Reporting Crimes...

[SouthernDem2004]

Let me start with a brief story so people will know where I am coming from:

I am a Police Officer. Last week I was dispatched to an assault that took place inside a bar. The bar happened to be a gay bar. When I arrived I found one person unconscious on the bar's floor bleeding from numerous areas. The victim's friend told me another patron assaulted him and why the assault took place. He also gave the suspect description. I spoke to each of the other 7 people in the bar to try to get witness statements and to clarify the description. Everyone stated they did not see anything and never saw the suspect. That was completely impossible. They all had to have seen what happened. When the victim regained conscious at the hospital he also lied and gave me a ridiculous story. Needless to say we had nothing to go on. This weekend I was speaking to one of my fellow Officers that happens to be gay and he mentioned the call. He knew some of the people that were in the bar and they told him the whole story.


This story is not unusual. Speaking to gay friends I always get one of two excuses: 1) The gay community takes care of its own problems. OR 2) The Police will be rude and not take us seriously because we are gay.

Excuse one does not fly. A crime is a crime and a criminal is a criminal... People should not take the law into their own hands. The community consists of everyone, call the Police.

As for excuse two, The Police are there to serve the public period. If you call the Police and they do not take you seriously or are rude, go down to the Department and file a formal complaint. We need help identifying those morons. The Police are your Police. Call them when you need them. If they do not do their job properly make sure someone knows about it. Continuing to allow problems to go unchecked is not going to help or change anything.

You must go down to the PD and make a formal complaint. Phoned in complaints are not taken very seriously.

Well that was my rant for the day.

Peace.

[Lerkfish]

1. actually, I see an obvious third possibility

protecting the identity of one or several who do not wish to be "out" on a police blotter, which is available to the public.

[SouthernDem2004]

2. Possible but the

Thing is arrest logs just show the person's name, charge,date and time, nothing more. The overwhelming majority of crimes do not make the news. Victims names are not reported.

[Laughing Mirror]

3. More details needed

Why did the assault take place, according to the witness?

Who called the cops?

[SouthernDem2004]

4. I can not go into details about an ongoing investigation.

The assault is a felony and we are still working on it. My friend gave me the suspects name and a warrant should be out soon. I hope we will be paying him a visit this weekend.

His friend that was the only honest one there called the Police. He was also angry that no one would help us.

[SouthernDem2004]

5. Actually he may have called for an ambulance and we were sent also.

911 call centers are manned by Police Dispatchers. If someone called for an Ambulance stating someone had just been assaulted the Dispatcher would send us and an ambulance.

[Laughing Mirror]

6. You just answered my question

Because assault is a felony charge. I'm assuming the assailant was gay and a patron of the bar. He probably already had a record. Nobody would want to call the cops on their brother beating up somebody if the charge is a felony and his eventual punishment could wind up being more severe than the wounds he inflicted on the guy he beat up.

It might be helplful to point out that we gay people are still today second-class citizens in this country, and only recently were we not illegal in most places. We were being tracked down, baited and arrested just for being gay.

I'm sure if you understand a little recent history, you can understand why some of us would react to a beating this way with the silent treatment once the cops got involved. Calling the cops is not always our first reaction.

[kweerwolf]

7. I can understand your frustration.

I spent a couple of years working on an anti-violence hotline taking calls from GLBT persons related to bashings, discrimination, etc.

When the call was about something like job discrimination, the victim was much more willing to report the incident to the human rights commission.

In the cases of gay bashings, however, few wanted to report the incident to police. Inevitably they would say things like the police wouldn't care and wouldn't do anything about it any way. Granted, this was several years ago, but there is still a perception that police will be homophobic.

SouthernDem2004, I applaud your enlightened stand on dealing with gay issues ... and I know there are many more police officers out there like you. But it will take time to overcome the stereotypes some gays and police still carry about each other.