A group of about 40 new Philadelphia police officers attended a training session at the Police Academy last week to learn the ins and outs of working effectively with the LGBT community.
The Police Liaison Committee and the office of Chief Inspector James Tiano, the police liaison to the LGBT community, organized the session — the first held in several months, as the Academy has not graduated a new class of cadets because of budgetary restrictions. Last week’s group, however, was not new to the police world, but rather just new here: All were recruits who’d served on police forces in surrounding areas such as Bucks County.
Members of the committee worked with Sgt. Jefferson Campbell to institute the training, which committee chair Franny Price hailed as a success.
“It went really well. I was very, very impressed,” she said.
While the officers will be dispersed throughout the city, Campbell said LGBT people live and work in all corners of Philadelphia and police should be prepared to work with the community beyond the Gayborhood.
“In places like West Philly or Olney, there are lots of gay people in those areas,” he said. “We want them to know that it’s not just the Gayborhood. Just like they need to be able to deal with issues between heterosexual couples, this training makes them better-equipped to handle similar things between same-sex couples.”
The officers were walked through a presentation by Price, former committee co-chair and current member Fred Bostwick, members Jaci Adams and Brian Green, as well as city director of LGBT affairs Gloria Casarez and former police officer Maria Gonzalez, who underwent gender transitioning while on the force.
The presenters discussed everything from the history of LGBT rights in Philadelphia to an overview of community events held in the city throughout the year.
Instead of talking at the officers, however, Campbell said the training facilitators were interactive.
“It was educational but also friendly and fun, as opposed to the typical classroom setting,” he said. “People weren’t just sitting there with their mouths closed, but were actually involved and asking questions.”
Casarez said the audience was smaller — as well as more experienced — than the regular cadet classes, which may have fueled its responsiveness.
“This was a very engaged group,” she said. “When we’re doing this training with the cadets, they’re usually younger and usually nervous, just around the general policing pieces. They haven’t graduated yet and get tripped up on the policing details, so throwing in the whole LGBT piece is even more for them. But this group has the experience with the policing, and they were really interactive and interested.”
The officers participated in a simulation in which they pulled over a driver, played by Gonzalez, and were asked how they would respond to the fact that she presented as a woman but offered up a male driver’s license.
Casarez said the officers were initially stumped as to how to react and questioned the committee about the legalities of name changes for transgender people.
But Campbell instructed Gonzalez to pretend to shoot the officers, to demonstrate to the officers that focusing on their own misconceptions or biases could risk their own safety.
“You have to just treat everybody the same,” Campbell said. “You can just question why the picture doesn’t look like this person and ask what she’d prefer to be referred to as. People won’t be upset by that question, by that politeness.”
The reality of the challenges faced by transgenders was further supported by Gonzalez’s speech about her 40 years on the force and her own transition.
Campbell said Gonzalez taught him in the Academy more than 20 years ago, and he hoped her message hit home with the officers.
“When she was here, nobody had a clue what she was going through,” he said. “It was 30 or 40 years of misery because she couldn’t be herself. Her story let these officers know that people give up a lot for their liberties and that that needs to be respected.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].