november 20. 199fl
The
Thin
Queer
Line
Sketches of
three of
Portland’s finest
P atrick C o llin s
photos by L inda K u n m
by
t’s a soggy Sunday afternoon in early
November. After bidding my beloved
farewell in front of the East Precinct
building, situated in the eastern reaches of
the city, I sign my life over (quite literally, on
an official form) and climb into squad car num
ber 904, driven this afternoon by officer Cheryl
McGinley, a 23-year veteran of the Portland
Police Bureau.
An avid fly-fisher, a hiker, camper, furniture
refinisher and builder, McGinley has been with
the bureau since the days when women weren’t
allowed to work Portland’s rougher neighbor
hoods. These days the picture is slightly differ
ent. There is now a female motorcycle officer,
and there was recently a woman finalist in the
recruitment process for the bureau’s SWAT
team. And McGinley s patrol area includes
stretches near the Portland International Air
I
port, 82nd Avenue, and Northeast Prescott
Street.
But enough about being a female cop.
What about being a female cop who is a les
bian?
“Oh, just look at me,” she says, and turns in
her seat as her squad car glides north on a nar
row road. She wears her brown hair close-
cropped, and has soft blue eyes and an angular
jaw line. “C an ’t you tell I’m a dyke?”
For McGinley, the coming out process was
not necessarily hampered by the fact that she’s
a law enforcement officer.
“A s your co-workers become your friends,
things about your personal life come up,” says
McGinley, who once served as her precinct’s
representative during contract bargaining and
pushed hard for— and won— domestic partner
benefits.
She says her supervisors do more than pay
lip service to the concepts of equal opportunity.
“There is a no-nonsense approach to harass
ment and discrimination,” she says. “Which is
not to say we don’t have some bad cops. We
do. But The Oregonian usually catches them
quickly.”
The conversation switches gears from sexu
al orientation to coffee in three seconds.
“I never know how the day’s going to start,”
she says, and parks her car in front of a conve
nience store with a rusty ice chest out front.
“Sometimes it’s dead babies, sometimes it’s sex
ual abuse, and sometimes it’s just a cup of cof
fee,” she says, and shuts the engine off. “I prefer
coffee.”
Throughout the afternoon, McGinley will
veer off the topic of her sexual orientation over
and over again— not because she’s uncomfort
able with it, but because more pressing issues
keep coming up: lives run amok, drugs and
assault, the fear of being shot and killed in the
line of duty, the need to experience a profound
and oftentimes detrimental connection with
the human condition.
In a field with life and death so close to its
core, perhaps the gender of those you love
doesn’t really matter.
T
Cheryl McGinley (center) works with Tracy Bertalot before administering shooting range
qualification tests
he woman has scraggly blonde hair and
is barefoot on this chilly afternoon. She
lives in a camper in her mother’s front
yard.
“That guy sprays me with a hose every time
I walk by there,” she says, and holds up a
drenched pair of sweat pants for McGinley s
inspection.
She explains that they had a brief affair.
“But nothing serious,” she says. “Two or three
times.”
“Why do you walk by the house T M cGin
ley asks.
“To use the pay phone.”
“You have to really like yourself in this busi
ness,” she says, and sips her coffee as she radios
back to the dispatcher that she’s on her way to
investigate the man with the hose. “Otherwise
you’ll take your frustrations out in all the
wrong ways.”
For McGinley, who became an officer after
completing two degrees in biology, the frustra
tions are defused in a number of ways: talking
with friends and co-workers, refinishing furni
ture, swearing at the windshield of her squad
car.
Not far away, in an alley, the man in ques
tion and a friend work on a motorcycle.
McGinley gets out of the car, introduces herself
and asks a few polite questions.
After a number of surly responses, the man
attempts to enter the house. But McGinley,
who stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, hustles him
into the back seat of the squad car with a speed
and efficiency that no camera could ever hope
to capture.
“Listen,” she says later, after she’s dropped
the guy off at the Justice Center downtown, “I
know better than to let someone disappear into
a house. There’s a good chance they’ll run out
another exit or come out with a weapon and
blow me away.”
Later, as the sun begins to dip beneath the
western horizon and the clouds part to reveal a
jagged skyscape, McGinley says she knew the
two Portland police officers who were killed on
the job in the last two years. “They were both
friends of mine,” she says softly.
T
he fear of being blown away.
When most of us think of job-related
stress, we probably think of deadlines,
difficult bosses, perhaps a hopelessly antiquated
filing system. But what would drive someone to
risk his or her life each and every time he or
she clocks in?
“I’ve been asked that question many times,
and I don’t know that I have an answer,” says
officer Sara Westbnxik, who’s been a cop for 13
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