AN UNEASY EXISTENCE : Dealings With Garden Grove Police Are Better, but Gays Wonder Whether It Can Last

Along a five-mile stretch of Garden Grove Boulevard between Beach Boulevard and Haster Street, wedged between all-night adult bookstores, Vietnamese restaurants and martial arts studios, is the largest concentration of gay bars in Orange County.

Despite the rising incidence of AIDS and a long tradition of vehement anti-gay sentiment in the surrounding lower-middle-class Garden Grove neighborhoods, most of these raucous nightspots are prospering, drawing large crowds in glitter and jeans and leather, night after night. Until the spring of 1985, Mac’s Landing was one of those bars.

It closed June 1, 1985, after a month of police activity that its owners, Don and Nancy McGuire, described in a federal lawsuit as harassment. Police parked their patrol cars in front of the bar for long periods and photographed customers entering and leaving, they said, and eventually, the bar’s business dwindled until it was forced to close. Last month, a federal jury in Los Angeles found that police had engaged in a pattern of harassment and ordered the City of Garden Grove to pay the McGuires $110,000.

Hope Trend Will Continue

Such harassment has been commonplace in the area for years, gay leaders say, adding that it is only since the Mac’s Landing case went to trial that relations between Garden Grove police and bar customers have begun to improve. They hope the trend will continue, but they fear the odds are against it. Problems with police, they say, are only a microcosm of a larger conflict.

“We’re seeing a rise in racial prejudice and hatred all over this country, and a rise in homophobia, practically brought on by the concern over AIDS and fueled by right-wing organizations,” said Laguna Beach Councilman Robert F. Gentry, the county’s only openly gay elected official.

Orange County gay leaders often single out the Garden Grove Police Department when complaining about past and present incidents of police harassment. Police Chief Francis Kessler refuses to discuss the subject because the Mac’s Landing case is on appeal.

But Garden Grove Police Capt. John Robertson says his department doesn’t deserve its reputation of harassing gays, and he disputes the contention that anyone is trying to impose morality on anyone else.

“I don’t believe we are trying to regulate homosexuality,” he said.

Rather, Robertson says, the police find themselves caught in the middle, between local residents who are outraged by what they view as lewd activity in public places, and gay men and women who believe they have a right to openly gay life styles.

He recalls a series of incidents of vandalism more than five years ago at the headquarters of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County, then located on Euclid Street in Garden Grove. Rocks and bricks were thrown. Windows were broken. There were several arson attempts, all over a period of several months.

Police believed that removing a sign marking the location as a gay center would alleviate the situation, but the tenants refused.

‘Any Other Citizen’

“The people at the center were complaining that not enough was being done to investigate these incidents,” Robertson said. “At the same time, we had to explain to other angry citizens who wanted the gays out of there because the center was near a school. It put us in the position of explaining that these people also had a right do whatever they wanted just like any other citizen.”

Eventually, however, the center moved to a location on Garden Grove Boulevard. No sooner had the building on Euclid been vacated than it was firebombed.

Gay activist Andrew Exler, while believing that relations between Garden Grove police and gays have improved, has a different view from Robertson’s of recent history.

Exler recalls a public meeting in 1983 at which Garden Grove Councilman Raymond T. Littrell, complaining about gay activity in public, said cryptically: “If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it is a duck. Shoot it.”

At the meeting, Littrell had expressed concern about increasing gay activity after, he said, he had noticed a male motorist stop and pick up another man on a Garden Grove street corner. Littrell declines to discuss the statement because the Mac’s Landing case is on appeal, and the statement was introduced as evidence during the trial.

Verbal Harassment

Although he hasn’t seen it happen for a while, Exler says it was not that long ago that verbal police harassment of gays was commonplace.

“I remember I left a gay bar with another man, and a police car pulled up and the officers started whistling at us,” he said. “You know, wolf whistles, and making remarks about fags. And this wasn’t 10 or 15 years ago. It was around 1981.”

Today, however, police attitudes toward the gay community have matured from “outright hostility” to subtle harassment, says Werner P. Kuhn, executive director of the Garden Grove-based Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County.

It was about a year ago that Garden Grove police initiated stringent and frequent inspections of gay bars, looking for health, safety and criminal violations, say members of the gay community. It was not unusual for gay bars to be inspected at least three times a week, said Christopher Holloway, manager of the Fraternity House tavern.

After the Mac’s Landing case went to trial, Holloway said, the frequency of those inspections dropped to once a month.

Record Police Visits

Fraternity House employees continue to record all police visits to the bar, writing down the officers’ badge numbers and vehicle license plate numbers to document police actions.

Gay leaders dispute Robertson’s contention that relations with police have improved dramatically since Kessler, a former Tucson, Ariz., police administrator, became the Garden Grove chief in 1976. They say the problem generally is limited to a few overzealous officers, but they hold the Police Department’s leadership responsible for the actions of those few.

“I believe that 70% of all police officers probably could care less about gay bars and gay people,” Kuhn said. “So we’re dealing with a small number of people, who with police leadership allow these things to happen.”

But the fact that the vast majority of police officers are not guilty of harassment doesn’t affect the barrier of fear many gays perceive between themselves and police, Kuhn says.

Cases Go Unreported

He contends that many incidents of gay bashing, including verbal, physical and psychological harassment, go unreported and are increasing.

“Why should we go and report crimes to our oppressors, especially when we’re treated as criminals?” he said.

It is estimated, Kuhn said, that 10% of Orange County’s 2.1 million residents are gay. A common goal expressed by gay and progressive police leaders alike when asked about relations between police and gays is the integration of those gay residents into the community as a whole, Kuhn says.

Kuhn and others praise the relationship that has developed between the gay community and the Laguna Beach Police Department.

“Gay people are a part of the fabric of Laguna Beach, and they’re not treated any differently than, say, senior citizens, members of the Chamber of Commerce or others,” Laguna Beach Councilman Gentry said.

Substantial Base

Laguna Beach officials recognize that the city’s estimated 5,500 adult gay residents, in a city of 18,469, represent a substantial residential base, Gentry says.

Gentry and Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil Purcell agree that photographing customers outside gay bars is not the best use of city manpower.

“Not only would we not allow it in Laguna Beach,” Gentry said, “But we have been working very hard to do just the opposite.”

Purcell points to a program he initiated in 1980 to encourage discussion between police and gay leaders. He said pre-employment screening and police seminars are used to heighten officers’ awareness of and sensitivity toward gay issues. During the summer, gay volunteers accompany police officers on foot patrols.

“My officers know that I don’t care to read about or be a part of anybody having poor relations with different segments of our community,” Purcell said.

Exchanges of Idea

Access to police administrators, open communication and participating in exchanges of ideas are the keys to progressive law enforcement in Orange County, gay leaders say.

In Fullerton, for example, gays and police relied on those key elements to lessen tensions after police cracked down on gay activity in the city’s Hillcrest Park in 1984, said Patricia Callahan of the Election Committee of the County of Orange (ECCO), a four-year-old, gay-oriented political group.

Rather than protests, breakfast meetings were held with gays and civic leaders and Police Chief Martin Hairabedian Jr., Fullerton Police Sgt. Charles (Bud) Lathrop says.

“It provided for a good healthy exchange,” said Lathrop. “After the meeting, we invited gay leaders to future meetings to present the views of the gay community to the straight community.”

Many people who didn’t want gays included in such civic discussions later praised the department, Lathrop says.

“We want to make our jobs easier and at the same time make their lives more comfortable,” he said. “We also told them they’re not above the law, but that we would enforce the law equally.”