After paying more than $1 million to settle lawsuits over police misconduct related to a 2009 raid of a Midtown gay bar, the city of Atlanta is now denying wrongdoing in a new lawsuit.
Atlanta taxpayers handed out more than $1 million to 26 men to resolve a federal lawsuit that said police officers abused the rights of patrons and employees of the Atlanta Eagle Bar. The City voted Monday to spend another $120,000 to resolve a similar lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court by the bar's employees.
Both an internal police investigation and an extensive review by a former U.S. attorney confirmed members of the now-disbanded RED DOG unit violated people's constitutional rights in the raid.
Yet, the city’s lawyers, defending itself in the third lawsuit, denied everything the police department and the mayor have admitted since last June.
“If any [customer] was, in fact,” searched, detained or subjected to homophobic slurs and obscenities, the officers “were justified,” the city said in response to the misconduct claims. The city said the actions of the police officers – most of them RED DOG – that night were "reasonable, proper, and necessary."
The city also asked the court to deny the request that Atlanta taxpayers cover legal charges if those bringing the case should win.
The mayor's spokeswoman, Sonji Jacobs Dade, said the denials might "seem kind of odd since we settled Calhoun [the first lawsuit] and the mayor has apologized about what happened," she said.
Dade said the denials are a legal tactic the city is taking until lawyers can confirm that each of the defendants in the newest case were actually at the bar that night. "From a legal perspective, the city has no choice but to deny [the claims]," Dade said.
“The argument is absurd and frivolous,” said attorney Dan Grossman, who brought the cases. “This police action has been investigated as thoroughly as anything else in Atlanta’s history... Everyone who has investigated it has determined that the police violated the Constitution.”
APD fired eight of the 25 police officers named defendants; two of them were ordered reinstated last week after appealing to the city's Civil Service Board. At least four other defendants have since resigned from the police department.
On Sept. 10, 2009, police stormed into the Atlanta Eagle bar based on reports that men were engaged in sex while others watched. Frightened customers and employees were forced to lie on the floor while officers checked for criminal histories, according to official accounts from that night. Witnesses said some officers peppered customers with obscenities and anti-gay slurs while they were on the floor.
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