ARTICLES

Rainbow Force

ARE GAY COPS FAIR?

By Allyson Smith

I went into the men's restroom (in Presidio Park), and there were two male couples going at it in the stalls," said Adam Kennedy (not his real name.) "I told them I had a cell phone and was calling the police right now. While I was waiting for the police to show up, the men left the restroom. A few minutes later, a female officer responded to my call. I noticed that she was wearing a rainbow pin on her uniform. I have two questions. First, why are officers allowed to wear rainbow pins on their uniforms, and second, what is a gay-friendly police officer doing handling a complaint about homosexual activity in Presidio Park?"

I called the San Diego Police Department in July to inquire about policy regarding uniform pins. Captain Harold Cox, chairman of the uniform committee, explained that several organizations within the police department have official pins. Some of these organizations, such as the Black Police Officers Association and the Latino Peace Officers' Association, are based on racial or ethnic heritage. Others, such as the Mounted Horse Unit and Evidence Technicians, are based on a specialty within police work. The rainbow pin Kennedy had seen is the emblem of the Golden State Peace Officers Association, a statewide group of homosexual officers. "To wear a pin, you have to be a member of that group," Cox said. "There are about 30 members on the committee, and no officer is allowed to wear a pin that has not been officially approved by the committee." When asked if there are any official Christian police groups, he said there are none. Cox added that before his term as head of the committee, several Vietnam Veteran officers had requested a pin, but their request was denied.

I visited the Golden State Peace Officers' Association website (http://www.gspoa.com). A page within the site announced the group's convention slated for September 14-17, at the Doubletree Hotel in Mission Valley. The website described the hotel accommodations as being "right in the heart of San Diego's Hotel Circle which is literally two minutes from Hillcrest (SD's West Hollywood)." The activities schedule for the conference listed a "Welcome Reception including comments from key politicians and organizers." Seminars offered included "Hate-Crime Investigations and Prosecution," "Violence in the Same-Sex Household," and "Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government: Looking at the Past and Living the Future." During the convention, I walked through the Doubletree Hotel and saw law enforcement recruitment tables from throughout the state of California, including the Santa Rosa Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff, and the San Diego Police Department. In addition, the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays organization also hosted a literature table there.

A few weeks later, I e-mailed A.J. Rotella, president of the gay police group and a police officer with the Los Angeles Community College police department, to ask who the conference keynote speakers were and if transcripts were available. In my message, I identified myself as a reporter with San Diego News Notes but did not tell him that News Notes is a lay Catholic paper. He said that addresses were given by Ms. Kelly Lobel, president of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, San Diego city councilwoman Christine Kehoe, and San Diego police chief David Bejarano. He said he did not have transcripts and suggested I e-mail Sergeant Natalie Stone of the San Diego Police Department.

I called Christine Kehoe's office and asked her assistant, George Biaji, if a transcript of her speech was available. After I identified myself as a News Notes reporter, Biaji asked if my story would be "positive or negative." When I in turn asked Biaji why he would ask such a question, he said that News Notes has run "negative" stories about San Diego's homosexual community. He told me he would ask if a transcript were available and get back to me. Several days later, he still had not returned my call.

I e-mailed Sergeant Stone with the same question and several others. I identified myself as "a reporter for San Diego News Notes currently working on an article about the promotion of gay rights by local government agencies." I asked her the question raised by Adam Kennedy's experience at Presidio Park: How does the San Diego police department ensure that its homosexual officers will fairly handle complaints related to homosexual activities?

Stone forwarded my message to A.J. Rotella of the gay police group, who telephoned me. "You didn't tell me this was a Catholic newspaper," he said. I asked him why that should matter. "I have a friend down (in San Diego), and they said that News Notes ran a gay-bashing story about the Grossmont Union High School District recall." "Did you read that story yourself?" I asked. "No," he replied. I said, "I am the person who wrote that story. Let me send you a copy of that issue, so you can read it and decide for yourself what you think of it." He expressed concern that because the Catholic Church is against homosexuals, they would not receive fair coverage from News Notes. I responded that the Catholic Church is not against homosexuals but is against participation in homosexual activity the same way it is against illicit heterosexual activity. Later in the conversation he admitted he is a fallen-away Catholic.

Rotella said he thought my questions to Stone were "leading," particularly the one about guaranteeing fairness from homosexual officers in handling complaints about homosexual activity. "It half makes me laugh, half makes me cry, that people are so ignorant that they would believe a gay officer would not enforce the law the same way a straight officer would."

Rotella said it is far more common to find heterosexual couples than homosexual ones having sex in public places. "When I find a (heterosexual) couple making out in a car or something like that, I usually just knock on the window and tells them that this is not the time or place and to take it somewhere else. But when it's homosexuals, they are asked for IDs, detained, given citations for lewd conduct."

Rotella disliked my use of the term "homosexual." "That term really bugs me; can you say gay and lesbian instead?" he asked. I explained that I used the term "homosexual" because it refers to both males and females. I asked him why he preferred the terms "gay" and "lesbian" which are reductionist labels that identify people only by the way they choose to have sex, when sex is only one part of their total personhood. He responded, "It's not a matter of how I have sex, it's who I love."

About the gay police conference, he said, "I'm proud of our conference. We had seminars on hate crimes, domestic violence where both straight and gay people were learning together." He concluded, "No matter what the Catholic Church says, no matter what the newspaper (News Notes) says, we (homosexuals) are not going away."

I asked a San Diego police officer, who requested anonymity, for his views on the department's promotion of minorities, including the homosexual agenda. He indicated some bias against Caucasian males within the department. "If anything, white males are being discriminated against. If I'm a Category 1 in line for a promotion, but a black female is a Category 2, she will get the promotion instead. I would like just for us all to be cops."

About the rainbow pins, he said, "(The introduction of that pin) started an uproar, so some of us started wearing a regular straight pin. Others wore blue enamel ribbons to signify solidarity during the Rodney King riots."

He praised other officers he has worked with, including homosexuals. "My department is very professional. Most of the gay cops I've worked with act professionally; I don't have any problems with them as far as their ethics and abilities. One (homosexual officer) said that that type of activity (in Presidio Park) makes them all look bad so they work even harder to be fair."

About the department's promotion of the Gay Pride Parade, he said, "Gay or homosexual is a way that they have sex, and to me it just seems really bizarre that they're going to have a parade because of the way they have sex. This sort of in-your-face thing that they do is more destructive to their cause. It's part of our policies that we're not supposed to let our political views be known, yet uniformed cops are marching in the parade. What it all boils down to is the sex thing; I think it should be kept behind your bedroom door."

I spoke with Sergeant Natalie Stone of the San Diego police department, "special assistant to police chief David Bejarano and liaison to the Gay and Lesbian and Disabled Persons communities." She laughed at my question about guaranteeing fairness, saying it was "loaded." "To that I would answer you with a question," she said. "How do we ensure that heterosexuals will act fairly?... Believe me, complaints about Presidio Park are not taken lightly. There's been more happening to stop that activity than anywhere else in San Diego." Regarding the department's response to Adam Kennedy's call, she said, "It sounds like we did everything that we could. We do conduct periodic undercover operations at Presidio Park."

A July 25, 1999 San Diego Union-Tribune article profiling Stone stated that she "sent invitations to all county law enforcement agencies, asking them to join yesterday's Gay Pride parade." I asked her which agencies she had invited and what kind of response she had gotten. She said she had invited the Carlsbad and La Mesa police departments, the Border Patrol, the District Attorney's office, San Diego County Marshall and Sheriffs offices, the Port District, SDSU and UCSD police departments, and the DEA, amongst others. Actual participants included members of the San Diego Police Department, San Diego Police Historical Association, the District Attorney's office, San Diego County Sheriffs and Marshalls, the Escondido Police Department, the County Probation Department, and San Diego Fire and Life Safety.