NYC Pride parade bans police Gay officers disheartened

Posted by gathan on May 16th, 2021

Organizers of New York City’s Pride events said Saturday they are banning police and other law enforcement from marching in their huge annual parade until at least 2025 and will also seek to keep on-duty officers a block away from the celebration of LGBTQ people and history.

In their statement, NYC Pride urged members of law enforcement to “acknowledge their harm and to correct course moving forward.”

“The sense of safety that law enforcement is meant to provide can instead be threatening, and at times dangerous, to those in our community who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason,” the group said.
It will also increase the event’s security budget to boost the presence of community-based security and first responders while reducing the police department’s presence.

Police will provide first response and security “only when absolutely necessary as mandated by city officials,” the group said, adding it hoped to keep police officers at least one city block away from event perimeter areas where possible.

Word of the ban came out Friday when the Gay Officers Action League said in a release it was disheartened by the decision.

The group called the ban an “abrupt about-face” and said the decision “to placate some of the activists in our community is shameful.”

The parade is scheduled for June after the coronavirus prevented many Pride events worldwide last year, including in New York which instead hosted virtual performances in front of masked participants and honored front-line workers in the pandemic crisis.

The disruptions frustrated activists who had hoped to collectively mark the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride parades and marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in 1970.

Those marches came a year after the 1969 uprising outside Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, in response to a police raid. The uprising is largely credited with fueling the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

Pride season occurs this year amid activism inspired by the response to racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death last year at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

Pride NYC’s announcement Saturday follows a division among organizers in recent years in planning for celebrations of LGBTQ pride in New York City.

In 2019, there were two marches in Manhattan after some in the community concluded that the annual parade had become too commercialized. The Queer Liberation March aimed for a protest vibe, saying the main Pride march was too heavily policed by the same department that raided Stonewall a half century earlier.

The New York Police Department commissioner apologized for the raid during a briefing in 2019, calling it “wrong, plain and simple.”

Detective Sophia Mason, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department, said on Saturday the department’s “annual work to ensure a safe, enjoyable Pride season has been increasingly embraced by its participants.”

She added: “The idea of officers being excluded is disheartening and runs counter to our shared values of inclusion and tolerance. That said, we’ll still be there to ensure traffic safety and good order during this huge, complex event.”

An active-duty Marine Corps officer seen on camera scuffling with a police officer and helping other members of the pro-Trump mob force their way into the Capitol on Jan. 6 has been charged in the riot, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Maj. Christopher Warnagiris, 40, of Woodbridge, Virginia, is the first active-duty service member to be charged in the insurrection, the Department of Justice said. Warnagiris, who has been stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico since last summer, was arrested Thursday in Virginia, prosecutors said.

He faces charges including assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and obstruction of justice.

Warnagiris, a field artillery officer who joined the Marine Corps in 2002 and completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was ordered released after a brief appearance before a federal judge in Virginia. It was not immediately clear Thursday if he had an attorney to comment on his behalf.

Warnagiris, who was wearing a dark jacket, military green backpack and black and tan gloves, pushed past police officers standing guard outside Capitol doors and forced his way into the building, according to court documents. He then appeared to use his body to keep the door partially open and helped pull others inside, authorities said.

A U.S. Capitol Police officer, who moved between Warnagiris and the crowd outside, tried to pull the door shut while Warnagiris fought to keep it open, court documents say. The officer told the FBI that he had tried to push Warnagiris out of the way and the man shoved him back, authorities said.

A former coworker who recognized Warnagiris in photos reported him to the FBI in March, court documents say. The next day, FBI agents went to his military command and showed pictures to someone he works with, who identified the man in the photos as Warnagiris.

The Marine Corps said in a statement that “there is no place for racial hatred or extremism” in its ranks.

“Those who can’t value the contributions of others, regardless of background, are destructive to our culture, our warfighting ability, and have no place in our ranks,” it said.

More than 400 people have been charged so far in the siege. Among them are four members or reservists of the National Guard and about 40 military veterans, according to the Justice Department.

The charges against the rioters range from misdemeanor offenses, such as disorderly conduct in a restricted building, to serious conspiracy cases against members and associates of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups.

A federal judge refused Thursday to free a Texas man whom authorities have accused of planning an attack on a social media company’s facility after he returned home from storming the U.S. Capitol.

Guy Wesley Reffitt, one of more than 400 federal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, has been identified by prosecutors as a member of a militia-style group linked to the anti-government Three Percenters extremist movement.

Reffitt bragged about his actions in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 during a Zoom meeting with two other militia members four days after the siege, according to prosecutors. A recording of the meeting obtained by investigators captured Reffitt discussing a plan to attack “mainstream media,” “Silicon Valley,” and “Big Tech,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say Reffitt specifically targeted a “prominent” social media company’s facility in Texas. During Thursday’s remote hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler didn’t name the company that Reffitt allegedly targeted but said it had servers near his home in Wylie, a Dallas suburb.