Gay Officer Quits, Cites Harassment

-----------------------------------------------------------

"I had just had it. I hadn't slept in weeks . . . I turned to this (training) officer and said, `Well, you know, as a matter of fact I am gay. What are we going to do now?'

Everyone in the room was just real uncomfortable. I get a myriad of (concerned supervisors') business cards - `Call me, call me' . . . I go in this empty office and I just lost it. I cried for about 20 minutes.

That was my outing at SPD."

- Former Seattle police Sgt. Paul Grady, describing a 1985 meeting with his captain, lieuten- ant, sergeant and other police officials about a pattern of harass- ment against him. -----------------------------------------------------------

From the outside, it might have seemed that Seattle police Sgt. Paul Grady, in an era of strife over gays on the police force, was an example of accommodation.

Grady started the police bicycle patrol, now a national model, that got dozens of officers onto sidewalks and alleys, whisking drugs out of dealers' hands. He helped shut down a teen sex-and-drugs club. He made sergeant two years ago and was highly respected in his squad. And he did not deny the fact that he was gay.

Grady testified as a gay officer supporting a state hate-crimes bill; joined the Seattle Commission for Gays and Lesbians late last year. The law-enforcement group he helped found, the Northwest Gay Officers' Action League, recently made itself known to the department and the police officers' guild.

Now Grady can no longer be referred to as "the only openly gay cop in the department."

That's not because many others have come forward. It's because Grady, 37, is no longer a cop.

Earlier this month Grady received an internal-investigations complaint accusing him of violating department policy by testifying in uniform on the hate-crimes bill. Although he was able to explain he had permission, the pressures of past and current homophobia reared up, he said. Grady handed in his resignation.

"I would hope he would rethink it and possibly come back. I think he is an asset," Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons said.

Said Ken Vincent, an aide to City Councilwoman Sherry Harris: "He was just really tired of being the trailblazer in the department."

It started eight years ago, when a mostly closeted Grady left the Portland area, where he had served on the Oregon City Police Department and Clackamas County Interagency Homicide Team.

He wanted to find a city and a police department where it was OK to be gay - should somebody find out.

His first choice was the San Francisco Police Department, but he balked at a yearlong residency requirement. That department suggested he try Seattle.

For the next few months, Grady said, he made anonymous phone calls to ask about the treatment of gays and lesbians on the force. He was told the city "celebrated diversity."

Early in his Seattle career, Grady was chosen for an undercover investigation of The Monastery, a downtown teen dance club notorious for drugs and gay prostitution. Vice officers figured he was new and wouldn't be recognized.

But patrol officers saw him coming out of the club and started talking. Slurs appeared on his locker.

It got so bad the meeting was called with his commanders. Grady refused to name his tormentors - "God forbid if I ever turned somebody in." He told the perplexed commanders he was gay.

That set off, Grady says, a series of incidents in which other officers suddenly blocked his radio communications. Every day his mailbox contained an AIDS pamphlet with his name on it.

Robbery Detective Don MacMillan, who worked on the Monastery case with Grady as a vice officer, remembers telling him things would get better.

"I said, `Paul, hang in there,' because he is probably by far one of the best cops I've seen in years," MacMillan said recently.

The overt humiliation died down as Grady gained stature as the bike-patrol pioneer in 1987.

But angry sidelong glances and offhand comments persisted.

One might think it would help to assign Grady to the East Precinct, which includes a large part of Seattle's gay community.

But being a known gay officer was an Achilles heel that thwarted several attempts to improve enforcement in the gay community, Grady said.

For example, his attempt last year to stop bashing in front of gay bars ended when a drug dealer filed a complaint that Grady was having sex with minors and dealing drugs in a bar.

The complaint, Grady said, eventually was ruled unfounded.

Speaking in his conference room late last week, Fitzsimons gestured at a picture of a smiling Grady and former partner Mike Miller on their bikes.

"I think Paul just had to see himself as an up-and-coming supervisor," Fitzsimons said. "He should be able to respond to questions and issues and not take it personally. If somebody questions his work, as far as I'm concerned, it had nothing to do with his lifestyle. "

Fitzsimons said he saw Grady as someone he wanted to promote up the line. Of any harassment of Grady, Fitzsimons said: "He didn't present anything officially about anybody I know of."

Fitzsimons verified that Grady had permission to testify in Olympia and that wearing his uniform there was "a nonissue."

Not everyone on the department thought so.

"Grady has every right to his opinion and every right to express it, but I, for one, resent it when he does this while wearing a Seattle police uniform," R.M. Neal, of the juvenile unit, wrote in a recent Guardian newspaper produced by the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

"I'm sorry to see the guy go as a cop," said Seattle police Sgt. T.C. Miller, a member of the guild's board of directors. "Anytime I was around him, he was extremely professional."

Grady has heartfelt appreciation for all the colleagues who've supported him over the years. The partners who stood by him through it all, drawing gossip for their mere association with Grady.

The sergeant who took Grady out for a drink for support, only to find his name, too, written on a restroom wall.

But Grady says there is a fundamental unwillingness at the top of the department to make the workplace truly hospitable to gay and lesbian officers.

"At this time, I would not recommend any gay or lesbian officers to `come out,' " he said.

Even with the new gay officers' organization, few plan to make themselves known. The group's president is Mike Hogan, a King County deputy prosecutor, who for now represents the group in most contacts with the department.

"I really wish I could say who I am without concern there would be a backlash," said a lesbian Seattle police officer. "I think Paul has made us more determined to do better for the people who are here now and the ones who come after."

One of the first projects of the gay-officers' group is to make numbered T-shirts with the group's logo to use in athletic events.

The group has retired the No. 1 - for former Sgt. Paul Grady.