Police Malpractice

Tangents

November 1965

Vol. 1 No. 2

Editorial by Don Slater

Because of the nature of our work, frequent examples of police malpractice come to our attention. Like the Negro in this regard, the homosexual seems to be an easy prey for abuses at the lime of his arrest.

So many homosexuals, and many members of the non-homosexual community, have suffered by this process that we no longer have any confidence in it as a solution to the problem. To us, as to many others, the situation clearly calls for new agencies to be set up to receive and investigate complaints concerning police practices and they must be completely independent of the police departments.

We see nothing radical in making law enforcement agencies subject to inspection where problems in their law enforcement techniques are brought to light. What is wrong with a practical method of publicly and periodically calling them to account? An enlightened and vitalized public opinion could only result and certainly we would see an improved relationship between the police and those they arrest.