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Police academy instructor Sara Westbrook
years. “But I know that it’s the perfect work for
me to be doing.”
Westbrook started out as a deputy in
Thurston County, Wash., and then moved to
Portland after being offered a job with the
Portland Police Bureau. She says the idea of
police work struck her as a college student,
when she was pursuing a degree in liberal arts.
Throughout her career, Westbrook says,
she’s maintained her identity as a feminist.
“The women’s community sometimes
thinks I’ve aligned myself with them,” she says.
“1 used to try to wear both hats and maintain a
sense of objectivity. Others saw it as a conflict
and I tried to respond. I still want fairness for
women, and as a law enforcement officer I
want fair treatment and justice for everyone. I
used to see it as a choice between my friends
and my career, but now it’s more integrated.”
The fact that she’s gay, Westbrook says, has
been integrated as well.
“In a good way, it’s an absolute nonissue
that I’m gay,” she says. “It’s a known fact that I
am; people ask about my partner. We had a
commitment ceremony a year and a half ago
and several co-workers and supervisors attend
ed. In Portland, I’ve never felt left out of
things.”
That was not the case back in Olympia,
where Westbrook was not out.
“It was my own self-inflicted prison,” she
explains. “Since then, I’ve had mostly positive
responses whenever I’ve told people. People
usually say, ‘Oh, of course you are.’ So far, it
hasn’t changed my friendships with anyone on
the job.”
Katie Potter (right) talking with an employee of Goodwill Industries
Perhaps one reason Westbrook and others
are comfortable being out at work is the exis
tence of Vision, a social group for queer
employees of the bureau.
Westbrook—along with everyone else inter
viewed for this article—dismisses the macho
nature of police work.
“Sometimes, guys can just be macho, peri
od,” she says. “But there’s lots of macho cul
tures under the umbrella of being male, and
I’ve heard much scarier stories from the busi
ness world. We’re certainly a predominantly
male career choice, but it gives us great debates
and fodder for terrific humor.”
(Despite the efforts made by Just Out, no
gay male officer would step forward to be inter
viewed for this story.)
Although she plans to return to patrol,
Westbrook is currently taking a
break from the streets by serving
as the bureau’s crisis intervention
team coordinator. The team is
her profession’s response to
chronically mentally ill and
developmental^ disabled people
in crisis.
For her, the switch from
squad car to office offered a
much-needed break.
“I knew intuitively from the
beginning of my career that I am
part of the human race, part of
the greater body,” she says, “But
what you see on the street blows
holes in your soul. You have to
get more thick-skinned and
dehumanize the situation, other
wise you could not survive. But
the balance for me is that I want
to maintain my humanity and
my ability to remember that peo
ple are involved, and see the
horror of humanity and not have
that destroy me.”
An intricate equation, to say
the least, but Westbrook has
managed to find her own peace.
“I maintain a life outside of police work,”
she says. “I’m active in a social world that has
nothing to do with my profession, and I’m a
fabulous aunt.”
Westbrook is also pursuing a graduate
degree in interdisciplinary studies.
“To immerse myself in the arts and how
other people see the world,” she says. “To keep
me whole and keep my mind open.”
B
oth Westbrook and McGinley mention
a particular colleague as a positive exam
ple. In 1991, Katie Potter—an officer
and the daughter of then-Portland Police Chief
Tom Potter—tore the door off the closet and
came out as a queer cop in a profile first pub
lished in Just Out and later picked up by the
national media.
“What made it such big news was that
nobody had really gone public at that time,”
she says, looking back on the event. “Plus the
fact that my father was so high in the bureau.
Historically, the police have been the oppres
sors of gay people, so for a father and daughter
to come out together made it even more inter
esting, I think.”
What Katie Potter couldn’t have known at
that time was that she would become the
poster child for queer cops. Public appearances
have become a way of life for her since then.
Still, she recalls, her coming out was not with
out a price.
“There were some things that happened,”
she says.
Her car was vandalized in the bureau’s park
ing lot. There were letters in magazines all over
the country with unnamed sources from the
bureau saying they resented the fact that Potter
and her father came out publicly.
“But I’m sure there were lots of things that
didn’t happen because of who my father was,”
she says.
There were, of course, some nasty rumors.
Like Potter attending a party-tumed-shoot-out
in Washington County with her girlfriend.
Continued on page 23