Action at Stonewall Inn that provoked resistance and catalyzed fight for LGBT rights was ‘discriminatory’ says James O’Neill

New York City’s police commissioner has apologized for the 1969 police raid at the Stonewall Inn in the city, which catalyzed the modern LGBT rights movement.

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Commissioner James O’Neill said on Thursday that “the actions taken by the NYPD were wrong” at the gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood.

He called the actions and laws of the time, which prohibited homosexuality and just being in a gay bar could prompt an arrest “discriminatory” and said, “For that, I apologize.”

The apology comes just weeks ahead of the 50th anniversary of the raid and the rebellion it sparked on 28 June 1969. Bar patrons on the night, soon joined by others, fought back against officers, after frequent bar raids and arrests, and against a social order that kept gay life in the shadows.

It wasn’t the first time that LGBT people had demonstrated or clashed with police, but it proved a turning point that spurred a wave of activism.

After days and nights of protest and rioting, members of the LGBT population courageous enough to be seen in public supporting a campaign for equal rights began a march from “the village” through the city to protest against discrimination. Marchers were met with some cheers but faced a lot of yelled abuse from onlookers.

The following June, the first official gay pride parade took place in New York to mark the anniversary of what became known as the Stonewall uprising, and continued through the 70s, the Aids crisis and into the era of campaigning for greater legal protections and same-sex marriage.

The Stonewall Inn, on the village’s famous Christopher Street, was declared a national monument under the Obama administration in 2016 and is still a busy bar and nightspot.

“Stonewall was the event where gay people finally stood up and fought back in a way they never had in New York before,” Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis, an acclaimed chronicle of American gay life from 1940 to 2019, told the Guardian at the time the national monument designation was in process.

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Several exhibitions in New York are commemorating the uprising, which will culminate in the 50th anniversary celebrations later this month.

Ten years ago, retired police officer Seymour Pine, 89, who had led the police raid on the Stonewall that night in 1969, had not formally apologized for it but acknowledged to the Guardian that 40 years of progress towards equal rights meant “the country has come a long way”.

He had spontaneously apologized at an event in 2004, in response to a question from the audience, the New York Times reported in 2010, after his death that year.

Pine told the Guardian that on the night in 1969, he and his officers were just doing their jobs, and were shocked when the bar patrons, sick of harassment, fought back, with the outlaw rebellion led by drag queens, gender non-conforming men and women, homeless patrons and queer sex workers.

“We knew something had happened that had never happened before. We’d never had any trouble, but it just came out of nowhere,” he said.