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Once in the shadows, gay police now out and proud
Once in the shadows, gay police now out and proud
The six officers huddled inside Officer Preston Horton’s small Northampton apartment, where he had put out some snacks, coffee, and soda. ... They had been drawn there by a news article in which Horton had asked for police officers like him to get in touch in order to create a support group. ... Now they were at the first meeting of the New England Gay Officers Action League and they were terrified.
Stacey Simmons, then a 24-year-old Connecticut state trooper, feared she had been followed by internal affairs officers and kept getting out of her seat to peek out the window. ... “I was petrified,” she recalled. “I thought they were going to find out I had gone to this meeting and confront me and fire me.”
Twenty-five years later, the New England Gay Officers Action League, or GOAL, has transformed in ways none of those officers imagined during that first fear-filled meeting. The group, which now has more than 300 members, has trained dozens of police chiefs on how to treat gay officers in their departments and has led police academy trainings to help recruits understand how to work with gay victims. When gay marriage was being debated in Massachusetts, members of GOAL said, they went to the State House to testify about the need to give partners of fallen gay officers the same benefits as those married to straight officers.
....
When the group formed in 1991, more than two decades had passed since the infamous Stonewall riots in New York, where gay men and women clashed violently with police in protest of years of persecution. But it was still dangerous for a police officer to come out as gay. There were accounts of cops who asked for backup on a dangerous call and received none because they were believed to be gay. Springfield police Officer Michael Carney, who was at GOAL’s first meeting, remembered one officer at his Police Academy graduation in 1982 who brought a man to a party, only to be sucker-punched by a veteran officer. Simmons said that before she could join the State Police, she had to take a polygraph test and was asked if she had ever had a same-sex partner. ... “I really firmly believed that if anyone found out that they were going to kill me,” said Carney.
....
Maria Cramer can be reached at maria.cramer@globe.com Follow her on Twitter @GlobeMCramer.
The six officers huddled inside Officer Preston Horton’s small Northampton apartment, where he had put out some snacks, coffee, and soda. ... They had been drawn there by a news article in which Horton had asked for police officers like him to get in touch in order to create a support group. ... Now they were at the first meeting of the New England Gay Officers Action League and they were terrified.
Stacey Simmons, then a 24-year-old Connecticut state trooper, feared she had been followed by internal affairs officers and kept getting out of her seat to peek out the window. ... “I was petrified,” she recalled. “I thought they were going to find out I had gone to this meeting and confront me and fire me.”
Twenty-five years later, the New England Gay Officers Action League, or GOAL, has transformed in ways none of those officers imagined during that first fear-filled meeting. The group, which now has more than 300 members, has trained dozens of police chiefs on how to treat gay officers in their departments and has led police academy trainings to help recruits understand how to work with gay victims. When gay marriage was being debated in Massachusetts, members of GOAL said, they went to the State House to testify about the need to give partners of fallen gay officers the same benefits as those married to straight officers.
....
When the group formed in 1991, more than two decades had passed since the infamous Stonewall riots in New York, where gay men and women clashed violently with police in protest of years of persecution. But it was still dangerous for a police officer to come out as gay. There were accounts of cops who asked for backup on a dangerous call and received none because they were believed to be gay. Springfield police Officer Michael Carney, who was at GOAL’s first meeting, remembered one officer at his Police Academy graduation in 1982 who brought a man to a party, only to be sucker-punched by a veteran officer. Simmons said that before she could join the State Police, she had to take a polygraph test and was asked if she had ever had a same-sex partner. ... “I really firmly believed that if anyone found out that they were going to kill me,” said Carney.
....
Maria Cramer can be reached at maria.cramer@globe.com Follow her on Twitter @GlobeMCramer.
