Commissioner
William Bratton
New
York City Police Department
1
Police Plaza
New
York, NY 10007
By
email to: dcpi@nypd.org
By
fax to: (646) 610-8795
|
Commissioner
Salvatore Cassano
New
York City Fire Department
9 MetroTech Center
Brooklyn,
NY 11201
By
email to: fdnyopi@fdny.nyc.gov
By
fax to: 718-999-0033
|
Feb. 20,
2014
Dear
Commissioner Bratton and Commissioner Cassano,
As you
know, the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade has excluded lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and queer-identified groups and individuals since 1991.
The parade’s avowed bigotry has been a constant source of pain and protest for
the LGBTQ community. After the NYC Human Rights Commission found in 1992 that a
public parade could not discri minate, the parade organizers set out to preserve their
bigoted message by recasting the parade as an act of “private, religious”
speech. They have endowed the parade with a clear and deliberate anti-gay
message, affirmed first in court in 1993, and every year subsequently in
response to inquiries from media and elected officials.
The
homophobic message of the parade is so indisputable that Mayor de Blasio has
said he will not march, and several leading government ministers in Ireland
have announced that they can no longer justify Irish government participation
in the parade, and support a boycott.
We
recognize that the parade organizers have established a legal right to the
exclusionary procession they have characterized as private, religious, and
anti-gay. However, New York City Human Rights Law prohibits the City from
approving or joining in such discrimination. Accordingly, we ask that you
uphold City law by taking immediate action to prohibit uniformed NYPD and FDNY
officers from marching in the parade, and to prohibit use of departmental resources
for organizing participation in the parade.
The
parade is so intrinsically, essentially homophobic that the presence of
identifiable LGBTQ people – whether an Irish LGBTQ cultural group marching with
a banner bearing the group’s name, or an individual identified in any way as a
non-straight person – is rejected by organizers as anathema to the parade’s
message.
Yet
uniformed officers of the NYPD and FDNY are a main feature of the parade,
marching in their thousands every year. They march with top brass of both
departments. They march in dozens of departmentally sanctioned contingents,
both official and fraternal. They march early in the parade line-up, in spots
reserved for groups who hold close relationships with the parade organizers.
The meaning we receive is clear: the NYPD and FDNY support the parade’s
religious, anti-gay message, and the parade’s injury to the LGBTQ community is
not deemed important.
This
official endorsement of one of the country’s largest displays of homophobia has
annually compounded the discrimination and bigotry many LGBTQ people have
experienced in dealings with the NYPD, and it resonates with ongoing
allegations of discrimination plaguing the FDNY. Those of us who have protested
the parade’s anti-gay message over the last two decades have had particular
confirmation of NYPD and FDNY members’ homophobia as they have marched past us
shouting anti-gay slogans – or as police have arrested protesters while
shouting epithets and worse. These instances are impossible to accept as
individual behavior of “bad apples” while both departments are so thoroughly
embedded in the parade.
In the
broader LGBTQ community, and in other communities with histories of police
discrimination in particular, witnessing the NYPD’s enthusiastic participation
in this bigoted parade exacerbates the fear that the police are not interested
in serving all of us. The
consequence to a vulnerable community arising from the appearance that a city’s
uniformed services endorse a message of bigotry has been eloquently described
by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Pappas v.
Giuliani, 290
F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002):
“The effectiveness of a city's police department depends importantly on
the respect and trust of the community and on the perception in the community
that it enforces the law fairly, even-handedly, and without bias. If the police
department treats a segment of the population of any race, religion, gender,
national origin, or sexual preference, etc., with contempt, so that the particular
minority comes to regard the police as oppressor rather than protector, respect
for law enforcement is eroded and the ability of the police to do its work in
that community is impaired.”
For both
the NYPD and FDNY, the annual insistence on marching – over the outcry of
communities they’re sworn to serve – deepens mistrust in the City’s commitment
to its own human rights law. Individual officers in their private capacities
may have the right to participate in such events, but the NYPD and FDNY must
withdraw their official imprimatur from the parade.
We ask
the courtesy of a response before February 26th, 2014. Please reply
to the address below.
Attached
please find this group’s letter to Mayor de Blasio, signed by over 200 New York
City community organizations, public officials, community activists, and civil
rights attorneys.
Sincerely,
Gabrielle
Cryan
Bill
Dobbs
Jennifer
Flynn
Emmaia
Gelman
Andy Humm
Amanda
Lugg
John
Francis Mulligan
Ann
Northrop
Pauline
Park
Allen
Roskoff
for the
Ad Hoc Committee To Ban NYPD & FDNY Participation in Discriminatory Parades
Please
direct your reply to:
Alan Levine, Esq.
99 Hudson St.
14th Fl, 10013
Tel: (212) 739-7506 // Fax: (212) 431-4276
Email: *****
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