NO COPS AT PRIDE

No Cops

at Pride!

Words by Michael Petrilli (he/him)

TW: violence, DV and SA

The featured picture was on the centrefold of this very student magazine in 1973, and it was for an article on the first ever Pride March in Adelaide that occurred in that same year. Next year will mark 50 years since that first Pride. How then in those fifty years has Pride shaped itself and influenced society and culture, and should we ask ourselves if everyone is welcome at Pride, a time and place focussed on inclusivity?

I think it’s important when considering this to return to the origins of Pride. Where does Pride even come from? As queer people and through our lived experiences we have all at some point in our lives faced discrimination based on our queerness. In a general sense this is where Pride comes from - fighting against that hatred and standing up for the right to be who we are. This sort of pride and energy was built up throughout queer history, and there are many instances of queer fightback throughout that history, but it perhaps most famously culminated and erupted at the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The riots to some, mark the beginning of an entirely organised and united front in fighting for queer liberation. It is very important I believe to understand the pretext and environment surrounding the Stonewall Riots in answering who Pride is for.

At that time, and for a long time before that, gay and lesbian culture was pushed underground and hidden behind closed doors; anti-homosexual laws ensured this was so. The oppression of queer people was an active agenda of the state for most of twentieth century, and particularly in 60’s New York where it was heavily enforced under the mayorship of Robert Wagner fighting against all forms of counterculture. Bar licenses were revoked, and police dressed in plain clothes would actively entrap men at bars and even public spaces. The Stonewall Riot itself was the result of a botched police raid at the Stonewall Inn. Normally gay bars would be tipped off about upcoming raids. This time they were not, and so the bar patrons were not ready for the disturbing happenings of a police raid. Unprepared, patrons became agitated and concerned and eventually after a crowd grew outside the bar and after police started to assault bystanders, a riot broke out. The riot itself had no political subtext, it was rather people reacting to being harassed by cops. There were no chants, no signs, no marching, simply a raw reaction to police brutality. What sparked from it though was perhaps the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement. The following night the riots continued, this time it was political, queers, allies, and anti-police bystanders actively revolted against police brutality and chants of gay power echoed through the streets that night. Within months gay rights magazines were established and within years gay rights groups started organising and agitating all around the world.

The oppressors and instigators of those first riots were cops. While they may have not been the architects of that oppression, they were the enforcers of it. This highlights the role cops play in society; the ruling class designs the rules of oppression, and the police enforce them. One must truly consider if cops are really here to help you. I would argue that cops do not prevent crime - take for example burglaries, by the time you call 000 your house has already been robbed and the only help you are offered is the bureaucratic process of reporting crime. And cops are notoriously terrible at responding to this, especially when it comes to women reporting cases of sexual assault and violence. Study after study finds that victims reporting sexual assault crimes to police results in secondary victimisation, which is where cops overwhelmingly blame the victims, stigmatise women, and flat out do not believe their claims (Moore and Baker, 2018, 3419-3438), (Murphy-Oikonen and Egan, 2022, 773-795). People often argue in defence of police behaviour, saying that it is simply a few rotten apples in the bunch, and that most of them are good and join the force out of a genuine desire to help people. Unfortunately cops in their private lives are c*nts - after spending their day doing f*ck all to help victims of violence and bashing in the heads of indigenous children, at home they continue that violence and become the perpetrators of domestic violence. Studies show that 40% of families of cops face domestic violence. That means nearly 1 in 2 cops is violent against their family (Pidel, 2022, 36865). Sadly, the cops themselves uphold this system of violence in their ranks. Disgracefully only 1 in 3 cops arrested for domestic violence are actually convicted (Pidel, 2022, 36865).

You would have thought that in the 50+ years since the Stonewall Riots, police would have learnt not to be violent against queer people. Sadly, every year at many Pride Marches across the globe, cops continue to bash queers. On the 52nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York at a peaceful post-march hang out at Washington Park, the NYPD perpetrated brutal violence against innocent bystanders (Cozzarelli, 2021, 3-3). This violence by police is not limited to the US, it happens right here in Australia. In 2013 at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras,

an 18 year old marcher was videoed being thrown around like a rag doll by police officers and eventually smashing his head into the pavement. It took three years for the police to drop their charges against the marcher, and sadly no police officers were even reprimanded for their brutality. Closer to home here in Adelaide, we have the famous case of George Duncan, a Law Professor at this very University. Three cops brutally assaulted Professor Duncan and tossed him into the River Torrens, leaving him to drown. The proceeding investigation found that this behaviour by SAPOL was common at that time and additionally, it also came out that there was a concerted effort on the part of SAPOL to: one, cover up the crime and two, influence a juror to find the defendants not guilty. To this day SAPOL offers no apology on the case, admits no guilt and at every opportunity affirms their false support for the LGBTQI+ community and shamefully they say the case is still open. The only investigation I see needing to be done is into the complete corruption of SAPOL. Despite all this, we still accept cops’ presence at Pride events across the world, we happily allow them to make floats and march alongside us, some of us even work as cops or within the police system. Cops have a violent history with the LGBTI+ community, and their support is solely dependent on our current legal status. In a post Roe v. Wade overturning world, we know better than ever that hard-fought rights are not a guarantee. We do not need conditional allies who have historically brutalised us and continue to do so, whose surface level allyship is dependent on whether or not we are legally protected. All I hope to achieve in this article is to, at the very least, make you consider cops’ roles in society and their oppressive nature. As queer people we must continue the fight for our own liberation and support the liberation of all people under the oppressive system that we live in. References

Cozzarelli, T. 2021. Cops Brutalize, Arrest Queer Marchers on Anniversary of Stonewall Uprising. Turning the Tide, 33, p. 3-3.

Moore, B. M. & Baker, T. 2018. An exploratory examination of college students’ likelihood of reporting sexual assault to police and university officials: Results of a self-report survey. Journal of interpersonal violence, 33, p. 3419-3438.

Murphy-Oikonen, J. & Egan, R. 2022. Sexual and gender minorities: reporting sexual assault to the police. Journal of homosexuality, 69, p. 773-795.

Pidel, J. 2022. Protecting Victims Of PolicePerpetrated Domestic Violence. Government Law Review, 15, p. 36865.