Breaking Rank (58 page)

He read from his report. “Officer N. Stamper set an SDPD record for the most arrests ever as a Pink Beret, fifty-six in fifteen days. Of course, the assignment was a bit . . .
distasteful
.” My peers, some fifty strong, tittered. I felt my face flush. “. . . And not without its problems. For example, Officer Stamper blew his first case.” The crowd roared. “And another defendant got a sodomy charge reduced to following too close.” Hoots and howls. “Later, we lost one in court because Stamper swallowed the evidence.” Uncontained shrieking. I was bright red now. Stevens waited for the room to quiet. “In spite of these problems, Officer Stamper was able to take matters into his own hands.” They were stomping on the floor, rolling in the aisles. “In fact, he bent over backwards to get the job done.”

On and on it went. I pictured Stevens huddled that day with his Sex Crimes cronies, chortling over the nest of double entendres they'd hatched. I also pictured the men I arrested. Willie Brown being savaged by Bruiser. The sobbing Methodist minister, his hands cuffed behind his back, asking me to pray with him. My community college carpentry instructor who trembled uncontrollably as I put him in the backseat of a police car. The two or three terrified military personnel who knew exactly what their arrests meant.

Moments later, when Stevens read the chief's actual commendation, I couldn't hear him. I was mortified: God forbid, that roomful of uniformed peers should think my record-breaking performance was
remotely
attributable to the
possibility
that I
might
be gay. So I threw my head back and laughed harder than everyone else. I think they call that homophobia.

At that early moment in my career as a cop, bigotry, mine and others', was starting to wear me out. It was easy to work on prejudice against blacks. Not so easy was confronting my attitudes about homosexuality. Then came Stonewall. June 28, 1969, New York.

Reacting to repeated police raids on the Stonewall Inn, a private club, gays fought back. There were thirteen arrests in the melee. Four officers were injured, one with a broken wrist. I pictured my brother cops, trapped inside a gay bar, being pelted with, according to the
New York Times,
“bricks, bottles, garbage, pennies, and a parking meter.” Nine police officers against an army of angry,
violent
homosexuals. The riot on Christopher Street was no way for gays to achieve their rights.

But, as details of the incident became clear, I switched sides.

The cops had acted like pigs both before and during the Stonewall confrontation. I'd seen the same in San Diego, at the Brass Rail: vice cops demeaning and baiting gay men, arresting them on trumped up charges, pushing them around or beating them up. Those cops in New York had no justification for the way they behaved. They got what they asked for—an opinion I kept to myself.

By the end of my second year as a police officer I was railing against
racism, confronting misogynist cops, making public my belief that policing was a tainted institution much in need of sweeping reforms. A few years and two badges later, when I was a lieutenant, the San Diego
Evening Tribune
carried a front-page profile by Steve Casey that labeled me a “new breed advocate of radical change in policing.” It extolled my commitment to human rights. But there was no mention of gay rights. I was already, in the words of a senior officer, a “nigger lover.” What would my peers think if I started speaking up for homosexuals?

I rationalized my fears. Unlike blacks and Latinos and women, homosexuals had made a “lifestyle” choice, or so I believed. I believed they had a right to that choice—live and let live. I believed in treating everyone fairly, and with respect. But deep down it bothered me that “gay liberation” had become part of the civil rights movement. All that lavender, all that flesh, all that gaudiness showing up at civil rights and even antiwar demonstrations.

In the mid-seventies, Helen entered my life. Helen was a writer friend of my second wife, Patricia. She wore jeans, denim shirts, clunky boots, a single braid down her back, and occasionally a knife on her belt. She spent time at our old house on Adams Avenue, fixing toilets, clearing drains, and—from where I sat—pining over Patricia. Helen was cool toward me at first. Not icy, she just wouldn't make eye contact and she answered my home improvement questions with a word or two, or an unintelligible grunt. I was the enemy: man, husband, cop.

Gradually, she warmed up and started volunteering plumbing information and advice, even making small talk. Finally, she shared stories of run-ins she and her friends had had with the police. I pictured those run-ins, and was angry. I asked for names, times, locations. I followed up, and we became friends.

Spending time with Helen got me to thinking about what I'd read back in the early sixties about homosexuality, about weak or absent fathers, domineering mothers, social “explanations” of gayness. Helen was Helen. A lesbian. It was who she was; or, rather, a vital part of who she was. It wasn't at all about “preference” or “lifestyle.” She could have
been a suburban, tight-assed, Christian conservative, Donna Reed–dress-alike who voted for Nixon and held Tupperware parties. But she still would have been a lesbian.

Helen told me she'd never been erotically attracted to a man. “Well, that's two of us,” I said. We laughed.

What if I had been gay? What kind of a life would it have been? A life like Helen's? Gawked at, snubbed? Ridiculed, hassled, brutalized by the cops? Would I have been beaten—or worse—at the hands of homophobic bullies who didn't like the way I walked or talked, or the people I associated with, or what I did in my private life? What if I'd been one of the masses of closeted gay men who “passed”? What kind of a life would that have been? And what if I'd chosen to come out? Or, if I were outed? Would my parents have disowned me? My straight friends shunned me? Would I have found worthwhile work, been able to keep a job, enjoy the same partnership benefits as a straight spouse, the same legal rights?

One thing was certain: If I were gay I wouldn't have been a cop. There
were
no gay cops then. You laugh? Hey, we were sure of it, the brotherhood and I.

During the screening process I'd been hooked up to a lie detector and asked if I'd ever been involved in an “unnatural sex act.” I didn't know whether that included oral sex so I asked for clarification. The polygraph operator said, “You know. Do you have an unusual fondness for barnyard animals? Have you ever done it with a
man
?” If you copped to getting it on with a member of your own gender, or lied, you were automatically rejected. So, we
knew
there were no gays in the police ranks.
*

Not until Sgt. Larry Lamond, who'd recently left the department, went on national TV and told the world he was gay. (Some of my colleagues were sure he'd “turned homosexual”
after
he left the department). Much admired by his peers and superiors, his “confession” rocked our world—and caused a lot of cops to start looking funny at one another.

I don't remember when the word
homophobia
entered mainstream communication, but it was on the heels of Lamond's coming out that I added bigotry against gays to my public recitation of grievances against the profession. I decided to confront homophobia, like racism or sexism, wherever I found it. At my gym, a stockbroker/lawyer-type made some crack about “faggots.” I said, “I find that offensive.” He quickly wrapped a towel around his privates.

“Why? You gay or something?”

“What difference does it make?” He shook his head, slammed his locker door, and headed for the shower. I couldn't, I wouldn't remain silent anymore. As they say, if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. I stood for human rights, which now included gay rights.

By the early nineties, SDPD had become, arguably, the most progressive police department in the country. We'd pioneered community policing, revolutionized our handling of domestic violence, opened the department to citizen participation in everything from policy making and program development to police shooting reviews. We'd conducted a whole-hog investigation into racism within the ranks, and moved aggressively to combat it. Thanks to affirmative action, relentless training, and the personal commitment of chiefs like Bill Kolender and his successor Bob Burgreen, we were one of the most diverse organizations anywhere. Burgreen and I (now the department's number-two guy, wearing my eighth badge) had marched several times in San Diego's annual gay pride parade.

Then came the toughest test of our progressive credentials. It was triggered by a mugging series in Hillcrest, home to the city's largest openly gay population. The crimes were vile. Elderly couples walking home from an evening meal, gay men headed for a movie or a drink, shoppers returning to
their cars—all struck from behind with baseball bats and pipes. Money was taken in a few of the assaults, but amusement, not robbery, seemed to be the primary motive, and gay victims were clearly being singled out for the most vicious attacks. It was just a matter of time before someone got killed.