Pride, public relations and the police

Sunday, 15 July 2018

Inspector Tracy Phillips, self-appointed national coordinator of New Zealand Police's diversity liaison officers.

'At least once a week someone calls me sir,' Inspector Tracy Phillips admits.

Phillips, of Tāmaki Makaurau, is the self-appointed coordinator of the New Zealand Police's diversity liaison officer (DLO) service.

Never heard of it? Neither have many within the force, she says.

DLOs - or rainbow-friendly police - aim to provide empathy, understanding and a safe point-of-contact for members of the rainbow community.

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Victims of hate crimes, somebody in a same-sex relationship involved in a domestic incident, or another situation.

Many transgender people and queer people of colour said police involvement in Pride made them feel unsafe.

Phillips underwent DLO training 'many years ago', however it wasn't until 2015, where she worked at the Auckland Pride Parade, the first year officers were allowed to walk in uniform, where she realised more work was needed.

A working group was formed to ensure the rainbow community felt understood and respected by officers.

Partners - including OUTLineNZ and RainbowYOUTH - were also introduced.

'We said be honest, what do we need to do, and do you trust the police? If you were involved in same-sex family harm incident, would you report it? If you were a victim of a hate crime, would you report it, would you trust us?

A woman being restrained during a demonstration against a petition opposing the Homosexual Law Reform Bill.

'The resounding feedback was no. So that made us take a really good hard look at ourselves and say, well, what do we need to do?'

Fast forward to 2018 and Phillips said more training is still needed.

Right now, she is in the midst of organising November's national rainbow conference.

'The kaupapa around it is going from tolerance to inclusion. Because some people tolerate the rainbow community, and actually we should be looking at actively making sure they're included.'

The rainbow police car on display at the 2018 Wellington Pride Festival.

While there may be little awareness of the 80-odd current DLOs, they form a key part of police efforts to reflect the diverse communities they represent.

Phillips said the rainbow community - which included those who identify as lesbian; gay; transgender; bisexual; intersex and related queer groups - made up 'conservatively' about 10 per cent of the population.

'We need to actually acknowledge that [population], work on it and actively and publicly do some work to say, we've got these people that you can come to, and we are rainbow-inclusive.'

New Zealand AIDS Foundation executive director, Jason Myers, said the organisation had increased its contact with police since DLOs were introduced.

'This has been primarily to make sure that information given to staff about HIV is accurate, but also to ensure that any work done in the LGBTQ space is reviewed by members of the community.'

Myers said recently, somebody disclosed having an unsatisfactory experience when reporting a homophobic attack.

'Tracy [Phillips] was straight on the case following it up with the officer involved. The community member was very happy with this part of the process and described feeling valued and pleased with the outcome.'

Human Rights Commission said it welcomed police moves to better understand and engage with the rainbow community and said the establishment of DLOs was 'a step forward'.

Protest on the streets of Wellington during debate over the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1985.

'We would like to see police commit to ongoing training and development of these officers and to ensure that rainbow competency training is delivered to all new recruits at Police College.

'This training should be designed, developed, and implemented in conjunction with rainbow communities,' a commission spokesman said.

'The commission also encourages the police to collect better data on the occurrence of hate crimes.'

Phillips said while there was still 'truckloads' of work to be done, the relationship between police and the rainbow community had come 'a long way' from the days where gay men could 'genuinely fear' being arrested.

'And if you talk about men having sex with men in toilets, people used to get arrested for that, which is terrible,' Phillips said.

'You consider the All Black who had sex in the toilet, no-one suggested that he should be arrested for that. There was no question of moral corruption of any small children behind closed doors.'

Marks of progress included a new policeman recently proposing to his boyfriend at Police College graduation, and police earlier this year unveiling a rainbow Pride car.

'I was driving that [car] round on Friday night, there's people taking selfies and loving it. We've got a long way to go still, but we've come a really long way from where we were last century. And I'm really proud of how far we've come.

'We've got the Police College set up to recruit transgender recruits now. We didn't have that in the past … Almost every recruit out of the Police College is wearing a rainbow lanyard - that's massive.

'What we're doing is affecting behaviour change.'