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Police Training - Gay Issues

1995



"The 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

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