We lost one of the Good People.
Retired San Francisco police sergeant Elliott Blackstone, the first police officer in the nation assigned to work with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, has died. He was 81….During his 26-year career with the San Francisco Police Department, Mr. Blackstone helped mend the rift between the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and the police department. Before his assignment in 1962, the department’s previous interaction with the community largely involved raids on bars and entrapment of gay men in bathrooms.
“He didn’t see any reason why homosexuality or cross-dressing should be illegal,” said Susan Stryker, a historian and scholar who directed and produced a documentary, “Screaming Queens,” which tells the story of a 1966 riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. That event sparked San Francisco’s transgender rights movement. After the riot, Mr. Blackstone trained other officers on transgender issues, and he is featured throughout the documentary….
Mr. Blackstone was assigned as a liaison to the emerging gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities after a police bribery scandal involving gay bars. He said in an interview with The Chronicle this summer that he worked in a hostile climate within the Police Department and focused much of his efforts on the transgender community.
“They hated me. They thought it was wrong for a policeman to associate with these ‘faggots,’ ” Mr. Blackstone said. “But they needed help, so I helped.”
He started the first transgender support group in the country and even took offerings at church to buy hormones for transgender people when the city refused to fund them.
