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Gay cops to march in NYC

If they can't march with Pride in Toronto, they will do it in New York City.

A group of Toronto police officers who are barred from marching in the city’s Pride Parade in uniform this weekend are heading to the U.S. where they will march beside their American counterparts.

Some 100 people that include officers from Toronto and other parts of Ontario along with civilian police department employees are headed to the Big Apple to participate in pride festivities there.

The trip was organized after a New York gay advocacy group, Gay Officers Action League, invited the snubbed officers to attend the NYC parade.

And it is not the Toronto Police Service or a government edict that is banning the officers from marching in uniform.

In January, the membership of Pride Toronto voted to ban uniformed officers from this year’s parade in the wake of a protest from members of Black Lives Matter - Toronto that briefly halted the event last year.

“We are delighted and overwhelmed by the support in New York City and that New York was able to get it right,” Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack said, as he got ready to board a flight to New York. “Our wish and our hope is that Toronto organizers get it right next year.”

Police Chief Mark Saunders has said that it is important that the TPS takes a step back from its formal participation in the Pride Parade this year in order to allow important conversations to take place.

McCormack, however, said on Saturday the decision to ban officers from wearing their uniform in the parade is an “insult” to his members.

“It is an insult to the people here who have been working so hard to say that there has been no inroads and that this relationship is fractured,” he said

For her part, the executive director of Pride Toronto has previously said that the ban on uniformed police at this year’s pride parade is not necessarily a permanent one.

"We are utterly welcoming to LGBTQ+ members of the police service and their allies. But what we are asking this year is that they not wear their uniform, that they not bring all the aspects of their uniform until we are able to have conversations with those parts of our community that feel that this is not appropriate to what they would like to celebrate in a parade,” Olivia Nuamah said in May.

- with files from CTV News



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