FWPD actively recruiting new officers in LGBTQ community
Mat Shaw | Contributing Writer
mathews.yb@gmail.com
The Fort Worth police department is looking to add a splash of rainbow colors to their thin blue line as they launch their second recruiting effort targeting LGBT people.
Recruiting began last month at Tarrant County Pride. The department will use social media to attract potential recruits, as well as distribute posters in the business district. With Fort Worth City Council’s blessing, the police department is looking mainly for officers, who are the ones with the badges and guns.
“Aside from nebulously saying that we want to increase the LGBT community within the department, I think we’re all kind of working toward one goal, and that’s just making it to where it’s no longer an issue,” Fort Worth police Sgt. Christopher Gorrie explained. “Making it not just normal for my family and coworkers but the community, to where everybody’s like, ‘Okay, you’re just another human.’”
Chris Gorrie
Gorrie, who has been an officer since 2006, participated in the department’s first LGBT recruitment effort in 2014, when he uploaded a video introducing himself and sharing his personal experiences as a gay man in the force. For good measure, he incorporated popular memes at the time into his video.
Even though Gorrie described the previous effort as successful, he added that there is no way to know how many recruits were LGBT because it is not asked on the job application. However, he recalled that a lot of officers reached out to him to ask for advice after their children came out.
In addition, the video made improvements to the department by helping people get to know him, he said.
“When you work with a gay person, or you have a family member who’s gay, it helps normalize that and take away the stigma,” Gorrie said. “The culture specifically has been great. Everybody I work with has been pretty respectful. I haven’t had any negative interactions outside the Facebook arguing from time to time.”
Gorrie said the Fort Worth Police Department has come a long way since 2009 when officers joined with TABC agents to raid Rainbow Lounge, a then-newly-opened LGBT nightclub on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The raid resulted in several arrests and left one bar patron seriously injured. It also resulted in worldwide news coverage, widespread protests — and a quick and decisive response from city officials.
Within months of the raid, the city had updated its nondiscrimination ordinance, passed in 2000, to include transgender and gender identity and expression protections. The department also required officers to attend a two-hour class on LGBT issues last year, which Gorrie taught.
“We just kind of talked about LGBT history within the Fort Worth Police Department,” he recalled. “It was pretty well received.”
Gorrie also recalled when the department sided with him during a blood drive, which offered an hour vacation for every officer who donated blood. He said he informed the department that gay men could not donate blood.
“After a little around and around, they finally came back and said, ‘Okay, we see your point,’” he said. “And now anybody who shows up to donate, whether they actually donate or not, can get that benefit, so it worked out in our favor.”
The department also participated in a marriage equality ad in 2015 that aired in the Metroplex. In the ad, Gorrie, along with three employees of the department, made the case that he should have the freedom to marry because of the sacrifices he made as a police officer. In addition, Fort Worth law enforcement achieved a perfect score in the Human Rights Campaign’s 2018 Municipal Equality Index.
Sgt. Alisha Dunkin, who has been with the department for 20 years, witnessed the changes over the years: “When I first started, one of the questions on the entrance exam was, ‘Have you ever had any homosexual conduct?’” she recalled. “I think I put no, but it bothered me to put no. I’m glad that’s not one of the questions now.”
Now Dunkin feels she can talk about her wife and foster son with her colleagues. “I feel pretty comfortable and respected,” she said.
With four more years to go until retirement, Dunkin declared that she has had a lucrative and rewarding career. “I have a college degree,” she said. “I could have worked somewhere else. [But this job] paid all my bills, and they have great benefits. And I’ll have a retirement; there’s not many jobs where you can get a retirement these days.”
For information on joining the Fort Worth Police Department, visit the website at https://police.fortworthtexas.gov.
