Cleveland Police Sued For Telling Gay Couple “F*ggots Don’t Deserve To Wear Pants In Jail”

From Queerty:

Jonathan Simcox and his partner Steven Ondo were walking home from a bar in Cleveland one night last April when they got into an argument on the street—probably typical drunk-couple stuff. An off-duty police officer at his house heard them and took it upon himself to resolve the matter, telling the couple to STFU.

“I pushed to get past him,” says Simcox, “And as soon as I did that he knocked me on the ground, and just started beating me, hitting me, standing over top of me, and punching me repeatedly.” Police then showed up and took them to jail, where they were released with no charges.

What happened next led the couple to hire renowned attorney David Malik and file a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

A week after the initial arrest, a SWAT team showed up at Simcox and Ondo’s house and arrested them in the middle of the night, saying they had a warrant for “assaulting a peace officer.” Bewildered, the couple was attacked more and more as they asked questions. “The officer in the glasses grabbed me by my shirt,” says Simcox, “and punched me twice in the face, after he punched me, he threw me up against the wall.”

Simcox’s brother asked if he could get the couple some pants and shoes, seeing as they had been sleeping in their underwear.

“You can go get them shoes, but faggots don’t deserve to wear pants in jail,” one officer said. Now we’ve heard a lot of shitty things said about gay people, but that’s a line we’ve never heard before.

Simcox and Ondo (right) were publicly humiliated in their undies on the front lawn for 10 minutes, then taken to jail and kept pantsless for over a day.

Civil rights attorney Sam Riotte said, “Jonathan and Steven’s rights were violated in part of who they are, because they are homosexuals.”

And we gay people demand the right to pants! (And fair treatment, and protections against excessive force/police brutality, and so on and so forth.)