Seattle Police Continue Shakedown of Gay Clubs

The Stranger had reported that recently over the past few weeks, the SPD had been paying an excessive amount of visits to gay clubs, several times throughout the night in what appears in my opinion to be an attempt to rattle nerves and spook patrons.

DJ Randy Schlager (left), outside of Neighbours Nightclub accompanied
by a “STAFF” member, attempts to explain acoustics to SPD
officers, who made multiple visits within a short period of time.

In a recent posting on The Stranger SLOG, described how Officer O’Neill observed a video that the Eagle bar was running that supposedly does fall within state liquor board guidelines and contains no visible nudity.

When two men in the video started kissing, O’Neill “flipped out,” Christiansen said. O’Neill pulled bartender Scott Kirby outside the bar, asked for his I.D., and warned him about the “simulated sex acts” in the video.

The SPD made their presence felt multiple times throughout the
night parking directly in front of the entrance with lights flashing.

The SPD took a lot of heat for the reported gay bashings recently and many in the gay community were critical that they police were not doing enough. It would appear to me that the criticism may have struck a deep chord within the SPD in what has evolved into an all out shakedown of gay clubs unseen in almost 40 years.

When the owner of Eagle bar told one of the officers that the video met liquor board standards the police officer reportedly said “I am the law” and that the incident would be in his report. According to the article an incident report was never filed by the officer.