San Francisco A Pioneer In Hiring Gays As Police

SAN FRANCISCO - Mitch Grobeson patrols the streets of San Francisco with a soul stretched between two worlds. He's a cop. And he's gay.

It's Friday night in the Mission District, the gay and lesbian Tenderloin. This is Grobeson's beat from sundown to dawn - drug busts to drunk tanks, robberies to hate crimes, chasing down men bashing men in dark parks because of their sexual choice.

Ahead of Grobeson is a burly man strutting his stuff in black fishnet hose, a Mae West wig and blue eyeshadow, blending in perfectly on a sidewalk overflowing with excess, flourishing amid San Francisco's famed tolerance.

"Welcome to the Castro," says Grobeson as he walks through what is perhaps the most famous gay neighborhood in the world, a setting that has become a testing ground for how well two politically powerful forces in a major city - gays and the police department - can work together.

San Francisco's Police Department now includes more than 150 officers who identify themselves as gay. But in most cities throughout the country, the coming out of gay and lesbian officers is still a likely invitation for harassment and discrimination from within the department.

"That's not something that's going to be very easily accepted - it's not going to be a 90-day quick fix," Minneapolis Police Chief John Laux said last month in appealing for more understanding between gays and his department.

While some police departments, such as Los Angeles, still raid gay bars in hopes of arresting men for sodomy, San Francisco has been aggressively recruiting gays and lesbians to join its 1,700-member force for 10 years. The department has developed a mandatory sensitivity-training course for recruits. A lesbian sits on the city's police-civilian review board to make sure police brutality against gays and lesbians isn't overlooked.

"The message is that it's OK to hate me and OK to hate my lifestyle in your private life, but the minute you put on that uniform it is not OK to discriminate," said Grobeson, 32.

Grobeson's career was destroyed in Los Angeles only to be resurrected in a San Francisco department willing to accept someone based on performance instead of lifestyle.

He had worked one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country, south-central Los Angeles, as a sergeant supervising a patrol team, earning commendations for bravery.

But "hundreds of officers would hear my calls on the radio and I'd get no backup because I was gay," he said. "When Rock Hudson was dying, they hung up his poster on my locker. In one year, they hung 48 anti-gay banners signed by cops. I was the president of my recruiting class and graduated No. 1. And they told me I had to see a psychologist because I was sick."

Grobeson was the first openly gay officer in the LAPD, coming out in 1985. After three years of harassment, he left and headed to San Francisco, where he joined the force after 18 months of unemployment, taking a $30,000 pay cut. "Being a cop is what I'm all about. I proved it there and I'm proving it here," he said.

"I don't care if they're black, white, pink or polka dot," said Sgt. Dan Linehan, Grobeson's blunt supervisor. "I don't care what sex they are or who they like to have sex with. The bottom line to me is competency. That's what I ask when he or she gets into the squad. There are straight cops who can't do the job just like there are gay and lesbian cops who can't do the job. And there are all those kinds of people who can do the job.

"When women first came on the force 15, 16 years ago, guys were very suspicious of working with a woman because they wondered if she could do the job and defend her partner. But I've never heard anybody say that about working with a gay cop. I think it's been harder on women, personally. I don't think a cop is gonna mind working with a cop who's 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds and happens to be gay - as long as that guy is capable of saving his partner's life. Grobeson can take care of himself."

For eight hours, Lea Militello puts San Francisco police recruits through some very uncomfortable moments.

She asks the recruits to come up with every stereotype they can think of to describe gays and lesbians. "I dare them to try to describe something I haven't heard. They can't think of one I haven't heard.

"Then I ask how many think those terms should be used.

"There's silence. Then it's my turn. I tell them that while it's perfectly all right to have these kinds of feelings in their private life, they must leave those feelings at home and do the job the uniform represents.

"The idea is to demystify homosexuality. The recruits ask everything from what we do in bed - does anal sex hurt? - to being part of the community. A drag queen, a transvestite, corporate women who're lesbians, a lesbian grandmother - everybody from A to Z in the gay and lesbian community is brought in. It makes a difference. You see some people change in a short period of time. Not all, but some."

Militello is now the department's liaison for gay and lesbian officers. Her office is directly across the hall from the chief's, and she doesn't have to thread her way through gatekeepers for an audience.

This year, the chief rode in the city's Gay Pride Day parade, and gay and lesbian officers were allowed to march in their uniforms on city time.

"I think it shows we're out there doing the job," Militello said.