Nearly 40 years to the
day have passed since the Stonewall riots that sparked the
modern LGBT rights movement, but the New York City police
officer who led the pivotal bar raid in the early morning hours
of June 28, 1969, maintains that the operation had
little to do with gay people, and everything to do with
following orders.
Nearly 40 years to the
day have passed since the Stonewall riots that sparked the
modern LGBT rights movement, but the New York City police
officer who led the pivotal bar raid in the early morning hours
of June 28, 1969, maintains that the operation had
little to do with gay people, and everything to do with
following orders.
NYPD deputy inspector
Seymour Pine, now 89, joined a special broadcast of
TheBrian Lehrer Show
on WNYC-FM on Tuesday that looked back at the Stonewall riots.
Guests also included Stonewall veterans Danny Garvin and Tommy
Lanigan-Schmidt and historian David Carter.
When pressed about the
motivation for the raid, Pine, speaking by telephone, said,
"I don't think not liking gay people had anything to do with
it." Instead, the former member of NYPD's vice and gambling
unit listed complaints from the community about the Stonewall
Inn that included Mafia connections, dirty drink glasses, and
the violation of contemporary dress codes. (Earlier, panelist
Garvin mentioned the preponderance of "flame queens" at the
establishment.)
While Pine acknowledged
that the Stonewall Inn in the West Village was known as a
"gay headquarters," he sounded genuinely confused when
asked whether any antigay bias existed among police officers on
the streets at the time.
"I'm sorry, I didn't get that," said Pine. Audience
members, who were present in the studio for the
live broadcast, chuckled.
Finally, host Lehrer
asked Pine directly, "Do you think that the police were on
the side of right?"
"Yes, of course,"
Pine answered. "When we took the action that we took that
night, we were on the side of right. We never would have done
something without supervision from the federal authorities and
the state authorities. They were involved with this just as
well as we were."
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