TRUST STILL AN ISSUE IN LGBTQ COMMUNITY

Since the beginning of our LGBTQ movement, the work to reimagine policing has been critically important to our community’s health and safety. During the 1950s and 1960s, law enforcement targeted our safe places, LGBTQ bars, with police raids, arrests and unrelenting violence. Our community’s protests against this oppression gave birth to the modern movement for LGBTQ equal rights. Every year, all around the world — and here in San Diego — Pride events commemorate the 1969 Stonewall rebellion when LGBTQ people in New York City decided enough was enough, stood up and fought back. San

Diego’s first LGBTQ protest took place in 1971 and was also in reaction to ongoing police harassment and unjustified uses of force and entrapment.

Today, the LGBTQ community’s relationship with police remains complex. While many in our community today have had nothing but positive interactions with law enforcement, that is simply not true for everyone in our community. Racial profiling and overpolicing continue to be issues that threaten the physical and emotional safety and equality of LGBTQ people of color and transgender and nonbinary people.

Overwhelming evidence shows that inequities of the criminal justice system and law enforcement disproportionately impact our LGBTQ community.

This is especially true for

LGBTQ San Diegans who are also people of color, those who are struggling with mental health issues, those who are impacted by homelessness or those who are transgender or nonbinary. A 2020 Campaign Zero report commissioned by the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties found that the San Diego Police Department stopped Black people at a 219 percent higher rate than White people. LGBTQ San Diegans are experiencing real overpolicing — SDPD was 22 percent more likely to search, 54 percent more likely to arrest without a warrant, and 33 percent more likely to use force on people perceived to be LGBTQ. Analysis of both the SDPD and the San Diego Sheriff ’s Department indicates that across all racial groups, Black and Latino/a/x people who are perceived to be LGBTQ are more likely to be searched, arrested and have force used against them than White LGBTQ people. Statistics like these are important, and it is equally important to note that SDPD’s use of force is 95 percent higher than in 42 other California cities.

The San Diego LGBT Community Center has long advocated for equality for our whole community, including LGBTQ communities of color. This work includes advocating for fair and transparent policing. In fact, since 2015, we have served as a founding member of the ACLU’s Coalition for Police Accountability and Transparency (CPAT). The impacts of systemic racism deeply affect LGBTQ people of color as a doubly-vulnerable population; and for the LGBTQ community in general, witnessing overpolicing can reignite our community’s historic distrust of law enforcement. What these reports tell us matches what many community members have been saying for years — that despite some incredible progress and steps forward for some in our community, there continue to be real reasons for that distrust in Black and Brown communities.

In addition to our active participation with CPAT, Center staff participate on the San Diego County Sheriff ’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, City of San Diego Mayoral LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee, the Your Safe Space Foundation that supports the San Diego Family Justice Center Foundation, the San Diego Police Chief ’s LGBT Advisory Board, and the San Diego Immigration Rights Consortium. We will continue to work collaboratively with a diverse array of San Diego individuals and organizations to improve public safety, offer trainings and address bias in policing.

As both a social service and an advocacy organization, The San Diego LGBT Community Center is committed to healing wounds and trauma inflicted on select community members at the hands of law enforcement, and a deep investment in local and regional dialogue and efforts to reimagine policing to truly create safer communities for us all.

The impacts of systemic racism deeply affect LGBTQ people of color as a doubly-vulnerable population; and for the LGBTQ community in general, witnessing overpolicing can reignite our community’s historic distrust of law enforcement.

Dessert

Khalfani

Sanders