Institutional necessities and the practice of policing in conflict with the rights of LGBTIQ* persons?

Police, seen as homogeneous organisation, based on cop-culture and loyalty is however subjected to societal change processes and should be seen within institutional analysis as an instrument to secure societal norm – these can be LGBTIQ* friendly or homophobic. In the societies, which comply to the conceptions of human rights and explicitly seek to protect the LGBTIQ* community, the police, at least legal-wise is called for protecting the queer community, support it and be open and ready to react to the needs of LGBTIQ* persons. These persons can be clients of the police, police officers themselves, victims or even perpetrators, still having specific rights connected to free choice of gender identity. Even if one anticipates the motivation of police to comply to the idea of protecting the LGBTIQ* community and be sensitive towards its specific rights and demands (which might not be the case for each single individual within the police, but must be anticipated in terms of complying to the legal regulation, as it is e.g. in Germany), there are still some institutional hurdles preventing the police from fully corresponding to the ideal of rights protection on this level. At the same time, the “new” openness and sensitivity to the societal diversity might be the framework for a police self-description, however this self-vision might still not be visible or perceived within the community – be there because of the experiences in the past, general knowledge of the exclusive structures, punctual experiences with homo-and trans*phobia with the police or the self-understanding as a group, which is normally facing discrimination and exclusion from the authorities, which is statistically also true. Non-binary, gender fluid, inter* and trans* citizens build here a specific group, who’s experiences are less visible because of the small numbers of the group, less visible in the statistics, not least because of the lacking knowledge in the police forces. This group is at the same time specifically affected by the binary-based policing system, starting with body checks and document control and ending up with binary detention. In our presentation we seek, from the level of the institutional analysis, to detect the points of dysconnectivity and the organisational necessities, the intransparency of knowledge provision and knowledge management, the priority of resources, the conflict of legislations, which might produce the overseeing the non-binary in the policing processes aside from the – definitely still existing – institutional and personal homo-and-trans* phobia. Using our research within the German police and our experiences with the police organisation and education from our perspective as advisors, and based on neoinsitutional analysis we want to elaborate on the question, how and why institutional necessities and the practice of policing can come into conflict with the rights of LGBTIQ* persons?