Lincoln/Coverdale

A couple weeks ago, I sent an email to several members of the Fort Worth City Council. I just received an email from Councilman Frank Moss (well, actually from an aide of his) containing a statement expressing support for an investigation of the events at the Rainbow Lounge.

I also received this press release:

Chief Appoints Interim Liaison

Today during the City of Fort Worth Pre-Council meeting Fort Worth Police Chief Jeffrey W. Halstead announced his appointment of an interim liaison to the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender community. Officer Sara Straten stepped forward after learning of the chief’s request for a volunteer to serve the GLBT community in a liaison role. Officer Straten is a 17-year veteran and has served in previous assignments such as patrol, North Division Crime Response Team, East Division Zero Tolerance Unit, the Gang Unit, and the Training Division as a background investigator. She is currently assigned to the North Division as a Neighborhood Police Officer (NPO) serving the Fossil Creek, Summerfields, and Arcadia Park neighborhoods. Her duties will now include being a liaison to the GLBT community which means attending meetings, events, functions, etc… and being a direct conduit to the chief’s office.

Officer Straten will act in an interim capacity enabling the police department to evaluate and search for possible funding for a full-time position at which time Chief Halstead will seek input from various community leaders to ensure their involvement in the selection process.

“We’ve acted with urgency to quickly bridge the communication gap between the police department and the GLBT community. Our intent is to move forward in establishing a new relationship that consists of mutual understanding and respect.” Chief Halstead

Officer Straten will be available at tonight’s city council meeting to answer questions.

Time will tell if this is real progress, but for now, it’s something.

EDIT: The original statement from Frank Moss was an improperly released rough draft. The link above now points to a corrected version.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.