A ‘fair cop’: Queer histories,affect and police image work in Pride March

The commemoration of queer resistance and the role of an unconventional cop

Many gay pride events internationally commemorate the Stonewall rebellion of 1969 that took place at a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York. ² During this uprising, patrons of the Stonewall Inn resisted a routine bar raid and a series of riots ensued against violent police assault and repression (Hanhardt, 2013). Within the United States (and beyond), ‘Stonewall’ is often seen to symbolize the birth of the ‘gay rights’ movement (Manalansan, 1997; Stanley, 2011). However, as Hanhardt (2013) points out, the memory of Stonewall often omits the fact that it was a collective challenge to the police and that it was just the latest clash in an ongoing struggle. Australia’s largest public LGBT event, the Sydney Mardi Gras, has its origins in commemorating Stonewall, and the first Mardi Gras in 1978, subject to harsh police brutality, also occurred within a context of sustained state violence for LGBT people (see Carbery, 1995; Duncan, 1998; Markwell, 2002; Pride History Group, 2013). The Pride History Group (2013) describes how Darlinghurst station, where the first Mardi Gras arrestees were taken and held, was ‘a law unto itself’ and police were routinely ‘bashing’ Aboriginal people, gay men and women in police cells. Both accounts of Stonewall and of the first Mardi Gras suggest that historical events that are often singled out for commemoration and recognition in gay pride festivals today were reflective of a broader pattern and context of routinized police violence and oppression.

The Victorian Annual Pride March was established in 1996 as part of the lesbian and gay ‘Midsumma’ festival. From its beginning Pride March represented multiple different and conflicting interests and aims. Initially proposed by gay business owners to augment tourism, it was also conceived and developed in reference to local, national and transnational movements rallying under the banner of ‘gay pride’ (Joyce, 1997; Markwell and Waitt, 2009). Victoria Police officers had been officially banned by the force from participating in Pride March up until 2002 when Christine Nixon reversed this early in her term as Chief Commissioner by allowing officers to ‘wear their uniforms, and march on police time’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 132). ³ Around this time Nixon was seen as a popular Chief Commissioner and a role model for women police officers (Chulov, 2002). Marching in gay pride resonated with her broader objective to reinforce an image of Victoria Police as aligned with community concerns, as she stated: ‘I talk about us being the people’s police and I think that’s what we are’ (News24, 2002). Her decision appealed to members of the community, as reflected in a letter published in The Age which characterized Nixon as ‘gutsy’ and her participation in Pride March as ‘one of the most important of her many and varied police force reforms’ (Condon, 2002: 10). However, it also alienated and upset conservative politicians, media commentators and police members. Politicians declared that it was ‘inappropriate for Victoria Police to align itself with a minority cause’ (Crawford, 2003) and that ‘the Chief Commissioner should be above these sorts of activities’ (Donovan, 2002). Nixon recounts how she received ‘letters and emails from police officers apoplectic with rage’, who thought it was ‘appalling’ and ‘an assault to the image of Victoria Police’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 132).

The shock and criticism that Nixon’s decision to participate in Pride March attracted occurred in the context of skepticism from the Police Association towards Nixon’s ‘soft’ approach to policing and her position as Chief Commissioner being controversial in gendered terms. As the first woman to be police commissioner of any state police force in Australia, the negative responses to Nixon’s Pride March decision were likely to have been driven at least in part by hostility towards the femininity that Nixon represented, constituting a threat to a traditionally hyper-masculine organization (see Donovan, 2002; Nixon and Chandler, 2011). For example, in a Herald Sun Opinion Piece titled ‘Our cops go girlie’ on 11 November 2006, renowned ultra-conservative commentator Andrew Bolt labeled Nixon’s approach to policing as ‘passive’; a new ‘back-off’ style resulting in a ‘feminised’ and ‘non-authoritarian’ force (Bolt, 2006: 21). Bolt suggested that police marching ‘in gay pride and women’s events’ weakened police power. When Nixon retired amidst controversy in 2011, ⁴ Police Association secretary Greg Davies asserted that Nixon ‘destroyed’ her own reputation by ‘emasculating’ the police force, ‘trying to turn it into something that she thought would have been lovely for everyone’ (Levy, 2011). In contrast to these assertions – enlivened by sexist discourses – that community policing approaches undermine police authority, critics argue that community policing strategies actually compliment more aggressive and paramilitary styles of policing. This is because community policing can legitimize more overtly forceful and coercive policing, whilst enabling the ‘government to expand the applicable targets of control and to draw openly on a much larger array of tactics’ (Kappeler and Kraska, 1998: 306; McCulloch, 2001; Sentas, 2014). Far from constraining police and state power, Nixon’s focus on ‘community engagement’ in her role as Chief Commissioner is more likely to have increased policing capacities and strengthened the legitimacy of law enforcement through realigning the institution with prevailing moral norms (Tyler, 2006), a topic that will be revisited later in the article.

Affecting representations: Tracking symbols of progress at Pride March

In contrast to the anger and apprehension of Police Association members and conservative politicians, others including Pride March organizers, LGBT organizations, GALPEN, LGBT media and sections of the mainstream press represented the Chief Commissioner’s participation in the 2002 Pride March as an overwhelmingly positive and historically significant event. It was seen as a ‘turning point’ for LGBT-police relations (Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, 2001). In the LGBT press coverage, Pride March president Penny McDonald described it as ‘the best Pride March ever!’ (Jacobs, 2002: 1), whilst GALPEN member Luke Bryant (2012) portrayed it online as ‘the day that changed Melbourne’s Pride March for ever’. Themes of institutional change and progress also resonated in the mainstream press. An article in the Herald Sun described how cries of ‘Good on ya Christine’ and ‘Go coppers’ were heard from ‘hundreds of people more accustomed to avoiding authority than cheering it’ (de Kretser, 2002) and Nixon reportedly stated: ‘I think people of the community really hope that we have overcome some of the prejudices that used to be there’ (de Kretser, 2002). One letter published in The Age argued that it was ‘refreshing’ to see ‘our own Victoria Police making a strong statement, starting at the very top for open-mindedness and acceptance of the gay community’ (Condon, 2002: 10).

In the lead up to the march, McDonald emphasized the unprecedented nature of Nixon’s decision to participate in order to promote the event. Her comments were printed in an article in LGBT newspaper Melbourne Community Voice (MCV) on 7 December 2001:

“Because of the Police Commissioner, Pride March is going to be big and exciting. It is making history – there has never been a commissioner march in a gay and lesbian event in Australia before, and it will have quite a bit of media attention,” McDonald said. “It’ll be great for people to say ‘I marched in that’ and ‘I was on the sidelines and watching that’. I’d really love for lots of people to march along with Commissioner Nixon.” (Melbourne Community Voice, 2001: 3)

This excerpt illustrates how the Chief Commissioner was construed as the reason for excitement and as enabling the march to be regarded as ‘making history’, even in advance of the event itself. The possible effects of this discourse are reflected in the structure of narrative itself, as Ahmed (2010: 45) suggests that we can think of narrative as a ‘form of conversion’ whereby one feeling state is converted into another. This highlights the importance of questioning ‘who’ or ‘what’ in the narrative gets seen as converting bad feeling into good feeling (and vice versa). The passage above, located within a broader discourse of ‘history-making’, constructs the Chief Commissioner as the agent of conversion, as propelling Pride March into the history books and converting bad feelings of queer oppression and exclusion into good feelings of LGBT recognition and acceptance. To use Ahmed’s (2010: 45) term, the Chief Commissioner is ‘our conversion point’ here. This construction reflects positively on police image. Since the Chief Commissioner is charged with directing and publicly representing the force, showing her in a positive light reflects well upon the force (and vice versa if she is portrayed in a negative light) and is thus a priority for police media units (see Lee and McGovern, 2014). Yet it also serves Nixon as an individual. Nixon cultivated an image as a courageous, progressive and ‘successful woman leader’ (particularly in her biography Fair Cop) and she has gone on to establish herself as a consultant and public speaker on the topics of leadership, cultural change and women in business (see ICMI Speakers & Entertainers, 2015; Nixon, 2015).

The positive image of police that circulated at Pride March in 2002 resonated beyond the event itself and Pride March organizers continued to promote policing as a social good. For example, an image of the Chief Commissioner was featured on a promotional postcard for Pride March the following year, alongside a photo of a placard that read ‘Equity & Diversity’. The text ‘Peace through Pride’ was printed on the reverse side of the postcard. ⁵ This textual reproduction of police in Pride March might be productively read as part of a form of ‘rebranding’ for the organization that augments police public image. Popular understandings of policing may be refined and reworked by virtue of association with liberal values of equality, diversity and peace, even though policing is more often associated with inequality, dominant masculine culture and war such as the ‘war on crime’ or ‘war on drugs’. As Nixon’s successor Simon Overland suggested, police participation in Pride March sends ‘a message to the broader community about tolerance and inclusivity’ (Firkin, 2010). It may thereby assign and communicate new meanings to the public about policing and the institutional valorization of difference. Since administrative power has to ‘affirm difference to demonstrate institutional protocols and progress’ (Ferguson, 2008: 163), the presentation of police in Pride March enables policing to approach the ideals of modernity and adaptability. Gay pride events, often criticized for their depoliticized and commercialized nature (Halperin and Traub, 2009; Pendleton, 2007), provide police with a particularly visible opportunity to demonstrate institutional inclusivity and responsivity to the needs of a specific group (that has been formally excluded and targeted) in order to improve ‘community perceptions’ (Garland, 1996).

Although the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March was frequently constructed as both a product and sign of institutional progress, a closer examination of relevant texts reveals it as a site of significant complexity and contestation amongst both police and LGBT people. The links between the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March and institutional or police cultural change remain unclear. Senior Constable Edwards (2004) recounted in a 2004 conference presentation: ‘I still receive homophobic threats whenever I do the call for [Pride March] participants from [police] members (…) I have to admit one of the most concerning ones was I fear God more than I fear the Equal Opportunity Act’. The circulation of such threats highlights the persistent and ‘entrenched culture of homophobia’ within the force, as Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (VGLRL) (2001) described it. The ‘significant progress’ or ‘turning point’ that the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March represents for organizations such as VGLRL (2001) thereby still exists alongside patterns of homophobia within policing and wider society. This awareness creates a sense of ambivalence in relation to the event. The image of the Chief Commissioner in Pride March both assigns and contests institutional progress at the same time as it highlights and draws out explicit reactions of homophobia from police members.

Reckoning with histories of violence and the compulsion to ‘move on’

In part because of the complexities in institutional practices, effects and barriers to change, the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March also gave rise to debate around the possible risks and benefits of police presence in queer spaces. LGBT people did not uniformly welcome the news of the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March. A letter to the editor written by Gregory Doran was published on 18 January 2002 (one week prior to the 2002 Pride March) in MCV, in which he questioned the broader acceptance and celebration of police in gay pride events. Taking a critical stance on the presumed value of policing in Pride March media and promotion, he argued that, ‘whether gay men and lesbians are police officers is a matter for individual choice, but that it should be the occasion of communal joy and pride, well that’s another matter entirely’ (Doran, 2002: 5). In so doing, he made a distinction between individual employees’ right to participate in Pride March as LGBT people, and the promotion and legitimization of policing by Pride March itself. Doran posed the question to MCV readers:

Have we forgotten that police forces, historically, have been at the forefront of the oppression of gay men? Realising this fact, it baffled me that a squad of uniformed police received such a rapturous reception at the 2001 Mardi Gras parade. It had an almost Orwellian chill to it. Like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-four, it seemed that we had come to love Big Brother. (Doran, 2002: 5)

The following week, Sally Goldner (now President of Transgender Victoria) responded to Doran’s letter in MCV:

I welcome the unilateral strong initiative (leadership defined, perhaps) of Chief Commissioner Nixon. She is at least trying to move things on from the past. No one suggests forgetting, as someone who has been on the direct receiving end of police discrimination I understand that only too well. However, here is a chance to turn things for the better and I’m willing to work with the police where possible. (Goldner, 2002: 5)

These two perspectives highlight some of the contradictions and compromises LGBT people encountered in the context of this event, producing conflicting responses to the Chief Commissioner’s participation in Pride March. Doran’s view is wary of the potential for the co-option of gay pride by police. By suggesting that LGBT people are welcoming their oppressor, Doran reflects on the way that an institution known to harm ‘gay men’ through criminalization and harassment, is now being celebrated and promoted. The implication is that LGBT people are no longer resisting police interventions into queer spaces, but inviting them in. For Doran, this is dangerous because of the violent track record of police amongst LGBT people. Goldner, however, emphasizes the possibility of genuine reform, perhaps including the disappearance of police homophobia, which for her seems to outweigh any risks the scenario might pose. The optimism placed in a potential future outcome suggests that in this instance, Nixon functions as a ‘promise’ (see Agathangelou et al., 2008; Ahmed, 2010). The promise comes to rest upon the possibility of Nixon’s leadership overcoming the (past) injury of queer oppression, much like the ‘conversion point’ analogy used above. In this formulation, police homophobia becomes seen foremost as a memory of unresolved pain for LGBT people that threatens to hinder the possibilities of developing positive police-LGBT relations. While ‘forgetting’ might be too much to ask, the onus is placed on LGBT people to put these violent histories behind us so that we can move forward. ⁶ The ‘moral task’, Ahmed (2010: 143) argues, then becomes ‘‘to get over it’, as if when you are over it, it is gone’. However, the continued materiality of police violence for LGBT people in Australia, as the following section discusses, reveals the precarity upon which this symbolic promise rests.

Both of these letters draw on a history defined by violence and exclusion, a history that is unevenly shared. Yet, some LGBT people are more likely to be erased in historical accounts and those excluded are ‘variously and often simultaneously black, female, queer’ (Freeman, 2005: 57). Doran’s depiction of queer histories of police violence inaccurately implies only ‘gay men’ were the recipients, whereas Goldner reflects on her personal experience without making broader claims as to who was or was not targeted by police historically. While both Doran and Goldner draw on historical narratives to construct their argument or viewpoint, Goldner’s letter evokes a promise that rests in ‘a chance to turn things for the better’. Heather Love (2007: 163) argues that because of the ‘scene of destruction at our backs, queers feel compelled to keep moving on toward a brighter future’. In contrast to the positive affects commonly associated with virtue and futurity, negative affects such as shame, disidentification and trauma can be pathologized and cast as backward. Although ‘bad feelings have been central to the history of queer experience and queer feeling’, Love (2007: 27) argues that, ‘there is little room for them in the contemporary climate’. Yet at the same time the history of queer experience has made a sustained positive orientation to the future difficult, as both of these letters illustrate. As Love (2007: 163) points out and as both Doran and Goldner imply, ‘queers are intimately familiar with the costs of being queer’.

From Love’s (2007) perspective, that intimate familiarity with oppression cannot simply be disavowed, because it’s what makes us queer as much as anything. As Goldner (2002) puts it, ‘no one suggests forgetting’. However, the contingency implied by ‘the chance to turn things for the better’ and ‘work with the police where possible’ (Goldner, 2002) may reflect how LGBT people are repeatedly being compelled to move toward a brighter future which, in this case as in others, comes to rest upon the promise of institutional reform and inclusivity. Ahmed (2004: 172) argues that a politics that is critical cannot simply ‘overcome’ through detachment the affects of histories of violence, injustice and inequality. Indeed, negative affect or ‘backward feelings’ experienced or expressed collectively may serve an important political function (Halperin and Traub, 2009). Backward feelings can ‘serve as an index to the ruined state of the social world; they indicate continuities between the bad gay past and the present; and they show up the inadequacy of queer narratives of progress’ (Love, 2007: 27). Ahmed (2004) suggests that these ‘negative’ affects can be used to structure and inform demands or hopes for social transformation as we orient ourselves towards the future. The emphasis on the transformative power of negative affect contrasts with the more pragmatic approach of working with police, because the Chief Commissioner is ‘at least trying to move things on from the past’ (Goldner, 2002). This representation of Nixon as a bold and progressive leader aligns closely with the narrative constructed in her biography Fair Cop.

From shame to institutional pride: The fair cop narrative

Fair Cop takes considerable effort to explain and contextualize Nixon’s decision to break Victoria Police tradition by marching alongside lesbian and gay police officers at a gay pride event. The driving force behind her decision that is constructed in the biography links back to early in Nixon’s career as a police officer, when she witnessed the aftermath of the first Mardi Gras in Sydney in June 1978, which ‘turned into a violent clash with police’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 52). Alternative accounts testify in more detail to the nature and extent of this violence, including police not wearing badges and bashing LGBT protesters, as well as protesters resisting police by pulling friends out of paddy wagons and throwing garbage cans (see Carbery, 1995; Duncan, 1998; Markwell, 2002; Pride History Group, 2013). Nixon recalls how she turned up to work to find the Darlinghurst police station ‘surrounded by a crowd of distraught, angry gay and lesbian protestors demanding the immediate release of friends being held – and beaten, they claimed – in the cells’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 52). In the Fair Cop narrative, Nixon represents herself as ‘profoundly’ impacted and moved by the protests in her role as a junior police officer. Her distress led her to more broadly question the role of police. Her response is depicted in emotional terms:

I was deeply distressed at the schism I observed that day between the police force and members of the community it served. The scene had a profound effect on me. I’d become increasingly preoccupied with questions around the role of police in a changing society. What I saw that day represented, to me, the worst of policing – the clash of a kind of occupying force with its own citizens. It was symptomatic of the gap between narrow police culture and the diversity of the broader community. I felt ashamed as I picked my way across Taylor Square and through the barricade in my police uniform. (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 53)

In this specific historical context of police violence, what role does Nixon bearing witness and recognising shame play? And how does it function as a vehicle for recovering institutional pride and repairing police image later on? To gain insight into the relationship between bearing witness and recovered pride, Ahmed (2004) investigates how ‘national shame’ can function as a mechanism for ‘self-reconciliation’. Specifically in relation to the Bringing Them Home report that documents the genocidal state practice of systemically removing Aboriginal children that resulted in the Australian Stolen Generations, Ahmed (2004) argues that an acknowledgement of the ‘wrong’ committed in the past provides the grounds for claiming a proud national identity in the present. In the moment of recognition national pride is threatened, but then immediately regained in the capacity to bear witness (Ahmed, 2004). This process is what reproduces ‘the nation’ itself. By witnessing what is shameful about the past, Ahmed (2004: 109) argues, ‘the nation can “live up to” the ideals that secure its identity or being in the present’. The identification of personal or institutional shame means that ‘we mean well’ and can work to reproduce the ideals of the nation (Ahmed, 2004: 109). Nixon’s depiction of shame thus conveys that she is now ‘well meaning’ and cognisant of the ‘diversity of the broader community’ and the need to reform ‘narrow police culture’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 53). This ultimately reproduces the ideals of institutional reform and progress. It is through witnessing and recalling past wrongs that the former Chief Commissioner and the institution of policing itself can approach the imagined values of tolerance, inclusion and progress that contribute to the production of a positive police image in the present. The exposure of past injustice is therefore only temporary and becomes the ground for a narrative of institutional recovery (Ahmed, 2004).

In contrast to Nixon’s account in Fair Cop of feeling ‘ashamed’ in her ‘police uniform’ in Sydney in 1978, depictions of police at Pride March in Melbourne in 2002 implied the presumed opposite: pride. ‘Looks’ and aesthetics played an important role in the construction of a proud police image at this event. Pride March President McDonald argued that ‘the presence of the Police went beyond the expectations of everyone’; they ‘just looked so good’ (Jacobs, 2002: 1). Police image work at Pride March resonated strongly in mainstream media outlets The Age and the Herald Sun, which described a ‘smiley’ and ‘beaming Ms Nixon’ marching ‘in her neatly pressed uniform alongside more casually dressed participants sporting items such as … leather vests and metallic shorts’ (de Kretser, 2002: 5; Jackson, 2002: 3). The emphasis on institutional pride is reflected again in a quote printed in The Age from a member of an outer eastern lesbian social group: ‘they looked as proud to be there as we were to have them’ (Jackson, 2002: 3). In Fair Cop Nixon recalls how the police marching group had ‘drilled their routine thoroughly and put on a nice display’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 133–134). Photos of the Chief Commissioner at Pride March in 2002 that circulated in the LGBT and mainstream press present a style of approach that is warm, smiling and at ease (Jacobs, 2002). At the same time and in contrast, the police uniforms are sharp and neat and the routine is disciplined. From the author’s observations of the Victoria Police contingents in Pride March in 2012 and 2014, they appear as an ordered marching formation that is militaristic in style. Uniformed police march in straight rows whilst staring straight ahead. The pairing of a friendly, personable and ‘open-minded’ Chief Commissioner with a traditional and disciplinarian representation of police officers in the parade reflects Reiner’s (2003: 259) observation that the positive representation of the police to the public ‘involves the continuous reconstruction and reinterpretation of the nature of policing’. In this case, symbols of authority are paired with representations of progress, modernity and adaptability to produce a dynamic image of policing that appeals simultaneously to notions of tradition and order, and social and institutional change.

Fair Cop presents Nixon’s personal response to the first Mardi Gras as one that deeply shaped her overall approach to the role of Chief Commissioner. As outlined earlier, her focus and vision for Victoria Police was directed towards community policing philosophies and techniques, for which she came to be renowned (Nixon and Chandler, 2011). Nixon reconstructs this personal journey and identifies her memory of the first Mardi Gras in 1978 as what informed her decision to join fellow police members in the Victorian Pride March in 2002:

The memory of that moment would echo through my career, eventually following me to Victoria, and propelling me down Fitzroy Street in St Kilda where I led a formation of gay and lesbian police participating in the gay pride march. It was one of my first public acts in the uniform of Victorian chief commissioner, and while it wasn’t applauded universally, the reaction on the street was ecstatic. Remembering that very different, grim, long-ago morning in Darlinghurst, I rejoiced at every single step. (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 53)

This excerpt demonstrates an attribution of causality that works in part through affective metaphors. The ‘echo’ of the first Mardi Gras ‘propels’ Nixon to join Pride March decades later. The shameful, painful memory of the first Mardi Gras creates the conditions necessary for the Chief Commissioner’s later rejoice in police uniform at a gay pride event. Importantly, it is because the police violence in Sydney in 1978 is positioned as ‘very different, grim, long ago’ that Nixon is able to rejoice ‘at every single step’ whilst in ‘the uniform as Victorian chief commissioner’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 53). The first Mardi Gras, labeled as ‘the worst of policing – the clash of a kind of occupying force with its own citizens’ (Nixon and Chandler, 2011: 53), maintains an important place in the evolution of policing gay pride. As a point of comparison that signals progress in the present, this narrative contributes to the legitimation of policing. Fair Cop recasts contemporary policing as modern, adaptive and inclusive not by forgetting past policing practices, but by remembering them. The violent policing of LGBT people in the past is recalled in the present, but swiftly labeled as backwards, overly authoritarian and ineffective, so that it may be ideologically disassociated from current institutional practices and priorities.

The institutional progress narrative constructed in Fair Cop and resonant in the press coverage of Pride March 2002 – beginning with prejudice and targeting and ending with pride and inclusion – reflects and generates broader conceptual shifts and understandings regarding not only the relationship between police and LGBT people, but also sexuality and Australian society. As Markwell (2002) suggests, the years since the first Mardi Gras have witnessed considerable change in how diverse sexualities and genders are constructed, represented, regulated and lived. Such changes are often conveyed through a narrative of progress, which minimizes the continuities in power relations and social norms cast over decades, as well as the contested and complex nature of moves towards institutional inclusion and recognition for sexual and gender ‘others’. For example, Richard Waterhouse (1995: 247), writing about the history of Australian popular culture, argues that:

During the 1950s homosexuals were condemned and treated as ‘deviants,’ as threats to society and the heterosexual family that underpinned it. The promotion of Mardi Gras in the 90s is a sign both of a more tolerant society and of widespread acceptance that the ‘traditional’ family is not a prerequisite for a stable and ‘healthy’ community.

Whilst much may have changed for many race- and class-privileged LGBT people who now have increased access to resources and cultural capital, pathologizing scripts about LGBT people have not yet lost their currency and heteronormativity maintains a hold upon almost all facets of political and social life. LGBT-police relations continue to be marred by histories of criminalization and targeting, despite proactive police image work designed to counter this perception.

Reflecting on the first Mardi Gras 20 years after it occurred, Digby Duncan (1998), a lesbian film-maker present on the night, states: ‘I would hope we would never see police action like that again. But we should always keep in mind our past and be ever-vigilant about our rights’ (p. 20). In this statement, Duncan expresses optimism about the future without erasing the past. Instead she uses the past to call for LGBT vigilance in the present. Unfortunately, Digby’s hope for an end to violent police incursion in gay pride spaces was not realized. Police brutality at the Sydney Mardi Gras again made headlines in 2013, when police assaulted 18-year-old Jamie Jackson Reed. Footage captured by spectators showed police handcuffing Jackson, then gripping his neck in a lock-hold, slamming his head against the ground and stepping on his back, whilst Jackson Reed is seen crying and repeating that ‘he didn’t do anything wrong’ (SydneyMardiGras2013, 2013). In what is perhaps an example of the changing circumstances of visibility and invisibility for police (Goldsmith, 2010), the footage amassed more than one million views on YouTube in less than a week and sparked an internal police inquiry and a 2000-person protest against police brutality. A magistrate eventually withdrew all charges against Jackson Reed and awarded him AUD$39,000 in costs (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014). This case complicates the notion that police violence against LGBT people is a problem only of the past (and not of a tolerant present), but it also raises questions about how and why particular incidents of police violence come to be viewed as worthy of recognition and redress (while others do not). Bryn Hutchinson, a gay activist who was also assaulted by police at the 2013 Mardi Gras, argued that his case and that of Jackson Reed garnered media attention because they were middle class, whereas many Aboriginal people and migrants regularly experiencing police violence rarely attain news headlines (Needham, 2014).

Despite the community outrage following this incident of police brutality and claims of a trend of over-policing of LGBT people at public events such as Mardi Gras (New Matilda, 2015), the police contingent was not ousted from the parade in following years. The police contingent continued to be promoted with pride as Mardi Gras organizers sought to strengthen their relationship with police (Akersten, 2014; Australian Pride Network, 2014). This reflects the normalization and entrenchment of policing in queer spaces, regardless of whether it is perceived as inclusive or exclusive (or both). As VGLRL Co-Convener David McCarthy frames it, ‘the Police understand they need to be part of the community to police it’ (Crawford, 2003). In order to maintain a legitimate presence in a contested space, police image work must be effective. This is the role played by public relations exercises such as participation in Pride March from the highest ranks of the force. Indeed, McCarthy adds that ‘the police force is held in a much higher regard because of their presence [at Pride March]’ (Crawford, 2003: 5). The threat to legitimacy that police authority poses may be mediated or counteracted through strategic police image work that portrays police as protectors and defenders of LGBT rights, despite the continuation of practices that contradict this image. LGBT people are left with limited options for negotiating or resisting the close regulation of queer spaces by the state if they are to avoid further exclusion, rejection or violence. This process occurs in a context where queers as the objects of tolerance (see Brown, 2006) must be grateful to those who extend it, even as the overarching conditions of unequal power remain fundamentally unchanged.

Police image, legitimacy and power

At Pride March in 2002, Nixon as Chief Commissioner developed an opportunity to build the legitimacy of Victoria Police through police image work. In this specific context and based on the discussion above, police and state legitimacy is garnered through at least three inter-related processes. First, a violent and antagonistic past is conjured in order to reproduce the present anew as defined by discourses of institutional tolerance and community engagement. Histories of police violence against LGBT people that have contributed to strained and poor LGBT-police relations into the present are negotiated and appropriated to construct a positive police image. As in the Fair Cop narrative, prior policing practices targeting LGBT people can be labeled as backwards and out of step with modern attitudes towards diversity and individual rights and the very act of labeling them as such demonstrates institutional maturity and progress. The condemnation of past practices shows that police and in particular their Chief Commissioner are now ‘well meaning’ and well positioned to respond to LGBT concerns. Second, the force’s institutional identity of professionalism, adaptability and modernity embodied by a bold and unconventional police leader commands authority and garners legitimacy. As Dwyer (2011: 425) argues, ‘leadership has been evidenced even from the highest ranks of police to improve relationships of LGBT people with police, particularly former Victorian Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon’. Third, the actions of participating in a public gay event alongside police promotion and expansion of their Gay and Lesbian Liaison Officer (GLLO) program put these new qualities of professionalism, adaptability and modernity in motion, reproducing the ideals of institutional inclusion and progress.

Police image and the manner in which police identity is expressed are important components of institutional legitimacy. As Barker (2001: 35) argues, ‘when rulers legitimate themselves, they give an account of who they are’ in writing and in images. This action creates and expresses the identity. The expression of a particular police identity is designed to secure a positive response from the ‘audience’, crowd or community. This is because legitimacy has a dialogic nature, necessarily involving both claims to legitimacy by power-holders and audience responses (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). The reception of police participation in Pride March – by spectators, participants, organizers, as well as the LGBT and broader community – plays a crucial role in any legitimation effects that flow from it. Legitimacy is a vital component of social institutions, practices and arrangements because it ensures their viability and survival (Jackson et al., 2013; Tyler, 2006). For police, legitimacy is the foundation of their authority and broadly refers to the likelihood that people will obey a police command because they believe that it emerges from a source of moral power and right (Tyler, 2006). It therefore depends on the ‘myth that police and the public share a single set of coherent and consistent norms and values’ and that the police have a unique power to use force if necessary to impose them (Smith, 2007: 280). Because of the instability and changing nature of social norms and values in practice, legitimacy is based on a variety of shifting factors within a given context and the process of legitimation is often incomplete, containing internal contradictions.

The authoritative role of police in combination with the disproportionate application of police power across populations, including LGBT people, frequently generates public disdain and distrust towards police and their actions. The weight of evidence suggests citizens that have the greatest satisfaction with the police are those who have no direct contact with them (Bradford et al., 2009) and form their opinions from information they acquire elsewhere (Lee and McGovern, 2014). This is reflected in literature that states most people gain their knowledge of the criminal justice system through the media rather than personal experience or interaction (Marsh and Melville, 2009; Mason, 2003). Media is therefore a central medium through which police organisations communicate with the public and seek to present a positive image of policing (Lee and McGovern, 2014). Goldsmith (2010: 915) argues that the appearance of ‘normal policing’ – that is, professional or official competence – can be pursued by ‘ensuring visibility of positive acts and achievements and equally by concealing negative instances’. Whilst this case study confirms the importance of ensuring the visibility of positive acts, it also suggests, however, that negative examples of policing do not necessarily have to be concealed for a respectable police image to be achieved. Instead, examples of negative police-citizen encounters may be revised and legitimized by strategic police image work in the present.

Conclusion

Conventional representations of Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon’s participation in the 2002 Pride March sought to rebrand and reimagine contemporary policing as modern, adaptive and inclusive. Ultimately this was done not by forgetting past policing practices of targeting and punishing sexual deviance, but by remembering them and prescribing new meaning to them. As illustrated in the narrative constructed in Nixon’s biography Fair Cop, homophobic police violence is contained to the past but recalled in the present, only to be decisively labeled as backwards, authoritarian and ineffective, so that it may be ideologically disassociated from current institutional practices oriented towards community engagement. The Chief Commissioner’s recognition of the institutional homophobia ‘of the past’ enables police in the present to be reproduced anew as ‘protector, patron, and sponsor of minorities’ (Haritaworn, 2010–2011: 83). This ‘new’ image of police shaped by liberal ideals of tolerance and fairness is partly contested and destabilized by the persistence of visible practices of homophobia and exclusionary policing. Perhaps more importantly, it fails to reckon with the deeply unequal power relations that are produced through the legitimation of police authority in an historical context of queer criminalization, pathologization and silencing.

The appropriation and re-signification of histories of police violence against LGBT people has implications not only for police legitimacy, but also for the politics of queer history. Emerging historically out of grassroots protests focused on institutionalized homophobia, the new face of gay pride that features police foremost amongst its celebrations raises important questions about the place of sexual politics within police image work and legitimacy and the complex meanings attributed to LGBT visibility today. For example, how might heteronormativity be preserved through the incorporation of LGBT citizens into existing institutional arrangements? What role does policing or more broadly the state play in producing and constraining LGBT spaces? Issues of co-option, commercialization and the continuities identified in homophobic policing in Australia suggest that gay pride may be implicated in the processes of commodification, assimilation and exclusion that earlier gay liberationist and queer activists fought against. Frequently LGBT people (and other groups constituted by ‘difference’) are compelled toward a ‘better’ future in a totalizing, developmentalist narrative. Police image work at Pride March assigned and communicated multiple meanings about the past in relation to the present (progress) and where we are headed in the future (promise). The emotive language of excitement and discourses of institutional change projected a new tolerant and inclusive face onto police leadership, which builds police legitimacy even as LGBT spaces – and other public spaces – continue to be subjected to exclusionary and violent policing practices. Representations of the Chief Commissioner may have, in part, ruptured traditional views of police as a homophobic organization yet they did so not by forgetting antagonistic histories but by revising them as a necessary part of an institutional progress narrative. The institutional legitimacy gained through this process complicates the task of exposing power and sexual injustice because the powerful proclaim to be on the side of the weak, whilst maintaining or building a position of dominance.