The president of the San Francisco Police Officer's Association said LGBT officers were among those who were willingly involved in the creation of the recently discovered controversial SFPD videotapes.

"Yes, there were gay officers in that video, but I'm obviously not going to say who they are," Gary Delagnes, president of the San Francisco POA, told the Bay Area Reporter. "They were willing participants. In fact, as I'm looking at this ... almost half the officers involved in the video were either black, female, or gay."

News of the alleged racist, sexist, and homophobic videos made by members of the San Francisco Police Department was met with outrage last week, with city leaders declaring the discovery to be "shameful," according to Mayor Gavin Newsom, and "a dark day" in the history of the department, according to Police Chief Heather Fong.

The videos – reportedly intended as parodies to boost morale of the station members – contained footage of mock calls, with staged scenes to imply that officers had hit a homeless African American woman with a patrol car, for instance, or received sex from an Asian massage parlor. Other scenes included officers poking fun at homoerotic advances, and in one case, an officer was dressed as a transgender person.

Although reportedly not meant for public viewing, the footage was posted to the Internet by Officer Andrew Cohen, who produced the tapes, and official reaction was swift. More than 20 SFPD members were immediately suspended for their misuse of police resources, and Newsom ordered an investigation not just by SFPD but by the city's Human Rights Commission and the Commission on the Status of Women. Newsom has also issued an executive order creating an independent blue ribbon commission to conduct a comprehensive review of SFPD's personnel polices and standards of conduct and training, and to determine whether stations include "appropriate representations of the communities they serve," according to a statement from the mayor's office.

But some on the inside said that while they don't condone the video, the official reactions appear to have jumped to some broad conclusions about SFPD members.

"These officers are like family. They don't think of each other in terms of black or gay or female; they were having fun with each other and their situation, which sometimes feels very hopeless and frustrating," said Delagnes. "When people are sitting around poking fun at one another it may appear insensitive to the outside world but the people involved certainly understand it. It was in bad taste to make this video public and we don't expect a lot of people on the outs

Officer Len Broberg. Photo: Rock Gerharter

ide to understand this kind of venting."

Delagnes said some of the immediate responses were "classic overreactions by a city that many times is very hypocritical."

"We have the Folsom Street Fair and Castro Street and all sorts of expressions of First Amendment rights here and everybody says, 'Hey that's cool, that's the way of San Francisco.' Now, when it involves police officers, some of the same people who hang their hat on the First Amendment are immediately condemning the cops because we're cops," he said.

Openly gay Officer Len Broberg worked at the Bayview station until 2002, when he transferred to SFPD's gang task force. He still works daily with officers from the Bayview Station, he said, and knows many of the officers who participated in the videos, although he said he was unaware that there were gay officers involved.

While Broberg said he was reserving judgment until the investigation was complete – and that he was "disappointed" in some of the footage – he also agreed that the videos could have been a way to blow off steam in a work environment that is stressful beyond most people's comprehension.

"I do not want to downplay this. There are some very serious things here and they aren't things people should be taking lightly," said Broberg of the videos. "But I wish people would maybe wait to see the totality of the situation."

Broberg described violent streets and workdays where many officers don't know if they will make it home alive. When he meets young local people, Broberg said, sometimes he will ask them how old they are and they will answer, "I made 19," meaning they never expected to live that long. Most of his unsolved homicides, he said, are murders where everyone knows who did it and nobody will testify to be able to prove it in court. Add to this the routine duties of officers and the public scrutiny and criticism, he said, and the videos would be seen from a much different perspective within the ranks.

"I can't say I was offended by the videos. Disappointed by some of the stuff, yes. But what I'm offended by is people getting shot everyday. I think many people who deal with workplace stress can relate to having an outlet, getting some relief, and then moving on," said Broberg, who also takes issue with the idea that the videos capture some kind of "police culture."

"If they really represented a department-wide attitude about transgenders, for instance, I don't think we would have seen the progress the department has made over the last several years," said Broberg, referring to some of the more recent reforms including the fact that an openly transgender woman, Theresa Sparks, now sits on the Police Commission. "We're not completely there yet but we've made some really big steps."

Broberg said he has dealt with work-related incidents of homophobia himself but describes them as isolated. "This is a very progressive department. It's very different to say this is endemic to the whole organization based upon the actions of individuals."

Transgender activist Robert Haaland said the fact that women and minorities were involved in the videos proves that simply diversifying a workforce does not eliminate homophobia, sexism, and racism.

"Even in our most diverse work places we can have intense racism and sexism. Attitudes don't necessarily change," said Haaland, who believes the videos have provided the city with "an opportunity for reform" and that the system should now be revamped to provide "clear markers for acceptable behavior with clear lines of accountability so that police officers will conduct themselves appropriately."

But Dr. Dan Karasic, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and president of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, said the fact that the videos were known to be inappropriate probably has a lot to do with why they were made.

"It sounds like the people involved don't identify themselves as being racist or sexist but there's this underlying tension there between being powerful male, mostly white enforcers cruising around a neighborhood where much of their contact is with people suspected of crimes and yet at the same time there's an expectation that to do their jobs they have to be a part of that community," said Karasic, who described the "morale building" function of the videos as coming in part from indulging in behaviors that officers knew could get them in trouble.

"I'm sure they've all had their sensitivity trainings. They know that videos like this are not meant for the public. That adds a certain illicit quality to it, doing something they know is forbidden and yet that our homophobic and racist and sexist society also permits," said Karasic. "There is at once some permission to have those feelings and yet at the same time not permission to express them. In these kinds of events they can perhaps have license to vent some of these feelings or thoughts they know they cannot ordinarily express, and the 'morale building' is the sharing of that joke. They might disavow this behavior by the light of day, but by all being in on it it's something that brings them together because they've all been a part of that hazing and are now all a part of that club."