Gay Police Come Out as LAPD Recruiters : Law enforcement: They set up booth at Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebration in West Hollywood. Wachs hails event as ‘historic and monumental occasion.’

Linette Vasquez saw her first policewoman at age 5 and knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“Now I have to put an application in and hope for the best,” Vasquez, now 21, said after meeting with Los Angeles police recruiters Saturday. “It’s a big step.”

Her dream isn’t unusual. What is extraordinary is that Vasquez is pursuing her goal as an openly homosexual woman with the help of openly homosexual police officers. She was one of the first prospects to stop by a Los Angeles Police Department recruitment booth at this weekend’s Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebration in West Hollywood.

“We’ve had about 20 (inquiries) so far,” Officer Kelly Shea said an hour after the recruitment booth opened for business. “Whether they’re sure or not we don’t know.”

In an event City Councilman Joel Wachs hailed as “a historic and monumental occasion,” four uniformed LAPD members--officers Shea, Karen Kos and Sue Herold and reserve officer Paul Butler--took questions and passed out recruitment material to the public. The event represented an official coming-out party for Los Angeles’ gay law enforcement officers and a dramatic departure from a longstanding LAPD policy that had forbidden recruitment targeted at the gay community.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Wachs said in a press conference outside the booth. “Change never comes from the top down . . . and you’re the ones who made it happen.”

A crowd of onlookers cheered and whooped their approval. And Rodolfo Hernandez, a 25-year-old Echo Park resident, picked up some employment brochures.

“I’m interested,” Hernandez explained simply. He said that, as a gay man, he was well aware of the LAPD’s reputation for homophobia, yet respected the people who do such a dangerous and necessary job. Seeing openly gay police officers in uniform made an impression.

“I think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done,” Hernandez said. “It looks like the LAPD is making some changes.”

More gay officers were expected to staff the booth later Saturday and today. Membership applications for Pride Behind the Badge--a newly formed organization of gay law enforcement personnel in Los Angeles--were distributed along with brochures that promoted careers in police work, encouraged the reporting of hate crimes and sought information regarding the unsolved slaying of a man last seen leaving a gay nightclub.

The LAPD booth was getting far more response than a Sheriff’s Department operation a few stalls down. The Sheriff’s Department has recruited at the festival in recent years, but gay activists complain the outreach effort is insufficient.

No members of the Sheriff’s Department have publicly disclosed a homosexual orientation. In a recent interview, a member of Pride Behind the Badge who identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy said fears of anti-gay attitudes within the Sheriff’s Department are the reason.

Police recruitment targeting the gay community, a routine practice in New York and San Francisco for several years, has been sought by Los Angeles gay activists for 15 years. It only happened now, Wachs said, because a handful of gay officers stepped forward, acknowledged their sexual orientation and initiated the recruitment effort as volunteers. The officers and members of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force persuaded police brass to OK the off-duty recruitment effort.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has long maintained that the LAPD in no way discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. But gay activists have no less ardently portrayed the city’s police force as an institution that is intolerant of gays and lesbians.

In police review hearings prompted by the widely publicized beating of Rodney G. King, gay activists have accused the police of discrimination, harassment and brutality against gays. Former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Mitch Grobeson is suing the LAPD, alleging that he was harassed off the force by officers who correctly suspected he was gay. Herold, who last week became the first active-duty LAPD member to publicly acknowledge her homosexuality in a press interview, is also a plaintiff in the suit.

Gates incurred the wrath of gays most recently on Wednesday when he objected to gay officers’ intentions to wear their uniforms during the recruitment effort. The next day, after an hourlong discussion with Wachs, the chief relented.

Wachs said he appreciated Gates’ actions. The councilman also disputed media accounts that the chief was making a one-time exception. “To me this was inevitable, and there is no turning back,” Wachs said. “It will be a non-issue in a few years.”

The stormy political debate over the LAPD and Gates’ future stood side by side with the festival. As Shea, Kos, Herold and Butler chatted with potential officers, gay activists in the next booth collected signatures for a petition to recall Gates. “We can get a lot of signatures this weekend,” said Susan Haag of the Committee to Remove Daryl Gates.

Whether the LAPD can get new recruits was the stated concern of police reservist Paul Butler. Officers weren’t about to discuss politics.

“We’re not doing the media,” Butler said. “We’re here to recruit today.”

Butler emphasized that--at least in his experience--the LAPD’s reputation for discrimination and harassment of gays seems exaggerated. He pointed out that he told police interviewers from the start that he was gay.

“I have felt no discrimination,” Butler said. “I did not find I was in any way harassed. Others may have other experiences. But’s that’s mine.”