Intolerance Undercuts ‘City With A Heart’

The big news isn’t that Stephanie Lourenco quit the Coeur d’Alene Police Department last week after 10 years of sterling service.

The shocker is that he lasted more than five months after the day he came to work dressed in women’s clothing and revealed to his fellow officers the secret he had been hiding for years.

Lourenco, 33, is a transsexual planning a sex-change operation.

Officers at first thought Lourenco was joking. But it was true. Steve - a tough-as-nails former Marine reservist and self-defense expert - was becoming Stephanie. Last Dec. 10, Lourenco legally changed his name.

In the coming months, the long and arduous process of hormone therapy, counseling and electrolysis will be complete. Lourenco plans to fly to Thailand, where skilled surgeons will forever alter his gender. Lourenco is naturally “terrified,” but at the same time looks forward to finishing the transformation to the gender he believes he should have been all along.

As a transsexual police officer in conservative Coeur d’Alene, however, the emotional pain Lourenco experienced was probably deeper than anything to be found on an operating table. The public servant was essentially made an outcast by the rank and file who had previously been his friends and comrades.

What a shame. In its stand against North Idaho’s white supremacists, Coeur d’Alene billed itself as the “City with a Heart.” A place of tolerance where diversity is accepted.

Yet despite having the full support of Chief Dave Scates and an administrator or two, Stephanie Lourenco found the Coeur d’Alene Police Department became a pretty heartless place.

The cops all had their reasons:

Some despise what Lourenco is doing on religious grounds. Others are embarrassed and believe he turned the department into a laughingstock. Then there are those who simply can’t get past the strangeness of it all.

Married, Lourenco plans to remain with his wife and children after the operation. His wife, who asked to not be identified, says she loves her husband regardless of his sexual identity.

And though transsexualism is rare, it is not as rare as one might suppose. According to psychologists, one in 30,000 males decide to have a sex-change operation.

“How can people say these things about someone they care about?” Lourenco wonders of the ridicule being spread about him behind his back. “I was socially excluded. No one ever asked me to join them on a break.

“I feel sorry for that group at work. I wish they could grow, but they can’t. They’re stuck.”

Lourenco isn’t going away mad. Or with any sense of defeat.

The officer proved that his transsexualism didn’t interfere with being a fine police officer. He worked patrol, handled accident scenes and dealt with the public. Just like before.

Lourenco’s police skills have always been exemplary. He was a DARE officer in Coeur d’Alene schools. He helped establish Block Watch programs. The 5-foot-5, well-muscled officer taught many North Idaho cops how to protect themselves.

Stephanie “is an excellent employee,” says Coeur d’Alene Police Lt. Ron Hotchkiss. “I think it did him well to stay and stabilize and get a history” of working a police job as a woman.

Lourenco takes with him a lot of good memories and many accomplishments. He soon will graduate from Lewis-Clark State College with a communications degree. After the surgery, she hopes to find a job with a more open-minded police department, possibly in Seattle or Portland.

“I pretty much reached my level for intolerance” at the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, Lourenco adds. But “I feel good. They can call me a freak or a fairy or whatever they want. But nobody can say that I’m not a cop.”