Breaking Rank

by Norm Stamper

  “Do I have to?” said Willie.

  “Yes, goddammit! Right now!” He struggled to stuff his johnson back into his trousers. “Hurry up, Willie!” I glimpsed the other two, cuffed right wrist to right wrist, shuffling awkwardly toward the exit. I yelled at them over Bruiser’s shoulder, “You two: You are hereby officially deputized. You too, Willie.” Bruiser, my arms encircled by his, squeezed harder. “You (gasp, gasp) know (gasp, gasp) what that means?” I, myself, had no idea. Or whether I had the authority to deputize anyone.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked one of the prisoners. It was odd. I could tell he was on my side. I took a risk.

  “Move (gasp) over (gasp) to the (gasp) door. No matter what (gasp, gasp, gasp) don’t let this guy out of here.” It was personal now. Bruiser was going down, no matter what.

  “Yes, sir,” said both men. They planted themselves in the doorway. Willie, meanwhile, ran up and pushed himself against Bruiser’s back.

  “Grab him, Willie. Pull him off me.” I needed to get my choking arm free, or at least get to my second pair of cuffs. This guy was strong. “Grab him, goddammit!” Willie hesitated a moment then jumped on Bruiser’s back, throwing his arms around him. When he had him in a bear hug of his own I brought the heel of my right foot up, sharply, into my assailant’s groin and slipped free. Bruiser let out a howl then chomped down on Willie’s arm, causing Willie to emit a howl of his own.

  “He’s biting me! He’s biting me! Stop it, mister. Please stop.” He started to cry.

  Something shifted inside. A confusing mix of gratitude and rage, and a sudden letting go of at least a fragment of the bigotry I’d carried for most of my twenty-two years. I had to protect the three men who were helping me, especially Willie. “You heard the man,” I shouted. “Let him go.” Bruiser showed no sign of unclenching his jaw so I doubled my fist and smacked him in the face as hard as I could. Nobody treats my deputy like that.

  The fight was over, and my struggle with homophobia just begun. When someone keeps your head from being stuffed down a toilet you feel a certain warmth for them, maybe even a bit of a desire to get to know them better.

  Until that moment I’d played a strong role in antigay locker-room performances, the lisping, swishing, faggot jokes. In the months ahead I continued to smile at the fun-making, even laughed a bit when I couldn’t help myself. But something had definitely changed, and it wasn’t only because of the efforts of my good Samaritans. The men I arrested in Balboa Park (except for Bruiser, for whom I could muster no sympathy at all) were decent, respectful, frightened human beings. It was wrong to call them degenerates. It was wrong to laugh at them.

  And it was wrong for Stevens to come to my patrol roll call, commendation in hand, a few days after I finished the detail.

  He read from his report. “Officer N. Stamper set an SDPD record for the most arrests ever as a Pink Beret, fifty-six in fifteen days. Of course, the assignment was a bit . . . distasteful.” My peers, some fifty strong, tittered. I felt my face flush. “. . . And not without its problems. For example, Officer Stamper blew his first case.” The crowd roared. “And another defendant got a sodomy charge reduced to following too close.” Hoots and howls. “Later, we lost one in court because Stamper swallowed the evidence.” Uncontained shrieking. I was bright red now. Stevens waited for the room to quiet. “In spite of these problems, Officer Stamper was able to take matters into his own hands.” They were stomping on the floor, rolling in the aisles. “In fact, he bent over backwards to get the job done.”

  On and on it went. I pictured Stevens huddled that day with his Sex Crimes cronies, chortling over the nest of double entendres they’d hatched. I also pictured the men I arrested. Willie Brown being savaged by Bruiser. The sobbing Methodist minister, his hands cuffed behind his back, asking me to pray with him. My community college carpentry instructor who trembled uncontrollably as I put him in the backseat of a police car. The two or three terrified military personnel who knew exactly what their arrests meant.

  Moments later, when Stevens read the chief’s actual commendation, I couldn’t hear him. I was mortified: God forbid, that roomful of uniformed peers should think my record-breaking performance was remotely attributable to the possibility that I might be gay. So I threw my head back and laughed harder than everyone else. I think they call that homophobia.

  At that early moment in my career as a cop, bigotry, mine and others’, was starting to wear me out. It was easy to work on prejudice against blacks. Not so easy was confronting my attitudes about homosexuality. Then came Stonewall. June 28, 1969, New York.

  Reacting to repeated police raids on the Stonewall Inn, a private club, gays fought back. There were thirteen arrests in the melee. Four officers were injured, one with a broken wrist. I pictured my brother cops, trapped inside a gay bar, being pelted with, according to the New York Times, “bricks, bottles, garbage, pennies, and a parking meter.” Nine police officers against an army of angry, violent homosexuals. The riot on Christopher Street was no way for gays to achieve their rights.

  But, as details of the incident became clear, I switched sides.

  The cops had acted like pigs both before and during the Stonewall confrontation. I’d seen the same in San Diego, at the Brass Rail: vice cops demeaning and baiting gay men, arresting them on trumped up charges, pushing them around or beating them up. Those cops in New York had no justification for the way they behaved. They got what they asked for—an opinion I kept to myself.

  By the end of my second year as a police officer I was railing against racism, confronting misogynist cops, making public my belief that policing was a tainted institution much in need of sweeping reforms. A few years and two badges later, when I was a lieutenant, the San Diego Evening Tribune carried a front-page profile by Steve Casey that labeled me a “new breed advocate of radical change in policing.” It extolled my commitment to human rights. But there was no mention of gay rights. I was already, in the words of a senior officer, a “nigger lover.” What would my peers think if I started speaking up for homosexuals?

  I rationalized my fears. Unlike blacks and Latinos and women, homosexuals had made a “lifestyle” choice, or so I believed. I believed they had a right to that choice—live and let live. I believed in treating everyone fairly, and with respect. But deep down it bothered me that “gay liberation” had become part of the civil rights movement. All that lavender, all that flesh, all that gaudiness showing up at civil rights and even antiwar demonstrations.

  In the mid-seventies, Helen entered my life. Helen was a writer friend of my second wife, Patricia. She wore jeans, denim shirts, clunky boots, a single braid down her back, and occasionally a knife on her belt. She spent time at our old house on Adams Avenue, fixing toilets, clearing drains, and—from where I sat—pining over Patricia. Helen was cool toward me at first. Not icy, she just wouldn’t make eye contact and she answered my home improvement questions with a word or two, or an unintelligible grunt. I was the enemy: man, husband, cop.

  Gradually, she warmed up and started volunteering plumbing information and advice, even making small talk. Finally, she shared stories of run-ins she and her friends had had with the police. I pictured those run-ins, and was angry. I asked for names, times, locations. I followed up, and we became friends.

  Spending time with Helen got me to thinking about what I’d read back in the early sixties about homosexuality, about weak or absent fathers, domineering mothers, social “explanations” of gayness. Helen was Helen. A lesbian. It was who she was; or, rather, a vital part of who she was. It wasn’t at all about “preference” or “lifestyle.” She could have been a suburban, tight-assed, Christian conservative, Donna Reed–dress-alike who voted for Nixon and held Tupperware parties. But she still would have been a lesbian.

  Helen told me she’d never been erotically attracted to a man. “Well, that’s two of us,” I said. We laughed.

  What if I had been gay? What kind of a life would it have been? A life like Helen�
�s? Gawked at, snubbed? Ridiculed, hassled, brutalized by the cops? Would I have been beaten—or worse—at the hands of homophobic bullies who didn’t like the way I walked or talked, or the people I associated with, or what I did in my private life? What if I’d been one of the masses of closeted gay men who “passed”? What kind of a life would that have been? And what if I’d chosen to come out? Or, if I were outed? Would my parents have disowned me? My straight friends shunned me? Would I have found worthwhile work, been able to keep a job, enjoy the same partnership benefits as a straight spouse, the same legal rights?

  One thing was certain: If I were gay I wouldn’t have been a cop. There were no gay cops then. You laugh? Hey, we were sure of it, the brotherhood and I.

  During the screening process I’d been hooked up to a lie detector and asked if I’d ever been involved in an “unnatural sex act.” I didn’t know whether that included oral sex so I asked for clarification. The polygraph operator said, “You know. Do you have an unusual fondness for barnyard animals? Have you ever done it with a man?” If you copped to getting it on with a member of your own gender, or lied, you were automatically rejected. So, we knew there were no gays in the police ranks.*

  Not until Sgt. Larry Lamond, who’d recently left the department, went on national TV and told the world he was gay. (Some of my colleagues were sure he’d “turned homosexual” after he left the department). Much admired by his peers and superiors, his “confession” rocked our world—and caused a lot of cops to start looking funny at one another.

  I don’t remember when the word homophobia entered mainstream communication, but it was on the heels of Lamond’s coming out that I added bigotry against gays to my public recitation of grievances against the profession. I decided to confront homophobia, like racism or sexism, wherever I found it. At my gym, a stockbroker/lawyer-type made some crack about “faggots.” I said, “I find that offensive.” He quickly wrapped a towel around his privates.

  “Why? You gay or something?”

  “What difference does it make?” He shook his head, slammed his locker door, and headed for the shower. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t remain silent anymore. As they say, if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. I stood for human rights, which now included gay rights.

  By the early nineties, SDPD had become, arguably, the most progressive police department in the country. We’d pioneered community policing, revolutionized our handling of domestic violence, opened the department to citizen participation in everything from policy making and program development to police shooting reviews. We’d conducted a whole-hog investigation into racism within the ranks, and moved aggressively to combat it. Thanks to affirmative action, relentless training, and the personal commitment of chiefs like Bill Kolender and his successor Bob Burgreen, we were one of the most diverse organizations anywhere. Burgreen and I (now the department’s number-two guy, wearing my eighth badge) had marched several times in San Diego’s annual gay pride parade.

  Then came the toughest test of our progressive credentials. It was triggered by a mugging series in Hillcrest, home to the city’s largest openly gay population. The crimes were vile. Elderly couples walking home from an evening meal, gay men headed for a movie or a drink, shoppers returning to their cars—all struck from behind with baseball bats and pipes. Money was taken in a few of the assaults, but amusement, not robbery, seemed to be the primary motive, and gay victims were clearly being singled out for the most vicious attacks. It was just a matter of time before someone got killed.

  When it finally happened, two blocks from my home, the victim was a frail seventeen-year-old kid. He and a couple of pals had come to the big city from the burbs to sip espresso and soak up the atmosphere of a pre-Starbucks, independent coffeehouse on University Avenue.

  Out of the grief and recriminations that followed the murder came a commitment to organize a citizens’ patrol. Officer John Graham, the first openly gay cop within our ranks, stepped forward to offer the hundred or so citizen volunteers a class in personal protection. So did Chuck Merino, a friend of Graham’s. Merino was an El Cajon cop and scoutmaster for his department’s Explorer troop.

  The citizens’ patrol, sponsored by the PD, was a first for San Diego (and the country) so it got a lot of press. Which is how the Boy Scouts of America, which sponsors police Explorer posts, learned that one of their scoutmasters was gay. BSA wasted no time firing Merino. It didn’t matter to them that he was an outstanding police officer in his hometown, a man of sterling character, a volunteer who had made an extraordinary contribution to our department, and to the people of Hillcrest.

  To his credit, Jack Smith, Merino’s chief, wasted no time telling Boy Scout leaders to pack up their tents and camp stoves and remove their bigoted butts from the premises. Smith formed his own, unaffiliated youth “scouting” program. And put Merino in charge.

  To the credit of my own chief, Burgreen asked me to chair a special meeting of SDPD’s senior staff. The agenda: Should we follow suit and file for divorce from the Boy Scouts of America?

  Graham, who taught in our Explorer program, was not technically “at risk,” since he wasn’t a scoutmaster. But there was an important principle involved, namely discrimination and the will to stand up to it. There was also the matter of solidarity with another agency whose employee had been helpful to us, and whose chief had stuck his neck out for his guy.

  There were an even dozen members of our senior staff—black, white, Latino, women, men, civilian, sworn. Several of the men, traditional police managers (some with grievances against the “liberal” chief of police and his even more “liberal” assistant chief), were ex-scouts themselves. I pictured them as kids: the straight-male bonding, the campfires, the knot-tying. This was not going to be a slam-dunk meeting.

  I predicted at best a fifty-fifty outcome, with Burgreen having to make the call at the end of a rancorous meeting. By our rules everyone was required to speak his or her mind—no passing, no ass-kissing, no “group-think” allowed. We heard first from Chief Smith, then from the regional poobah of BSA. I thanked them, excused them, and started around the room. A deputy chief . . . a commander . . . our civilian personnel director . . . another a deputy chief . . . another commander . . .

  Shaping up in the seventh-floor conference room that morning was one of the biggest shocks of my career. By the time I turned to the last member of the team, the “vote” was 11-0. The last person, our most senior member in age and tenure, one of our last “dinosaurs” and an ex-scout, made it unanimous: If the Boy Scouts of America would not stop discriminating against gays, and if Chief Justice Rehnquist’s Supreme Court kept insisting they didn’t have to, the San Diego Police Department would also send the scouts packing. I’d never felt more proud of my organization.

  And the rank and file? They’d never felt more ashamed or embarrassed by their department. They went ballistic. So did three-quarters of the community and at least half the city council. So, too, did Bill Kolender, who’d moved on to become head of the California Youth Authority. “Jesus, Normy,” he said, after our decision made headlines. “You and Bobby really fucked up on this one.” I wanted a good comeback, but couldn’t quite remember the quote. I went home that night, pulled out my journal, and found it:

  In Germany they first came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak.

  —Pastor Martin Niemöller

  Cut to Seattle, 1994, ninth and final badge. I’m the city’s new police chief, having traveled a thousand miles up the Pacific coast. “You’re not really going to be out there, are you?” said Norm Rice.

  “Yeah, I was planning on it.”

  “You mean you’re gon
na march?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” I think he was used to the chief before me, a man who’d rather have had his canines pulled than stroll along in the city’s gay pride parade. For me, there was no way I wouldn’t be there.

  “Yeah, well, those are my people.”

  The morning rain had stopped and the sun was out in full force. A festive crowd of ten thousand lined Broadway from Pike to Prospect on Capitol Hill. Rice and I milled about with groups of city employees, including several gay and lesbian cops and firefighters. Local businesspeople, musicians, straight parents of gay children, politicians courting votes, six-foot-tall men in drag—all wandered over to say hi to the mayor and meet his new police chief. As we prepared to step out, a large, loud contingent of “Dykes on Bikes” roared past us to take their customary place at the front of the parade. Many were bare-breasted but for pasties; a few were bare-cheeked as well. They straddled “hogs” and Hondas and Kows, maybe even an Indian or two. The parade was under way.

  As we turned onto Broadway we were met by half a dozen sign-toting Christian fundamentalists who, when they recognized me in uniform, shouted greetings like “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Chief!” and “You’re gonna burn in hell, Chief!” A few feet up the road the crowd turned friendlier. In fact for the rest of the parade spectators kept breaking from the sidelines to shake my hand, plant a kiss on my cheek, or press candy into my palm. Oh, yes, and to do the same with the hugely popular mayor.

  Coming on the heels of a widely publicized incident in which a Seattle cop had (unlawfully) arrested two men for smooching in public, my appearance in the parade was “nothing short of astonishing,” said a civil rights activist. People went out of their way to express appreciation, and none seemed more grateful than my own lesbian and gay police officers.