The Atlanta Police Department said Friday it has revised some of its policies as required in the settlement of a federal lawsuit that followed a raid on a gay bar. The lawyer who brought the case questions if that is true.
“I’m concerned that their proposed policy revisions don’t comply,” said Dan Grossman, who represented the Atlanta Eagle manager and 25 patrons who were in the bar on Sept. 10, 2009,when APD officers raided it. Grossman said he thinks the police department didn't change their policies enough to satisfy the requirements of the settlement.
According to documents provided by APD, the department has proposed policy revisions because of problems with some procedures used the night of the raid at the Midtown bar.
The department now requires all complaints be investigated within 180 days. Other policy changes, according to APD, focus on what plain-clothes officers must wear at a raid and specifies that “authority to detain or stop does not automatically include the authority to frisk or pat down.” In addition, officers must complete certain forms before conducting searches without warrants or any time they conduct a background check.
The Dec. 8 settlement also required to APD conduct “mandatory in-person training of all sworn employees … as soon as practicable.”
The city signed a contract on May 20 to pay two consultants almost $30,000 to conduct the training between June 1 and Sept. 1.
Atlanta taxpayers have already spent more than $1 million to settle the suit brought against the city after police officers raided the Atlanta Eagle. Patrons and employees were detained, some forced to lie on the barroom floor for as long as an hour while officers checked for criminal histories. They said some of the officers peppered them with slurs about their homosexuality.
In the end, charges filed against 8 employees or the bar's owners were dismissed or dropped.
The court has given the city until June 27 to produce the results of an internal police investigation of the raid.
That is also the deadline for a report on the findings of an independent investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Joe Whitley. He was looking at the response of the police department and the city’s Law Department once complaints were received about the Atlanta Eagle raid.
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