Last Tuesday, Lambda legal and its co-counsel filed a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta, the chief of police and 48 individual police officers of the Atlanta Police Department for an incident at the Atlanta Eagle bar Sept. 10.
The lawsuit is on behalf of 19 individuals who claim they were forcibly searched and detained at the bar. Mistreatment of bar customers is said to have occurred after 20 to 30 officers were sent to the Atlanta Eagle and included a “Red Dog Unit” in SWAT gear. The officers found no public sex, drugs or weapons, and no one was charged with crime, but patrons were forced to lie face down on the bar floor while background checks were done for all people.
Individuals say anti-gay slurs were yelled at them and the officers were too forceful with instruction.
Lambda Legal’s Southern regional supervising senior staff attorney, Greg Nevins, said it is the Atlanta Police Department at fault.
“The illegal activity going on in the Atlanta Eagle that night was committed by the APD,” Greg Nevins told 365gay.com. “If it is APD procedure for elderly men and wounded veterans to be thrown to the floor and harassed simply for being in a bar having a drink after work, then the APD should change its procedures.”
Read the full article here.
-Kim Brown
