Also detective brian downey. Also is lieutenant brett parson, district native. He manages the department lesbian gay transsexual and bisexual department. Thank you all for taking part in this today. I am looking forward to learning a lot and looking back with you through your eyes and perspectives on where we were 50 years ago. It is kind of hard to believe. David, i would like to start with you if we can. What was new york like, what was america like before the stonewall riots . What was it like for the lgbt community. David it is counter intuitive. There is a common tendency in this country to assume that the further we go back in history, the worse things are going to be. Actually, in the history of and the interior d of u. S. In the entirety of u. S. History, the 60s and 50s were the worst time for lgbt people. That is because there had been a period of liberalization in the 1920s. But with the Great Depression coming along, that seemed to begin a clampdown on i will use gay people as an umbrella term. After the war, we entered what would be called the red scare. This was the main reason there was so much more repression after world war ii. In new york city, the height of arrest of gay men occurred in 1966. At that time, you had, on average, 100 homosexual amendment being arrested in new york city every week. The 1960s were a period we think of expanding liberty and openness, but it was rather the opposite for our people. Another thing making that happen was the use of psychiatry. Sigmund freud his view of homosexuality was negative here did was not very negative. He saw the ideal adaptation. He certainly didnt think that it was a severe pathology. America was the first country to embrace freud. When the freudian approach to psychology was embraced by this country, american psychologist, under the influence of the military in world war ii it was the american psychologists who pathologist homosexuality severely. So, there were laws that you could be put in mental institutions that could be imposed upon you and men work castrated, lobotomys, Shock Therapy and other treatments that were meant to change them from being homosexual to heterosexual or just made them asexual. The loss kept on multiplying altogether. From one institution to another. So, our number one historian of homosexuality in america from a legal point of view, the way he characterized it was that by the 1950s and 1960s, it gay people lived in a state of suffocation. It was a terrible time. I want to go back to the day riots. Raids and the you were actually at Stonewall Inn . Take us back to what it was like to be there. Well, it was accidental for me. I had just graduated from west point, believe it or not. I was spending my free leave living in new york and i was walking from the loft i was renting from. Return to the corner off of waverly onto for and there it was, right in front of me. They were busting the stonewall. A couple police cars pulled up on the street. The bust had begun half an hour before. They were starting to bring out people in cuffs. And put them in police cars. A crowd had gathered across the street. They were watching some of the people cross the street had gotten out of the stonewall as the cops came in the word had spread what was going on. Christopher street was the heart and soul of the Gay Community in new york. There were a lot of gay bars and places that gay people had dinner and so forth right nearby. And, what happened was the cops busted gay bars all the time. What typically happened was gay people would come out of the bars was caps on and cover their faces and go into the paddy wagon and they didnt want to be recognized. They worked for banks or advertising firms and they thought they would lose their jobs or the exposed to their wives if they were married or whatever. That is what the police were used to. They busted the Stonewall Inn and it was known for serving underage people. It had a sound system in the back room and there was dancing. It was a wild place. The people that they busted in the stonewall werent like that. They didnt have jobs. They didnt have anything to lose. A lot of them were 17 and 18 years old. When they came out of the bar, they were posing and waving to their friends and saying, can you get my bail . Acting like there was nothing to it. They had been busted before and it didnt bother them. The cops didnt like it. They didnt have the fear that so many had before . They didnt behave like frightened gay people. The cops didnt like it. They didnt like them standing and posing and waving. The cops started pushing them with their nightsticks and shoving them roughly into cars and the crowds started reacting to it, yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at first, calling them pigs. It went south from there. Right after i got there was when the throwing and so forth went. This went on through the night was at the next night where hundreds and thousands came back . Yes. The next night was the night the Tactical Patrol force came in. It went on on friday night it didnt go on for billy long. The bust took place, they try to get them in the cars and when the gay people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops, they reprieved and went inside the stonewall. That was when they broke the front window, through things through the window and started a fire. They took a parking meter . Yes they took the parking meter and threw it through the door. Within a couple of hours, it was over. But it went on for hours. Last week, your commissioner issued an apology on behalf of the end nypd for the raids. What was the response . How do you view the apology . I take the apology kind of for what it is. I dont read much behind it for a number of different reasons. It was a moment that no one thought would ever happen. I think, if you know anything about commissioner oneill, who i know quite well, he is probably the first humanitarian Police Commissioner we have had in new york city. He is not a mold of a rockstar Police Commissioner. We had Raymond Kelly as a vice for a couple years and then he was there for 12 years. That is an eternity for a new york city Police Commissioner. We had brought in twice. These are big, giant, media personalities. Commissioner oneill just calls it as he sees it. He was a cop his whole career. I think he is the only Police Commissioner in the last 50 years that was capable of bringing himself to apologize or acknowledge our world our role in the transgressions or mess ups. He also issued a apology to the Prospect Park rape victim a few months ago. Im not here tonight as his ambassador, but what i will say is that he does lean on my organization heavily for advice. He keeps me on his staff and my role and the Police Department, he also has the former president of the organization as the lgbt liaison. He is engaging and interested in he wants to know the way forward he wants to know how the. And he wants to know the way forward. He wants to know how the Community Feels. I wish sometimes that our community would be a little more engaging. I wont get into the specifics of the meetings where i am there as staff and not as the president , but i think sometimes other communities it seems our more willing to go in and speak clearly. They are a little more organized. It just seems we can never come to an agreement on everything. That is troubling sometimes. Lets talk but our community, greater washington. Brad, i want to ask you, we just came off of a festival where hundreds of thousands of people turned out. You are a native washingtonian. Use in the demographic change here. You have seen acceptance change come us urgently over the decades. Talk a little bit about your role and what you do. Brad the first thing Everybody Knows is washington, d. C. Is not any different than new york city other than it is massive and has more people. New york city in june 1969 was the same as washington, d. C. As far as values, common practices and walk common practices in Law Enforcement. We were cracking down on gay bars and gave people and arresting people for the same types of offenses that you talked about. Hundreds of men arrested every day back then. Our hands are not clean here in washington, d. C. While it was james oneill in new york city that may have apologized on behalf of nypd, when he did that, he was also apologizing as a leader in Law Enforcement. Nypd is eight leader around the world. To say on behalf of all Law Enforcement, that is not the way it should have been handled or it should have been treated ever. We have come a long way. Here it washington, d. C. , despite whatever the National Politics are, it doesnt matter who is in office. We have been a very liberal and open, welcoming city for people to live and work in. We have had human rights act since 1977 that has included Sexual Orientation and gender expression. We have had openly lgbt members of our city council and our ancs. Going back as far as the 1970s, those groups after stonewall started to work not just here in washington, d. C. But nationally to change things. Washington, d. C. Became a bit of a laboratory for many of the things that have spread throughout the United States and the world. One that we are proud of is the emergence of our gay and lesbian liaison unit which we probably renamed the lgbt unit to be more inclusive. In just 1998 and 1999 was recognized that wealth geographic policing and Community Policing works all over the world, the idea of placing Police Officers in geographic areas was a good idea for management and accountability, sometimes you need to police differently and manage differently. We look at communities demographically. We have the lgbt liaison unit. One of our officers is working in the Jewish Community. We are in the asian community. It is not that we arent doing the same work as other Police Officers, but we are focusing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern and shared traits. We are trying to work to build relationships. Not if a crisis occurs but when it occurs like happened on saturday at the pride parade. We have relationships and people know they can count upon us and they recognize us and hopefully we are able to gain that reputation. We talk about acceptance of residence, but what about people on the force who are openly gay now and couldnt be years ago. How important is that . How are they when did it start that they were welcomed and embraced . How long ago has that been . I dont know. Im waiting for it. You made a face. I dont play the pokerfaced , you know where i stand. The objectivity is kind of the same. I dont think i dont think at all under any circumstance i would ever say that lgbtq people are at home yet in this nation. Because we have shows on tv with gay characters and things like that, that is not the measure of athome for me. I say that, first of all lets look at goals. The organization stems from Charlie Cochran outing himself in november 1981. You headache a wrightsville that was before the city council. Your ordnance or your law here in 1977 included gate people and gender identity and gender expression or was it amended later . It was added later. Sexual orientation initially. So, you were ahead of us. In 81, there is this contentious hearing in the city Council Chamber. I think it was the Vice President or the president of the tva that issued this strong worded editorial that this law could never pass. We would need to carve out like they have had in other institutions. There are no such thing as a gay cops. Now you have a viral testimony and now, who will testify it next but a new York City Police sergeant. The activists are irate now. They are booing when he is introduced. He steps in front of the microphone and says not only am i proud to be a new York City Police officer, but i am proud to be a gay man. For people that i know that were in the Council Chamber that they, it has never been louder than it was at that moment. So we fastforward a few months and the organization was founded. The first meeting took place in the basement, a Catholic Church that was very friendly. They met under protection of other cops because nobody wanted this meeting to happen. There were bomb threats called into turley home. His answering machine. Going a further than that first meeting, there was always a threat to the meetings of goal. They met in secrecy very often. So, we go now for almost 15 years, the lawsuit was filed by tommy jeans, edgar rodriguez, and they were the plaintiffs represented by two attorneys. This was 1996 and it was settled in 1997. For 15 years, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. Since then, every Single Initiative a new York City Police has had four lgbtq people was tiered by goal individually or geared by goal as members of the Police Department jointly. So, we march for the first time in uniform in 1997. It took until 2002 for the Gay Officers Action League to be fully accepted to at least what they were referred to in the nypd. We are talking about state police agencies, federal, local. It took the nypds committee until 2002 before the president of goal was able to sit in on meetings with other president s recognized. So, we are not talking about ancient history here. The discrimination that used to see and we used to get reported to goal would be things like your locker would be turned upside down, personal property destroyed. Hate speech was used. Now, i see a little bit different discrimination incidents or what gets reported to me. I find that often times, our members have less desirable assignments inside of command, whether at the precinct level, transit level. If you work a steady sector, you have a partner. Lets say brett was my partner and i work with brett every day. I find that a lot of times, our people, especially male officers, and we could have a conversation about the difference between being a Lesbian Police and being a gay Police Officer. We see that these guys dont have steady partners. They are in response autos or they are assigned to sit on prisoners were go to the hospital and sit on a prisoner in the hospital as opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. When there is a detail opened up in the precinct, say you are a good cop, a hard worker and you come in and do your job and have good evaluations. If there is a temporary opening because somebody is out longterm sick or somebody cant come to work because they are on some other kind of leave for vacation and there is something going on, they will pull the good queer cop. He is good enough then, but when the position is open in that detail fulltime, is that the guy that gets the spot . No. So, that is the discrimination that we see today. Mind you, the relationship with the executive staff, executives have never better. I cant ask for a better Law Enforcement executive to work for. The chief of department, chief of patrol all on board. It is the systems and structures and human barriers below. I dont think we are 100 at home on the force. I dont think we are 100 at home in this country. I think we have a lot of work to do in both places. Jim im curious roughly, and i will ask for metropolitan police. Numbers wise, how many openly gay officers are on your force and your department . You just opened a can of worms. Internalized homophobia is still a very real thing for cops. I think that everybody wants to be part of a team. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team. At what expense do you become part of that team . The nypd does not even track Sexual Orientation or anything like that. For the First Time Ever and at my urgent, they are trying to do focus groups and things like that to gauge the weight queer people feel inside of the department. I would go to meetings all the time you would get this data and we find a large number of africanamerican cops leave at 20 years. And we start analyzing data and we say why is that . Maybe they feel this is not a home for them. We dont even know. Our membership varies as rs from the nypd. We get a couple or a hundred fulltime, nonretired active members per year. That is an incredibly low number four a 54,000 person agency. So, we think that it is because people dont want to make other people uncomfortable. Give me five minutes with any cop and i can pull it out of them. Its because they think they are doing something good for whatever. The conversations, you have a conversation in the locker room or the break room whatever the case may be and the experiences are kind of like this. We are constantly disclosing our Sexual Orientation everywhere we go. Whether you realize it or not, you are. If i were to say that i was going to go to the movies this weekend with my boyfriend, lets just say to her title have a boyfriend but, whatever the case may be. And there, its like the air gets sucked out of the room. Its like ok, we get it, its gay. If you make another reference, why is he talking about it. Youre just not used to hearing it, so im at there are a lot of floated issues with that. So we have no idea, to be honest. Jim so that is still taking place . Everybody wants to be part of the big blue family. Jim when you look at Corporate America versus Police Culture it is very different. Were talking about new york city. Law enforcement is a conservative recession. It is still uber masculine in nature. And it is slow to change. So, it is very different from Corporate America in many ways. In washington, d. C. , maybe 50 people that i could say are openly gay and that is in a rolodex way back here that would never be written down or disclosed because, as brian said, here i am front page of Washington Post as out as they come. There are still situations in the job i am in where people dont know that i am gay, they dont ask and when it comes up as a matter of conversation that i have a life partner or something that discloses might Sexual Orientation, there is a look of shock. And, straight people dont have to deal with that. There is another reason though ryan didnt touch upon in washington, d. C. Here, we have a phenomenon for the most part of a gay cops dont feel the need to go to goal or a liaison unit for support because it is it really comfortable place to work and live and to be gay. For many of them, while they are not out, they are comfortable in who they are and they consider themselves out. The definition of who and what is out so they feel protected. Theres a balance going on. The thing that most concerns me that i have been dealing with, i was elected president , started january 2016 and what i find now, what concerns me the most is everybody here knows that new york is known for affordable real estate, right . [laughter] were big on that. A lot of affordable housing. We see a trajectory of People Living at home longer than they have. I could be wrong about this. At any point in history in the city. People are at home until they are 85 or 36 years old. What i have a lot of now is a lot of, especially male cops that are being terrorized by their families, by their parents and we have these counseling sessions in my apartment. I know when the phone rings and it is a certain person on a holiday, they want to note when i will be back from my sisters or if im visiting with my brother, are you going to be around . Im going to stop by. They just have to get out of the toxicity. This is a job with a lot of responsibility, a lot of power and a lot of stress. I really worry about some of these guys and i had a really bad scare less summer where somebody posted something on facebook and it was off to the races. Mobilization, we had cops at the parent house, cops here looking for this cop and luckily we were able to find him and get to him and get him to help that he needed. With stonewall and 50 years ago, david, you interviewed a deputy. Talk about his perspective when you talked to him about the raids and the riots. David well, thats a big subject. Although i covered it in my book, this aspect has not gotten out and to the common history. So, seymour pine was a Police Officer who had a strong reputation for being honest. I think what was happening was that because of the nap commission, the Police Department was under a great deal of scrutiny at that time for corruption and other problems. I think that is probably why he was moved, against his wishes from oakland to manhattan and in charge of the morals police. I think he probably he is not sure when the transfer took place. The spring of that year. Very soon after that, he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. I will go into the detail here the bombsnvestigated were not counterfeit but they were stolen. They had been stolen from wall street by a gay man who was under pressure of blackmail. One of the main figures was a career criminal by the name of ed murphy. He was gay and had ran a national blackmail ring. He was busted in the mid60s. Including prominent people like the head of the ama, and admiral in the navy caught up in this committed suicide. He had blackmailed to the tune of 2 million. He had the goods on hoover. Seriously. J edgar hoover was blackmailed by ed murphy. Ed murphy did use the stonewall. The mafia honors had an apartment on the second floor. They use the waiters who were mostly straight. So, when the police investigated, it centered around the stonewall. What happened is only pine and his copartner, this was supposed to be a secret. Only they knew about that part of the raid. Even their men didnt know they were rating to bust a blackmail ring. So, that was the reason for the raid. That is fascinating. The different layers behind it. But they did the same thing that they always did. They arrested the kids were in there and they were busting a blackmail ring. They were blackmailing wall street guys. Taking their pictures and threatening them saying that we are going to show to to your wife or your boss. In there with a good motive. It may have been the only gay with a goodhistory motive. All the rest of them were just because it was gay people in the bar or because the mob wasnt paying off. One of the things we are not discussing here, all the problems you got in the Police Department with attitudes about gay people, all the problems in new york city or washington, d. C. Come out of long ingrained tendencies of families and so forth to look down on gay people and think that they are the other. And then to pass laws about it. With respect to gay bars, the laws they passed were that gay people couldnt known agar a bar because there was a moral clause in new york city and probably washington, d. C. So, the mob took it over. The mob opened these places without Liquor Licenses, and paid off the cops. So, you have an underground economy of bars serving gay people. They are overcharging them, gouging them. Then you have the cops coming in and busting it because the mob is not paying off on time or right or lets just shake up some gay people. All of that comes out of the laws that were passed by the public. By the voters that voted in the politicians that passed the laws. Then, you have the police force that treats groups differently than white generally cops as the other. If you are black, brown, or especially if you are gay. So, by the time you get that and mix it all together, then you get what has become known as the stonewall riots. The rights mostly that they are talking about is saturday night with tps coming in with face shields and all that stuff. That was typically, just like in 1968 in the Democratic National convention, it was a police riot. Gay people were on the street. They might have been blocking the street but you can move people along on the street. But you dont move people along on the street and expect them to cooperate when you put your facial down and go after them with a nightstick and start prodding them. Jim how long did it take time curious until the approach by police toward gay bars changed . Did it take a matter of a few years . Lucian there are a couple things going on there. The change and the new york city laws, but also a change in the new york cities states in the way they regulated ours through Liquor License. They finally gave a Liquor License to the first gay bar that was owned by gay people in about 1973. As it happens, i stumbled into the stonewall riot on june 27, 1969 and i was working at the Village Voice. They said i want to do the story on the mob and having these restaurants in the south village. Also, this guy came to her and said, we want to open up the ballroom, a gay cabaret but we cant get a Liquor License. So, she called and introduced me to this guy and said, what can we do. Do a story about it. I said i will do a story but it will nothing will happen. I said we can do a story about how the cops never bust where they are Holding Meetings with mobsters on a friday night. So i went and wrote out license plates numbers. I lived down there. I knew where the mob meetings were taking place. I wrote down license numbers of these double and triple parked limousines outside. Mary got a cop she knew and ran the place and we found out who was meeting and all these restaurants so i sat down and wrote a story. The new york city wont issue a Liquor License to these eight or 10 upstanding a citizens but they are issuing licenses to these gangsters. Mary took the story and went up to the liquor commissioner. I named the commissioner of abc and said this is the guy that is doing it. She went and put it on his desk on a monday and said, this runs on wednesday unless you give them a Liquor License. If you give them a Liquor License, we wont run it. So my story did not run and the ballroom got a Liquor License. That was it . That broke the logjam. Next thing you know, i didnt pay for drinks for quite a while. At no point were you afraid when you were taking down these license plates and doing this . Lucian they didnt see me taking down license plates. [laughter] lucian but what i am saying is, once gay people started owning gay bars, then the mop wasnt involved and they werent paying off the cops and they didnt have a reason to go bust them because they werent getting a pass. Though a snowballing effect took place and gay bars started getting Liquor Licenses and getting legitimized and it happened over time. At the same time, things were happening like people were working toward getting a people right to serve in the military. And that started changing things. Then, gay people were working toward the right to marry. And that started changing things. All of this happened over the last 50 years. It is really pretty extraordinary when you think about it. It is extraordinary to me because i was there the night that was the rosa parks moment for the gay movement. That was the night that gay people, instead of saying i will move to the back of the bus, they said youre not going to bust our bars anymore. I had no idea at the time what i was looking at. I thought i was looking at a gate riot. If that guy, he is in a dress. The amazing thing about it was the cops were so incompetent that they hit would line up and jcs day people down christopher street they would come up behind the cops and form it kick line and start going we are at the stonewall girls. The cops turn around and see that and they start chasing them that way. I ended up teaching a class on how not to do it right control in the army based on this riot. They gave me a theater at fort carson and i taught battalions. I drew a map of Sheridan Square on it. I drew arrows of where the cops are. Where the gay people are and all that stuff. And taught how not to control a right to a whole division of soldiers. Which was an experience all to itself. That was one of the problems of Law Enforcement and if you treat people as in other, they will behave like an other. Jim i want to talk more about the other later. But i want ask about your liaison unit. The competent cops of today and what you do in terms of outreach with the Gay Community and straight for the community. We are certainly not doing kick lines. I did not that is not one of my gay trade spirit i am not able to do that. Youve got to go to his course. So, what has changed now is that we have an understanding first of all that this community exists. That was step one and this still exists in some parts of the country. If i go to a Law Enforcement executive and i say who are your lgbt to Lgbtq Community leaders peered if youre of a community where you dont think you have lgbt people do you think they are being treated with professionalism . Step one was to have our leaders, not just Community Leaders but Law Enforcement acknowledge this community exists, they have rights, and they have the right to speak up when they are not treated properly. That was step one. Except to was changing culture within the Police Department. Ryan has spoken about how slow that is. We still have homophobes in Law Enforcement or we still have racist in Law Enforcement peered at him of the we will ever get rid of that as long as human beings are Police Officers, but what were doing more and more of is exposing Police Officers to any one of a number of cultures, the lgbtq plus committee is one of many, but who are they . How do they engage in our lives . What is a respectful way to address someone . What are the laws with regard to the activity they engage in . What are their rights . Making sure Police Officers understand that no different than any other Community Come if you dont do what we trade you to do, we are not going to protect you. Theres not a thin blue line when it comes to the that type of misconduct and miss respect. Lastly, were pretty proud that we go above and beyond here in washington, d. C. We using Police Officers who are members of the community and allies to engage where the Community Feels safe. That is a little bit different than basic Community Policing. Basic Community Policing you drop a tent, go to a parade. We are going into tough places where the community is safe, they know this is their space and we are saying we are here with you, we are here to listen to you and eventually it becomes instead of the cops are here, what is wrong, oh, the cops are here. That is brett, that is nicole, thats jim. When you change the dynamic and people will commute as Police Officers into their community or acknowledge that you are members of the community, you can do a better job because it is all about preparing for the crisis and trauma in the community so that you gain cooperation and things go more smoothly when the crisis occurs. Jim brian, do you see that to . How long does it take . It takes a long time. Everything he just said is true. I dont want to repeat any of that, but there is some kind of thing where people are afraid to engage in when i say our community, i say i am ultimately a queer man and when you say our community, i am not talking about the police. I just want everyone to be clear. With our community, they just never knew. My first real all shocks moment in the Police Department occurred on the morning of the polls the pulse nightclub shooting. I had just come from the Detective Bureau and this is when commissioner oneill was eight chief of the department and i was maybe a month into his office. He had pulled me out of the Detective Bureau to work for him. A lot of things went through my mind when the calls started coming very early and people telling me to turn on the tv. The first thing that came through my mind is a my god, we are going to respond to this. I didnt mean to orlando, florida. The type of city that new york city is, we respond to every incident locally. It doesnt matter if it happened somewhere else in the country, or it happened somewhere else in the world. Lets use the Jewish Community for a good example of this. If we have a mass casualty incident or terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in pittsburgh, a couple days before or after halloween. The Jewish Community knows that we are coming. They note there is going to be a marked police car outside of the synagogue. They can expect to see high visibility patrols, what we call a hercules team. A squad of Emergency Services officers with heavy weaponry and a k9 officer and intel and we can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day. The Jewish Community knows and they appreciated and i was having a heart attack because i was like a my god, we are coming and this community has never seen this. So, i called might lieutenant in the same morning we had the puerto rican day parade which is a Massive Police detail in new york city and i was going to assist with that. I called the lieutenant and said just go do whatever you need to do. Sign in, get the car, and get out there. My first stop was at the lgbtq Committee Center on 13th street in manhattan. I walked up to the desk dressed like this and i have a tie on at work. I went a little casual today for you all. But, i walked in and i said i am a detective with the Police Department. We need to speak to whoever is in charge. I know it is a sunday morning come up at can you get someone on the phone for me. Five minutes later and a back room we were on a Conference Call with the chief operating officer. I had never met him before it i never did any kind of outreach before, i was just running goal, which is an independent organization. We are our own 501 c 3 . Now i had to do work for the chief and do work for the department. I told this guy, i said first of all, let me ask you if you want to security. If you tell me know, the other part of that is a him a going to come anyway. Ive always been a bit of an outside of the box thinker. I said why dont you put an e mail out to everybody on your subscriber list saying the Police Department is going to be outside for a few weeks until we know what is going on. Then, the rest of the day, going to brunch spots. We like brunch. I dont know if you got that memo, but it is a big thing with us. But going in and meeting with nightlife people. Over the next few days, i was getting calls on myself am come up my personal phone. It was like i was peddling some contraband. People like are you the detective that can get us some security . I got your number from someone and they said that you helped them because people wanted the protection. They felt that are, and it was even at the discomfort of some of their clients and these service providers. That is where a Real Partnership has to exist. There has to be trust mike bradd said. You cant just show up and give out key rings at a pride march and expect everyone will love the police. We are nobodys friends. I am a realist. Nobody calls the police because they have extra tickets to the ballgame. Nobody calls the police because there are a couple beers left in the cooler after the barbecue or there is food left over. What do we get calls for . Horrible, terrible things where people are not at their best. Maybe to a large extent, our history has not been the best at responding to some of these incidents and situations and i think to an extent, that still goes on. I do think in the last five years, i finally see Law Enforcement, at least the executives i work with want to get out ahead of things. They want the input. We are the police and we know what were doing. If that is your mindset, good luck. You will not have a long tenure as a Law Enforcement executive these days. We have to think about what we are not thinking about and really engage. We started a neighborhood coronation officer program where every sector or precinct is broken down into a sector and there are two cups that work there that do four hours as noncommitted radio time where they are out there going to businesses in their sector and theyre supposed to meet with Community Leaders. They have a mill addresses, cell phones and people of they can call them. It is really changing the conversation out there. We want to pause and take some questions from you folks. Anyone have any questions for any of our panelists . Lets hear from you. I was wondering, you referenced there were different experiences being a gay officer versus being a female officer. We still live in a society ifre we sexualize women and you are going to be paired off ,ith a Lesbian Police officer guys minds go wild. Im so good, maybe i can get her. Mindset where we still , aseive gay men as weak effeminate, as not being able to those. There are people that will test carl, he was a the policen impersonation investigation unit. The cases are automatically felonies when you impersonate a police you commit a crime. The first question was . Asked thosek we questions of our lesbian officers. I think as a society we still sexualize women. I think the misogyny exists in lawenforcement still. Openly lesbian women are more valued than openly gay men still generally in this profession. Do you think its because its 100 stereotypes. We have our lipstick lesbians and our butch lesbians and you cant touch there ability to police based on how they look. Teaching people how to break through the stereotypes is the hard part. You spoke about your story, presenting your story about these persuasions as a way of persuading gay people to allow to own clubs. How do you feel the publics desire for these stories has desiresor the medias for presenting these has changed over the years . The story about stonewall is in the Village Voice. The Village Voice covered stonewall. Now theres a story this big about the Police Commissioner. Apologizing about stonewall. And there are 15 stories about the stonewall anniversary 50th anniversary that is coming up. Then there have been millions of stories about being in the and gays being allowed to be married. Gay people to a large extent our way in the mainstream compared to where they were in 1969. Somebody was asking me recently what is the big difference between them and now . Stonewall rence stonewall made his everybody who ,s in the riot at stonewall they were on the street, they looked gay, they were in a gay riot, so they were out. More and morel, people started coming out. Realized mye people cousin is gay, or they have a couple who lives next door that actually lived together. They loved each other. When gay people coming out affected families it affected communities, it affected relationships at work, it made everything better. Made coverage in the media better. Its made what you see on tv better. During the 60s when there was a lot of heavy policing, i read the police had a lot of andledge of the culture obviously under the radar. A lot of Institutional Knowledge about the Gay Community. Do you think because the , that thefforts Institutional Knowledge and culture declined as a result of that . That . Re a way to preserve there was a lot more culture about communities and place department. So howdy dies down, if preserve that . Im not sure i agree with that. Theres a lot of policing of the Gay Community back in the 60s. They didnt know about the Gay Community. Perhaps what youre talking about is knowing how to entrap gay men. They have an idea of how gay men dressed when they were out to socialize to meet sexual partners. Take their best looking Police Officers, dress and dressght pants them like gay men dressed in the area. Thats really not a knowledge of gay culture or even a gay mentality. My impression is, and i havent been involved in Law Enforcement is that probably Law Enforcement and other institutions has also been learning, whether it is military, business, church, schools, that is my impression. Also, there is this wonderful thing out there called the internet. Perhaps you have heard of it. They know how to use it. What i mean by that, sometimes in spite of a lack of training, they have personal interests. They are exploring things everyone else in society is exploring. We are doing a better job of educating officers about the communities we serve. That has gotten better. Events like stonewall wake people. They cause people to move in a better direction. Progress to be made. I dont know i train cops about lgbtq issues. I am always surprised there is somebody that does not know the difference between bisexuality and a transgender individual. They dont even know what the term intersexuality is. Some of you are going, i dont know either. We are trying to train more cops. We are talking to someone representing new york city. I am curious how communities are treated by police. Are they even on the radar . You talk about years ago, entrapment. Does that kind of thing still happen . Not allowed to happen in new york or d. C. It must have been about 14 years ago. My pager went off. It was an area code from north carolina. I swear to god, his name was bubba something. A deputy sheriff. He was investigating one of those he she murders in a large metropolitan area in north carolina. He had learned about my work from the newspapers and one of his lieutenants said you have to call this guy. The first thing i did was, are you talking about a transgender individual . He didnt know what that meant. He was talking about a transgender female. I said, tell me something. Where did this occur . Is that anywhere near your transgender stroll . He paused and said, what is that . Where does transgender prostitution happen . He said, we do not have that. I went on the line. I googled that area. Looking for transgender prostitutes, it did not take me but a few moments. How about telegraph road, do you know where that is . He said, sir, that is where the Police Station is. I said, good, you dont have far to go. What i want you to do on the day of the week the murder happened, go out that night about the same time. All those people wandering around, Start Talking to them about this murder. Three days later, he called me and he said he closed the case. Just because he became aware a community existed in the best way to engage them. That is where we are. In some parts of the country, they dont even acknowledge that gay people exist. They could not tell you they have in lgbtq mission center. Training is farreaching. One of the things i have been reading over, this is the settlement from when the Gay Officers League sued the new York City Police department. One of the things that came out of this settlement, they were given the opportunity to train officers in lgbtq awareness. That has looked like Different Things over the years. Carl is a gift to my agency. Before he became a cop at 30 something years old, he was the director of client services. He worked at the david geffen aids program. He was with act up on the brooklyn bridge. He brings all this will will world activist education to the pd. When he got involved, he redid the curriculum. We dont go into do training with cops. We dont spend a lot of time in definitions. In the history. We do two things. We want people to take away from it. One is we give them a little bit of our personal coming out stories. We are cops training cops. They can see all these issues have affected the people 3have affected the people standing in front of them. We have someone who was thrown out of her house in high school for being a lesbian. Who put herself through high school. 3whose mother would not give her Financial Aid paperwork for college. She put herself through college. She is now new York City Police sergeant. You give a cop a story about you. I went through all this. We have cops involved, that came up through house that is amazing in and of itself. We really were doing implicit bias training before that was a thing. We won the crew recruits especially to understand where your ideas come from. You have been bombarded with messages since you were a child. Fair and impartial policing, when we talk about implicit bias. We put the recruits in scenarios. We say, everybody in here is going to police fairly and impartially, right . All the hands go up. We are going to be fair and impartial. We graduate them. We take an officer and tell him, tonight, you have this post. Your sergeant told you there was a high propensity of robberies in this area. We want to keep people moving. We dont want cars to stopping. No reason for a car to be stopping. We tell the cop in the alleyway, there is a vehicle parked. It does not have its lights on but it is running. The cop goes up to the vehicle. He finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. When he asks him, what do you got . You have a chuckle, the cops engage a little bit. What do you actually have, it is a penal law misdemeanor. You kind of ask them, what are they really going to do . Some of them say, i am going to issue a summons. Im going to lock them up. I am going to let them go. We play with this a little bit. Some of them are honest. I know what you are going to do, you are going to text a cop and say, you are never going to believe what is going on. That is what you are going to do, right . Everybody is having a good time. And then we graduate them again. I say same scenario and say, now you come across that same car and the alleyway. It is a man getting oral sex from a man. What have you got . The air gets sucked out of the room. They dont know what they have. Everybody just said they are going to be fair and impartial. Every face was grinning. I say, listen. If a guy is getting lucky in one scenario, the guys getting lucky in the other scenario. Being a fair and impartial Police Officer is taking the same action no matter what the Sexual Orientation is, no matter what the race, color is. No matter what the religion. We want them to understand where their ideas come from. What i also want you to understand is, when you wear that uniform, you are representing me. A couple million other honest people. Who have a tremendous amount of integrity. In the name of other people. Whatever conversations you may have at your dinner table, or whatever joke you may tell after church with your friends at the bar or wherever you go, when you put in that uniform and you put that shield in your chest, you better treat everybody the same. You have to be the police for everybody, not just the people that look like you. Not just the people that come from your ethnic or religious background or whatever the case may be. You have to do it fairly and impartially. That is what the gay Action League officers stands for. Thank you for your powerful perspective. We cannot thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we have made. It is fascinating to hear your stories. Anybody else have a question before we wrap up . Could you tell us about the how it got started . How other cities followed the lead . Have they done the same kind of institutionalization we have done . Here in d. C. , we didnt have the same struggle new york had. It did not take lawsuits. Forcefully pushing our way into this. Our community worked with our Police Department to support the idea the Lgbtq Community. Deserved to have officers that were familiar enough with the community and able to engage members in a safe space. The chief of police back then, charles ramsey, said yes. It started in one of our police district. He realized it could not be confined to one police district. What we believe is one of the only fulltime police units. Not just a liaison offer. Working fulltime in the community. Three parts to the mission, outreach. Going to events, pride festivals. Singing kumbaya. Training and education. Not just training officers, because that is important. Another part of our training is going the opposite direction. Training u. S. Community members about what you should expect from us. What our jobs are. What the laws are. We have continued to see bias crimes increase. One of the reasons why we celebrate the fact our numbers go up is we believe we are educating our citizens better and better every year building stronger relationships. Highest crimes committed in the past are being reported to us. The third part of the mission, the part i am biased about that i think is important, unlike most Community Policing, we are doing police work. The officers i work with are not only going to be at those events, when that pride parade was interrupted by what appeared to be an active shooter, it was these bas in officers running toward it. What Community Members saw was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniforms engaging in real police work and public safety. We are hoping other Police Departments around the world. Probably not a week goes by we do not hear from other agencies about how they tailor this type of work. Designating an officer parttime. Even creating a fulltime unit. One of the benefits we have is in 2007, we won the innovations in American Government award. We won a grant. We are proud to do that whenever we can. Help Police Officers do the type of work we are doing. All the communities we are working in. I think we are about out of time. Thank you for coming. We cannot thank you enough. [applause] American History tv is on cspan3 every weekend and all of our programs are archived on our website at cspan. Org history. You can watch lectures in college classrooms, tours of historic sites, archival films and see our schedule of upcoming programs. Shooting on cspan. Rubber bands about to snap back. Put that about to just wrap. If we about to get it on. Inetspans citys