French NGO teaches police about LGBT+ identities
There was a time when Christophe Desportes-Guilloux feared being arrested in French nightclubs, simply for being gay.
That era has now passed but he says there’s still a level of distrust between the police and France’s LGBT+ community.
Desportes-Guilloux has made it his mission to fix that problem – by going into police stations and training officers in how to handle reports of crime from LGBT+ people.
In 2020 police recorded 1,590 victims of crimes classified as homophobic or transphobic, according to French interior ministry data.
But that's an incomplete picture.
Another interior ministry study revealed that between 2012 and 2018 only 20% of people who were victims of anti-LGBT threats or violence filed a report with the police.
(Christophe Desportes-Guilloux) "In fact we had been noticing for a while that homophobic acts were under-reported, there were too few complaints that were filed. So we wondered why, and we heard two different kinds of answers. People telling us: 'That's because police officers don't receive us well.' And others saying, 'Because I don't dare to go file a complaint'. So the idea for us is to create a link between those who may need to file a complaint and the police officers who receive the complaints."
56-year-old Desportes-Guilloux represents an LGBT+ association called GAGL45.
To date, his association has carried out about 10 training sessions for police.
Location: Orleans, France
At this Orleans police headquarters, Desportes-Guilloux is leading a class of around 30 officers,
all of whom work in the department that receives reports of crime from citizens.
He guides them through the different types of sexual orientation and sexual identities they could encounter and the vocabulary used to describe them.
He also briefs them on the kind of crimes to which LGBT+ people are especially vulnerable.
One of the officers listening was Maryline Francois, a major in charge of the department.
"It (this presentation) allows us to identify the victim, to know who we are talking to, in order to adapt our speech to what this person feels. Because for us who take complaints, it is a lot about victims' sensibility and perception to which we must adapt to. Every victim is different."
(Christophe Desportes-Guilloux) "We also try to lift taboos. Sometimes there can be embarrassment or discomfort with policemen and policewomen when they receive a transgender person or a person victim of homophobia. There can be discomfort and it can make work harder. The idea is to improve the relationship between police officers and citizens."
