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And so, to gay rights activists, the police commissioner’s apology on Thursday was long overdue. The infamous clash with police has long been a painful chapter in the gay rights movement, even as laws and society have extended greater protections to the LGBT community. Bars like the Stonewall Inn often operated unlicensed and in the shadows. Leading psychologists viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder and people were routinely arrested for cross-dressing or showing affection. The Stonewall riots happened in a decidedly different era. “Almost overnight, an incredible number of new gay and lesbian organizations were established-by some counts rising from 50-60 groups before the uprising to more than 1,500 a year later,” according to New York’s Landmark Preservation Commission. The riot became a watershed moment that sparked nationwide demonstrations by LGBTQ activists demanding equal rights. They shoved back at police, tossed stones and bottles and did everything they could to resist until police retreated, according to NPR interviews with raid witnesses. They began roughing up people, pushing people against walls and searching them. on June 28, 1969, police descended on the bar in hopes of closing it down for good. “The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize.”īefore the police stormed Stonewall, it had long been the scene of police harassment, but just after 1 a.m. “The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple,” said O’Neill at police headquarters on Thursday. Just about 50 years after New York police clashed with gay rights activists at the Stonewall Inn, the city’s police commissioner, James O’Neill, has apologized for the department’s raid on that tumultuous night in 1969.ĭepartment officials have expressed regret about the aggressive crackdown in the past, but they have never went so far as to apologize for the raid, until now.