LA Police Com. vows to end Dept's anti-gay stance

LOS ANGELES The antigay policies and attitudes of the Los Angeles Police Department, led by notoriously homophobic Chief Ed Davis, recently came under attack from the Department's own overseer, the Los Angeles Police Commission. At a Feb. 19 meeting, the Commission voted unanimously to reject the recommendation of the Department's Internal Affairs. Division that no disciplinary action was warranted in response to a complaint of harassment by local gay activist Michael Manning. In discussion afterwards, according to a transcript obtained by the gay paper News West, Commissioner Salvatore Montenegro declared that "the philosophy of the Department has to change," and recommended an investigation of the police-vs.gays issue that might bring Davis himself up for questioning.

"I'd like to change that attitude, that philosophy of the Department which I think permeates all the divisions," Montenegro said, "and maybe we can somehow get the word out that this thinking has to change." Commissioner Stephen Reinhardt, a long-time Davis critic, strongly seconded Montenegro's suggestion, saying that "I think the time has come to find the people to talk with to discuss the problems of

how individuals should be treated and should not be abused." The other commissioners agreed, but concrete action was postponed pending final disposition of the Manning

case.

Manning had charged, in a Dec. 18, 1975 complaint, that he, a companion and another man had been stopped by plainclothes police while walking on a Hollywood street one evening. Manning was threatened with a gun and all three were forced to lean against a building wall and submit to a search. After examining an address book found on Manning, one of the officers asked him if he was, and shortly afterwards the officers got back into their car and drove away. They refused to explain the reason for the search or for the questioning.

During the Internal Affairs Division investigation, the officers involved admitted that Manning's story of the incident was true, but said that he and the others "looked like suspects" in another case. They also said that the question about Manning's homosexuality was for the benefit of his companion, who "appeared to be a stranger to the city" and "should have been warned about the sexual habits of the person he was associating with." It was this part of the police explanation

that the commissioners found unacceptable and prompted the discussion about the Department's pervasive anti-gay "philosophy."

Another possible factor in the Commission's recognition of the gay harassment problem, which had often been brought to its attention before, though without effect, was an unprecedented letter to the Commission from City Councilor Peggy Stevenson. Stevenson, whose district includes the heavily-gay Hollywood area, told the Commission that her office had received numerous complaints about unwarranted police intrusion into gay bars, often accompanied by harassment and abuse of the patrons, and that she was concerned about the disproportionate amount of manpower and time the Department expends to generate gay vice arrests.

Pointedly referring to her position on the Council's Police, Fire, and Defense Committee, as well as the necessity for the Department's budget requests to be approved by the Council, Stevenson called on the Commission to exercise its city charter mandate to "control and manage" the Police Department. "I question our ability to enforce (the laws)," she said, "when it is alleged that as many as six un-

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dercover officers spend hours drinking beer and encouraging gay advances. If the Department were to send female officers into heterosexual bars to encourage sexual advances, I am sure our already overburdened courts would be full of police officers waiting to defend themselves against (solicitation) arrests."

Reminding the Commission of the Department's stated policy of directing vice operations only against offenses that are "conspicuous, commercial, or (where there is a )

citizen complaint," Stevenson said she disagreed "with what is ap parently the Department's fanlin that gay bars are automatically conspicuous simply (for being gay)." She went on to say that while ne had received "hundreds of letters deploring the crime problems of Hollywood I have never received a single citizen complaint regarding a gay establishment. Having been on an inspection of several of these establishments, I found them remarkably peaceful compared to other bars."

State-by-state tally

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ruling. The chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Judiciary "offered nothing but encouraging remarks to the few opponents of the bill who did attend," according to Boston's Gay Community News, and only one committee member appeared sympathetic. The legislative agent for influential. Massachusetts. Catholic Conference was one of those testifying against the bill, though he declined to state his organization's reasons for opposing

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Though its "unnatural acts" statue remains on the books, Massachusetts gays are relatively free from fear of prosecution for such acts performed by consenting adults in private due to a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of the state (in Balthazar v. Commonwealth of Mass.). The possibility exists for a similar judicial solution in Arizona, where the state Court of Appeals last year struck down the "sodomy" law on the grounds that it was unconstitutionally vague-a very different sort of objection than that rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Virginia case. Appeal of the ruling is pending before the Arizona Supreme Court. Of course, voiding the law on such narrow grounds would leave it open for the state legislature to reinstate penalities for gay sex acts in a more carefully drawn statute

Gay rights bills, as opposed to sex law reform bills, have been in troduced in a number of states, some of them among those yet to achieve sodomy repeal. The bills variously bar discimination against gay people in such areas as housing, employment, and public accomodations, often by adding "sexual preference" (or sometimes "sexual or affectional preference") as a protected category in existing antidiscrimination legislation.

None has yet passed, and several have already been defeated including ones in Maryland, Connecticut, and Masschusetts. (The latter was a narrow amendment to the civil service code, covering state government employment only; a much broader general gay rights bill is still to be voted on.) Those that appear to have some chance of passage-though both the Connecticut and Masschusetts bills were also expected to pass-are the ones in Hawaii and in New York. The former has passed the state House of Representatives, but has yet to be introduced in the Senate. The latter has merely emerged from a state Assembly committee and is yet to be voted on by either house; however, a 1972 predecessor was only narrowly defeated, and observers expect more favorable. treatment this time around.

Gay rights bills have also been introduced in the lower houses of the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania legislatures, but even their sponsors do not give them much chance of passage this year. Their intent is more "educational" than anything else: creating an opportunity for favorable testimony at hearings and giving legislators inclined against gays but not hopelessly prejudiced a chance to get used to the idea and prepare to change their minds.

GAY NEWS May 1975 PART