Atlanta cops sued over raid on gay bar

Lambda Legal has filed a federal lawsuit against Atlanta's police chief and 48 officers for a September raid on a gay bar, whose customers say they were mistreated by police. They didn't drugs or weapons. The only charges were filed against some bar employees. (For not having an adult entertainment license. Some folks were reportedly dancing in their underwear.) But everyone had to lie on the floor and was searched, some roughed up -- even though, the lawsuit alleges, there was no probable cause.

"Imagine if the police walked into a Wal-Mart and see someone shoplifting, and because they see what they think is a crime taking place in Wal-Mart, they take everyone at Wal-Mart, throw them on the floor, spread their legs, put their hands in their pockets, take their IDs, put their name in the computer, simply because they're out of place or someone else may or may not be doing something wrong," co-counsel Daniel Grossman said at a news conference Tuesday.

Atlanta police have said that officers were merely following established procedure.

Comments

[cripjak]

They must have thought Adam Lambert was there. On a side note: I wonder how many customers actually enjoyed lying down and being frisked.

[Chuck Rizzo]

Yeah thats typically sending 48 officers anywhere for no reason.

[rpt]

I can guarantee you that no one that was there that night, in any way shape or form, enjoyed having to lay face down, get searched and be detained. Lawsuits like this one, Mr. CRIPJAK, may help to insure that your civil rights will not be violated.

[The Golfer]

Oh lighten up rpt, cripjak was joking.
How I read it. Although I agree with him snickering as I am.

48 cops - they had something that needed that many cops. Not just riding around cops.

[Searching]

Maybe they just dont like people that hang around in public half naked promoting sexual perversions in Atlanta? Just guessing.

[Searching]

without a license..

[sickoftheidiots]

"sexual perversion"? Really? And I thought that kind of garbage rhetoric was left to Parkay and his ilk.

[Searching]

NO, it is my observation as to what the cops were thinking.. Even Straight bars have to have a license to parade around ho's in underwear.

[Kevin]

The police were responding to complaints of sexual activity going on inside the club. Since most patrons were probably okay with it, the complainrs most likely came from vice officers who observed the activity. In response, the police used a show of force to raid the bar and force everyone to the floor just to charge a few with indecent conduct.

If you go into any club in this city, or anywhere else for that matter, you will see on occassion sex in the restrooms, drug sales and drug use. That goes for straight clubs as well as gay clubs.

I have a few problems with these types of raid. One, the show of force was excessive. It only was that excessive because it was a gay club. For some reason, consentual sex between gays seems to be a crime worthy of the death penalty when the same sex between straights in the park, at the drive-in, in the elevator, in an airplane bathroom and so on is viewed as romantic.

Second, I have a real problem with vice officers who are straight being the complainants. Of course they were hit on, they were fresh faces and new meat so to speak. They should have sent gay officers in to see if a real problem existed.

Third, personally sex in public is not going to stop. I would rather have a few guys doing it in the club than out in the park or a Home Depot restroom.

[roxorz]

Searching, I'm glad you explained that. I was about to be terribly ashamed of you. :P

I'm a little bit surprised being sued is the worst they got. Or, if not surprised, a little bit sad. :-/

[Chuck Rizzo]

I like Kevin's idea, send in Gay officers to see if it's an issue. I don't want to see people having sex in public anywhere I don't care where it is. Do I think it was worth 48 officers no but it shows to me that it was more than just 2 cops driving by who decided to be jackasses.

[Searching]

Second, I have a real problem with vice officers who are straight being the complainants. Of course they were hit on, they were fresh faces and new meat so to speak. They should have sent gay officers in to see if a real problem existed.

Why, vice officers that go into a gay club, are jaded. They dont know when they are being treated like fresh meat?
Kevin.. here in lies the problem...Gay people are not special.. I am sick of them thinking so. If heteros are caught having sex in the bathroom,they are arrested just the same.

What you are suggesting is that gay officers would look the other way, for those little things that gays do. like sex in the bathrooms. hand jobs under the bars... because, they understand, that those perversions are somehow "necessary".

Cut the crap, the stuff that goes on in those clubs is sometimes absolutely disgusting and you know... dont sugar coat it, and say that straight people just dont get it

Yeah, we get it. you all want "special" stuff just for gay people.

[Searching]

The article said 20-30 officers.. I dont know where 48 keeps coming from.

[D-man]

It's raining men.

[me]

Searching, I see your stupid ass is still posting! Special? Are you a moron or what? They don't want to be treated special, Only fair. No special rights,Just human rights. People like you take things out of context and turn it into something you can complain about. Wise up! No special rights, Just equal rights!

[Searching]

So, you think it is equal rights, to look the other way when gays are having sex in bathrooms and bars and arrest the hetero's for doing it?

[Searching]

Talk about moronic thoughts.
And if there faces were in broken glass and spilled drinks, that's the bars fault, it should have been cleaned up. Not just left there.

[Occaisional Bigot]

One more reason I'm glad I'm not gay.

[Searching]

They dont send in only black cops for bars that are frequented by blacks. or jewish cops, or female cops... it is expecting special rights. Next thing you know, they will want the cops prosecuted under hate crime status. geeezzz

[me]

Searching, Must have touched a nerve here.
You said special rights! Don't change your tune now. If I was in a bar that had illegal activity going on I would expect for cops to arrest those involved, but to treat everyone like a criminal is wrong.
Equal rights not special rights.

[KC Cicero]

Sadly, we reached the point in this Post-Constitutional America where the police do think of this abuse of formerly-free citizens as "standard" -- after all, waterboarding (torture which we formerly punished as torture) is not "enhanced interogation).

The ONLY place where this kind of behavior is "standard" is in a police state.

[Pat the Rat]

Gay cops to raid gay bars.

Thats like having Jay and Silent Bob raid a reefer den.

Moo moo buckaroo!

[cripjak]

Golfer---thanks for defending my, at times, questionable integrity. I was trying to inject a little levity on the subject. As far as attorney Grossmans Wal-Mart argument apparently he's never looked at the website "people of wal-mart.com" He might want to make a different anology because many of them would have problems complying with the officers instructions. Thanks again Golfer. Owe ya one.

[Searching]

ME.. I am not changing my tune. They want special rights. Kevin was suggesting. that gay cops go in, to see if anything is "really" wrong, as if the stuff that goes on in gays bars is fine. Wouldn't be allowed in hetero bars, shouldn't be allowed in gay bars.
That is what I call "special" rights, they think that they ought to be able to continue with public perversions, because the gay lifestyle accepts it.

I don't care if you are gay or straight, boppin MR.. I just met you 5 minutes ago.. in the bathroom, is unacceptable behavior.

Sorry if that's all YOU can get.

[rhonda]

Sure, Pat, I have comments:

1) Spellcheck your name.

2) Everyone who is commenting on this thread should read the article.

3) It appears nothing illegal was going on and that all of the bar's customers were treated like criminals for no reason.

4) "Police have said that if they go into a bar, it is procedure to have patrons lie on the floor and be searched, and everyone's identification is taken and checked, Nevins told reporters."

I've been in a lot of bars in my life and I've certainly never experienced anything like this. If it happened to me, I would certainly sue someone.

[Kevin]

I never implied that gay officers should be sent in to overlook criminal behavior, my point was that gay officers may not have overreacted as much as the good ole' boys obviously did..

Although it is procedure to send extra officers to a bar, 20 -48 officers meant they had a plan to arrest everybody in the place. I would love to see them respond to a straight bar with these types of number..that would of had a fight on their hands.

Typical stupid police and this is the same department that used a crackhead as an informant to get a search warrant for a house where a little old lady lived and who was gunned down by police because she was defending her property from what she beleived to be robbers...Give me a break.

[Searching]

They had witnessed the activities in the bar prior. They just didnt actually catch them in the act this time. Besides, most of my comments were directed toward kevin and his comments.

And whoever ME is. It is a false name to disguise themselves. They don't want people to know how asinine they really are. Must be terrible to not be able to show people who you really are.. must be a lot of shame there.

[Pat the occaisional bigot]

Got it. Thanks Rhonda.

[rhonda]

"They had witnessed the activities in the bar prior"

Where are you getting that? The article doesn't mention it.

[Damon]

Rhonda,

Thats because some people imagine that all gays in all situations are giving each other reach arounds when they're not looking.

You can't reason with a raging person Rhonda , potent thoughts are racing through them, and its hard to be objective.

[KPOP]

note to self; no dancing in underwear in gay bar.

[roxorz]

(Applauding rhonda.)

[Chuck Rizzo]

They were expecting drug users and drug dealers, I would say this is typical behavior of law enforcement when they are going into a "seemingly" dangerious enviroment. They don't go into crack houses holdin doylies.

[Chuck Rizzo]

Not calling a gay bar a crack house so don't get your panties in a bunch. I'm just saying it appears per the story they were looking for drugs.

[kccad]

Since the police didn't find anything, perhaps next time they will enter from the rear? :)

[cripjak]

Were the Village People playing there?

[parkay]

Recriminalize sodomy.

[Jo Jo]

Kev, if you were any more retarded, we'd have to pulse-check you from time to time. And I'm sorry logic escapes you. You think that a greater show of force presumes:
1. Everyone will be arrested--if that was the case, why are we not seeing a report of everyone in the bar arrested? Lemme help you out there, champ--it's to control an unknown amount of people. You don't guess and send five in to control what may be up to fifty.
2. There will be a more violent response to more manpower. I don't know where to begin with you. That also ass-umes that bar patrons, gay or straight, will only be more willing to fight when the numbers are more even, not stacked more in the patrons' favor. You must think that ALL bar patrons, not just you, are poorly lacking in judgment skills.

And good call on the fact that Atlanta PD is the ONLY police department in the WORLD to EVER have mistakenly relied on the word of a drug user in support of an affidavit for a search warrant that subsequently went awry. Well hell, if they just changed their departmen policy on the use of crackheads as informants, this would just be a slight misgiving in their largely untainted history. Good eye, Inspektor.

You hate cops, I get it. I like cops, everyone else gets it. But the shit you're advancing is ridiculous.
Just like we know that with KCC, we can send 2.5 kids to Mizzou, no matter what the topic and that this is Post-Constitutional America.

[xenotoxin]

Obvious that the "holster-sniffing" pig lovers are out in force. While the doings of any number of homosexuals interests me not-at-all, the idea that a huge number of city employees decide to indulge their prejudices and "raid" a homo hangout, with no just/probable cause, puts my back up. 48 cops @ (average)$ 45/hour (benefits included) times 6 hours = US $12,960.00 at a minimum.

What the heck could they have been thinking? Atlanta's budget is already redder than Obama's stimulus, and these officers thought that this waste was a good idea?

The precinct Captain, Lieutenant, and the shift- Sergeant, all need to be busted down to traffic control for such a disgraceful waste.

Just because the homos are an easy target, there is no justification for this sort of squandering of resources & creating Municipal exposure to (very, very) expensive litigation.

[Chuck Rizzo]

xenotoxin it's obvious the morons are out in force. Yeah they would waste their time with homo's as you call them. I think what they were really after is drug users and drug dealers. But I guess you'd have had to READ the article to understand that portion of it.

[xenotoxin]

Rizzo: Reading the article doesn't help to excuse the absolute lack of professionalism, or justify for this act of penis-insecure idiots prejudice being acted out on the City's dime.

Like it or not, to most, homosexuals are now a "suspect class". This means a higher level of judicial scrutiny when actions are undertaken against them, singularly, in group or in toto.

What sort of reaction would one expect if this many butt-heads in blue staged an identical action in an exclusively Negro social venue? Yes, that's right there would be such hell to pay that Atlanta would think that Sherman had come through again.

If a police department is not willing to do the real, nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty work of long term surveillance, purchase & record, photograph & trace, to establish a venue as a drug den, then they need to stay at the damn doughnut shop or the precinct and stop costing the city money.

[Man in a Mission]

Chuck Rizzo -

I read the article. What I read was a statement by the police, prepared more than 2 months after the raid, unsupported by any evidence, and contradicted by the fact that not a single patron or staff member was arrested or charged with a drug related or sex-related offense or any evidence that 20-30 police officers have ever forced every patron of a straight bar to lay on the floor in spilt beer and/or broken glass.

You can accept the cops justification of this raid if you want. However, I will wait to see the outcome of the lawsuit when the police will be forced to produce proof that there is some other explanation of this. Also, when was the last time you saw 20-30 cops involved in a drug raid on a single establishment. BTW - given that no evidence of illegal drugs was found on either patrons or staff - do you honestly think that story holds water?

Even if there was drug use going on, that does not justify the detention and search of individuals where no articulable probable cause exists.

*****

Staff members were charged with a minor violation because 4 individuals were allegedly dancing while wearing very little clothing. Note that they were not nude, nor is there evidence that sex was taking place in this bar.

Those of you who are making prejudicial remarks need to consider that while wearing only underwear may be distasteful, if no genitalia was visible they were as well clothed as someone wearing a swim suit and would not violate a public nudity law by appearing in public dressed as they were. You might find the image distasteful, but it is in all likelihood much less explicit in nature than the wet T-shirt contests regularly held in straight bars every week, or the displays to be seen in many straight bars and clubs.

For that matter if anyone has seen the TV series Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Cafe one will see the types of behavior you condemn happen every day across America without anyone saying a word and are just as likely to occur in straight bars as gay bars.

[Jeff Johnson]

Next time I'm in Atlanta I'll be sure to ask a cop how I can protect myself against police brutality. The cops would have had to shot me. I will never lay dawn on the floor for no reason. F the pigs.

[Chuck Rizzo]

MIAM they do the same thing in any drug raid. If they raid a crack house they detain everyone inside and figure out who's who and whats what as the investigation continues.

[Kevin]

A known drug house is a little differant than a public establishment. Like the previous comments said, the police should not have worried about past complaints to justify detaining such a large group. They should have went in undercover and conducted surveillance prior to the raid. They should have identified just those committing illegal acts and then have officers come in to arrest them. They knew this type of operation was not going to be very sucessful because once they revealed the first arrest, evrything else would stop. They choose instead to do a shotgun effect, make everyone hit the floor, and then hope they found something illegal. Again another example of lazy cops, with little %$#%& that can't fight real crime because they are too scared.

[readaswritten]

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:13

[Chuck Rizzo]

Well they aren't that lazy or they wouldn't have even been in the place that long and they would have just taken all the dudes to jail.

[Steve]

Was it because they didn't "come through the back door"?! Quit your bitching people!

[Man in a Mission]

Chuck Rizzo -

When is the last time you have heard of this happening in any public establishment? Again - this was not a drug house, there is no evidence of widespread drug use, let alone dealing happening at the bar, and the net result of this 'raid' was the arrest of 4 staff members because people were 'dancing in their underwear'.

These types of raids used to happen all the time in America. However, it wasn't related to drugs. Rather it was cops busting into gay bars because of laws forbidding two men or two women to dance with each other. In those cases, yes the people were subjected to humiliation, anti-gay slurs, and at that time, yes everyone was arrested.

This is nothing except an organized gay-bashing by the police using their state authority to perpetrate their personal prejudice. As such, and given that they ran every person who was at the bar through the police computers, there is a clear record of who the victims of this action was - so I say certify this as a class action suit and BOHICA Atlanta because your police department just wrote another huge check that your tax dollars are going to have to cash.

[Man in a Mission]

readaswritten -

These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcasses in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, And the vulture, and the kite after his kind; Every raven after his kind; And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckoo, and the hawk after his kind, And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl, And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.

Leviticus 11:9-20

So when are you going to quit eating lobster, crab, oysters, scallops, clams, or calamari?

Keep my decrees. "'Do not mate different kinds of animals. "'Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. "'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

Leviticus 19:19

When are you going to stop wearing poly-cotton blends?

Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.

Proverbs 12:22

When are you going to quit committing an abomination to the Lord?

You don't get to pick and choose which abominations you get to make laws about. Further, we have seen what happens when nations try to make laws based upon ancient scripture - the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Iran. If you seek to become a Christian or Jewish theocrat, I will oppose you with just as much fervor as I do those who are Muslim theocrats.

We live in a secular society where laws are not based, and should not be based upon the scripture of one religion or the interpretation of those scripture by one sect.