L.A. Settles Officers’ Suit, Vows to Fight Anti-Gay Bias : Police: Council to pay $770,000 in damages. New policy includes expansion of LAPD hiring practices.

In a sweeping lawsuit settlement, Los Angeles city officials have agreed to far-reaching changes in hiring and personnel practices to ensure that gay and lesbian police officers and other city workers are not harassed or discriminated against.

Approved Wednesday by the City Council in closed session, the settlement also calls for the reinstatement of former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Mitchell Grobeson and the payment of $770,000 in damages to Grobeson and two other officers who joined him in filing the suit against the city.

“This is a historic moment representing a radical change in the ongoing practices of the LAPD,” said Dan Stormer, one of Grobeson’s attorneys. “It signifies the end of the homophobia that existed under LAPD leadership under (former Chief Daryl F.) Gates.”

The final language of the settlement still must be adopted in court, but attorneys on both sides said they have agreed to a broad range of policy revisions covering recruitment, hiring and training that will be written into law governing all city departments. As outlined in a 15-page blueprint, they include:

* Police Department recruitment at gay community events and through the placement of advertisements in gay-oriented publications.

* Expanded training of police recruits and officers regarding the city’s anti-discrimination and harassment policies, appropriate ways of dealing with the gay and lesbian community, hate crime reports, people with HIV or AIDS, and proper behavior with gay co-workers.

* Prohibition of slurs, intimidation or comments that would create a hostile working environment for gay men and lesbians or people with HIV.

* Statements that violation of the city’s anti-discrimination policy amounts to serious misconduct that will be swiftly investigated and disciplined, including possible suspension or discharge.

* Elimination of any recruitment questions or tests that would reveal a person’s sexual orientation.

* Screening of anti-gay applicants so that they are dropped from the recruitment pool or required to participate in special sensitivity training.

“It’s very exciting,” said gay rights attorney Jon Davidson of the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent Grobeson in the early phases of the 1988 lawsuit. “The entire employment picture for both applicants and current employees who are lesbian and gay is being very significantly improved.”

Stormer credited Police Chief Willie L. Williams and City Councilman Michael Woo with clearing the way for the settlement--which he and others maintained never would have been possible under Gates.

“I believe that Chief Williams was willing to recognize that this lawsuit presented an opportunity for extending a hand of friendship to the gay and lesbian community,” said Woo, who has gained broad gay support in his run for mayor in this spring’s city elections. “A settlement was a way to show that the old guard had departed from the scene and that new leadership is open to defining a more visible role for gay and lesbian officers in the Police Department.”

Williams’ staff said the chief had no comment. But soon after his arrival last year, he made an effort to thaw police relations with the gay community, meeting with gay and lesbian leaders who had long complained that Gates set a tone of hostility toward homosexuals that permeated the Police Department--despite city ordinances outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“What we’re seeing brought into Police Department policy are some of the vaguer promises that Chief Williams has made at community meetings,” Davidson said. At a news conference in Stormer’s Pasadena law offices, Grobeson, now a community services officer with the San Francisco Police Department, praised Williams for the change.

“As long as Chief Williams is willing to take a position, it says something for the whole department,” Grobeson said. “Starting tomorrow, you will no longer see people who will lie about their girlfriend or boyfriend,” Grobeson added. “They will be able to say, ‘I’m a good cop. My sexual orientation is none of your business. I’m gay. What’s your problem?’ ”

Gates on Wednesday admitted he had tried to block the settlement during his tenure as chief, saying he particularly objected to demands that the department establish an aggressive outreach program to recruit gay and lesbian officers.

In a 1982 interview with The Times, Gates said he personally thinks homosexuality is “unnatural” and professionally is convinced that gay officers will never fit into an urban police force. “Who’d want to work with one?” he sighed at one point in the interview.

But in a telephone interview Wednesday, Gates said he has no prejudices against gays and lesbians, and his objections to the settlement had more to do with principle.

“I’ve never been homophobic,” Gates said. “Talk to any of the good gay officers--and we have some really fine ones--and they’ll tell you the chief isn’t homophobic.”

But he said he thinks recruiting gay officers on the basis of their sexual orientation is unworkable and wrong.

“You’ll never convince me that’s the right thing to do,” he said. “If you have to recruit gays, you’ll have to recruit heterosexuals too. Pretty soon, we’re going to be out there recruiting Presbyterians.”

The former chief also termed Grobeson “a whiner and a complainer.”

Grobeson anticipated coming back to Los Angeles within six weeks to resume his job but said he has no expectations about the assignment he will receive.

Grobeson and Los Angeles Police Officer Sue Herold--one of two officers who joined the lawsuit anonymously--characterized themselves as “cautiously optimistic” about the impact of the new city laws. Herold, 30, said she will watch to see if treatment of gays and lesbians changes now that anti-harassment policies will be more strictly enforced.

“Officers don’t like to be disciplined,” said Herold, 30. “It causes problems.” But she added, “I’m looking forward to staying with a department that I never wanted to leave, really.”

Herold became a Los Angeles police officer in December, 1984. Her sexual orientation was revealed by another officer in the Police Academy who recorded a private conversation between Herold and her lover, she said.

Herold said she was called disparaging names and, like Grobeson, failed to receive backup from other officers on occasion.

After the city attorney issued a 1989 memo regarding discrimination against gays and lesbians, conditions improved, she said. Overtly hostile behavior diminished but, she said, she began to be disciplined for minor infractions for which other officers were not penalized.

During his stint on the Los Angeles police force, Grobeson said, he was repeatedly harassed because of his sexual orientation. He was given an “AIDS survival kit,” his locker was glued shut and a photo of movie star Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS, was pasted on his locker door. He said he was also repeatedly denied backup officers, including one instance when he entered a tenement building and confronted 30 gang members. In 1988 he resigned from the force and filed the lawsuit, charging that he had been forced out by the harassment.

The other officer involved in the suit, a heterosexual married man who fellow officers mistakenly thought was gay, is on stress leave from the department and did not appear at the news conference.

Times staff writer Shawn Hubler contributed to this story.