New York (AP) – A New York City intersection is being renamed for a police sergeant who formed the first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender police fraternal organization.
Sergeant Charles H. Cochrane Way was unveiled June 17 in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. Cochrane is believed to have been the first New York City police officer to come out as openly gay in 1981.
He founded the Gay Officers Action League a year later with 11 members. The group met for the first time at a church at the intersection of Washington Place and the Avenue of the Americas. Fellow officers needed to guard the meeting after someone threatened to blow up the church.
Cochrane died in 2008.
The Gay Officers Action League now has more than 2,000 members across the U.S.
