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At about 2:15 a.m. on October 7, 2007, law enforcement officials entered Atlanta's Spring 4th Center and broke up a party sponsored by Onyx Southeast, a regional chapter of Men of Onyx, an African-American leather-community network based in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York.

Attendees had registered for a four-day leather conference called Blackout XII. Some had paid an extra fee to enroll in "Onyx University," an all-day series of classes in BD/SM culture. The weekend included a community forum on "People of Color in Leather and Racism," a Leathermen of Color contest, a bar crawl, leather and fetish demos, and a cigar party. Most of the conference took place at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel and the city's principal leather-and-denim bar, the Atlanta Eagle.

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pring 4th Center was the site of the conference's Saturday-night "Men's VIP Party," an invitation-only, dry event with no gate fee. According to one witness, there was "nothing to drink on the premises except a couple of pitchers of ice water." The raid began when an undercover officer appeared at the door and asked to pay a cover charge. He was told that the party was strictly private, and that he could not pay to enter. Moments later, according to witnesses, six uniformed officers from the Atlanta Police Department (APD) came bursting into the space. The officers kept insisting Onyx Southeast must have been charging admission and hiding the proceeds. No cache of money was found.

Failing to catch the party's organizers charging an illegal entrance fee or selling alcohol, police sought to shut down the party on grounds that attendance exceeded Spring 4th's legal capacity. But since there were only about two dozen Onyx members present, the crowd fell well below the space's legally mandated 50-person limit. After the center's owners arrived on the scene at about 2:45 a.m., produced a business license, and defused the situation, police finally left. There were no arrests, but the party was too dampened and disrupted to continue.

Blackout XII organizers later said they were thinking of filing a formal complaint against the APD, citing lack of warrants and harassment. Onyx Southeast's president, known by the pseudonym Ejay Session, told Southern Voice reporter Ryan Lee the police were "very disrespectful to what was going on," making comments about the "cakes and pies in here" (meaning gay leather-clad attendees), and club members' "motorcycle rider" fashions. Session said officers were calling colleagues to the scene as if to say, "Come see this freak show."

The APD has treated the raid as if it never occurred. There apparently was no police report; there is no trail of official paperwork. Officer Darlene Harris, the Atlanta Police Department's GLBT liaison since 2005, was on vacation at the time of the incursion. Contacted on December 5 at the APD, she was unaware of the details of the raid, or whether anyone had lodged a complaint. "I'm just being filled in on that incident," she admitted. She did try, without success, to track down the identities of the officers who participated in the raid. She thinks they might have been from a specialty unit, not from the APD's Midtown Zone 5 police headquarters, which has jurisdiction over the Spring 4th Center's neighborhood.

At the beginning of 2005, there was a spate of APD raids on gay porn theaters and sex clubs. Since then, local police have mostly left gay Atlanta alone. But the Onyx Southeast raid was the second time in just over a year the APD has targeted a gay leather-and-fetish play party. On October 1, 2006, two undercover officers attended a gathering of Atlanta's Sunday Leather Social at Spring 4th Center, triggering a full-fledged raid when one of them paid a suggested donation for beer. The three organizers were arrested on charges of operating an illegal social gathering and selling alcohol without a license.

Spring 4th Center occupies a former office/warehouse space at 726 Spring Street in Atlanta's Midtown district. It provides rental space for such alternative happenings as rave parties, concerts, fetish fairs (including a Christmas offering called Twisted Toyland), Star Trek gaming nights, and belly-dance classes. Major events take place on weekends. During the week, Spring 4th becomes an adult community center. Its owners are a straight married couple, Rick and Stacey Day. Rick Day says their mission is "to enable the colorful fringe groups of the community to gather together in peaceful assembly."

The Days opened the facility in August 2005. Since then, police have appeared at their door three times. The first incident occurred at the close of a goth party late in 2005, when the Days were mistakenly cited for operating an illegal private club and "bottle house." When the couple announced their intention to contest the charges, the prosecutor quickly dropped them. Day says that his relations with local police have mostly been nonconfrontational, and that a more troublesome adversary, the Atlanta Midtown Neighbors' Association (MNA), may in fact have instigated the Onyx Southeast raid.

On or about September 15, three weeks before the October 7 incident, some anonymous source mailed a fake flyer to the MNA touting Spring 4th Center as a cauldron of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and the place to go for underage girls. Rick Day says the flyer was "ridiculous, lurid, and over the top" -- and clearly intended to stir up community ire against his operation. Whether or not the staid membership of the politically powerful MNA believed the flyer was an authentic product of Spring 4th Center, they made it public in an apparent effort to discredit the Days's operation.

"The police who turned up on October 7 were looking for booze and girls," says Day. "I don't think they even knew there was a gay leather party in progress."

The MNA is a guardian of respectability and tradition in the cultural heart of Atlanta. Property values have been soaring in gentrified Midtown, viewed by many as the most desirable part of town. But alongside the museums, the theaters, the Atlanta Symphony, and Bank of America Plaza, an eroding number of businesses cater to non-mainstream tastes. Midtown is the site of more than 15 gay bars, including the Atlanta Eagle, the male strip club Swinging Richards, and -- on Spring Street near Spring 4th Center -- Wet Bar.

"It all comes down to control of what goes on in the community," says Day, "and what the community is allowed to be. For the Midtown Neighbors' Association, it's about shiny new buildings made of glass and steel -- and about how, if you're going to open a nightclub, it has to be the kind of place where it costs $30 to get in. If you're a big developer, the MNA loves you. If you're a small businessman, they'll stand in your way."

Day has been battling the MNA over parking issues created by Spring 4th's recent expansion into an additional 6000 square feet of space in an adjacent building.

"I think the police were targeting us," he adds, "not the gay leather community, and that they were doing it as dupes of the MNA. On the other hand, this is Atlanta. You never know."