Police Training - Gay Issues
1995
"The police training had role-plays
where the class would split into two groups. One part would play police officers
and the other would play members of the public. They would have these scenarios
and have these mock houses. Then they would introduce gays into it; they didn't
focus on gays all of the time. There would be a gay domestic and people would
play the parts of the gays. As you can imagine the gays were stereotypical with
the generic voice and the generic actions and some story of 'How could you go
off with a woman?' being very stereotypical. This was all videoed and watched
back in front of the class for feedback. ‘Could you have dealt with that
better?’. One of the trainers turned and round and said ' Someone could be
deeply offended by this in the class; is anybody gay in the class?' I remember
thinking ‘God I am not going to put my hand up!’ I did say a few things where I
probably outed myself to somebody; I think some of the trainers cottoned on. For
some people it just flew over their head. I always spoke about it in the third
person; like people that I knew that had suffered problems or people had
stereotyped. "
Contributed by: Derek, 35