Oct 12, 2007  |  By: JOEY DiGUGLIELMO  | COMMENTS     

The well-liked former commander of the Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit of the D.C. Metro Police has been promoted to a new leadership role as the District’s chief of police continues to implement major structural changes throughout the department.

Sgt. Brett Parson, who’s gay and joined the GLLU as commander in 2001, is now the commander of the special liaison units and will oversee all four. In addition to the GLLU, they are the Latino Liaison Unit, the Asian Liaison Unit and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Unit. He will work out of the office of Chief Cathy Lanier.

“I just want to be clear that this isn’t me returning to the GLLU,” Parson said. “I’ll still be involved to some degree but this is as much about the other special outreach units as the GLLU. It’s not just a gay issue.”

Parson is succeeding Lt. Alberto Jova who will move to a supervisor role in the 3rd District police station. Parson says his duties will be slightly expanded from what Jova was doing.

“We’re looking at an expansion and unification of all the liaison units,” Parson said. “I’m going to be developing and implementing a plan of how to join these units together as a cohesive team in the areas in which they can share resources. Just off the top of my head, that could be something like using similar outreach techniques, similar case-tracking techniques, sharing investigative resources and so on.”

Jova, who’s on a short leave, said he had “no opinion” on the changes. He’ll start in the 3rd District upon his return to work Tuesday.

Jova has supervised the GLLU out of Lanier’s office for most of this year with Sgt. Tania Bell overseeing the day-to-day operations out of the GLLU’s Dupont Circle headquarters.

Bell will continue in that capacity, as will the heads of the other liaison units. With five full-time officers and Bell as a full-time sergeant, the GLLU is one of the smaller liaison units. The Latino unit has nine full-time officers and a sergeant and the Asian unit has six full-time officers and a sergeant. The GLLU is significantly larger than the deaf unit, which has only two full-time officers.

Lanier is in the midst of reorganizing the city’s 3,900-member force, saying she wants to streamline the department for efficiency. The overhaul includes reducing the number of assistant police chiefs from eight to six and eliminating two senior executive directors of similar rank. Lanier also is distributing 400 laptop computers to patrol officers and automating police reports.

The department is now divided into six bureaus — homeland security, professional development, corporate support, investigative services, international affairs/patrol services and school security. The city’s 2,000 patrol officers answer to Assistant Chief Diane Grooms.

How all the pieces fall into place for the GLLU remains to be seen. Lanier pledged in June that she wouldn’t disband the unit but rather planned to cross-train non-GLLU officers so that gay Washingtonians would, in time, feel comfortable having any D.C. officer respond to a gay call. The unit was devised so officers could sensitively handle the needs of gay and trans residents.

Public input sessions were held throughout the city this summer. Jova compiled the findings and presented them to Lanier. Parson was familiar with the findings but said it’s yet to be determined if expanding GLLU services will involve cross training non-GLLU officers, adding GLLU officers or both. Lanier said in June she was concerned about the reach of the GLLU being limited geographically to Dupont Circle and the surrounding area.

Lanier admitted in June there are pockets of homophobia within the department and said eventually she’d like to have all officers trained sufficiently so that there wouldn’t be a need for a GLLU. Some gay activists, while agreeing that universal sensitivity would be ideal, said that’s unrealistic for the forseeable future and that they feel a sense of pride and security from the GLLU and want it to continue.