GLLO unit dissolved
Victoria Police’s Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit has been disbanded.
The announcement was made last week by Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit manager Sergeant Scott Davis (pictured) who will transfer to the Police Academy training office.
“After e
ight years of service to Victoria Police and the GLBTI communities, the Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit will cease to exist as we know it,” Davis said.
“I cannot put into words how much of a privilege and an honour it has been to be the manager of the Victoria Police Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit since December 2004, and to work with such fine people.
“As a team … we have made a significant change, for the better, to the way Victoria Police responds to the GLBTI communities. We shall never go backwards.”
Davis’ departure follows a two-year review of Victoria Police’s Operations Coordination Department which houses the Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit.
The announcement confirms the unit will amalgamate into a more generalist community engagement model.
Although the unit will no longer exist in its current format, Davis’ role will continue and will be advertised in coming weeks. The position will become part of Victoria Police’s Community Engagement Support Team which will deal with a range of areas including multicultural, youth and human rights issues.
Anti-Violence Project Victoria convenor Greg Adkins said the group has requested a meeting with Chief Commissioner Ken Lay to seek assurances the changes won’t diminish the relationship between the community and police.
“They’re rushing in to disband it before they’ve even worked out how they’ll do it,” Adkins told the Star Observer.
“We need some clarity as to how this will all unfold, especially as there hasn’t been a person yet nominated to fill [Davis’] role.
“We need some certainty it’s not going to have a negative impact on reporting of violence and the successes we’ve had.”
Adkins said the AVP has raised concerns that expertise on LGBTI issues may be lost among the competing concerns of other marginalised groups.
He also said the move will restrict the ability of the community to have input and offer police feedback.
“We can’t possibly go to four sets of meetings [across four state police regions], the community can’t spread itself four times as thin,” Adkins said.
“It spreads us rather than unites us.”
Victoria Police’s GLBTI community reference group met on Tuesday to discuss the changes.
[…] community events. This progress, however, has not been entirely uniform, as demonstrated by an announcement in 2012 that the Victoria Police Gay and Lesbian Advisory Unit was being […]
I think it is very dissapointing that Victoria Police have made an operational decision without prior engagement of the GLBT community in order to ensure the community that there will be on going support to our community and in what police operational capacity that will be provided.
Scott Davis and his team have done a fantastic job in being the instrumental and pivotel link between Victoria Police and Victoria’s GLBT community. Now we do actually risk all these key strategic links, partnerships, forums and operational practices all coming undone due to operational changes.
I just hope that our GLBT community stand up, unite and ensure that Victoria Police command is made fully aware that we will not tolaerate a watering down of policy, resources or committment to what the GLLO team achieved for us all.
Each and every one of us now has a responsibility to ensure that this now occurs. It’s time to stand up and be counted for what law enforcement and community engagement should truly represent in the state of Victoria and Melbourne.
It is a shame yes! This was not the governments doing it was the result of a two year internal review that was not well managed. Due to Overlands departure it was delayed for several months.
Vic Pol has a lot of dedicated members who do their best to help everyone no matter whether they are gay, straight, muslim, jewish, asian, handicapable, or whatever. It should be about treating everyone with dignity and respect. Proof of this is the fact that most GLLO’s are straight like Scott Davis.
The gay community will not lose out, Scott will still be around and will be able to make a difference by better educating recruits at the Academy and police like Electra and the other GLLO’s will work with other staff in Community Engagement for all Victorians.
Why? Why now? Why at all?
I think it is a bloody shame the Liberal/National Party have chosen do this. The Advisory Unit has had particular expertise that has helped out a number of my friends, from bashings at a park, to being treated badly at a local police station by homophobic police, when complaining of assault. It was a great independent voice with good committed police with expertise especially to domestic violence.
First the Liberal/National party of Victoria knocked off the police commissioner, Simon Overland, by leaking sensitive information, and then they took an axe to the Equal Opportunity Act, stripping same-sex attracted people of many workplace protections. They made it legal not to employ same-sex attracted in thousands of community sector jobs. I see a pattern of abuse here.
Robert Clark, the Attorney-General of Victoria said of homosexuality to parliament, “I believe homosexual practices form a destructive way of life, destructive to the individual and destructive also to other individuals who are brought into that way of life. I suppose it is most readily demonstrable at a physical level; it is a physical fact that the human body is not designed for many homosexual practices and it is clear that physical problems follow from those practices.” Mr Clark went on to quote a student medical text stating that homosexual male pedophiles commonly reported molesting hundreds of victims, while heterosexual pedophiles “molest only a few”. (Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/libs-take-dim-view-of-homosexuals/2005/11/26/1132966006762.html ).