Police found a dead young man in El Cajon and assumed a drug overdose caused his death. They had no clue the dead man was gay. “There was no dress in the closet.”

But a gay detective investigates. He finds the death is a murder. There’s a serial killer who meets closeted men via the Internet and phone-sex lines.

Two teenage boys go camping in the mountains in San Diego. One boy reports the other is missing. The story is the boys got high from a tea made from a wild hallucinogenic weed indigenous to the area. The missing boy got lost. Searchers find his nude body a week later a few miles from campsite. Police conclude he died from exposure and rule his death an accident, not a homicide.

A gay detective examines the case and is intrigued upon learning the boys were best friends in high school, ran track, worked together in a local restaurant, and that the surviving boy had brought a large kitchen knife with him on the camping trip. The detective gets help from a gay criminalist who performs tests on items found at the crime scene and the boys’ homes, including fibers, blood, hair, urine, semen and saliva. After DNA analysis, the gay detective concludes that the two boys had been sexually active with each other. The surviving boy, fearing the dead boy would reveal their secret to friends and family, planned for his friend to die by accident on the trip.

Despite the proof, the district attorney refuses to charge the surviving boy with murder, voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.

A wife discovers her wealthy husband dead in the garage. His body is wrapped in plastic; his hands and legs bound. Detectives from the rural area conclude his murder was the result of a home-invasion robbery gone awry. The wife knows her husband’s interest in sadomasochistic sex, but she and her kids don’t want this disclosed because of the embarrassment.

A gay detective discovers the dead man was known throughout the S&M community as a “submissive” whose ultimate fantasy was death during sex.

By researching websites, the detective finds a master who promised to provide the ultimate pleasure. Crime scene evidence places him at the dead man’s home. However, the family pressures the D.A. not to pursue the case.

Each scenario above is fictional, but based upon real cases I’ve examined over the years. What is, however, the greatest fiction is the role of the gay police detective. They don’t exist.

They do exist, of course, in real life. For those of us who read about crimes in the news can’t help but look for the gay or lesbian nuances. Was the guy beaten on a street in Hillcrest? Was it a hate crime? Older gay man with lots of money? Was it done by a hustler he met at a bar?

A youth gang is robbing people in Mission Hills? Do the police go to a local coffee house to find members of the gang? Do the Crips and the Bloods have gay units?

The reason I raise this issue is just as there is “A Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” there is also a “queer” eye for crime. Unfortunately there are few gay cops and detectives working in the field.

Each year hundreds of unsolved homicides continue to mount in San Diego and elsewhere. Many involve gay and lesbian victims, some out, others not.

The perpetrators often “get away with murder” for several reasons.

Homophobia is still rampant in police agencies. Unless a gay victim is prominent, finding his murderer (and protecting the rest of us) falls slightly ahead of finding the murderers of illegal immigrant, the homeless, female prostitutes, transgender prostitutes, male prostitutes, drug dealers, gang members and parolees.

Secondly, when police do investigate, they often buy the so called “gay panic” defense. “He put his hand on my knee and I had to kill him.” That’s justifiable homicide in some eyes, regardless of its truth.

The Los Angeles Times recently featured a story discussing the careers of openly-gay men in Los Angeles police agencies. The sad truth is that despite California state laws and local L.A. laws prohibiting bias against employees based upon sexual orientation, openly-gay officers reported that various units of the LAPD (e.g., vice, narcotics) are “off-limits” to gay men. Lesbians have it only slightly better.

If fellow officers can’t even deal with gays and lesbians in their midst, is it any wonder why they don’t want to pursue people who murder GLBT people?