
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 27, 1994                   TAG: 9412290003
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: G3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT A. BERNSTEIN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUPERCOP SPURNED

YOU DON'T have to be a gay activist to recognize that anti-gay attitudes and rhetoric cause a significant amount of crime. Killings, beatings and harassment of gay Americans are common fare on police blotters. In Texas alone, eight hate-inspired killings of gay men were recorded in a recent period of less than a year and a half.

Nevertheless, the Clinton administration now has shunned a top law-enforcement official because he openly opposes anti-gay discrimination. That's something like firing a medical director for backing DPT shots. Hatred endangers public order in the same way diphtheria and tetanus threaten public health.

The official in question is Tom Potter, former chief of police in Portland, Ore., who had been slated to head a crime-bill program adding 100,000 officers to the nation's streets. Potter is a supercop with a lustrous record of achievement. He's won dozens of local, regional and national awards. He gave Portland a new, healthier look in law enforcement. The city's newspaper said he ``brought the Police Bureau closer to the citizens than any chief in contemporary times.'' His mayor, Bud Clark, said Potter took the bureau on ``a huge leap forward.''

At the last moment, however, Potter felt compelled to withdraw his name from consideration for the federal post, when Justice Department officials grew concerned about his record of support for gay rights. They feared it could hamper Potter's effectiveness with conservative police chiefs.

The real victim is a nation beset by escalating violence. Potter lost the job, in effect, because he believes in attacking crime at its roots - because he takes the ounce-of-prevention concept seriously.

But he probably wasn't vastly surprised by the administration's timidity. He knows how prejudice can overpower reason. Thus, when he retired as Portland's chief in 1993, he made a poignant prediction. Despite his record of broad-scale accomplishment, he said he had little doubt he would be remembered primarily as ``the gay-rights chief.''

One of Potter's four children, daughter Katie, is both a Portland police officer and openly lesbian. And Tom Potter, supercop, is also a proud father. He calls Katie a ``great person'' and a ``good cop.'' All of which makes great copy. So the FBI's routine background check on Potter turned up reams of newspaper stories about the ``gay-rights chief.''

The clippings described him marching at Katie's side in gay-pride parades, testifying before the state legislature in favor of civil-rights protections for gays, and stating publicly that ``some of the nicest people in this city are gays and lesbians.''

The point, though, is that he didn't do those things just because he's Katie's father. He did them because he was chief of police. To him, prejudice of any kind is an important root of social dysfunction and crime. When he became chief, he startled some folks around town, including the man who appointed him, Mayor Clark, by announcing his top priority would be open battle against racism, sexism and homophobia.

He kept the vow. His hiring and promotion innovations enriched the bureau's gender and ethnic mix. Revised training programs stressed sensitivity to minorities and women. The message of equality ``practically became his mantra,'' one reporter wrote.

Few objected to his stress on justice for women and ethnic minorities. But not everybody was pleased when he met regularly with gay and lesbian leaders and openly recruited officers within their community.

Despite some grumbling, he saw his responsibility as clear. In the 1960s, cops had to learn to accept blacks, and in the 1970s, to accept women. There is just one group, gays, that it's still acceptable to hate, to call dirty names and to discriminate against. Potter rightly thinks cops can learn to accept them, too - and, in the process, become better officers.

In general, anti-gay attitudes are an expensive social luxury. We pay massively in both dollars and grief, for example, when society's hostility moves gay adolescents to despair, drugs, disease and death. Prejudice takes its toll in a wide variety of ways - and increased lawlessness is part of the tab.

But the Clinton administration doesn't get it. So add one more item, the sacrifice of a top cop and outstanding anti-crime administrator, to the social cost of common bigotry.

Robert A. Bernstein, a retired law professor and Justice Department attorney, is national vice president of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

The Washington Post

by CNB