Stonewall by David Carter

Author:David Carter [Carter, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3939-3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2004-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Indeed, Pine had less to work with than Smith realized. In 1969 automatic firing handguns were rare. The officers would have only been able to fire as rapidly as they could pull the trigger, but also most of the guns the police had on them that evening would have had to be reloaded after firing five or six shots. As angry as the crowd was, Pine did not feel that he and his men could have stopped it with only several shots each. Moreover, Pine’s own gun, a .38mm Smith & Wesson with a wooden handle, had a very short barrel, only about one inch long, reducing its range of accuracy to only about eight to ten feet.

While a couple of officers remained posted at the Stonewall’s door, Smythe and some other officers and even Smith searched for an escape.33 Among the prisoners held inside was a bartender who had the keys to the place, and Pine intermittently barked questions at him, demanding to know what various things were and peppering him with queries about the club’s layout.34

Outside, Garvin recalls, “it was like being in a war. People were crying. People were cut up. I mean, people would throw bricks, but you didn’t always hit a cop. Sometimes you’d hit another queen. So you didn’t know when you saw someone cut were they cut because the cop hit the guy or were they cut because of running and falling or what? It was great, but you didn’t want to get hit by nightsticks. Yet I had to see what was happening. I had to see! This was unbelievable. My God! It was like—these are the guys at the Stonewall who were—my God, look at… They busted open the doors. I can’t believe it.”

Finally the police succeeded in finding a vent in the back up near the roof, and they struggled to get the smaller of the two policewomen outside through this opening. Pine instructed the woman to go across the roof and to climb down—but not on Christopher Street—report the fire at the Stonewall to the firehouse on the adjacent block, and use a telephone to send an emergency signal for assistance.

The crowd outside again focused its fury on the Stonewall’s western window. Tom watched as “a sort of wooden wall blocking out the front plate glass windows was forced down.”35 Smith wrote: “One of the big plywood windows gives, and it seems inevitable that the mob will pour in.”36 But just then the police inside turned the Stonewall Inn’s fire hose on the crowd, hoping to stop the rioters. From the inside, Howard Smith reported: “The detectives locate a fire hose, [but] can’t see where to aim it, wedging the hose in a crack in the door. It sends out a weak stream. We all start to slip on water and Pine says to stop.”37 Outside, Truscott saw the youths “cavort in the spray” in “momentary glee.”38 Tom wrote scornfully: “The pigs carried futility to the extreme and turned the fire hose on the mob through the door.

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