On 09 Jan 2022, Molly Bolt <mollythebolt666@gmail.com> posted some
news:dcdb8b64-ab93-46fb-9467-06e81a8892aan@googlegroups.com:

> 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.