Dallas Voice’s Instant Tea blog has collected eyewitness accounts from the police raid Saturday night at Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge.
Here’s the first:
Todd Camp, founder of Fort Worth’s LGBT film festival Q Cinema, had gone to Rainbow Lounge Saturday night with friends to celebrate his birthday. He said he was standing in line at the bar when “seven or eight cops,” some wearing Fort Worth Police uniforms, others wearing clothing identifying them as “state police.”
Camp said an officer “shoved me out of the way to grab the guy in front of me” in line at the bar. The officer “told the man, ‘You’re drunk,’” and took him out of the bar, Camp said.
He said there were “about six police cars” and a “paddy wagon” waiting outside the bar, and that officers had several people in zip-tie handcuffs lined up on the sidewalk.
“No one I saw appeared to be highly intoxicated, and the way they were choosing people just appeared to be random harassment,” Camp said. “They were pretty violent in grabbing people, and one guy was shoved to the ground and handcuffed.
“I was absolutely stunned. They are saying this was a routine check by TABC. I have been in plenty of bars before when TABC checks happened, and this was not like anything I have ever seen before,” Camp added. “People were just grabbed randomly, told they were drunk, spun around, put in handcuffs and taken out.”
And another:
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.
McCarty said that he saw officers throw Chad Gibson to the floor, adding that, “There were people standing there watching it happen and crying. They were scared. It was just brutal.”
Chad Gibson is the customer who remains in intensive care as doctors try to determine what steps to take to reduce the swelling and bleeding on his brain.
And a third eyewitness report:
Brandon Addicks said he had brought his girlfriend and “some of her friends” to the Rainbow Lounge on Saturday night to dance. At first, he said, they noticed “a small trickling of cops” coming into the bar, one of which “was wearing a shirt that said ‘Vice’ on it.” Then the trickle grew.
“I saw a cop walk up behind a guy who was sitting at a table. The cop told him to stand up, and when the guy asked what for, the cop said, ‘You’re intoxicated,’ Addicks said. “Then there was that guy getting the crap beat out of him there in the back.
Read about what happened in Fort Worth last weekend here.
Read about the Human Rights Campaign’s call for an investigation here.



5 Comments







Keep up with the news on this story as it breaks at Dallas Voice, and the Voice’s blog Instant Tea.
This is horrifying. Between this and the San Diego Francine Busby fundraiser, this just goes to show how much of a problem this nation still has with its homophobia.
This is why we desperately need a national hate crimes law in America. The DoJ should be able to investigate both of these horrific incidents, instead of having the local “law enforcement” investigate itself and discover everything is OK.
Thank you for sharing information about this incident. I hope the cops are held accountable.
This is why I moved out of Ft. Worth when I was about 20. I was at a blues bar (drinking age was 18), and was with about 5 other friends. We are all white. The cops came in, singled us out, and arrested 3 of my friends, along with myself, for being ‘drunk’. We had arrived maybe 20 minutes before, and had hardly started our first beers. Then, when we were in the police cars, handcuffed, the cops started shit, asking why we were hanging out with n—–s
It was really creepy, they were such redneck racist shit bags. This really doesn’t surprise me at all. Dallas/Ft. Worth are pretty messed up cities. They don’t take kindly to people who aren’t white republicans. Sad.