News 8
Fort Worth council members call for probe in raid of gay bar 
01:49 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 30, 2009
FORT WORTH - Fort Worth has received national attention after a controversial inspection at a gay bar.
The nation's largest gay and lesbian civil rights organization has called for an investigation, and they're not alone. Council member Kathleen Hicks said she wants the community to know that there is a recourse for complaints such as the ones that arose after officers were accused of violence without just cause.
Seven were arrested and one hospitalized after violence broke out during a raid at the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth.
Hicks called witness reports and Chad Gibson's brain injury disturbing; Gibson's mother, Kelly Carter, called it heartbreaking.
"He's got bruises here on his head," Carter said. "He's got [them] all down his shoulder. He's got a ring around his wrist where they had tied him."
Carter came to the Rainbow Lounge to see for herself where her son suffered the brain injury.
"They spun [Gibson] around this way, and laid him out on the ground and that's when he hit his head on the step and got the head injury," said one witness of what occurred during the early Sunday-morning raid.
Monday, police chief Jeff Halstead said the officers' actions are being investigated. However, he also said that officers that entered the bar during the scheduled inspection were touched inappropriately.
"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."
Witnesses denied the chief's account.
News 8 talked with council member Joel Burns shortly after he visited Gibson in the hospital Monday afternoon.
"It's my hope that the fact that this is a gay bar and the violence that happened there are not in any way tied - obviously as someone who loves Fort Worth [and] as someone who is gay - I don't want those two things to be connected," he said.
Neither the TABC nor Fort Worth police revealed why the bar was selected for what police called a bar check. But, Halstead said the checks always result from either citizen or law enforcement concerns. The bar's owner questioned that and pointed out the Rainbow Lounge has been open for less than two weeks.
E-mail chawes@wfaa.com
