On Monday, October 5th, community groups including the Virginia Highland Church, BLOCS (Building Locally to Organize for Community Safety), ATAC (Atlantans Together Against Crime), as well as representatives from the Atlanta Police Department held a forum to discuss the police department's recent raid on the Atlanta Eagle, a prominent gay nightclub.

Expectations of a genuinely open and forthcoming discussion were lowered at the very beginning when police refused to discuss the incident at all, preferring instead to have a dialogue around more general issues of policy and tolerance in the police department.

Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality set the tone of the discussion early by placing the Atlanta Eagle raid in the context of 70 years of police harassment and targetting of GLBT social venues. He pointed out that police vice units have been used throughout the past century as a way to persecute GLBT gatherings. "We want to feel like equal citizens, not targets in our own communities."

Forum attendees were especially interested in the role of the Red Dog Unit, a special police unit which is trained as a SWAT team and uses especially aggressive tactics. Police representatives said the Red Dogs were formed in the 1990s as a response to increased gang activity, and are currently used mostly to deal with so-called "open air drug markets". Despite repeated criticism of the decision to send a SWAT force to the Eagle, police representatives were unapologetic, saying that the Red Dogs are specially trained for this type of operation and are very well disciplined. One attendee asked "Who is policing the Red Dogs?"

Deputy Chief Carlos Banda repeatedly asserted that no discrimination had occurred, and that as long as police were treating straight venues in a similar way, there was no problem. Others cited examples of discriminatory treatment. Chris, a bartender at the Eagle, pointed out that while police claim to conduct similar enforcement on straight venues, it was only at the Eagle that arrests were made. Another attendee recounted the abusive treatment of the raid, "I don't recall anyone in other establishments kicking people or calling them names."

The representative from BLOCS (Building Locally to Organize for Community Safety) drew connections between the repression at the Eagle and the repression which communities of color and other marginalized groups face constantly in Atlanta. She was disturbed by hearing of the Red Dogs' involvement because the unit already has a very negative reputation in black and latino communities for other abuses. BLOCS was also concerned about the breakdown of trust and communication between the police and the community. "When that happens," she said, "public safety is not increased."

The police department was asked to cooperate with the independent investigation by the Civilian Review Board. While this sentiment was strongly supported by forum attendees, Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta Police Union, had different priorities. He expressed concern for the rights of police officers, saying "My officers didn't sign away their rights" in response to calls for an independent investigation. Sgt. Kreher also said that while community-oriented policing could have mitigated the problems at the Eagle, the department needed more funding to enact it, and implied that lack of funding was the root cause of events like the Eagle raid. Although the department appears to have enough resources to devote an entire tactical SWAT team to license enforcement, Kreher asserted that community policing was impossible unless the department budget was increased.

The police were repeatedly asked what the probable cause was for officers to search and run the IDs of every person in the club despite no evidence of wrongdoing. A police representative responded vaguely "Based on our purpose for being there..." and, when pressed, went on to say that IDs were run to ensure that none of the Eagle patrons were murderers or robbers.

Raymond Duke, president of In the Life Atlanta and organizer of Black Gay Pride events in the city offered some experiences in dealing with the police. "Black Gay Pride was asked to come back to Atlanta in 2010, and after I heard what had happened, I was like 'no'." He also highlighted the issue of race as a component in LGBT oppression. "While we may call it the LGBT community, we're actually part of all communities. [...] It makes a difference where you are, how you're treated. It feels like the police do everything in their power to make it uncomfortable and difficult to be in downtown or midtown. Maybe it's not that way, but that's how it feels."

Several times in the discussion the police representatives went out of their way to highlight and praise the GLBT officers they had on the force. The repeated emphasis on these few officers at times seemed "over the top" and more of an exercise in tokenism. When complaints of inappropriate treatment or disrespectful comments by police were raised, a gay police representative countered that he himself had never seen or experienced any discrimination and recounted an anecdote in which a superior officer did not discriminate against him. "If we believed there was homophobia in the department," he said "we would be at the AJC, we'd be in the paper talking about it." Raymond Duke responded that police harassment against GLBT people does happen, but is often not reported because of fear of police and/or drawing public attention to themselves. "People ask them, why don't you report it? And they tell me: it's the police department, who will take it seriously?"

At the conclusion of the forum, feelings were mixed, with some attendees expressing frustration at the lack of response from police. In the end, perhaps most telling of the forum overall was a statement by Duke, "When something like this raid happens, the police ask us for the opportunity to explain themselves, and that's what this is. But when the police stop GLBT people, they don't give us the chance to explain ourselves or talk it over."

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