Gay, Lesbian Officers Win Approval to Wear Uniforms at Festival Booth

Seeking to avoid the controversy that erupted last year, a task force sought and won Police Commission approval Tuesday to allow gay and lesbian Los Angeles police officers to wear their uniforms when they staff a booth at a gay pride festival this year.

The officers, however, will do no recruiting at the two-day Christopher Street West event in West Hollywood in June because, as Chief Daryl F. Gates noted, the Los Angeles Police Department is in the midst of a hiring freeze.

Instead openly gay and lesbian officers, all volunteers, will provide information about the LAPD. They also will “build bridges” of good will between the department and the gay and lesbian community, said John Ferry, co-chair of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force.

“The presence of openly gay and lesbian officers at the task force booth at last year’s Christopher Street West festival was the single most positive event ever in building . . . trust and cooperation,” Ferry told the five commissioners Tuesday, before they unanimously approved the plan.

Getting approval for the officers’ participation last year was not so easy. At that time, Gates created a public furor when he refused to allow some of the seven openly gay and lesbian officers on the LAPD to wear their uniforms in a recruiting booth at the festival, even though approval had been given by a lower-level police official.

Gates relented, but only after he and gay rights activists argued publicly over whether he had earlier endorsed the idea. A similar controversy flared a few months later when activists wanted a similar recruiting booth at a Silver Lake street fair. In that instance, the commission overruled Gates.

Gates, during the commission meeting, did not oppose the staffing plan, but pointed out that he continues to oppose “recruiting on the basis of sexual orientation.”