cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. up next on american history tv, a discussion on the 1969 police raid on the stonewall inn in new york city and how it sparked the gay rights movement. this is from the national law enforcement museum in washington, d.c. well, it's my pleasure and honor to be back with you and back with as we stream as well. we're looking back on 50 years, where we were 50 years ago at the stonewall riots and how far we've come, the changes that have been made and the changes still to come, too. before we get started, i would like to introduce our esteemed panel, if we can. starting with david carter, the author of "stonewall" the riots that sparked the gay revolution, the basis for american experience, the film stonewall uprising which won a peabody

award. also with u.s. today is detective brian downy, the president of the gay officers action league goal of new york which is addressing the needs and issues and concerns of the lgbt community. also on hand with us today is lieutenant brett parson, district native. how many years on the force? >> almost 26. >> 26 years. and he manages, you should know, the department's lesbian gay, bisexual transgender liaison unit here in d.c. and mr. prescott, a journalist, novelist, screen writer as well and columnist for salon. so thank you all for taking part in this today. i'm looking forward to learning a lot and looking back with you through your eyes and perspectives on where we were 50 years ago. it's kind of hard to believe. david, i would like to start with you, if we can. what was new york like?

what was america like, for gay, lesbians, transgender citizens before the stonewall riots? what was it like for the lgbt community? >> well, it's really counterintuitive because there's a common tendency, at least in this country, to assume that the further we go back in history generally the worst things are going to be. but, actually in the whole history of -- and the entirety of u.s. history the '60s and '50s were probably the very worst time for lgbt people. that's because there have been a period of liberalization in the 1920s. we know the 1920s was generally liberal period. but with the great depression coming along, that seemed to begin a clamp down on -- i'm just going to use the term gay people to umbrella and use the term gay people. and then after the war, we

entered the, what could be called a red scare. and this i think was the main reason that there was so much more repression after world war ii. so, for example in new york city, the height of arrests of gay men actually occurred in 1966, where at that time you had on average 100 homosexual men being arrested in new york city every week. so, you know, while the 1960s were a period of, you know, we think of the time of expanding liberty, openness, it was really opposite for our people. and the -- another big force that was making that happen was the use of psychiatry. sigmund freud his view of

homosexuality was negative, it was not very negative. he saw the ideal adaptation for any adult that was heterosexual. he did not think it was a severe pathology. and america was the first country to really embrace freud. and when the freudian approach to psychology was embraced by this country, american psychologists think very much under the influence of the military in world war ii, they -- it was the american psychiatrist who really tended to pathology jiez homosexuality severely. and so, you know, there were laws that you could be put in mental institution versus -- i mean, not freely. that could be imposed upon you. and there people -- men were castrated, la botmys performed on them, shock therapy and other

kinds of treatments that were meant to change them from being homosexual to heterosexual or make them asexual. and just the laws just kept multiplying all together, you know. from one state to one institution to another. so, the way -- our number one historian of homosexuality in america from a legal point of view, bill eskrige, the 1950s and 1960s gay people really lived in a state of suffocation. it was a terrible time. >> i wanted to go back to that -- the day of the raids and the riots. you were actually at stonewall inn, is that right? take us back what it was like to be there. >> well, the way -- it was accidental for me. i had just graduated from west point, believe it or not. i was spending my pre-going into

the army leave living in new york and i was walking from the loft i was living in down to broad street to the lion statement which was two doors down from the stonewall and i turned the corner off of waverly street off of christopher street and there it was right in front of me. there was a couple police cars pulled up on the street. and the bus had been gone probably half an hour, hour before and they were starting to bring out people in cuffs, put them in the police cars. and a crowd had gathered across the street and they were watching some of the people across the street had gotten out of the stonewall as the cops came in, either out the back door or around the cops and out the front door or somehow. and then the word had spread what was going on on christopher street. christopher street was the heart

and soul of the gay community in new york. and there were a lot of gay bars and places that gay people had dinner and so forthright nearby. they started -- people started walking over to see what was going on. and so what happened was, you know, the cops just like was said, the cops busted gay bars all the time. but what typically happened was gay people would come out of the bars with cuffs on and cover their faces and go into the paddy wagons or cars and they didn't want to be recognized. people had jobs. they worked for banks or advertising firms or whatever and they thought they would lose their jobs or be exposed to their wives if they were married or whatever. and that's what the police were used to. well, they busted the stonewall

and the stonewall is known for serving underage people. and it had a sound system in the back room and there was dancing and it was kind of a wild place. then people they busted in the stonewall weren't like that. they didn't have jobs. they didn't have anything to lose. a lot of them were 17 and 18 years old. and when they came out of the bar, they were posing and waving to their friends and calling out and saying, you know, come down and can you get my bail and acting like it was, you know -- there was nothing to it. they had been busted before and it didn't bother them and the cops didn't like that. >> they didn't have that fear like so many before. >> they didn't behave like coward, frightened gay people. the cops didn't like it. and the cops didn't like them standing and posing and waving. so the crowd started -- the cops started pushing them with their night sticks and shoving them roughly into cars and the crowd

started reacting to it and yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at first and calling them pigs. it sort of went south from there. right after i got there was when all the throwing and so forth started. >> and this went on through the night and then was it the next night where you had hundreds if not thousands come back. >> yeah. the next night was the night that the tactical patrol force was sent in. there were hundreds on the street, if not a couple thousand. and it went on for -- on friday night it didn't go on for real long because the bust took place. they tried to get them in the cars. when the gay people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops, the cops retreated and went inside the stonewall. i was outside. that is when they broke the front window, threw things through the window, started a

fire, took a -- >> parking meter? >> parking meter and used it to ram the door and that sort of thing. and then the cops re-enforcements came from sixth precinct and scattered the crowd and the cops came back out and, you know, within a couple of hours it was over. but saturday night went on for hours. >> brian, i want to ask you because it's been in the news, last week your commissioner, commissioner o'neal issued an apology on behalf of nypd for the raids. tell us -- give us a little bit of insight into that apology and goal. what was the response from goal? how do you view that apology? >> i take the apology kind of for what it is, an apology. i don't read much behind it for a number of different reasons.

but mainly because it was a moment that nobody thought would ever happen. and i think if you know anything about commissioner o'neal, who i know quite well, he's probably the first maybe humanitarian police commissioner we've had in new york city. he's not this mold of this rock star kind of police commissioner, you know. we had raymond kelly twice, once for a couple years and then we had him there for 12 years. i mean, that's an eternity for a new york city police commissioner. you know, we had bratton twice. so these are, you know, big, giant media personality, media darlings. and commissioner o'neal kind of just calls it as he sees it. you know, he was a cop his whole career. and i think he's the only police commissioner in the last 50

years that is capable of bringing himself to apologize or acknowledge our role and our transgressions or our mess-ups. he also issued an apology to the prospect park rape victim a couple months ago. and that also included probably two paragraphs in there directed towards the lgbtq community. i'm not here tonight really as his ambassador, but what i will say is that he does lean on my organization heavily for advice. he keeps me on his staff in my role in the police department he also has the former president of the organization as his lgbt liaison. he's engaging, and he's

interested. and he wants to know the way forward. he wants to know, you know, how the community feels. i wish sometimes that our community would be a little more engaging. i think that -- i won't get into the specifics of the meetings where i'm there as staff and not as the president. but i think sometimes other communities it seems are more willing to go in and kind of speak and speak clearly. they're a little more, you know, organized or i don't know why, it just seems we can never come to an agreement on anything. that's troubling sometimes. >> let's talk about our community, greater washington, if we can for a minute. brett, i want to ask you. we just came off a parade that

nbc was very involved in. and a festival the next day, hundred of thousands of people turned out. your a native washingtonian. you have seen the demographics certainly change here, and you've seen, i guess, acceptance change certainly over the decades. talk a little bit about your role and your liaison and what you do. >> sure. well, thanks, jim. you know, i think the first thing everybody knows probably that's been around for a while is washington, d.c. is not any different than new york city other than new york city is massive and has a lot more people. but new york city in june of 1969 was the same as washington, d.c. as far as values, and common practices in law enforcement. we had a morals division back in the metropolitan police department. we were cracking down on gay bars and gay people and arresting people for the same types of offenses that you

talked about hundreds of men were being arrested everyday back then. and so, our hands are not clean here in washington, d.c. and while it was james o'neal in new york city that may have apologized on behalf of nypd, when he did that, i think he was also apologizing as a leader in law enforcement because nypd is a leader around the world. to say on behalf of all law enforcement, that's not the way it should have been handled. that's not the way people should be treated ever, whether it was in a time where that was acceptable or not. and we've come a long way. so here in washington, d.c., despite whatever the national politics are, it doesn't matter who is in office, we've always been a very liberal and open, welcoming city for people to live and work in. we have had a human rights act here since 1977 that has included sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression. we have had openly lgbt members

of our city council and our ancs and we have one of the most progressive groups in our gay and lesbian activist alliance and other organizations. going back as far as the 1970s, those groups immediately after stonewall started to work not just here in washington, d.c. but nationally to try and change things. and washington, d.c. became a bit of a laboratory for many of the things that have spread throughout the united states and the world. one of those that we're pretty proud of is the emergence of our gay and lesbian liaison unit and proudly changed it to become the lgbt liaison unit to be more inclusive several years ago. what we did back then and just 1998, 1999 was we recognized that while geographic policing and community policing works all over the world and sir robert peel when he created it back in london, the idea of placing

police officers into geographic areas was really a good idea for management and accountability that sometimes you need to police differently and need to manage different plily and that what we do. we have a lgbt liaison unit. i have sergeant nicole brown who heads that here with officer kerry mills and one of the officers working in the jewi community, deaf and hard of hearing community and it's not that we aren't doing the same work as other police officers, but we're focussing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern, shared traits whether it be communication, whether it be a history of abuse light the lgbt plus community has had over the years and we're trying to work to build relationships so not if a crisis occurs but when a crisis occurs, like happened on saturday at our pride parade, right? we have relationships and people know that they can count upon us

and they recognize us and hopefully we're able to gain cooperation and calm people's fears. >> i want to ask you both but brian let me ask you first, we talk about acceptance of residents and the people that you work with and serve, what about people on the force who are openly gay now who couldn't be years ago. how important is that? and how are they -- when did it start that they were welcomed and embraced? how long ago has that been? >> i don't know. i'm waiting for it. >> you know you made a face, right? >> i don't play the poker face. you know where you stand with me. no. i think that the trajectory of queer people in society and in law enforcement of the criminal justice system is kind of the same. i don't think that -- i don't think that at all under any circumstances i would ever say that lgbtq people are at home

yet in this nation. and because we have shows on tv with gay characters and things like that, that's not the measure of at home for me. i say that, you know, first of all, let's look at goal, if we have time. so the organization stems from charlie cochran outed himself in front of the new york city council in november of 1981. so, you had a gay rights bill that was before the city council. now, your ordnance or your law here in '77 -- >> 1977. >> that included -- that included gay people -- >> sexual orientation, yes. >> and gender expression or that was amended later? >> gender identity was added later. sexual orientation initially. i have my experts right here making sure i'm giving the right information. how am i doing, craig?

>> so you're ahead of us. >> yeah. >> so, in '81, there's this contentious hearing in the city council chamber. and i think it was the vice president or the president of the pba that was -- that issued this strong worded editorial in the newspaper that this law could never pass. we would need to carve out like they have in other institutions. we can't have queer cops. there are no such thing as gay cops, x, y, z. so, this viral testimony and so now who is going testify next but a new york city police sergeant. the activists in this chamber are irate, they're booming when he's introduced. and he steps in front of this microphone and he says not only am i proud to be a new york city police officer but i'm proud to be a gay man. from people that i know that were in the council chamber that

day, it has never been louder than it was at that moment in 1981. so we fast forward a few months and the organization was founded -- the first meeting took place in the basement of st. joseph's church in greenwich village, a catholic church that was very friendly to the community. and they met in the basement and they met under protection of other cops because nobody wanted this meeting to happen. you know, there were bomb threat i think was called into charlie's home and his answering machine. and even going further than that first meeting, there was always a threat to the meetings. these guys met in secrecy very often. so we go now for almost 15 years, i think, or 14 years. the lawsuit was filed by tommy

jeans, edgar rodriguez and fran debenedictus they were the plaintiffs and they were represented by two attorneys, coleen, the executor of goal. this was '96 and it was settled in '97. so for 15 years they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. and since then, every single initiative the new york city police department has had for lgbtq people was either geared by goal individually or geared by goal as members of the police department, kind of jointly. so, we march for the first time in uniform in 1997. it took until 2002 for the gay officer's action league to be fully accepted into what they

refer to as, at least in the nypd. now, we're little more than an nypd organization. we represent all full-time criminal justice employees and the interest of the community from inside those institutions. so, we're talking about state police agencies, federal, local. but it took the nypd's committee of police societies until 2002 before the president of goal was able to sit in on meetings with other presidents of their recognized fraternal, religious or minority organizations. so we're not really talking about ancient history here. the discrimination that we used to see and used to get reported to goal would be things like locker would be turned upside down, personal property was destroyed, you know, hate speech was used. now i see a little bit different

discrimination incidents or what gets reported to me. i find that oftentimes our members have less desirable assignments inside of commands, whether it be at the precinct level, the transit level. if you work a steady sector, a lot of times, you know, if you work a steady sector, you have a partner. let's say brett was my partner. i work with brett everyday. i find that a lot of times our people, especially male officers, and we can have a conversation about the difference between being a lesbian police officer and being a gay police officer, a gay man, could talk about that later if you want. but we see that these guys they don't have steady partners. they're in what we call response autos or assigned to sit on prisoners or go to the hospital and sit on a prisoner in the

hospital as opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. when there's a detail opened up in the precinct, let's say you're a good cop. you're a hard worker, you come in, do your job. you have good evaluations and so if there's a temporary opening that, you know, because somebody is out long-term sick or that somebody can't, you know, come to work because they're on some other kind of leave or vacation or whatever the case may be, and there's something going on that they need somebody for, they'll pull the good queer cop. he's good enough then. but, when the position is open and that detail full time, is that the guy that gets the spot? no. so that's the discrimination that we see today.

and mind you, the relationship with the executive staff, executives never been better. now, i talked about commissioner o'neal a few minutes ago. i can't ask for a better law enforcement executive to work for and the chiefs of counterterrorism, the detective bureau, the chief of department, the chief of patrol all on board. it's the systems and instructors and these human barriers below. so i don't think we're 100% at home on the force. i don't think we're 100% at home in this country. i think we have a lot of work to do in both places. >> you mentioned cochran. i'm curious roughly, and i'll ask for metropolitan police, too, numbers wise, how many openly gay officers are on your force and your department, too? >> you just opened up a can of worms number two. >> i said roughly. >> internalized homophobia is

still a very real thing for cops. and i think that everybody wants to be part of a team, right? everybody wants to be part of the winning team, but at what expense do you become part of that team? so, the nypd doesn't even track, you know, sexual orientation or anything like that. for the first time ever, at my you are jens, at goal's urgence they're gauging the way queer people feel inside of the department because i would go to meetings all the time. you could get this data and it would be a large number of african-american cops leave at 20 years and they start -- we start analyzing data. why is that? maybe they feel that this isn't a home for them, that this

isn't -- we don't even know. our membership varies as far as from the nypd, we get maybe a couple -- maybe 100 full-time, 150 full-time non-retired active members a year. that's an incredibly low number for a 54,000-person agency. 36,000 sworn and the other civilian. so, we think, you know, goal thinks, that it's because people don't want to make other people uncomfortable. they're willing to -- and you give me five minutes on any cop, i can pull it out of them, you know what i mean. any day cop. >> because he's a detective. he's good at that. >> that's right. >> no. it's because they think they're doing something good for the -- for whatever, for the job because the conversations -- you have a conversation in the

locker room or, you know, in the break room, whatever the case may be. you know, the experience is kind of like this, we're constantly disclosing our sexual orientation everywhere we go. whether you realize it or not, you are. and you know, if i were to say that i was going to go to the movies this weekend with my boyfriend, i don't have a boyfriend but whatever the case may be, but you know, in there it's like -- it's almost like the air gets sucked out of the room. okay, we get it, he's gay. if you make another reference, man, why is he always talking about it. and so you're just not used to hearing it. that's the -- so, there's a lot of loaded issues with that. so we have no idea to be honest with you. >> that's fascinating that it's still taking place. >> everybody wants to be part of the big, blue family, jim. >> right. >> also, when you look at corporate america versus a

police culture, it's very different. and we're talking about new york city. >> it is. i mean, law enforcement is a conservative profession. >> sure. >> it is still uber masculine in nature. and it is slow to change. so, it is very different than corporate america in many ways. here in washington, d.c., you know, maybe 50 people that i could say openly gay and that's in a rolodex way back here that would never be written down or disclosed to anybody, because as brian said, here i am, i've been front page of washington post, documentaries about as out as they come, there are still situations even in the job that i'm in where people don't know that i'm gay. they don't ask. and when it comes up just as a matter of conversation that i have a life partner or something that discloses my sexual orientation there's a look of shock. and straight people don't have to deal with that.

there's another reason, though, i think brian didn't touch upon, at least i think in washington, d.c., whether it exists in new york or other large cities, here we also have a phenomena that for the most part a lot of gay cops don't feel the need to go to a goal or to a liaison unit for support because it's a really comfortable place to work and live and to be gay. and so, for many of them, while they're not out, they're still very comfortable in who they are and they consider themselves out. so the definition of who is out and what is out is a very difficult thing -- >> they feel protected, too. >> absolutely. so there's probably a balance of that going on. >> a little bit. i mean, the thing that most concerns me that i've been dealing with -- i was -- i was elected president -- i guess i started january, 2016. and what i find now is what

concerns me the most is everybody i'm sure here knows that new york is known for affordable real estate, right? so, we're big on that, you know. we have a lot of affordable housing. what we see a trajectory of people that are living at home longer than they have maybe, i don't know, i could be wrong about this, at any point maybe in history in the city. people are at home until they're 35, 36 years old. and what i have a lot of now is i have a lot of -- especially male cops that are just being terrorized by their families. you know, by their parents. and it's kind of -- we have these counselling sessions almost in my apartment. i know when the phone rings and it's a certain person and it's a holiday, i know they want to know when i'm going to be back

from my sister's or if i'm visiting with my brother, are you going to be around later? i'm going to stop by. i know they just have to get out of that toxicity. and this is a job with a lot of responsibility, a lot of power, and a lot of stress. and i really worry about some of these guys. i've had a really good scare last summer where somebody posted something on facebook and it was off to the races. you know, mobilization, people -- we had cops at the parent's house, cops here looking for this cop who luckily, you know, we were able to find him and get to him and get him the help that he needed. a lot of stress. >> david, stonewall 50 years ago, david, for your book you interviewed deputy police inspector with the morals division seamore pine. talk a little more about his

perspective when you talked to him about the raids and the riots. >> well, it's -- that's a big subject because although i covered it in my book, this aspect has not really gotten out into the common history or perception, the common perception of history. so, seamore pine was a police officer who had a strong reputation for being honest. and i think what was happening is that because of nap commission and other things happening in the late '60s, the new york police department was under great deal of scrutiny at that time for corruption and other problems. and i think that is probably why he was moved against his wishes from brooklyn to manhattan and charged with the morals police.

so, i think he probably -- he's not sure exactly that transfer took place april, may, anyhow the spring of that year 1969. and very soon after that he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. and i'm going to go into a little detail here, it's not part of the common history or commonly known history, his commanding officer i think he was a captain told seamore pine that the new york police department had gotten an inquiry from interpol that they had a lot of bond surfacing on the streets of europe, they didn't know if they were real or not. they wanted the nypd to investigate. the nypd investigated and found the bonds were not counterfeit but they were stolen. they investigated further and found out the bonds had been stolen from wall street by a gay man who was under pressure blackmail for that reason stole the bonds. one of the main figures at the

stonewall inn was a career criminal by the name of ed murphy. and he had read -- and he was gay. he had ran a national blackmail ring that was busted in the -- about the mid '60s for blackmailing all these thousands of people including the head of the ama, american medical association, and admiral in the navy who was caught up in this, committed suicide, and he never went to jail. he was held for jail and blackmailed to the tune of $2 million as best we know which is probably like 20, $40 million today. so i think he had the goods on jerry. that's why he did not end up in prison for the rest of his life. seriously. jerry had good evidence, in my mind, that he was blackmailed also by ed murphy. and ed murphy did use the stonewall as -- they had on the mafia honors had an apartment on

the second floor out of which they ran a prostitution ring and also used the waiters who were mostly straight at the stonewall to gather information from the clients. i'm sorry, the patrons of the stonewall club. so, when the police investigated seemed like this blackmail ring was centered around the stonewall. and pine was ordered to shut it down. now, what happened is that only pine and his co-partner smyth, both fought in world war ii, they fought in world war ii together. this was supposed to be a secret, so only they knew about that part of the raid, even their men who were -- men and women from the morals squad didn't know that they were raiding to bust a blackmail ring. and so that was the reason for the raid. >> fascinating, the different layers behind it. >> they did the same thing they always did.

they busted -- they arrested the kids that were in there. they were busting a blackmail ring, just like you said, blackmail on wall street guys that were getting them in that apartment, taking their pictures and then threatening them and say we'll show your wife, we'll show your boss, whatever. so they went in there with like an actual good motive. it may have been the only gay bar bust in history with a good motive. all the rest of them were just because it was gay people in the bar or it was because the mob wasn't paying off quickly. one of the things we're not discussing here is all of the problems that you got in the police department and with attitudes about gay people, all the problems you got in new york city or washington, d.c. come out of long, engrained tendencies in families and so forth to look down on gay people and think that they're the

other. and then to pass laws about it. now, with respect to gay bars, the laws they passed were that gay people couldn't own a bar because they couldn't get a liquor license because there was a morals clause in new york city and probably washington, d.c. liquor laws. so the mob took it over. the mob opened these places up without liquor licenses, paid off the cops. so, you've got an underground economy of bars serving gay people. by the way, they're overcharging them. they're gouging them and so forth. and then you've got the cops coming in and busting it because the mob isn't paying off on time or right or just let's go shake up some gay people. all of that comes out of the laws that were passed by the public, by the voters that voted in the politicians that passed

the laws. and then you've got the police force that treats groups different than white generally cops as the other. if you're black, if you're brown, especially if you're gay. and so, by the time you get that and mix that all together, then you get you get what's become known as the stonewall riot. the riot mostly that they're talking about really is saturday night with the tpf coming in with helmets on and face shields and all that stuff. that was typically, you know, just like in 1968 in the democratic national convention, it was a police raid. it wasn't the -- gay people were on the street. they might have been blocking the street, but you can move people along on the street. but you don't move people along on the street and expect them to cooperate when you put your face shields down and go at them with

a night stick and start prodding them. >> how long did it take, i'm curious because you were there that night and the weeks after that, until the approach by police toward gay bars changed in terms of raids and all? did it take a matter of a few years? >> well, there's, you know, a couple of things going on there. there's the change in the new york city laws. there was also a change in the new york state the way they regulated bars through liquor licensing. they finally gave a liquor license to the first gay bar that was owned by gay people. about 1973. and as it happens, i stumbled into the stonewall riot on june 27th, 1969. i was working at the village

voice in '73 when the city editor came to me and said, lucian, i want to do a story on the mob, on the mob having all these restaurants in the south village and all these mob meetings that are taking place. and also this guy came to her and said we can't -- we want to open up the ballroom it was called. it was a big down on best broadway. we can't get a liquor license. so she called me and introduced me to this guy. she said, you know, what can we do about this? do a story about it. i said i'm going to do a story about it. nothing is going to happen. it's the village voice. it's not "the new york times." so she said, well, then, what can we do? we can do a story about how the cops never bust these italian american restaurants where they're holding meetings with mobsters every friday night. i went around and wrote down license plate numbers outside of these. i lived down there in the south village. i went around. i knew where the mob meetings were taking place.

i wrote down license numbers while these double and triple parked limousines outside that ended up being owned by car low gambino and people like that. vincent and the rest of them. and mary got a cop she knew and ran the plates and we found out who was meeting in all these restaurants. so i sat down and wrote a story said the new york city won't issue a liquor license to these eight or ten upstanding gay residents but to these mobsters. mary took the story and went up to the liquor commissioner. i named the commissioner of abc, alcoholic beverage control and said, and this is the guy that's doing -- she went up there and put it on his desk on a monday and said, this runs on wednesday unless you give the ballroom a liquor license. >> wow. >> and if you give them a liquor license we won't run it. so my story didn't run and the

ballroom got a liquor license. >> power. >> that was it. that broke the log jam. the next thing you knew reno sweeney on 13th street got one and i didn't pay for drinks for quite a while. [ laughter ]. >> at no point were you afraid when you were taking down these license plates and doing this? >> they didn't see me taking down license plates. >> i'm hoping. >> you do realize this is being video taped. they're watching now. and i'm sitting next to you. >> what i'm saying, though, is that once gay people started knowing gay bars, then the mob wasn't involved. then the gay people weren't paying off the cops. then they didn't have reason to go in there and bust them because they weren't getting the payoffs. so a snowballing kind of effect took place. and gay bars started getting liquor licensing and getting legitimized and it happened over a period of time.

but at the same time, things were happening like people were working towards getting gay people the right to serve in the military. and that started changing things. and then gay people were working towards the right to marry. and that started changing things. all of this happened over the last 50 years. which is really pretty extraordinary when you think about it. i mean, it's extraordinary to me because i was there the night that was really the rosa parks moment for the gay movement. that was the night that gay people instead of saying i won't move to the back of the bus they said you're not going to bust our bars anymore and we're not going to put up with it. and i had no idea at the time what i was looking at. i thought i was looking at a gay riot. oh my god. look at that guy. he's in a dress. those guys, the amazing thing about it was the cops were so

incompetent that they would line up and chase these gay people down christopher street and the gay people would run down grove, run around waverly and come up behind the cops and form a kick line and start going, we are the stonewall girls. we wear our hair in curls. the cops turn around and see that, they start chasing them that way. i ended up teaching a class on how not to do riot control in the army based on this riot. >> wow. >> they gave me a theater at ft. carson. i taught battalions one after another. i set up a huge black board and drew a map of sheradon square and drew arrows where the cops are. a blue arrow and where the gay people are and all that stuff. and taught like how not to control a riot. to a whole division of soldiers. and which was an experience all to itself.

but, that was one of the problems that law enforcement had in that how they treat -- if you treat people as an other, they'll behave like an other. >> i want to talk more about the other later book, first, brett, i want to ask you a little bit more about your liaison unit and the competent cops of today and what you guys do in terms of outreach with gay community and straight for that matter. >> well, we're certainly not doing kick lines, i can tell you that. >> why not? >> because i'm incompetent. i did not get that -- that is not one of my gay traits. i'm not able to do that. >> you got to go to his course. >> exactly. >> let me see your gay id. >> so, what has changed now, jim, is that we have an understanding first of all that this community exists. that was step one. step one and this unfortunately still exists in some parts of

the country f i go to a law enforcement executive, a chief of police, or a lieutenant or street officers and i say, where -- who are your lgbt community leaders? we don't have that here. well, if you've got a community where you don't even think you have lgbtq people, do you think they're treating them with dignity and respect and professionalism? that's not happening. step one was to have our leaders, not just our community leaders, but our law enforcement leaders acknowledge this community exists, that they have rights, and that they have the right to speak up when they are not treated properly. so that was step one. step two was then changing culture within the police department. and brian has spoken about how slow that is. we still have homophobes in law enforcement, we still have racists in law enforcement, we still have misogynists in law enforcement. i don't know that we'll ever get rid of that as long as human beings are allowed to be police officers, but what we're doing more and more of is exposing

police officers to any one of a number of cultures, the lgbtq plus culture is one of many, but who are they? how do they engage in our lives? what is a respectful way to address someone? what is -- what are the laws with regard to the activities they engage in? what are their rights? and making sure that police officers understand that no different than any other community, if you violate what we train, if you don't do what we train you to do, we are not going to protect you. there's not a thin blue line when it comes to that type of misconduct and disrespect. and treating people in unconstitutional ways. and lastly, we're pretty proud that we think we go above and beyond here in washington, d.c. we are actually using police officers who are members of the community and allies to engage where the community feels safe. and that's a little bit different than basic community policing.

basic community policing, you tlo throw up a tent, invite everyone for hamburgers and hotdogs, and you sing kumbaya together. we're going into the tough places where the community is safe, they know this is their space, and we're saying we're here with you. we're here to listen to you, and eventually it becomes instead of oh, my gosh, the cops are here, what's wrong. it becomes, the cops are here. that's brett, that nicole, that jim. when you change that dynamic and people actually welcome you as police officers into your community or acknowledge you're members of the community, that's when you can do a better job because it's all about preparing for that crisis and trauma in the community so you gain cooperation and things go more smoothly when that crisis occurs. >> brian, do you see that, too? and how long does it take to build that kind of rapport or trust, if you will, within certain communities? >> it takes a long time. you know, i mean, everything

that he just said is true. i don't want to repeat any of the, but yeah, there is some kind of, i don't know what it is, but there's this thing where people are just afraid to engage with -- when i say our community, i mean i'm an openly queer man, and whenever you hear me say our community, i'm not talking about, you know, the police. i just want everybody to be clear on that. with our community, they really just never knew, and my first real, i guess, aw schucks moment as part of the police department occurred on, you know, the morning of the pulse nightclub shooting. because i had just come from the detective bureau where i was a bias crimes investigator, and this is when commissioner o'neal was the chief of the department and i was maybe a month into his

office. he had pulled me out of the detective bureau and to work for him. and a lot of things went through my mind when the calls started coming very early, and people telling me to turn on the tv. the first thing that came through my mind is, oh, my god. we're going to respond to this. i didn't mean to orlando, florida. the type of city that new york city is is that we respond to every incident locally. it doesn't matter if it happens somewhere else in the country, it doesn't matter if it happens somewhere else in the world. so let's say that, let's use the jewish community for, you know, a good example of this. so if we have a, you know, a mass casualty incident or a terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in

pittsburgh on halloween, it was halloween, right? a couple days before or after. it was right around halloween. october. the jewish community knows that we're coming. you know, they know that there's going to be a marked police car outside of the synagogue. they know that they can expect to see high visibility patrols, with you know, what we call a hercules team, which is, you know, a squad of emergency services officers with heavy weaponry and a canine officer, highway and intel. we can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day based upon intelligence. so jewish community knows and they appreciate it, and i was having a heart attack because i was like, oh, my god, we're coming and this community has never seen this. so i called my lieutenant.

the same morning, the puerto rican day parade was going on, which is a massive police detail, and i was going to go and assist with that. i called the lieutenant, and he just said, just go do whatever you need to do. just sign in, get the car, and get the hell out there. and you know, my first stop was at the lgbtq community center on 13th street in manhattan. and i just walked up to the desk. i'm dressed like this, you know, i have a tie on when i'm at work. i went a little casual today for y'all. but i walked in, and i just said, i'm the detective with the police department. we need to speak to whoever is in charge. i know it's a sunday morning, but can you get somebody on the phone for me? and five minutes later, in a back room, we were on a conference call with the chief operating officer of the center. it was rob wheeler, and i had

never met him before. i never did any kind of outreach before. i was just running goal, which is like an independent organization. we're orour own 501 c 3. we're a watchdog group. now we're in the role. i have to do work for the chief and the department. i told this guy, i said, first of all, let me ask you if you want the security. if you tell me no, the other part of that is it's going to come anyway. but, you know, i have always been a little bit of an outside the box thinker. i'm like, why don't you do me a favor? why don't you put an email out to everybody on your subscriber list saying the police department is going to be outside for a few weeks until we know what's going on. and then the rest of the day, going to brunch spots, going to -- because we like brunch. i don't know whether you got that memo, but it's a big thing

with us. going and meeting with night life people, and over the next few days, i mean, i was getting calls on my cell phone, on my work phone and my personal phone, it was like i was like peddling some contraband. people are like, are you the detective that can get us some security over here? you know, i got your number from someone and they said you helped them get -- because people wanted the protection. they felt better. and it was even, you know, at the kind of the discomfort of some of their clients. and some of these service providers, but that's where a real partnership has to exist, where there has to be trust, like brett says. you can't just show up and give out key rings at a pride march and expect that everyone is going to love the police. we're nobody's friends. i mean, i'm a realist. nobody calls the police to, you

know what i'm saying, because they have extra tickets to the ball game. you know, nobody calls the police because, you know, there's a couple beers left in the cooler after the barbecue or there's food left over, do you want to bring it back to the precinct? what do we get called for? horrible, terrible things, where people aren't at their best. and maybe to a large extent, our history hasn't been the best at responding to some of these incidents and situations. and i think to an extent, that still goes on. but i do think that in the last five years, i think i finally see law enforcement, at least the executives i work with, they want to get out, you know, ahead of things. they want the input. they don't want, you know, we're the police, and we know what we're doing. if that's your mindset, good luck.

you're not going to have a very long tenure as a law enforcement executive these days. you know, we have to think about what we're not thinking about. you know, and really engage. we started a neighborhood coordination officer program in new york now where every sector or precincts are broken down into sectors. there's two cops that work there that do absolutely, you know, four hours they're required to do half of their shift as noncommitted radio time where they're out there going to the businesses in their sector and they're supposed to go meet with community leaders. they have email addresses. they have cell phones, people know they can call them. it's really changing the conversation up there. >> that's encouraging. on that encouraging note, we

want to pause and take some questions from you folks. so we have a couple microphones. anyone have any questions for any of our panelists, please. let's hear from you. >> can you hear me? okay. i was just wondering, the detective you referenced that there were some different experiences being a gay male officer versus being a lesbian officer. can you speak to some of those differences as you and your members sort of report them to you? >> yeah, i think that we still live in a society where we sexualize women. and if you are going to be paired up with a lesbian police officer, you know, guys' minds go wild. you know, i'm so good, maybe, you know, i can get her. and you know, her and the

girlfriend. it's like this mindset, you know, but we still perceive gay men as weak, as, you know, effeminate, as not being able to handle themselves. and there's people that will test you. you know, carl locke, you know carl. carl was a detective in the police impersonation investigation unit. that's a pretty serious unit because, first of all, the cases are automatically felonies. when you impersonate a police officer to commit a crime, and the first question he got when he got to the office was, do you know how to fight? you know, i don't think we ask those questions of, you know, our lesbian officers. i think we as a society, we still sexualize women, and that's a fantasy, and that's

allowed to perpetuate itself, if that clears that up. >> i think the misogyny exists within law enforcement still. but openly lesbian women, i think, are more valued than openly gay men still generally in this profession. because openly gay men are viewed as effeminate and weak. >> you think that's because lesbian women are sometimes stereotyped as having masculine traits? >> 100% stereotypes. we have our lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians, and you cannot judge their ability of policing based upon the way they look. training people and teaching people how to break through those stereotypes is the hard part. >> thank you. >> a question there. >> so you spoke a little bit about your story, presenting your story about these mob persuasions as a way of persuading gay people to allow

to own clubs. how do you feel that the public's desire for these stories in the media has changed? or your -- the media's desires for presenting these stories has changed over the years? >> that's a good question. >> it's changed. the story about stonewall was in the village voice. there was a story in the "new york post" like that, in the "daily news" like that, and the village voice covers stonewall. so now, there's a story this big about the police commissioner in "the new york times" about the police commissioner apologizing about stonewall. and there's been big stories about the stonewall anniversary, the 50th anniversary that's coming up. and all the gay pride parades and that sort of thing.

but then there's been millions of stories about gays in the military and millions of stories about gays being allowed to be married. you know, gay people, to a large extent, have way entered the mainstream compared to where they were in 1969. and the difference, somebody was asking me recently, you know, what's the big difference between then and now? the big difference that stonewall made was everybody that was in the riot, in stonewall, was out. they were on the street. they looked gay. they were in a gay riot. so they were out. and after stonewall, more and more and more people started coming out. and as more and more people came out, more and more people realized, hey, my cousin is gay.

or hey, you know, that couple that lives next door, not just room mates, they're, you know, they actually live together. they're a family. they love each other. and so gay people coming out affected families, it affected communities, it affected relationships at work. it made everything better. everything. and it's made coverage in the media better as well. and it's made, you know, what you see on tv better. >> here. >> hi. so during the '60s when there was a lot of heavy policing, i read the police had a lot of knowledge in the culture of the gay community with the codes and the sort of under the radar bars. and it seems like the place had a really deep -- i mean, while not necessarily the best connection, but a connection that and a lot of institutional

knowledge about the gay community. do you think that because the policing efforts have obviously died down a lot toward the gay community that the sort of institutional knowledge and culture has declined as a result of that? and is there a way to preserve that without necessarily going into the same policing tactics? >> that's directed toward me? >> we were kind of -- >> i hope so. >> okay, okay. i'm sorry, i missed the gist of your question. >> just that, you know, when there was -- when the heavy policing, just a lot more knowledge about the culture of the local gay communities by the police departments. and when that policing dies down, does that sort of knowledge go away too, and if so, how do you preserve that through policing? i don't know, tactics or whatever. >> i'm not sure i agree with that. i don't think that the police had -- there was a lot of

policing of the gay community back in the '60s. they didn't know shit about the gay community. except to arrest them. >> perhaps what you're talking about is knowing how to entrap gay men. they knew where they went. they had an idea of how a lot of, you know, gay men dressed when they were out to socialize, to meet other gay men. to meet sexual partners, so they knew how to -- they would take their best looking police officers, you know, dress them in tight pants, and you know, dress them kind of like gay men dress and send them to those areas and entice them. that's really not a knowledge of, you know, gay culture or even a gay mentality. it's just a very surface thing. so i think that the -- i think with -- my impression is, and i haven't been involved in law

enforcement, is probably law enforcement has been learning bit by bit as other institutions and society has also been learning. you know, whether it's the military, whether it's business, the church, schools. that's my impression. does that answer your question? >> yeah, it does. >> okay. >> if i could also. you know, there's this wonderful thing out there called the internet now. perhaps you have heard of it. and as big a neand rutholes we are as police officers, they know how to use it. sorry, bri. and what i mean by that is, sometimes in spite of a lack of training or a lack of experience, they have personal lives and personal interests, and they are exploring all of the things that everyone else in society is exploring sometimes. but we're also doing a much

better job of educating police officers about the communities we serve. i think that has gotten better because of what was talked about, events like stonewall wake people. they cause people to move in a better direction and progress to be made. so i don't know that some of my cops, i travel all over the world training cops about lgbtq issues. i'm always surprised there's somebody who doesn't know the difference between bisexuality and a transgender individual or they don't even know what the term intersexuality is. some of you are going, i don't know either. but we're trying to train more and more cops. but they're just like everybody else. >> i mean, we're talking to someone representing new york city and someone representing washington, d.c. you say you travel the country. i'm curious about what the lgbtq

communities in small town alabama or other parts of the country, how they are treated by police. are they even on police radar? you talk about years ago, entrapment. does that kind of thing still happen in other parts of the country that isn't allowed to happen in new york or d.c.? >> let me tell a quick story and then you can address it. >> go crazy. >> it must have been about 14 years ago. i told you how long it was, my pager went off. i had a pager back then. it was an area code from north carolina. i called it back. and it was a deputy, i swear to god, his name was bubba something. from north carolina. he was a deputy sheriff. and he was investigating one of those he/she murders they had in a rather large metropolitan area in north carolina. and he had learned about my work from the newspaper and his lieutenant said you need to call

this guy because you're not making any progress on this he/she murder. the first thing i said is are you talking about a transgender individual? he didn't know what thought meant, but we figured out he was talking about a transgender female who was murdered. i said, so tell me something, where did this occur? he told me. i said, is that anywhere near your transgender stroll? and there was just sort of -- i could hear the ocean, that was about it, and the phone. he paused. he said what is that, sir? i said, where does your transgender prostitution happen? he said, oh, sir, we don't have that here. not in our town. so i went online and i quickly googled that area. looking for transgender prostitutes in that city. didn't take me but a few moments, and i said, and i'll only make up the street in case anyone is from this town, how about telegraph road. do you know where that is? there was a pause, and he said sir, that's where the police station is. i said, well, good, you don't have far to go.

i said, what i want you to do is on the day of the week the murder happened, if was a monday, tuesday, wednesday, go out about the same time, and all those people wandering around that you see there, start talking to them about this murder. three days later, he called me, and he said he closed the case. just because he became aware that a community existed and how was the best way to engage them. that's where we are. in some parts of the country, they don't even acknowledge that gay people exist. they couldn't tell you that they have an lgbtq community center in their city, county, or state, much less that their police department knows of. brian. >> yeah, i just think we talk about training. training is far reaching for g.o.a.l. because one of the things i have been reading over recently, this is the settlement from when the gay officers action league sued the new york city police department in 1996.

and one of the things that came out of this settlement was g.o.a.l. was given the ability to train police officers in lgbtq sensitivity and awareness. that's looked like a lot of different things over the years. but i mentioned carl locke before, because carl is a gift to my agency. before carl became a cop at 30-something years old, before that, he was an accomplished social worker. he was the director of client services of the new york city antiviolence project. he worked at the david geffen aids program, at gay men's health crisis. he was with act up on the brooklyn bridge. he brings all of this real-world activist experience and education to pd. so when he got involved with

g.o.a.l., he kind of redid the curriculum to what it is today. and it's very impressive. we don't go in to do a training with cops and go over -- we don't spend a lot of time on the definitions. we give them to you. we don't spend a lot of time on the history. we do really two things. i think that we want people to take away from it. one is we give them a little bit of our personal coming out stories because we're cops training cops, and they can see that all these issues have affected the people that are standing in front of them, giving them a block of instruction. we have somebody like a woman who was thrown out of her house in high school for being a lesbian, who put herself through high school, whose mother wouldn't give her financial aid paperwork for college. she put herself through college. she took the police test. she was a police cadet. the promotional exam.

she's now a new york city police sergeant. you give a cop a story kind of about you that, hey, listen, i went through all this shit, so this is very real. we have cops that weren't involved in house and law, that came up through house and law, if you can believe that. that's amazing in and of itself. but the other part of what we do is we really were doing implicit bias training before that was really even a thing. we want people, we want the recruits especially, to understand where your ideas come from, where you have been bombarded with messages since you were a child. society tells you, you know, what's preferred. and fair and impartial policing when we talk about implicit bias, so we put the police recruits in scenarios. say everybody in here is going to police fairly and impartially, right? and all the hands go up, big

smiling, grinning faces. yeah, we're going to be the fair and impartial police. so we graduate them now. so we take an officer, and we tell him, tonight, you have this post. your sergeant told you that there's been a high propensity of robberies in this area. we want to keep people moving. it's inside of a club district. we don't want cars stopping. no standing signs everywhere, so there's no reason for a car to be stopping or parking there anyway. keep the area clear. okay. so we tell the cop that in the alleyway, there's a vehicle parked. it doesn't have its lights on, but it's running. and the car goes up -- the cop goes up to the vehicle and conducts an investigation. and lo and behold, he finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. and we ask him, what do you got? and you have a little bit of a chuckle. you know, the cops engage a

little bit. you know. what you actually is a penal law misdemeanor in the state of new york. you have a must-arrest misdemeanor situation, but you kind of ask them, what are they really going to do? you have some of them raise their hand and they say i'm going to issue a summons or i'm going to lock them up or i'm going to let them go. you know, we play with this a little bit. you know, even get some that are honest. i tell them, i know what you're going to do. you're going to text a cop on the adjoining post and say you're never going to believe what's going on over here right now. that's what you're going to do, right? everybody is laughing, having a good time. then we graduate the cops again, and i say, put them in the exact same scenario. and i say, now you come across that same car in the alleyway, and it's a man getting oral sex from a man. what do you got? it's like the air gets sucked right out of the room. they don't know what the hell they have.

you know? but everybody just said they're going to be fair and impartial, right? every hand went up, every face was grinning. we were seeing teeth. listen, if a guy's getting lucky in one scenario, then the guy's getting lucky in the other scenario. being a fair and impartial police officer is taking the same action no matter what the sexual orientation is, no matter what the race, color of somebody's skin is, no matter what their religion is. we want them to understand where their ideas come from. and what i also want you to understand is, when you wear that uniform, you're representing me and you're representing brett, and you're representing a couple million other honest people that have a tremendous amount of integrity and have sacrificed their lives for this job. and in the name of other people.

so whatever conversations you may have at your dinner table or whatever joke you may tell after church with your friends at the bar or wherever the hell it is you go, when you put on that uniform and you put that shield on your chest, you better treat everybody the same. because you have to be the police for everybody, not just the people that look like you. not just the people that come from your ethnic or religious background or whatever the case may be. you have to be the police for everybody. and you have to do it fairly and impartially. and that's what the gay officers action league stands for. >> thank you for your powerful perspective, all of you gentlemen, and the insights you shared with us today. we can't thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we have made over the decades. it's been fascinating to hear your stories and what's being done on the front lines, if you will. anybody else have a question before we wrap up?

go ahead, sir. >> hopefully it's for brett. >> could you tell us a little bit about hour the gllu got started in washington, and have other cities around the country, have they followed the lead of doing that? one thing is training, but have they done the same kind of institutionalization they have in d.c.? >> here in washington, d.c., we didn't have the same struggle that new york had in that it didn't take lawsuits and really forcefully pushing our way into this. our community worked with our police department and our leadership to support the idea that the lgbt community, back then, it was called the gay and lesbian liaison unit, deserved to have officers that were familiar enough with the community and able to engage

community members in a safe space and a safe way that the chief of police back then, charles ramsey, in 1999, said yes. it started in one of our small police districts, which was kind of in the gayborhoo d-back then, and he realized this was something that should not be confined to just one police district, so he expanded it city-wide, and we are what we believe is one of the only full-time police units, meaning not just a liaison officer, but multiple officers working full time in the community. three parts to the commission. outreach. the usual community policing stuff. going to events. going to pride festivals. going to meetings. singing kumbaya. training and education. that important thing that brian mentioned. not just training and educating police officers, because that's really important. we've got to get them to understand that there are certain tools they need to engage community members. but another part of our training

and education is going to opposite direction. training you as community members about what you should expect from us. about what our jobs are. what your rights are. what the laws are. it is not a secret in washington, d.c., we have continued to see our bias crimes increase as far as the numbers reported here. one of the reasons why we actually celebrate the fact that our bias crime numbers continue to go up is we believe we're educating our citizens better and better every year and building stronger relationships that bias crimes that were committed in the past are now being reported to us. so that's part of the training and education. and then the third part of the mission and the part i'm biased about that i think is the most important is unlike most community policing, we are actually doing police work. the officers that i work with and the officials i work with are not only going to be at those events or being at classes, but when that pride parade was interrupted by what appeared to be an active shooter

but thank god wasn't, it was these officers and those liaison units who were amongst the very first running through the crowd, the opposite direction, towards it. so what community members saw was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniforms actually engaging in real police work and public safety. yes, we're helping other police departments around the world. not a week goes by that we don't hear from other agencies how they tailor this kind of work to their police department, whether it's designating an officer part-time, an officer full-time, or even creating a full-time unit, and one of the benefits we have is, in 2007, we won the harvard innovations in american government award, and part of that is we won a grant to help replicate the work we're doing, and we're proud to do that whenever we can to help other police departments anywhere in the world do the type of work we're doing. and not just the lgbtq community, but all the

communities we work in. i hope i answered your question. >> i think we are about out of time. again, thank you all for coming, and gentlemen, we can't thank you enough. thanks again for sharing. [ applause ] first ladies, influence and image, on american history tv. examines the private lives and the public roles of the nation's first ladies. through interviews with top historians. tonight, we look at the first two first ladies. martha washington and abigail adams. watch first ladies, influence and image, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. >> every saturday night, american history tv takes you to

college classrooms around the country for lectures in history. >> why do you all know who lizzie borden is? and raise your hand if you had ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial, before this class? >> the deepest cause where we'll find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. >> we're going to talk about both of these sides of the story here. the tools, the techniques of slave owner power, and we'll also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. >> watch history professors lead discussions on topics ranging from the american revolution to september 11th. lectures in history on c-span3 every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv and lectures in history is available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. to mark the 50th anniversary of the police raid on a new york

city gay bar and ensuing riot, the u.s. commission on civil rights hosted a discussion titled stonewall at 50, the movement for lgbt civil rights. this is an hour. >> we'll now turn to our next iteration of the commission speaker series. this is titled stonewall at 50, the movement for lgbt civil rights. i thank the commissioner for suggesting this month's speaker topic. june, as we know, has come to be known as pride month, and the reason for that stretches back now 50 years. on june 28th, 1969, street demonstrations for lesbian and gay civil rights began at the stonewall inn, in greenwich village, in new york city. many view these demonstrations as a critical moment in the movement for lgbt civil rights. in june 2016, in recognition of that history, president barack obama proclaimed a site near the former stonewall inn a natil