Report: NYPD Officer Shouted Anti-Gay Slurs at Black Gay Bar

There are new and disturbing developments regarding the recent police action at Chi Chiz, the Christopher Street bar in New York City's West Village that caters to a predominately younger black gay clientele. The club, which has been open since June 1998 is one of the very few black-oriented clubs in Manhattan, was raided on March 5 by more than a dozen NYPD officers police officers who cited four instances where drugs were allegedly openly sold. The club was temporarily shut down.

Owners Ronelle McKenzie and Everett Ray claim the police are harassing them and witnesses identified an undercover NYPD officer shouting anti-gay epithets outside the club, reports Gay City News.

Their efforts to come to a settlement with the NYPD have so far proved elusive, and Chi Chiz’s owners are next due in court on April 6. The court’s action on March 6 allowed the club  to reopen that evening at 9 p.m., about 24 hours after being shut down. Later the same night, Allen Roskoff, a longtime gay activist who had been told of the previous day’s raid, dropped by the club, where he said he was harassed by a young white man standing outside who he later learned was a Sixth Precinct undercover cop.

According to Roskoff — who was with Corey Johnson, also a gay activist and the 1st vice chair of Chelsea’s Community Board 4 (which does not encompass Christopher Street) — as they arrived at the club, the young white man was standing outside yelling, “This fag establishment should be closed.” When Roskoff and Johnson confronted the man, he responded to each of them, “You’re a faggot.” Roskoff said he called 911, at which point the man headed east on Christopher until he arrived at the cigar store at Sheridan Square, where he went inside and changed his clothes, before hailing a cab. At that point, a squad car pulled up and the man was asked to step out of the taxi. The officer at the scene said “Oh, no” when he saw the man, whom he recognized as an undercover in his precinct, according to Roskoff, who said he was interviewed by telephone at 2 a.m. by an NYPD Internal Affairs investigator who had arrived at the Sixth.

Thomas Shanahan, who is representing McKenzie and Ray, said that he was told by Laura Mulle, the NYPD legal unit attorney in the Chi Chiz case, that the man who confronted and then fled from Roskoff and Johnson was, in fact, an undercover Sixth Precinct cop, but that he had been put on desk assignment. Mulle would not divulge the name of the officer to Shanahan — she advised him to file a Freedom of Information Act request.

After being in business for 12 years, Chi Chiz' owners McKenzie and Ray say they have never encountered problems when they’ve appeared before Community Board 2 to renew their liquor license. However, they believe the NYPD is targeting them because many local residents resent the club and black/Latino gay youth in the West Village.

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Comments

[Chris Cruz]

Given the NYPD history toward black and latino gays I am not surprised

[Chris]

Cops go after [gay] black folk. AGAIN. How come I'm not even slightly surprised?

[FQ]

Hmm. So they send a homophobic white undercover to a gay bar with a predominately black gay clientele. Brilliant.

[Zaidi Baraka]

Stonewall in 1969. Chi Chiz in 2010. Aluta Continua! (The Struggle Continues!).

[DEWAYNE]

The true reality is the Blacks and Latinos have been the target of police predjudies and harassment since our/my birth...It is not far fecthed to think that being GAY is any different..1969 Stonewall is our important history, however, police put u in patty wagons in 1969...today for blacks and latinos...we are shot to deaths...and put in coffins