Queer Community Case Study

The queer communities and the communities of color in Los Angeles have a common history of police violence. Their geographic proximity during the 1950’s and 1960’s, exposed them to the same heavy policing in the form of "vice" entrapments, which were motivated not only by the police’s need to control the queer community, but also to stop interracial relationships. The struggles of these two groups were put in evidence in the 1952 case of Horace Martinez and his friends. Martinez was using the restroom in Echo Park, known as a cruising spot for the queer community, when he was mistakenly identified as being gay and violently slapped by an undercover police officer. Outside the restroom, Martinez's unarmed friends came to his aid, resulting in the shooting of William Rubio, who survived, and the arrests of the five teenagers, of which four were of Mexican decent, and one was of Italian decent. Although Martinez affirmed that he was not gay and that in fact, he didn’t like gay people, he was taken to a facility for psychiatric evaluation (Jung 189).
In the 1950's, queer people gathered in working class neighborhoods in public spaces such as bars and parks (Jung 191). These neighborhoods also housed people of color and were heavily policed. The police wanted to control not only queer life, but interracial queer life as well. In response to this heavy policing, queer people of color started gathering in more private places like their houses, while, middle class queer people, were able to find safety in public places in less policed areas like west Hollywood (Jung 193). This clear division between queer people of color and white queer people contributed to geographic segregation within groups that were deeply interconnected in their history with