Quality | 2010.01.13
Police forces win Stonewall approval as 'gay friendly' employers
Five police forces make it into the top 20 in the gay rights organisation\'s annual survey
The lesbian and gay rights organisation Stonewall has just published the results of its annual survey to find the top 100 "gay friendly" employers. The index is based on a range of measures, mainly self-assessed. This year, though, a survey of more than 7,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual employees showed that staff satisfaction was higher in the top 25 organisations than those outside the top 100, lending more weight to the results.
And the big surprise? Five of the top 20 employers were police forces, with a further six in the top 50, making the service the best employment sector. This is a far cry from my own experience at police training school in 1976. I remember being bawled at by the drill sergeant when one of my fellow recruits tried to protect himself from the cold, "Only girls and poofs wear gloves!" The general consensus on the riot van, shortly after I completed my training, was that "only queers wear aftershave – you don\'t wear aftershave, do you Brian?"
As far as the Met was concerned, change started when a progressive commissioner, Sir Peter (now Lord) Imbert, agreed to include sexual orientation in the force\'s equal-opportunity policy in the early 90s. I got a personal visit from the officer in charge of the policy to tell me it was "a shield, not a flag". This marked out the accepted wisdom for the next decade or so: that it was OK to be gay, black or female, as long as you behaved like a straight white man. Not until 2000 had the culture changed sufficiently that I felt able to be open about my sexuality.
Attitudes in the police service have moved with those of society in general, with many police recruits now being open about their sexuality, even if openly gay police officers are still rare in the most senior ranks.
As Stonewall points out, though, police forces still need to translate good employment practice into a world-class service to lesbian, gay and bisexual communities. At the moment it is still a lottery whether victims of homophobia receive an appropriate service from the police.
Brian Paddick is a former deputy assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan police.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/gay-rights-police-forces
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