Gay Cops

A ground-breaking study of the lives of gay and lesbian police officers in America, Gay Cops explores the dilemmas and problems facing homosexual cops as they balance the day-to-day realities of their work and their sexual identities.

In the first book-length study of gay police officers, Leinen, a sociologist, author of Black Police, White Society and a former NYPD lieutenant, reports on the coping and surviving strategies of 41 homosexual New York City police officers, both male and female. The author, who is heterosexual and was on the force when he began this study, attended Gay Officers Action League meetings, dances and gay pride parades. He describes the tense passage from being a law enforcement agent who potentially threatens the secrecy of gay officers still in the closet to being a researcher observing their lifestyle. Academic jargon ("deviantized minority groups" and " 'inner-closeted' group") mars an otherwise intriguing account. Leinen often allows these cops to speak for themselves about coming out to each other, to their heterosexual colleagues and to their families.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Though significant as the first study of gay cops and informative by virtue of the author's diligent approach, Leinen's naive and often plodding report on homosexuals in the NYPD manages to reveal only a few insights along with the obvious. Leinen (Black Police, White Society, 1985--not reviewed), a retired NYPD lieutenant with a Ph.D. in sociology, began his study of gay police after seeing a gay cop announce his homosexuality while testifying for a gay-rights bill. Through the Gay Officers Action League, the author interviewed 41 gay cops. The size and type of the sampling (all of Leinen's interviewees are ``out'' to some degree) invalidates statistical significance; the value here is largely anecdotal--and not impressively so. While officers' voices are moving as they relate fears of exposure; discrimination; the humiliation of listening or even joining in as their colleagues derided gays; and various strategies for concealment and coming out, Leinen devotes too much space to observations such as that sex in a car ``severely constrains body movement, limiting the enjoyment of the act''; that many gays prize cops as lovers, fulfilling widespread gay-culture fantasies; or that higher-ranking gay cops suffer less than lower-ranking ones. There's something to be gleaned as the author tracks the process of coming out, and it's heartening that, at least in the NYPD, a reputation as a ``good cop'' outweighs any for sexual orientation, but much here is common sense, applicable to straights and civilians as much as to gays and cops: The practice of safe sex; the problem of coming out to one's family; the preference for long-term relationships; reasons for joining the force. Of limited interest, then--and it's hard not to suspect that Leinen's apparent lack of familiarity with gays (he finds a bisexual's dating history ``quite unique'' and worries about getting AIDS from sharing a glass) might be part of the problem. (First printing of 5,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Leinen's overview of what it's like to be a gay man or lesbian on a U.S. metropolitan police force is based on a decade's worth of interviews. Well-organized and easy-to-read, the book explores the relatively recent phenomenon of openly gay and lesbian police from the vantages of both the force and the gay and lesbian officer. From "Staying in the Closet" through "Coming Out Tentatively at Work" to "Coming Out Publicly at Work," its chapters disclose the unique brands of fear and homophobia gay and lesbian cops endure and the very special courage they display in coming out on the job. If one chapter, "Recruiting Gay Cops," offers a hopeful vision of what gay and lesbian police can give the community and the force, another, "The Off-Duty World of Gay Cops," reveals that even the gay and lesbian community is occasionally unfriendly toward gay and lesbian police. Finally, Leinen discusses his methodology as a heterosexual social scientist conducting this particular study, and he appends a general profile of the officers in his study. In its research on gay and lesbian pioneers in another uniformed service, Leinen's work usefully complements the recent literature on gays and lesbians in the military. Charles Harmon

Gay Cops is a groundbreaking study of gay and lesbian police officers in America. In 1976 San Francisco Sheriff's Deputy Rudi Cox became the first openly gay law enforcement officer in the United States. Five years later Sgt. Charlie Cochrane of the New York City Police Department came out at a city council meeting. With the assistance of Sergeant Cochrane and members of the Gay Officers Action League, retired NYPD Lieutenant Leinen probes the dilemmas facing homosexual officers striving to balance the realities of police work and their sexual identities. Workplace issues concerning recruitment, harassment, coming out on the job, and off-duty social life are exposed through interviews. As one officer states, "To be a cop is very hard. To be homosexual and a cop, it's harder." A highly commendable choice not only for institutions supporting police science programs but also for academic and larger public libraries.
- Michael A. Lutes, Univ. of Notre Dame Lib., Ind.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.