San Francisco police officers said Monday they will not march in the city's LGBTQ Pride parade this year, an act of protest after the event's board of directors asked them not to wear uniforms.
The clash between police and Pride organizers followed a year and half of negotiations, in which both sides aimed to find common ground after a tense confrontation between police and demonstrators during the last parade in 2019. These talks grew complicated with the 2020 murder of George Floyd, and ongoing introspection among members of Pride who debated how to honor the event's legacy of activism.
Originally, the board voted to bar law enforcement uniforms in 2020, not knowing that a new wave of COVID cases would thwart the parade in 2021. They voted to reinstate the decision this year, following on the heels of Pride parades in other cities — including New York City and Toronto — that have enacted similar, equally controversial bans.
With a month remaining until San Francisco's parade, friction is escalating and officers are urging Pride's board to reverse course.
"We, the police officers of the San Francisco Police Officers Pride Alliance, stand firm in our decision that we will not be pushed back into the closet," representatives of LGBTQ officers wrote in a joint statement with the San Francisco Fire Department and LGBTQ members of the San Francsico Sheriff's Office, who also declined to march out of solidarity.
Pride officials have also asked sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement agencies not to wear uniforms, a reasonable concession, they said, to people who feel traumatized or intimidated by police. They did not extend the request to firefighters.
In spite of the restriction on participants, uniformed officers will be on-duty patrolling the parade route.
Throughout their joint statement, law enforcement and fire officials invoked language that cast the prohibition on uniforms as a form of oppression and discrimination, anathema to Pride's embrace of "radical inclusion," they wrote.
"This committee would not order the leather community to wear polyester at the parade. This committee would not order the drag community to wear flannel. But they have told us, peace officers, that if we wear our uniforms, we may not attend."
Such comparisons failed to sway Suzanne Ford, interim executive director of San Francisco Pride. Ford argued that "there is no equivalence" between the leather community and police officers. Ford also noted that Pride's board had welcomed law enforcement to wear some other type of outfit to represent their group, such as a T-shirt with an SFPD logo, so long as it wasn't an official uniform with a badge.
"We didn't ask anyone to hide, or not to denote who they were," Ford said. "We just did not want full uniforms, out of harm reduction to marginalized members of our community."
Like the members of the Officers Pride Alliance, Ford also emphasized "radical inclusion," though in a different sense: She felt the request to modify officers' garments would still accommodate them, while creating a more hospitable environment for people who feel mistreated by police. The 10-member board voted unanimously to approve this condition after a string of mostly amicable meetings between Pride officials and representatives of the officers' alliance, some of them facilitated by the mayor's office, according to Ford and others who attended.
"We've asked for this gesture, (which) would say to some members of our community who don't feel safe around police, that the police heard our concerns, and responded in a positive way," Ford said.
Organizers of Pride call the civilian dress code a compromise. Members of law enforcement view it as a punitive ban, undermining years of civil rights gains in public safety agencies that once tormented LGBTQ citizens.
Pride began in 1970 as a reaction to high-profile incidents of police violence, including the Compton Cafeteria riots that jolted San Francisco's Tenderloin district in 1966, and the Stonewall uprisings in New York City in 1969. But it's evolved into a big-tent festival with corporate sponsors, in an era when Police Departments have sought to incorporate more progressive views on gender and sexuality.
"The LGBTQ community understood that in order for policing to get better, it had to get more diverse," Officer Kathryn Winters said. A trans woman and lesbian, she joined San Francisco's department in 1998 but moved to Texas in 2006, where she began a period of advocacy work, including testifying to the state Senate against bathroom bills, she said.
Upon returning to San Francisco Police Department in 2018, Winters started teaching classes in the police academy on how to engage with the LGBTQ community. She also began walking a beat in the Castro, where she felt an emotional connection with homeless trans women who recognized her as an ally, she said.
"The first time I got to march (at Pride) as an out trans woman in uniform was in 2019," Winters said. "I got to march with my daughters. The impact it had on me when we turned the corner on Market Street, and I heard cheers from the crowd — it literally brought me to tears."
While Winters said she won't march in Pride if she's prohibited from wearing her uniform, she may help manage a police recruitment booth.
Ford, who is also a trans woman, said she views Winters as a sister, and understands that the officer's job encompasses part of her identity. But it doesn't need to be represented by a uniform, Ford and other Pride organizers insist.
"How about this year, let's wear some matching T-shirts, let's show the community you care, let's make sure you're there too, let's de-escalate," Ford said. "Let's find a way to be with each other on this special day."
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