Last Saturday during San Francisco’s 40th gay pride celebrations, one man was killed and two people were injured during a shooting. On Sunday, a handful of women appear to have been beaten by police. This should end well.
Like all things uploaded to YouTube, it’s difficult to tell context and cause. What you’ll see in the clip are SF Police officers attempting to detain one woman while fending off attacks from people on the sidelines. You will also see the police getting roughed up.
SF Police say they’re investigating the incident, reports the SF Appeal: “Police spokeswoman Lt. Lyn Tomioka said police initially responded to break up a fight between two women, and then the officers were surrounded and attempted to disperse the crowd. Six women were taken into custody; another was cited and released. Tomioka said the department’s internal affairs division is investigating the use of force by the officers. ‘It’s an ongoing investigation, but use of force…it’s why we try to talk to people, but when we have no other option, use of force is required, unfortunately,’ Tomioka said. ‘But to the public, it never looks pretty. The officers gave commands, which were ignored,’ Tomioka said. ‘When an officer gives an order to move or to stop, those are orders, and they need to be complied with.'”
Five women were charged with misdemeanor battery on a police officer and misdemeanor resisting arrest.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Jacob
Wow, I forgot how dirty San Francisco is.
QueerToday
The first 15 seconds of this video say it all. The police went too far and provoked the crowd to get more violent.
Baxter
If I were surrounded by an angry mob, I’d probably just start shooting. These people are lucky that they just got smacked around a bit.
TiredOldQueen@Queerty
To answer your headline, yes, it was.
Sceth
@QueerToday: The first 20 seconds feature is that the woman in purple was pretty adamant about wanting to be in the middle of the police huddle, despite them not wanting her there. Arresting her was prudent. No crowd has an excuse for violence; the mob is wrong by default.
Gen X San Franciscan
What is really sad is that the above fight and the Pink Saturday incident mostly involved heterosexuals bringing their disputes to gay events. When being gay or trans was more stigmatized, we did not seem to attract the ghetto element aside from a few gay bashers. Gay Pride used to be more than a chance for heterosexuals to get drunk, start fights, engage in gang violence, and for the hetero men to chase the lesbians.
I worry that Gay Pride and Pink Saturday will be canceled “to prevent violence,” the way that Halloween in the Castro was canceled due to violence by people with no ties to the LGBT community. The health and safety nannies are already arguing these events should be canceled; more worryingly some younger GBLTs endorse their arguments. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, anti-gay violence on Pride Weekends in San Francisco was an unfortunate fact of life. But we held Gay Pride anyway and dealt with the violence and police indifference to gay bashings. Now, our perseverance (I moved to SF in 1995) is considered “reckless” and “immature” by younger gays. If older generations of gays had shared their attitudes, we would have no Gay Pride Events, no effective treatments for AIDS, and no rights whatsoever.
Revemupman
Its only too much force when its women being wild. If this video featured men no one would even post this crap.
But who am I, just another misogynist huh?
Tallskin
Pfff, only in America!
Shootings on a gay pride march
Police roughing up a gang of lesbians on that same gay pride march
Texas about to make sodomy illegal again!
Amazing
You people have got to get a fucking grip
FanOfThat
Which is Tallskin’s polite way of saying we have too many blacks in America.
redd
The bottom line is that when police are called to break up a disturbance and the crowd chooses to involve themselves by fighting the police they deserve what they get. If I were in the middle of a crowd and felt threatened and had a baton, mace and a gun I would be ready to use any of them to insure my safety and that of my partner.
Clearly when someone punches a police officer they are asking for trouble.