tangents

news & views

by del & cal & hal & val mcintire

Editor's Note: In preparing this issue of ONE, the editors asked four of the nose-for-news McIntire bros. to do a year-end coverage of homosexual events. Thus "tangents" became the lead article. As many news items as room permitted have been used. But many more have been crowded out not only from this issue but during the year.

We wish to thank all readers who have faithfully sent in clippings and information. If you don't see your particular story used, it is because of space limitations.

POLICING THE POLICE

Police conduct has been a hot issue in several communities recently where inquiries into crime and the police have led to disclosures of elaborate vice activities flourishing viciously unchecked in the ranks of those very men who have sworn to protect the public from such behavior. Nothing new or unexpected here of course. Yet there are those who will believe the old saw that every town gets the police force it deserves, wants, and pays for. However, the homosexual, because of his extra legal status, sometimes sees first-hand that particular brutality and cunning that too often characterizes arresting officers. Reports of the theft by police of money and other valuables in Denver, the rolling of drunks by cops in Los Angeles, brutality inflicted upon pris-

oners in Milwaukee county jail, the acceptance of bribery from gambling and prostitution operators in Chicago, extortion and blackmail in Philadelphia, illegal search and seizures in Cleveland, the giving of favors to female motorists ticketed. in California's Manhattan Beach, all give one pause to wonder. Is there something peculiar about the man. who will make it his business to police other men?

In Denver, the information came to us last April that the police were taking it upon themselves to "cleanup" on "abnormal sexual activity" by confiscating what police termed 'obscene material" from at least two newsdealers. Capt. Lloyd Jamerson, morals bureau, arbitrarily ruled "sex perversions undoubtedly are illegal." ONE Magazine and Mattachine Review have not been for sale on the Denver