Nearly a week ago, gay bar Atlanta Eagle was raided. The Atlanta Police Department seem to have taken notes from June’s Ft. Worth gay bar raid. Since it’s been almost a week since the clearly discriminatory raid, here are some details to bring you up to date.

• September 10, 2009, 11:30pm: Atlanta police arrived at the Atlanta Eagle with ten police cars, three paddy wagons, fifteen officers, and five to ten plain clothes officers. Police ordered all patrons to lay on the ground, regardless of suspicion. Patrons were handcuffed indiscriminately seemingly for no reason before being searched, most of them at least twice.
• Yesterday the Southern Voice published the anonymous tips from May and July that led to this September raid. (Local copies available here and here.) The complaints allege nude dancers, sex parties, sex outside the Eagle, speakers pointed to neighboring buildings blasting sounds of sex (I’m not kidding), drug use, drug sales, and bags with drug residue strewn around the neighborhood. The online complaint is listed as a prostitution complaint.
• Witness Allan Vives had this to say: “Of the officers present, there was one female who was running searches on the IDs of those whose licenses were collected. She was not only rude but seemed to be enjoying the event. At one point, she stopped what she was doing and walked over to the television and asked her colleagues what the score to the game playing on the television was…..at this point there were still innocent patrons laying face down on the floor.”
• Background checks were performed on patrons were allowed to leave. No patrons were arrested.
• Du-Wayne Ray, store manager of Rawhide Leather, which operates below the Eagle, said that he and one of his employees heard one white uniformed officer say to another, “This is a lot more fun than raiding niggers with crack.”
• By 1:00am, eight Eagle employees were arrested for “providing adult entertainment without a city permit.” As Dan Savage noted, that sounds a lot like homophobic police speak for “those homos don’t have thar shirts on.”
• All eight arrestees were kept in jail overnight, with two remaining until the following afternoon when two city council candidates coerced a judge into finally setting bail.
• In an article published by the Southern Voice Monday, Richard Ramey, Eagle co-owner, spoke about the charges.

Ramey said he didn’t understand the need for the raid, saying they have a good relationship with the police and their neighbors. He said that while he doesn’t have a permit for paid dancers, the dancers the Eagle employs are covered under their nightclub permit because they are not nude. Also, nothing illegal was found in the raid, he said.

“No drugs found in my bar or on any patron, and that says a lot about my bar and my patrons. I have wonderful customers,” Ramey said. “We don’t have drugs at Eagle, we don’t allow it. The only drug we have is the alcohol.”

• Steven Gower, volunteer for a local neighborhood watchdog group had this to say:

I can assure you that the raid was not initiated by MPSA or its patrol, and we have never received any complaints, reports, or observations about criminal activity in any way associated with the Eagle. Further, I have spent much time on the streets of Midtown, and look under every rock to identify problem spots. Eagle is not one of those problem spots, and we have always considered the Eagle to be a good neighbor.

• Police later claimed that the raid took place because undercover officers had twice seen sex taking place in the bar on previous visits. No arrests were made during those alleged instances.
• The Atlanta police LGBT Liaison, Officer Dani Lynn Harris, was kept completely in the dark about the raid, only finding out about it when members of the press started calling her.
• (Thursdays are “underwear night”, with bar employees and some patrons in their underwear. Not dancing, not stripping, just in their underwear, which is more than you would see at the beach or swimming pool.)
• In an interview after being released from jail, one of the arrested employees had this to say:

Tadareius Johnson, 24, was dancing in the the bar’s cage when police came into the club Thursday and was one of the men arrested and charged with providing adult entertainment without a permit. He said those charges are unjust.

“I’m dancing [in underwear] and what I think is a SWAT team comes in. Some are telling me to stand still, some are telling me to get down. It was big confusion,” he said Friday at the bar.

“The police were really tough, especially on our older customers. I understand police have to be safe, but there was no reason for them to treat people the way they did — especially when someone is 60-65. They weren’t even helping them up after making them lay on the ground.”

Johnson said he was accused of exposing his penis and pulling his underwear down while dancing. He denied those charges.

“You can’t do that. There’s cameras in here. I’m very conscious of the laws. I know men can’t grope, you can’t be naked. That’s why we were in our underwear,” he said.

• We learn in the same article that Eagle co-owner Robby Kelley was made to spend the night sitting in a plastic chair and the arrestees weren’t permitted to use a telephone for 14 hours.

Repeating, the raid supposedly happened because of public sex and/or prostitution, but the only reason for the eight arrests was a code violation. Patrons and employees were thoroughly searched multiple times and NO drugs were found. NO public sex arrests were made. NO prostitution arrests were made.

But that’s not all! Yesterday at least nine complaints against the Atlanta Police Department were filed. Among the charges:

• One man said officers grabbed patrons who didn’t immediately lie down by the neck and forced them to the ground. The man said he was kicked in the ribs while lying down. “Then I heard laughing and giggling and saying this is more fun than raiding niggers with crack. They also told us to shut the fuck up unless we were spoken too [sic].” The man said he heard one person told that if he spoke again he would be hit by a chair. He also reported that one officer “said to everyone in general that all you all do is flash your asses and show your cocks.”
• An Eagle employee said he did not know what he was charged with until he got to jail. “A lot of officers were laughing and high-fiving each other, and I heard one officer say I thought this was a sex club.”
• Another patron described listening to officers chat about their cell phone plans as he lay on the ground. “I was forced down by physical force. They grabbed my neck and pushed me down. They put their boot on my back and told me to stay down. … If anyone asked anything they were told to ’shut the fuck up.’”
• Another patron said he saw officers forcing people to the ground by officers pushing their shoulders or the backs of their heads. He said he asked to move because there was broken glass on the floor where he was lying, and he was told to “shut the fuck up.” The customer recounted hearing anti-gay slurs: “I heard several slurs such as ‘I hate homosexuals.’ I also heard ‘I don’t like fags.’ One officer asked me if I was married and had any children, and he told me I should be ashamed for being there.” The customer recounted having his diabetes medication, which was in an unmarked container, taken and not returned. He recounted hearing another customer told that if he didn’t be quiet, an officer would hit him over the head with one of the barstools. “There were several officers standing over me that started joking about this is a lot of fun, we ought to come back and do this every week.” The customer said he heard an officer say pictures of men on the walls made him sick, and make comments about people’s appearance, including calling him “big boy.” He also said officers were watching the football game on TV during the raid.
• A customer said he at first thought the bar was being robbed because the first police officer to yell “get the fuck on the floor” was dressed in civilian clothes and did not display a badge.
• An employee who was arrested said that after the customers were allowed to leave, “the officers started high fiving and jumping up in the air bumping into each other like they were at a football game.”
• An employee who lives in an apartment over the Eagle, who said he was not working that night, said someone started pounding on his door. He opened the door to two cops who asked if anyone was having sex there. They asked why there was a bed and he said it was because he lives there. He was made to come downstairs and was arrested with the other employees. He recalled hearing comments like “You people are despicable.”

I’m sure someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but generally speaking, do the police show up with ten cars and 20-25 officers when a straight bar is raided for sex charges? Would a straight bar be raided or would somebody just call them up and talk about the problem before gassing up the fleet? If a straight bar were raided, would officers run background checks and search everyone for drugs? Is that even legal on a code violation raid? And when an officer makes an arrest, is it generally accepted to high five your partner?

Come to think of it, do you usually call three paddy wagons and make arrests for simple non-violent code violations? And if you allegedly spend MONTHS investigating public sex complaints at a prominent gay bar, what possible reason (other than to get them faggots) would you have for excluding your LGBT Liaison, or at least informing her that she might hear some complaints?

One last question: WHY AREN’T WE BEYOND THIS KIND OF BULLSHIT IN 2009?