Police questioned about department culture<\/p>\n
Thomas questioned Bethel about accountability within the department, asking whether officers are willing to recognize their own wrongdoing and policy violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we have a police department where the culture is, \u2018If I see somebody doing something wrong, would I say something?’\u201d Thomas asked.<\/p>\n
Several witnesses argued the problems extended beyond officers\u2019 actions on June 7 and reflected a deeper culture of bias against LGBTQ+ communities in the department.<\/p>\n
Tyrell Brown, founder and executive director of Philly Pride 365, which produced the official Parkway celebration, said he was trapped in an area of the Gayborhood that was barricaded by police that day. He said, \u201cit\u2019s not about positionality,\u201d referring to the way social identity, such as race and gender, shapes one\u2019s view of the world. He said police were not letting him or anyone through, nor were they giving anyone instructions to help them move away from the scene \u2014 even after Brown had identified himself as an event organizer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sentiments that were shared by individual officers on the ground were absolutely offensive [things like] not wanting to \u2018be down here with these people.\u2019 That approach is so broken,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
He explained that, regardless of competency training, there are people inside the department who are still approaching LGBTQ+ people with their own individual bias or hatred.<\/p>\n
Jacen Bowman, president of Philadelphia Black Pride, testified that he heard officers using homophobic slurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cA policing culture that dehumanizes any part of the community makes the entire community less safe,\u201d Bowman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police questioned about department culture Thomas questioned Bethel about accountability within the department, asking whether officers are willing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":985244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,18026,3009,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-985243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-police","tag-pride","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117050404053991842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/985244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}