(Note: This editorial was originally published on March 23, 2011.)
The wording of Tuesday's (03/22/11) brief Fort Worth City Council memo was pure legal boilerplate:"Approval of this settlement should not be construed as an admission of liability by the City of Fort Worth, any liability in this matter being, in fact, expressly denied. This settlement is entered into only to avoid time-consuming and costly litigation ."Nobody's fooled.No city leader has said officially that Fort Worth admits civil liability in the June 2009 bar raid during which Chad Gibson suffered a severe head injury. But it's been clear for a long time that police officers and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents did not act as they should have that night. Gibson's injury was one of the unhappy results.The good thing is that both city and state officials learned from that bad experience. The lessons were expensive, mostly in terms of the bad national and international publicity the city received but now because the settlement of Gibson's damages claim will cost $400,000.George Armstrong, another bar patron who blamed officers for a torn rotator cuff suffered during his arrest for public intoxication, settled his damage claim for less than $50,000.Police should not have gone to the Rainbow Lounge or the other bars they helped raid that night. It's the TABC's job to enforce state liquor laws, and even TABC officials have said the raid violated commission policies.This might be a good place to note that the joint police/TABC action at the Rainbow Lounge, a gay bar south of downtown, has been politely called a "bar check" or "bar inspection." Both terms are overly generous.When six police officers in five marked police vehicles, along with two TABC agents in their official car, descend on an establishment and one of the agents jumps out immediately to stop the doorman from alerting the people inside, that's a raid.But back to the positives. Police Chief Jeff Halstead and top TABC officials conducted their own investigations, publicly disclosed the results and took strong action.TABC fired the two agents and their supervisor for policy violations. Halstead gave three officers one- to three-day suspensions. The TABC and Fort Worth police revised training procedures and instituted policy changes.Most important, the aftermath of the raid spurred formation of a new, stronger, more sensitive and tolerant -- might we even say more adult? -- relationship between Fort Worth police and the city's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.Some Rainbow Lounge patrons alleged that police deliberately targeted them on a night when they had gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of the gay rights movement. There was no clear evidence to support that allegation, but the fact that some people earnestly believed it showed police-GLBT community relations needed work.Halstead named an official GLBT liaison and established a dialogue both official and personal with representatives of Fairness Fort Worth, an organization formed in the wake of the Rainbow Lounge incident to represent the GLBT community.In a way, the settlement with Gibson ties a ribbon around the box of negatives from the Rainbow Lounge experience. In the long run, the more positive community relationships formed through that experience have a chance to make Fort Worth a better place to live.Ugly as the raid and its immediate aftermath turned out to be, they showed an entire city where it needed to be better.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
