No cops at Pride. Ever

Words: Eliel Cruz

On June 6, 2019, during the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, then-NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill apologised to the LGBTQIA+ community for the raids that regularly took place at bars that let same-sex couples dance and gender-transgressive people as they were inside the doors. 

“The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong – plain and simple,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said during a press event in the lead-up to World Pride in New York City. “The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive and for that, I apologise. I vow to the LGBTQ that this would never happen in NYPD 2019.” 

The very next day, on June 7, 2019, reports of the death while on Rikers Island of Afro-Latinx trans woman Layleen Polanco would break. Her time on Rikers Island stemmed from a 2017 prostitution charge in which undercover NYPD Vice Squad officers criminalised Layleen not in a dissimilar fashion to what the queer and trans people at Stonewall Inn faced. Only a few months before Layleen died on Riker’s Island, a Black gay man, Kawaski Trawick, was cooking in the apartment when NYPD arrived and, in under 112 seconds, shot and killed him. To many of us, privy to or impacted directly by the NYPD’s continued violence against LGBTQIA+ people, the apology was laughable.

Now, in 2025, NYPD Police Commissioner Tisch threw what amounted to a tantrum in a press conference condemning Heritage of Pride’s, which coordinates NYC Pride, continued ban on LGBTQIA+ NYPD officers marching in the Pride parade, in uniform and with their weapons. This ban was enacted in 2021 in the aftermath of the large-scale uprisings across the country against police and racialised violence. The four-year ban went up for a re-vote, and Heritage of Pride, rightfully so, voted to uphold it again this year. 

“My hope is that [Heritage of Pride] will come to their senses because this March is not hiding who you are. It’s about being visible. And so many of our GOAL officers are just as proud of being a cop as they are about being LGBTQ+,” read a statement from Commissioner Tisch. 

What NYPD Police Commissioner Tisch conveniently, and perhaps intentionally, left out was that Heritage of Pride attempted to compromise: LGBTQIA+ officers could march out of uniform and unarmed, just like everyone else. “To be clear, GOAL is welcome to march without weapons like every other contingent, and we welcome them to join us as we march to protect trans youth, advocate for full equality and stand in proud defiance of the attacks our community is facing,” a statement from Heritage of Pride shares. Commissioner Tisch refused, insisting that the LGBTQIA+ cops be allowed to carry their guns. The ban was then voted on and upheld to the ire of a number of elected officials.  

Gov Kathy Hochul shared on social media that LGBTQIA+ NYPD officers “deserve to be seen, respected, and fully included. I am proud to stand with them.” According to the New York Times, Mayor Adams accused Heritage of Pride of “anti-law enforcement energy.” Congressman Ritchie Torres said the move to not allow cops to march with their guns was discriminatory. Attorney Tish James also echoed these sentiments and said: “Let them march.” All seemed to have forgotten or would like to rewrite the history of Pride.

If today’s Pride parades are meant to honour the legacy of the Stonewall Riots and those like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were at the uprisings and continued to fight against state criminalisation and police violence, cops should never be allowed to march in Pride. Not in uniform or without. Not in NYC or anywhere else.

Police will, of course, always be at the march in their uniforms and with their guns as is required by any permit. Despite the many ways LGBTQIA+ communities attempt to create safety at our events outside of policing, through safety teams and trained marshals, a group cannot opt out of police presence when applying for a permit. But as seen at the Brooklyn Liberation March: An Action For Black Trans Lives in 2020, where upwards of 20,000 people came out, which was un-permitted and lacked the police presence that normally would come from a permit, safety outside of policing is very much possible. Or through alternative Pride marches like Queer Liberation March, the anti-corporate, people-centered alternative to NYC Pride, where police involvement is mitigated and contained to keep people safe. This march has been safe for marchers every year since its inception, except in 2020, when police were the source of violence and attacked peaceful marchers. An apology for that police riot has yet to materialise. 

Despite what police supporters may attempt to push, equating sexual or gender identity, an innate part of you often known to yourself by a very young age, with being a police officer is not at all the same. This is a job, chosen in adulthood, fundamentally at odds with queerness itself in the ways that it is based on punishment and continues to be used as a means to criminalise queer and trans people today. 

LGBTQIA+ people are intimately aware of the violence policing brings. According to a report by the Williams Institute, LGBQ people are six times more likely to be stopped by police than the general public. In a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, the data underline what those in our community already know: While also being more likely to experience crime victimisation, LGBTQIA+ people are less likely to call the police, particularly because of the ways that police may discriminate, harass, or subject them to further violence. 

Police violence is not unique to New York City, but it is outsized as the NYPD is the largest police force in the country, and not at all in the past. The NYPD killing of Kawaski Trawick, just a few months before the apology by the NYPD commissioner, was egregious in its inhumanity. In under two minutes, officers, who were trained in de-escalation, escalated and killed Trawick when they saw him in his kitchen cooking with a knife. Just a few hours before, firefighters let a locked-out Trawick back into his apartment while he similarly held a knife. While firefighters saw someone in need, NYPD officers saw a threat. Five years later, an NYPD trial judge dismissed the substantiated fireable charges found by the independent civilian review board, due to missing the allotted window for most fireable charges, a timeframe missed due to the countless intentional delays by the NYPD to prolong and evade disciplinary action. 

Still, now, the same Police Commissioner who jumped to a press conference to shame Heritage of Pride for their decision, prolongs justice for one family and denies it for another. The family of Allan Feliz, will not receive justice due to Commissioner Tisch’s decision to ignore the recommendation by an NYPD trial judge to fire the officers responsible for his death. Similarly, the family of Win Rozario, a 19-year-old killed last year while in crisis, awaits accountability for the killing of their child. A much better use of NYPD Commissioner Tisch’s time than a press conference targeting NYC Pride officials would be to do everything in her power to provide police accountability to the victims and families of those lost to us due to reckless NYPD officers. 

Police violence is still rampant, but even if it weren’t, all Pride festivities around the globe should remember the ways queer and trans people were criminalized during the years of police raids, the laws outlawing intimacy between the same sex, and the policing of gender presentation. Pride should also make the connections in the ways the state continues to criminalise LGBTQIA+ people today, particularly now in the aftermath of a Supreme Court Decision to ban lifesaving healthcare to trans young people.

We should use Pride as remembrance of the Stonewall Riots as they were, not whitewashed to minimise the ways police harm our community. The Stonewall veterans and icons, some who are alive with us today like Miss Major, are staunchly against cops presence at our marches: “Most people don’t know what Pride is about. The anguish, and the hurt, and the reason why Pride started in the first place—it was an anti-cop event…” reads her biography, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary. “So no, they don’t need to be there. That’s where their loyalty lies. So stay the fuck away from me.” I echo Miss Major’s curt analysis: No Cops at Pride. Not this year, not ever.