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The Blue in the Rainbow
THE LGTBQIA COMMUNITY FACES CHALLENGES WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT,
INCLUDING A LACK OF REPRESENTATION IN POLICING AND NOT FEELING PROTECTED BY THE COPS
By Joseph Cappelletti
D
‘LAW ENFORCEMENT IS
PREDOMINANTLY A MALE-RUN
INDUSTRY SO I HAVE THAT
FEMALE PERSPECTIVE THAT IS
ALSO DIFFERENT.
I ALSO COME FROM A DIFFERENT
SEXUAL ORIENTATION THAN MOST OF
THE PEOPLE I WORK WITH,
SO IT GIVES ME A DIFFERENT VOICE
IN THE ROOM. AND A
VERY IMPORTANT ONE.’
— Deputy Chief Stacy Jepson
Deputy Chief Stacy Jepson, who identifies as an LG-
BTQIA employee at EPD, says she can understand why
showing the community just how diverse the police de-
partment is can help accountability. “The more transpar-
ent we can be as a police department, the better off we
are. I certainly think that showing the community that
we demographically represent them is very important.”
Jepson returned to her hometown of Eugene last
year after 23 years at the Hillsboro Police Department.
Jepson says that she has seen the police force culture
change significantly since she first started policing in the
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
TIM MORRIS
Photo courtesy friendsoftimmorris.com
iversity in Oregon means that in addi-
tion to the important conversations
people, businesses and government
agencies in Eugene and Springfield
are having about policing and race,
local law enforcement also needs to
look at cultural diversity, such as the
LGBTQIA community, who often don’t feel protected
by the police.
Tim Morris, who ran for Eugene City Council earlier this
year, says that as someone who identifies as LGBTQIA,
he doesn’t feel like a lot happens when he contacts the
police department for issues such as harassment. “I feel
like unless there’s significant danger to my life, I tend to
just not contact the police. I have contacted the police
after being harassed and I was basically told, ‘Good luck
with that,’ and hung up on.”
According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, Oregon has the
largest number of individuals who identify as LGBTQIA in
the U.S., and many of them live in Eugene. But it’s hard to
say if law enforcement reflects that demographic because
as in most other professions, the sexual orientation and
gender identity of police officers isn’t information that is
collected by the departments.
When asked about LGBTQIA representation, the Lane
County Sheriff ’s Office said, “We do not collect that infor-
mation from employees in our organization.” The Eugene
Police Department’s LGBTQIA liaison is Det. Chris White,
who said that while he can think of people from command
staff to line staff who are a part of the LGBTQIA commu-
nity, EPD doesn’t take a head count, either.
’90s — just as society has. While it took her many years to
come out to her coworkers, she says the importance of
her different perspective, both as a female and LGBTQIA
officer, is very important.
“Law enforcement is predominantly a male-run in-
dustry so I have that female perspective that is also
different,” Jepson says. “I also come from a different
sexual orientation than most of the people I work with,
so it gives me a different voice in the room. And a very
important one.”
Creating a more diverse police force begins with re-
cruiting, which can often be difficult for a field that has
discriminated against the LGBTQIA community. Even
though transgender people are more likely to be victims
of violent crime than non-transgender people, more than
57 percent of respondents to the 2019 U.S. Transgender
Survey “feel uncomfortable calling the police for help
when they need it.”
In response to Eugene Weekly’s questions, EPD’s recruit-
ment team says in a statement, “We have implemented
removing names, age, sex and race information from our
testing process,” to reduce potential risk of biases. It says
that, “events like the Orlando dance club mass shooting
make communities more aware of the discrimination and
vulnerability of our LGBTQIA community. These incidents
are a time when outreach to our local community is critical.”
EPD’s recruitment team hired a full-time recruitment
and background officer in January “geared toward diver-
sity, inclusion and equality,” according to the statement.
It says that EPD partners with minority police associa-
tions and that the recruitment team has “participated in
events including the Women in Public Safety Career Fair,
the Eugene Pride Festival, the Eugene Asian Celebration
and the Eugene Women’s half marathon.”
LGBTQIA awareness extends not just to the officers
employed but to the policies they enact. For example, the
policy on recording information during an arrest states
that the information to be recorded should include “the
race, ethnicity, age and sex of pedestrian or operator of
the motor vehicle stopped, based on the observations
of the law enforcement officer responsible for report-
ing the stop.”
The policy does not require officers to ask what an
individual's pronouns are. When asked, Jepson responds
that if officers are collecting information on individuals it
needs to be accurate, and that there is room for improve-
ment in those areas.
The LGBTQIA community interacts with police at a
high rate because it has been one of the most targeted
groups for both violent and non-violent hate crimes in
Oregon. Twenty-six percent of all hate crimes in Eugene in
2018 were related to sexual orientation or gender identity.
“I often don’t feel safe in Eugene. There’s people that
drive by and scream slurs at me. There’s certain parts of
the city I’m just not welcome in,” Morris says. “And a part
of the reason for that is a lack of safety from the police
department.”
Additionally, six of the 10 hate crimes involving physical
violence in 2018 were motivated by the sexual orientation
of the victim, according to the city of Eugene’s 2018 Hate
and Bias Report. “The percentage of physical violence
cases motivated by the sexual orientation of the victims
more than doubled in comparison to 2017,” the report says.
Jepson says the challenges that come with identifying
as LGBTQIA have still affected her and others, both in the
workplace and society. “I know several male gay officers
that really have struggled to come out and share who they
are and be open about who they are. I worked with one
for a very, very long time that I knew he was gay but no
one else did and he was really reticent to share that. So
I think that still exists and there’s still room for growth
in that area.” ■
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