Organizers of the Pride Day events in New York banned police and other law enforcement from marching in their huge annual event until at least 2025 and also they will seek to keep officers on duty one block from the celebration that commemorates people from the LGBTQ community and their history.
In your statement, NYC Pride urged members of law enforcement to “acknowledge their harm and correct the course in the future. “
“The sense of security that law enforcement is supposed to provide can instead be threatening and sometimes dangerous for those in our community who are often attacked with force excessive and / or without reason”Said the group.
Also increase the event security budget to boost the presence of security and first aid personnel community, while reducing the presence of the police department.
Police will provide first response and security “only when absolutely necessary, as required by city officials, “the group clarified, adding that it hoped to keep police officers at least one block from the perimeter areas of the event when possible.
News of the ban broke yesterday when the Gay Officers Action League said in a statement that she was disheartened by the decision.
The group called the ban an “abrupt change.” and said the decision “to placate some of the activists in our community is shameful.”
The parade is scheduled for June, after coronavirus prevented many Pride Day events around the world in 2020, including in New York, which instead staged virtual performances in front of masked participants and honored front-line workers in the health crisis.
The disruptions frustrated activists who hoped to collectively commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride parades and marches In Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, in 1970.
Those marches took place a year after the confrontation between police and people from the gay community in front of the Stonewall Inn bar in Manhattan, in response to a police raid.
Pride season occurs this year amid activism inspired by the response to the racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020 at the hands of the police in Minneapolis.
The announcement of Pride NYC follows a split among organizers, in recent years, in planning LGBTQ pride celebrations in New York.
In 2019, there were two marches in Manhattan after some community members concluded that the annual parade it had become too commercial. The Queer Liberation March pointed to an atmosphere of protest, saying that the main Pride march was overly policed by the same department that raided Stonewall half a century earlier.
The commissioner of the New York Police Department apologized for the raid during a briefing in 2019, calling it “wrong, plain and simple”.
Detective Sophia Mason, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department, said “the department’s annual work to ensure a safe and enjoyable Pride season has been increasingly embraced by its participants.”
“The idea of officers being excluded is daunting and runs counter to our shared values of inclusion and tolerance. Having said that, we will still be there to ensure traffic safety and good order during this event huge and complex, “he added.
AESC
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