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In May, Gay and Lesbian Community Services (GLCS) ran a condensed version of their Opening Closets diversity training program on diverse sexuality and gender for two squads of WA Police cadets as part of a four-day diversity training for recruits. Both the WA Police and GLCS have called the training an important, if small, first step towards addressing homophobia within the police force.

The training comes as police are changing their approach to diversity issues and phasing out gay and lesbian liaison officers, opting instead to recruit gay and lesbian officers into the mainstream force through, amongst other initiatives, advertising in queer media. The Community Diversity Unit, which oversees diversity training, has also been restructured and moved to the Police Academy.

According to Helen Phelan, the Manager for the WA Police Community Diversity Unit, the new diversity training program has departed from past training on sexuality and gender identity in two significant ways. First, issues relating to HIV/AIDS and handling blood are now covered in Occupational Health and Safety training rather than training on diverse sexuality and gender. Secondly, DSG training now takes up a range of issues and no longer emphasizes the single issue of policing beat use.

‘Part of our conversations in working with our community contacts about this issue [diversity training] was looking towards normalizing things. We’re trying to understand and deal with difference rather than place a particular emphasis on any one group,’ said Phelan.

As there is currently only an hour allocated for DSG training, the depth and breadth of information is somewhat limited making rapid change to homophobia within the police force unlikely. While GLCS Chairperson Mark Woodman said the initial training was at this stage mostly ‘basic myth-busting’, GLCS Board Member and Freedom Centre Coordinator Dani Wright added that, ‘If you think about it, you are having an effect in the overall culture. We have one group of newbies who are going out and they have some awareness, no matter how limited it is. If you keep doing that with the new groups, then you are starting to change the culture.’

WA Police Community Diversity Officer Tim Renwick pointed out that changing the culture will be a lengthy process. ‘We have support for the diversity training and that is a small victory. When you talk about cultural change, it is a massive organisation that has a long history.’

Both the Community Diversity Unit and GLCS have noted the structure of the training as an obstacle to address in future work. Besides the limited time for GLBT diversity, the structure of the training was modelled on a school classroom with supervisors present, something GLCS said made it difficult to start open and frank discussions to understand exactly how and what the cadets were thinking.

GLCS was further disappointed that GALPEN (Gay and Lesbian Police Employees Network) declined to be a visible part of the training.

‘I don’t think any of them felt safe as a representative of GALPEN to come forward and assist with the training,’ said GLCS Opening Closets Facilitator Sandra Norman, pointing to a culture of homophobia within the police.

Despite the obstacles and setbacks, GLCS and the Community Diversity Unit both agreed that the most important message from the training was simply the fact that it happened. The training began a dialogue between the gay and lesbian community and the WA Police to address issues of homophobia within the force and to implement better policies and procedures.

‘I think in some ways the important thing is that they are forced to do an hour of diversity training on this issue because that sends the message that the hierarchy thinks this is important,’ said Norman. ‘We reinforce that in the training by talking about their responsibilities under Equal Opportunity Law, so they know it is not okay to be disrespectful.’

Encouragingly for the GLBT community, the Community Diversity Unit have expressed their commitment to continuing and improving DSG training for WA Police.

Helen Phelan told OUTinPerth, ‘We are all starting to come up with ideas of how it might be done differently. Certainly, I would be hoping that we could create a situation where we could do some training beyond just the recruits. If we could have some in service training that would be good to start to open up that knowledge in a broad conversation.’

Mark Woodman believes that in addition to training there need to be ‘good policies and procedures, written down, that support [GLBT] officers within the force.’ According to Woodman, once the force is more inclusive within its ranks, police will have a better understanding of the GLBT community because it will be a visible part of the force.

The WA Police are already working to address policy issues that came up in training. One issue raised was that of strip searching a trans* woman, and some cited the current police policy to have a female officer strip search from the waist up and a male officer conduct the search from the waist down. The WA Police are now reviewing their own policy, according to Phelan, and are likely to take into account the Criminal Investigations Act, which makes provisions for police to ask the person in question how they identify and conduct a strip search accordingly.

GLCS has said it would like to be involved in future diversity training programs, though they said discussions with the WA Police for the next round of training are still ‘very preliminary’.

Anyone with complaints about police homophobia should seek first to report any incident or complaints to their local station diversity officer in person or via 131 444. Any serious complaints should receive a case number, and anyone who feels their complaint was not adequately addressed can contact the Community Diversity Unit on 9301 9675.

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