Pride Parade organiser Jonathan Smith The organiser of next month's Auckland Pride Parade is not anticipating any of the kind of disruption that police fear could lead to an undermining of their reputation for impartiality if gay police officers appear in the parade in uniform while on-duty officers deal with problems. Assistant Police Commissioner Upper North, Allan Boreham has ruled that gay police officers cannot march in the parade wearing their uniforms as there could be confusion over the position of on-duty officers called to deal with disruptive action by protesters. The gay parading officers can, however, identify themselves as police officers in other ways. Pride Parade organiser Jonathan Smith says he is not expecting any disruption "and nothing has been alerted to me. I've also done a major letter drop in the whole Ponsonby Road area and I've had no negative comments whatsoever come back so I'm not expecting anything." Smith, who has decades of experience running major public gay events such as the Big Gay Out, says he would normally expect to be alerted to any possible problem through a variety of channels including the Auckland Council. Historically, the massive annual Hero Parades did not attract any disruptive activity, with police frequently commenting on the good nature and good behaviour of the crowd and the lack of incidents. While Smith does not expect problems his team has prepared for the possibility. "We have systems in place under our Health and Safety event plan so we would deal with any problem that was alerted to us," he says. Smith declined to comment on whether there is disappointment that the gay police cannot march in uniform, saying "I don't want to comment on that until I have more information."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 18th January 2013 - 12:22pm