Former SDPD Chief Jerry Sanders looks to be one of the favorites for mayor. While everyone seems focused on the pension deficit, how would Sanders (and the other candidates) deal with GLBT issues? I’ve detailed here the problems with anti-gay bias within police departments generally. I’ve pointed out how this leads to serious problems for GLBT officers. It also impacts crime prevention and crime solving in the GLBT community.

The Los Angeles Times reported in November that, despite a 1993 agreement to make the LAPD a hostile-free place for GLBT officers, the “department can be a hostile, even frightening place” for GLBT officers.

The paper spoke with 16 gay officers, five who have retired.

They told the Times that being openly gay slows promotions, makes discipline more likely and jeopardizes careers. Openly gay officers, they said, are not welcome in the vice, juvenile, metro, SWAT, organized crime or anti-terrorism units.

Two officers recently settled with the city of Los Angeles regarding their claims of discrimination.

Allan Weiner, 45, was a training officer in the Van Nuys Division. The LAPD accused him of making inappropriate remarks about sodomy and searching crotches for guns. But an LAPD administrative panel found him not guilty. But by then the LAPD transferred, demoted and cut his pay.

Sgt. Robert Duncan, 42, a Medal of Valor winner worked at headquarters. An ex revealed Duncan’s sexuality when he complained to police, accusing him of harassment. Duncan was put under surveillance, then accused of unexplained absences, then relieved of duty. Ultimately, a board found that his only transgression had been leaving work early one afternoon and getting a full day’s pay. The LAPD suspended him for five days then said his former job no longer existed.

Changing the culture of homophobia within police agencies is key to preventing and solving crime affecting GLBTs.

Years ago women reported that they couldn’t report rape or domestic violence because police officers were all men who had little sympathy. It wasn’t until courts required police agencies to hire women that female victims of crime found empathetic ears.

No court has ordered police agencies to hire gay cops. Less than 20 years ago, police agencies screened out gay cops. A former sheriff of San Diego County, John Duffy, used to ask candidates for deputy sheriff if they were “gay.” One complained he had to take a lie detector test. A judge ordered the practice stopped.

A former SDPD assistant chief of police, Norman Stamper, told a Seattle paper that in the ’70s, beating up gays was a “rite of passage” for new cops in San Diego. Jerry Sanders denies it happened.

In reporting on the LAPD’s notorious Rampart division, investigators found numerous cases where police arrested gay men who were completely innocent of any wrongdoing. But police reports indicated that the men were exposing themselves to children, masturbating in public, or otherwise soliciting them. The police reports turned out to be boilerplate, meaning that cops simply changed the names of those arrested without even so much as changing the ages or ethnicities of the persons arrested.

Things have changed drastically in San Diego in this regard, as the police agencies try to screen out those who are obviously homophobic or racist. The police academy includes training in dealing with GLBT issues.

San Diego is fortunate to have Bonnie Dumanis as an openly lesbian district attorney. Cops who display anti-gay, anti-Semitic or anti-women conduct will hear from this D.A.

But, unfortunately, neither the Sheriff’s Department nor the SDPD has had an openly gay or lesbian cop serving in a major management capacity.

To make matters worse, the SDPD cut the part-time post for a liaison to the GLBT community. The GLBT community contributes (via property taxes, if nothing else) millions to the SDPD budget. Considering the history of anti-gay bias within the SDPD, and the distrust of the police in general, a part-time liaison hardly seems expendable.

But to attack the deeper problem of people joining the agency with anti-gay biases, there are some essentials.

First, the state should prohibit all law enforcement agencies (including local police, prosecutors, judges and prison personnel) from employing persons who belong to groups that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Secondly, the state should prohibit agencies from hiring anyone who has belonged to or been employed by an employer that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that police agencies can regulate the off-duty conduct of police when it adversely affects the mission of the police agency. Just as police may not belong to groups like the KKK, they cannot participate in groups like the branches of the military (or the Boy Scouts) that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Homophobia is rampant within law enforcement, and it’s due in large measure to the fact that police agencies hire most of their recruits from the U.S. military and the Explorers program (Boy Scouts). Thus, officers enter the profession coming from environments where bias against GLBTs is the norm. When discovered to be gay or bi, those persons are harassed, punished and fired.

If men and women want to be police officers and be in military service, they can join the California National Guard, which does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.