NYPD apologizes to the LGBTQ community for Stonewall

Fifty years after the New York Police Department broke into the Stonewall Inn, leading to the birth of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the NYPD Commissioner apologized.

"I know what happened should not have happened," said James O'Neill, police commissioner in New York, in a statement. "The measures taken by the NYPD were wrong – clearly and simply. The actions and laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that I apologize. "

The Commissioner's remarks were vague as to what exactly happened at the Stonewall Inn, a gay and transgender bar in 1969, when clients objected after decades of harassment and abuse. by the police. The riots that took place in response lasted four days and resulted in dozens of arrests, injuries on both sides and, a year later, the first month of March of Pride.

O'Neill's decision to apologize is important because it marks a change from the New York Police Commissioners' commission years, including O'Neill in 2017, insisting that the past was the past and no excuse was necessary.

Prior to O'Neill's statement on Thursday, the executive committee of Heritage of Pride, which hosts the New York Pride Events, has called on the NYPD to apologize, as does Corey Johnson, president of New York City's City Council.

"I think the NYPD's apology in this regard would be a very, very good thing," said Johnson, a gay homosexual, according to New York's 1010 WINS news radio station, "because I think it would be a step towards reconciliation. "

When the question of apology was raised in the past, a senior NYPD official had even implied that the LGBTQ community should be grateful Stonewall has arrived. "We should all be celebrating this terrible experience that has generated a lot of good," Bill Bratton, the former NYPD commissioner, told reporters at a press conference in 2016. would apologize to the LGBTQ community for the Stonewall events.

"Excuses, I do not think so. I do not think it's necessary, "said Bratton, adding that instead of apologizing, people should look at how much the NYPD has evolved since the 1970s.

Tensions around police brutality and profiling, especially trans-colored women, still linger, as reported by German Lopez de Vox in 2017. But it is also true that police regularly participate Pride events not only in New York but throughout the country. As Lopez wrote:

Nowadays, police, especially in big cities, are making concerted efforts to reach LGBTQ people. This is one of the reasons they participate in Pride. But they also do all sorts of other things, like hiring LGBTQ liaisons to work closely with local LGBTQ communities. And in particular, they are now responsible for enforcing hate the crime laws that include at least part of the LGBTQ community in most states – an effective reversal of roles, oppressive LGBTQ communities to protect their.