Content warning: This article contains extensive discussion of police brutality and sexual assault.
At Philadelphia’s annual Pride parade last weekend, only one thing could spoil the party: cops. After a transgender woman allegedly attempted to burn a “Thin Blue Line” flag (symbolizing police solidarity), eyewitnesses reported that officers tackled ReeAnna Segin to the ground and detained her in Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility — a maximum security men’s prison — for the better part of a day, until her release on bail late Monday afternoon. Segin was held on felony charges including arson and “causing a catastrophe,” and although those charges were dropped today by District Attorney Larry Krasner, she still faces several misdemeanor accusations.
Details on the incident are still emerging, and Segin has thus far declined to comment until she can secure legal counsel. (Fundraising for Segin’s legal battle is currently being organized by the group Philly Socialists, who also coordinated Segin’s jail support during her time at CFCF.) Deputy Commissioner Joe Sullivan, the Philadelphia Police Department’s LGBT Liaison, did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication; Amber Hikes, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs, told them. in a statement that any allegations of police misconduct “would be a concern for the Mayor’s office” and assured us that “every class that comes out of the Police Academy is trained [in] LGBT sensitivity.”
That training, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to have done Segin much good — and it came far too late to help her sisters in the past. The department is still under scrutiny from the local queer community for its scandalous cover-up following the 2002 death of Black transgender woman Nizah Morris, who was killed shortly after entering police custody under mysterious circumstances; earlier that same year, PPD officers James Fallon and Timothy Carr forced an exotic dancer into their patrol car and took turns raping her. Fallon and Carr plead guilty and received four years of probation.
Of course, Philadelphia is far from the only city in America to deal with police misconduct, especially when it comes to relations between law enforcement and the LGBTQ+ community — and particularly for transgender people. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey of America’s transgender community, 58 percents of all respondents said they had personally experienced police mistreatment within the past year, and 57 percent said they were either “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” calling the police in an emergency. 86 percent of respondents who said they interacted with the police while engaged in sex work (or who the police thought were engaged in sex work) reported police misconduct ranging from verbal abuse (65 percent) to sexual assault (27 percent). When those trans women are incarcerated in men’s prisons, as Segin briefly was, they experience catastrophic rates of abuse from inmates and officers alike.
Those statistics have faces. Most recently and famously, police in Bethesda, Maryland broke into Chelsea Manning’s apartment with guns drawn in a “wellness check” after the activist and former military intelligence operative posted about being suicidal on Twitter — an appalling use of excessive force that potentially could have held catastrophic consequences for Manning. Others who encounter the police (especially Black trans women) aren’t so lucky. Last year in St. Louis, Kiwi Herring was shot to death by police, who were responding to harassing phone calls sent by a homophobic neighbor; in 2015, Mya Hall met the same fate outside NSA headquarters in Baltimore. Black and transgender people in America also develop mental illnesses at higher rates than the general population, which increases their likelihood of experiencing police violence.
Yet despite this ongoing history of police violence against queer bodies, police are frequently framed as a necessary protective force by more affluent (read: usually white and cisgender) members of the queer community, who will often (and bafflingly) side with police rather than those who have been traumatized by their misconduct. Last year, in response to civil disobedience from groups like Black Lives Matter and No Justice No Pride, Pride attendees around the country booed protesters and applauded the police who arrested them, seemingly oblivious to the harm that might befall them while in custody. (In videos of Segin’s arrest this weekend, bystanders can be heard applauding and shouting “thank you.”) And this backlash wasn’t limited to the U.S.; after BLM activists demanded police withdraw from Toronto Pride 2017, a member of Ottawa Police Services’ GLBT board began a Change.org petition that accused the group of “promoting discrimination within the LGBTQ community.” The petition eventually gathered over 10,000 signatures. Police were barred from the 2017 parade, but plan to return this year.
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This deep division within the LGBTQ+ umbrella reveals just how far Pride has strayed from its early roots. Both the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and the lesser-known Cooper’s Donuts Riot in 1959 — events which inspired the modern American queer rights movement — were characterized by violence and hostility toward police. Those activists’ anger wasn’t unfounded, nor is the anger of modern Pride protesters. Police pose a clear and present threat to many in the queer community today. Yet the most privileged among us, who have grown complacent after gaining “marriage equality” through the Supreme Court, refuse to acknowledge it, preferring instead to welcome those same avatars of racist, queerphobic oppression into our midst as though the past is somehow behind us. It is not, and to pretend otherwise is to willingly ignore the ongoing trauma and brutality visited upon less photogenic members of their own community.
If we wish to keep Pride safe, let us do it ourselves, through community organization and cooperation. Reliance on the forces of state violence to do so is violently counterproductive, signaling to transgender, Black, brown, undocumented, and mentally ill people that Pride is not a place where they are welcome. Assimilationist queers can complain all they want that excluding cops from Pride is “divisive.” If I’m forced to decide between vulnerable members of my community and the organizations that oppress them, well, that’s not even a choice: fuck your parade. We have work to do.
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