Gay & Lesbian Liaison Offficers (II)

Following my front page story In Melbourne Star last issue (Cops Lose their GLLOs) Victoria Police acknowledge that the program is in trouble, and are trying to decide where they go from here.

In direct response to our revelations, the full-time GLLO for Region 4 (covering areas such as Monash, Knox, Whitehorse and Boorondara) will now remain in post at least until April, and a new volunteer GLLO has been appointed to cover the LaTrobe Valley in Region 5.

The Equal Opportunity Commission, the Victorian AIDS Council, the Rainbow Network and the ALSO Foundation, are all writing to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, and asking for explanations.

The gay and lesbian liaison officer program was begun because so many crimes against gays and lesbians, especially domestic violence and sexual assaults, went unreported.

The GLLO mission statement says “The Gay and Lesbian Mission is to contribute to the creation of mutual trust between police, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and intersex persons so that they may have increasing confidence in police through the provisions of fair and equitable policing service.”

But Melbourne Star has spoken to several serving gay and lesbian police officers, who paint a disturbing picture of a program struggling to survive in the face of a hostile culture, especially in the middle levels of the command structure.

The officers allege that people without appropriate qualifications and little or no interest in the job are sometimes appointed. The function may be added to an officers existing responsibilities, but no additional resources are provided, and pro-active outreach to the GLBTI community is not sanctioned.

This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the GLLO is unenthusiastic, with neither the resources, motivation or official sanction to build bridges with the community, crimes against gays and lesbians continue to go unrecorded in the statistics on which the police rely when deciding how best to use their resources. As a result a commander can argue that, since the statistics show little or no gay related crime, there is no need for a GLLO.

Melbourne Star has even heard of unsympathetic officers appointed as GLLOs because their commander ‘has no particular use’ for them, to encourage them to quit the force. These sorts of abuses arise where the program is run by “people whose heart isn’t in it,” according to one source.

The problem is not confined to Victoria – Surry Hills, one of Sydney’s largest police stations, right in the heart of the gay district, has been without a GLLO for three months. A temporary Mardi Gras Liaison Officer has been appointed, but there’s no sign of a permanent replacement.


CASE STUDY – WHY WE NEED GLLOs

The case of the two men who were bashed at Spring Street tram stop after Carnival illustrates exactly why we NEED gay and lesbian liaison officers.

The police who answered their 000 call told them to remain at the tram stop while they searched for the attackers.

But the couple, believing they had done everything necessary, and feeling unsafe remaining in the area, left.

When the police returned to the scene 20 minutes later to find them gone, they assumed the couple had decided not to take the matter further. So they made no official report.

So when the area GLLO, Senior Constable Danielle Cameron was contacted by the press for information, she could find no record.

However, by checking 000 calls she traced the officers involved, and the victims, persuading them to make the all-important official report, without which the police can’t launch an investigation.

The official report also ensures that the crime appears in the statistics, and as we have seen, if crime doesn’t show up in the stats, senior command don’t believe it’s happening, and don’t allocate resources to tackle it.

In a further twist, when Cameron tried to track the progress of the investigation, she discovered that data entry staff hadn’t ticked the box identifying it as a gay hate crime.

State GLLO Co-ordinator Sergeant Scott Davis is now trying to discover how often this might have happened in the past. If it turns out to be a common error, the statistics on which Victoria Police are basing their decisions about the future of GLLOs may well show anti-gay crime at a much lower level than it really is.