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I know of circumstances where police at beats have told beat users: ‘Well, you give me something - usually money, but sometimes it’s even sex - and we won’t report you. Morgan says police harassment at beats can include “outright physical abuse”, bribery or extortion: “It speaks to corruption within the police force. It reinforces an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality which isn’t helpful to either side.” “Also, it makes beat users and sections of the GLBTI community itself very hostile to police generally. “It can lead to more internalised homophobia in other words, feelings within beat users that they are the scum of the earth, that they deserve this sort of thing,” he says.
Their behaviour has long-term impacts on both the LGBTI community and beat users, who are already heavily stigmatised and vulnerable. Wayne Morgan, an academic lawyer and senior lecturer in Law and Sexuality at Australian National University, says police have a long history of harassing men at beats.
The group has also created an independent reporting system to collect information on police behaviour at beats. A core network of users supported by grassroots lobby group Community Action Against Homophobia now hosts regular Saturday night picnics to monitor police activity, raise awareness of the issue and inform beat users about their rights and responsibilities. There were also reports of men being searched, chased, threatened and manhandled by police or visited at their homes the next day - despite not being charged with any offence.Ĭoncerned beat users began researching the laws governing public spaces and proper police conduct, and sharing what they learned.
PARK PUBLIC GAY SEX REGISTRATION
“It is common practice for officers to take down car registration details, and names and addresses when policing beats, even though guidelines indicate they cannot record personal information … simply because men are in an area that is a ‘known’ beat,” he says. “We were concerned it would get back to the days when being a gay man was illegal, when police regularly harassed men at beats and used plain-clothed officers to entrap and charge men,” says project co-ordinator Richard Capuano, who regularly monitors police behaviour at his local beat in Sydney. Initiated by beat users themselves in response to increased reports of police harassment, intimidation and mistreatment of men at beats across Sydney, it now monitors beats across NSW and has forged links with beat users in South Australia. The issue of beats and beat users exploded onto the pages of Sydney’s gay and lesbian newspapers - and to the forefront of queer community consciousness - in November 2008 with the launch of the Sydney Beat Project, now called the Beat Project. The issue is dividing the gay community and stirring debate on homophobia and the role of police. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.A grassroots project that began with picnics aimed at monitoring police harassment of men at beats - public places where men gather to have casual, consensual sex - is expanding, despite controversial beginnings. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering. Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls.
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