The image of a grinning Mayor Jerry Sanders engagingly sitting across from Police Chief William Lansdowne on the Dec. 7 Gay & Lesbian Times “Persons of the Year” cover elicited quite a debate on a San Diego Police Officers Association (SDPOA) message board.

Anonymous commentators opined both about the association of the two centrist civic leaders with the GLBT community and about the “Persons of the Year” honor itself. Although a majority of the members had mostly constructive remarks on the subject, dissenting comments ranged from offensive to blatantly homophobic.

Both Sanders and Lansdowne were recognized as the 2006 “Persons of the Year” by the Gay & Lesbian Times for their demonstrable vigilance and organized initiative in apprehending perpetrators of the beatings wrought against six men outside the summertime Pride festival. The recognition was met with online acrimony on a message board operated and used mostly but not exclusively by police officers, raising questions about illicit discriminatory practices by the police force against individuals of the GLBT community.

“Sorry but I find this shameful! The last thing I want my kid to see is my boss on the cover of a magazine like this! This makes me sick,” a user with the online handle “NY” exclaimed after seeing the cover.

Others followed suit, with postings like: “Nice! Hope is officially lost” and “Very cute! Pardon me while I go vomit.”

Since the Internet domain serves as a public forum, there is no verifiable way to distinguish actual police officers and SDPOA employees from random users. However, the way in which the comments are authored infers a direct and professional relationship with the San Diego Police Department.

“If indeed the comments were written by officers, which one may surmise by the possessive tone of the comments, those individuals need to take a long, hard look at themselves and re-evaluate their duty as police officers,” said Bill Nemec, president of the SDPOA.

After apologizing to the Gay & Lesbian Times and extending his redress to the rest of the GLBT community, Nemec took the brunt of the blame.

“Because our organization’s name is directly on the site, as the president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, we take complete responsibility for the ignorant comments made,” he said. “These individuals behaved very unprofessionally.”

Police Chief Lansdowne was similarly displeased when told about the postings.

“Those anonymous comments are in no way reflective of the San Diego Police Department,” he said.

But an anonymous source who sent the Gay & Lesbian Times the original message- board transcript offered a different vantage point.

“I’m tired of seeing crime reports ‘washed’ by a few [officers] because the couple or person reporting the crime is gay, and that select [officer] doesn’t believe the crime is legitimate because they don’t believe in gay relationships,” the source said.

The individual was particularly alarmed by the handling of same-sex domestic violence cases by members of the SDPD.

“I’m focusing on instances of domestic violence,” the source said. “If there’s physical violence in a domestic-related incident, a report must be made, and in most instances the offending party is sent to jail. The officer, in the end, must make a determination that a crime occurred.”

The Gay & Lesbian Times’ attempts to verify whether the source is in any way affiliated with the SDPD or the SDPOA were unsuccessful.

In an effort to quell any resulting GLBT anxiety, Lansdowne asserted: “There are policies in place that must be followed by officers on duty that require them to file a domestic violence report. Everyone is protected by these policies.”

Mayor Sanders’ communications director, Fred Sainz, further denounced the brash message board comments on behalf of the mayor. “Clearly, those opinions are not representative of the mayor’s view, the city’s view or the views of the vast majority of San Diegans who believe that the LGBT community is a vital and important part of our community.”

By Nemec’s own admission, this isn’t the first time a defamatory comment on the SDPOA message board has incited the ire of persons within the organization, himself included, and he proposed a three-pronged plan designed to curb future offenses to minimize fallout from the incident.

Although he wishes to modify the way in which discourse is conducted on the message board, Nemec said he is apprehensive about permanently dismantling the domain. The message board was originally designed to streamline communication between officers throughout the greater San Diego area, from South Bay to North County. But according to Nemec, “Some of this stuff has gotten out of hand with some of these comments.” Heeding the positive feedback from the officers and employees of the SDPOA, Nemec plans to install a system of accountability, supported by three new implementations. First, he plans to hire a Webmaster in charge of reviewing content and omitting invidious comments. Second, he plans to require users to disclose their identities as a condition of joining the message board. Third, sanctions would be applied to anyone who then chooses to post offensive material on the message board.

Nemec, Lansdowne and Sainz independently arrived at the consensus that the message board comments made on Dec. 11 were a mere aberration, not to be viewed as a reflection or representation of the SDPOA, SDPD or the city as a whole. Indeed, the abrasive remarks were sparse, with positive reinforcement about the accuracy of the “Persons of the Year” feature outweighing the negative.

But in considering the gravity of the comments in question, along with the double-standard that all too often exists between racism and homophobia, one user posits a relevant comparison: “I was just wondering if the NAACP or Hispanic Weekly nominated them, what would be posted here? Let’s not knock the vessel which is used to promote them.”