Fort Worth Weekly - News, Entertainment, Restaurants, Music

The anger on Carol West's face looked like it had been building inside her for decades, and her voice thundered even without a microphone, easily reaching across the crowd of gays and straights that stretched across South Jennings Avenue.

The minister of Fort Worth's Celebration Community Church stood outside the Rainbow Lounge and talked about the harassment that gays and lesbians had suffered at the hands of police in the 1960s and '70s. And she voiced the outrage being felt in 2009, after Fort Worth police and state liquor enforcement agents made a heavy-handed and seemingly unprovoked raid on the brand-new club that ended with 20 patrons facedown in the parking lot, numerous injuries, one man in the hospital with a serious head injury - and Fort Worth's reputation for tolerance in tatters.

"No more!" she shouted.

As the TV news crews filmed and photographers shot and reporters scribbled, the crowd pumped their fists and shouted in unison, "No more! No more! No more!"

And just like that, Fort Worth's traditionally quiet gay community was wide-awake and pissed off, and the city was facing its worst public relations nightmare in recent memory.

Since that raid in the wee hours of June 28 - on the 40th anniversary, almost to the minute, of the Stonewall police raid in New York City that ignited this country's original gay rights movement - the developments have come fast and furious.

Police statements that the raid was done properly and that any injuries were the result of officers being assaulted quickly melted in the face of eyewitness reports to the contrary. Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead has temporarily halted his department's cooperation with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and pointedly noted that TABC agents, not police, had taken Chad Gibson, the most seriously injured man, into custody. TABC agents have been taken out of the field and assigned to desk duty pending reviews of their actions. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers across the country have published major stories on the raid. The Dallas gay establishment has come west to support the gay community here in marches and protests. Three different sets of public officials and community leaders, including the mayor, have called for independent investigations of what happened that night. The airwaves and cyberspace are full of those condemning Fort Worth as some backward, intolerant, jackbooted town. Gay activists across the county are calling this Stonewall II.

"It's like raiding a black bar on the anniversary of emancipation," said Rainbow patron Tony Thompson.

But what did happen that night? And just as important, why?

City and state officials have yet to release police and TABC reports on the raid - the city now requires reporters to file open-records requests to get police reports, which once were available just by walking up to a police station window.

However, evidence from eyewitnesses - including an accountant who took detailed notes for the entire hour that police were at the Rainbow - tells the same consistent story: Even though the club had no record of presenting problems for law enforcement or the neighborhood, police and TABC agents arrived in force that night, seemingly ready to make multiple arrests before the first officer walked through the door. The raid was conducted a mile outside the lines of what usually happens in such instances. Multiple witnesses said officers were apparently looking for a fight, arresting people because of mild comments, without even a pretense of trying to find out if they were drunk. And several bar patrons were subjected to brutality far beyond the level of force needed to make an arrest, warranted or not.

Operators and patrons of gay clubs in Fort Worth have had their differences with police and TABC agents in recent years, no doubt - especially on the Near South Side, where most of Fort Worth's thin ranks of gay clubs have been located in recent decades. But until the night of June 28, those problems had more to do with subtle pressure from police and the city bureaucracy, not with violence or physical abuse. And the same team that showed up at the Rainbow had also raided two other Southside bars earlier the same night, making numerous arrests but reportedly doing their work professionally and without incident.

What's more, Police Sgt. Richard Morris, who was allegedly in charge of the Rainbow operation, has a sterling reputation, both for efficiency and compassion. He's a 30-year veteran, a retired minister who does volunteer work with the homeless.

On the other hand, the raid appears to have broken TABC's own recently instituted policies about investigating bars allegedly selling to intoxicated patrons. A few weeks before the Rainbow Lounge raid, the TABC supposedly had suspended most undercover operations because of an allegation of improper conduct made against an agent. Such investigations in the future, an agency spokeswoman told an Austin newspaper, would be "uncommon and targeted toward establishments with a clear record of proven infractions" - which doesn't seem to have been the case at the Rainbow.

Investigations may eventually explain a lot about what happened that night, and why TABC agents and police were even there. But one thing is already clear: There's no going back. The relationship between Fort Worth and its gay community, which in recent years had been marked by quiet but steady progress, has changed, perhaps irrevocably.

The Rainbow Lounge had been open only a week when police and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers showed up after midnight on June 28 and waded into the large crowd to look for drunken patrons. The club is trendy, with plenty of cold air conditioning, a large wood-floored dance area, spinning laser lights, pool tables, video games, and caged platforms where men and women dance in their underwear. (No, not bathing suits or dancewear - underwear.) A VIP room boasts plush sofas and coffee tables, and there's a patio out back.

The building on South Jennings Avenue has been home to other gay bars in the past. None were as high-end as the Rainbow.

Tom Anable, 55, is the Fort Worth certified public accountant who oversees the club's books. He was there that night checking out the software used in the cash registers and showing bartenders how to tally up at night's end. He arrived at about 11:30 p.m. and was behind the VIP bar when the first TABC agents came in shortly before 1 a.m. and began questioning patrons.

"They did not go behind the bar and ask to look at any permits" as would be the norm, he said. "They did not ask any of the bartenders, the owner, or manager any questions. The security guard at the front door told me he asked the agents and police why they were there, and they told him, 'Make yourself scarce.' "

Anable said he sensed something was awry and immediately began writing down what he saw.

"I was taking notes as they came in, and marking down times and what was happening," he said. "Within two minutes after they came in, they had already put wrist ties on two people and taken them out of the bar."

Anable counted 21 people who were led outside, including nine who were pulled from the dance floor.