NYPD Commissioner Apologizes for Police Role in Stonewall Riots
Stonewall Inn, NYPD Police Apology
Organizers of this years Pride celebration and Council Speaker Corey Johnson had called for the police to apologize for the raid at Stonewall on the night of June 28, 1969. The Stonewall Uprising was the catalyst for the modern LGBT rights movement. At headquarters this morning, New York police commissioner James O'Neill said that the NYPD of 2019 would never do what happened 50 years ago.
"The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple," said O'Neill.
"The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive," he added. "And for that, I apologize."
O'Neill is reportedly the first police commissioner to admit wrongdoing during the Stonewall Riots. James Fallarino, a spokesman for NYC Pride welcomed the apology. "The NYPD, as an institution, needed to take responsibility for what happened at Stonewall. This isn't going to undo the decades of violence and discrimination that our community has experienced at the hands of the police, but it's a good first start," he told the Associated Press.
