Raid on Rainbow Lounge

[keyan_bowes]

 In honor of San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade.

(That's a double rainbow over market street, New Year's Eve, some years ago.)
 

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One of my gay Clarion-mates, who is in Texas, posted on Facebook to say that the Fort Worth police last night raided the Rainbow Lounge, a new GLBT venue.  They arrested a bunch of people for being drunk. In a bar. All the accounts make it seem as though the police were being deliberately provocative.
Everyone's waiting for an explanation. (Well, that and organizing protests.)

All this on the anniversary of Stonewall. Does the Fort Worth police department have an overdeveloped sense of irony or what?

 

ETA: There was a protest. 
And the police explained they weren't picking on the gay bar, they were going after all bars. Apparently in Fort Worth, it's illegal to be drunk in a bar.
I am hoping this turns out to be a tempest in a teacup.

ETA2: Here's the police statement about the raid, I mean, the Inspection. The police were apparently irresistable.

Comments

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Almost all the Google News hits are from the same site, Dallas Voice. This suggests to me that the more national media hasn't verified anything.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

Yes. Dallas Voice carried all the early accounts. The protest got a bit wider coverage. The police apparently have an explanation, but whether it's a satisfactory one or not we'll have to see.

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I was just suspicious at the timing. Why would the police do it on the anniversary? Yet someone faking a story would definitely have faked a story on the anniversary.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

The timing was weird. But it seems to have been coincidental malice rather than carefully planned malice.