First ever gay couple graduates from Boston Police Academy
This gay couple have just graduated to become police officers in Boston, and became the first out gay couple to do so.
Jimmy Moccia and Shawn Maclver, who have been together for five yeras, completed the training scheme, and both scored 100 on their civil service tests, reports the Boston Herald.
Moccia said his father and brother are both also in the police.
“I think it’s important to note that throughout the entire academy experience we were never afraid to be ourselves,” he said.
“I’m not going to lie. I was pretty nervous on the first day back in December,” he went on, “I sort of didn’t want people to find out because I didn’t want people to look at me differently. I wanted people to get to know us. We didn’t want to be known as ‘the gay cops.’ We’re cops who just happen to be gay. There’s so many other things we are. Yeah, gay’s on the list, but it doesn’t define us.
“It’s not anything we were hiding, but we wanted to prove ourselves as classmates and friends. And over the course of our training, we were welcomed by everyone. Our peers, our classmates, can say we were down in the mud, we were running, we were doing push-ups, we were going through the same training. The academy kicked our asses … but we’re still standing at the end of it.”
Maclver also said he thought they might be the first ever out gay couple in the US, in a major police department.
He almost gave up on his dream of joining the police, but was inspired by a member of the BPD’s SWAT team Tim Hancock, who came out as gay just after completing the training two decades ago.
“On the civil service exam there is no box you can check for being ‘gay,’ but the truth is we are a minority,” Moccia said. “We are a minority in the country as well as the department. But when you talk about community policing, I think it really provides us with a deeper empathy. We understand what it is like to exist in the shadows.”
