Queering policing: what is best practice with LGBTQ communities?

This paper explores the notion of best practice policing with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) communities. Rather than wholeheartedly endorsing this notion, however, this paper is driven by the discussion of questioning moments that emerged from a number of Australian research projects focused on how police interact with LGBTQ people and from other moments of discussion about how we ought to counsel recruits to interact with LGBTQ people in police training. Using a queer, poststructural theoretical framework, and filtered through an ethics of discomfort, the paper works through these questioning moments that I have experienced as a researcher doing work that seeks to define LGBTQ-police relations and to better elaborate best practice. The analysis highlights the slipperiness of the idea of best practice and questions whether or not it is actually feasible and achievable. It also presents as a warning to policing stakeholders of becoming too comfortable with stipulating processes and practices of best practice policing with LGBTQ people into the future.