Evaluating Historical Police Practices: Strikeforce Parabell, LGBTIQ Hate Crimes and the Role of Community Oversight

• In Event: Queering Policing

Abstract

During the 1980s and 90s, over 80 men and transgender women were killed in what later were identified as possible hate crimes. In Tomsen’s (2002) initial analysis of these cases, and the socio-legal circumstances of the investigation of these cases, he found that policing services too readily dismissed the attribution of hate crime, dismissed homophobia as a motivation when the offender did not identify as gay, and disproportionately evaluated that these cases were suicides or crimes of passion (homosexual advance defence). After a series of unofficial reviews, and in an effort to resolve the acrimony between LGBTIQ communities and the police, the NSWPF Sexuality & Gender Diversity Corporate Sponsor, Superintendent Tony Crandell established Strikeforce Parabell. This strikeforce will undertake a community-informed ‘cold case’ analysis of the policing practices in 88 deaths of people thought to have been killed due to their sexuality or gender identity. To facilitate community ownership of this investigation, Strikeforce Parabell has contracted the authors to undertake an independent review as triangulation to the NSWPF analysis. This paper discusses the political and operational contexts of undertaking this type of applied evaluation, and the practice gaps in what constitutes evaluation, and what constitutes a bias crime.

Authors

• Nicole L. Asquith, Western Sydney University

• Angela Dwyer, University of Tasmania