Re: He was one of the nation's most (over-sold) revered gay cops. His arrest changed everything.

On 09 Jan 2022, Molly Bolt <[email protected]> posted some
news:[email protected]: 

> Cut his dick off and superglue it in his asshole.

He had cinched cuffs around hundreds of wrists as a D.C. police officer, 
but now Brett Parson’s own hands were being placed behind his back.

“So I’ll let you know guys, right now, that until I talk to an attorney, I 
won’t talk to anybody,” Parson said.

The police in Boca Raton, Fla., guided him toward their cruiser as their 
body cameras recorded the encounter.

“I think I know exactly what it’s about. It’s a brand-new warrant, right?” 
Parson guessed. “Brand-new? Issued probably this morning?”

“Yep,” answered one officer. They were outside the condo where Parson’s 
parents lived. He’d been staying with them to help his father recover from 
a surgery.

On this February morning, he’d taken the trash out, not knowing detectives 
were waiting for him outside. They asked for the keys to his father’s red 
convertible. They asked him to turn over his phone.

Parson, 53, instructed them not to search anything without a warrant.

“I know what it is you’re looking for,” he said.

Around 12:30 a.m. the night before, Parson had been pulled over by 
officers from Coconut Creek, who’d seen him driving the red convertible 
near a quiet office park 20 minutes away. Police reported they watched as 
the convertible followed a gray sedan into a parking lot. Both cars made a 
U-turn and returned to the road. The gray sedan then pulled into a fenced-
off area with an empty field and a Comcast tower. The gate, which should 
have been locked, was open. What were these drivers doing there in the 
middle of the night? The officers stopped both cars.

Parson told them they were mistaken. He wasn’t following the gray sedan. 
He was just lost and looking for Interstate 95.

“I’m a cop from D.C.,” he said. In reality, he had been retired and only a 
reserve officer for two years.

They let him drive away. Then they went to talk to the driver of the gray 
sedan.

The window rolled down to reveal a thin White boy. He said he had pulled 
over to text a friend. The officer told the boy he didn’t believe him. In 
his report, he described what the teenager — who turned out to be 16 – did 
next.

“He dropped his head, took a deep breath, and stated he met the guy who 
was following behind him online and they were meeting to ‘hook up.’ ”

The teenager began to tell the officers the story he would repeat at least 
three times that night, including at the sexual assault treatment center 
where he was taken after his parents were called.

He’d met Parson on Growlr, a dating app for gay men that requires users to 
be 18. He’d lied about his birthday to use the app, claiming he was 18. He 
said he and Parson exchanged oral sex in the parking lot of a day care.

He said he knew Parson used to be a police officer.

What he didn’t know was that Parson was not just any police officer. The 
man who had just driven away was known nationally and internationally as a 
pioneer of gay rights in policing.

In the nation’s capital, Parson built an award-winning liaison unit that 
investigated hate crimes, befriended advocates and marched in Pride 
parades, slowly revolutionizing the relationship between the police and 
the city’s LGBTQ community. People saw him everywhere: dance clubs and 
book clubs, hospital bedsides and funeral homes, early-morning court 
hearings and late-night domestic disputes.

The city’s 2019 guide to Pride called Parson a “living legend.” The 
Department of Justice, the State Department, Amnesty International, the 
Southern Poverty Law Center and other police departments relied on his 
expertise.

Now, he was going to jail. The warrant for his arrest listed two counts of 
unlawful sexual activity. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence 
and a lifetime as a registered sex offender. Under Florida law, claiming 
to be misled about the age of a victim cannot be used as a legal defense.

Parson’s arrest stunned the legions of people who admired him, leaving 
them with questions about what exactly happened in Florida and whether it 
represented some sort of mistake or a serious betrayal.

Months later, they are still without answers. The case, which depends 
largely on the involvement of a 16-year-old identified only by his 
initials, is moving slowly. It will be months, and possibly years, before 
a judge or jury determines Parson’s fate.

While the former lieutenant waits for his future to be decided, those who 
put their trust in him for so long are revisiting his past. This story is 
based on public records and interviews with more than three dozen people 
whose lives and work Parson influenced during his 26-year career. They are 
grappling with the person they thought they knew — and the power he 
wielded for so long.

Parson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, did not respond to 
repeated interview requests.

On the morning of his Feb. 12 arrest, Parson frequently reminded the 
officers taking him into custody that he, too, was a cop. He commented on 
their equipment, mentioned he was scheduled to teach at the FBI National 
Academy, mused about what his approach to this kind of warrant would be 
and joked about his own history of stuffing large men into cramped back 
seats.

“With all due — we know who you are, sir,” an officer informed him. “Your 
credentials don’t matter. … It’s nothing to do with how this is being 
handled.”

“I understand,” Parson said. He thanked them for being caring.

They confiscated his loaded Glock 26, explained to his parents what was 
happening and slammed the cruiser door.

“F---,” Parson said, “It’s weird being on this side.”

Ending ‘fairy shaking’
Parson’s reputation as a gay hero began with a scandal. In the late 1990s, 
while Parson was building a career in narcotics investigations, another 
D.C. officer was stationing himself outside a gay club in Southeast 
Washington. He was watching for men leaving the club who were wearing 
wedding rings or getting into cars with baby seats. He wrote down their 
license plates, found their contact information and called them. Pay 
$10,000, he said, or he’d expose them to their wives and employers.

The scheme was known as “fairy shaking.”

It eventually led to an FBI investigation, a nearly two-year prison 
sentence for the officer and the resignation of the chief of police.

To those in the LGBTQ community, the extortion was just the latest example 
of mistreatment by a police force with a decades-long history of targeting 
vulnerable queer people.

“There was an overall mistrust,” remembers Peter Newsham, who later became 
police chief. “There was a feeling that they couldn’t call the police and 
ensure that the police officer who came to the door was going to treat 
them with dignity.”

The chief installed after the scandal, Charles Ramsey, saw a solution to 
that problem: bolstering and broadening a newly formed Gay and Lesbian 
Liaison Unit.

Parson, then in his early 30s, had been openly gay since he joined the 
force. He’d grown up in the area and, after working as a National Hockey 
League referee, became a police officer in 1994.

He didn’t want the job as head of the unit. But Ramsey, as Parson told the 
story, didn’t give him a choice.

[The victims of D.C.’s record year of hatred ]

“I was wearing plain clothes, driving an undercover car, growing my hair 
out, wearing my gun on my ankle, jumping out on felony drug dealers, and 
flipping them for homicide cases. It was the assignment of a lifetime,” 
Parson later told the Community Policing Dispatch newsletter. “I was 
really, really afraid that my reputation was going to change from being a 
good cop who happened to be gay, to being a gay cop that used to be a good 
cop.”

Instead, he became renowned for professionalizing the unit, balancing a 
law-and-order approach with what was then a relatively new idea: true 
community policing. Rather than raid gay clubs, Parson and the five to 15 
members of his unit would announce themselves over the loudspeaker, then 
walk around, introduce themselves and pass out refrigerator magnets with 
their phone number on it. The number was the workaround for those in the 
community who needed help, but worried about the repercussions of calling 
911: a gay man experiencing domestic abuse from his partner or a 
transgender woman wanting to report a hate crime.

“Nowadays, it’s not appreciated how ground-breaking and innovative it 
was,” said Kurt Vorndran, who served on the D.C. Police Complaints Board 
for 15 years. “Those of us who were advocates at the time, we were blown 
away. And Brett, his personality, his skill and his professionalism was a 
major factor in all of this.”

Within three years of Parson’s being put in charge, the unit won a 
distinguished service award from the city’s Gay and Lesbian Activists 
Alliance, an organization formed in part to protest discrimination by law 
enforcement. LGBTQ rights pioneer Frank Kameny, who became a national icon 
after he was fired from his job for his sexuality, handed the award to 
Parson.

“No longer are the police our enemy,” Kameny declared.

In time, the unit and the LGBTQ community worked in tandem to aid the 
department in solving crimes, including the murders of several transgender 
women in the city.

“[Brett] would call me, you know, I don’t care what time of morning it 
was,” remembers Earline Budd, a longtime advocate for the city’s 
transgender and sex worker communities. “He would wake me up and he would 
say, Ms. Budd, we are on the scene of a double homicide.”

Budd would help identify the victims, then see Parson at every memorial 
and funeral that followed, and every community meeting about stopping the 
next act of violence. Though Parson did stints elsewhere in the 
department, he returned again and again to what was renamed the LGBTQ 
Liaison Unit, eventually overseeing the department’s entire Special 
Liaison Branch. He trained recruits, retrained old-timers and consulted 
with departments across the country trying to replicate what he had built.

“He made me feel safe,” said Kisha Allure, who works in victims services 
at Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ support center.

But she knew that wasn’t true for everyone.

When Parson walked into a support group unannounced, she saw the 
uneasiness in the eyes of transgender women, especially women of color, 
meeting him for the first time.

He looked to many like a TV version of a cop: White and male, big and 
burly, always armed and always in uniform. Parson boasted that, on a 
police force with few openly gay cops, his imposing figure earned him 
respect.

“I’m 6 foot, I weigh about 295 pounds, I have experience in professional 
athletics and ice hockey — there aren’t a lot of people lining up to f--- 
with me” he told a podcast interviewer in 2021.

What some took as Parson being direct and authoritative, others saw as 
arrogant and aggressive.

“He exerted his power. In some cases, he used it to stop hate, harm and 
death in our community, even when it wasn’t popular to do so,” said June 
Crenshaw, director of the Wanda Alston Foundation. “But it’s hard to turn 
that power off.”

Parson was furious in 2017 when, following protests of police 
participation in the city’s annual Pride parade, the LGBTQ Liaison Unit 
was asked not to march. He became so heated during a meeting with 
organizers that Sheila Alexander-Reid, the mayor’s director of LGBTQ 
affairs, had to calm him down.

“He was hurt that his own community would have the nerve to ask him not to 
be a part of the parade after all he had done,” Alexander-Reid remembered.

Parson reluctantly agreed to a compromise: He and his officers would wear 
D.C. police polos instead of full uniforms. But by 2019, he was ignoring 
the new policy, marching again in uniform down the parade route. That same 
week, when other members of his unit were asked to leave a Latinx Pride 
event, Parson returned with them 30 minutes later. He took the microphone 
and made a speech.

“He just walked up the church aisle, armed, this [cisgender] White man, 
all upset because somebody told his people not to be there,” remembered 
Nancy Cañas, who organized the event.

Some of Parson’s fellow officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity 
because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said they were 
aware of concerns about his behavior.

An investigative report from the Office of Police Complaints describes a 
night in 2006 when Parson was monitoring 18th Street NW. A cabdriver did 
not properly pull over to the curb. Parson’s solution: open the door, grab 
the driver by his shirt and rip him out of the vehicle. Parson took the 
taxi and drove it down the street.

“You can’t do that,” the cab’s stranded passengers told him. According to 
the complaint, Parson replied, “Shut the f--- up, b----, you don’t know 
what you’re talking about!”

Parson denied using foul language. But when asked by investigators about 
removing the driver from his cab, Parson replied that he had done this on 
“hundreds of occasions.”

The investigator found that Parson had engaged in harassment and use of 
excessive or unnecessary force. His punishment, a D.C. police spokesman 
said, was a letter in his personnel file.

On another night two years later, Parson stopped by the nightclub Town 
Danceboutique, where dozens of people were in line to get into what was 
advertised as “D.C.’s biggest Pride party.” According to a deposition he 
gave after he was sued for his behavior that night, he was planning to 
pass out magnets. Instead, he chased down a woman who appeared to be 
putting something in her mouth. Once he stopped her and her friends, he 
saw a young White man walking away from the same area.

“Hey partner, come with me for a second,” Parson said, according to his 
2009 deposition.

“What did I do?” the man replied as he kept walking.

Parson grabbed his arm. The man yanked it away. Parson grabbed him harder, 
turned and threw him through a plate-glass window.

Parson’s explanation was that he was trying to pin the man up against a 
brick wall, and missed. The man, who declined to comment because he did 
not want to revisit that night, was crouched in the fetal position. He was 
covered in shattered glass and bleeding from his head. Parson was still 
trying to put him in handcuffs.

“I’m yelling over and over again, ‘Stop resisting, put your arms behind 
your back,’ ” Parson stated in the deposition. “The crowd is screaming at 
me. I can’t hear him, but he’s yelling and I, eventually, use my weight 
to, kind of, push my body weight down on top of him.”

Parson charged the man with assaulting a police officer.

After a trip to the hospital and a night in jail, the charges were 
dropped. Records show the city settled the case for $17,500.

But whether Parson was disciplined for this incident — and whether there 
are other use-of-force incidents are on his record — remains unclear.

Police officials declined to release Parson’s disciplinary record or 
answer questions about it, citing the former lieutenant’s right to 
privacy. The department terminated Parson from its reserve force after his 
arrest in Florida. A spokesman said Parson is not under investigation in 
D.C., and there is nothing in his record to suggest he had inappropriate 
contact with anyone in the District.

As Parson’s use-of-force cases were handled by police internally, his 
profile outside the city grew. He hosted and attended international 
conferences for LGBTQ law enforcement. He starred in a Justice Department 
training video on how police should treat the transgender community. He 
traveled to Vietnam and the Philippines for the State Department.

Eventually, those familiar with his decision said, he realized he could 
make far more money outside the department than the $121,000 records show 
he was making annually as a lieutenant. Parson retired in February 2020 to 
start his own consulting firm.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, he 
began traveling around the country to train police on how to intervene 
when a fellow officer uses excessive force.

“We’re not just policing others,” Parson told NBC4. “We have to police 
ourselves.”

‘I like younger’
The teen messaged Parson first.

“Hey,” he wrote at 10:21 p.m., “how are you.”

Parson’s Growlr profile identified him as a 53-year-old in an open 
relationship. His job was listed as LEO, an acronym for law enforcement 
officer.

“I like younger,” Parson’s profile stated. “Just a regular guy looking for 
the same. Staying in Fort Lauderdale for the week.”

According to screenshots of Parson’s messages with the teenager obtained 
through public records requests, Parson replied that night: “Good. U?”

The 16-year-old’s profile listed his age as 18. It described him as 5-
foot-7 and 140 pounds. From a list of words to describe himself, one he 
chose was “boy.” The term is sometimes used by adults in the gay community 
who identify or present as youthful.

Parson and the teenager unlocked the app’s “private media” feature, 
allowing them to see revealing pictures of each other. Though the boy’s 
photos are not part of public records, he later told officers that they 
included pictures of his body and his face. In one explicit text message, 
Parson commented on how skinny he was.

“You know a place where we can meet that’s not too far from you?” the 16-
year-old asked Parson the next day.

Parson

February 11, 2022

We could definitely meet up after work. if you wanted to

The teenager

Where would we do it

Parson

I just brought dinner home to my parents. Let me get them fed, then we can 
chat

The teenager

Ok

The teenager

Any updates?

Parson

Why don’t we meet someplace after your work. We can chat. See if we click. 
Then, figure out a plan from there. No pressure and no strings.

The teenager

Sounds like a plan

After a phone call between them, records show that the teen sent Parson 
the address of a Shell gas station. Around midnight, Parson pulled in 
driving his father’s red convertible. Its front license plate said “LIFE’S 
A BEACH.”

Looking for a more secluded place, the pair moved across the street to the 
parking lot of a day care.

Three hours later, at the county’s sexual assault treatment center, the 
16-year-old sat in a room intentionally painted in calming blues. He was 
handed a brochure that said, “A person 24 years of age or older … cannot 
receive consent from 16- and 17-year-old minors.”

“Being the victim of a crime can be overwhelming,” it read. “Your 
reactions are normal.”

On his phone, there was a new text from Parson: “You ok?”

“Yeah I’m good,” the teenager replied. “I’m home.”

Then he started talking to a detective.

“It just kinda happened,” the teenager said, according to a police 
transcript of the interview. “I don’t really know how to explain it.”

The officer asked if he kissed back.

“I consented,” the boy said.

According to the transcript, the officer did not ask the teenager if 
Parson knew his real age.

Advocates who work with gay youth say it’s common for teenagers to explore 
on dating apps that allow them to meet strangers, especially if they don’t 
feel safe expressing themselves at home or in school.

Some vulnerable kids also use dating apps to seek out adults who will pay 
them, though minors cannot legally consent to being purchased for sex. The 
officer questioning this teenager did not ask whether money was exchanged.

The boy described how he and Parson gave each other oral sex, then decided 
to move to another location because they’d seen someone walking in the 
distance.

“Did you feel like you wanted to continue what you guys are doing?” the 
detective asked.

“No,” the teen said. “I also didn’t really feel like saying no either, but 
I didn’t want to keep going.”

“Okay,” the detective said. “And then …”

“But I didn’t show any signs either of like wanting to stop, so.”

“Okay. Did, um, did you feel scared?”

“I felt uncomfortable,” the boy said. “But I kinda went with it because I 
was already there.”

He told the detective Parson did not threaten him. And though he never 
showed him his badge or his weapon, he knew that Parson used to be a cop.

“I just didn’t stop for some reason,” he said. “But I don’t know why.”

After 20 minutes, the interview ended. It was 3:50 a.m. The boy, with his 
father’s permission, consented to give DNA to investigators. They had 
everything they needed to ask a judge for an arrest warrant.

‘No, not Brett’
Parson sat in a jail cell for nearly a week. He paid $5,000 to A Signature 
Only Bail Bonds, which insured the rest of his $50,000 bond. A judge 
ordered him to remain in Florida, stay away from all minors and live at 
his parents’ Boca Raton condo while he awaited trial.

Meanwhile, his mug shot had hit the news.

“I kept saying no, no, no, not Brett,” recalled Budd, who had helped 
Parson identify crime victims. “An underage young man? No.”

On Twitter and in text messages, members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community quickly 
began taking sides. Many pointed out that while the age of consent in 
Florida is 18, in D.C. it’s 16. Parson could not have been arrested for 
the same set of circumstances here.

“I don’t think a life should be destroyed over one foolish event late one 
night, especially when the contact was made on a site where everyone is 
supposed to be a minimum of 18,” said Rick Rosendall, former president of 
the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance.

Nothing about the police reports, some argued, indicated that Parson had 
intentionally sought out a minor.

“To me, there’s no victim, there’s no predator in this story,” said 
transgender activist Taylor Lianne Chandler, who took to Twitter to defend 
Parson. “I can’t fathom Brett risking his career for 20 minutes of fun.”

Others were disgusted, saying it was not acceptable even if Parson thought 
the person he was meeting was 18.

“You’re a police officer, you should know better,” said Tamika Spellman, a 
transgender advocate who has conducted training sessions alongside Parson. 
“You should know the differences between a grown-up and a child.”

Impossible to ignore was where the encounter happened: a state then on the 
verge of passing a bill to ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation 
and gender identity. Dubbed the “don’t say gay” law by opponents, its 
supporters bandied about terms like “grooming” to create false links 
between homosexuality and child abuse, which is committed by people of all 
sexual orientations.

“Something like this just plays right into their narrative,” said John 
Guggenmos, owner of several gay nightclubs in D.C., including Town 
Danceboutique, which closed in 2018. “To me, it makes all our community 
look bad.”

Many who had crossed paths with Parson or invited him to speak at events 
said they feared that bringing any additional attention to his arrest 
could hurt LGBTQ progress.

But to those who put their trust in him again and again, the hurt was 
already done.

“For him to use his power to leave the scene, leaving this vulnerable 
youth to fend for himself, it’s devastating,” said Crenshaw, of the Wanda 
Alston Foundation.

Allure, at Casa Ruby, who’d said Parson made her feel safe, couldn’t help 
thinking of how vulnerable she had been as a teenager.

“You’re a leader. People look at you as a public figure. You have the 
nerve? The audacity? I can’t. That’s where I’m at,” she said.

Alexander-Reid, who was Parson’s counterpart in the mayor’s office, said 
she’s still waiting for some kind of explanation, maybe from Parson 
himself.

“If he’s willing to be vulnerable and open as to what happened, I’m 
definitely open to listen,” she said. “He’s earned my respect. And if he’s 
made mistakes? You know what, he’s not the first one.”

And then there were Parson’s colleagues, officers who by training are 
inclined to believe that police in Florida are justified in the charges 
they filed.

Newsham, the former D.C. police chief, compared the situation to how he 
felt as a Catholic to learn of abuse in the church. To those who believed 
in community policing, he said, Parson was as revered as a priest.

“The trust, I’ve got to tell you, it’s definitely fractured,” he said. “If 
it’s completely broken remains to be seen.”

Pride’s missing fixture
On an overcast Saturday in June, D.C. staged its first full-fledged Pride 
parade since the pandemic began. The city and its people were draped in 
rainbows, jubilant to see the streets packed again.

On nearly every corner sat a D.C. police cruiser and a few officers, 
assigned to monitor the event for safety.

“Capital Pride, are you ready?” an announcer called, and onto the parade 
route walked another group of officers.

They too, were in uniform, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying guns. 
But the words “METROPOLITAN POLICE” across some of their backs were 
written in rainbow.

Members of the LGBTQ Liaison Unit walked alongside employees of the 
mayor’s office, shaking hands and posing for pictures. The officers were 
scheduled to stop by bars on U Street that night and run a tent at the 
Pride festival the next day — the kind of events where Parson was always a 
fixture.

He hadn’t been seen in months. But two days before the parade, a judge 
granted Parson’s request to leave Florida. As long as he reports to his 
probation officer by phone twice a week and Zooms into his court hearings, 
he has permission to spend the summer at his home in Provincetown, Mass. 
Come September, he told the court, he is planning to move back to the 
District.

He will return to a city where he is no longer a member of the police 
reserve force. His many speaking engagements have been canceled. The 
program that teaches police to stop unnecessary force terminated his 
contract.

The officers he once led kept moving down the parade route. They handed 
out rainbow bracelets stamped with a phone number, the direct line to the 
unit. Anyone who needed their help could call.

Some people slipped the bracelets onto their wrists. Some left them behind 
on the pavement.

All queers are pedophiles and can never be trusted.  Ever.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/gay-dc-cop-
parson-teen-florida-arrest/