Transcripts For CSPAN3 Stonewall Riots 50th Anniversary 20240714

This event was hosted by the National Law Enforcement museum in washington dc. It is my pleasure and honor to be back with you. As we stream, we are looking back on 50 years, where we were 50 years ago at the stonewall riots and how far we have come, the changes have been made and the changes still to come. Before we get started, i would like to introduce our guest, starting with david carter, the film stonewall uprising which won a peabody award. Also with us is brian downey, the president of the officers actually goal of new york which addresses the need and issues and concerns of the Lgbtq Community. Also, lieutenant brett parson, a district native per coming years on the force . Almost 26. 26 years. He manages the departments lesbian, bisexual liaison unit. And then mr. Lewis prescott. He is a novelist and a writer and a common list. Im 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 hard to believe, i would like to start with you david if we can. What was new york like . What was america like for , lesbian, transgendered citizens before the stonewall rights . What was it like for the Lgbtq Community well, it is, or intuitive because there is a common tendency to assume that the further we go back in history, the worst things will be. But, actually the whole history of, three entirety of u. S. History, the 60s and 50s were probably the very worst time for lgbt people. That is because there have been a period of liberalization in the 1920s. We know the 1920s was a liberal period. But with the Great Depression coming along, that seemed to begin a clampdown on, i will use the term people , and after the war we entered the what could be called the red scare. And, this i think was the main reason there is so much more depression after world war ii. So, for example, and in new york city, the height of the rest of men occurred in 1966. On average, you had 100 homosexual men being arrested in new york city every week. So, in the 1960s, they were a period of we think of a time expanding liberties and openness. It was very opposite for our people. And, another force i was making that happen was the use of psychiatry. Sigmund freud, his view homosexuality was negative but not very negative. He saw the idea of adaptation for any doping heterosexual but he certainly didnt think that it was a severe pathology. And, america was the first country to embrace freud and when the freudian approach to psychology was embraced by this country, american psychologists were under the influence of the military in world war ii. The american psychiatrist who tended to pathology eyes homosexuality severely. And so, you could be put in a mental institution, i mean, youd be imposed upon you, men were castrated and lobotomies were performed with shock therapy. And also other kinds of treatments that were meant to change them from being homosexual to heterosexual and make us asexual. This kept on multiplying altogether. This went from one state to another. The way, our number one historian of homosexuality in america from a legal point of view, bill eskridge, by the 1950s and 60s, people really lived in a state of suffocation. It was a terrible time. I want to go back to that. The day of the raids in the riots, you are actually at Stonewall Inn. Is that right . What was it like to be there . Well, it was accidental for me. I just graduated from west point. And, i was staying, i was at leave and eyes walking from aloft on the street. I turned the corner onto christopher street and there was right in front of me. They were busing the police in with a couple of police cars. About an hour before, there were starting to bring out people in cuffs. Theyre putting them in the police cars. And then, the crowd had gathered across the street. And, they were watching. Some of the people across the street had gotten out of the stonewall but the cops came in through the back door, somehow. And then the word spread what was going on and the street was the heart and soul of the community in new york. There are a lot of bars and places that people have dinner and so forth nearby. They started , people started walking over to see what was going on. And, what happened was, the cops just like, the cops busted bars all the time. But, what typically happened was people would come out of the bars, they would have cuffs on and they would cover their faces and going to the paddy wagon or cars. They do want to be recognized, they had jobs, they work for banks for advertising firms or whatever and they thought they would lose their jobs or be exposed to their wives if they were married or whatever. And, that is what the police were used to. While they busted the stonewall, the stonewall was known for serving underaged people. It had a sound system in the back room and there was dancing and it was a wild place. The people they busted in the stonewall were not like that. They didnt have jobs or anything, a lot of them were 17 or 18 years old. And when they came out of the bar, they were posing and waving to their friends and calling out and saying come down and, can you get my bill . And acting like it was you know, there is nothing to it. Theyve been busted before and it didnt bother them. The cops do not like it. They didnt have that fear that so many had before. They didnt behave like cows, like frightened people. The cops didnt like it. The cops didnt like them standing and posing and waving. The crowds started, the cops started pushing them with nightsticks and shipping them roughly and the crowd started reacting to it, they were yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at first and calling them pics. He went south from there. After i got there, that is when the throwing started. This went on through the night and was it the next night we had hundreds if not thousands come back . Mimic yes, the next night was the night the Tactical Patrol was sent in, there were hundreds across the street if not a couple of thousand. Then, and it went on for, on friday night, it didnt go on for a long because the bust took place. They tried to get on the cars and when the people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops, the cops went inside the stonewall. I was outside. That is when they broke the window and threw things through the window and started a fire because it took a parking meter and they used it to ram the door. And the cops, the report came and scattered the crowd and the cops came back out. Within a couple of hours, it was over. But saturday night, it went on for a while. Reporter it has been in the news last week, your commissioner issued an apology on behalf of nypd for the rates. Give us a little insight into that apology. How do you view that apology . I take the apology kind of for what it is, an apology. I dont read much behind it for a number of different reasons. But mainly because it was a moment that nobody thought whatever happened. And, i think if you know anything about commissioner oneal, i know him quite well. He is probably the first humanitarian Police Commissioner we have had in new york city. Hes not this mold of this rockstar kind of Police Commissioner. We had kelly twice and we have them there for 12 years. I think that is an attorney for a new york city Police Commissioner. We had bratton twice. So these are big, giant media personalities, media darlings and commissioner oneal calls it as he sees it. He was a cop his whole career and then i think hes only please commissioner in the last 50 years that is capable of bringing himself to apologize or acknowledge our role in the transgressions or are mess ups. He also issued an apology to the prospect raid victim a couple of months ago which included two paragraphs that were directed towards the lgbt community. Im not here to be his ambassador. But what i will say is he does lean on my organization heavily for advice. He keeps me on his staff and my role in the Police Department and the also has the former president of the organization as his lgbt liaison. And, he is engaging and is interested. 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 think i wont get into the specifics of the meetings on that staff. But, i think sometimes other communities it seems are more willing to go in and kind of speak and speak clearly. They are a little more organized, i dont know why, it just seems we can never come to an agreement on anything. That is troubling sometimes. Lets talk about our community, Greater Washington if we can for minute. I want to ask you, when we came off of the parade, nbc was involved in this. And, a festival the next day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out your native washingtonian, you have seen the demographics change and you have seen acceptance certainly over the decades. Talk a little bit about your role in your liaison and what you do. Sure, thank you jim. I think the first thing Everybody Knows that is been around is washington dc is not any different than new york city other than new york city is massive and has lot more people. But, new york city in june 1969 was the same as washington dc as far as values, as far as common practices in Law Enforcement. We had a moral division back then. We were cracking down on bars and people and arresting people for the same types of offenses that you talked about. And so, our hands are not clear. And, while we may have apologized, when he did that, i think he was apologizing as a leader of Law Enforcement because nypd is a leader around the world. To say on behalf of all of us, that is not the way it shouldve been handled. That is not the way people should be treated ever. Whether it was in the time for that was acceptable or not. We have come a long way. Here in washington to see, despite what ever the National Politics are, it doesnt matter who is in office, weve been a very liberal and open, welcoming city for people to live and work in. We have a human rights act here 1977 that included Sexual Orientation, gender identity and expression. We have had openly lgbt members of our city council and we have had one of the most progressive groups in ourand lesbian activists alliances. Going back as far as the 1970s, those groups immediately after stonewall started to work not just here in washington dc but nationally. Theyre trying to change things. Washington dc became a bit of a laboratory for many of the things that have spread throughout the United States and the world. Of is the emerger gay and lesbian unit and we proudly changed it to the lbgtq unit years ago to make it more inclusive. In 19981999 we recognized, while geographic policing and Community Policing worlds all over the world, and sir robert peel when he crated it in london, the idea of placing Police Officers in geographic areas was good for management and accountability, sometimes you need to police and manage differently. Thats what we do. We look at communities demographically. We have an lbgtq liaison unit. Sergeant nicole brown heads that here. She is with one of our affiliate officers here. I have one of our officers is working in the Jewish Community, deaf and hardofhearing community, asian community. Its not that we are not doing the same work of other Police Officers, but we are focusing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern, shared traits whether it be communication, whether it be a history of abuse like the lbgtq plus community has had over the years, and we are trying to work to build relationships so not if a crisis occurs, but when a crisis occurs like happened on saturday at our pride parade, right . We have relationships and people know that they can count upon us and they recognize us and hopefully we are able to gain cooperation and calm peoples fears. I want to ask you both. Brian, let me ask you first. We talk about acceptance of residents and people you work with and serve. What about people on the force who are openly gay now who couldnt be years ago . How important is that, and 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 know you made a face, right . You know where you stand with me. No. I think that the trajectory of queer people in society and in Law Enforcement of the criminal Justice System is kind of the same. I dont think that i dont think that at all, under any circumstances, i would ever say that lbgtq people are at home yet in this nation. And because we have shows on tv with gay characters and things like that, thats not the measure of at home for me. I say that, you know, first of all, lets look at goal. The organization stemmed from Charlie Cochran outed himself in front of the new York City Council in november of 1981. So you had a gay rights bill that was before the city council. Now, your ordinance or your law here in 77, that included gay people Sexual Orientation, yes. Gender identity and gender expression. Or that was amended later . Added later. Sexual orientation initially. I have my experts making sure i get it right. So you are ahead of us. So in 81 there is this contentious hearing in the city Council Chamber, and i think it was the Vice President or the president of the pba that was that issued this strong worded editorial in the newspaper that, you know, this law could never pass, we would need to carve out like they have in other institutions. We cant have queer cops. There are no such thing as gay cops, xyz. So, yeah, this viral testimony. So now who is going to testify next but a new York City Police sergeant. So the activists and everybody in this Council Chamber are irate now. They are booing when he is introduced. And he steps in front of this microphone and he says, you know, not only am i proud to be a new York City Police officer, i am proud to be a gay man. And from people that i know that were in the Council Chamber that day it has never been louder than it was at that moment in 1981. So we fast forward a few months and the organization was founded, the first meeting took place in the basement of Saint Josephs church in greenwich village. A Catholic Church that was very friendly to the community. They met in the basement. They met under protection of other cops because nobody wanted this meeting to happen. There were bomb a bomb threat i think was called into charlies home on his answering machine. And even going further than that, that first meeting, there was always a threat to the meetings of g. O. A. L. These guys met in secrecy very often. So we go now for 15 years, 14 years. The lawsuit was filed by tommy jeans, edgar rodriguez, and fran benedictis. They were the plaintiffs. They were represented by two attorneys, one of which is colleen meanen, the executive director of g. O. A. L. This is 96, and it was settled in 97. So for 15 years they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. And since then every Single Initiative in new York City Police department has had, for lbgtq people, was either geared by g. O. A. L. Individually or geared by g. O. A. L. As members of the Police Department. Kind of 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 into the, what they refer to, at least in the nypd now, were a little bit more than an nypd organization. We represent all fulltime criminal justice employees and the interests of the community from inside those institutions. So were talking about state police agencies, federal, local. But it took the nypds committee of Police Societies until 2002 before the president of g. O. A. L. Was able to sit in on meetings with other president s of their recognized fraternal, religious organizations. So were not really talking about ancient history here. The discrimination that we used to see and we used to get reported to g. O. A. L. Would be things like your locker would be turned upside down. Personal property was destroyed. You know, hate speech was used. Now i see a little bit different discrimination incidents or what gets reported to me. I find that oftentimes our members have less desirable assignments inside of commands, whether it be at the precinct level, the transit level. If you work at a steady sector, a lot of times, you know, if you work a steady sector you have a partner. Say brett was my partner. I work with brett every day. I find that a lot of times our people, especially male officers, and we can have a conversation about the difference between being a Lesbian Police officer and being a gay Police Officer, a gay man, we can talk about that later if you want. But we see that these guys, they dont have steady partners. They are in what we call response autos or theyre assigned to sit on prisoners or go to, you know, the hospital and sit on a prisoner in the hospital as opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. When there is a detail opened newspaper the precinct, lets say youre a good cop, you know, you are a hard worker. You come in, you do your job. You have good evaluations. And so if there is a temporary opening that, you know, because somebody is out longterm sick or somebody cant, you know, come to work because theyre, you know, on some other kind of leave or a vacation or whatever the case may be, and there is something going on that they need somebody for, they will pull the good queer cop. He is good enough then. But when the position is open and that detail is full time, is that the guy that gets the spot . No. So thats the discrimination that we see today. And, mind you, the relationship with the executive staff executives have never been better. I talked about commissioner oneill a few minutes ago. I cant ask for a better Law Enforcement executive to work for, and the chiefs of counterterrorism, the Detective Bureau, the chief of department, the chief of patrol, all on board. Its the systems and structures and these human barriers below. So i dont think were 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. You mentioned cochran. Im curious. Ill ask for metropolitan police, too. Numberswise, how many openly gay officers are on your force and your department, too . You just opened up a can of worms number two. I said roughly. Yeah. Well, internalized homophobia is still a very real thing for cops, and i think that everybody wants to be a part of a team, right . Everybody wants to be a part of a winning team. But at what expense do you become part of that team . So the nypd doesnt even track, you know, Sexual Orientation or anything like that. For the first time ever, at my urgeens, at g. O. A. L. s urgeens, they are finally doing focus groups to gauge the way people feel inside the department because i would go to meetings all the time and wed get this data data and it would be like we find that a large number of africanamerican cops leave in 20 years and they Start Playing we start analyzing that. I say why is that . Maybe they feel that this isnt a home for them, that this isnt we dont even know. Our membership as far as from the nypd varies. We get maybe a couple of maybe 100 fulltime, 150 fulltime nonretired, like active members a year. Thats an incredibly low number for a 54,000person agency. 36,000 sworn and the other civilian. So we think, you know, g. O. A. L. Thinks that its because, you know, people dont want to make other people uncomfortable. They are willing to and you give me five minutes with any cop, i can pull it out of them. You know what i mean . Any gay cop. Thats because he is a detective. He is good at that. Thats right. No, its because they think they are doing Something Like good for the for whatever, for the job, you know, because the conversations, like you have a conversation in the locker room or, you know, in a break room, whatever the case may be. You know, the experiences is kind of like this. We are constantly disclosing our Sexual Orientation everywhere we go. Whether, you know, you realize it or not, you are. And, you know, if i were to say that i was going to go to the movies this weekend with my boyfriend. I dont have a boyfriend, but whatever the case may be. But, you know, in there its like its almost like the air gets sucked out of the room. Its like, okay, we get it, hes gay. Then if you make another references, its like, man, why is he always talking about it . You are just not used to hearing it. So there is a lot of loaded issues with that. So we have no idea, to be honest with you. That is still taking place . Everybody wants to be a part of the big blue family, jim. Right. Also, when you look at Corporate America versus a police culture, its very different. And were talking about new york city. It is. I mean, Law Enforcement is a conservative profession. It is still uber masculine in nature. And it is slow to change. So it is very different than Corporate America in many ways. Here in washington, d. C. , you know, maybe 50 people that i could say are openly gay, and thats in a rolodex way back here that would never be written down or disclosed to anybody because, as brian said, here i am. I have been front page of washington post, documentaries. I am about as out as they come. There are still situations even in the job that i am in where people dont know that im gay. They dont ask. And when it comes up just as a matter of conversation that i have a life partner or something that discloses my Sexual Orientation, there is a look of shock. And straight people dont have to deal with that. There is another reason though i think brian didnt touch upon, at least i think in washington, d. C. , weather it exists in exists in new york or other large cities, we have a phenomena that for the most part a lot of gay cops dont feel the need to go to a g. O. A. L. Or to a liaison unit for support because its a really comfortable place to work and live and to be gay. And so for many of them, while they are not out, they are still very comfortable in who they are and they consider themselves out. So the definition of who is out and what is out is a very difficult thing to they feel protected, too . Absolutely. So there is probably a balance of that going on. A little bit. I mean, the thing that most concerns me that i have been dealing with, i was elected president , i guess i started in january of 2016, and what i find now is, what concerns me the most is everybody im sure here knows that new york is known for affordable real estate, right . [ laughter ] so were big on that, you know . We have a lot of, you know, affordable housing. We see a trajectory of people that are living at home longer than they have maybe, i dont know. I could be wrong about this. At any point maybe in history in the city, people are at home until they are 35, 36 years old. And what i have a lot of now is i have a lot of, especially male cops, that are just being terrorized by their families. You know, by their parents. And its kind of we have these counseling sessions almost in my apartment. I know when the phone rings its a certain person if its a holladay. I know they want to know when im going to be back from my sist trs sisters, brothers, whatever the case may be. You going to be around later . I know they have to get out of that toxicity. And this is a job with a lot of responsibility, a lot of power and a lot of stress. And i really worry about some of these guys. I have had i had a really good scare last summer where somebody posted up something on facebook and it was off to the races, you know. Mobilization. People we had cops at the parents house, cops looking for this cop. Luckily, we were able to get him the help that he needed. A lot of stress. Thank you. Stonewall 50 years ago, david for your book you interviewed Deputy Police inspector with the morals division. Seymour pine. Talk about his perspective when you talked to him about the raids and the riots. Well, thats a big subject because although i covered it in my book, it hasnt this aspect has really not gotten out into the how can you say . The common history or perception. The common perception of history. So seymour pine was a Police Officer who had a strong reputation for being honest. And i think what was happening is that because of the commission and other things that happened in the late 60s, the new york Police Department was under a great deal of scrutiny at that time for corruption and other problems. And i think that is probably why he was moved against his wishes from brooklyn to manhattan and in charge of the morals police. So i think he probably he is not exactly sure when that transfer took place. April, may. Anyway, the spring of that year 1969. Very soon after that he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. I am going to go into a little detail here. Its not part of the common history, commonly known history. His commanding officer, i think he was a captain, tells seymour pine that the new york Police Department had gotten an inquiry from interpol, that they had a lot of bombs surfacing on the streets of europe. They didnt know if they were real or not. They wanted the nypd to investigate. The nypd investigated. They found the bombs were not counterfeit, but they were stolen. And so very investigated further. They found out the bombs were stolen from wall street by a gay man who was under pressure of blackmail. One of the main figures at the Stonewall Inn was a career criminal named ed murphy. And he was gay. He had ran a national blackmail ring. Was busted about the mid60s for blackmailing these thousands of people, including prominent people like the head of the ama, american medical association, an admiral in the navy who was caught up in this, committed suicide. And he was held in jail for a while, but was let out. To the tune of 2 million as far as we know. Thats about 20,000 today. I think he had the goods on hoover is why he didnt end up in prison the rest of his life. Hoover was also blackmailed by ed murphy. Ed murphy used the stonewall the mafia honors had an apartment on the second floor which he ran a prostitution ring. They used the waiters who were straight to get information from the clients. I am sorry. The patrons of the stonewall club. So whether the police investigated it seemed this blackmail ring was centered around the stonewall. You know, pine was ordered to shut it down. Now, what happened is, is that only pine and his copartner summit, with whom he had fought in world war ii together, this was supposed to be a secret. Only they knew about that part of the raid. Even their men, men and women from the morals squad, didnt know that they were raiding to bust a blackmail ring. And so that was the reason for the raid. Fascinating. The different layers behind it. The same thing that they always did. They arrested the kids that were in there. I mean, they were busting a blackmail ring. They were blackmailing wall street guys. They were getting them in that apartment, taking their pictures and threatening them and saying we are going to show them to your wife, show them to your boss, whatever. So they went in there with like an actual good motive. It may have been the only gay bar bust in history with a good motive. All of the rest of them were just because it was gay people in the bar or it was because the mob wasnt payiid off add quick quitly adequately. All the problems that you got in the Police Department with attitudes about gay people, all the problems you got in new york city or washington, d. C. Come out of long ingrained tendencies in families and so forth to look down on gay people and think that they are the other. And then to pass laws about it. Now, with respect to gay bars, the laws they passed were that gay people couldnt own a bar because they couldnt get a Liquor License because there was a morals clause in new york city, and probably washington, d. C. , liquor laws. So the mob took it over. The mob opened these places up without Liquor Licenses, paid off the cops. So youve got an underground economy of bars serving gay people. By the way, they were overcharging them. They were gouging them and so forth. Then you have the cops coming in and busting it because of the mob isnt paying off on time or right or just lets go 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. And then youve got the police force that streets groups different than white generally cops as the other. If youre black, if youre brown, especially if youre gay. And so by the time you get that and mix that all together, then you get, you know, whats become known as the stonewall riot. The riot mostly that theyre talking about really is saturday night with the tpf coming in to film and so on and face shields and all of that stuff. That was typically, you know, just like this 1968 and the Democratic National convention. It was a police raid. It wasnt 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 face shield down and go at them with a nightstick and start prodding them. How long did it take . Im curious. You were there that night, and the weeks after that, until the approach by police towards gay bars changed in terms of raids and all . Did it take a matter of a few years . Well, you know, a couple of things going on there. There is the change in the new york city laws, okay . But there was also a change in the new york citys and new york states, the way they regulated bars through liquor licensing. They finally gave a Liquor License to the first gay bar that was owned by gay people in about 1973, and as it happens i stumbled into the stonewall riot on june the 27th, is t 1969. I was working at the Village Voice in 73 when the editor came to me and said, listen, i want to do a story on the mob having all these restaurants in the South Village and all these mob beatings that are taking place. And also this guy came to her and said we cant we want to open up the ballroom, it was called. It was a cabaret, it ended up on west broadway. We cant get a Liquor License. She called me in and introduced me to this guy. They said do a story about it. I said i will do a story about it but nothings going to happen. Its the Village Voice. Its not the New York Times. She said what can we do zm . I side we can do a story about the cops never bust these meetings at restaurants where they are Holding Meetings with mobsters every friday night. I wrote down license numbers. I lived in the South Village. I went around. I knew where the mob meetings were taking place. I wrote down the license plates of double and triple parked limousines outside owned by Carlo Gambino and people like that and the rest of them. And mary ran the place. We found out who was meeting at all these restaurants. I wrote a story and said new york city wont issue a Liquor License to these upstanding gay citizens, but they are issuing Liquor Licenses to these gangsters, you know . Mary took the story and went up to the liquor commissioner. I named the commissioner abc. Ill call him Beverage Control in the story. I said this is the guy thats doing it. She put it on his desk on a monday and said this runs on wednesday unless you give the ballroom a Liquor License. Wow. And if you give them a Liquor License, we wont run it. So my story didnt run and the ballroom got a Liquor License. And that was it. Power. That broke the logjam. The next thing you knew reno sweeney on 13th street got one. And i didnt pay for drinks for quite a while. [ laughter ] at no point were you afraid when you were taking down license plates and doing this . They didnt see me taking down license plates. You are hoping. You realize this is being videotaped. They are watching and im sitting next to you. What im saying though is that once gay people started owning gay bars, then the mob wasnt involved. Then the gay people werent paying off the cops and then they didnt have reason to bust them because they werent getting the payoffs. A snowball kind of effect took place and gay a bars started getting Liquor Licenses and getting legitimized. It happened over a period of time. At the same time things were happening like people were working towards getting gay people the right to serve in the military. And that started changing things. And then gay people were working towards the right to marry. And that started changing things. All off this happened over the last 50 years. Its really pretty extraordinary when you think about it. Its extraordinary to me because i was there the night that was really the rosa parks moment for the gay movement. That was the night that gay people instead of saying i wont move to the back of the bus, they said you are not going to bust our bars anymore and we are not going to put up with it. And i had no idea at the time what i was looking at. I thought i was looking at a gay right, oh my god, look at that guy, he is in a dress, you know. Those guys, i mean, the amazing thing about it was the cops were so incompetent that they would line up and chase these gay people down christopher street and the gay people would run down grove, run around, come up behind the cops and form a kick line and start going we are the stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls. The cops see that, they start chasing them that way. I ended up teaching a class on how not to do riot control in the army based on this riot. They gave me a theater at ft. Carson, and i taught italians one after another. I set up a huge blackboard and drew a map of Sheridan Square on it and drew arrows like where the cops are, you know. A blue arrow. Where are the gay people, all that stuff, and taught like how not to control a riot to a division of soldiers. That was an experience all to itself. But that was one of the problems that Law Enforcement had in how they treat if you treat people as an other, theyll behave like an other. I want to talk more about the other later first, i want to ask you a little bit more about your liaison unit. The competent cops of today, what you guys do in terms of outreach with the Gay Community, and straight for that matter. We are certainly not doing kick lines. Why not . Because im incompetent. I did not get that that is not one of my gay traits. Im not able so do that. You have to go to his course. Exactly. Let me see your gay i. D. So what has changed now, jim, is that we have an understanding, first of all, that this community exists. That was step one. Step one, and this, unfortunately, still exists in some parts of the country, if i go to a Law Enforcement executive, a chief of police or a lieutenant or street officers and i say, where who are your lbgtq Community Leaders . We dont have that here. Well, if you have a community w where you dont think you have lgbt people, do you think they are treating them with dignity and respect . Thats not happening. So step one was to have our leaders not just our Community Leaders, but our Law Enforcement leaders, acknowledge this community exists, that they have rights, and that they have the right to speak up when they are not treated properly. So that was step one. Step two was then changing culture within the Police Department. Brian has spoken about how slow that is. We still have homophobes in Law Enforcement. We have racists in Law Enforcement. We have missa misogynists in enforcement. What were doing more and more of is exposing Police Officers to any one of a number of cultures. The lbgtq plus culture is one of many. But who are they . How do they engage in our lives . What is a respectful way to address someone . What is a what are the laws with regard to the activities they engage in . What are their rights . And making sure that Police Officers understand that no different than any other community, if you violate what we train you if you dont do what we train you to do, then we are not going to protect you. There is not a thin blue line when it comes to that type of misconduct and disrespect and treating people in unconstitutional ways. And then, lastly, were pretty proud that we think we go above and beyond in washington, d. C. We are actually using Police Officers who are members of the community and allies to engage where the Community Feels safe. And thats a little bit different than basic Community Policing. Basic Community Policing you throw up a tent, invite everybody for hamburgers and hot dogs, you go to a parade and sing kumbaya together. We are going into the tough places where the community is safe. They know this is their space and were saying we are here with you. We are here to listen to you. Eventually, it becomes, instead of oh my gosh, the cops are here, whats wrong . Its oh, the cops are here, thats brett, thats nicole, thats jim. When you have changed that dynamic and people actually welcome you as Police Officers into their community or acknowledge that you are members of the community, thats when you can do a better job because its all about preparing for that crisis and that trauma in the community so that you gain cooperation and things go more smoothly when that crisis occurs. Brian, do you see that, too . And how long does it take to build that kind of rapport or trust, if you will, within certain communities . It takes a long time. You know, i mean, everything that he just said is true. Im not going to want to repeat any of that. But, yeah, there is some of kind of i dont know what it is. But there is this thing where people are just afraid to engage or when i say our community, im an openly queer man. And whenever you hear me say our community, i am noting talki ta about the police. I just want everybody to be clear on that. With our community they just really never knew. And my first real, i guess, aw shucks moment as far as the Police Department occurred on, you know, the morning of the pulse nightclub shooting because i had just come from the Detective Bureau where i was a bias crimes investigator. This is when commissioner oneill was a chief of the department. I was just maybe a month into his office. He had pulled me out of the Detective Bureau and i worked for him. And 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, oh my god, we are going to respond to this. I didnt mean to orlando, florida. This type of city that new york city is, is that we respond to every incident locally. It doesnt matter if it happens somewhere else in the country. It doesnt matter if it happened somewhere else in the world. So lets say that, lets use the Jewish Community for, you know, a good example of this. So if we have, you know, a mass casualty incident or a terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in pittsburgh on halloween. It was halloween, right . It was a couple days before, a couple days after. It was right around halloween. Yeah, october. The Jewish Community knows that the were coming, you know . They know that there is going to be marked police car outside of the synagogue. They know that they can expect to see high visibility patrols with like what we call a hercules team, which is a, you know, a squad of Emergency Services officers with heavy weaponry and a k9 officer, highway and intel. We can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day based upon intelligence. So the Jewish Community knows and they appreciate it. I was having heart attack i was like, oh my god, we are coming and this community has never seen this. So i called my lieutenant. The same morning we had, you know, the puerto rican day parade was going on, which is a Massive Police detail in new york city, and i was going to go and assist with that in my role in the chiefs office. I called the lieutenant. He just said just go whatever you need to do. Just sign in, get the car, and get the hell out there. And, you know, my first thought was that the lbgtq Community Center on 13th street in manhattan, and i just walked up to the desk. Im dressed like this, you know. I have a tie on when im at work. I went a little casual today for yall. But i walked in and i just said im the detective with the Police Department. We need to speak to whoever is in charge. I know its a sunday morning, but can you get somebody on the phone for me . And five minutes later in a back room we were on a Conference Call with the chief operating officer of the center, rob wheeler. I had never met him before. I never did any kind of outreach before. I was just running g. O. A. L. , which is like an independent organization. Were our own 501 c 3 . We are a watchdog group. Now in this role i have to work for the chief and do work for the department. You know, i told this guy, i said, first of all, let me ask you if you want the security, and if you tell me no, the other part of that is its going to come anyway. But, you know, right at i have always been a little bit of an outside the box thinker. I said why dont you do me a favor . Put an email out to everybody on your subscriber list to say the Police Department is going to be outside for a few weeks until we know whats going on. And then the rest of the day, going to brunch spots, going to because we like brunch. You got that memo. Its a big thing with us. But going and meeting with night life people. And over the next few days, i mean, i was getting calls on my cell phone, my work phone and personal phone. It was like i was like pedaling, you know, some contraband. People are like, are you the detective that can get us some security over here . I got your number from someone and they said that you helped them get because people wanted the protection. They felt better. And it was even, you know, at the kind of the discomfort of some of their clients in some of these service providers. But thats where a Real Partnership has to exist where there has to be trust. Like brad says, you cant just show up and give out key rings at a pride march and expect that everybody is going to love the police. Were nobodys friends. I mean, im a realist. Nobody calls the police, you know what im sayin, because they have extra tickets to the ball game. Nobody calls the police because there is a couple of beers left in the cooler after the barbecue or there is food left over, do you want to bring it back to the precinct . What do we get called for, you know . Horrible, terrible things where people arent at their best. And maybe to a large extent our history hasnt been the best at responding to some of these incidents and situations. I think to an extent that still goes on. But i do think that in the last five years i think i finally see Law Enforcement at least the executives i work with, they want to get out, you know, ahead of things. They want the input. They dont want to, you know, were the police and we know what were doing. If that is your mindset, good luck. You are not going to have a very long tenure as a Law Enforcement executive these days, you know. We have to think about what were not thinking about, you know, and really engage. We started a neighborhood coordination officer program in new york now where every sector or precincts are broken down into sectors. There is two cops that work there that do absolutely, you know, very have four hours they are required to do half of their shift as noncommitted radio time where they are out there going to the businesses in their sector and they are supposed to meet with Community Leaders. They have email addresses. They have cell phones. People know they can call them. Its really changing the conversation up there. Thats encouraging. And on that encouraging note we want to pause and take some questions from you folks. So weve got a couple of mike phones. Anyone have any questions for our panelists, please . Lets hear from you, if you do. Can you hear me . Okay. I was just wondering, the detective, you referenced that there was some different experiences being a gay male officer verse as lesbian officer. Could you speak to some of those differences as you and your members sort of report them to you . Yeah. I think we still live in a society where we sexualize women. And if you are going to be paired up with a Lesbian Police officer, you know, guys minds go wild, you know . Oh, im so good, you know, maybe i can get her. Then, you know, i will have her and the girlfriend. Its like this mindset, you know, where but we still perceive gay men as weak, as, you know, efemnent, as not able to handle themselves. And there is people that will test you, you know. Carl lock. You know carl. Carl was a detective in the Police Impersonation investigation unit. Thats a pretty serious unit. First of all, the cases are automatically felonies when you impersonate a Police Officer to commit a crime. And the first question he got when he got to the office was, do you know how to fight . I dont think we ask those questions of, you know, our lesbian officers. I think we, as a society, we still sexualize women, and thats a fantasy and thats allowed to perpetuate itself, if that clears that up. I think the misogyny exists within Law Enforcement still, but openly lesbian women i think are more valued than openly gay men still generally in this profession because openly gay men are viewed as ef femnent and weak. Do you think lesbian women are sometimes stereotyped as having masculine traits in. 100 . We have our lipstick lesbians and butch lesbian. You cannot judge their ability for policing based on how they work. Training people to break through the stereotypes is the hard part. Another question. Persuasions as a way of persuading gay people to own clubs. How do you feel that the publics desire for these stories in the media has changed or your the medias desires for presenting these stories has changed over the years . Thats a good question. Its changed. I mean, the story about stonewall was in the Village Voice. There was a story in the New York Post like that and the daily news like that. The New York Times like that. So now there was a story this big about the Police Station kmilgser in the New York Times about the Police Commissioner apologizing about stonewall. And there has been big stories about the stonewall anniversary, the 50th anniversary thats coming up and all of the gay pride parades and that sort of thing. But then there has been millions of stories about gays in the military and millions of stories about gays being allowed to be married. I mean, you know, gay people to a large extent have way entered the mainstream compared to where they were in 1969. And the difference somebody was asking me recently, you know, whats the big difference between then thand now . The big difference that stonewall made was everybody that was in the riot in stonewall was out. They were on the street. They looked gay. They were in a gay riot. So they were out. And after stonewall, more and more and more people started coming out. And as more and more people came out, more and more people realized, hey, my cousin is gay or, hey, you know, that couple that lives next door are not just roommates. They are, you know, they actually live together. They are a family. They love each other. And so when gay people coming out affected families, it affected communities, it affected relationships at work. It made everything better. Everything. And its made coverage in the media better as well. And its made, you know, what you see on tv better. Hi. So during the 60s when there was a lot of heavy policing, i read the police had a lot of knowledge about the culture, under the radar bars. It seems like the place had a really deep, i mean, well, not necessarily the best connection, but a connection that and a lot of Institutional Knowledge about the Gay Community. Do you think that because the policing efforts have obviously died down a lot towards the Gay Community that the sort of Institutional Knowledge and culture has declined as a result of that . And is there a way to preserve that without necessarily going to the same policing tactics . Thats directed towards me . We were kind of thinking so. Its history. Sorry. I missed the gist of your question. You know, when there was police when they were doing heavy policing there was a lot more knowledge about the culture of the local gay communities by the Police Departments. And when that policing dies down, does that sort of knowledge go away, too . And if so, how do you preserve that group like policing i dont know. Tactics, whatever. Im not sure i agree with that. I dont think that the police had i mean, there was a lot of policing in the Gay Community in the 60s. They didnt know shit about the Gay Community, except the rest. Still dont. I think perhaps what you are talking about is knowing how to entrap gay men. They knew where they went. They had, you know, an idea of how, you know, gay men dressed when they were out to, you know, socialize to meet other gay men, to meet sexual partners. So they knew how to, you know, they would take their best looking Police Officers, you know, dress them in tight pants, and, you know, dress them kind of like gay men dress and send them to those areas and entice them. But, i mean, thats really not the knowledge, you know, of gay culture or, you know, or even a gay mentality. You know, its a very surface thing. So i think that the i think with the my impression is, and i havent been involved in Law Enforcement, is that probably Law Enforcement has been learning bit by bit this other institution that society has been learning, whether its the military, whether its business, the church, schools. Thats my impression. Does that answer your question in. Yeah, it does. Okay. If i could also, you know, there is this wonderful thing out there called the internet now. Perhaps you have heard of it. And as big of neanderthals we are as Police Officers, they know how to use it. And so they sorry, bri. [ laughter ] and what i mean by that is sometimes in spite of a lack of training or a lack of experience, they have personal lives and they have personal interests, and they are exploring all of the things that everyone else in society is exploring sometimes, but we are also doing a much better job of educating Police Officers about the communities we serve. And i think that has gotten better because of exactly of what lushen talked about. Events like stonewall wake people. They cause people to move in a better direction and progress to be made. So i dont know that some of my cops i travel all the world training cops with lbgtq issues, and im always surprised somebody doesnt know the difference between bisexuality and a transgender individual, or they dont even know what the term, you know, intersexuality is. Some of you are going i dont know either. But were trying to train more and more cops, but they are just like everybody else. I mean, we are talking to someone representing new york city and someone representing washington, d. C. You say you travel the country. Im curious about what the lbgtq communities in small towns, alabama or other parts of the country, how they are treated by police. Are they even on police radar . You talked about years ago en p entrapment. Does that kind of thing still happen in other parts of the country that isnt allowed to happen in new york or d. C. . Let me tell a quick story and ill let you address it. Go crazy, man. It must have been 14 years ago. Tell you how long ago it was, i had a pager back then. It was an area code from north carolina. I called it back. And it was a deputy. I swear to god his name was bubba something from north carolina. He was a deputy sheriff. And he was investigating one of those he she murders they had had in a rather large metropolitan area in north carolina. And he had learned about my working from the newspaper and his lieutenant said you need to call this guy because you are not making any progress on this he she murder. The first thing i did i said are you talking about a transgender individual . He didnt know what that meant. He was talking about a transgender female who was murdered. I said, tell me something. Where did this occur . He told me. I said, is that anywhere near your transgender stroll . And there was just sort of i could hear the ocean, that was about it in the phone. He said what is that, sir . I said what does your transgender prostitution happen . He said, oh, sir, we dont have that here. Not in our town. So i went online and quickly googled that area looking for transgender prostitutes in that city. Didnt take me but a few moments. I said and ill make up the street in case anybody is from this town. How about delgraph road . There was a pause. He said, sir, thats where the Police Station is. I said, well, good, you dont have far to go. And i said what i want you to do on the day of the week that the murder happened, monday, tuesday, wednesday, go out that night about the same time and all those people wandering around that you see there, 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 that a community existed and how it was the best way to engage them. Thats where we are. In some parts of the country they dont even acknowledge that gay people exist. They couldnt tell you they have an lbgtq Community Center in their city, county, or state, much less that their Police Department knows of it. Brian. Yeah. I just think we talk about training. Training is far reaching for g. O. A. L. Because one of the things that i have been reading over recently, this is the settlement from when the Gay Officers Action League sued the new York City Police department in 1996. One of the things that came out of this settlement was g. O. A. L. Was given the ability to train Police Officers in lbgtq sensitivity and awareness. Now, thats looked like a lot of Different Things over the years, but i mentioned carl lock before because carl sa giis a gift to agency. Before carl became a cop at 30 something years old, before that he was an accomplished social worker. He was the director of Client Services in the new york city antiviolence project. He worked at the david geffen aids program at gay mens health crisis. He was with act up on the brooklyn bridge. So, you know, he brings all of this real world activist experience and education to p. D. So when he got involved with g. O. A. L. , he kind of redid the curriculum to what it is today. And its very impressive. And we dont go in to do a training with cops and go over we dont spend a lot of time on the definitions. We give them to you. We dont spend a lot of time on the history. We do really two things. I think that we want people to take away from it, one, that we give them a little bit of our personal coming out stories because we are cops training cops and they can see that all these issues have affected the people that are standing in front of them giving them a block of instruction. So we have Something Like anna who was thrown out of her house in high school for being a lesbian, who put herself through high school, whose mother wouldnt give her Financial Aid paperwork for college. She put herself through college. She took the police test. She is now a new York City Police sergeant. So you give a cop a story kind of about you that, hey listen, like i went through all this, so this is very really. We have cops that involved in house you know, that came up through house and ball. Thats amazing in and ofitself. The other thing we do, we were doing implicit bias training before that was really a thing. We want people, we want the recruits especially to understand where your ideas come from. You have been bombarded a messages since you were a child. Society tells you, you know, whats preferred. And fair and impartial policing, when we talk about implicit bias. So we put the Police Recruits in scenarios. Say everybody in here is going to police fairly and impartially, right . And all the hands go up, big smiling grinning faces. Yep, we are going to be the fair and impartial police. So we graduate them now. So we take an officer and we tell him, tonight you have this post. Your sergeant told you that there has been a high propensity of robberies in this area. We want to keep people moving. Its inside of a club district. You know, we dont want cars stopping. There is no standing signs everywhere, so there is no reason for a car to be stopping or parking there anyway. Keep the area clear. Okay. So we tell the cop that in the alleyway there is a vehicle parked. It doesnt have its lights on, but its running. And the car goes up to the the cop goes up to the vehicle and conducts an investigation. Lo and behold, he finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. Now, we ask him, what do you got . And you have a little bit of a chuckle, you know. The cops engage a little bit. You know, what you actually have is a penal law misdemeanor in the state of new york. You have a must arrest, a misdemeanor situation, but you kind of ask them, what are they really going to do . And you know some raise their hand and say i will issue a summons. I am going to lock them up. Or im going to let them go. N you know, we play with this a little bit. You even get some who are honest who say, i know what you are going to do, you are going to text the cop on the adjoining post and you are going to saywh gonna do. Youre gonna text the cop at the adjoining post and tell them, youre never going to believe whats going on over here right now. That is what you are going to do. Right . Everybody is laughing and having a good time. Then we graduate the cops again. And i say, put them in the exact same scenario. And i say, now, you come across that same car in the alley way. And it is a man getting oral sex from a man. What have you got . Its like the air gets sucked right out of the room. They dont know what the they have. You know . So, everybody just said theyre going to be fair and impartial, right . Every hand went up. Every face was grinning. We were seeing teeth. I told him. Listen. If a guy is getting lucky in one scenario than the guy is 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, the color of somebodys skin is, no matter what the religion is. 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, and you are representing brett. They were representing a couple million other honest people. That have a tremendous amount of integrity. And has sacrificed their lives for this job. And in the name of other people. So, 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 on that uniform, and you put that shield on your chest, you better treat everybody the same. Because, 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 be the police for everybody. And you have to do it fairly and impartially. And that is what the officers Action League stands for. Thank you. For your powerful perspective. All of you gentlemen and the insights that you shared with us today. We cant thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we have made over the decades. It has been fascinating to hear your stories and what is being done on the front lines, if you will. Anybody else have a question before we wrap up . Go ahead, sir. Sergeant brett, could you tell us a little bit about how the gl l you got started in washington. And have other cities around the country, have they followed the lead of one thing is training but have induced institutional asian we have in dc. Thanks for the question. So, here in washington dc, we didnt have the same struggle that new york had, and that it didnt take lawsuits, and really forcefully, you know, pushing our way into this. Our community worked with our Police Department and our leadership to support the idea that the lgbt community, back then it was called the and lesbian liaison unit, deserve to have officers that were familiar enough with the community, and were able to engage Community Members and a save space, and in a safe way , that the chief of police back then, it was Charles Ramsey in 1999. Said, yes. It started in one of our small police districts. It was kind of in the gaber hood back then. And Charles Ramsey realized very quickly that this is something that should not be confined to just one police district. Sucker he expanded it citywide. And, what we believe is one of the only fulltime police units, meaning not just the liaison officer, but multiples officers working fulltime in the community. Three parts to the mission. Outreach. The usual Community Policing stuff. Going to events. Going to pride festivals. Going to meetings. Singing come by on. Training and education. That important thing that brian mentioned. Not just training and educating Police Officers. Because that is really important. We have got to get them to understand that there are certain tools they need to engage Community Members. But, another part of our training and education is going the opposite direction. Training you, as Community Members, about what you should expect from us. About what our jobs are. What your rights are. What the laws are. It is not a secret washington we continue to see our bias crimes increase. As far as numbers reported here. One of the reasons why we actually celebrate the fact that our bias numbers continue to go up as we believe we are educating our citizens better and better every year and building stronger relationships. That bias crimes that were committed in the past are now being reported to us. So that is part of the training and education. And the third part of the mission and the part that i am biased about, that i think is the most important, is, unlike most Community Policing, we are actually doing police work. The officers that i work with and the officials i work with are not only going to be at those events and classes. But when that pride parade was interrupted by what appeared to be an active shooter, but thank god wasnt. It was these officers in those liaison units who were amongst the very first running through the crowd the opposite direction, towards it. And what Community Members saw, was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniforms, actually engaging in real police work in public safety. Yes. We are helping other Police Departments around the world. Probably not a week goes by that we dont hear from other agencies. About how they tailor this type of work to their Police Department. Whether it is designating an officer parttime, and officer full time, or even creating a full time unit, and one of the benefits we have is, in 2007, we won the harvard innovations in American Government award work and, part of that was, we won a grant to help replicate the work we are doing and we vowed to do that whenever we can pick it help other Police Departments anywhere in the world do the type of work we are doing. Not just the lgbt community. But all the other communities we work in. So, i hope i answered your question. I think we are about out of time. Again, thank you all for coming. Gentlemen, we cannot thank you enough. [ applause ] this Holiday Weekend on American History tv. Saturday at 10 pm on real america. The 1970 film, honor america day. The july 4 celebration of the National Mall featured comedian bob hope and the reverend billy graham. Without freedom of the press and open communication system, we dont sweep under the rug. Of racial can exist, if riots occurred, the whole world knows about it. Instead of an iron curtain, we have a picture window. Sunday at 6 pm eastern time, american artifacts. Living history hobbyist, recall, perpetrators a soviet cavalry officer and discusses the soviet unions role in world war ii. One month before dday, we had been occupying 65 may be of the best german troops, fighting us. If we hadnt done that, if they hadnt , if we had failed that moscow or stalingrad or crist , any of those troops could well have been on the normandy beaches, and it couldve been a different outcome. So, the story that has to be told is that that is a significant contribution to winning the war. Watch on American History tv. On cspan 3. Each week, american artifacts takes viewers into archives, museums, and Historic Sites around the country. Up next, we visit the wise up, rise up exhibit in washington dc to learn about the 1969 stonewall riots. And how they served as a catalyst for the modern lgbtq rights movement. Welcome to the museum. Patty rhule, the