Mar 23, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Reports that Washington’s interim police chief plans to assign members of the department’s highly praised Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit to each of the seven police districts have raised concerns among the ranks of the five-officer unit as well as among local activists.

Chief Cathy Lanier told the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance last week that she wanted to expand the unit to enable two GLLU officers to be assigned to each of the seven police districts throughout the city, but she did not say where the officers would by stationed, according to GLAA spokesperson Rick Rosendall.

Assigning two of the unit’s officers to each district would mean the unit would be expanded to at least 14 officers from its current five-officer status. Others familiar with the GLLU said members of the unit were told the chief planned to expand the unit to seven rather than 14 officers, raising uncertainty among its ranks.

Rosendall and other activists said removing the officers from the unit’s central station at Dupont Circle and placing them under the command of the seven police districts could end its status as a city-wide, cohesive operation.

“I don’t think that’s the chief’s goal,” said Lt. Alberto Jova, a gay assistant to Lanier who works out of the chief’s office at police headquarters. “That’s not something I would favor,” he said.

Jova said his understanding was that Lanier would assign the GLLU officers to monitor gay-related crime and other issues in each of the seven districts while letting them continue to work out of the unit’s offices in Dupont Circle. But he said he had yet to confirm the chief’s plans for the unit.

Lanier could not be reached by press time.

News about the possible redeployment of its officers came at a time when the unit has gone without a commander for the past two months. In January, Sgt. Brett Parson, the unit’s commander for the past five years, requested and received approval for a transfer to supervisory duties in the Third District.

Officials said the chief’s office would issue a vacancy announcement for a sergeant to replace Parson within a week or two of Parson’s departure in late January. However, the announcement was not issued until March 15, a development that raised concern among GLLU officers, two sources familiar with the unit said. The sources requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Christopher Dyer, interim director of the Mayor’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Affairs, said the delay was due to procedural requirements in the department’s personnel office and had nothing to do with Lanier’s or the mayor’s commitment to the unit, which he said was strong.
Local gay activists raised further concerns this week when reports surfaced that the vacancy announcement listed the GLLU under the command of the Third District’s Police Service Area 306, which includes Dupont Circle. The GLLU has been nominally linked to the Third District for administrative and personnel purposes, but has always been considered an autonomous entity that reported directly to the chief of police rather than the Third District commander, GLLU officers have said in the past.

Was Lanier downgrading its importance within the department by placing it under a single Police Service District?

“That was an error, a typographical error,” said Jova, when asked about the notation about PSA 306 on the vacancy announcement. “They are not assigned to PSA 306,” he said. “It will still be an autonomous unit.”

Former Police Chief Charles Ramsey created the GLLU in 2000 as the nation’s first police liaison operation associated with the gay community that had full authority to investigate crimes and make arrests. At the time, nearly all the gay outreach units in other big city police departments had been limited to providing educational and outreach services to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.
Mayor Adrian Fenty nominated Lanier as Ramsey’s replacement in January in one of his first major appointments after taking office. On the day Fenty announced her nomination, Lanier told the Blade said she would retain the GLLU.