Executive Summary
Over the past several decades, law enforcement agencies across the United States have established liaison officer roles to strengthen relationships with historically underserved communities, including LGBTQ communities. LGBTQ liaison officers serve as designated points of contact within departments for internal and external stakeholders, working to build trust, improve communication, and enhance responses to LGBTQ victims of crime. Despite the growth of these roles, only limited research has examined how LGBTQ liaison officers understand their roles within law enforcement agencies and how they engage with LGBTQ community members.
This report draws on 20 in-depth interviews conducted as part of the Hate Incident Reporting Initiative to Strengthen Engagement (HIRISE) project to understand how liaison roles are structured, supported, and experienced in practice by liaison officers, stakeholders, and community members. Participants included 11 law enforcement officers and nine community-based victim services providers across four U.S. cities—one in the West, one in the Midwest, one in the South, and one in the Southeast.
Key Findings
Departmental support for liaison roles varies significantly.
- In some departments, LGBTQ liaison roles are full-time and compensated; in others, they are effectively voluntary, with limited formal resources or support.
- Liaison officers with strong department support—including from department leadership—described positive experiences as liaisons and a sense of self-efficacy. In contrast, officers in departments with limited support expressed frustration at being unable to meet the goals of the liaison role.
Liaison officers strive for a central role in engaging LGBTQ communities and victims of crime.
- Liaison officers identified two key parts of their role: supporting LGBTQ victims of crimes and helping LGBTQ victims of violence feel comfortable reporting incidents to the police.
- Nevertheless, community stakeholders reported uneven experiences in police interactions, which in some cases resulted in reluctance by crime victims to interact with police.
Liaisons are key educators about LGBTQ issues within their departments.
- LGBTQ liaison officers provide formal training and informal education about LGBTQ issues within their departments. These education opportunities improve community interactions beyond those in which the liaison officers are directly involved.
- Liaison officers benefit from partnerships with community groups when developing formal training for law enforcement officers.
Sustained engagement and openness to feedback are essential for building trust with LGBTQ communities.
- Both liaison officers and community stakeholders identified the value of LGBTQ liaison officers for building long-term trust between law enforcement and the LGBTQ community.
- Community stakeholders also identified willingness to receive feedback as an important attribute for improving community relations.
Overall, the findings suggest that LGBTQ liaison officers may play an important role in improving police-community relations. Realizing this potential, however, requires strong institutional support, clear communication, and sustained engagement with LGBTQ communities. Success also requires confronting the historical and ongoing tensions that shape police-community relationships, including persistent mistreatment of LGBTQ individuals by law enforcement. Finally, this study shows that liaison officers face many context-specific challenges, underscoring the need for continued research to better understand how both local dynamics and broader trends influence the effectiveness of LGBTQ liaison officer roles.