At least that's what Toronto Police thought in the 1980s:Toronto police spied on gay community in 1980s: report
A surveillance report leaked to CBC News details how Det. Garry Carter went undercover in the community, spying on bathhouse operators, attending conventions in Alberta and tracking gay candidates running for city council.
The detective even reported on how gay activists questioned the police budgets.
Coun. Kyle Rae, a vocal gay rights advocate, said the report confirms what many in the community had long suspected.
"We were seen as a subversive minority that was worthy of ridicule and violence against us by the police," said Rae. "It's part of the paranoia of the '70s and '80s. It's not appropriate, but I'm not surprised."
See also The Toronto Bathhouse Raids of 1981
It wasn't the first anti-gay police action in Canada's history, but it was the biggest and most brutal. At 11 o'clock the evening of February 5, 1981, 150 plainclothes and uniformed police officers staged violent raids on four of Toronto's five gay bathhouses and arrested almost 300 men.
