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Show 198 seeing them sitting in the bars holding hands and dancing together. That's what we all wanted to have happen here. When I came back I thought, "How would it be to have that kind of openness here, I hope some day that happens."? Accustomed to gays pleading guilty to conduct charges, quietly paying fines, and stoically enduring harassment, local law enforcement officials noticed a change as early as the mid-1960s: gays were becoming less governable, in their attitudes if not their conduct. In 1965 Sergeant Dean Eskridge of the Salt Lake City Police Department's Sex Crimes Squad compared homosexual cases to those involving indecent exposure, which he considered "easy to handle" since the offenders were "aware of their problem and want to do something about it." By contrast, police found homosexuals the most difficult to deal with of all sex offenders because they were "antisocial and anti-law in attitude; they see nothing wrong in their actions, and regard the police as being the offenders for 'trapping' and interfering with them.?? Occasionally, frustrations over police harassment boiled over. For example, on December 29, 1972, a scuffle broke out during a routine police raid at the Radio City Lounge. As police arrested six patrons on charges of underaged drinking and public intoxication, one struck a vice officer after calling him "several obscene names." The incident did not provoke collective action, but it contrasted sharply with the patient resignation typical of bar patrons in the 1950s and 5Holbrook interview. 'Eskridge reported that during the previous five years, his division investigated 2307 sex offense cases, including 152 arrests for homosexual acts. "Council Airs Report on Sex Offenders," Salt Lake Tribune, 25 June 1965, p. B1. |
