Police officers marching in the Victoria Pride Parade on July 7 will not be wearing their uniforms, at the request of the parade’s organizers.
After consultation with the LGBTQ2+ community, the Victoria Pride Society heard that some community members, especially those from marginalized groups such as racial minorities, find that the participation of uniformed officers makes the parade unwelcoming and inaccessible.
“This is an issue we’ve been hearing a lot about,” said Scott Daly, communications co-ordinator for the Victoria Pride Society. “This decision is not a statement on individual LGBT and ally officers that want to participate. This is trying to make Victoria pride more accessible to everyone.”
Daly said the society consulted with over 500 people through an online survey and small group meetings to gauge the community’s feelings on the matter. Nearly everyone who weighed in agreed that there is more work to do to help marginalized members of the LGBTQ2+ community feel safe and included, Daly said.
Victoria is the latest Canadian city to grapple with how to include police officers in a pride parade. Officers have been banned from participating in the Toronto event since 2017, following a sit-in held by Black Lives Matter that temporarily stopped the parade the previous year. The demonstration sparked a national conversation about the presence of uniformed officers during pride events. Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver have all banned officers from marching in uniform. Edmonton’s pride festival was cancelled this year after demonstrators stopped last year’s parade and called for police to be uninvited.
“Mostly it’s been positive,” Daly said of the community’s response to the decision. “There are community members that are upset, and we do recognize those community members that are very upset. At the end of the day, I think we want to move forward as a community.”
Police officers march in the parade as part of the Greater Victoria Police Diversity Action Committee. Daly said officers are still welcome to participate as long as they are not dressed in uniform.
He also said the Police Diversity Action Committee was happy to accommodate the community’s request. “They’re happy to show their solidarity, and they’re happy to participate however the community would like,” Daly said.
Police representatives have been participating in the parade for more than a decade. At last year’s parade, department chiefs and LGBTQ2+ officers were permitted to wear their uniforms if they chose to.
Scott Treble, who co-ordinated the Police Diversity Action Committee’s participation in the parade from 2014 to 2018, estimated about 15 to 20 officers marched with the committee last year and eight to 10 of those wore uniforms. The number of police cars in the parade was reduced from five or six in previous years to just one vintage car last year.
Treble said his group is pleased to continue to be included and understands that there is more work to be done to build relationships between police and the LGBTQ2+ community.
“The GVPDAC is thankful to have this opportunity to walk in the parade and celebrate, and are committed to moving our community forward,” he said.
The Victoria Police Department was unavailable for comment.
Pride Week starts on Sunday in Victoria and finishes with the parade on July 7.
On Friday morning, Mayor Lisa Helps held a flag-raising ceremony outside of Victoria City Hall to kick off the week’s events. Helps and city councillors raised the rainbow pride flag on the flagpole outside City Hall’s Pandora Avenue entrance. Eight other flags — each representing a group within the LGBTQ2+ community — are hanging above the entrance to the building until the end of Pride Week. Last year, the city raised five flags, including the rainbow pride flag, the transgender flag, the genderqueer flag, the non-binary flag and the two-spirit flag. This year, the asexual flag, the bisexual flag, the pansexual flag and the polysexual flag are also included.
The week leading up to the parade includes pride events like a baseball game in drag, a party at the Royal B.C. Museum and a “big gay dog walk.”
Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York, which protested a police raid of a gay bar and is widely considered to be the catalyst in the fight for LGBTQ2+ rights in the U.S.
