This event was hosted by the National Law Enforcement museum in washington dc. It is my pleasure and honor to be back with you. As we stream, we are looking back on 50 years, where we were 50 years ago at the stonewall riots and how far we have come, the changes have been made and the changes still to come. Before we get started, i would like to introduce our guest, starting with david carter, the film stonewall uprising which won a peabody award. Also with us is brian downey, the president of the officers actually goal of new york which addresses the need and issues and concerns of the Lgbtq Community. Also, lieutenant brett parson, a district native per coming years on the force . Almost 26. 26 years. He manages the departments lesbian, bisexual liaison unit. And then mr. Lewis prescott. He is a novelist and a writer and a common list. Im looking forward to learning a lot and looking back with you through your eyes and perspectives on where we were 50 years ago. It is hard to believe, i would like to start with you david if we can. What was new york like . What was america like for , lesbian, transgendered citizens before the stonewall rights . What was it like for the Lgbtq Community well, it is, or intuitive because there is a common tendency to assume that the further we go back in history, the worst things will be. But, actually the whole history of, three entirety of u. S. History, the 60s and 50s were probably the very worst time for lgbt people. That is because there have been a period of liberalization in the 1920s. We know the 1920s was a liberal period. But with the Great Depression coming along, that seemed to begin a clampdown on, i will use the term people , and after the war we entered the what could be called the red scare. And, this i think was the main reason there is so much more depression after world war ii. So, for example, and in new york city, the height of the rest of men occurred in 1966. On average, you had 100 homosexual men being arrested in new york city every week. So, in the 1960s, they were a period of we think of a time expanding liberties and openness. It was very opposite for our people. And, another force i was making that happen was the use of psychiatry. Sigmund freud, his view homosexuality was negative but not very negative. He saw the idea of adaptation for any doping heterosexual but he certainly didnt think that it was a severe pathology. And, america was the first country to embrace freud and when the freudian approach to psychology was embraced by this country, american psychologists were under the influence of the military in world war ii. The american psychiatrist who tended to pathology eyes homosexuality severely. And so, you could be put in a mental institution, i mean, youd be imposed upon you, men were castrated and lobotomies were performed with shock therapy. And also other kinds of treatments that were meant to change them from being homosexual to heterosexual and make us asexual. This kept on multiplying altogether. This went from one state to another. The way, our number one historian of homosexuality in america from a legal point of view, bill eskridge, by the 1950s and 60s, people really lived in a state of suffocation. It was a terrible time. I want to go back to that. The day of the raids in the riots, you are actually at Stonewall Inn. Is that right . What was it like to be there . Well, it was accidental for me. I just graduated from west point. And, i was staying, i was at leave and eyes walking from aloft on the street. I turned the corner onto christopher street and there was right in front of me. They were busing the police in with a couple of police cars. About an hour before, there were starting to bring out people in cuffs. Theyre putting them in the police cars. And then, the crowd had gathered across the street. And, they were watching. Some of the people across the street had gotten out of the stonewall but the cops came in through the back door, somehow. And then the word spread what was going on and the street was the heart and soul of the community in new york. There are a lot of bars and places that people have dinner and so forth nearby. They started , people started walking over to see what was going on. And, what happened was, the cops just like, the cops busted bars all the time. But, what typically happened was people would come out of the bars, they would have cuffs on and they would cover their faces and going to the paddy wagon or cars. They do want to be recognized, they had jobs, they work for banks for advertising firms or whatever and they thought they would lose their jobs or be exposed to their wives if they were married or whatever. And, that is what the police were used to. While they busted the stonewall, the stonewall was known for serving underaged people. It had a sound system in the back room and there was dancing and it was a wild place. The people they busted in the stonewall were not like that. They didnt have jobs or anything, a lot of them were 17 or 18 years old. And when they came out of the bar, they were posing and waving to their friends and calling out and saying come down and, can you get my bill . And acting like it was you know, there is nothing to it. Theyve been busted before and it didnt bother them. The cops do not like it. They didnt have that fear that so many had before. They didnt behave like cows, like frightened people. The cops didnt like it. The cops didnt like them standing and posing and waving. The crowds started, the cops started pushing them with nightsticks and shipping them roughly and the crowd started reacting to it, they were yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at first and calling them pics. He went south from there. After i got there, that is when the throwing started. This went on through the night and was it the next night we had hundreds if not thousands come back . Mimic yes, the next night was the night the Tactical Patrol was sent in, there were hundreds across the street if not a couple of thousand. Then, and it went on for, on friday night, it didnt go on for a long because the bust took place. They tried to get on the cars and when the people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops, the cops went inside the stonewall. I was outside. That is when they broke the window and threw things through the window and started a fire because it took a parking meter and they used it to ram the door. And the cops, the report came and scattered the crowd and the cops came back out. Within a couple of hours, it was over. But saturday night, it went on for a while. Reporter it has been in the news last week, your commissioner issued an apology on behalf of nypd for the rates. Give us a little insight into that apology. How do you view that apology . I take the apology kind of for what it is, an apology. I dont read much behind it for a number of different reasons. But mainly because it was a moment that nobody thought whatever happened. And, i think if you know anything about commissioner oneal, i know him quite well. He is probably the first humanitarian Police Commissioner we have had in new york city. Hes not this mold of this rockstar kind of Police Commissioner. We had kelly twice and we have them there for 12 years. I think that is an attorney for a new york city Police Commissioner. We had bratton twice. So these are big, giant media personalities, media darlings and commissioner oneal calls it as he sees it. He was a cop his whole career and then i think hes only please commissioner in the last 50 years that is capable of bringing himself to apologize or acknowledge our role in the transgressions or are mess ups. He also issued an apology to the prospect raid victim a couple of months ago which included two paragraphs that were directed towards the lgbt community. Im not here to be his ambassador. But what i will say is he does lean on my organization heavily for advice. He keeps me on his staff and my role in the Police Department and the also has the former president of the organization as his lgbt liaison. And, he is engaging and is interested. He wants to know the way forward. He wants to know how the Community Feels. I wish sometimes that our community would be a little more engaging. I think i wont get into the specifics of the meetings on that staff. But, i think sometimes other communities it seems are more willing to go in and kind of speak and speak clearly. They are a little more organized, i dont know why, it just seems we can never come to an agreement on anything. That is troubling sometimes. Lets talk about our community, Greater Washington if we can for minute. I want to ask you, when we came off of the parade, nbc was involved in this. And, a festival the next day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out your native washingtonian, you have seen the demographics change and you have seen acceptance certainly over the decades. Talk a little bit about your role in your liaison and what you do. Sure, thank you jim. I think the first thing Everybody Knows that is been around is washington dc is not any different than new york city other than new york city is massive and has lot more people. But, new york city in june 1969 was the same as washington dc as far as values, as far as common practices in Law Enforcement. We had a moral division back then. We were cracking down on bars and people and arresting people for the same types of offenses that you talked about. And so, our hands are not clear. And, while we may have apologized, when he did that, i think he was apologizing as a leader of Law Enforcement because nypd is a leader around the world. To say on behalf of all of us, that is not the way it shouldve been handled. That is not the way people should be treated ever. Whether it was in the time for that was acceptable or not. We have come a long way. Here in washington to see, despite what ever the National Politics are, it doesnt matter who is in office, weve been a very liberal and open, welcoming city for people to live and work in. We have a human rights act here 1977 that included Sexual Orientation, gender identity and expression. We have had openly lgbt members of our city council and we have had one of the most progressive groups in ourand lesbian activists alliances. Going back as far as the 1970s, those groups immediately after stonewall started to work not just here in washington dc but nationally. Theyre trying to change things. Washington dc became a bit of a laboratory for many of the things that have spread throughout the United States and the world. Of is the emerger gay and lesbian unit and we proudly changed it to the lbgtq unit years ago to make it more inclusive. In 19981999 we recognized, while geographic policing and Community Policing worlds all over the world, and sir robert peel when he crated it in london, the idea of placing Police Officers in geographic areas was good for management and accountability, sometimes you need to police and manage differently. Thats what we do. We look at communities demographically. We have an lbgtq liaison unit. Sergeant nicole brown heads that here. She is with one of our affiliate officers here. I have one of our officers is working in the Jewish Community, deaf and hardofhearing community, asian community. Its not that we are not doing the same work of other Police Officers, but we are focusing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern, shared traits whether it be communication, whether it be a history of abuse like the lbgtq plus community has had over the years, and we are trying to work to build relationships so not if a crisis occurs, but when a crisis occurs like happened on saturday at our pride parade, right . We have relationships and people know that they can count upon us and they recognize us and hopefully we are able to gain cooperation and calm peoples fears. I want to ask you both. Brian, let me ask you first. We talk about acceptance of residents and people you work with and serve. What about people on the force who are openly gay now who couldnt be years ago . How important is that, and how are they when did it start that they were welcomed and embraced . How long ago has that been . I dont know. Im waiting for it. You know you made a face, right . You know where you stand with me. No. I think that the trajectory of queer people in society and in Law Enforcement of the criminal Justice System is kind of the same. I dont think that i dont think that at all, under any circumstances, i would ever say that lbgtq people are at home yet in this nation. And because we have shows on tv with gay characters and things like that, thats not the measure of at home for me. I say that, you know, first of all, lets look at goal. The organization stemmed from Charlie Cochran outed himself in front of the new York City Council in november of 1981. So you had a gay rights bill that was before the city council. Now, your ordinance or your law here in 77, that included gay people Sexual Orientation, yes. Gender identity and gender expression. Or that was amended later . Added later. Sexual orientation initially. I have my experts making sure i get it right. So you are ahead of us. So in 81 there is this contentious hearing in the city Council Chamber, and i think it was the Vice President or the president of the pba that was that issued this strong worded editorial in the newspaper that, you know, this law could never pass, we would need to carve out like they have in other institutions. We cant have queer cops. There are no such thing as gay cops, xyz. So, yeah, this viral testimony. So now who is going to testify next but a new York City Police sergeant. So the activists and everybody in this Council Chamber are irate now. They are booing when he is introduced. And he steps in front of this microphone and he says, you know, not only am i proud to be a new York City Police officer, i am proud to be a gay man. And from people that i know that were in the Council Chamber that day it has never been louder than it was at that moment in 1981. So we fast forward a few months and the organization was founded, the first meeting took place in the basement of Saint Josephs church in greenwich village. A Catholic Church that was very friendly to the community. They met in the basement. They met under protection of other cops because nobody wanted this meeting to happen. There were bomb a bomb threat i think was called into charlies home on his answering machine. And even going further than that, that first meeting, there was always a threat to the meetings of g. O. A. L. These guys met in secrecy very often. So we go now for 15 years, 14 years. The lawsuit was filed by tommy jeans, edgar rodriguez, and fran benedictis. They were the plaintiffs. They were represented by two attorneys, one of which is colleen meanen, the executive director of g. O. A. L. This is 96, and it was settled in 97. So for 15 years they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. And since then every Single Initiative in new York City Police department has had, for lbgtq people, was either geared by g. O. A. L. Individually or geared by g. O. A. L. As members of the Police Department. Kind of jointly. So we march for the first time in uniform in 1997. It took until 2002 for the Gay Officers Action League to be fully accepted into the, what they refer to, at least in the nypd now, were a little bit more than an nypd organization. We represent all fulltime criminal justice employees and the interests of the community from inside those institutions. So were talking about state police agencies, federal, local. But it took the nypds committee of Police Societies until 2002 before the president of g. O. A. L. Was able to sit in on meetings with other president s of their recognized fraternal, religious organizations. So were not really talking about ancient history here. The discrimination that we used to see and we used to get reported to g. O. A. L. Would be things like your locker would be turned upside down. Personal property was destroyed. You know, hate speech was used. Now i see a little bit different discrimination incidents or what gets reported to me. I find that oftentimes our members have less desirable assignments inside of commands, whether it be at the precinct level, the transit level. If you work at a steady sector, a lot of times, you know, if you work a steady sector you have a partner. Say brett was my partner. I work with brett every day. I find that a lot of times our people, especially male officers, and we can have a conversation about the difference between being a Lesbian Police officer and being a gay Police Officer, a gay man, we can talk about that later if you want. But we see that these guys, they dont have steady partners. They are in what we call response autos or theyre assigned to sit on prisoners or go to, you know, the hospital and sit on a prisoner in the hospital as opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. When there is a detail opened newspaper the precinct, lets say youre a good cop, you know, you are a hard worker. You come in, you do your job. You have good evaluations. And so if there is a temporary opening that, you know, because somebody is out longterm sick or somebody cant, you know, come to work because theyre, you know, on some other kind of leave or a vacation or whatever the case may be, and there is something going on that they need somebody for, they will