(Fox News) – New York City’s police commissioner apologized Thursday for the June 1969 raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar, an event widely cited as the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement. “The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said during a briefing at police headquarters. “The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize.” Organizers of New York City’s LGBT Pride celebration had called for police to apologize for the raid on the Greenwich Villiage bar on the night of June 27-28, 1969,
which saw bar patrons and others fight back against officers and a social order that kept gay life in the shadows. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is gay, had also joined the calls for an apology. “What happened should not have happened,” O’Neill said Tuesday. “This would never happen in the NYPD in 2019.” The confrontation at the Stonewall wasn’t the first time LGBT people had protested or spontaneously clashed with police. But it proved to be a turning point, unleashing a wave of organizing and activism. READ MORE
