Growing up in a village on the edge of the Peak District in the mid-1970s the only contact I had with the world of policing was that the local PC and his wife were friends of my parents. Along with our local doctor and his wife they would accompany my parents to the folk nights at a pub in a neighbouring village. The PC was a friendly and approachable man whom I had no reason to fear.

It was around that time however that I began to realise I was gay. There was no one to talk to about those feelings and in search of opportunities to meet others like me I put myself in harm’s way. Much later I realised that exploration could have resulted in a far less friendly encounter with my parents’ friend. Luckily for all of us that never happened.

Within a few years I was a student at Lancaster University, and it was there in January 1980 that I came out to the world around me. I was 18 and had first revealed my sexuality to a school friend the previous summer after a long evening of procrastination about a secret I knew I needed to share but didn’t know how. Fortunately for me, my friend was having none of it and in the end, I had to cough up. Even more fortunately he didn’t walk away – and we are still friends.

A year after my coming out I attended my first gay rights demonstration marching through the streets of Manchester on a dreich February day. I still have photos of that day including the faces of onlookers and the police presence around us. My abiding memory of that presence is the sense that the police were there not to protect us but rather to protect those onlookers from us.

Five years later in December 1986, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester referred to people with HIV and AIDS as “swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making”. My late partner whom I had met in 1985 was HIV positive. A decade on from everyday encounters with my friendly local PC, I had every reason to fear. The police were not on our side.

Fast forward another four decades to June 2024 and I am sat at my first board meeting as a newly appointed member of the Scottish Police Authority. Just the weekend before I had been at Pride Edinburgh and observed low key, friendly policing a world away from what I had witnessed in Manchester more than 40 years earlier. During the interview for the role, I had spoken with pride of my record of activism on gay rights in the 1980s and 90s.

On the screen saver of the police laptop in front of me is a message about homophobic abuse. As part of her report the Chief Constable refers to Police Scotland’s recognition of Pride month including the flying of the Pride flag at Scotland’s police headquarters. Just a month earlier she had issued an apology to the LGBTQI+ communities of Scotland for the pain caused through injustices, including policing’s role in enforcing laws which criminalised love and identity.

As I sat at the meeting taking it all in, I couldn’t help but reflect that it had been a long way to here. That young activist could not have imagined he would one day be wearing a police authority badge. Still less the message, the flag, the apology. The latter coming a year on from a historic acknowledgement of institutional racism and discrimination by the Chief Constable’s predecessor. And yet I could not avoid also reflecting that there was a distance to travel yet. We were far from job done.

During Pride month last year, I attended an event hosted by the Scottish LGBTI Police Association on behalf of the Scottish Police Authority board. I was proud to do so as a gay man with a long history of activism. I acknowledged that while my role on the board was not that of an activist my commitment to LGBTQI+ equality remains undimmed, at the core of who I am.

As board members our accountability is ultimately to the Scottish public and to ensuring its trust and confidence in policing. And we are aware from recent user experience data that despite the undoubted progress which has been made in recent years LGBT people have the lowest level of satisfaction with Police Scotland among those with protected characteristics.

But we also know that the presence of LGBT people within Police Scotland’s workforce is increasing. And that as part of its Policing Together programme, Police Scotland has established an LGBTQI+ Citizens panel to deliberate on the question “What does Police Scotland need to change and do to build greater trust and confidence amongst LGBTQI+ people?”

Sixteen recommendations have been prioritised by the panel covering a wide range of issues including training and education; transparency, trust, and accountability; community engagement and visibility; internal police culture and feeling safe, seen, and welcome when interacting with police. Police Scotland is committed to mapping the recommendations to the Policing Together Implementation plan as appropriate and responding to the panel.

Not long after I moved to Edinburgh in 2003, I had to report a crime committed against me at a local police station and in doing so reveal my sexuality because it was relevant to what had happened. It was not a moment which left me confident policing was yet fully on my side.

In 2022 I was subject to unprovoked homophobic verbal abuse by a passer-by on the streets of Edinburgh’s Newtown. Although I shared my story with the media to raise awareness, I didn’t report it to the police. I wondered later whether I should have and what might have happened if I had.

My hope is that my experience would have been different from that I had encountered in 2003. I cannot know for certain. But what I do know is that it is the kind of engagement that Police Scotland are undertaking with LGBTQI+ citizens which can build trust and confidence I could never have dreamt of on that first demonstration all those years ago.

Policing has come a long way. Symbols matter. But what really counts is the lived experience of people in communities. Our task now – together – is to ensure LGBTQI+ people feel safe in everyday life, confident that our police service is on their side whenever and wherever they need it.