Iowa police raid gay bar for providing first aid supplies to protestors

Police arrive at the bar with guns pointing
Photo: Screenshot/Twitter

An LGBTQ venue was raided by police earlier this week for providing first aid for protestors.

The Blazing Saddle, an LGBTQ bar in Des Moines, posted a video to Facebook showing around a dozen armed police officers raiding the bar late Monday night, the first day of Pride Month.

Related: Police opened fire on a gay bar because the owner was handing out water to protestors

Protests erupted all over the country last week after a video of an unarmed, handcuffed Black man dying in police custody surfaced. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of the victim, George Floyd, for eight minutes and 46 seconds, including three minutes after he stopped breathing.

After days of protest, Chauvin and three other officers have been fired and charged.

The Blazing Saddle, on Facebook, wrote that staff watched the local Black Lives Matter demonstration on television and saw that police officers were using tear gas against the protestors.

“Three of our people were prepared with a backpack full of first aide [sic] supplies and went outside in case anyone would be in need of assistance post-protest,” the bar’s co-owner Bryan Smith wrote in the post.

The supplies included bottled water, milk of magnesium (a remedy for tear gas), and towels.

Vana B, showgirl at the bar, posted to Facebook that staff was tending to protestors who were “in agonizing pain.” While the workers were at the bar past curfew, she said they stayed there to keep an eye on the bar and weren’t participating in the protests.

Then police allegedly arrived in two trucks with guns pointed and…

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