NYPD is her 2nd family

AS A TEEN, Ana Arboleda’s coming-out was beyond traumatic — her mom derided her as worse than a prostitute and forced her out of the house.

As a new NYPD sergeant, Arboleda is completely at ease with who she is and has reestablished ties, however fragile, with her strict Catholic mother.

She was there last month when Arboleda, now 31, was promoted during a ceremony at 1 Police Plaza.

But she stayed out of photos, especially ones with Arboleda and her partner — and she told the Daily News she wouldn’t talk about an issue she considers private.

For Arboleda, she’s long past thinking their relationship will be anything more than a grudging acceptance of who she is.

“That idea, or that ideal, left my mind a long time ago,” Arboleda told The News. “To me, it’s about my happiness. Whether she accepts it, or she doesn’t, I think that’s on her.”

“If she does, good,” Arboleda added. “If she doesn’t, good as well. I don’t need that part of my life any more.”

Arboleda (photo below), an eight-year veteran, was assigned to the Central Park Precinct after her promotion.

She’s also vice president of the Gay Officers Action League and teaches a sensitivity workshop for rookies.

In the NYPD, Arboleda said, she found the love and acceptance she never received at home.

“I realized as I got older that family is not just blood,” she said. “Family is the person there with you in good times and in bad times, and this department . . . allows me to grow, and I’m still growing. “I see the department as a family.” Things weren’t always so good. Colombian-born and raised in Queens, Arboleda at about age 16 approached her already-suspicious mother and told her she liked girls.

“She pretty much told me that she didn’t accept it, that she’d rather have a prostitute as a daughter than a lesbian daughter, and pretty much kicked me out of the house,” Arboleda remembers.

“She told me that I wouldn’t be anything but a lesbian and that nobody would ever see nothing good in me.”

A Flushing High School student, she moved in with another student, then relocated to Ohio to be with a girl she’d met in the city.

She later came back to New York, joined the NYPD Cadet Corps and worked in a bar to help put herself through John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she pondered a career as a lawyer before becoming a cop.

During that time, she and her mother were largely out of touch for a few years “until I completely healed and I was able to somewhat forgive her.” They talk more often now, and her mother called her “a very nice and sweet girl.”

She refused to discuss her issues with Arboleda’s sexuality.

Arboleda, though, is used to that.

“At this point in my life I don’t even see it as something negative,” she said. “Because in a way, that’s what helped me — and helps me — to make myself better every single day.”