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After the announcement today about the Fort Worth Bar Raid, I think it’s about time we had a frank discussion about police officers. Throughout LGBT history in the United States, the gay/trans community has been pitted against police. It’s police, in fact, who inspire our holiest of high holidays: Pride. The clashes are universal, span from coast to coast and need to stop.
But it’s not suspensions and internal reports that are going to end this problem.
To be a police officer in Fort Worth, TX one must have completed high school or achieved a G.E.D. And that’s it. No diploma from a community college. No college degree. No Masters program in criminology or forensics or law. Then officers are trained, by the police force rather than an independent body.
A Lieutenant in the Fort Worth police department gets paid $36,000 a year.
But police officers are outfitted with guns, given immense amounts of power and asked to make sophisticated legal decisions in an instant. Are we surprised that they screw up a lot? Are we surprised that the people they recruit are not the most open-minded, educated members of a community?
The Fort Worth police department wants to solve this problem by doling out a few suspensions or by instituting training that considers the rights and experiences of LGBT community members.
I think there’s no chance the Fort Worth Texas police force, or pretty much any police force, is going to improve their relationship with the LGBT community until we start insisting the officers get more life experience and academic training, the salaries increase to be competitive with degree requirements and the force itself start to take its job seriously enough that bare minimum standards just aren’t good enough anymore.
I agree with many of your points, especially your recognition of the irony in the less – than – friendly relations with police officers ultimately leading to our “holiest of high holidays”. Standards for becoming police officers should definitely be higher than a high school degree or something equivalent. Additionally, police officers should be earning a higher income nationwide to serve as an incentive for superior work performance and to ensure that the police force is of the highest moral fiber.
These are the people entrusted to serve and protect the people – ALL people. In order to be able to do so, however, these men and women must be armed with enough knowledge of all races, classes, genders, ages, and sexual orientations in order to respectfully uphold the law to the best of their ability. Once the bar has been raised, perhaps a new, more open – minded police force can emerge and use life experiences combined with training courses designed for people living in the 21st century, including the LGBT community.
what… you want them to hit you over the head with a rolex?
Well, people who get paid more tend to be less grumpy. And required to actually earn it (unless you’re on Wallstreet). It’s not just give them more money, it’s put the bar way way higher, and raise the salary to meet the heightened expectations. After all, you can’t just raise standards without raising rewards. That being said, even if they were better trained and better paid, I’d probably distrust them less, but I sure as hell wouldn’t trust them. Fortunately I’ve never had an encounter with a cop before, and I hope to keep it that way.
salaries increase???
cops are puke anyway and you want to pay them MORE?
And in this “frank” discussion of police officers, it is vital to acknowledge the services they provide during, for example, PrideFest. I have participated in some manner in Denver’s PrideFest for the last 4-6 years, and in that time, I have never witnessed a clash between police and protesters OR police and festival-goers. (And I’ll admit that this is not solely because of the police.) The Denver police (as an example of just one entity) have a history rife with prejudice, shootings, no-knock raids, and other really bad things, but they also manage to provide genuine and real security at gay events. When we examine the qualifications, actions, and purpose of security agencies like police forces, we must discuss the good AND the bad alike, we must use success and failure as a model for improvement.
Agreed. Same with teachers, by the way.