Seymour Pine Dies at 91; Led Raid on Stonewall Inn

[Shana A]

Seymour Pine Dies at 91; Led Raid on Stonewall Inn
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: September 7, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/nyregion/08pine.html?_r=1

Seymour Pine, the deputy police inspector who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, on a hot summer night in 1969 — a moment that helped start the gay liberation movement — died Thursday at an assisted-living center in Whippany, N.J. He was 91.

His death was confirmed by his son Daniel.

Inspector Pine, who later apologized for his role in the raid, was commander of the New York Police Department's vice squad for Lower Manhattan when he led eight officers into the Stonewall Inn, an illegal club frequented by cross-dressers, just after midnight on June 28, 1969.

[K8]

Raids on gay bars was fairly common in those days.  It was the drag queens at Stonewall who were the first to resist - a fact that sometimes gets lost in the history of gay liberation.

- Kate