He manages the department lesbian gay transsexual and bisexual department. And mr. Trust thought. Were looking forward to learning a lot, and looking back through your eyes and perspectives on where we were 50 years ago. It is kind of hard to believe. I would like to start with you if we can. What was new york like what was america like, for gays and lesbian and transgender citizens before the stonewall riots. What was it like for the Lgbtq Community. It is really counter intuitive, because there is a common tendency in this country, to assume you dont for the we go back in history the worst things are going to be. But in the whole history of the entirety of the u. S. History, the sixties and fifties were probably the very worst time for lgbt people. That is because, there have been a period of liberalization in the 1920s, and you know it was generally a liberal period in the 1920s. With the Great Depression coming along, that seem to begin a clamp down on and i will use the term gay people, just as a full eight people. And we entered the reds quite the red scare, and there was more depression after world war ii so. For example in new york city, the height of a rest of the game and, occurred in 1966 where that time you had on average, 100 homosexual men being arrested in new york city every week. So you know, the 1960s were a period and we think of a time of expanding liberties and openness, but it was rather the opposite for our people. And another big force that was making that happen was the use of psychiatry. Segment fried, his view of homosexuality was negative but it was not very negative. In other words he saw an ideal adaptation. For an adult being homosexual. But he certainly didnt think, that it was a severe, pathology. And, america was the first country to really embrace freud. And when, the floridian approach to psychology was embraced by this country american psychologists, under the influence of the military in world war ii they you know it was the american psychiatrist who really pathologized homosexuality severely. So there were laws that you could be put in a mental institution, versus you know not freely but it could be imposed upon you, and their people had it all men were castrated, low bottom ease were performed, Shock Therapy and other kinds of treatments, that were meant to change them from being homosexual or heterosexual and to make them a sexual. The loss just kept on multiplying altogether from one state to 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 19 fifties 1960s gay people lived in a state of sub suffocation in suffocation really. It was a terrible time. I want to go back to the days of the the riots. You were actually at stonewall. Take us back to what it was like to be there. Well it was accidental for me, i just graduated from west point believe youre not. And i was spending my free leave going into the army leave, in new york and i was walking from the loft i was renting from the you know it which to a place that was two doors down from the storm all, and i turned around the street and there was. The stonewall, there was a couple of police cars and pulled up on the street and the bust had begun, maybe half an hour an hour before, and they were starting to bring up people and cuffs. Can and put them in the police cars. And a crowd had gathered across the street. And they were watching, some of the people across the street had gotten out of the stone wall, as the cops came in, either at the back door around the cops and around the front door somehow. Then the word had spread what was going on on christopher street, and 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, was right nearby. And people started walking over to see what was going on. And so what happened was, the cops busted gave ours, all the time. What typically happened was, people would come out of the bars, and they recover their faces and go into the paddywagon, and they didnt want to be recognized, people had jobs they work for banks or advertising firms and, and they thought they would lose their jobs or be exposed to their wives and if they were married or whatever. And that is what the police were used to. While they busted stonewall the stone wall was known for serving underage people. It had a sound system in the back room, and there was dancing. It was kind of a wild place. And the people that they busted in the stonewall, were like that. They didnt have jobs, they dont have anything to lose. A lot of them were 17, and 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 in the can you get my bail post my bail. And acting like it was nothing like there was nothing to. It theyve been bussed before, and it bothered them. And the cops didnt like it and they didnt have that fear that something before it had. It know they dont behave like frightened gay people. And the cops didnt like it, and they didnt like them standing imposing and waving. So the crowd you know sorry the cop started pushing the crowd with their night sticks, and shoving them roughly onto the cars and the crowds the crowd started reacting to it. Yelling at the cops and throwing pennies it first and calling them pigs and it just went south from there. Right after i got there a thats when it started throwing and so forth. So that went through the night, and was it the next night where you had hundreds and thousands come back. Yeah it was the next night the they were no hundreds on the streets if not a couple thousand. We could and it went on you know. On friday night it didnt go on for a really long time, because the bus took place, and they try to get them in the car after the bust took place, and the gay people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops,s and i was outside. That was when they broke the front window, and they threw things through the window and start a fire. They took a a parking meter and used it around the door, and that sort of thing and then the cops, and the reinforcements came from the more precinct, since they scattered the crowd and. And within a couple of hours it was in the news last week. Commissioner oneill issued an apology on behalf of nypd for the raids. Give us a little bit of insight into that apology and goal. What was the response from . 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 no one thought would never 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 this rock star Police Commissioner. We had Raymond Kelly twice for a few couple years. That is an eternity 12 years, thats an eternity for Police Commissioner. These are big giant media personalities and darlings. Commissioner oneil just calls it as he sees it. He was a cop his whole career and i think he is the only Police Commissioner in the last 50 years that is capable of bringing himself to apologize or acknowledge our role. Our transgressions or our mess ups. He also issued an apology to the Prospect Park rape victim a few months ago and that also included probably two paragraphs that were directed towards the Lgbtq Community. Im not here tonight as his ambassador but i 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. He also has the former president of the organization as his lgbt liaison. Hes engaged and interested and 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 will not get into the specifics of the meetings. Im there a staff and not as the president. 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. It just seems like we can never come to an agreement on anything and that is troubling sometimes. Lets talk about our community, Greater Washington if we can for a minute. Brad, i want to ask you, we just came off of a parade that nbc was very involved in. A festival the next day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out. You are a native of washington, you have seen the demographics certainly change here and you have seen i guess acceptance change certainly over the decades. Talk a little bit about your role and your liaison and what you do. Sure. Thanks jim. I think the first thing everyone knows probably that has been around for a while is washington d. C. Is not any different than new york city. Other than new york city is massive and has a lot more people. But new york city in june of 1969 was the same as washington d. C. In terms of values and common practices in Law Enforcement. We had a Morals Division in the metropolitan Police Department in that day. We were cracking down on gay bars and gay people and arresting them for the same types of defenses you talked about. Hundreds of men were being arrested every day back then. Our hands are not clean here in washington d. C. And while it was james oneill who apologized in new york city on behalf of nypd, when he did that, i think he was apologizing also as a leader of the Law Enforcement because and what parties known around the world. It is not the way it should have been handled. It is not the way people should be treated ever, whether it was in a time when it was acceptable or not. We have come a long way. Here in washington d. C. , despite whatever the National Politics are, it does not matter who is in office, we have always been a very liberal and open and welcoming city for people to live and work in. We have had a humans human rights act since 1977 that has included Sexual Orientation, gender identity and gender expression. We have openly lgbt members of our city council and we have one of the most progressive groups in our gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance and organizations. Going as far back as the 1970s, those groups immediately after stonewall started to work, not just here in washington d. C. , but nationally to try and 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 of those that we are pretty proud of is the emergence of our liaison unit. We changed the name to the lgbt liaison unit to be more inclusive. What we did back then, just in 1998 and 1999 was, we recognized while geographic policing and Community Policing works all over of the world. Sir robert peel when he created it back in london, the idea of passing placing Police Officers in geographic areas was a good model for accountability. But sometimes you need to manage police differently. That is what we do. We look at communities demographically. We have a lgbt liaison unit, i have sergeant with nicole brown who heads that. We have one of our officers working in the Jewish Community with faithbased outrage. It is not that we are not 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. Whether it is communication, whether it be a history of abuse like the Lgbtq Community and we are trying to work to build relationships. Not if a crisis occurs, but when a crisis occurs, like it happened on saturday and our pride parade, 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 but brian let me ask you first. We talked about acceptance of residents and the people that you have worked with and serve. What about people on the force who are openly gay now, who could not be years ago, how important is that . When did it start that they were welcomed and embraced . I dont know. I am waiting for. It we need to face . Right i dont play poker. You know where you stand with me. No, i think that the trajectory of queer people in society and Law Enforcement in the criminal Justice System is kind of the same. I dont think at all, under any circumstances, that i would 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 it home for me. I say first of all, lets look at our organization. It stemmed from Charlie Cochran who outed himself in from the city council in november of 1981. You had a gay rights bill that was before the city council. Your ordinance or law here in 77 included gay people. Sexual orientation. Gender identity and gender expression but that was identified amended later. Gender identity and gender expression was added later. It was originally sexual identity. Sexual orientation. In 81, there was this contagious hearing in the City Council Chamber and i think it was the Vice President that issued this strong worded editorial in the newspaper that this law could never pass. We would need a car val like they have another institutions. We cannot he have quick cops, there is no such thing as quick ups, xyz. Now you have this viral testimony so now who will testify next but a new York City Police sergeant . The activists and everyone in this Council Chamber are irate and booing when he is introduced. He steps in front of this microphone and says, not only am i proud to be a new York City Police officer, but i am proud to be a game in. From people that i know were in the Council Chamber that they, 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 st. Josephs church in greenwich village. It was a Catholic Church that was very friendly to the community. They met in the basement and they met under protection of other cops because no one wanted this meeting to happen. There were a bomb threat i think was called into charlies home. On his answering machine. Even going further than the first meeting, there was always a threat to the meetings of our organization. These people met in secrecy very often. For almost 15 years, the lawsuit was filed by tommy jeans, Edgar Rodriguez and frank the benedict is. There accompanied by the executive director of goal, it was settled in 97. For 15 years they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. And since then, every Single Initiative the new york city Police Department has had for lgbtq people was either geared by goal individually or gore geared by goal 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 lead to be fully accepted and what they referred to, at least in the and ypg, we are a bit more than an and ypg organization. We represent awful time criminal justice employees and the interest of the community from inside those institutions. We are talking about state police agencies, federal, local, but it took the nypds committee a Police Societies until 2002 before the president of goal was able to sit in on meetings with other president s of their recognized fraternal, religious, or law organizations. So we are not really talking about ancient history here. The discrimination that we used to see and get reported to goal would be things like your locker would be turned upside down. Personal property was destroyed, 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 whether it be at the precinct level, the transit level. If you work at a steady sector, a lot of times you work a steady sector and you have a partner. Lets say brett is my partner and i work with him 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. But we see, these guys do not have steady partners, they are and what we call response autos or assigned to sit on prisoners or go to the hospital and sit on a prisoner at the hospital as opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. When there is a detail opened up in the precinct. Lets say you are a good cop, you are a hard worker, you come in and do your job. You have good evaluations. If there is a temporary opening, because someone is out long term sick or someone cannot come to work because they are on some kind of leave or vacation or whatever the case may be and there is something going on they need someone for, they will pull the good career 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. And mind you, the relationship with the executive staff executives have never been better. I talked about commissioner oneill a few minutes ago. I cannot ask for a better Law Enforcement executive to work for and the chiefs of counterterrorism, the Detective Bureau, the chief department, the patrol, they are all on board. It is the systems and structures and the moving barriers below. So 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. I will ask for metropolitan police to, im curious, numbers wise how many openly gay officers are on your force and your department as well . You just opened up a can of worms. I said. Roughly internalized homophobia is still a very real thing for cops. I think that Everyone Wants to be part of a team, part of the winning team right . But at what expense to be part of that team . The nypd does not even track Sexual Orientation or anything like that. For the first time ever, they are finally doing focus groups and things like that to kind of gauge the way queer people feel inside of the department. Because i would go to meetings all the time and we would get this data and we find that a large number of African American cops for 20 years, why is that . Maybe they feel that this is not a home for them. We do not even know. Our membership barriers varies as far as the nypd, we get maybe 100 fulltime, 150 fulltime non retired like active members a year. That is an incredible low number four 54,000 person agency. 36,000 sworn, and the other civilian. So we think, that 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. For the job. Because you have a conversation in the locker room are in 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. And if i were to say that i was going to go to the movies this weekend, with my boyfriend. Lets just say i dont have a boyfriend but whatever the case may be. In there its almost like the air gets sucked out of the room okay we get it hes gay and then if you make another reference, its like why is he always talking about. It youre just not used to hearing it. So there are a lot of loaded issues with that. So we have no idea to be honest with you. Its still taking. Place everybody wants to be part of the big blue family. When you look at Corporate America versus the Police Culture it is very different. And were talking about new york city. Law enforcement is a conservative profession, it is masculine in nature, and it is slow to change. It is different than america Corporate America in many ways. You know in washington d. C. Maybe 50 people that i could say are openly gay, and the rest of never disclosed to anyone. Because as brian said, here i am i have been on the front page of the washington post, i miss out as they come, but there are still situations in the job that i am in, were people dont know that im gay. They dont ask eye when it comes up as a matter of conversation, they have a life partner or something that discloses my Sexual Orientation, there is a look of shock. And street people dont have to deal with that. There is another reason though i think that bryant in touch upon, at least in washington d. C. Or perhaps another large cities to, here we have a phenomenal that call for the most part a lot of the cops dont feel the need to go to a liaison unit for support. Because it is a real comfortable place to work and to live and to be gay. So for many of them, while they are not out there 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 different thing. Well lately feel they feel they think theyre protected to. Theres a balance of that yes. The thing that most concerns me, that i have been dealing with, i was elected president i guess i started january in 2016, and what i find now what concerns me the most is that everybody im sure here knows that new york is known for affordable real estate right. laughs . We are being on that right. We have a lot of affordable housing. Could we see a trajectory of people that are living at home longer than they have you know and i could be wrong about this but, maybe at any point in history in the city. People are at home until they 35 or 36 years old, and what i have a lot of now 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 you know we have these counseling sessions, almost in my apartment and i know in the phone rings and its a certain person its a holiday, that i know they want to know if im visiting with my brother, or you know there like are you going to be around later i want to stop by. And i know they just need to get out of that toxicity. And this is a job with a lot of responsibility and a lot of power, and a lot of stress goods. And i really worry about some of these guys, and they had a really good scare last summer, were somebody posted something on facebook and it was off to the races. You know mobilization, we had cops at the parents house, cops here looking for this kopan luckily we were able to find him, and get to him and get in the help that he needed. You know. Thats a lot of stress. Well with stonewall 50 years ago, and david for your book you interviewed a Deputy Police inspector with the Morals Division. Talk a little bit about his perspective when you talk to him about the raids and the riots. Well thats a big subject. Because all i although i covered in my book, this aspect has not gotten out to the common history. Or 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 was that because the nap condition, and other things happening there in the late sixties, the new york Police Department was under a great deal of scrutiny at the time for corruption and other problems. And i think that is probably why he was moved against his wishes from oakland sorry from brooklyn, to manhattan and in charge of the morals police. So hes not sure when that transfer took place, but anyway the spring of that year. And very soon after that, he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. And im going to go into a little detail here, its not a commonly known history. His commanding officer, i think what the captain tells him that the new york Police Department, had an inquiry from interpol, that there were a lot of bombs on the streets of europe and they wanted nypd to investigate. So they found that the bonds were not counterfeit but they were stolen. But they were stolen from wall street, but a gay man who was under pressure of blackmail. That is why they stole the bonds. One of the main feet figures, at the stonewall inn, and he was gay and he ran a national blackmail ring, and that was about the mid sixties, for blackmailing all these thousands of people. Including prominent people like the head of the ema, the american medical association, and admiral in the navy, and then he never went to jail. He blackmail people to the tune of about 2 Million Dollars. Which is about 20 40 Million Dollars today. So i think he had the goods on Jay Edgar Hoover as well. So seriously, you know Jay Edgar Hoover was black mile blackmailed again by ed murphy. Royal and he had an apartment on the second floor, and ran an prostitution ring. And he used to waiters, to get information from the clients. Im sorry, the patrons of the stone wall club. So when the police investigated some of this blackmail ring was it around stonewall. And pine was ordered to shut it down. What happened is, only pine key and his copartner, its mostly secret. So only they knew about that part of the raid. And even the men and women from the morals squad, didnt know that they were rating to bust a blackmail ring. So that was the reason for the raid. Fascinating the different layers behind it. But they did the same thing that they almost did the rest of the kids that were in their, and they were busting a blackmail ring, and they were blackmailing wall street guy. You know taken their pictures, and then threatening them and saying were going to show your wife or your boss or whatever so they went in there with an, actual move a natural motive. It may have been the only gave our bust in history. But it was a good motive. And this was just because there were 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 with 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 in families and so forth, to look down on gay people and think that they are like others. Not like others. And then you know the people they would say couldnt own bars, because there was the moral clause. So the mob open these places, up without Liquor Licenses, they paid off the cops so you have an underground economy of bars serving gay people. By the way they are overcharging, they are gouging them. And then you have the cops coming in and busting it, because the mob is not paying off on time or not paying off right or you know just to shake up some gay people. All that comes out of the laws that were passed by the public can. By the voters that voted you know in the politicians that pass the laws. And then you have the police force, that treats groups different than white, generally cops as the other. If youre black or brown especially if youre diego. And so, by the time you mix that altogether, then you get whats become known as the stonewall riot. And the riot that theyre talking about, he really hit saturday night with the tpp f coming in with the shields of face shields and all that stuff. The just like in 1960, eight in the Democratic National convention it was a police riot. It gave people were on the street, they might have been blocking the street but you can move people on the street. But you dont move people along on the street, and expect them to cooperate when you put your face shields down and go at them with a night stick and start prodding them. Im curious how long did it take until the approach by police towards gay bars changed. In terms of reagan it raids and all that. It wasnt a matter of years or . What was it. There are couple things going on there theres a change in the new york city laws. There is also a change in the new york citys and the new york state, the way they regulated laws through Liquor Licenses. They finally gave a Liquor License to the first gave are, that was owned by gay people in about 1973. As it happens, i stumbled in to the stonewall riot on june 27th 1969 i was working at the Village Voice in 73. Thats when they came to me and said, listen i want to do a story on the mob and them having all these restaurants in the self village. And also, this guy came to her and said we want to open up the ballroom you know is a gay cabaret, and it was upon west broadway. We cant get a Liquor License. So she called me and introduce me to the sky and she said, what can we do about this. And i said im going to do a story about it but nothing is going to happen its the Village Voice its not the New York Times. So she said so what we do. And i said you know how story about how these cops never bus these restaurants, and theyre Holding Meetings with monsters on a friday night. So i went and wrote down license plates you know i love down the self village, i went around i wrote down license numbers of these double and triple parked limousines outside. And ended up being owned by gaby null and people like that. And mary got a cop she knew, and around the plates and found it who is meeting with these people in the restaurants. So i sat down and wrote a story, and saying the new york city wont issue a Liquor License to these upstanding gay citizens, but they give it to these gangsters. Mary took the story, and went up to liquor commissioner and, i named the commissioner as beverage control, and said this is the guy thats doing it. She went up there and on this desk on a monday and said this runs on wednesday unless you give them a Liquor License. And if you give them a Liquor License we wont run them. So my star did not run. And that was it. That broke the logjam. The next thing you knew, sweeney on 13th street got one and i did not pay for drinks for quite awhile. And no point were you afraid we were taking down these license plates and doing this . They did not see me taking down license plates. Im hoping. You realize this is being videotaped. Im sitting next to you. What i am saying though is that once gay people started opening gay bars, then the mob was not involved and get people were not paying off the cops and then give them a reason to breaking down on them. It started legitimizing them and it happened over 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 get people working towards the right to marry. And that started changing things. All of this happened over the last 50 years which is really pretty extraordinary when you think about it. It is extraordinary to me because i was there the night that was really the rosa Parks Movement moment for the gay movement. That was the night where people said im not going to the back of the bus, you wont bust our backs anymore. I have no idea at the time what i was looking at. I thought i was looking at gay rights, oh my god hes an address, the amazing thing was the cops were so incompetent that they would line up and chase the gay people down christopher street. The good people would run down grove and wave early and come up behind the cops and form a picket line. The cops turn around and see that and start chasing them that way. I ended up teaching a class on how not to do right control in the army based on this riot. They gave me a theater at fort carson and i taught battalions one after the other. I set up a blackboard and drew a map. I drew arrows of where the cops were and where they get people were and all that stuff and taught how not to control right. To a whole division of soldiers. That was an experience all to itself. That was one of the problems that Law Enforcement had in how a few treat people as in other, they will behave like and other. I want to talk more about the other but first i want to ask you a bit more about your liaison unit. The competent cops of today and what you guys do in terms of outreach with gay communities and straight for that matter. Im not able to do that. You have to go to his course. Exactly. 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 unfortunately it still exists in some part of the country, if i go to a Law Enforcement executive like a chief of police or lieutenant or street officers even, when i say who are your Lgbtq Community leaders . They say we do not have that here. If you have a community where you dont even think you have lgbtq people, do you think theyre being treated with dignity and respect and professionalism . That is not happening. 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 they have the right to speak up when they are not treated properly. That was step one. Step two is then changing culture within the Police Department. Bryant has spoken about how slow that is. We still have homophobes in Law Enforcement. We still have racists in Law Enforcement. We still have massaging us in london forsman. I do not know if we will ever get rid of that as long as human beings are allowed to be Police Officers, but what we are doing more and more is exposing Police Officers to different cultures. 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 activities they engage in . What are their rights . And making sure that the Police Officers understand that no different than any other community, if you violate what we trained you to do, then we will not protect you. There is no thin blue line when it comes that kind of misconduct and disrespect. And lastly, we are pretty proud because we think we go above and beyond in washington d. C. We are actually using Police Officers who are members of the community to engage where the Community Feels safe. That is a bit different than basic Community Policing. And basic Community Policing, you throw up a tent and invite everyone for hamburgers and hotdogs. Maybe you go to a parade and sing kumbaya together. We go into the tough places where the community is safe and know this is their space and we are saying, we are here with you, we are here to listen to you, and then eventually it becomes instead of oh my gosh the cops are here what is wrong . Its all the cops are here. That is brett, that is nicole, that is jim. When you change that dynamic and people welcome u. S. Police officers into their community or acknowledge that your members of it, that is when you can do a better job because it is all about preparing for that crisis and that trauma in the community so that you gain cooperation and things go more smoothly. Brian you see that to, how long does it take to build that report or trust if you will in certain communities . It takes a long time. laughs everything he just said is true, i do not want to repeat any of it but, there is some kind i do not know what it is, there is this thing where people are just afraid to engage with our community. Im an openly queer man and whenever i say our community, im not talking about the police, just to be clear on that. With our community, theyre really just never knew. My first real i guess awe shocks moment as part of the Police Department occurred on the morning of the post nightclub shooting. I had just come from the Detective Bureau for i was a biased crimes investigator. Commissioner oneill commissioner of the department. I was a month into his office, he pulled me out of the bureau to work for him. And a lot of things went through my mind when the calls started coming in very early and people to start autonomy to turn on the tv. The first thing they came into my mind is oh my god we will respond to this. I did not mean to orlando florida, the type of city that new york city is is that we respond to every incident. It does not matter if it happens somewhere else in the country or somewhere else in the world. Lets use the Jewish Community is an example. If we have a mass casualty incident or terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in pittsburgh. It was right around halloween right . October. Yeah. October. The Jewish Community knows that we are coming. They know that there is going to be a marked police car outside of the synagogue. They know that they can expect to see high visibility patrols with what we call a Hercules Team which is a squad of Emergency Service officers with heavy weaponry and a canine officer. We can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day based upon intelligence. The Jewish Community knows and they appreciate it. I was having a heart attack because i was like we are coming in this community has never seen this. So i called my tenant and the same morning we had the puerto rican day parade which is a Massive Police detail in new york city. I was going to go assist in that and i called the lieutenant and he said just do whatever you need to do. Just signed in, get the car and get the hell out there. My first stop was the Lgbtq Community center on 13th street in manhattan. I walked up to the desk, im walk im dressed like this. I usually have a tie on at work, i went casual today for you all. But i walked in and i said im a detective with the Police Department. We need to speak with whoever is in charge. I know it is a sunday morning but can you get someone on the phone for me . Five minutes later in a back room, you are on a Conference Call with the chief operating officer of the center. I never met him before and never did any outreach before. I was just running goal which is like an independent organization. We are a watchdog group. But now i am in this role where i need to work for the chief and the work for the department and i told this guy, first of all let me ask you if you want the security. And if you tell me know, the other part of that is it is going to come anyway. I have always been a bit of an outside the box thinker. I said why dont you do me a favor . Why dont you put an email out to everyone in your subscriber list saying the Police Department will be outside for a few weeks until we know what is going on. And then the rest of the day, going to brunch spots because we like branch. Its a big thing with us. But going in meeting with nightlife people. Over the next few days i was getting calls on my work phone and personal phone. Its like i was peddling some contraband. People are like are you the detective they can get us some security over here . I got your numbers from someone and they said you help them because people wanted the protection. It kind of the discomfort of some of their clients and service providers, that is where a Real Partnership has to exist. Where there has to be dressed. You cant just show up and give out key rings at a pride march and expect that everyone is going to love the police. We are nobodys friends. Im a realist. No one calls the police, you know what im saying, because they have extra tickets to the ball game. No one calls the police because theres a few beers left in the cooler after the barbecue. What do we get called 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. 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 ahead of things. They want the input. They dont want the you know we are the police and we know what we are doing. If that is your mindset, good luck. You will not have a very 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 coordination officer program in new york now where every sector or precincts are broken down into sectors. There are two cops that work there. And they have non committed radio time, where theyre out there going through the businesses in their sector and theyre supposed to meet with community leaders. They have email addresses, cellphones and people know they can call them. It is really changing the conversation out there. Thats encouraging, and on the encouraging note. We want to pause, and take some questions from you folks. We have a couple of microphones, anyone have any questions for any of our panelists please. Lets hear from you. We have some up there. Can you hear me . I was just wondering the there was some different experiencing being a gay male officer versus a lesbian officer, can you speak to that how your members report those things to you. Yes i think that we still live in a society where we sexualize, women. And if youre going to be paired up with a Lesbian Police officer, you know guys minds go wild. And theyre like well im so good, maybe i can get or. Then ill get her in the girlfriend. Its this mindset, that we still perceive game in, as weak. And if eminent, and not being able to handle themselves. And there are people that will test you. Carlos, i dont know if you know curl he was a detective in the Police Investigation unit, thats a serious unit. Because first of all the cases are all felonies. And when you impersonate Police Officer, or commit a crime. And the first question he got when he got to the office was, do you know how to fight . And i dont think weve asked those questions to of lesbian officers, or you know as a society we still sexualize women and thats a fantasy and thats allowed to perpetuate itself effect clear 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 in this profession. Because openly gay men are viewed as a feminine and week. The there are 100 stereotypes, we have lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians, and you cannot judge their ability in policing by the way they look. You dont train people and teaching people to breakthrough though stereotypes is the hard part. We have a question over there. Yes so you spoke a little bit about your story, presenting your story about these mob persuasions, as a way of persuading gay people to be allowed to own clubs. How do you feel that the publics desire for these stories, in the media has changed. Or the medias desires, for presenting these stories has changed over the years . Well its changed, the story about stonewall, was in the Village Voice. There was a story in the New York Post like that, in the daily news, and monday in the New York Times like that so. The Village Voice covered it. So now, there is a story this big about the Police Commissioner, and the new york style times, apologizing about storm law. There is been big stories about the stonewall anniversary. And you know the 50th anniversary is coming up. And all the parades, and that sort of thing but then theres been millions of stories about gays in the military. Millions of stories about gays being ought to be married. You know, gave people to a large extent have way entered the mainstream, compared to where they were in 1969. And the difference, and somebody was asking me recently, what is the big difference between then and now. And the big difference, that stonewall made, was everybody that was in the riot, in stonewall was out. They were on the street, and they look a and they were in a gay riot. So they were out. And after stonewall, more and more people started coming out. And as more and more people came out, more and more people realized, that hey my cousins gay. Or hey that couple that lives next door or not just you know roommates, they actually live together they are a family. They love each other. And, so when gay people are coming out affected families, and communities and relationships at work and it made everything better. Everything. And it has made coverage in the media as well. And its made what you see on tv better. Okay over here. High, so during the sixties when there was a lot of heavy policing, i read that the police had a lot of knowledge about the culture of the Gay Community, and you know this sort of under the radar bars, and they dont have the best connection, but they had a lot of Institutional Knowledge about the Gay Community. Do you think thats because the policing efforts, have done a lot towards the community, that the Institutional Knowledge and culture, has declined as a result of that. And is there a way to preserve, that without going through the same policing tactics. Well thats directed towards me . We were kind of hoping. Its a mystery. Not sorry just to answer your question. When there was heavy policing, there is just a lot more knowledge about the culture of the local gate communities by the Police Department. And when that policing dies down, does that sort of knowledge go away too. And if so how do you preserve that. I dont know tactics or whatever . Im not sure i agree with you though. I dont think that the police, had you know theres a lot of policing of the Gay Committee back in the sixties, but they did notion about the Gay Community. Perhaps what youre talking about is knowing how to interrupt a man. They knew where to go, and they had an idea of how game and dressed, and when they were out to royal socialize other game and, then have sexual partners, and they knew how to you know they would take their best looking Police Officers, and dress them in tight pants, and dress them kind of like game and dress, and and tyson in some of those areas. But thats really not a knowledge of the gate culture or for even a gay mentality. Its just very surface things. So i think that the, my impression is, and i havent been involved in Law Enforcement, is that probably Law Enforcement has been learning bit by bit, as other institutions from society has also been learning. You know whether its the military, or business of church, or schools that is my impression. Does that answer your question . Yet does. Thank you. If i could also, there is this wonderful thing out there called the internet now. And perhaps youve heard of it, and as big as neanderthal as we are as Police Officers, they know how to use it. And so what i mean by that is, sometimes despite of a lack of training, or lack of experience they have personal lives, and they have personal interests. And they are exploring all of the things that everyone else and 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 what we talked about, because events like stonewall. They wake people. It causes people to move in a better direction and progress to be made. So i dont know that some of you know i travel all over the world training cops, and im always surprised that there is somebody that doesnt know, the difference between bisexuality, and a transgender individual, or they dont even know what the term inter sexuality is. Some of you are going either no either. But we are trying to bring more more cops, but theyre like everybody else. We trying to train more of them but. We were talking about somebody representing new york city and somebody representing d. C. , you say you travel the country, im sorry about im curious about what the lgbtq communities like and in alabama another small parts of the country, you know how they are treated by police . Are the even on police radar . You talk about years ago, entrapment does that kind of things still happen in other parts of the country . You know that maybe is not allowed to happen in new york or d. C. So it must have been about 14 years ago, i told you i want to go ahead a pager back then, and my pager went off. And it was a code from North Carolina, i called it back and it was a deputy, and i swear to god his name was bob of something. He was a deputy sheriff, he was investigating one of those he slash she murders. That they had in North Carolina he had learned about my work from newspaper and the exit call this guy youre not making any progress on this he she murder the first thing i did was try to reach the individual but he did not know what that meant. We figured out he was talking about a transgender female who was murdered. I asked him, so tell me where did this occur . He told me. I said is that anywhere near your transgender stroll . I could hear the ocean. That was about it. He paused and he said what is that sir . Said where does the transgender prostitution happened . He said i dont have that here we dont have that here. I googled that area and searched on google and it did not take me very long. How about telegraph road do you know where that is . There was a pause and he said, sir that is where the Police Station is. I said will good you do not have far to go. What i want you to do is go out at the about the same time and those people wandering around the to see their, Start Talking to them about this murder. Three days alert later he called me and said, i closed the case. Just because he became aware that a community existed and how was the best way to engage them. That is how we are. In some parts of the country, they do not even acknowledge that gay people exist. We talk about training. Training is far reaching for goal because one of the things i have been reading over recently, this is the settlement from when the Gay Officers Action League suit the new york city Police Department in 1996. One of the things that came out of the settlement was goal was given the ability to train Police Officers in lgbtq sensitivity and awareness. That is looked like a lot of Different Things over the years but i mention carl because he is a gift to my 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 with the new york city anti violence project. He worked at the david get fun aids program at game mans health crisis. So he brings all this real world activist experience and education. So when he got involved with a goal, he kind of redid the curriculum to what it is today. It is very impressive. We do not going to do a training with cops, we do not spend a lot of time on the definitions. We do not spend a lot of time on the history. We give them to you. We do two things really. One is we give them a little bit of our personal coming out stories because we are cops training cops and they can see all these issues have affected the people that are standing in front of them giving them a block of instruction. So we have someone who was thrown out of her house in high school for being a lesbian who put herself through high school. Whose mother would not give her financial aid. She put herself through college. She was a police cadet and is now a put police sergeant. You give a cop a story kind of about you like, listen i went through all of this stuff so it is very real. We have cops that were involved in house and law that came up through house and law if you can believe. That is amazing in and of itself. But the other part of what we do is we were really doing implicit bias training before that was even a thing. We want people, we want the recruits especially, to understand where your ideas come from. You have been bombarded with messages since you were a child. Society tells you what is preferred and fair and impartial policing, when we talk about implicit bias, we put the Police Recruits in scenarios. And then we say, everyone in here is going to police fairly and impartially right . And all the hands go up, big smiles and grinning faces. Yes, we will be the fair and impartial police. So we graduate them now. We take an officer and say tonight, you have this post. Youre sergeant told you there has been a high propensity of robberies in this area. We want to keep people moving, it is inside a club district, we do not want cars stopping. There is no standing science so there is no reason for a car to be parking or stopping anyway. Keep the area clear. Okay. We tell the cup in the alleyway there is a vehicle parked. It does not have its lights on but it is running. The car the cop goes up to the vehicle in conducts an investigation and lo and behold he finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. We ask him what do you got . We have a bit of a chuckle. The cops engage a little bit and what you actually have is a penal law misdemeanor in the state of new york. You kind of asked them what are they really going to do . Some of them raise their hand and say i will issue a summons or i will lock them up or i will let them go. We play with this a little bit. Even get some who are honest. I know what youre gonna do i tell them, you will text an adjoining cop on a different post and say you wont believe what is happening right now. That is what you will do right . Everyone is laughing and having a good time. Then we graduate the cops again and put them in the exact same scenario and i say, now you come across that same car in the alleyway and it is a man getting oral sex from a man. What do you got . It is like the air gets sucked right out of the room. They do not know what the hell they have. But everybody just said they will be fair and impartial right . Every hand went up and every face was grinning. We were seeing keep. I tell them listen, if a guy is getting lucky in one scenario, then a guy is getting lucky in the edit 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 someones 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 and youre representing a couple million other honest people. People who have a tremendous amount of integrity and have 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 the heck it is you go, when you put on that uniform and put that shield on your chest you better treat everyone the same. Because you have to be the police for everyone, not just the people who look like you, not just the people who come from your ethnic or religious background or whatever the case may be. You have to be the place for everybody and do it fairly and impartially. That is with the Gay Officers Action League stands for. Thank you for your powerful perspective. All of you gentlemen, and the insights you had shared with us today. We cannot thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we have made in the decades. It has been fascinating to hear your stories and what is being done on the front lines. Anyone else had a question before we wrap up . Go ahead sir. Hopefully it is for brett. So urgent brett, could you tell us a little bit about how the g l el youve got started in washington and how cities around the country followed the lead . Have they done the same kind of institutionalization that we have had in d. C. . Excellent question. Here in washington d. C. , we did not have the same struggle that new york had and that it did not take lawsuits and really forcefully pushing our way into this. Our community worked with our Police Department and leadership to support the idea that the Lgbtq Community, back then it was called the game lesbian layers on unit, that officers were familiar enough with the community and able to engage Community Members in a safe space and safe way that the chief of police back then who was Charles Ramsey in 1989 said yes. It started in one of our districts. Charles ramsey realized quickly that it was something that should not be confined to just one Police District so he expanded it citywide. We are what we believe is the only fulltime police units. Meaning not just a Liaison Officer but multiple officers working fulltime in the community. Three parts to the mission. Outreach, the usual Community Policing stuff like going to events and pride festivals and meetings, singing kumbaya. Training and education, the important thing brian mentioned. Not just training and educating Police Officers because that is very important, we need to get them to understand that there are certain tools that they need to engage Community Members. But another part of our training and education is going the opposite direction training u. S. 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 in washington d. C. That we have continue continue to see our bias crimes increase. One of the reasons we celebrate the fact that our bias numbers go up is because we believe we are educating our citizens better and better every year to build better relationships that bias crimes that were occurring in the past are being reported now. The third part of the mission and im biased because i think it is the most important part of the mission, unlike other Community Policing, we are actually doing police work. The officials i work with and i not only go to the events and big classes, but when the pride parade was interrupted with what appeared to be an active shooter, it was these officers and those liaison units who were amongst the very first running through the crowd the opposite direction towards it. And so what Community Members saw was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniforms actually engaging in real police work and public safety. Yes we are helping other Police Departments around the world. Probably not a week goes by that we do not hear from other agencies about how they tailor this type of work to their Police Department. Whether it is designating an officer parttime, an officer fulltime or even creating a fulltime unit. One of the benefits we have is, in 2007, we won the harvard innovations and American Government award and part of that was a grant to help replicate the work that we are doing. We are proud to do that whenever we can to help other Police Departments anywhere in the world to the type of work we are doing. Not just the Lgbt Community but all other communities we work with. I hope i answered your question. I think we are about out of time. Again, thank you all for coming and gentlemen we cannot thank you enough. To