Peter Tatchell of the lesbian and gay human rights group OutRage! says police prejudice is undermining the fight against homophobic violence.
The recently retired Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, Richard Wells, says many police forces are still failing to tackle homophobic attitudes within their own ranks. This failure, he says, undermines gay confidence in the police and hinders police action against anti-gay violence.
“The traditional macho culture associated with the police service is responsible for a whole range of prejudices and it could take decades before those prejudices are completely eliminated”, says Wells.
A 1998 survey of 202 lesbian, gay and bisexual Londoners aged 16 to 25 – conducted by GALOP (the gay London police monitoring group) – found that 47 percent had been attacked by queer bashers and 84 percent had suffered homophobic threats or abuse.
But only 19 percent of the victims reported the attack to the police, and only one-third of those said the officers were supportive. Thirteen percent found the police to be homophobic and hostile towards them.
These survey results highlight the anti-gay attitudes that still persist, even in a relatively liberal force like the Metropolitan Police. They help explain why so many lesbians and gay men lack confidence in the police and why, as a consequence, so much homophobic crime goes unreported – despite monitoring schemes being now well established in most major cities.
A study of over 4,000 lesbian, gay and bisexual people -published by the gay lobby group Stonewall in 1996 – found that in the previous five years:
* 34 percent of gay men and 24 percent of lesbians had been beaten up by queer-bashers
* 32 percent had experienced harassment, such as threats, graffiti, vandalism or blackmail
* 73 percent had been subjected to homophobic taunts or abuse
These statistics suggest that a million homosexuals and bisexuals nationwide have been victims of homophobic-motivated assaults. These assaults are typically characterised by extreme savagery, with the victims being punched, stabbed or bludgeoned dozens of times.
Equally disturbing, the same research also discovered that the fear of violent attack was so strong that it led most lesbians, gays and bisexuals to modify their behaviour:
* 88 percent said they always or sometimes avoided expressing affection towards their partner in public in order to minimise the possibility of violence and harassment
* 65 percent always or sometimes avoided telling people they were gay
* 59 percent always or sometimes avoided dressing or acting in ways that might be construed by others as gay.
This suppression of natural, spontaneous behaviour – together with the fear of attack – puts many lesbians and gays under great psychological stress, which can contribute to depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and even self-harm. Homophobic violence – and threat of homophobic violence – is, quite evidently, still a very serious problem that blights the lives of many homosexuals and bisexuals.
Until less than 10 years ago, anti-gay crime was largely ignored by the police. Queers were seen as criminals, undeserving of police protection. Gay men who reported being queer-bashed in parks and toilets often found themselves under investigation for homosexual offences and accused by officers of provoking the attack by dressing flamboyantly. The gay victims of hate crimes were, all too often, treated as the criminal perpetrators.
Early attempts to negotiate a more sensitive policing of the gay community were met with contemptuous rebuffs. In the late 1980s, hard-line police homophobia gave way to PR-conscious roundtable discussions. But these came to nothing. Despite the police smiles and handshakes, hate crimes against lesbians and gays still received derisory police attention.
Between 1986-92, David Smith of the monthly magazine Gay Times catalogued 55 murders of gay and bisexual men – most in circumstances strongly suggesting an anti-gay motive. Nearly half these murders were unsolved, and the police showed little interest in solving them.
Instead, officers were far more concerned about cracking down on “homosexual indecency”, such as gay cruising and sex in forests, toilets and parks in the middle of the night.
Huge resources were invested to arrest gay men committing victimless homosexual offences. Officers hid for hours in the ceilings of public toilets to spy on men having a harmless wank at 4am. Private gay clubs were raided on the strength of mere gossip that sex was taking place on the premises. Infra-red night-sight cameras were used in after-dark police stake-outs of gay cruising areas like Clapham Common. Agents provocateur “pretty police” were deployed to lure men into committing homosexual acts, and then promptly arrested them!
The end result was that in 1989, the number of men convicted of the consensual gay-only offence of “gross indecency” was the highest this century – higher than in 1966 (the year before the so-called decriminalisation of male homosexuality) and even greater than in 1953-55, when Britain was gripped by a McCarthyite-style anti-gay witch-hunt.
It was these distorted police priorities that led to the formation of the queer rights group OutRage! in 1990. Our key demand was “protection, not persecution!” Because the police would not listen and respond to our reasonable request for fair and unbiased policing, we embarked on a high-profile campaign of civil disobedience and direct action against police harassment of the gay community. This involved invading and occupying police stations, busting undercover police entrapment operations, warning gay men cottaging and cruising with leaflets and stickers, publicly identifying police agents provocateur, and blasting New Scotland Yard with a deafening barrage of whistles and fog-horns.
Simultaneously, we mounted a well-researched PR campaign exposing the huge waste of police time and taxpayers money involved in the arrest of gay men for victimless behaviour.
This caused the police huge embarrassment. Suddenly officers began to sit up and take our concerns seriously for the first time.
To meet this new challenge, OutRage! set up the London Lesbian and Gay Policing Initiative in late 1990, bringing together representatives from a wide cross-section of lesbian and gay organisations in the capital. We demanded that the police meet the LLGPI and agree to an on-going structure for dialogue and negotiations with the gay community.
Within a few months, the Met capitulated. It agreed to create a liaison forum and conceded to most of our proposals for policing reform. These included the scaling down of police operations in parks and toilets, the greater use of cautions as an alternative to prosecutions, tighter controls on the authorisation of undercover entrapment operations, the introduction of lesbian and gay awareness education at police training colleges, tougher disciplinary action against homophobic officers, and the monitoring of homophobic attacks.
The end results were dramatic. Between 1990-94, the number of men convicted of consenting homosexual behaviour fell by two-thirds – the biggest, swiftest fall in ever! The new police commitment to liaise with gay groups to tackle homophobic violence – and to appeal for information on queer-bashing attacks via the gay press – resulted in important breakthroughs in the investigation of many anti-gay assaults and murders.
Although the policing of the lesbian and gay communities has continued to improve, the adoption of gay-friendly policies remains patchy and often depends on individual officers. There is no consistent, uniform nation-wide policy. Incorporation of “sexual orientation” in police equal opportunity statements has been slow and uneven. Most police forces – notably the Met – still refuse to place recruitment adverts in the gay press.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) new guide for “dealing incidents involving the lesbian and gay community” – adopted in December 1997 – is a big disappointment. On the issue of gay cruising and public sex, it encourages “working with the local gay community to sort the problem out”. But the guide to Chief Constables does not, as hoped, rule out the use of “pretty police” to entrap gay men.
In different parts of the country, the monitoring of homophobic violence varies greatly, from the casual to the enthusiastic. Best practice includes:
* the designation of a publicly named officer – preferably gay and out – who is responsible for dealing with homophobic hate crimes
* the creation of a police hotline for the reporting of anti-gay attacks
* the placement of police adverts in local papers and the postering of public libraries, council offices, colleges and shopping centres – as well as local gay bars and clubs -warning that “homophobic violence is a crime!” and giving hotline details
* the establishment of a local liaison forum that meets regularly to bring together the police and gay community groups.
* the switch of police resources from operations against consenting gay sex to the deterrence and investigation of homophobic attacks.
Although the level of anti-gay hate crime is similar to the scale of racist violence, it is treated even less seriously by both police and the Home Office.
The Home Secretary in June 1998 refused to extend the Crime & Disorder Bill’s tough new penalties for race hate crimes to crimes motivated by homophobia. This down-grading of anti-gay violence signals that the government is soft on queer-bashers.
In January 1998, seven gay and bisexual men in Bolton were convicted on charges of consensual group sex in the privacy of their own homes (gay sex involving the presence of more than two persons is still illegal under the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, whereas equivalent heterosexual behaviour is not). The zealous police pursuit of these men – which received widespread publicity in the gay press – has reignited lesbian and gay distrust of the police and made many homosexual men and women more reluctant than ever to report queer-bashing assaults.
* Details of OutRage! campaigns on policing and other issues can be accessed via the web site: [email protected]
This article is a summary of a speech at the Building Safer Cities conference at Keele University, 24 June 1998. Subsequently published as a conference report book, Building Safer Cities, Peter Francis and Penny Fraser (editors), The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, London, 1999.