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The New York City Police Commissioner apologized on Thursday for the raid against the Stonewall Inn gay bar in June 1969, an event widely cited as the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement.
"The measures taken by the NYPD were flawed, clear and simple," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill told a police headquarters briefing. "The actions and laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that I apologize."
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The organizers of the LGBT Pride Celebration in New York had called the police to apologize for the raid organized at the Greenwich Villiage Bar on the night of June 27 to June 28, 1969, during which their clients and family members were arrested. others fought against officers and against public order life in the shadows. New York City Council chairman Corey Johnson, who is gay, also joined the call for an apology.
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Manhattan
(AP Photo / Mary Altaffer, File)
"What happened should not have happened," O'Neill said Tuesday. "This would never happen in the NYPD in 2019."
The confrontation at Stonewall was not the first time that LGBT people protested or clashed spontaneously with the police. But it was a turning point, triggering a wave of organization and activism.
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At the time, many LGBT people lived in fear of arrests, harassment, professional ruin and family ostracism. The psychiatric establishment regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder and the police often considered it a crime.
LGBT people could be arrested for showing affection, having danced together, even if they did not carry a number of articles deemed gender-appropriate. The bars that served homosexuals had sometimes lost their liquor permits, and others, like Stonewall, were simply unlicensed. Raids were frequent.
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Last week, New York City officials announced that transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera would be commemorated with statues in Greenwich Village for their role in the FOX 5 NY movement.
Marsha P. Johnson, transgender activist, distributing leaflets for gay students at NYU in 1970. (REUTERS / Diana Davies)
The police inspector who led the raid on Stonewall, Seymour Pine, said in 2004 that he was sorry, according to reports in a conference he would have given at the time . Pine, who died in 2010, said the officers were prejudiced against homosexuals, whom they did not understand.
NYPD leaders have already expressed regret over the events in Stonewall, but until Thursday, they stopped without official apology.
Former Commissioner William Bratton, in 2016, described this experience as "a terrible experience", noting that it was also a "turning point" for change. He said that an apology was useless: "The excuses are all that has happened since."
The following year, when O'Neill was asked to apologize for Stonewall, he replied that "this had already been done".
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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