Local
D.C. police add 23 ‘affiliate’ officers to gay liaison unit
In a little-noticed development, a D.C. police official last week released the names of 23 officers assigned as “affiliate” members of the department’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit.
The affiliate officers, who are based in the department’s seven police districts, represent the culmination of Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s long-awaited plan to expand and decentralize the GLLU and three other special liaison units.
“The Metropolitan Police Department is pleased to announce the expansion of the Special Liaison Unit to better serve the needs of the community,” said Capt. Edward Delgado, supervisor of the SLU, which oversees the individual liaison units, in a Jan. 13 announcement.
In addition to the GLLU, the special liaison units include the Latino Liaison Unit, Asian Liaison Unit, and Deaf & Hard of Hearing Liaison Unit.
Delgado issued his announcement through an online listserve group created by the SLU to communicate with civic activists and members of citizen advisory councils linked to each of the seven police districts.
In his announcement, Delgado included a list of 50 affiliate officers and the individual liaison unit to which they are assigned. It shows that nearly half of the offers — 23 — are assigned to the GLLU. Sixteen affiliate officers are assigned to the Latino Liaison Unit and five each are assigned to the Asian and Deaf & Hard of Hearing liaison units.
Delgado told DC Agenda on Thursday that upon completing an SLU training course, officers were allowed to choose the specific liaison unit to which they would be assigned, and the GLLU was a popular choice.
“I was totally shocked that almost half of them wanted to be GLLU members,” he said. “I thought not that many would want to be dealing with some of the issues within the gay community. But the feedback that I’ve gotten from the officers has been all positive as it relates to working in the community. They’re on target and they have done an excellent job.”
Although his announcemt about the affiliate officers came Jan. 13, he said all of the affiliates started in their posts in the first and second week of December.
Delgado’s announcement did not discuss the status of the GLLU’s headquarters office in Dupont Circle, which has decreased from seven full-time officers three years ago to just one in November.
Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes told DC Agenda in an e-mail Wednesday that the department has designated four officers and three supervisors to the GLLU’s central or headquarters unit.
Groomes noted that it would be up to the individual GLLU members to disclose their own sexual orientation and the department would not say which members, if any, are gay.
Groomes said the headquarters unit consists of Officers Joe Morquecho, Juanita Foreman, Zunnobia Hakir and Kevin Johnson. She said Delgado, along with Sgt. Carlos Mejia, supervisor of the GLLU and the Latino Liaison Unit, and Lt. Allan Thomas are designated as GLLU supervisory members.
Lanier has told LGBT activists in the past that GLLU headquarters staff decreased due to attrition as officers sought new assignments or left the department. She told activists that a reduced police budget and urgent deployment needs in high-crime areas of the city prevented her from filling the vacant positions.
In recent years, Lanier said she was holding off filling the vacant posts while she arranged for the expanded and decentralized liaison units that went into effect last week.
Officials with Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence had complained that Lanier effectively “dismantled” the GLLU before she put in place the decentralized units with the affiliate officers. Chris Farris, co-chair of GLOV, could not be immediately reached for comment on the department’s latest expansion of the GLLU.
In announcing the 50 affiliate officers for the liaison units, Delgado also provided advice on how people should contact the units.
“In case of emergency, or for immediate police response, always call 911,” he said. “Once police are on the scene, you may request that an on-duty affiliate or liaison officer be contacted.”
He said that for other police-related services, such as requests for an affiliate or liaison officer to attend a meeting or for other non-emergency issues, the individual liaison offices can be contacted directly. The number for the GLLU is 202-727-5427.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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