NYC pride ban on police uniforms reflects tensions

For decades when LGBTQ people have gathered to take part in New York City's Pride march, they've worn anything and everything imaginable, no holds barred.

But soon, there's going to be something off-limits _ the uniforms of the New York Police Department.

As Pride weekend approaches, the recent decision from organizers of New York City's event to ban LGBTQ police officers from marching wearing their uniforms starting next year, due to concerns from other parts of the LGBTQ community about policing, has put a spotlight on issues of identity and belonging, power and marginalization.

For some, the presence of uniformed LGBTQ police marchers is an expression of hard-fought diversity and inclusion that should be celebrated, a hallmark of how integral LGBTQ people are in the fabric of American life. The decision to forbid uniforms is a slap in the face, they say.

But New York City Pride's global high profile and the current climate around policing spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement are bringing a bigger megaphone to the issue.

Andre Thomas, co-chair of Heritage of Pride, said the process that led to that ban started last year.

There was no New York City Pride in-person event because of the pandemic, but Reclaim Pride did hold a march, and at the end, police arrested and pepper-sprayed some demonstrators.

That negative interaction led to LGBTQ community pressure on Heritage to respond forcefully to police mistreatment, Thomas said, which led to internal conversations as well as conversations with the city and the NYPD about the level of police security staffing at NYC Pride events and how that could be de-escalated.

Thomas said those discussions also involved reaching out to the Gay Officers Action League, the organization for LGBTQ police officer. GOAL members have been marching in NYC Pride in uniform since 1996, often to cheers.

But there are also those members of the LGBTQ community who are not cheering, who have a much more contentious relationship with police, Thomas said.

"We realized that for many people in the community, that uniform is triggering, that creates a sense of being unsafe and unwelcome," he said.

The organization's executive board had to "weigh the need for one group to wear a uniform for a couple of hours vs. the need for someone who's marginalized feeling safe and welcome," he said.

They spoke to GOAL, and that organization announced the ban before Heritage did, putting out a release saying they were being kicked out of the parade, and that the decision made "in order to placate some of the activists in our community is shameful."

Ana Arboleda, vice-president at GOAL and a sergeant with the NYPD, has marched in the parade several times during her years in the department and is adamantly against the ban.

"Why should I have to hide a part of me," she asked. "Why should I have to take off (the uniform) as if I'm ashamed?"

Asked about the feelings of those who feel targeted by police, she acknowledged that some did have negative interactions, but that those were outweighed by people who had good experiences with law enforcement.

"We have to think and see the bigger picture for what it is," she said. A small number of bad experiences "doesn't cancel out millions of positive experiences."