San Francisco Pride interim Executive Director Suzanne Ford. Trans and BIPOC persons say, however, that the history of police aggression against their communities more than merits the bans. in a phone interview April 5, are ongoing.Īround the United States, Pride organizations have been wrestling with the same question, with many of the larger organizations electing to ban the presence of uniformed police officers in their parades, while offering compromises that rarely seem to ameliorate the feelings of the police they affect. Both the SDPD and the SDCSD announced they would not participate in this year's parade, according to the LGBTQ San Diego County News.įernando Lopez, the nonbinary executive director of San Diego Pride, said the news site's version of what happened at the meeting was completely incorrect.
It was one of a series of meetings organized by HSCC.Īccording to the story, the San Diego Pride board proffered a compromise that would have allowed both city and district attorneys, as well as members of the FBI, to march in the parade but would have required officers of the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department to march out of uniform wearing, instead, T-shirts that would have identified them as police officers.
The request for the ban had initially come from the LGBTQ Black Coalition, transgender, and BIPOC activists, reported LGBTQ San Diego County News. Paul's to discuss San Diego Pride's 2-year-old ban on police officers marching with their uniforms and guns in the annual San Diego Pride parade. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego March 23 underscores the challenges Pride organizations around the country are facing when it comes to whether or not they will allow uniformed police officers to participate in their annual parades.Īt that meeting, organized by San Diego Pride's Healing and Safer Communities Commission, LGBTQ bar and business owners members of the LGBTQ Black Coalition transgender and Black, Indigenous, and people of color activists community activists and leaders and "a top gay FBI agent" gathered at St. In Southern California, a meeting held at St. Police officers would be allowed to march out of uniform, according to SF Pride's policy. The 2021 Pride parade was canceled due to the COVID pandemic, meaning this year's event will be the first where the policy will be implemented. San Francisco Pride in September 2020 announced that the members of the Pride Alliance of the San Francisco Police Department would not be allowed to march in uniform going forward, as the Bay Area Reporter noted at the time. As San Francisco Pride looks to enforce for the first time its ban on police marching in uniform when the in-person event returns in June, other cities are also grappling with the issue.