Postman further detailed the extent of the inspections, noting that on Friday night, the JET visited 10 locations, including two known as historic gay clubs. On Saturday, LCB officers inspected eight clubs, two of which were gay clubs.
Also
The lewd conduct violations in question were related to clothing that exposed the buttocks and nipples of patrons, which is prohibited under state law in liquor establishments, he said, noting that, in his opinion, the law needed to change to be a reflection of today’s times.
Sounds like pretty standard, as opposed to directed, harrassment. Well, if they had information about how many tickets were given out at each club they "visited". And I happen to agree with the guy (shudder), the law needs to be changed.
Cops have plenty of discretion in choosing which laws to enforce, and how. They have to - they have limited resources and we have a ridiculous number of laws. I’ve had a cop say that if he wants to pull someone over, he just has to follow them for a while. They’ll drift their lane, fail to signal, speed just a bit - there’s always something. Her doesn’t have to, he just does it if he feels like fucking with someone. They chose to do this. He’ll, I think Seattle was one of the cities where the cops basically went on strike and refused to enforce the law almost at all during some dispute with the mayor.
Harassment at LGBT bars has been historically one of the main ways the LGBT community was systemically oppressed and made to stay in the closet. It happened all the time in the 50s and 60s, and bar owners used to have to bribe the cops to stay open (and sometimes still get raided but with advanced warning). Hell, some of the bars were run by the mafia.
This was exactly the kind of thing that kicked off the LGBT rights movement when their arrest of Stonewall patrons triggered a riot. There were laws on the books then, too, including full on criminalization of homosexuality.
That’s exactly where a significant chunk of this country wants to go. And this is the kind of thing that starts it.
Hopefully, this will force them to change those laws, but that’s just removing the opportunity for these kinds of raids. They should no more be having these raids than Texas should have enforced its antiquated and never-enforced sodomy law, which resulted in the Lawrence ruling (which they also want to overturn).
We'll see how this turns out. I'm pretty sure the immediate national attention has a basis, but I've been wrong before.
One thing I can say is I've learned a lot about the laws in this state. A male bartender got ticketed for having a nipple exposed, despite nudity being largely legal in public, just not where alcohol is served. For instance, people can legally play tennis outside in their underwear, but if they enter a bar afterwards it becomes illegal. I can see the pros and cons to that.
What I find deeply concerning are reports of police taking photographs of everyone in the gay bars. Including patrons who were not doing anything illegal, who might not have come out to family or friends yet. That worries me.
What I find deeply concerning are reports of police taking photographs of everyone in the gay bars. Including patrons who were not doing anything illegal, who might not have come out to family or friends yet. That worries me.
taking photographs of innocent people is extremely unnerving. Very likely they're being uploaded into an AI facial recognition database. They're going to be used to profile those individuals.
Yeah, I caught that near the end. Fucking cops. That should be an immediately fireable offense, and you can't be a cop anywhere ever again. They might get a "stern" talking to here.
IMO... anyone dies resulting from interactions with the cops, that should trigger an automatic, mandatory, criminal trial. Make them justify themselves in court.
And because they're being indicted for a felony... and its federally illegal for such people to have a gun... They get to be put on desk duty answering phones or fetching donuts. maybe cleaning out the jail cells.
Nah, the seattle PDs MO would be to target the gay clubs but then also "inspect" several straight clubs to cover it up.
Its a police department that's been under a federal consent degree for over a decade due to racist policing and excessive force. Its the police department whose second in command of the union was recently recorded joking about how little a young indians woman's life was worth after a cop just recklessly killed her with his car going 74 in a 25. Its a department that illegally hung a "trump 2020" flag in the same break room they were displaying trophies from black lives matter protests. A department that directly maced a small child during said protests, along with hundreds of other brutal and unjustified actions. The same department whose last chief mysteriously lost a great sum of official conversations with the the mayor and the head of the police union during the protests. The previous mayor and head of the police union also strangely "lost" those legally public conversations.
They get no reasonable doubt because they have failed to live up to that standard too many times.
Don't forget the cop who tweeted "black lives splatter LOL" after a woman was killed at one of the BLM protests.
Or the lieutenant who asked everyone to refer to him as Obergruppenführer and had Nazi memorabilia in his office. And yes, that was the local sheriff's department not Seattle PD, but still...
This is some straight bullshit, I was literally there in Seattle that week looking to move into a different company, we even went to a drag show to see what the vibe was like.
Word. Vancouverite here. Nudity law in Canada is fairly lax. As long as the windows of the bars are tinted and the owners like it, full nudity is a go. We got folk doing fully nude pole dances in the shower over at the Pumpjack.
If folk gunna be a delicate homophobic snowflake... just stay out of the steam.
When I was a kid, I asked my parents for the book of laws. They looked at me like I was crazy
We learn our laws through gossip.
We are responsible for following them despite there being no practical way to learn them. Not even law school.
We enforce our laws at the discretion of the police department/city/state/federal government.
The police don't know the law, and they're allowed to arrest you because they think what you're doing is illegal.
The government doesn't know the law - there was a federal effort to count the number of federal crimes. We know there's over 100k, because they gave up after 120k.
Laws do not have to be enforced. They're usually left on the books - the only time laws are revoked are when there's disagreement over if it should be enforced, or someone wants to make a show of it.
It's an insane system.
But there's someone in Seattle that ordered this, and they had no responsibility or duty to do so. And there's someone (probably the mayor) who could order this to stop with a phone call
I ran a club for years and dealt with their bullshit often. Luckily I knew my local SPD so our checks were super easy. LCB didn't like us though so when they decided to come by they would have a list of tickets to write up and if you didn't know your RCWs front to back you'd have no choice but to accept the fines. (Much like police don't know the laws they enforce, LCB agents don't either.)