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SX – Thursday, 23 August 2007

Police resources may be stretched, but they still manage to cover the beats, Stephen Bull reports.

I recently defended a client charged with indecent behaviour and I thought SX readers might be interested in the outcome of the case.

My client was caught standing in a toilet cubicle in Marrickville with another man. The police evidence was that the plain-clothes young constable saw two pairs of feet under a closed toilet door, promptly jumped up and looked over the door and saw the shocking sight of two men standing together. The door was locked and nothing was seen apart from feet.

This flagrant display of feet caused the police to arrest both men on the spot and handcuff them. Both made no move to flee the scene and were co-operative. When the senior sergeant appeared, the first thing he did was order that the two men be uncuffed.

The magistrate found the thought of two men having sex in a toilet cubicle in a public park in the middle of the day when children were present objectively offensive. Such a use of the toilet would scare the children who used the park.

The decision shows more than anything else that mainstream attitudes rule. My personal analysis is that the middle-class families moving into Marrickville have been complaining like hell about the perverts in ‘their’ park. In terms of penalty, the magistrate dismissed the charge without a conviction. The lightest sentence possible. I advised my client to appeal.

In my earlier article, I did criticise the NSW police for directing resources towards prosecuting gay men in the suburbs and suggested that there was a bit of institutional homophobia floating around the NSW police. I can now safely renew this criticism. The two police, who arrested and cuffed my client for standing in a toilet cubicle, were in an unmarked police vehicle, in plain clothes and on what they described as ‘proactive policing duties’ within the Marrickville Local Area Command. It must have been a slow day. They were roaming around Marrickville targeting what they perceived as anti-social behaviour at their discretion. Both admitted, under cross-examination, that there was no complaint that day concerning activity in the park but it was well known by police as a gay beat. Nothing to do, go bust some poofs.

The NSW police is a huge organisation with a long history. It contains some humane and well-intentioned people at all levels. It is trite to demonise the police as the enemy. It is also inherently conservative. In the police mindset, ‘one of us’ is not an openly gay male.

Lesbians seem to function better in the NSW police although there have been some celebrated incidents when the ladies appear to have been thrown out of the club. The example of Lola Scott springs to mind. Dykes appear to fit in better through sheer force of numbers. I don’t think you can underestimate numbers. For some reasoning, joining the police is something that gay women like to do. Butch dykes can also talk about tits and football which is handy.

I know of very few openly gay men in the NSW police who find it a comfortable place to be. I have seen some nasty and weird things happen with police officers that like to have sex with other men. The pop psychologist in me would tend to diagnose the problem as the self-hating homosexual. An ugly beast in anyone’s home.

Bureaucracies have their own unspoken rules of membership. Don’t ask me to point out the section in the police handbook that says poofters are bad news but they definitely are not part of the law enforcement club in New South Wales. Some of the ‘cultural’ issues that make police gay-unfriendly are not gay-specific but part of broader issues concerning minorities, gender and sexuality. Police tend to divide the world up into ‘us’ and ‘them/criminals’.

The police force has a huge turnover of staff. Many are now recruited and out of the place in about two years. Many police at the coalface have little experience and less judgment. The young constable who handcuffed my client for no reason said he handcuffed him because he had concerns about his safety. This is in the middle of the day in a park in Marrickville.

I am cynical about statements on websites about inclusion, banners in parades and gay and lesbian liaison officers. There is nothing wrong with good intentions but actions are better. The NSW police have a beat policy, which provides some guidelines to how beats are supposed to be policed. Police are only supposed to police beats if the boss tells them to. In this case, the police were in plain clothes and an unmarked car. The policy clearly states that operations should be conducted in uniform and marked cars. The policy doesn’t say that the law relating to offensive behaviour shouldn’t be enforced. My advice is stick to the saunas. At this time of year, they’re warmer and always safer. View article
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Download • Law and Gay Identity • Australasian Law Teachers Association (ALTA) 2007 Refereed Conference Papers
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ACON seeks meeting with police over beats • SX • November 16, 2006
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Letters – ‘Negative thoughts’&‘Dirty business’ • SX • November 16, 2006
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Police converge on beats, not on streets • SX • November 9, 2006
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Letters – ‘No excuse for beats’&’Straight Perverts’ • SX • November 9, 2006
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Police and AVP announce new liaison • SX • November 2, 2006
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Gay men’s cruising sites under spotlight • SX • November 2, 2006
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Coroner criticises police investigation into gay men’s deaths
ABC PM • March 9, 2005

An investigation stretching back 20 years had an ending of sorts today, when the Deputy New South Wales Coroner handed down her findings into the deaths of three gay men in Sydney.

The three men died or went missing in the mid to late 1980s from a well-known gay haunt in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

The cases were all investigated, inadequately according to the Coroner, and quickly forgotten.

But in a story that could come from the files of a television “cold case” program, a New South Wales policeman who wanted to know the truth re-opened the cases a decade later. Read more
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Operation Taradale
Finding and Recommendations:
Inquest into the death of John Alan RUSSELL
Inquests into the suspected deaths of Ross Bradley WARREN &
Gilles Jacques MATTAINI
Operation Taradale Findings • March 9, 2005
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VICTIMLESS CRIMES – DECRIMINALISATION OF HOMOSEXUAL SEXUAL ACTIVITY • Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law • September 1994
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Police ‘beat wars’ against gays
Green Left Weekly • September 1,1993

MELBOURNE — An increase in the number of gay men being arrested by police decoys in public places has highlighted what is an ongoing outrage for Melbourne’s gay community. According to the Police-Gay Liaison Committee, anything up to 20 gay men a week are being arrested at a park on charges of offensive behaviour. The committee alleges that undercover police approach gays, provoke offenses and then apprehend the “offenders”. Read more