Montgomery County Police to hold LGBT community meeting
Organizers hope meeting will create an ongoing relationship between the LGBT community and police
In the wake of the Orlando mass shooting, the Montgomery County Police Department is hosting its first community meeting for the LGBT community on Tuesday, June 21 at 7 p.m. The meeting will be held at police headquarters, and will allow concerned residents to ask questions of the department and Chief J. Thomas Manger, who will be in attendance at the meeting.
Organizers note that the meeting had been scheduled prior to the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which killed 49 people and left 53 others wounded. But that attack highlights the urgency and importance of creating relationships and dialogue between Montgomery County’s police and the community they serve, says Lt. Nicholas Augustine, the Department’s executive administrative officer.
Topics expected to be broached at Tuesday’s meeting include updates on bias-related incidents involving the LGBT community in Montgomery County, notably the slayings of two transgender women over the past year, as well as the department’s response to and resources available to people during an active-assailant incident like the one encountered by club-goers in Orlando, and plans for future outreach or partnerships between LGBT leaders and organizations and the department.
The department hopes that the meeting will help to establish a long-term working relationship between the LGBT community and the police going forward.
“We’re trying to develop a partnership with the LGBTQ community so in case we have an incident like the one in Orlando that happens here, we have stakeholders we can reach out to and provide resources to, as well as get information out to them,” says Augustine. “We always say, when we deal with other communities, ‘It’s better to establish these relationships before an event occurs rather than after an event occurs.”
Referring to a recent New York Times article revealing that the LGBT community is the most likely to be targeted by hate or bias-motivated crimes, Augustine said that the data show why it is especially important to hold this type of meeting now.
“It’s part of developing a dialogue between the police and the LGBTQ community,” he says.
The Montgomery County Police Department’s LGBTQ community town hall meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 21 from 7:00-8:30 p.m.at Public Safety Headquarters, 100 Edison Park Drive, Gaithersburg, Md. Attendees must bring a photo ID to be admitted. For more information, visit mymcpnews.com or facebook.com/mcpnews.
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