MISSOULA, MONTANA — His pleasant demeanor and baby face aside, Sgt. Scott Oak is a tough cop.You might have seen him patrolling Missoula’s streets on a motorcycle oblivious to the cold and, if you’re lucky, zooming past your rig to nail a speeder.
When the roads get icy, he’ll be assigned a police cruiser, though much to his chagrin.
As a law enforcement officer in Missoula and Great Falls, and as a cadet in the U.S. Air Force, Oak earned the respect of Montana’s law enforcement community.
His thoroughness as a patrol officer and painstaking attention to detail in reports and investigations didn’t fall below the radar of Police Chief Rusty Wickman.
So when Oak volunteered as liaison officer to Missoula’s gay and lesbian community — a position the department had long been considering — Wickman pledged his support, and told the motor cop to make it happen.
That was just over two weeks ago, and already Oak is proving his mettle as the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and intersex — or GLBTI — liaison.
A gay man recently told Oak he’d been receiving harassing e-mails from someone he suspected was a police recruit.
Oak told Wickman about the complaint.
“Well, if he is a recruit, then he’s not anymore,” Wickman said.
When Oak determined that the harasser was not a recruit, he informed the gay man that criminal charges were still a possibility, but he had to provide information to file a report.
“He wasn’t comfortable telling me his name or filing a report,” Oak said.
Oak, who is openly gay, hopes to quell those fears within the GLBTI community, making himself visible as a cop who cares and understands.
“Through this position, I want to be a direct link between the GLBTI community and the police department,” Oak said.
On Thursday, the Western Montana Gay & Lesbian Community Center held a “meet and greet” to introduce Oak and explain his new position.
The idea is for an officer to work more exclusively with the underserved gay community.
And while Oak won’t abandon his normal duties, he’ll spend a large chunk of his time ensuring crimes targeting the GLBTI community are properly documented and investigated.
It’s a link that many men and women attending Thursday’s gathering say is missing, and has been for a long time.
Sitting in the community center’s cramped meeting room, Oak, Wickman and Detective Guy Baker fielded questions from more than 30 people.
“We’ve needed to establish a better relationship with the GLBTI community for a long time,” Wickman told the group. “And I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of that in the past. I apologize this wasn’t done three years ago.”
Wickman, who has been chief for only about six months, said he’s wanted to create a position like Oak’s for a long time.
But last month, an unprovoked attack on two 21-year-old University of Montana students jump-started the effort.
On Oct. 15, a group of teenagers screamed anti-gay epithets at Marcus Chebul and Wally Catton, then beat the men so severely they were both hospitalized.
Catton’s jaw was broken in two places and had to be wired shut, while Chebul suffered a fractured cheekbone and a concussion.
While both men are heterosexual, the attack generated a sense of urgency in Missoula.
“The line between harassment and assault can be very thin,” Wickman said. “There are barriers between the gay community and the police department, and I need to know what those barriers are. We are your police department, too.”
While Wickman said incidents of assault aren’t increasing in Missoula, the violence of the attacks has become more severe.
“The numbers aren’t going up,” Wickman said. “But what we’re seeing is a lot more brutal violence.”
Missoula is the only city in Montana to have a GLBTI liaison officer, and the only city of its size in the nation with such a position.
Wickman told the group of people Thursday night that he wants to know just how much underreporting the police department is getting from the GLBTI community.
“If someone isn’t out, then they’re going to be worried about reporting something and giving their name to a police officer,” a woman said.
Bobby Tollefson, editor of the publication “Gayzette,” said he works at City Hall, and knows which officers are or are not gay friendly.
“I know. We have to clean up our own backyard, too,” Wickman said.
And Oak has created a temporary solution for underreporting. Last week, Wickman approved the Missoula Hate Crime and Bias Incident Report.
It allows someone to file a complaint anonymously.
While a victim would have to give his or her name for actual criminal charges to be filed, Oak said the reports will at least generate some statistics and alert him to problem areas in Missoula.
Oak is still trying to determine how the new position can be most productive.
Searching for direction, he contacted Sgt. Brett Parson, the head of the GLBTI Liaison Unit for the Washington, D.C., police department.
“The first step is the biggest step,” Parson said. “And that’s creating the position. It’s a huge step for the chief, and for the entire city.
“The next step is getting the community and the officers to buy in. The way to do that is to continue to be a good cop, continue to do all the things you’ve always done to build a reputation.”
When Parson took over the D.C. unit in 2001, his biggest concern was whether it would change his reputation.
“Before that, my reputation was as a tough (expletive) cop,” he said. “Now it’s as a gay cop. But this is a new kind of community policing, and it’s not something that everybody is used to.”
Each Friday, Parson teaches a training course at the D.C. police department called Gay 101.
He also travels around the country and offers the same course to police departments trying to reach out to the gay community.
Diversity and sensitivity training are priorities for the Missoula Police Department.Oak said beginning next week, every field training officer at the department will attend mandatory diversity training.
New police recruits are assigned a field training officer a more experienced cop to shadow for 14 weeks.
Oak says targeting the field training officers will help extend the attitude to the recruits.
“If they have biases, they’ll reflect those onto the trainees,” Oak said. “It will be good for the recruits to see that officers and command staff have bought into this.”
On behalf of the police department’s detective bureau, Guy Baker volunteered to be a contact for the GLBTI community.
Because investigations often take place behind the scenes, Baker said their extent is rarely known.
“Unless there is a criminal charge filed, the case won’t become public record,” he said. So it’s easy to say we didn’t do anything.”
Last month, Oak read an e-mail from a gay man who said he was afraid to go downtown because of anti-gay harassment. It was the impetus for his decision to volunteer as Missoula’s first GLBTI officer.
“That really opened the can of worms,” Oak said. “But I think this is exactly where we need to be as a police department.”
Since the position was created, Oak said he has to check his e-mail every hour.
The community reaction has been so encouraging, he’s certain he did the right thing.
Parson is certain of his decision, too.
“I always have to ask myself, ’Is this why I became a cop?’ “ he said. “In the end, where I come down is ’Yeah, it is.’ “
Although police work in a large city is more extreme by nature, Parson said you never know where the need might exist for cops like Oak.
“Regardless of whether there’s an actual need for it, perception is everything,” he said. “If you have members of the community who perceive there’s a problem, then there’s a problem.”
from Helena Independent Record
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