September 2: The Stonewall Cop

Seymour Pine, the Jewish New York cop who led the raid that resulted in the Stonewall Uprising of June 28, 1969, died on this date in 2010 at age 91. Pine was a deputy police inspector and commander of the police department’s vice squad for Lower Manhattan. He later apologized for the raid, in which he led eight officers into the Mafia-owned Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village with the intent of arresting transvestites and other customers. “They were easy arrests,” he said. “They never gave you any trouble.” On that night, however, the “easy arrests” turned into a riot by thousands that sparked the modern gay liberation movement.
“If what I did helped gay people, then I’m glad.” —Seymour Pine
Until April 26, 2014 PBS is making the full one-hour twenty-two minute American Experience documentary Stonewall Uprising viewable online. The documentary is dedicated to the memory of Raymond Castro and Seymour Pine and the closing moments belong to Pine.