A POLICE force that encourages gay officers to go on marches, take parenting leave and organise parties with local homosexual groups has been named Britain’s most gay-friendly employer.

The award marks a transformation in gay attitudes towards the police, who until recently were accused of institutional homophobia by activists.

Less than 10 years ago Staffordshire police, which this week will be named winners of the award, were ridiculed for mounting an operation to spy through peepholes on men “cottaging” in public conveniences in Stoke.

Relations with the gay community reached a low point when 21 men, many of them married, were arrested, with some losing their jobs, their wives and their homes.

Now, after recruiting in the “pink press”, one in 10 of the force’s 2,309 police officers is gay, almost twice the 6% of the general population estimated to be homosexual by a recent Treasury report.

Stonewall, the gay activist charity that runs the Workplace Equality Index, said one factor in Staffordshire’s success was its record of promoting lesbian and gay officers to a high level.

IBM, the computing firm, came second in the list of the 100 most gay-friendly employers, while the Department for Work and Pensions and Manchester city council tied for third.

However, the Royal Navy, which last year entered a partnership with Stonewall, has yet to break into the top 10. The navy said it was determined to shrug off saloon bar prejudice characterised by the sort of innuendo summed up by Churchill in his reference to a tradition of “rum, sodomy and the lash”.

A spokesman for the Staffordshire force said gay and lesbian officers were entitled to attend up to three gay pride rallies a year in paid time, to have paid parenting leave if they adopted a child, and to run parties with gay groups from neighbouring West Midlands constabularies.

The Staffordshire force has also pioneered a scheme called True Vision, intended to give an accurate picture of levels of homophobic, as well as racist and religious, attacks by inviting people to report crimes anonymously.

The initiative won Home Office funding to go national in a campaign fronted by Jarrod Batchelor, holder of the Mr Gay UK title. So far 37 of the country’s 43 police forces have adopted the programme.

Staffordshire’s chief constable, John Giffard, married with two sons, is credited with transforming attitudes. He was said to be “horrified” by the 1996 lavatory surveillance operation.

However, in 2003 a vociferous group forced the cancellation of a gay pride rally backed by Mike Wolfe, Stoke-on-Trent’s gay mayor, after vitriolic letters in the local press said the event would be “offensive and embarrassing”.

Michael Cashman, the gay former EastEnders actor and West Midlands MEP, said the controversy was no longer representative of behaviour towards gay people in Staffordshire. “We are starting to get the right sort of attitudes in the police,” he said.

Giffard also believes tolerance has increased. “A decade ago the efforts and initiatives (we have introduced) would not have seen the light of day,” he said. “I’m delighted with our number one ranking.”

Darren Oakey, 35, divisional “hate crime” officer for Burton upon Trent, who is gay, said: “How well police forces deal with different groups within their own ranks is nowadays seen as a litmus test.”

Sam Humphreys, 33, a patrol officer, said she had never concealed her lesbian orientation and had always had supportive colleagues.

The drive to end prejudice has coincided with a recent improvement in crime detection rates. Latest statistics show 18,081 crimes detected in the six months to September 30 2005, 356 more than the same period of the previous year.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said that the police had until recently been viewed as hostile toward homosexuals. The pressure group OutRage! was founded in 1990 in protest at what it claimed was an anti-gay “witchhunt” by police who the previous year had secured the highest conviction rate of the 20th century for gross indecency offences.

“Like everyone else, the police are waking up to the fact that unless they promote policies to recruit and retain gay people, they risk losing a valuable source of labour and talent,” Summerskill said.

He said the same attitude applied to other organisations who had topped the national league table. IBM has granted three days’ paid “honeymoon” leave to a male staff member celebrating a civil partnership.

Others at the top of the league include Credit Suisse First Boston and BT.

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