First Gay Boston Councilman Sues Police

Former Boston city councilman David Scondras charges in a federal lawsuit that members of the Lawrence, Mass., police department beat him when he was arrested in 2006 for soliciting sex from a teenager he met online.

Scondras, who was elected as Boston's first openly gay city councilor in 1983, pleaded guilty in 2007 to enticing a child under 16, and served 18 months probation. He also was registered as a sex offender.

However, Scondras filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court in Boston on Friday alleging that the police officers who arrested him in a Lawrence school parking lot where he had arranged to meet the young man assaulted and slurred him, according to the Boston Herald.

"'Fearing for his safety and that he was about to be the subject of a potential gay bashing, [Scondras] turned to try and run away,' the suit maintains, adding that Scondras was then violently tossed to the ground and struck in the head, breaking a tooth," according to the Boston Herald.

Scondras also charges that the police officers held a gun to his head and threatened to kill him. One of the officers was the father of Michael Fornesi, the young man Scondras had arranged to meet. Fornesi was actually 20 years old at the time, but posed as a 15-year-old online.

Scondras, the founder of Fenway Community Health Center, lost his seat in 1993 over a controversy about an obscenity-riddled phone call to an emergency dispatcher.