“We’re one big family and right now one part of the family makes another part uncomfortable,” said André Thomas, co-chair of Heritage of Pride, the organization that runs the annual Pride march. It’s between marchers who view cops in uniform as potential threats and symbols of brutality and those participants who want the NYPD to have a role in Pride. “In those days, they were there on almost every street corner and I think they kind of sent the word up and down the line.”īut today when police officers march in the parade, the tension isn’t between police officers on different sides of the barricade. “They were furious that there were gay cops out there, and they turned their backs on these guys,” Humm said.
Humm, a long-time activist and journalist, remembers the police presence as “looser” back when he first started protesting, but when GOAL joined the march, he began noticing the tension from the cops patrolling on the periphery. The group Cochrane went on to form-the Gay Officers Action League-had started marching in the annual Pride march.
It started around 1982, shortly after Charles Cochrane, an NYPD sergeant, had come out as gay at a City Council hearing. Andy Humm had been marching in New York City’s annual Pride march for more than six years when he noticed a shift.
