this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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The parade board uninvited the police, who usually march in their uniforms, because it was deemed to be insensitive following the murder of a gay couple by one of their colleagues (with a police issue revolver no less). Individuals who happen to be police were still allowed to march just like anyone else. Now an agreement has been reached that police can be in the parade as a representative group, but in plain clothes.
As for the police that are maintaining law and order, that's their job, as it is for any large scale public event.
There's questions to be answered about the gun situation but I do think it's heavy handed to un-invite the police as a group in the way that they have. After all they didn't instruct or condone it. In this situation someone killed someone that just happened to be employed by Police, it wasn't a Policeman acting as Police who killed. And the guy is obviously not all there. Sounds like he would have killed anyway through some other method eventually.
Would they uninvite Qantas as a corporate sponsor if one of their employees murdered someone? What about Optus, or Coles?
Personally I don't care for virtue signalling, which is what it looks like when Police march. But then again there's virtue signalling all around. Those big corporate sponsors would drop Pride faster than you could blink if it seriously hurt their financial bottom line.
But isn't it just as triggering to have police in uniform maintaining law and order?
( but are people going to be triggered? Who said they will be triggered? What do the families and friends of the victims say? )
Yes I thought the same tbh. If their mere presence repulses them why have them show up at all in their uniform? At face value this seems inconsistent.
The arrogance also bothers me. I read the articles and no where does it say the board consulted family and friends of the victims. The board also assumes the public and family and friends would be triggered and assume they know best how to handle the situation.
Which of the articles you've read use the word "triggered", because none that I've read say that. Isn't it also an assumption to say the families weren't consulted? None of us know that, but it should be kept in mind that at the time the request for police not to march in uniform, the victims' bodies had not yet been found which you'd imagine would have amplified the hurt for the families and in the wider community.
I have no skin in this game, the only reason I replied to OP was because I happened to be reading this article about it.
From reading that article, "Pride in Protest" don't want any police there at all, in uniform or plain clothes. That position at the very least is consistent. But it seems the board are sort of half in and half out by letting them attend in plain clothes, but then the cops are also presumably turning up in uniform to maintain law and order.
You can't have your cake and eat it is my view. If you want to ban police outright no matter their dress, well ok I think that's shitty and very hard to police pardon the pun, but as I say it's consistent. But it seems silly to me to say, we don't like you and don't want you to march, but also we are happy take from you something that suits us, and it smacks of hypocrisy.
It feels .... punitive. We are going to punish police for what happened. Feels very misguided to me since the alleged killer was acting alone. Some people are upset obviously, but punishing the police force is not going to bring back dead people. And of course it raises the question as to what is the criteria to let police back into the march? Who sets the criteria ? On whose authority? And is the criteria realistic?