Members of the South Australian police force allowed to be in uniform for Adelaide's gay pride march from 2105
South Australian police members in uniform, taking part in Adelaide’s annual gay pride march in 2015.
Members of the South Australian police force marched in uniform at Adelaide’s annual gay pride march, as part of the Feast Festival, for the first time in 2015. Assistant commissioner Linda Fellows was among the members marching, alongside senior constable first class Russell Disher.
This represented a reversal by Grant Stevens, South Australian police commissioner from 2015, of a previous attitude. Stevens said that South Australian police force was a “a proudly diverse work group and we serve an equally diverse community… it is important that we recognise this diversity by demonstrating our core values not only to the community, but our own workforce.”
The South Australian police force’s relationship with the homosexual community has been fraught, culminating with suspicion of involvement of some police officers in the murder of Adelaide University lecturer Dr George Duncan who drowned after being thrown into the River Torrens in 1971.
Public outrage surrounding his Duncan’s death triggered homosexual law reform in South Australia and is still seen as a catalyst for the later push for gay marriage equality. Police commissioner Harold Salisbury had added to the outrage by calling the allegations of police involvement with the Duncan case a “minor sensation”.
The resulting raised awareness of the plight of homosexual men saw Gay Liberation started in South Australia in the 1970s. The inquiry by Acting Justice J.M. White in the South Australian police special branch in 1977 revealed that “pink files” on hundreds of homosexuals, without any criminal record, went beyond the special branch’s to those held in the CIB vice squad and other police files.
The Adelaide Homosexual Alliance also was an important in lobbying for the files on homosexual to be destroyed. They were burned at Centennial Park crematorium in 1979.
