Things that make you go hmm...

How dare these officers get upset that gay drunk patrons tried to grope them?!

Gee, isn't raiding gay bars so, like 1969? It takes so little to 'amuse' a conservative these days - just a little rousting of the kweers. And on the anniversary of Stonewall no less. Set your watches back 40 years, folks. The crunchies are goin' nutz.

It's amazing that some people can't see that drunk patrons grabbing police officers in places they have no right to be grabbing is..(now brace yourselves for some horrifying words)....not good. Come on, people---I know the Brave New World is trying to get us to redefine drunk, officer-grabbing as just good clean fun, but not all of us have completely drunk the BNW koolaid just yet on absolutely everything.

I was tempted to agree, but they'd apparently inspected other bars without incident. Granted this could mean they decided to turn the inspection of a gay bar into a bashing, but the evidence doesn't seem clearcut that that's so. That one may personally prefer cops to gays or gays to cops isn't really evidence. We just don't know.

If it were fiction though the story would be kind-of funny. I can see finding it not so funny when it comes to real people. (The wood-chipper scene in Fargo is kind-of funny, if it happened in reality not so funny)

When you have a history of anti-gay activism, people are not likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when you use gay people for humor.

Plus, as Charles Foster Kane pointed out, we don't know that the cops' allegations are true. Cops sometimes make stuff up to cover for their mistakes, especially when no video is running. Dreher, do you have information that we don't? Or, as a journalist, do you always take the cops' word? Maybe that's one of the Dallas News' cost-cutting measures--print what the cop says and go home.

As to ironies, I recently saw a pickup with a bumper sticker that said, "A government that is so big to give you anything you want is so powerful that it can take away everything you have." It was parked in the lot of a government-provided recreation center.

Rod,

Most media accounts also go on to note that the patrons of the bar contend that no such groping occurred. But, I'm glad you find police harassment of gays humorous.

I really don't understand why this is supposed to be funny.

Sorry Rod, some of the stuff you write is amazing and thought provoking and then, well, then you write stupid stuff like this.

And we wonder why the world is laughing at us Christians. What a double standard we are.

"love thy neighbor"

Eyewitness accounts from the Dallas Voice blog:

http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_11500.php

And an update on Chad Gibson's condition, also from the Voice:
==================
Senior Editor Tammye Nash is just now leaving the hospital in Fort Worth where she spoke with Chad Gibson’s family. Gibson is in intensive care after reportedly suffering head trauma when he was thrown to the ground by police early Sunday during a raid of the Rainbow Lounge. Nash said she visited with Gibson’s mother and his sister this morning, and they told her that his condition has worsened. Gibson reportedly has a brain bleed — also known as intracerebral hemorraghing — and the clot inside his skull has gotten larger and shifted, which is a bad sign. Gibson is scheduled for another CT scan at 10 a.m. today. After that, doctors will decide whether the clot can be shrunk with medication or whether they need to perform surgery. Stay tuned, and keep Gibson in your thoughts and prayers.
===================

I don't know whose accounts of this story are correct. Given that one guy is still hospitalized with serious injuries, and that there are at least allegations of serious misconduct by the police, I have to say that Rod's judgment seems very poor here.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's at least as likely that patrons in a gay bar would try to inflate routine police work into "Kristallnacht" because it happened to take place on the 40th anniversary of the Stone Wall riot as it is that the police themselves would do so.

I have no more idea what really happened here than any of the rest of you. But I'm honest enough and clear-eyed enough to accept that it's every bit as likely -- and perhaps somewhat more likely -- that a sloppy-drunk gay-bar patron intoxicated enough to grab a policeman's crotch would also be intoxicated enough to fall and hurt himself in the midst of making a scene.

Gays have just as much incentive to be disingenuous in this case as the police do.

The police story smells very fishy indeed. And Rod's traffic must be slow lately....

I wonder if Rod's perspective might change if he read his own newspaper today.

www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-floyd_30met.ART0.State.Edition2.4bb1df1.html

"But there are flat contradictions about how Chad Gibson was injured. The Dallas Voice reported Monday that Gibson is hospitalized with bleeding around his brain.

"He was taken down hard," said Camp, with "four or five" officers wrestling him to the floor inside the club.

Cellphone photos shot by patrons and posted to blogs show a person being held facedown by officers in a short hallway inside the club, then show a dent in the wall where his head was apparently banged.

But a Fort Worth police spokesman told me Gibson was injured outside, when he fell and struck his head because he was so drunk.

"He was the one that groped the TABC agent," said Sgt. Pedro Criado. "He was injured by falling and hitting his head."

When I asked Sgt. Criado how he identified Gibson as the "groper," he said he was reading from a police report filed by cops on the scene. I asked for further details, but he said I'd have to file a Freedom of Information request."

Hmmm...cell phone pictures of where the officers hit the fellow's head against the wall. Rod, do you still find this funny?

YourName posted at 9:36 was Liam617

From this account it sounds to me like the police officers came to this bar looking for a fight.

www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_11500.php

"Justin McCarty said he was working security for the Rainbow Lounge at the time of the raid early Sunday morning. He said an officer approached him and asked how much he had had to drink.

“I told him I was working and hadn’t had anything to drink, and that’s when he told me, ‘Then you need to make yourself scarce.’ So I did. I went to the back out of the way. I took that as a threat that if I didn’t, I would be arrested, too,” McCarty said."

Hmmm....Later on...

"Randy Norman is general manager for the Rainbow Lounge. He said he saw a man on the dance floor, dancing, who was approached by police officers.

Randy Norman
“They threw him down, put the zip ties on him and took him out,” Norman said. “He told them he was not drunk, and asked that they do breathalyzer on him. But they refused.”

Norman said that after the bar had closed Sunday morning, an officer came back in and gathered the club’s employees on the dance floor. The officer told them police and TABC had been there for a routine check and that they club was not being targeted because it caters to the LGBT community."

Hmmm...a CYA visit, perhaps?

"Egert said when she first noticed an officer in the club she “made a point of going up to him to tell thanks for coming out to make sure we’re safe. ‘This is kind of a rough neighborhood, and we appreciate you.’ But he told me, ‘That’s not why we’re here.’”

When Egert asked why the officers were in the club, she said he told her they had received a tip from “a disgruntled former employee” who claimed the club’s bartenders were over-serving customers.

At that point, Egert said, she told the officer that she had had several drinks herself, but that she had a designated driver. The officer, in return, told her she had nothing to worry about.

It was shortly after that conversation, Egert said, that she saw officers “thrown against the wall” and then pushed to the floor. (That man was later identified as Chad Gibson.)

“Here you had this gay man who looked like he weighed about 100 pounds thrown to the floor with six cops on top of him,” she said. “That’s when I started noticing that they were only arresting men, and they seemed to be targeting the smaller men.”

Egert said her experience that night was proof the officers in the bar were there specifically to harass gay men.

“They said they were arresting people for public intoxication. I told them I was intoxicated, but they left me alone,” she said. “It was disgusting.”"

Hmmm...targeting smaller men, eh?

These things definitely make you go "hmmmm" Rod. I'm rather surprised that you, a newspaper reporter, didn't at least dig a bit deeper into the story to mention the injured person. But then, I'm left to wonder, from your past reporting, if perhaps you left that out on purpose.

Hmmmm....

Rod: "Your inability to see that grabbing a cop's crotch is a grossly inappropriate form of behavior, and in fact a COMPLETELY IDIOTIC thing to do, suggests to me that you think gay people cannot be as stupid as the rest of us, and certainly not when it comes to expressing their sexuality, which is, on this view, a sacramental act."

But Rod, other witnesses in the bar indicate that the person accused of grabbing the cop's crotch, the person who is currently in the hospital, did NOT do it. Why do you accept the police version of the story as gospel?

And as we well know, Badger, Texas police have never committed an act of violence against any minority, and have always told the truth to their internal investigating officers. We have absolutely no reason to doubt the veracity of the police officers in this instance, nor in any other instance in which "things happen".

/sarcasm

We don't really know what happened. As you would expect, accounts conflict. (What really would be suspicious would be if all accounts by all witnesses agreed!)

So I don't know who, if anyone, grabbed a cop's crotch.

But I never cease to be amazed at how stupidly some people can behave around armed police officers. You think you'd exercise common sense. (I do understand that the bar patrons here might not have been at their best.) But when an armed law officer tells you to stop, you stop. If he tells you to lie down on the ground, you lie down on the ground. He's armed, get it? as in, he has a loaded gun, and no one knows what he's likely to do with it if you get into his face. If he's off the mark, deal with it later, in court. Don't get into a gun battle like in Gunsmoke with the guy. He's in all probability a better shot.

Being totally right in defending your civil rights will be cold comfort in intensive care. Move slowly around these guys, be respectful, don't frighten them. It's just self-preservation.

I was sitting in a pizza joint in Edinburgh once, and in come two Scottish policemen, ordering pizza. I examined them closely from across the room, and, being policemen, they noticed.

So rather than have cops in a foreign country stomp over and ask me what exactly was on my mind, I went over to them and told the truth: I was trying to figure out whether they were armed. They were not.

When I asked, from an American's standpoint, how that works out, they advised me that they are so tough that they don't need firearms. The expected response. Some, not all, Scotsmen are enormous physically, not fat, just BIG, and these two were of that type. Their demeanor and bearing certainly did not encourage me to make any sudden moves or say anything untoward. I'm sure they would have been more than capable of beating me senseless with those billy clubs.

Should American policemen be carry firearms? Of course. Because unlike Scotland, the populace is armed, rather heavily armed.

I'm a member of the NRA, so don't talk about taking away my guns. ("Cold dead fingers" and all that.) But if everyone wasn't armed to the teeth, there would be fewer incidents of the sort Rod is talking about, or at least the long-term results might be less dire. It's part of the price we pay for guns.

RJohnson,

In my experience, drunks are never to be trusted over sober people. Admittedly, the gay gene may change that calculation, since we all know all gay people just want to be a part of the community, marry, adopt two black, handicapped children from foster care and contribute to the PTA and just be treated like everyone else.

RJohnson,

Why do your accept the gay account of this incident as being "gospel?"

The fact that you seem to makes me wonder if you don't in fact hold the gay world-view or the gay ideology or the gay identity to be "sacramental" just as Rod claims.

It wouldn't shock me in the least if some policemen lied -- to themselves or to others -- about what happened here.

It's also wouldn't shock me in the least if some gay-bar patrons did.

Rod writes: Your inability to see that grabbing a cop's crotch is a grossly inappropriate form of behavior, and in fact a COMPLETELY IDIOTIC thing to do, suggests to me that you think gay people cannot be as stupid as the rest of us, and certainly not when it comes to expressing their sexuality, which is, on this view, a sacramental act.

Rod, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're reading this thread in haste, probably while distracted, and not thinking very clearly.

The comment to which you're replying doesn't even remotely suggest that "grabbing a cop's crotch" is appropriate. Liam say's he's skeptical that any crotch-grabbing occurred. There are now a number of witnesses who dispute the police story.

We don't know what happened there, except that one person is hospitalized with serious injuries. I'm still unimpressed with your judgment on this one. If ever there was a case for looking into the story before turning on the mockery, this was it.

RJohnson writes:

Observer: "Being totally right in defending your civil rights will be cold comfort in intensive care. Move slowly around these guys, be respectful, don't frighten them. It's just self-preservation."

Ah, yes. The "Abner Louima" school of self-preservation.

Observer's advice doesn't guarantee "self-preservation" but it makes it a heck of a lot more likely. Would Louima have fared better if he'd fought back against the police?

Rod, I was really impressed last week when you took the time to reconsider your response to the Mark Sanford situation. A lot of people called you on your comments, and you admitted that you reacted poorly and did some self-reflection about why that happened. It was an admirable response. I wonder if some of that self-reflection might be helpful here. A lot of people, gay and straight, Orthodox and not, have been pointing out what appears to be one of your blind spots. You're reaction, however, seems to be just as knee-jerk as your original posts.

I don't know what happened in that bar. I'll admit that the police account doesn't sound right to me and there is a long history of police mistreating LGBT people, but also that people who have been drinking have been known to make poor choices when it comes to their interaction with police.

What I do know is that there is that of God in every person who was in that bar, in every person who has commented on this post, and in you. Sometimes it seems like you either don't believe that, or forget it when you start talking about gay and lesbian issues. Why (and I mean this kindly, not snarkily) do you think that is?

Making an unwanted sexual advance to a police officer is very stupid. But even that sort of behavior would not justify a beating by the local constabulary (nothing does, really) as even the police know, since they have taken the official position that he fell and hit his head because he was drunk.

Of course, the real problem in the incident is not only that that there are conflicting stories as to the officers' motivations and the cause of the serious injury to the unfortunate patron, but frankly to an objective observer, the evidence is more suggestive of improper police use of force than otherwise and the improper targeting of a minority establishment.

The real problem with Rod's post is that he didn't exercise a journalist's investigative instinct before writing, merely allowing the information to flow into a mold of his preconceived ideas and prejudices, missing important information in the process. A story about a gay bar patron grabbing a police officer's crotch by mistake because he thought he was a male stripper is funny, presumably ending with a misdemeanor ticket that would be dismissed. An incident with serious allegations of police misconduct, supported by witness testimony, resulting in serious brain injury, is not. At all.

RJohnson, nine posts on the same thread this morning constitutes trolling. Don't post anything else on this thread today, or I'll delete them.

really?: Are you incapable of seeing that cops lie? A lot? So credulous. Considering how sensitive you are about everything important to you, and since you discuss your own status as a victim of bullying, I'd think you'd have at least some sympathy for the put-upon. Instead, you make a blanket defense of the behavior and justifications for actions by the very same sort of rednecks that used to beat you up when you were a pudgy kid. Interesting.

Settle down, Chester. Of course cops lie, and maybe these cops are lying. If so, let 'em have it. I don't apologize for the fact that I tend to believe the police as a first response, until looking more closely at the story. You apparently choose to find the police to be liars, straight up. Why is that? And why do you assume these cops were "redneck" bullies? Maybe they are, but you are just making assumptions at this point, based on your own biases. Which is understandable, but it's rich that you gripe at me for doing the same thing you're doing.

Alanmt: The real problem with Rod's post is that he didn't exercise a journalist's investigative instinct before writing, merely allowing the information to flow into a mold of his preconceived ideas and prejudices, missing important information in the process. A story about a gay bar patron grabbing a police officer's crotch by mistake because he thought he was a male stripper is funny, presumably ending with a misdemeanor ticket that would be dismissed. An incident with serious allegations of police misconduct, supported by witness testimony, resulting in serious brain injury, is not. At all.

Alan, I pretty much agree with this. I wrote that post early yesterday afternoon, based on the available information, which I found through the D magazine blog (D is the city magazine of Dallas, and gay-friendly). D's blogger treated it as an occasion for humor, which it sounded like at that point. I wrote the post and scheduled it to go up later in the day (I do that a lot, to keep content refreshing throughout the day).

This is a blog. Bloggers react in real time to information that's presented in the public square. We now know more about the police raid on the bar, the condition of the guy who was injured, etc. I agree with you that the added context should cause a re-evaluation of this story. The first report indicated that drunk patrons had their hands all over the cops. I don't find that offensive as much as I find it heroically stupid (you will find that I am positively Cosimanian in my ability to find human stupidity mockable). If it turns out upon investigation that the police behaved wrongly here, then by all means, throw the book at them. And if it turns out that the initial reports painting the behavior of the bar patrons in a bad light were erroneous, then I'll be happy to publicize that and to change my view of the situation.

In any case, it is deeply distressing to learn that this particular patron is in critical condition, and we should all pray for his recovery. Seriously.

It may be news to some of you readers, but I am not omniscient, and I comment on news as it's released. As new facts emerge, the story may change, and the rolling commentary here will reflect that. It's in the nature of blogging that anything one blogs is only a snapshot of what the blogger was thinking at a particular moment in time.

I spied a bumper sticker (on an older Izuzu Trooper) this past weekend I found worthwhile: "Save Darfur - Send Rifles".

Oops--it looks as if I posted simultaneously with Rod. I did not mean to rain on your explanation, Rod. I looked up the original post on the D magazine blog, though, and it does contain the words "There are reports that things got out of hand, and one guy may have even been hospitalized after the incident." I guess your eye fell on the fun part, and I do understand that bloggers have to flit rapidly from flower to flower. But to me, the word "hospitalized" is always a bit of a buzzkiller and warrants checking out before the belly laugh begins. Also, if one goes to the link given in the original D post, one finds the same allegations of police brutality that have been brought up here. I guess I can't imagine ANY situation in which the police send someone to the hospital and it's still funny.

Gosh darn it--my apologies to all for the multiple post. Captcha seldom gets me, but when it does, it picks the best times . . . I'll depart for awhile now.

Rod:

Since your only published follow up on this terrible incident was to call my post idioitic and stupid, I'd like to offer a rebuttal.

First, yes this bar patron could be equally dumb as anyone else. The problem, though, is that he'd have to be the dumbest thing on 2 legs to make an inappropriate "pass" on a policeman during a raid on a gay bar. Gay men know their own history all too well and I'd imagine that awareness of police misconduct or gay bashing is particularly acute in certain parts of the country. To me, the police report is simply implausible on its face.

Second, don't lecture me on what I think is and is inappropriate. I never defended the bar patron's actions. I merely questioned the veracity of the policeman's version of events. It may shock you that even I, as a gay man, have morals and know what is inappropriate. Just because I didn't publicly declare them as such does not mean I don't think such a touching is inappropriate. Not only would it be inappropriate, but as an attorney I know that an unwelcome touching is also a criminal battery. I'd have to be really dumb (or, per your response, idiotic) to think a criminal act could be appropriate. But thanks for the vote of confidence in your readers.

I must admit that I am troubled by the police explanation: "We were having this discussion, the guy grabbed at my crotch, and then, by golly, the guy FELL and incurred this brain injury, who woulda thunk!"

Now, he could very well have fallen. People do, especially drunk people. And a certain number of people who fall do hit their heads. But this whole story sounds more than a bit fishy, yes?

There are ways for physicians to do better than this. Usually head injuries resulting from a fall can be distinguished from head injuries incurred by being bashed against the wall or on the head with a stick. No one at the hospital is too worried about all this right now; they're just trying to save the guy's life.

But after the dust settles, you can depend on it that all this will come out in the inevitable personal injury lawsuit against the Ft. Worth Police Department and the ABC.

Rod, upon reflection, my "don't lecture me" was rude. Sorry.

Your inability to see that grabbing a cop's crotch is a grossly inappropriate form of behavior, and in fact a COMPLETELY IDIOTIC thing to do, suggests to me that you think gay people cannot be as stupid as the rest of us, and certainly not when it comes to expressing their sexuality, which is, on this view, a sacramental act. I would also find it funny if some drunk redneck at a cowboy bar put his hand on a female cop's rear end, and got taken down for it. If said redneck ended up in the hospital, well, that wouldn't be funny.

Rod, show me exactly where Liam asserts that grabbing a cop's crotch is acceptable behavior. Show me where *anyone* criticizing this post says expressing their sexuality is a sacremental act.

When you find a minute to stop whackin' on straw men that you seem to want desperately to exist in flesh and blood, tone your hysteria down, and address the points people actually made, I'll be glad to see a response.

I don't get how you consistently give yourself a pass on laughing at people, then go on and on about sexual attitudes that treat people like meat.

Shall I draw a line from the "meat" attitude to your own attitudes expressed here? In the words of Margaret from "Howards End", can you connect???

If liberals dislike Rod's work as much as you seem to, then why do you come here?

Most of us are perfectly able to decide for ourselves whether or not we think Rod has gone over the line in some particular case, and we don't need your help in determining that.

Those who are so reflexively pro-Rod that they can't make those kinds of judgements for themselves are not going to be persuaded by anything that you-all have to say.

So why contribute traffic to a blog that you consider to be so abominable by liberal lights?

It would seem that the better thing to do by those lights would be to ignore Rod altogether and to let his blog wither or the vine, which it probably would do to some extent without its liberal readers, who seem to be most of its readers, or at least a majority.

You blew it on this one, Rod. "Injured by falling" is about the same as "shot while trying to escape." It is far easier for me to believe that a cop chose to crease this poor man's skull than it is to believe that a gay man, even if stupid drunk, would grab at a cop's manhood. That one doesn't pass the smell test.

JSP, for me it's the fact Rod is on theeditorial board of our paper, and thus part of the establishment for the community. I have also learned he 'test drives' some columns for the paper here first.

Clearly, the issue here is bigotry, or at least the appearance of bigotry. Police raids of gay bars is as sensitive a symbol of state-based bigotry as Bull Connor unleashing the dogs and high-pressure hoses during the Black civil rights era.

For the police in this instance to even be raiding a gay bar on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots is so obtuse as to be wholly incredulous.

And for Rod to dismiss their collective ignorance of Stonewall reveals his own investment in anti-gay bigotry. As another commenter said above, it's understandable and reasonable for individual officers to be ignorant of Stonewall's anniversary, but it is completely inexcusable that commanding officers wouldn't notify their street officers of the anniversary and dissuade such (apparently) pointless raids on gay bars in their jurisdiction.

And to "Jess Sayin'", who said on June 30, 2009, at 11:24 AM:

"Since Abner Louima is being invoked, it's worth remembering that the police brutality against him occurred in true-blue 'Noo Yauwuhk' and not in red-necked 'Foat Wuth.'

The regional snobbery and class bigotry on display here does nothing to make otherwise disinterested observers sympathetic to the gay and/or the liberal side of this Rashomon-like debate."

Your comment should be inserted into Rhetoric courses around the country as the most perfect strawman statement ever crafted. Yes, if anyone refers to the brutality committed upon Abner Louima by police officers due solely to his being gay, be sure to attack that example as inapplicable because it occurred in a "blue" state, as if that has any bearing at all on the discussion.

I'll give you some "regional snobbery" (which is always true when the setting is Texas), but please provide one example of class bigotry on display anywhere in these comments. And to assert such a plainly baseless diversion from the plain and actual bigotry displayed by Rod in his post? Ridiculous. As someone else said above, if Rod had posted a "humorous" story about any other racial, ethnic, or social stereotype, he would be roundly condemned for promoting bigotry.

Finally, I'm sure you feel very proud of your Rashomon reference. However, there is a significant problem: in the film, every witness told a separate story, whereas here there are only two stories - the self-serving, CYA version related by the cops and the version told by everyone else who was there, all of whom stand to gain nothing by lying since the young man in the hospital hasn't even been charged with assault, nor have any of them been criminally charged.