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up next, a discussion on the 1969 police raid on the stonewall inn 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 a 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 as an 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 psychiatrists who really tended to pathologize 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, lobotomies 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 of goal. 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.

you're 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 differently and that's

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 jewish 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 focusing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern, shared traits whether it be communication, whether it be a history of abuse like 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 and everybody 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 -- a 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 executive director 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 officers' action league to be fully accepted into what they refer to as, at least in the nypd. now, we're a little more than an nypd organization.

we represent all full-time criminal justice employees and the interests 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.nypd doesn't sexual orientation or anything like that. for the first time ever at my urge ens they're finally doing focus groups and things like that to kind of gauge the way queer people feel inside of the department. i would go to meetings all the time and they you get this data. we find that a large number of african-american cops leave at 20 years. we start analyzing data, why is that? maybe they feel that this isn't a home for them. 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 nonretired active members a year. that's an incredibly low number for 54,000 person agency. 36,000 sworn and the other civilian. so we think that it's because people don't want to make other people uncomfortable. you give me five minutes with any given cop, i can pull it out of them. >> that's because you're a detective. >> because they think they're doing something good for whatever for the job. the conversations, you know, have you a conversation in the locker room or, you know, in the breakroom, whatever the case may be. the experiences 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 too 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. in there it's like, it's almost like the air gets sucked out of the room, okay, we get it, he's gay. and if you make another reference it's like, man, why is he always talking about it. you're just not used to hearing it, so -- there's a lot of loaded issues with that. we have no idea to be honest with you. >> it's still taking place. >> everyone wants to be part of the big blue family. >> and when you look at corporate america versus a police culture. it's very different. and we're talking about new york

city. >> law enforcement is a conservative profession. it's uber masculine in nature. and it's slow to change. it is very different than corporate america in many ways. here in washington, d.c., maybe 50 people that i could say openly gay. and that's in a rolodex that would never be written down, because as brian said, i mean, here i am, i've been front page of washington post documentaries, there are still situations even in the job i'm in, where people don't know that i'm gay, they don't ask, and when it comes up 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 is 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 phenomenon that for the most part, a lot of gay cops don't feel the need to go to a goal or a liaison unit for support, it's a really comfortable place to work and live and to be gay. for many of them, while they're not out, they're still very comfortable in who they are and they consider themselves out. the definition of who is out and what is out is different. >> they feel proo tektsed too? >> absolutely. there's probably a balance of that going on. >> a little bit. >> the thing that most concerns me that i've been dealing with, 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. we have a lot of affordable housing. we see a trajectory of people that are living at home longer than they have maybe. at any point 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, by their parents. and it's kind of -- we have these counseling 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 sisters or if i'm visiting with my brother whatever the case may be. you going to be around later?

i'm going to stop by. i just know they have to get out of that toxicity. this is a job with a lot of responsibility, a lot of power, and a lot of stress. i really worry about some of these guys. we had a really good scare last summer where somebody posted something on facebook, and it was off to the races, mobilization, people -- we had cops at the parents house. luckily we were able to find them and get him the help they needed. >> stonewall 50 years ago, for your book, you interviewed depu deputy police division. talk about his perspective when you talk to him about the raids and the riots.

>> well, it's -- that's a big subject because although i covered it in my book. it hasn't -- this aspect has really not gotten out into the -- i can say the common history or perception. the common perception of history. so see more pine was a police officer who had a strong reputation for being honest. and i think what was happening is that because of things happening in the late '60s, the new york police department was under a great deal of scrutiny at that time for corruption and other problems. i think that is probably why he was moved against his wishes from brooklyn to manhattan and charged by the morals police. i think he probably -- he's not sure exactly when that transfer

took place. anyway, the spring of that year, 1969, and very soon after that, he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. it's not part of the commonly known history. his commanding officer, i think he was the captain, told seymour pine that the new york police department had gotten an inquiry from interpoll, they had a lot of bombs surfacing on the streets of europe. they wanted the nypd to investigate. the bombs were not counterfeit, but they were stolen. they investigated further, they had been stolen from wall street from a gay man who was under the pressure of black male, stole the bonds. one of the main figures at the stonewall inn was a career criminal by the name of ed

murphy. he was gay and ran a national black male ring. was busted in the mid '60s for blackmailing all these thousands of people. like the head of the ama, an admiral in the navy who was caught up in this, committed sue we sood. and then he went to jail. he was held for a while in jail. he was let out. to the tune of about $2 million as best we know. probably 20, $40 million today? i think he had the goods on j. edgar hoover which is why he did not end up in prison for the rest of his life. no, seriously. j. edgar hoover was blackmailed by ed murphy. and ed murphy did use the stonewall, they had on the mafia honors had an apartment on the second floor, out of which they ran a prostitution ring. they used waiters who were mostly straight to gather

information from the clients. i'm sorry, the patrons of the stonewall club. when the police investigated. it seemed like this black male ring was centered around stonewall. pine was ordered to shut it down. what happened is, only pine and his co partner smythe. this is to be a secret. 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. so that was the reason for the raid. >> fascinating. the different layers behind it? >> they did the same thing they always do. they arrested the kids that were in there. i mean, they were busting a

black male ring. they were blackmailing wall street guys, getting them in the apartment and taking pictures and saying, we're going to show your wife or your boss. they went in there with a 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. all it was -- one of the things we're not discussing here is, all the problems that you have in the police department with attitudes about gay people. all the problems you have in new york city or washington, d.c., come out of long ingrained tendencies in families and so forth, to look down on gay people and think 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 washington, d.c.. so the mob took it over. the mob opened these places up without liquor licenses and paid off the cops. you have an underground economy of bars serving gay people. by the way they're over charging them. they're gouging them and so forth. and then you have the cops coming in and busting it because of the mob isn't paying off on time or right. or just -- let's go shake up some gay people. all 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 cops as the other. if you're black. if you're brown, especially if you're gay. so by the time you get that. mix that all together, then you get what's become known as the stonewall riot. the riot they're talking about is saturday night with the tpf coming in with the face shields and all that stuff. that was typically, you know, 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 shield 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 change in terms of raids and all. did it take a matter of a few years? >> well, there's -- you know, the couple things going on there. there's the change in the new york city laws, okay? there was also a change in the new york city's -- in the new york state's 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 in about 1973. 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 came to me and said, listen, i want to do a story 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. we can't get a liquor license. she called me in and said, what can we do about this? i said, i'm going to do a story about it, but nothing's going to happen, it's the village voice, it's not the new york times. 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. i went around and wrote down license plate numbers. i lived down there in the south village. i knew where the mob meetings were taking place. i wrote down the license plates of all these double and triple

parked limos. marry got a cop she knew and ran the plates. i sat down and wrote a story and said, the new york city won't issue a liquor license to these 8 or 10 upstanding gay citizens. but they're issuing liquor licenses to these gangsters. mary took the story and went up to the liquor commissioner and i named the commissioner of alcohol beverage control and said, this is the guy that's doing it. 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. if you give them a liquor license we won't run it. my story didn't run, and the ballroom got a liquor license.

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. >> yeah, at no point were you afraid when you were taking down these license plates. >> they didn't see me taking down the license plates. >> you do realize this is being videotaped. >> what i'm saying, though, is, once gay people started owning gay bars, then the mob wasn't involved. then the gay people weren't paying off the cops, they didn't have reason to go in there and bust them, because they weren't getting a payoff. a snowballing effect, gay bars started getting licenses and legitimized. it happened over a period of time. at the same time, things were happening like, people were working toward getting gay

people the right to serve in the milita military, and that started changing things. and then gay people were working toward the right to marry. and that started changing things. all of this happened over the last 50 years. which is pretty extraordinary when you think about it. it's extraordinary to me, because i was there the night that was really the rosa parks movement for the 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 any more, and we're not going to put up with it. i had no idea at the time what i was looking at. i thought i was looking at a gay riot, oh, my god, that guy, he's in a dress. the amazing thing about it was, the cops were so incompetent that they would line up and chase these gay people down christopher street, they would

run down grove, run around and come up behind the cops and form a kick line and go, we are the stonewall girls. 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. they gave me a theater at ft. carson, and i taught about a tal yo -- battalions one after another. where the cops are, a blue arrow, where the gay people are, how not to control a riot to a whole division of soldiers. and that was an experience all to itself. but -- in that -- that was one of the problems of the law enforcement had. and 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. first 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. >> we're certainly not doing kick lines. >> yes. >> why not? >> because i'm incompetent. that is not one of my gay traits. i'm not able to do that. >> you have to go to his course. >> exactly. >> let me see your gay i.d. >> so what has changed now, 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. if i go to a law enforcement executive and say, who are your

lgbt community lead irs. we don't have that here. well, if you have a community where you think you don't have lgbt people, do you think they're streeting them with respect? step one was to have our 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 changing the culture within the police department. 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're going to get rid of that. we're exposing police officers to any one of a number of

cultures, the lgbtq plus community is one. how do they engage in our lives. what are the laws with regard to the activities they engage in. what are their rights, making sure that police officers understand that no different than any other community. if you violate what we train you to do -- we are not going to protect you. we are not -- there's not a thin blue line when it comes to that type of misconduct and misrespect and treating people in uncongress sti tugsal ways. and lastly we're pretty proud, we think we go above and beyond in washington, d.c.. we're using police officers who are members of the community and allies to engage where the community feels safe. that's a little bit different than basic community policing. basic community policing, you throw up a tent. maybe you go to a parade and you sing kumbaya together.

we're going into those tough places where the community is safe, they know this is their space, and we're saying, we are here with you? we're here to listen to you. and it becomes, instead of oh, my gosh, the cops are here, what's wrong. it's the cops are here. that's brett, nicole, jim. when you change that dynamic and people actually welcome you as police officers into their community or acknowledge that you're members of community, that's when you can do a better job, because it's all about preparing for that crisis and that 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 rapport or trust within certain communities. >> it takes a long time. i mean, everything -- everything that he just said is true. i don't want to repeat any of that. but there is some kind of --

there's this thing where people are afraid to engage -- when i say our community. i mean, i'm an openly queer man. when i -- whenever you say our communities. i'm not talking about 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, awe schucks moment as part of the police department occurred on the morning of the pulse nightclub shooting. because i had just come from the detective bureau where i was a vice crimes investigator. this is when commissioner o'neil was a chief in the department. i was a month into his office. he pulled me out of the

detective bureau. a lot of things went through my mind when the call started coming 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 tory pond is to this. i didn't mean to orlando, florida. the type of city that new york city is, 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. let's say that -- let's use the jewish community for a good example of this. if we have a mass casualty incident or terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in pittsburgh on halloween. it was halloween, right? it was a couple days before or

act. >> october. >> yeah, october. the jewish community knows that we're coming. ny know that there's going to be a marked police car outside of the synagogue. they know they can expect to see high visibility patrols with like what we call a hercules team. which is a squad of emergency services, officers, with heavy weaponry, a canine officer. we can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day based important intelligence. jewish community knows and they appreciate it. i was having a heart attack, because i was like, oh, my god, we're coming and this community has never seen this. i called my lieutenant. the same morning we had -- the puerto rican parade was going

on. which is a massive police detail in new york city. i was going to go and assist with that. i called the lieutenant and they said -- he just said, go do whatever you need to do. just sign in, get the car and get the hell out there. and my first stop was at the lgbtq community center on 13th street in manhattan. i walked up to the desk. i'm dressed like this, 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 a detective with the police department, we need to speak to whoever's 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 backroom we were on a conference call with the chief operating officer of the center, rob wheeler. i never met him before. i never did any kind of outreach

before. i was running goal, we're our own 501 3 c. i told this guy, let me ask you, if you want the security. and if you tell me know, the other part of that is, it's going to come anyway. but right at -- i've always been a little bit of an outside the box thinker, why don't you put an email out to everyone 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. over the next few days, i was

getting calls on my cell phone, my work phone and my personal phone. it was like i was peddling some contraband. people are like, are you the detective that can get us some security over here. i got your number from someone. they said you helped them get. because people wanted the protection, they felt better. and it was even 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 everybody's 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. nobody calls the police because there's a couple beers left in

the cooler after the bbq 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 ahead of things. we're the police, and we know what we're doing. if that's your mind-set, good luck, you're not going to have a long tenure as a law enforcement executive. these days.

we have to think about what we're not thinking about and really engage. we started a neighborhood coordination officer program in new york now, where every sector or precinct is broken down into sectors, there's two cops that work there that do absolutely -- they have four hours they're required to do, after their shift, as noncommitted radio time, where they're out there going to the businesses, and they're -- 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. and on that encouraging note. we want to pause and take some questions from you folks. we have a couple microphones. anyone have any questions for

any of our panelists, please? >> can you hear me? okay. i was just wondering, the detective, you referenced there were different experiences being a gay male officer versus a lesbian officer, could you speak to some of those differences as your members report them to you? >> yeah. i think that we still live in a society where we sexualize women and if you're going to be paired up with a lesbian police officer, you know, guys minds go wild. you know, i'm so good, maybe i can get her. and i'll have her and the girlfriend. it's like this mind-set where we

perceive gay men as weak, as effeminite, and there's people that will test you. carl locke, he was a detective in the police impersson investigation unit, that's a pretty serious unit. the cases are automatically felonies when you impersonate a police officer to commit a crime. the first question he got when he got to the office was, do you know how to fight? i don't think we ask those questions of our lesbian officers. i think we -- as a society, we still sexualize women and that's a fantasy and is that's allowed to perpetuate itself, if that clears that up. >> i think the misogyny exists

within law enforcement still, but openly lesbian women are more valued than openly gay men still generally in this profession. openly gay men are viewed as effiminite and weak. >> do you think that lesbians are stereotyped? >> absolutely. 100%. you cannot judge their policing based on the way they look. training people to breakthrough those stereotypes is the hard part. >> thank you. >> you spoke a little bit about your story presenting your story about this -- 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. i mean, the story about stonewall was in the village voice. there was a story in the new york post like that, and the daily news like that, monday the new york times like that. and the village voice covered so long. now, i think there's a story this big about the police commissioner in the new york times about the police commissioner. apologizing about stonewall. there's all sort of things coming up, the gay pride parades. millions of stories about gays

being allowed to be married. i mean, it's -- gay people have way entered the mainstream compared to what they were in 1969. the difference, someone was asking me recently. what's the big difference. the big difference that stonewall made, was everyone that was in the riot in stonewall was out. they were on the street, they looked gay, they were in if a gay riot, so they were out. and after stonewall, more and more people started coming out. more and more people realized, my cousin's gay, that couple next door are not just roommates, they live together,

they're a family, they love each other. and so it affected families, communities, it affected relationships at work. it made everything better. everything and it's made coverage in the media better as well. it's made, what you see on tv better. >> during the '60s, when there was a lot of heavy policing, the police had a lot of knowledge of the culture with the gay community with the under the radar bars. and it seems like the place had a really deep -- i mean not necessarily the best connection, but a connection. and a lot of institutional knowledge about the gay community. do you think because the policing efforts have 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 going into the same policing tactics? >> it's history. >> i'm sorry, i missed the gift of your question. >> it's just that, you know, when there was heavy policing, there was a lot more knowledge about the culture of the local gay communities by the police departments. when the policing dies down, does that sort of knowledge go away too, and if so, how do you preserve that through like policing -- tactics and whatever. >> i don't think that the police had. there's a lot of policing back in the '60s, they didn't know

about the gay community. >> still don't. >> 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 gay men dressed when they were out to socialize, to meet other gay men. to meet sexual partners, they knew how to -- you know, they would take their best looking police officers, dress them in tight pants and dress them kind of like gay men dress and send them to those areas and entice them. that's really not a knowledge of gay culture or, you know, the -- or even a gaye mentality, it's a very surface thing. i think the is law enforcement

learning bit by bit. society has also been learning, whether it's the military, the business, church, schools, that's my impression. does that answer your question? >> yeah, it does. >> if i could also, there's this wonderful thing out there called the internet, maybe you've heard of it. as big a neanderthals as we are, police officers, they know how to use it, 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. we're also doing a much better job of educating police officers about the communities we serve. and i think that has gotten better because of the solutions

we 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 lgbt issues. i'm always surprised that someone 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. 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 represents washington, d.c.. you say you travel the country. i'm curious about what the lgbt 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, then i'll let you address it. it must have been about 14 years ago, my pager went off. i had a pager back then. it was an area code from north carolina and 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. he had learned about my work from a newspaper.

his boss said, you need to call him, you're not making any progress. i said, where did this occur? is that anywhere near your transgender stroll. there was like -- i could hear the ocean. he said, what is that, sir? i said, where does your transgender prostitution happen? he said oh, sir, we don't have that. i went online, looking, i said, and i'll only make up the street in case anyone's from this town. i said, how about tem le graph road, do you know where that is? he said, sir, that's where the police station is. i said, on the day of the week that the murder happened, go out that night 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, 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 they have an lgbt community center in their city, county or state much less than their police department knows of. >> we talk about training. training is far reaching for a goal. because one of the things i've 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.

goal 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 mention carl locke before, because karl 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, new york city anti-violence project. he worked at the david geffen aids program at gay men's health crisis. he was with active on the brooklyn bridge. he brings all this real world activist experience and education to pd. when he got involved with goal, he kind of redid the curriculum to what it is today. 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 theser you us have affected the people. we have somebody like anna arbelleta who was thrown out of the house in high school for being a lesbian. her mother wouldn't give her financial aide paperwork to go through college. she put herself through college. she's now a new york city police sergeant. you give a cop a story about you that hey, listen, like, i went

through all this shit, so this is very real. we have cops that were involved in house and law that they -- you know, they came up through house and laws. that's amazing in and of itself. the other part of what we do, we really were doing implicit bias training before that, we want people, we want the recruits especially to understand where your ideas come from. where -- you've been bombarded with messages since you were a child. society tells you what's preferred. and fare and impartial policing when we talk about implicit bias. we put the police recruits in scenarios. everybody in here is going to police fairly and impartially, and all the hands go up, big smiling faces yeah, we're going

to be the fair and impartial police. we graduate them now. we take an officer, tonight have you this post. 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 soaping, there's no standing signs anywhere. keep the area clear. okay. we tell the cop that in the alley way there's a vehicle parked, it doesn't have its lights on, but it's running. and the cop dwoez up to the vehicle and con ductses an investigation and he finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. and we ask him, what do you have? you have a little bit of a chuckle, you know the cops engage a little bit. what you actually have is a penal law misdemeanor in the

state of new york. you have a must arrest misdemeanor situation. you ask them, what are they really going to do? you have -- some of them raise their hand. i'm going to issue a summons or i'm going to lock them up, or i'm going to let them go. we play with this a little bit. you get some of them that are honest. i know what you're going to do, you're going to text the cop on the adjoining post, you're never going to believe what's going on over here. everybody's laughing and we graduate the cops again. i say, put them in the exact same scenario, now, you come across that same car in the alley way 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. so everyone just said, they're going to be fair and impartial.

every hand went up, every face was gring, we were seeing teeth. if a guy is getting lucky in one scenario, the guy is getting lucky in the other scenario. being a fair police officer is taking the same action, no matter what the sexual orientation, no matter what the color of their skin. we want them to understand where their ideas come from. what i also want you to understand is, when you wear that uniform, you're representing me and you're representing brett and a couple million other honest people that have a tremendous amount of integrity and the sacrifice 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 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 do it fairly for everybody. that's what the officers gay action league stands for. >> thank you for your powerful perspective. all of you gentlemen, and the insights you share with us today. we can't thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we've 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?

>> could you tell us about how the gllu got started in washington, and have other cities around the country, have they followed the lead -- one thing is training, but have they done the same kind of institution we have in d.c. >> here in washington, d.c., we didn't have the same struggle 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 deserved to have officers that were familiar enough with the community and were able to engage community members in a safe space and safeway that the chief of police back then it was charles ramsey said yes, it

started in one of our small police districts, it was kind of in the gayborhood back then. this is not something that should be confined to one police district. he expanded it citywide. we are one of the only full time police units. meaning not just a liaison officer, but multiple officers working full time in the community. mission, outreach, the usual community policing stuff, going to events, going to pride festivals, going to meetings, singing kumbaya. trar training and education. not just training and educating police officers, 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 the open sit 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 that our numbers go up, we believe we're educating our citizen s better and better every year, that bias crimes that were committed in the past, are now being reported to us. the third part that i think is the most important is unlike most community policing, we're actually doing police work. the officers i work with, and the officials i work with are not only going to be at those event or 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 in those liaison units who are the very

first among the crowd running toward it. what community members saw was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniform, actually engaging in real police work and public safety. yes, we are helping other police departments around the world. probably a week doesn't go by when we hear from other agencies. 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 200 7 we won the harbor innovations in american government award. we won a grant to help replicate the work we're doing, and we're proud to do that whenever we can, to help police departments do the work we do all around the world. i hope i answered your question. >> great question. i think we are about out of time. again, thank you all for coming,

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