LAPD OKs Recruitment Booth at Gay Pride Festival : Police: But Chief Gates draws criticism by saying he is opposed to the wearing of uniforms by homosexual officers who will staff the table.

Only hours after gay activists hailed Los Angeles Police Department officials for allowing a police recruiting booth at a gay pride festival this weekend, they found themselves angry anew at their old nemesis, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

The reason: Gates declared that he is opposed to gay and lesbian Police Department members wearing their uniforms while staffing the booth at the West Hollywood event.

“The matter of wearing the uniform was not discussed with me and I am opposed to it,” Gates said.

The chief’s statement, issued by spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon, came shortly after gay activists heralded the recruiting effort as an important step in improving fractious relations between the police and the homosexual community.

“I’m afraid to say it’s typical for Daryl Gates,” said Jon Davidson, a specialist in gay rights with the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is a man who has previously said about hiring gay police, ‘Who’d want to work with one?’ ”

Davidson said that “by prohibiting officers from appearing in uniform at the festival, he is again showing his true colors.”

Miki Jackson, a member the Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force, described Gates’ objections as petty. “I don’t think he would object to a uniformed officer doing recruiting at a Martin Luther King Day. But if they’re going to recruit at the gay pride festival, then they can’t.”

Department policy, Nixon said, generally discourages officers from wearing uniforms off-duty. But he said the Police Commission allows officers to wear uniforms while moonlighting as security guards at Coliseum and Sports Arena events.

“The exceptions are very limited and then it becomes a matter of case-by-case approval,” he said.

Nixon said the officers should not feel discouraged from recruiting at the festival or from distributing job leaflets provided by Police Department officials.

Gates, Nixon said, was not available for further comment.

The controversy comes at a time when the department and Gates are under scrutiny for a litany of alleged abuses. The attention follows the widely publicized beating of Rodney G. King. The Christopher Commission, appointed to review police practices, has heard lengthy testimony from gays alleging brutality, harassment and discrimination by the department.

Gays also have been sharply critical of Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon, who has been accused of allowing his fundamentalist Christian views to unduly influence his duties. Vernon, a police chaplain, has sermonized against homosexuality and has argued against the hiring of gays by the department.

Earlier Wednesday, activists were praising police officials who apparently had sanctioned the proposal of gay Police Department members to staff a recruitment booth at the 1991 Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebration, which begins Saturday. The Los Angeles Daily News reported Wednesday that officers would be able to wear their uniforms at the booth.

Davidson called police officials’ actions “really incredibly significant” in light of the department’s anti-gay reputation. Gay activists also praised the courage of gay officers--only one of whom has thus far disclosed her homosexuality publicly--for initiating the recruitment effort.

The Sheriff’s Department made such a recruiting effort at last year’s gay celebration.

Torie Osborn, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood, had called the department’s support of recruitment “a monumental first step” in improving relations between the police and the gay community.

But after learning of Gates’ statement on uniforms, Osborne said, “It doesn’t surprise me. . . . I think it shows there is continued homophobia at the top. It’s nice to know some of the people below Mr. Gates are getting to be a little more progressive on the gay issue.”

Gates’ comment, Davidson said, “shows there are real problems with getting a Police Department that will not discriminate and will comply with the law as long as it continues to be headed by Daryl Gates.”

The controversy arises only days after Officer Sue Herold of the Hollywood Division revealed in the gay publication Vanguard that she is a lesbian. Herold, believed to be the first active-duty department member to publicly reveal a homosexual orientation, had been a previously unnamed co-plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the department by former police Sgt. Mitch Grobeson, who claimed he was threatened, harassed and forced out of the department by fellow officers who suspected that he was homosexual. Efforts to reach Herold were unsuccessful.

Although plans for the recruitment booth have become public, gay officers remained reluctant to disclose their identities on Wednesday, gay activists said.

Even before Gates’ statement was issued, the gay officers were apprehensive about media coverage of their actions, said David M. Smith, a spokesman of the 1991 Gay and Lesbian Celebration.

Activists said they were optimistic that, despite the controversy and officers’ nervousness, the recruitment effort would continue.

Sam Ciccone, a former New York police sergeant who founded the New York-based Gay Officers Action League (GOAL), said gay Los Angeles officers are part of an effort to organize a Los Angeles-area group to be known as Pride Behind the Badge/GOAL.

Ciccone said his conversations with Los Angeles officers indicated that they would meet with department brass today. Nixon said he was unaware of any such meeting.

Ray Rosborough, a San Francisco sheriff’s deputy and a member of the gay Golden State Peace Officers Assn., said gay officers in the Bay Area typically do not wear uniforms when recruiting at Bay Area gay events.

Officers in uniform, he pointed out, are more likely to be asked to assist the public with a law enforcement problem.