Local
D.C. Police LGBT unit ‘greatly diminished’
Head of anti-violence group says improvements needed
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said LGBT Liaison Unit affiliate officers have been responding to calls for LGBT-related matters during the midnight shift and at other times.(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The chair of the D.C. Anti-Violence Project, which formerly was called Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence or GLOV, told a City Council hearing on March 2 that the presence of the police department’s LGBT Liaison Unit has been “greatly diminished” in recent years.
D.C. AVP Chair Stephania Mahdi presented the group’s concerns over the current direction of the LGBT Liaison Unit in testimony before a police oversight hearing conducted by the D.C. Council Committee on the Judiciary.
“In January 2016 the D.C. police department made the problematic decision to end the LGBT Liaison Unit’s midnight shift,” Mahdi told the committee. “The midnight shift has often been the unit’s busiest time period; higher rates of violent crime and domestic violence occurs during late-night hours,” she said.
“The unit has also seen a sharp reduction in its full-time staff,” she continued. “Furthermore, liaison officers are being tasked to unrelated patrol duties for a majority of their shift. One could deduce that officer response time and focus on LGBT-related calls for service has been greatly diminished,” she said.
Added Mahdi in her testimony: “The truth of the matter is the LGBT community does not feel the same level of support from the Liaison Unit that they have received in previous years.”
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who also testified before the committee, said LGBT Liaison Unit affiliate officers have been responding to calls for LGBT-related matters during the midnight shift and at other times. The affiliate officers are assigned to each of the department’s seven police districts.
Lanier also said that the full-time LGBT Liaison Unit officers are on call at all times and have responded to LGBT-related calls during the midnight shift. During the past year Lanier has said the department was facing a shortage of officers due to a “retirement bubble” and she has had to reassign officers in various specialized units to street patrol duties during part of their daily shifts.
LGBT activists, including officials with the DC AVP, have expressed concerns that the LGBT affiliate officers may not have received the training needed to enable them to carry out liaison unit duties. Activists have said the department may also have cut back on the number of officers taking a longstanding LGBT cultural competency course.
“The department’s support of a robust dedicated liaison unit, carefully vetted and trained liaison officers, support of the LGBT cultural competency course, and finally the restoration of the LGBT Liaison Unit’s midnight shift” are actions the department should take in the coming months, Mahdi said.
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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