Officials said the response, similar to their handling of events like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or Pope Francis’s visit last year, was meant to reassure people as well as protect them. “You will be protected.”īut the plans for a heightened security presence, amplified after the mass killings this month inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., have highlighted a rift between the police and some in the gay community over the very definition of “security.” It is a disagreement, activists said, that is rooted in a turbulent history, which has left some lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people feeling disrespected and marginalized by the police force, rather than protected by it.Īfter the Orlando shootings, the Police Department in New York stepped up its presence, deploying officers armed with long guns at gay landmarks and gathering places, such as the Stonewall Inn in the West Village.
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“You will be safe,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said, speaking of the gay pride march at a news conference at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center on Thursday. Officers will be posted on rooftops along the route and even on boats in the Hudson River, standing by as marchers approach the endpoint, in Greenwich Village. Some will be on the streets in uniform, others in plain clothes. As the annual march, with its dozens of floats and some 20,000 participants, proceeds down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in a celebration of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual pride on Sunday, thousands of New York City police officers will be spread among the crowd.