The Washington City Paper has a short item about an incident similar to what happened to Skip Gates that happened to gay D.C. lawyer Pepin Tuma at 17th and U Streets, N.W., on the edge of the gay Dupont Circle neighborhood and the black-dominated U Street Corridor on Sunday night, again just for expressing disrespect of police:
‘District resident Pepin Tuma, 33, an attorney in private practice, said the arrest took place at 17th and U streets, N.W., shortly after midnight July 26, seconds after a police officer overheard him telling two friends "jokingly" and in a loud voice, "I hate the police."...In an e-mail to [Cathy Lanier], Tuma said that after repeating twice to his friends in a "sing-song" voice, "I hate the police," an officer "charged 40-50 feet towards us while yelling at me phrases like ‘who do you think you are’ and ‘who do you think you’re talking to.’
The City Paper continues:
He said the officer, later identified as Second District Officer J. Culp, pushed him against a transformer box, placed him under arrest and handcuffed him without immediately informing him of the charge. "As Officer Culp moved me toward a police cruiser, he told me to ‘just shut up, faggot.’"’
The City Paper's source is a longer article in the Washington Blade, Attorney arrested, says D.C. officer called him 'faggot' : Gay man was ‘joking’ with friends about his dislike of police:
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has ordered an internal investigation into a gay man’s arrest for disorderly conduct after the man filed a complaint alleging that an officer detained and arrested him for expressing his dislike for police.
District resident Pepin Tuma, 33, an attorney in private practice, said the arrest took place at 17th and U streets, N.W., shortly after midnight July 26, seconds after a police officer overheard him telling two friends "jokingly" and in a loud voice, "I hate the police."
Tuma said he made the comment in jest as he and two friends, who also are lawyers, were walking to Dupont Circle gay bar Cobalt while talking among themselves about the controversial arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Mass., for disorderly conduct.
It's getting harder and harder to deny that we're living in a police state, even on the edge of the Dupont Circle neighborhood and two blocks from Harvard Yard.