HPD sergeant undergoing sex change

So here's one of the more interesting news stories from the weekend: the one about Sgt. Jack Oliver, the HPD officer who's undergoing a sex change. Oliver, who works out of the Fondren Division, has been with the force for almost 25 years; four months ago, he began taking hormone treatments, and that's what started getting him attention from his fellow cops. As KHOU reports, "he's soft-spoken, his hair is longer and his face appears smooth."

At first, Oliver only told his supervisors — including HPD Chief Harold Hurtt and Mayor Bill White — about his transition, but then he decided to go public. First, he began worrying that he'd be injured on duty and people would find out, but then a fellow officer threatened to expose him. "I reached the point where I could no longer deny it for myself and decided to do something for myself and stand up for what I feel is right," Oliver said, so he gave interviews to two TV stations — on KPRC, he appeared wearing a T-shirt that read "It's not nice to stare." Oliver explained that he's been struggling with his sexuality for a long time. The uncertainty led him to divorce his wife of 27 years and start writing books and poems under his female name, Julia. Since he decided to become a woman, he's encountered some resistance from fellow officers, but he said his supervisors support him.

Oliver's surgery is scheduled for next year. After he officially becomes Julia, he plans to return to HPD as a lady cop — he'll be the fifth officer in Texas to have a sex change and the 39th in the country, he said (tcops.org, a website for transgender police officers, counts nearly 400 members worldwide, though we gather those include people who haven't had sex-change operations, too).