Gay Police Officer Who Sued LAPD Over Bias Is Reinstated

Five years after resigning from the Los Angeles Police Department because of alleged threats and harassment over his homosexuality, Mitchell Grobeson made a victorious return to the department Monday, saying he believes the force has changed for the better.

Grobeson’s reinstatement as a sergeant follows the February settlement of a landmark lawsuit that alleged a pattern of discrimination in the department against homosexuals.

At a brief swearing-in ceremony, Grobeson accepted back his silver-and-gold badge and then left to attend to the paperwork required of any returning officer.

Grobeson said he felt both happiness and trepidation about returning to the LAPD. “It’s a combination of returning home and confronting the enemy face to face,” he said. “Many of those officers who endangered my life are still here.”

But he added that he was heartened that the majority of officers he met Monday greeted him warmly. As he walked the hallways, he said, he felt a world of difference from the last time he was on the force.

“I am proud that the city of Los Angeles has moved forward to welcome me back,” Grobeson said. “I hope to see the day when sexual orientation is a total non-issue.”

Grobeson credited Police Chief Willie L. Williams with fostering a more tolerant atmosphere.

“The attitude has completely changed,” he said. “No whispers, no nothing. There are some looks, but they won’t say anything.”

Grobeson filed his lawsuit in 1988, accusing fellow officers and superiors of conspiring to force his resignation through threats and intimidation.

“There’s a police mentality that there is a whole group of second-class citizens who don’t have rights that other people have,” Grobeson said at the time. “At the very bottom of that list of second-class citizens are gays.”

Grobeson claimed in his suit that he was once identified at roll call as a “faggot” and found the word “Beware” scrawled on his car parked in the police lot.

On several occasions, he said, officers did not to come to his aid in dangerous situations. “I had to quit,” he told the Times in 1988. “I didn’t have a choice unless I wanted to die.”

Grobeson, the top cadet in his academy class, served seven years on the force before resigning. He won two formal City Council commendations for his police work.

Even in the midst of his suit, Grobeson maintained that the LAPD was “the finest force in the country.”

He had a different opinion, however, about former Police Chief Daryl Gates, whom he once described as a criminal. Grobeson believed Gates had violated the city ordinance barring discrimination against homosexuals.

Gates, in an interview after the settlement, called Grobeson “a whiner and a complainer,” adding, however, that he harbored no prejudice against homosexuals.

After leaving the LAPD, Grobeson joined the San Francisco Police Department as a patrol officer, although he said he always hoped to return to Los Angeles.

“My whole life is down here in Los Angeles,” he said recently. “I dedicated seven years of my life to being a Los Angeles police officer and it was robbed from me. This is an opportunity to get it back.”

Lt. John Dunkin, spokesman for the LAPD, said that after a two- to three-week reorientation at the Police Academy, Grobeson will become a field supervisor in the department’s West Los Angeles Patrol Division.