The Stonewall Riots by Marc Stein

Author:Marc Stein [Stein, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036060 History / United States / 20th Century
Publisher: NYU Press

DOCUMENT 97

D. L. [Dick Leitsch], “The Stonewall Riots: The Police Story”

Mattachine Society of New York Newsletter, Aug. 1969, 5–6

Naturally MSNY [Mattachine Society of New York] is sympathetic to the gay power movement—we were trying to gain gay power while many of the people who are just now becoming interested were sitting back, enjoying life, and waiting for someone else to achieve any gains the homosexual community might want.

On the other hand, it was difficult not to feel sorry for the cops who were involved in the Stonewall incident, and their associates who were obliged to explain to the [Police] Commissioner how a group of New York’s “finest” could be imprisoned in a gay bar for hours and nearly cremated. Imagine the jibes they must have gotten from their brother officers, their wives, and probably even their children! What must it do to a straight guy to have his kid say, “Daddy, tell us about the time the faggots cornered you and tore up the Village”?

When the police began visiting the MSNY office on July 3, their faces and their tired eyes told the whole story. They were in trouble—real trouble—and the situation looked like it might get worse before it got better. They wanted a sympathetic ear and they wanted to know what happened. We tried to help them on both counts.

The purpose of the visits by all of the officers (and there were many of them, including the Chief of the Morals Squad and the two Deputy Inspectors, Smythe and Pine, who had been imprisoned in the Stonewall, among others), was to find out one thing: why did this happen now, and why did it happen over the Stonewall, of all places? What we told them appears in another article in this issue; what follows is their side of the Stonewall story.

At no time in recent history has there been as little police action against homosexuals as in the past three years. Plainclothes decoys are no longer used to entrap homosexuals. There has been no concentrated effort to close down gay bars as there was during the Wagner years and before.

Headquarters has tried to clamp down on any harassment of homosexuals by policemen on the beat as well, and has had speakers from MSNY address students at the Police Academy in an effort to help the police (most of whom are, after all, straight and pretty much as ignorant about homosexuality as most straight people) understand homosexuals and our needs.

There has been no harassment of legitimate gay bars, the cops all stated. (A subsequent check with a number of bars, including the Stage 45, Harry’s, and others, indicated that these bars indeed had not been bothered for several years.) They do go after places that serve liquor without a license. This has nothing to do with who forms the clientele of the place, but only with the fact that it is illegal to sell liquor without a license. The State Liquor Authority had notified all unlicensed liquor-selling establishments that they must obtain a license by July 1 or stop selling.

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