Toronto police drop bid to join Pride march amid push to improve LGBTQ relations

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For the second year in a row, Toronto Police will not march in the city’s Pride parade after Chief Mark Saunders said he would respect​ a request to withdraw in the spirit of rebuilding relations with the LGBTQ community.

“Hopefully this moves us forward in an important way,” Chief Saunders said in a statement released on Tuesday morning after a public call by Pride Toronto and other community groups asking the police to pull their application.

Negotiations between Pride and police have been hampered for months by community frustrations over the investigation into alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, who faces six first-degree murder charges, as well as anger over police handling of the cases of two women who were reported missing from Toronto’s Gay Village and later found dead.

Uniformed police were barred from marching in last year’s Pride parade after organizers endorsed demands from protesters with Black Lives Matter who had blocked the parade the year before.

Mike McCormack, the head of the Toronto Police Association, said he was disappointed in the chief’s decision. He said some Toronto officers may march again in New York’s Pride parade instead, as they did last year.

“We understand the frustration around the McArthur investigation, we get that,” Mr. McCormack said. “In terms of the relationship, it’s not perfect. Yes, we need to do things better. But, again, we find ourselves in the same spot we were last year. It’s sort of driving the wedge in further.”

Pride’s executive director, Olivia Nuamah, said that her organization, as well as several other community groups, had all come to the same conclusion that police had not done enough to rebuild trust with the community despite months of dialogue. The breaking point was an insistence by police that they be allowed to march in uniform with their firearms.

Ms. Nuamah said her organization’s concern is the same one that was articulated by Black Lives Matter two years ago: “You don’t take black bodies seriously enough.”

Toronto Mayor John Tory, who warned last year that police must be welcomed back into Pride for 2018, had initially been optimistic about discussions between the two sides.

“Other circumstances arose, tragic circumstances that deeply affected the feelings of this community and deeply affected some of their perspectives about policing,” Mr. Tory told reporters on Tuesday. “And I think that now what has to happen is for those discussions to continue.”

The mayor said he saw no reason for a repeat of the day-long debate last May at City Hall over whether Pride should lose its $260,000 city grant in retaliation for excluding uniformed police. That motion, which Mr. Tory did not support, failed 27-17.

The city councillor who championed last year’s motion, Etobicoke’s John Campbell, said he has met with Ms. Nuamah and told her he would not reintroduce the idea.

“I think people are feeling that they were not supported by the police. And that’s not to say that the police didn’t do their job. But there is going to be an investigation. ... And you know, maybe there were some prejudices at play,” Mr. Campbell said. “City hall forcing their hand is not going to solve anything.”

Councillor Jon Burnside, a former police officer and a member of Mr. Tory’s executive committee who supported Mr. Campbell’s defunding motion last year, said he was unlikely to support the idea this time around: “I understand how emotions would be raw and that the community would not necessarily want to celebrate alongside police.”

Mr. Burnside also said that Chief Saunders had exacerbated tensions, including with comments he made to The Globe and Mail in February that appeared to blame civilians for failing to provide tips about Mr. McArthur: “There have been enough missteps by the chief of police, in my opinion.”

However, Etobicoke Councillor Stephen Holyday, one of Mr. Tory’s deputy mayors, said he was open to once again supporting a motion that would strip city funding from a police-free Pride: “Like last year, it seems to be enveloped in politics. And I don’t think that’s where tax money should be put.”

Local LGBTQ community advocate Nicki Ward said she questions the wisdom of inviting the police back to the parade in the first place, and Pride’s decision to publicly request the service withdraw its application. “It seems to be adding unnecessary levels of drama to an already difficult situation,” she said. There are bigger issues between the community and the police than just the one day in June, she added.

“We have to find a 12-months-of-the-year solution, not a solution for Sunday, [June 24].”