© 1994 Rich Grzesiak, all rights reserved.
Unemployed? Want some action, adventure and excitement in your next job? Do you hanker for the unexpected car chase, or are you more administratively oriented? Ever thought of becoming a cop for the Los Angeles Police Department?
This job opportunity derives from anything but the hallucinogenic: there are gays on every major city police force (though 90% are deeply in the closet), some holding command positions. Here in Los Angeles, an out front, lesbian police officer named Lisa Phillips serves on the LAPD. Her mission? Recruit the best lesbian and gay officers available.
Historically, it's hard to forget that were it not for the police, the Stonewall riots wouldn't have had a reason to happen. Becoming a police officer requires tough training (all LAPD officers go through the Police Academy), and your customers normally don't reach you at the most glorious moment of their day: drunk, disorderly, drugged, or deranged, they're a tough bunch to confront professionally. Some cops are overt queer haters: Leinen even cites a rumor of an "Aryan" dominated part of LAPD.
Policemen have fascinated me for ages, so when a book entitled Gay Cops emerged [Rutgers University Press; $22.95/hardcover] from a retired NYPD lieutenant, I was immediately enthused. Stephen Leinen served on the force for 23 years and eventually earned a Ph.D. in sociology (from New York University). He's not a waspy academic or wimped out police hack you might expect, but a forthright, down-to-earth gentleman who's been very active at integrating New York City's diverse police force—one of the largest in the country—into a racially and minority diverse world (his previous book is indicative of his ideology: it's Black Police, White Society).
Though L.A. has issues which make its police unique, the barriers and opportunities awaiting gay officers are uniform in most big cities. What's special about L.A., in Leinen's opinion, is its homophobia (he thinks Retired Chief Gates was probably one of the most queer hating in the U.S.) and its checkered reputation.
I spent some quality time quizzing Leinen on the LAPD's homophobic past, the perception crime may be rising in urban areas ["statistics can be manipulated any way you want"], what motivates someone gay/lesbian to be a cop, the extreme psychological costs involved if you're a cop stuck in the closet ["stress, anxiety and ego destruction"], why even some gay cops tremendously fear AIDS, and what the future beckons. "There's strength in numbers," Leinen thinks, and it's hard to dispute him on the arithmetic of assertive honesty.
Leinen interviewed several dozen gay/lesbian officers for Gay Cops, and part of that job was to dispel the myths and stereotypes of homosexuals on the force.
Talking with him wasn't easy. It's a tough job, but somebody had to do it.
Stephen Leinen (SL): The situation with gay and lesbian cops in L.A. tends to be very different from what it is in New York. I don't know how things with Chief Willie Williams have changed, but under Darryl Gates it was nothing but a horror show.
Ex-Police Chief Darryl Gates was condescending when I was a guest on his former radio show. His attitude to me suggested "you're supposed to be part of the 'good old boy network' and you're not." Basically that's what came across....
Rich Grzesiak (RG): The perception of a rising tide of crime in California is very strong right now regardless of what statistics indicate. Why would anyone gay even want to be a cop today, given this perceived rise in crime?
SL: Statistics can be manipulated any way you want and you have to be very careful how you interpret crime statistics as most people don't report crimes.
The job situation has been so bad in the last 10 years that it's encouraged gays and lesbians to become police for the very same goals blacks and Latinos want: security, tenure, benefits. In New York and other cities you have a 20 year pension system. Community service is a big motivator as people think they can provide a need to the gay and lesbian community—that's the reason blacks joined in the early 70's. The lure of action and adventure is also a major reason for people to join...
A smaller, though important reason to join is family tradition. A lot of gays I interviewed joined because their fathers or uncles pushed them into it. Of course, none of these parents knew their sons and daughters were gay: I'm not sure they would've pushed them into that arena if they'd known.
RG: I've frequently been biased by the (erroneous) perception that most police work involves violent crime—which is untrue.
SL: At the very most, 5% to 10% of police are involved in actual crime fighting. [0% to 95% involves extra-legal functions; handing out summons, mediating disputes, responding to accidents and injuries, etc.] Plus there's a portion of police work involving only the large amount of paperwork necessitated by police work.
RG: Do police departments that actively recruit gays to their force have a tendency to relegate gays to desk jobs?
SL: No, absolutely not... I organized the types of work the gay and lesbian cops I interviewed did in an appendix at the end of Gay Cops. I found the majority who were publicly out of the closet were either ranking officers or on details.
Remember that 95% of gay and lesbian cops remain in the closet, but the 5% I know of that are publicly out to their partners hold all different types of jobs and commands. Most gay cops I spoke to are in patrol precincts. That was good because I needed to get a feeling for how they dealt with people in their commands.
To my knowledge, though, there is no reason why gays need to be relegated to desk jobs or would choose desk jobs on their own. Gays join the police for the same reasons everybody else does: they have aspirations of moving up, going into details, becoming detectives, working on street crimes, and doing the full run of police work.
RG: How different is the NYPD from other forces and how does that impact on the research you put together?
SL: My feeling is that New York City is years ahead of most other cities, except perhaps San Francisco, in terms of its support for gay rights and gay and lesbian officers. The department's policy is supportive, at least publicly. In every command, you have a small percentage of cops that are very powerfully homophobic and this is where the problem arises for gay and lesbian officers.
RG: What kind of overlap do you think there will be between liberalized attitudes toward gays in the military and those in the police force? Don't you think there will be a cross over effect due to the hierarchical similarities between the police and the military?
SL: Well, the police and the military are similar, but they're not. Don't forget that in the military you're spending 24 hours a day with people. At the end of an 8 hour day you leave the police world and enter a social one. In that sense, they are very different.
One of the important findings in Gay Cops is the notion of the good cop. I tried to make it real clear to the reading audience that if you're gay or lesbian and you've established the credentials as a good cop, you won't have any problems, you will receive support, and that will be the master status that people will evaluate your professional and social worth by.
Before they come out, it may be better in this day and age for gays and lesbians to first establish a reputation as a good soldier and hope that will neutralize the sexual orientation issue [for them].
...It's not right as nobody else has had to do that. Blacks had to do that in the 70's: they had to go that extra yard and prove themselves better than others to be accepted. Women also had to do that in the early 80's. They had to prove themselves out in the street. It may be that the newest minority, gays and lesbians, will have to do the same thing in the military.
The only parallel I see is that [police and military work] is very dangerous. There's a potential [for danger] every day you go out. Yet it's not the same in the military unless you're in a wartime situation.
The bonding situation established among officers is due to the nature of the potentially dangerous work world. That [quality] brings cops together.
It's very important for two cops working together in a radio car to trust each other, that there is a bond, that they know each other. After a period of time that bond becomes terribly important and the officer's sexual orientation becomes less important.
That's what I found out when cops revealed their sexual orientation to their partners. Almost every case was like this, only 2 or 3 were different.
In all the other cases, these cops experienced acceptance rather than rejection and isolation.
RG: The arguable assumption I'm making is that a fair number of people recruited to the police force have some background in the military and they bring those experiences with them [including their attitudes toward gays].
SL: That certainly is not the case in New York City and I suspect it isn't around the country because you have an all volunteer military force.
I was in the Marines—I had to go in. One big problem today with police departments across the country is that new police recruits don't have that military background, and they... haven't been socialized into this hierarchy of taking orders from superior officers. It's a big problem in New York City...
RG: Did your research uncover any incidents where someone gay out on the force died in the line of duty?
SL: No, absolutely not. In fact, I know a related question is backup in dangerous situations and I have uncovered no incidents where a gay or lesbian cop failed to receive backup or had his or her radio transmission for a backup unit blocked by a cop in the street. I've asked everybody.
I conducted 41 formal interviews ranging anywhere from 6 to 20 hours. Not one gay or lesbian cop had that particular problem. That's not the case, I understand, in L.A., from Mitch Grobeson. That's one of the reasons he made very clear re: why he left the [L.A.] police department, because he wasn't getting backup in the street...
...I think the job of the police in New York and L.A. is very different, but there a lot of parallels and similarities between any big city police force...
Support flows from the top down. If you have a mayor and a police commissioner that are supportive, that word is going to filter down to the rest of the commanding officers right through to most of the troops. But if you have a police chief that's not supportive then you're just paying lip service to people's rights, whether it's women's or minority or gay and lesbian rights.
If the troops suspect the people at the top really don't care, then they're not going to support them [gay cops] and they're going to try everything they can to get away with everything they can in terms of targeting and discriminating against gays, blacks, women, whatever...
RG: Gates left behind a checkered legacy here in L.A. and the media have been filled with reports of low morale among the police, even allegations some cops are reluctant to take on extremely dangerous situations...
SL: I heard a horrible story told to me by someone works in LAPD that they have one precinct that's staffed almost exclusively by people that belong to the Ku Klux Klan or some other Aryan extremist organization and you can't get in unless you're a member. I don't know if that's true.
I got a call a few weeks ago from a very dear friend of mine that happened to be the co-founder of a Gay Officer Action League (GOAL) chapter. He just got a phone call from a Tennessee state trooper. The trooper, was out of uniform at the time, attempted to order a copy of Gay Cops from a local bookstore and was told "we don't handle that kind of stuff." I found that very interesting.
RG: I'm not surprised that happens in Tennessee.
SL: But I'm sure they handle books concerning incest and bestiality and stuff like that.
RG: If you have just moved to L.A. from another part of the country, it's very striking how thin the actual police presence is... As our mayor (Riordan) delivers on promises to recruit more cops, this is an excellent opportunity for more gays to get on the force.
SL: LAPD has been doing that for a couple of years now. They've set up booths staffed by gay and lesbian officers.
Some of the top ranking officers in New York have attended GOAL's Christmas Party. Of course, they may have had a hidden agenda in doing so, but at least that's a break through.
RG: A lot of city police departments have instituted mandatory sensitivity training sessions on a whole range of issues, including gay and lesbian ones. Is there a backlash by requiring people to attend those types of sessions?
SL: I've given seminars to straight cops and sense a backlash there: they try to put me up against the wall with issues like AIDS, etc.
It's very simple: if you're a sergeant or another cop in a precinct and you get the feeling the officer is just reading a paper as part of a mandatory training session and really doesn't believe what they're saying, you get the sense the higher-ups really don't give a shit about these issues...
That approach won't work: people will fall asleep, eat their donuts and say, "When is this shit over? Let me get out of here."
I felt very strongly about cops engaging in the use of excessive force. When I took over detective commands, I made sure I called the troops in and told them, "Whether you want to believe it or not, this is the way I feel about a particular issue: if you touch people... you're out of my command. And you don't take money from people. If I find out, you are not only out of my command but I'll turn it over to the [inspector] and see if we can get you dismissed. You may not like my policies, but as long as you are under my command, you'll respect them."
Within a year or 2, people under my command changed their ways. If you get a sergeant or lieutenant who gets his troops together and passes along the policy in this fashion—this is not just the policy but something I believe very strongly in—that will eventually sink through. If the supervisor follows through and doesn't just pay lip service, that's when these mandatory training sessions will start to pay off.
Cops are not stupid people—they read through what other people say. If they just see folks going through the motions, it won't mean a thing...
RG: There was an incident last year involving a Miami cop, allegedly lesbian, who had her locker rifled. What happened to that case?
SL: The cop involved was not a lesbian. I recently got a call from a Miami reporter who very graciously pointed this out. The police woman sued the City of Miami, and I believe she lost the case and is still on the police force.
I based this example in Gay Cops based on a story in The ADVOCATE, which assumed the cop was a lesbian, which she was not...
RG: Who's the most homophobic police chief in the country today?
SL: My guess would've been Gates before, but today I really don't know, and I think it'd be unfair for me to speculate.
By contrast, as far as progressive chiefs and departments go, I'd have to say New York's is: previous mayors and police chiefs bear this out.
RG: Have there been any gay officers who've died in the line of duty?
SL: In the line of duty? No, but there have been 6 gay officers who've died of other causes.
RG: Why is there all this exaggerated fear of AIDS among the police?
SL: Because a lot of the police simply still don't know enough about AIDS. A lot of New York cops have misinformation about AIDS (like touching someone will spread it, etc.). They don't understand you can't get AIDS through casual contact.
And I have to tell ya, at the beginning of my research, I had my concerns, too. In Gay Cops I talk about them and also the tremendous amount of reading and research I've done since then.
These are not just the concerns of straight people, but of many gay men and lesbians I spoke with, too. AIDS is a killer; it's not like the flu in that if you get it, you eventually die. So people take extreme precautions.
There's a gay cop I interviewed, someone very active in the gay community. One night they brought someone into his station who was bleeding profusely and he stopped dead in his tracks. "I'm not touching this guy," he told me, "I don't want anything to do with him."
Most cops nowadays have gloves and breathing apparatus in the trunk of their cars. No matter how much the departments do re AIDS education, there remain many cops that just want nothing to do with it. They avoid people who appear to be bleeding. If they're gay or are an intravenous drug user, they'll stay far away.
There was a very interesting question which came up in a seminar I conducted some time ago: what would you do as a policeman if you found out your partner was gay or HIV+?
Here are these hardcore, very conservative cops talking to me. Two of them who challenged me on other issues like gay quotas or gay recruiting. They basically said to me, if you work with a partner for 2 or more years and you find out he's HIV+ or gay, they're not going to give up their partners, they'll still work with them. If something should happen in the street, should there be an accident where there's blood flowing or if there's a stab wound or gunshot wound—they told me in no uncertain terms, they wouldn't hesitate to help their partner, no matter what it took.
And I know what partners are all about in the police department—it's a tremendous bond. You just forget about everything else when it comes to your partner: you go and save him, no matter what it takes.
So we have 2 very contradictory views: there's misinformation and they're scared to death, and at the same time, if it's their partner, they're gonna try and help them.
RG: It would seem from Gay Cops that the preferred method of survival if you're a gay or lesbian police officer is to remain in the closet, because that's the course of least risk overall. True?
SL: It's least risk overall but you must consider the stress, anxiety and ego destruction that comes with staying in the closet...
RG: What you refer to as "living the lie?"
SL: ...being "on" 8 hours a day. How long can people do that?
RG: If you stayed in the closet as a gay cop, what were the tradeoffs? Depression, substance abuse?
SL: It was simply the stress and anxiety of having to be "on." [Remember] this notion of bonding among cops. One element in that bonding process is trust. These guys, these women, just felt they were being dishonest with their partners, especially if they'd been together a long time. They couldn't deal with the fact they were lying to their partner because as partners you talk about everything in the world: every possible personal thing that's come into your life, past or present—and there's one tremendously powerful element that's missing, and that's a person's homosexuality. They say, look, I have to share this with a person and let the chips fall where they may. Almost everybody I spoke to had not anticipated terribly positive reactions... The force was so overwhelming they just had to get it off of their chest... They said, "Look, I'm gonna tell my partner... and if they accept me, that'd be great, and if they reject me, that's too bad but I'll understand."
For the most part their partners were very accepting.
RG: Are you optimistic about the professional future of gay cops over the long term?
SL: Absolutely! Given the right training programs, under the right circumstances.
...I feel very strongly about cops coming out. Of course, I'm not gay, so I'm not going to actually experience this even if I were with the department.
However, I believe it's a very individual decision. Nobody has a right to "out" somebody else or to tell them to come out of the closet and risk all those potential hazards out in the field...
But there's no question there's strength in numbers and the more cops who come out, the more the stereotypes and myths are debunked about gays being neurotic, compulsive, unreliable, untrustworthy, etc. That will all disappear, the more people come out of the closet.