Police LGBT Liaison Units: How Effective Are They?
Long before Stonewall, relations between the police and LGBTs were often contentious and adversarial. Despite advances, they remain so today.
Like the Watts riots of the 1960s which shone a light on neglect in the ghetto and led to the establishment of diversity training in police departments throughout the country, incidents of anti-gay violence or confrontations with the police often compel the formation of LGBT liaison units and the establishment of LGBT liaison officers.
Dan Pinello, a political science professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, notes that by their very design, "Police departments tend to be responsive rather than proactive. When a crisis arises, the bureaucracy thinks about what it can do to avoid this in the future."
Ft. Worth, Texas: Crisis Creates Opportunity
The best recent example happened in Ft. Worth, Texas.
In December 2009, Police Officer Sara Straten became the first full-time LGBT liaison. Her elevation is directly tied to the city's response to widespread outrage following a spectacularly ill-advised police raid on a local bar.
It happened on June 28, 2009 - smack dab on the 40 Anniversary of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York, an irony lost on no one. The Fort Worth Police Department, in concert with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, conducted a raid on the Rainbow Lounge gay bar. It resulted in seven arrests, one hospitalization, and accusations of excessive force from the local LGBT community, the media and outraged politicians across the spectrum.
What followed were months of street protests, national press coverage, and demands made at city council meetings. It all culminated in more righteous anger after two internal Police Department investigations concluded there was no excessive force employed by officers during the raid.
These combined efforts helped effect the establishment of a formal Fort Worth LGBT liaison. Previous to her recent full-time appointment as the city's LGBT liaison officer, Straten had been serving as a part-time volunteer interim liaison since October, 2009.
Straten readily acknowledges the Rainbow Lounge incident played a role in the establishment of her full-time status. "I think the current Liaison position has been very effective so far," she hastens to add.
Different community organizations have been contacted to assist Fort Worth's Diversity Task Force, which was instrumental in updating an anti-discrimination policy to include gender expression and gender identity recently passed by the City Council. "We are currently working on domestic partner benefits as well as ways to reach out to the GLBTQ community to bring our venues here to our city to further economic development," Straten notes.
Straten also points to post-Rainbow Lounge advances like the inclusion of LGBT issues in training curriculum. After the raid, the police established a Citizens Police Academy, and a Citizens on Patrol and Clergy and Police Alliance, which will allow trained citizens to accompany the police on patrol and witness how police respond to community incidents and concerns.
Despite these advances, some of the direct action groups that sprung up partly in the wake of the now-notorious raid, remain skeptical of their city's efforts. Community groups and organizations, however, tend to be a bit more generous in their assessment of a liaison's effectiveness.
The Dallas-based activist group Queer LiberAction has been particularly vocal in their criticism of Straten's ability to voice their concerns to her superiors. A fall 2009 phone conversation in which QL requested confirmation of a police presence at one of their events ended in an exasperated Straten hanging up on Wilkinson.
Fairness Fort Worth was founded shortly after the Rainbow Lounge incident. In previous EDGE interviews, members of the group gave a more generous assessment of Straten's effectiveness.
Even so, they also criticized the FWPD once the internal investigations of the Rainbow Lounge raid were announced.
Rafael McDonnell, a spokesperson for the Resource Center of Dallas, has had numerous dealings with Dallas liaison Laura Martin and Shelly Knight of the Dallas Country Sherriff's Department - as well as Fort Worth's Sara Straten.
Dallas: Activists, Community Groups Disagree
McDonnell's assessment of their effectiveness is far more generous than that of area activist groups - and stems from more direct interaction with them as well as the observance that much of their work with the community occurs off the record and behind the scenes.
For example, the local liaisons assist victims of domestic violence, whose cases rarely make it into the press or even onto the radar of activist groups.
"Laura is very visible in the community," McDonnell. "She comes in to the center one day a week and is available for community members if they have law enforcement concerns."
She also has an email box at the center where people can confidentially mail her questions or concerns. McDonnell also notes that Martin has worked closely with RCD's family violence coordinator to assist victims.
Officer Laura Martin says that when she brings community concerns to her superiors, "They have jumped through hoops for me. I've been given every opportunity to attend events where I am requested."
Martin cites the formation of relationships with several local groups, such as like Equality March Texas, as evidence that not all activists have a contentious or accusatory relationship with the city and the department.
"I am considered to be the go between," she says, "between those leaders and the police department." In instances where a police presence may be needed for a protest or public event, "I get the information, send emails to my supervisors, and it goes up the chain of command."
McDonnell says, of his organization: "We've worked with Shelly about a year and a half ago for some diversity training at the Sheriff's Department. She's been a voice and an advocate for the LGBT community," says McDonnell.
"I think from a visibility standpoint, liaisons serve as a way for the agency to demonstrate an awareness of the GLBT community," he says. "By their awareness and visibility, they help the community gain a seat at the table."
Washington, D.C.: The Influence of Minorities
"One important aspect of these liaison positions is clearly a PR function," notes Roddrick Colvin, an associate professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "That's why the establishment of LGBT or diversity units tends to indicate more of a commitment on the part of the police department. A single liaison officer tends to be more of a PR function."
Although ties to the department or city's PR office doesn't necessarily indicate an exclusively self-serving motive, it does call into question the sincerity with which the position was created as well as the true power it's given to impact policy.
That doesn't mean, however, that a reactive action won't develop into a genuine service to the community.
Colvin recalls that Washington, D.C.'s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLUU) was formed after its general diversity services first appeared, "when hate crime statistics were all the rage."
The problem was highlighted whne statistics were released for suburban Maryland and Virginia. They reported 165 and 100, respectively. Washington recorded only two.
"Clearly, there was something going on about how the police understood and reported hate crimes," Colvin notes.
What ensued was much intra-departmental examination of policies. "Two lesbians emerged and volunteered to do some training and outreach," he recalls. "That was the precursor to the GLUU unit."
The officers began to train their peers on what hate crimes were, and how to identify them so they could more accurately report them. From that in-house service came community outreach and the desire to serve as an interim representative between the department and gay Washingtonians reluctant to come forward to report everything from robbery to domestic disturbances.
DC Chief of Police Cathy L. Lanier points to her department's current array of diversity units, which also serve the Asian, Latino and African American communities. Such minority servicing units began 10 to 15 years ago, "when the philosophy of community policing was new."
Current liaison efforts, on the other hand, emerged from a model "in which we sought out officers who could connect to the community," she adds, "to give us that trust and make sure eve4rythng was reported to us."
To this day, she notes, "We are not counting certain crimes as hate crimes, because a lot of those involved in domestic disputes are hesitant to report it."
She acknowledges that skepticism, fear and mistrust of authority still exist among minority commuities. Still, Lanier says, "I am hoping that we will not need specialization in the future. All officers should be able to handle any community member with respect and dignity."
How Financial Constraints Influence Liaisons
That, in fact, is the standard argument for the establishment of a liaison by any minority community.
Colvin says he understand the argument that in a perfect world, a consistent level of professionalism and competence would render liaisons obsolete.
"It might make sense, when you have an insular or largely invisible community, to have these sorts of units," he adds. "When gay people are comfortable with the officers and unit, they help with their own policing, are more willing to call about a same sex violence scenarios, and provide information on crimes and murders."
Dan Pinello, a political science professor at John Jay College, cites lack of resources as the reason so many departments have yet to establish any level of LGBT outreach. (Pinello is also the author of a well-received book on gay marriage in the United States.)
"In many ways, the public gets what it pays for," he says. "I've taught lots of officers and service personnel in my classes over the past 16 years, and I marvel at how well police departments perform with very limited resources. I don't think there's some vast conspiracy where people think, 'We're going to intentionally short shrift this community.' They're trying to put out fires in any number of places where very few extinguishers. That's the nature of bureaucracies."
Chicago: Budgetary Considerations
Yet even for departments which have the resources for diversity units or officers, the LGBT community can find itself at the end of the line.
Jamie Richardson, the LGBT liaison to Chicago's 20th district, notes that limited resources and the need to serve as many minority segments as possible have stalled efforts to increase the number of LGBT liaisons there. Chicago currently has two.
"Because of the current [fiscal] climate, their defense is 'limited resources.'" Richardson says. "There are a lot of minorities who need attention, but the GLBT community is at the bottom of that pot. We still have a lot of issues that aren't understood or handled with equally."
Andy Thayer, co-founder of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network, appreciates the liaisons, "but the fact is they have no power to effect change. We have not spent a lot of time with the various liaisons"
He calls them "window dressing" for the city's administration: "Sure, they may be approachable, but given they have no power, what's the point?"
The case of Richard Fiorito, an alleged rogue officer who harassed LGBT residents with false arrests, remains a thorn in the side of Thayer and other activists.
His group, along with many others in the gay community, spent months trying to get Officer Fiorito put on desk duty. "We were told no one, let alone the lowly liaison, had the power to put him on desk duty," Thayer recalls. "We attended a few Town halls at the station and frankly, were given the runaround."
Ultimately, that officer was put on desk duty; a result Thayer says, that can be traced not to efforts from the liaison officer, but to relentless negative publicity arising from consistent public protest. That's why GLN disengages from interacting with the police, mayor and city council in favor of street protests designed to give their perspective maximum press exposure.
"It takes political pain" to get action, Thayer maintains. "The only thing they respect is power. Until the community exercises their power very forcefully, we'll continue to have this problem."
Officer Jose R. Rios is the LGBT Liaison assigned to Chicago's 23rd District. He describes police-community relations, as being "in really good standing; and it is continuing to grow. We deal a lot with the [LGBT] Center on Halsted, right next to my district. We also deal with the Howard Brown Health Center, and work closely with the North Halsted Merchants Association."
Thayer disavows that last sunny assessment. "If you're a businessman on Halsted Street who contributes to the city administration," he says, "then things are probably fairly good for you."
If, however, you're a young African American (the target of numerous complaints by local gay business owners), "Your life is considerably different if you can't afford the bars and you just hang out on the street," Thayer says. "We hear over and over again allegations of prostitution; and those all are focused exclusively on the youth - not their alleged patrons. The latter have got the money to patronize the bars. There's not only a racial thing going on here, there's a class thing."
The key to the success of a liaison unit is training. Part Two will examine training LGBT liaison officers - the tortured history points the way toward a standardized curriculum.