Resistance to Gay Cops Defeats the Police Mission : Bias: LAPD recruits minorities and out-of-towners; why isn’t the homosexual community welcome to “protect and serve”?

The current debate in the Los Angeles City Council over settlement terms of a $5-million lawsuit brought by former LAPD Sgt. Mitchell Grobeson should be a milestone for the police and the gay community, a historic opportunity for the council to effect fundamental changes in the Police Department’s treatment of gay cops and gay citizens.

One of the LAPD’s finest, Grobeson left the force because his life was threatened by fellow officers because he is gay. He has thrown down the gauntlet: Either the LAPD changes or the suit goes forward.

The LAPD has long been indifferent to pleas from the gay community regarding several issues touching their lives. Chief Daryl F. Gates has taken the position that the department doesn’t recognize gay men and women as members of a distinct community because city law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation. In his official view, gays don’t exist. There’s bitter irony in a law enacted for the protection of gays being used against them.

We live in a pluralistic society and the gay community is a part of it--and not a small part, either. The West Hollywood Gay Parade is the third-largest parade of any kind in the state, outnumbered only by Pasadena’s Rose and Doo-Dah parades. This year, it attracted 300,000 gays.

While gays are a thread that runs throughout the rich fabric of cultures, creeds and lifestyles that defines Los Angeles today, many have chosen to live in clearly recognizable neighborhoods, just as many blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews and other minorities do. Several of these gay neighborhoods--most notably, parts of Silver Lake, Hollywood, Studio City and Venice--are ill-served by the LAPD.

If these areas were populated predominantly by Latinos, would Latinos be actively discouraged from protecting and serving their own neighborhoods? Wasn’t one of the lessons of Watts that the virtually all-white police force came to be seen, justifiably, as an occupying army? And hasn’t the LAPD been aggressive in seeking Asian recruits to better serve Koreatown and Chinatown?

The same recruiting and deployment standards that apply to minority neighborhoods should apply to the city’s gay areas. This is crucial, considering the number of gays being assaulted--and some killed--by gay-bashers in those areas.

The discrimination by the LAPD against recruiting, hiring and advancing gays does not square with the modern police policy of community-based law enforcement. In 1987, for example, the New York City Police Department requested the help of the Gay Officers Action League, an organization of gay cops, in a recruiting drive. In taking advantage of this valuable human resource, New York police not only saved money on recruitment but also sent an important message: that police work, a public function, is open to every citizen.

Similarly, the Boston and Atlanta police departments advertise police examinations in gay newspapers. The San Francisco police advise departments across the nation on gay outreach. The San Diego police take a booth each year at the annual gay fair to distribute recruiting literature. Here in Los Angeles County, the Sheriff’s station in West Hollywood has taken steps to include gays in law enforcement.

Mayor Tom Bradley, himself a former cop, has long supported the gay community’s effort to get the LAPD to open its doors. But Chief Gates’ intransigence instead has exposed the taxpayers to a $5-million lawsuit, when the cost-effective move would be to adopt the enlightened policies of more progressive cities.

The LAPD has recruited in Boston, Detroit, New York and elsewhere in America, while taking great pains to oppose recruiting from a sizable resource in its own back yard. Surely among 300,000 gays at the annual West Hollywood event there are men and women as talented as Mitchell Grobeson (he was first in his class at the Police Academy). All it would take is a positive change in attitude and policy at the LAPD: to reach out to gay men and women, offer them this positive career option, and make an effort to provide them with the same fair and community-sensitive police service as other minority neighborhoods receive.

No one should have a monopoly on law enforcement. Equal protection under the law means little unless it includes equal participation.