When he first heard about GOAL in the academy, he thought it was an elaborate ruse to figure out which cops were gay so they could be fired.He eventually joined GOAL and came out with help from Cochrane and the group’s co-founder, Sam Ciccone. Like many other gay officers, Rodriguez stayed in the closet for a long time. “If you didn’t speak their language, if you were an outsider, you were out,” he said. Rodriguez knew if he said anything, he “would’ve been finished.” “You could see the terror on the victim’s face because not only did he have a partner that was beating on him, but now the cops weren’t going to do s- -t for him, and not only that, they were abusing him and revictimizing him.” and making really effeminate gestures,” Rodriguez recounted. “One of the other cops that came was interviewing the victim and was looking at him like, ‘Oh, really, he hit you?’. He recalled responding as a rookie to a domestic-violence call for a gay couple. “If you weren’t homophobic, you were either a f-g or, ‘What’s up with that?’ ” Rodriguez explained. When Rodriguez joined the department in 1982, homophobia in The Bronx’s 44th Precinct was “totally expected,” and when he first heard about GOAL in the academy, he thought it was an elaborate ruse to figure out which cops were gay so they could be fired. will be unworkable in the Police Department, and can do more harm than good.” He wrote employing queer officers could be “catastrophic.” In a February 1978 op-ed in The New York Times, then-PBA President Samuel DeMilia wrote that a ban on discrimination against “homosexuals by city agencies. In at least one case, an officer was reportedly fired just for having a gay man as a roommate. “They saved my life and allowed me to live.”īefore GOAL was created, homophobia was “accepted” and “tolerated” in the NYPD, former officers said, and they could be fired just for being gay. Edgar Rodriguez, who was featured in the documentary and is a former president of GOAL. “GOAL pulled me out of a very dark and lonely closet … and allowed me to recognize that I was going to be safe,” said retired Sgt. Edgar Rodriguez with recruiting posters for GOAL Gregory P.
Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village in 1982 is now a 2,000-member organization, celebrating its 36th year with chapters across the country.Ī documentary on GOAL’s history premiered last month at DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in the country, and was a remarkable collaboration between the organization at the NYPD. What began as a secret 11-person meeting in the basement of St. Cochrane would go on to create the Gay Officers Action League to support LGBTQ members of law enforcement. The bill would languish in committee for another 4¹/₂ years before it passed in 1986. There had never been an openly gay cop on the force since it was founded in 1845. Pat Burns was a landmark moment in NYPD history.
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