Members of the LGBTQ community came to City Hall on Wednesday to recount their experiences on June 7 — the day of the Philadelphia Pride March and Festival — when police used barricades, horses, and motorcycles to disperse crowds in the Gayborhood.
Attendees described being pushed back and trapped by lines of cops, some of whom wore masks.
“I heard officers saying they were covering their faces because they didn’t want to be recognized for being in the Gayborhood,” said Jacen Bowman, president of Philly Black Pride. “I heard statements to the effect that, ‘I don’t want to be down here with these F-bombs.’”
Nearly two months after the confrontation, City Council spent nearly four hours hearing testimony from city officials, community leaders and residents who found themselves being herded onto Camac Street and other Center City corridors.
“I have seen these tactics many, many years ago in the early 90s, and they were rectified,” said Rue Landau, Council’s first openly LGBTQ member and the lawmaker who called for the hearing. “I was horrified to see them come back again.”
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel acknowledged a few missteps but largely defended his officers for using the tools at their disposal to break up a gathering that he presented as a budding public safety risk.
He said he had “no idea” why some officers were masked, which is a violation of department policy. Their conduct is being investigated internally, though he said only nine of the more than 550 officers deployed for Pride events donned facial coverings.
No one was tased, according to Bethel. At least one officer, he added, activated the device’s “Arc switch,” a warning function that sends out electrical sparks at the front of the weapon. The PPD has since amended its policies to prohibit arching, and the department is shifting to a new Taser that does not include the feature, Bethel testified.
He admitted that the barricades raised tensions and should have been removed.
This year’s Pride festival was relocated to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and Bethel told Council that law enforcement did not predict that large numbers of teenagers would begin congregating in the Gayborhood early in the afternoon, before the official event concluded.
Bethel’s presentation incorporated blurred videos that showed young people fighting and “taking over” a parking garage, in the area of 12th and Walnut streets. The PPD was concerned about a shooting or some other form of mass violence, such as a vehicle-ramming terror attack, he explained.
“I have a duty to not allow others to get victimized,” he said. “It’s not pretty when you move a crowd of young people, especially when they don’t want to move.”
Landau referred to Bethel’s comments as “both painful and perplexing” and questioned why police were not prepared for crowds to assemble in the Gayborhood, where Pride revelers have gathered for decades.
Bethel contended that there were no structured activities for people in the downtown neighborhood, a notion that was contested by Landau and LGBTQ organizers. Exchanges between the police chief and lawmakers, at times, grew heated.
“I would suggest that most people did not believe that you were there to protect them,” Landau said. “They were terrified. They were harassed. They were traumatized. This was not about protection.”
“I disagree with you,” Bethel cut in. “Do you want police there at all? Because that’s the question then, right?”
Landau asserted that the PPD has to have “an accountability that leads potentially to even an apology.”
“I don’t know that we’re at the place of apologizing,” Bethel told reporters following the hearing. “I think a lot of mistakes were made, and I admit those.
“I don’t want this to be boiled down to whether Kevin Bethel apologizes to the LGBTQ community. Clearly, I apologize to those folks who felt, who were traumatized and who felt that the actions on that day harmed them. That was not the intended purpose.”
Beyond the events of June 7, LGBTQ Philadelphians said the department has a long history of brutality and harassment toward the queer community, particularly affecting Black and brown individuals. That legacy continues to the present day, with increased scrutiny of LGBTQ businesses and nightlife patrons in the Gayborhood, they testified.
Mayor Cherelle Parker, in a statement Wednesday afternoon, said the experiences described in the hearing “show us we can and must do better.”
“We can and will learn from what occurred,” she continued.
Bethel suggested organizing two Pride events going forward — along the Parkway and in the Gayborhood.
“We did not go into Pride with the intention of those things happening,” he told lawmakers. “Next year, it will not be like that.”
MORE: Immigrant groups demand Parker enforce ‘ICE Out’ laws
