ST. LOUIS — The chair of the St. Louis Mayor's LGBTQ+ Advisory Board said the fragile relationship between law enforcement and the LGBTQ+ community didn't erode overnight and a scary incident at Bar:PM has only highlighted the need for more education throughout all city departments.
Jordan Braxton, Chair of the Mayor’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, said across the country the relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and law enforcement has been broken for decades.
“There's always been this history of problems between trans people and police, queer people and police. We all know Stonewall, what happened there. Then we move forward. Where there's been some brutality and even some murders here in St. Louis of a trans woman. But strides have been made to try to work through that,” Braxton said.
Braxton said Pride St. Louis and the board have made progress with diversity and inclusion training for city departments and even a liaison in the St. Louis Police Department.
“The training is focused on, first of all, the definitions of what everything is. They also already have on the books, policies and procedure on how you interact when you come in contact with someone in the queer community,” Braxton said.
But when a police vehicle crashed into Bar:PM, an LGBTQ+ bar, Robert Fischer with Promo said, the crash itself and the confrontation after fractured an already fragile relationship.
“For those that already didn't trust them, they distrust them even more because there's no information coming out. And for people that had hope, this can start whittling away at that hope,” Fischer said.
Fischer said the current political climate and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation doesn’t help either.
“People in the community already feel their very existence is being threatened,” Fischer said.
Braxton said to some this may look like your average south city bar but to the LGBTQ+ community it’s more.
“Our bars here are our sanctuaries, and when we go we just get to let our guard down and breathe and exhale and just be ourselves. And when you have things like this happen, especially, if it's someone that's viewed as the oppressor, then you think, Oh, God, here we go again. So again, we're just trying to let the process play out, get all the evidence shown and then go from there,” Braxton said.
Braxton said she and the board are currently working on additional diversity and inclusion training for all city officials and first responders, which the chiefs from their respective departments are on board with.