QotD

"A good strategy to ensure equal and dignified treatment of gays by police, which my home city uses, is to have gay and lesbian police officers do much of the policing of the neighborhoods with gay bars and clubs. Police follow-up on some minor regulatory infraction in a gay club would almost certainly be undertaken by gay police, and at the same time, there are numerous gay/lesbian recruiting drives by the police. This means that the police patrolling these areas are more likely to identify with the citizens' particular concerns, and that straight cops who are prejudiced have gay colleagues and maybe will become less prejudiced as a result. This strategy was undertaken in response to a history of harassment many years ago, and it has worked in building trust of the police among gays and lesbians, and ensuring fair policing practices.

"In the ideal community MikeEss suggests, such group-based identification wouldn't be necessary, and straight cops would treat everyone equally and with dignity. Fort Worth is evidently not this kind of ideal community, so this incident would be a good opportunity to push for pro-gay measures on the part of the police, such as recruiting gays and changing the way gay bars/clubs are patrolled. And if it were up to me, the cops involved in this would never be allowed near a police force again; I am not sanguine that the abusers in this case will suffer 1/100th of that consequence, though."

-- Luke, commenter at Pandagon, 2009-06-29, regarding the police/TABC raid on a gay bar in Fort Worth, TX, on the 40th anniversary of the raid that sparked the Stonewall riot