New York gay hate crime victim blasts police

By

CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

Irish Voice Reporter

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Tarlach MacNiallais (center) was very unhappy with how he was treated by police following his assault at a nightclub

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Tarlach MacNiallais, 47, the Irish gay man living in Jackson Heights, Queens who was assaulted by employees of a nightclub there on Saturday December 5, has hit out at the behavior of some police officers that were the first responders at the scene.

“To be quite honest with you I am angrier about the police response on the night than the actions of two homophobic bigots who assaulted me,” MacNiallais told the Voice. “The police are charged with the duty of protecting you from assault from people like that. Those police officers did not do their duty.”

“Had I been attacked by one of the patrons of the club that would have been one thing, but the fact that it was actually the club’s security made it worse. And what makes it ten times worse again was the police officers actions when they arrived on the scene. Their conduct and their abusive language made me the angriest of all.”

MacNiallais, originally from Belfast, had been punched and kicked and had a chair smashed over his head in an attack by two employees of at the Guadalajara De Noche restaurant in Jackson Heights at 12:43 A.M. on Saturday.

“I was still being dragged though the restaurant by the two nightclub employees when the police arrived on the scene,” MacNiallais said. “They told my partner Juan and his three brothers to leave the club first and they told them to stay off to the side of the street, away from me.”

What happened next startled MacNiallais and his family. He was placed in handcuffs, he alleges, and then made to lie down on the ground. “The police put me in handcuffs, they dragged me outside and they put me on the sidewalk, face down. When I tried to explain to them what had happened to me, that I had been assaulted because I was dancing with my partner, they refused to let me speak.”

One officer in particular, MacNiallais says, was pointedly abusive. “One officer kept yelling in my face “Shut the f—k up, shut the f—k up!” My partner and his brothers had come over to check on me but another police officer kept them back, telling them “You can’t go near him, just stay there,” added MacNiallais.

MacNiallais was left on the ground for twenty minutes, he alleges, while the officers talked to employees of the Guadalajara De Noche restaurant. “I have no idea why they responded to me like this. At first there were about 18 police officers on the scene. I think when they realized that I wasn’t an aggressor most of them left and there were only four police officers left.”

MacNiallais says he knows at this point the police were talking to one of the employees who had assaulted him. The other assailant, MacNiallais says, stayed well away from the round of police interviews, watching from a distance.

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