Local
Judge sets $50,000 bond for release of Brett Parson
Former D.C. police lieutenant must remain in Florida while case is pending
A Broward County, Fla., judge on Feb. 18 set a $50,000 bond for the release of former D.C. police lieutenant Brett Parson six days after Parson was arrested in Boca Raton on Feb. 12 for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old boy in violation of Florida’s age of consent law, which is 18.
Online court records show that Broward County Judge Phoebee Francois set bond at $25,000 for each of the two charges of Unlawful Sexual Activity with a Minor filed against Parson by Coconut Creek, Fla., police. The court records do not show whether Parson paid the required 10 percent of the bond at $5,000 to secure his release.
But a court clerk said a public record check with the Broward County Jail to determine whether Parson was still incarcerated would determine whether he had secured his release on bond. A check with the jail on Monday afternoon found that Parson was not an inmate there at that time.
The online court records show that Judge Francois issued an order prohibiting Parson from having any contact with the 16-year-old he is charged with having sex with and prohibiting Parson from having any contact “with minors under 18 years old.”
In addition, the judge ordered that Parson must reside at the Boca Raton apartment owned by his parents and where he had been staying at the time of his arrest “until further order of the court.”
The online court records as of Monday had no information about whether Parson has retained an attorney or when his next court appearance was to take place. A Pretrial Services Supervision Order issued by the judge says Parson must report two times per week by phone to a designated Pretrial Services office.
An arrest affidavit filed by Coconut Creek police says the 16-year-old told police investigators he and Parson met on the gay online dating app Growlr and agreed to meet for a sexual encounter in a Coconut Creek location after exchanging “explicit” photos of each other. The affidavit says the 16-year-old, who was driving a car, met Parson at a location they arranged through a series of text messages.
After meeting at an initial location, the affidavit says the 16-year-old told police the two drove in their separate cars to another location at the site of a secluded parking lot at about 1 a.m. on Feb. 12 where the 16-year-old entered the car Parson was driving and the two performed oral sex on each other.
Without giving a reason, the affidavit says the 16-year-old provided police with full details of his interaction with Parson that police would otherwise not have known after police stopped him when he and Parson were following each other in their cars to find another secluded location. The affidavit says police stopped the 16-year-old after he drove his car into a restricted space owned by Comcast.
It says police also stopped Parson’s car but allowed Parson to drive away after he said he was a D.C. police officer who was lost and did not know who the 16-year-old was in the other car. After obtaining Parson’s identification from the text messages in the phone of the 16-year-old, who turned his phone over to police, Coconut Creek police arranged for Boca Raton police to arrest Parson later that day on Feb. 12 at the site of his parents’ apartment in Boca Raton.
The Growlr site where the 16-year-old and Parson met has a policy of requiring anyone using the site to be at least 18 years old, which is the legal age of consent in Florida. But according to attorneys familiar with Florida law, not knowing someone’s real age may not be legal grounds for a defense.
“In Florida, laws governing sexual activity with minors are ‘strict liability’ offenses,” said Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney Norm Kent, who is the owner of the South Florida Gay News, an LGBTQ community newspaper.
“This means that a person can be charged where they do not know the age of the person that they engaged in sexual activity with, or even worse, where the other person has lied about his or her age,” Kent told the Washington Blade. “Laws like these can obviously lead to very unfair results.”
Kent noted that in Parson’s case, the alleged victim used a dating app that limits its users to individuals over the age of 18. He said it also appears from the police reports that the 16-year-old never told Parson he was under 18.
“These are troubling facts that could be presented to a prosecutor or judge in support of mitigation, but the law does not allow them to operate as a complete defense to the crimes charged,” Kent said. “It’s a challenging case requiring experienced counsel for the officer’s defense.”
Parson’s arrest comes about two years after he retired from the Metropolitan Police Department of D.C. after a 26-year career in which among other duties, he served as supervisor of the department’s LGBT Liaison Unit.
Reaction to the news of his arrest by members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community has been mixed, with several prominent activists expressing support for Parson by saying his side of the story should be told and he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty at a trial. Others, however, have posted Facebook messages calling Parson a “predator” targeting an underage victim who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
At a Feb. 16 press conference on an unrelated subject, the Blade asked D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee for his thoughts on Parson’s arrest.
“I worked closely with him during his time here at the Metropolitan Police Department,” Contee said. “He served the citizens of the District of Columbia well,” the chief said.
“This investigation is taking place in Florida. I’m sure he’s entitled to due process and whatever the facts are in that case will be revealed. But I really have nothing beyond that,” Contee said. “I don’t know a whole lot about that case.”
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Congratulations to R. Warren Gill III, M.Div., M.A. on being appointed as the development manager at HIPS. Upon his appointment, Gill said, “For as long as I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., I’ve followed and admired the life-saving work HIPS does in our communities. I’m proud to join the staff and help strengthen the financial support that sustains this work.”
Gill will lead fundraising strategy, donor engagement, and institutional partnerships. HIPS promotes the health, rights, and dignity of individuals and communities impacted by sexual exchange and/or drug use due to choice, coercion, or circumstance. HIPS provides compassionate harm reduction services, advocacy, and community engagement that is respectful, non-judgmental, and affirms and honors individual power and agency.
Gill has built a career at the intersection of progressive politics, advocacy, and nonprofit leadership. Previously he served as director of communications at AIDS United, supporting national efforts to end the HIV epidemic. Prior to that he had roles including; being press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, and working with the General Board of Church and Society, the United Methodist Church, the denomination’s social justice and advocacy arm.
Gill earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Jewish Studies, Stockton University; his master’s degree in political communication from American University, where his graduate research focused on values-based messaging and cognitive linguistics; and his master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion.
District of Columbia
Judge denies D.C. request to dismiss gay police captain’s anti-bias lawsuit
MPD accused of illegally demoting officer for taking family leave to care for newborn child
A U.S. District Court judge on Jan. 21 denied a request by attorneys representing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay captain accusing police officials of illegally demoting him for taking parental leave to join his husband in caring for their newborn son.
The lawsuit filed by Capt. Paul Hrebenak charges that police officials violated the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, a similar D.C. family leave law, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by refusing to allow him to return to his position as director of the department’s School Safety Division upon his return from parental leave.
It says police officials transferred Hrebenak to another police division against his wishes, which was a far less desirable job and was the equivalent of a demotion, even though it had the same pay grade as his earlier job.
In response to a motion filed by attorneys with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents and defends D.C. government agencies against lawsuits, Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed to dismiss seven of the lawsuit’s 14 counts or claims but left in place six counts.
Scott Lempert, the attorney representing Hrebenak, said he and Hrebenak agreed to drop one of the 14 counts prior to the Jan. 21 court hearing.
“He did not dismiss the essential claims in this case,” Lempert told the Washington Blade. “So, we won is the short answer. We defeated the motion to dismiss the case.”
Gabriel Shoglow, a spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, said the office has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation and it would not comment on the judge’s ruling upholding six of the lawsuit’s initial 14 counts.
In issuing his ruling from the bench, Moss gave Lempert the option of filing an amended complaint by March 6 to seek the reinstatement of the counts he dismissed. He gave attorneys for the D.C. attorney general’s office a deadline of March 20 to file a response to an amended complaint.
Lempert told the Blade he and Hrebenak have yet to decide whether to file an amended complaint or whether to ask the judge to move the case ahead to a jury trial, which they initially requested.
In its 26-page motion calling for dismissal of the case, filed on May 30, 2025, D.C. Office of the Attorney General attorneys argue that the police department has legal authority to transfer its officers, including captains, to a different job. It says that Hrebenak’s transfer to a position of watch commander at the department’s First District was fully equivalent in status to his job as director of the School Safety Division.
“The Watch Commander position is not alleged to have changed plaintiff’s rank of captain or his benefits or pay, and thus plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that he was put in a non-equivalent position,” the motion to dismiss states.
“Thus, his reassignment is not a demotion,” it says. “And the fact that his shift changed does not mean that the position is not equivalent to his prior position. The law does not require that every single aspect of the positions be the same.”
Hrebenak’s lawsuit states that “straight” police officers have routinely taken similar family and parental leave to care for a newborn child and have not been transferred to a different job. According to the lawsuit, the School Safety Division assignment allowed him to work a day shift, a needed shift for his recognized disability of Crohn’s Disease, which the lawsuit says is exacerbated by working late hours at night.
The lawsuit points out that Hrebenak disclosed he had Crohn’s Disease at the time he applied for his police job, and it was determined he could carry out his duties as an officer despite this ailment, which was listed as a disability.
Among other things, the lawsuit notes that Hrebenak had a designated reserved parking space for his earlier job and lost the parking space for the job to which he was transferred.
“Plaintiff’s removal as director at MPD’s School Safety Division was a targeted, premeditated punishment for his taking statutorily protected leave as a gay man,” the lawsuit states. “There was no operational need by MPD to remove plaintiff as director of MPD’s School Safety Division, a position in which plaintiff very successfully served for years,” it says.
In another action to strengthen Hrebenak’s opposition to the city’s motion to dismiss the case, Lempert filed with the court on Jan. 15 a “Notice of Supplemental Authority” that included two controversial reports that Lempert said showed that former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith put in place a policy of involuntary police transfers “to effectively demote and end careers of personnel who had displeased Chief Smith and or others in MPD leadership.”
One of the reports was prepared by the Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the other was prepared by the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. appointed by President Donald Trump.
Both reports allege that Smith, who resigned from her position as chief effective Dec. 31, pressured police officials to change crime reporting data to make it appear that the number of violent crimes was significantly lower than it actually was by threatening to transfer them to undesirable positions in the department. Smith has denied those claims.
“These findings support plaintiff’s arguments that it was the policy or custom of MPD to inflect involuntary transfers on MPD personnel as retaliation for doing or saying something in which leadership disapproved,” Lempert says in his court filing submitting the two reports.
“As shown, many officers suffered under this pervasive custom, including Capt. Hrebenak,” he stated. “Accordingly, by definition, transferred positions were not equivalent to officers’ previous positions,” he added.
Virginia
LGBTQ rights at forefront of 2026 legislative session in Va.
Repeal of state’s marriage amendment a top priority
With 2026 ramping up, LGBTQ rights are at the forefront of Virginia politics.
The repeal of Virginia’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is a top legislative priority for activists and advocacy groups.
The Virginia Senate on Jan. 17 by a 26-13 vote margin approved outgoing state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria)’s resolution that would repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment. The Virginia House of Delegates earlier this month passed it.
Two successive legislatures must approve the resolution before it can go to the ballot.
The resolution passed in 2025. Voters are expected to consider repealing the amendment on Nov. 3.
The Virginia General Assembly opened with an introduction of a two-year budget — Virginia’s budget runs biannually.
In 2024 some funding was allocated to LGBTQ causes, and others were passed over. This year’s proposed budget leaves room for funding for a host of LGBTQ opportunities. One specific priority that Equality Virginia is promoting would ensure the state budget expands healthcare for LGBTQ individuals and extending gender affirming care.
Equality Virginia Communications Director Reed Williams told the Washington Blade the organization is also focused on passing three main budget amendments, and ensuring “LGBTQ+ students and their teachers have resources to navigate and address mental health challenges in K-12 schools.”
Along with ensuring school training, the organization wants funding in hopes of “establishing enhanced competency training for Virginia’s 988 Lifeline counselors and support staff to provide affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth.” This comes after the Trump-Vance administration shut down the specific hotline for LGBTQ young people that callers could previously reach if they called 988.
On a federal level, protections and health care access for LGBTQ people has taken a hit, as the Trump-Vance administration has continued to issue executive orders affecting the health care system. LGBTQ people no longer have federal legal health care protections, so local and state politics has become even more important for LGBTQ rights groups.
Equality Virginia has urged its supporters to call their local senators and stress the importance of voting to expand health care protections for LGBTQ people. The organization also plans to hold information sessions and a lobby day on Feb. 2.
Equality Virginia is tracking bills on its website.
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