Despite their already horrible reputation, cops are always finding new ways to worsen it.
On Feb. 12, a Baton Rouge police officer found two men having sex in the back of a car at Forest Community Park after hours. The cop booked the two men on counts of trespassing in a BREC park and crimes against nature, also known as “sodomy.”
First of all, the 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas ruled all anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional. This ruling affected 14 states, including Louisiana. Surely someone told the Baton Rouge cops.
The Baton Rouge Police Department received national attention in 2013 for enforcing the anti-sodomy laws. Officers actually took time out of their days to go undercover and convince gay men to agree to have sex with them. If the man agreed, the undercover officer arrested him. This happened about 12 times.
After the incident in 2015, Police Chief Carl Dabadie issued a department-wide memo reminding officers not to arrest people on grounds of sodomy.
Lieutenant Johnny Dunnam then issued an apology to The Advocate, which initially reported on the case.
“The officers made a mistake,” Dunnam said. “The chief wants to send his apologies to those individuals for making that mistake and has contacted supervisors to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
No, no one made a “mistake.” The police department was told on two separate occasions not to arrest consenting adults from having sex, once in 2003 and again 10 years later. Dunnam’s lie is inexcusible.
Either Baton Rouge is filled with senile and incompetent cops, or the cops are bigoted jerks. Regardless, someone needs to be fired or reprimanded.
Publications like The Advocate, The Times-Picayune and other Louisiana-based media aren’t calling out Baton Rouge’s police department for their homophobic practices of the law.
They’re letting the cops get away with claiming this incident was a “mistake.” The media aren’t holding the cops accountable for purposely charging people with unconstitutional crimes against nature.
The media are supposed to be watchdogs and whistleblowers. Whether crimes are committed by citizens or the police, we’re supposed to trust the media to accurately report on crimes. And we’re supposed to rely on them to criticize lying public officials.
They’re supposed to be the ones to call out the government when they do something wrong. And when exposed, the government isn’t supposed to keep doing what got them in trouble.
That’s obviously not happening anymore. After police arrested gay men back in 2013, some Louisiana lawmakers tried to pass a bill to formally repeal the anti-sodomy law.
The cops claimed they were enforcing the “crimes against nature” law because it was still in the books. Some lawmakers figured that, if the law was no longer there, cops would stop arresting people.
The bill, of course, died. And now here we are two years later, suffering from the consequences. Cops are still booking people on unconstitutional laws, the LGBT community still isn’t safe in Louisiana and media outlets aren’t pressuring the government for reform.
Something’s changed. Has government become too corrupt to control their law enforcement? Or have the media become too oblivious to pressure government anymore?
Whatever your take on this may be, the LGBT community has no one to turn to in Louisiana.
So if you’re gay and in Baton Rouge, you should probably delete your Grindr. It’s probably a cop on the other side, and you’ll be arrested.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.