Q Policing

Global perspectives on policing within LGBTQ+ communities

Relationships between law enforcement and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) communities have always been varied and complex. On one hand, history is filled with incidents of police harassment: raids that sparked famous uprisings and rebellions; shoddy police investigations into the murders of LGBTQ+ community members; a corrosive organizational culture marked by heteronormativity and misogyny. Yet positive changes are being made, such as the creation of LGBTQ+ police associations, participation by police officers in Pride Parades around the world, and formal apologies for past actions. To some LGBTQ+ community members, police are the physical manifestations of state-sanctioned oppression and abuse. To others, they are guardians who have become partners in public safety.

Q Policing features eighteen contributors from around the world who explore the nature of the relationship between LGBTQ+ communities and the police. Part 1 of the book offers insights on policing and racial and ethnic constructions, including efforts to build collaborative models of community-building within groups and with law enforcement. Part 2 highlights the experiences of individuals who may be marginalized due to various social constructions such as transgender, unhoused, southern, or kink-involved. Finally, Part 3 shares perspectives of queer folks inside policing.

The contributors—scholars, social workers, police officers, and other community leaders—cover diverse topics, including queer experiences of policing in southern India, clinical implications for mental health professionals working with Latinx LGBTQ+ people, transgender and nonbinary peoples’ presentation management during encounters with law enforcement, discriminatory policies in place in the southern United States, the pathologization of kink, and more. Essays analyze interviews with the “Pride Defenders” in Hamilton, Canada, as well as British and American police officers transitioning while in uniform. They explore the experiences of gay, lesbian, and genderqueer police officers, map principal findings and central concerns that structure extant scholarship on gay police officers in the UK, use queer theory to explore the effectiveness of LGBTQ+ liaisons, and more.

The volume editors adopt an inclusive global perspective to account for contextually located experiences of queer people within and outside of the United States. The book incorporates a variety of voices, data sources, and methodologies, but contributors share an intentional focus on race, age, sex, gender, and other identities that helps explain and contextualize queer people’s experiences around and in policing. The diverse, international group of contributors—whose voices are not often heard in traditional outlets and mainstream media—demonstrates that despite discrimination, harassment, and violence, LGBTQ+ communities continue to thrive.

Roddrick Colvin is professor of public administration and director of the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. His research has appeared in the Review of Public Personnel Administration, Police Quarterly, and Women and Criminal Justice. He is the author of Gay and Lesbian Cops: Diversity and Effective Policing. 

Angela Dwyer is associate professor in policing and emergency management at the University of Tasmania. Her research on LGBTQ-police relations helped found the queer criminology discipline and she was awarded the Richard Tewksbury Award by the Western Society of Criminology 2022-2023 for this work. She is the lead editor of Queering Criminology. 

Sulaimon Giwa is associate professor of social work and police studies, as well as the interim dean of the School of Social Work at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. He is the coauthor of the second edition of Transforming Community Policing: Mobilization, Engagement, and Collaboration. 

Contributions by Roberto L. Abreu, Dhanya Babu, Koree S. Badio, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, Alexa DeGagne, Nicole Elias, Tyson Marlow, Julio A. Martin, Sean A. McCandless, Seth J. Meyer, Paige L. Moore, Lauren Moton, Max Osborn, Heather Panter, Leah Rouse, Nick Rumens, Mitchell D. Sellers, and Emma L. Turley.