EXCLUSIVE
Sheriff Bill Gore has rightfully won the respect and gratitude of the LGBT community for making his department a safer, less discriminatory place for employment and soon for LGBT jailed inmates by creating an LGBT Advisory Board for his department, which will be formally announced July 17.
But that doesn’t mean the Sheriff’s Department is free of flaws and not in need of improvement – and the new LGBT Advisory Board.
To be clear, Gore has proven himself to be a friend of the GLBT community and someone who believes in the idea of equal protection under the law. Unlike the bad old days when to be gay and to encounter law enforcement meant your life could be in danger.
In fact, before the Brown Act of 1976, you could be arrested for committing a “homosexual act.” San Diego was one of the only cities in California where you could get arrested for “cross-dressing,” as they used to call it. I got arrested myself. Once you were in jail is when things could then (and even can now) get very dangerous for GLBT people.
“An LGBT task force would serve as a conduit of information,” said Susan Jester, a longtime activist and pioneer in San Diego GLBT and HIV/AIDS-support movements.
“It could provide a more specific standard of diversity training … ”
In the 1980s, Jester, myself and a handful of others faced bigotry head on with marches, pickets and meetings with sometimes less-than-willing city politicians and law enforcement officials. We’ve come a long way since the time when former mayor and later governor, Pete Wilson refused to meet with us.
Maureen O’Connor was the first mayor to really sit down with us. That led to open communication between San Diego’s GLBT community and law enforcement. Because of that early groundwork, these days our community is free of the open, top-down abuse suffered at the hands of bully cops back in the days of racist and homophobic former chief of police, Ray Hoobler.
Later police chiefs such as R. David Bejarano and Jerry Sanders were friends of our community, as is our current chief, William Lansdowne.
In the Sheriff’s Department, we’ve never had a better ally than Sheriff Bill Gore.
“Because the sheriff has the responsibility of the jails and those individuals who come into his custodial care, it is of utmost importance that the deputies and officers on site be well educated and informed as to the diverse nature of our LGBT community,” Jester said.
That is a fact made crystal clear in recent years by the alleged humiliation suffered by two prominent members of San Diego’s LGBT community at the hands of sheriff’s deputies while they were held at the county’s main detention center downtown.
It is a credit to both Gore and civil rights activist, Will Walters that after the sheriff’s emissary, Cmdr. Rich Miller heard the tale of Walters’ horrifying experience at the downtown detention center the department apologized.
Walters accepted and chose not to include the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department in his civil rights lawsuit, which is proceeding against San Diego Police and San Diego LGBT Pride, both of which declined to apologize.
Nevertheless, sheriff’s deputies only released Walters after he spent approximately 12 hours being, he says, systematically paraded before cells full of inmates, who were encouraged to taunt him.
San Diego Police officers had deemed Walters’ outfit equal to nudity. Either sheriff’s deputies kept an inmate nude for the entirety of his incarceration – or they disagreed with the opinions of their counterparts at the police department that Walters was nude.
“Ironically, it was sheriff’s deputies themselves who were calling me names,” Walters told LGBT Weekly. “The inmates, surprisingly, we’re not too fazed by seeing me in my leather gear. They knew it was gay Pride weekend. But the deputies were laughing, making hand gestures and making fun of my appearance.”
Another member of the LGBT community reports a strikingly similar ordeal at the jail.
“I’ve said from the beginning that I made a mistake,” said Paris Quion, a transgender woman who is a well-known entertainer at popular nightclubs and venues in and around Hillcrest. “I was pulled over for DUI.”
Be sure to visit LGBTweekly.com for more of this story Friday, including the shocking question a deputy demanded Paris Quion answer and
