Nik Dimopoulos is a gay club promoter from Melbourne. Last weekend, he was slammed to the ground, beaten, and arrested by police outside of Hares and Hyenas, a popular LGBTQ bookshop in Fitzroy, a suburb in northern Melbourne.
The attack happened at around 2 AM on Saturday morning. According to the shop’s co-owner, Rowland Thomson, police stormed into the garage attached to his store after mistaking Dimopoulos for a suspect in a carjacking case.
“The police broke in through our garage as they thought that an armed member of a ‘Lebanese’ gang was inside,” Thomson wrote in a Facebook post.
“At no stage did they identify themselves as police. They just stormed into a dark room shining torches and it was impossible to identify them as police.”
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Dimopoulos, who was inside the bookstore, panicked and fled the building “thinking it was an antigay home invasion.” That’s when police tackled him on the street, breaking his right arm in several places and injuring his shoulder.
According to his lawyer, Jeremy King, Dimopoulos was rushed to a hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. King also said his client’s “only crime was looking Middle Eastern.”
But the head of Victoria’s police union, Wayne Gatt, insists officers “made a lawful search and a lawful arrest of a suspect.” In fact, he’s “proud” of the way officers handled the situation.
Speaking to local media this week, Gatt said he’s proud because officers “did everything required of them, because they announced themselves as police, because they spoke to the occupants, because they searched the building properly, because they called on the suspect multiple times when engaging in that person before making the arrest.”
Except that, according to eye witnesses, they didn’t do any of those things. And then they arrested the wrong person, but not before using unnecessary force.
Gatt went on to say that he doesn’t think police have anything to apologize for.
“It’s never the situation where police want to see anybody injured,” he said, “but it’s always the situation that the community expects our police to do their job and to do it well.”
Meanwhile, King says Dimopoulos is still suffering “in a very bad way” and remains in the hospital wearing “the biggest brace I’ve ever seen.” Surgeons still don’t know if he will ever regain full use of his right arm.
“He is still very traumatized psychologically,” King says.
A GoFundMe page created for Dimopoulos has raised almost $10,000 to help offset the cost of his medical expenses.
iamru2
Only a racist or a crooked lawyer could blame this incident on the guys skin color!
Juanjo
Really? Were you there? Did you witness it? What do you base your “opinion” on, specifically?
Brian
This is your idea of a raid on an LGBT bookstore? Busting into a garage to catch who they thought was a carjacking suspect who tried to flee? The story seems disturbing enough that you don’t have to lie in the headline.
Jared MacBride
Did you momentarily forget where you are?
Brian
Heh, calling that stuff out the most fun part of coming here. If they weren’t so consistently sleazy with their “journalism” I would have gotten bored and left ages ago.
Brian
Also, there is a big chunk missing from the story, which knowing Queerty could very well be intentional. He was in a garage, several cops came and busted down the door at 2 am. This obviously was something they organized. How did they know he was there? Where did they see him before organizing the bust and why did they think he was a carjacker? That he vaguely matched the description of someone they were looking for doesn’t really seem like enough that they would just bust down the door in the middle of the night because some random cop saw him walking down the street for 30 seconds. So what happened in the lead up Queerty?
john.k
He wasn’t in a garage. He was in an apartment. The police entered through a garage. Read the linked report from TheAge.co..au It has more detail than the Queerty synopsis.
Brian
Ok, so after 5 minutes of research I’ve learned that the story has absolutely nothing to do with the bookstore other than it all happened at an apartment in the same building. The bookstore owners posted a description of what happened on Facebook, but I can’t tell if they actually witnessed it or if they were just recounting what they were told.
3 people were arrested, all white, but since this guy has dark features and was injured from the arrest, they are claiming racial profiling. I didn’t see anything indicating the other two men ran, which would explain why they weren’t injured, if you don’t have to be tackled to the ground when the police are arresting you, your odds of injury are greatly decreased.
And it seems like his being gay is completely incidental other than that he is using that as a defense for why he ran instead of cooperating.
I still can’t tell how it escalated to the point of breaking down the door just because someone looked similar to who they were looking for.
Great reporting as usual. Now I’m sure some of the facts were intentionally omitted to make it look like a racist hate crime instead of 3 white guys, who the cops probably didn’t even know if any were gay, being mistaken for suspects in a home invasion and carjacking.
Ronbo
Brian please stop. You are simply dumb as a rock and even wrote that Meg Ryan ran for CA governor. (Meg Whitman, is NOT the movie star) Rather than reveal you shortcomings, please just remain silent.
Hdtex
Feel free to start your own blog instead of defecating here endlessly.
Brian
You are correct. Anyone who read that Meg Ryan post could clearly tell I legitimately thought it was the actress who was running for governor, and who I obviously also thought was the former eBay CEO. You’d have to be dumb as a rock to think it was just a momentary brain fart. I should probably start wearing a helmet 24/7 since I’m clearly a danger to myself and society.
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Jared MacBride
I thought there was a raid on a bookstore. Seems like instead there was an arrest near a bookstore. This is why I take reported “news” with a grain of salt.