Queers will protest a symposium on gay and trans recruitment into the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) slated for Sat, Sept 18.
According to an OPP press release posted to the Pride Toronto website, the event “is specifically focused on attracting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates to a policing career with the
Ontario Provincial Police.”
The event will be hosted at the 519 Church Street Community Centre.
In June, queers heckled Toronto police chief Bill Blair at a police-Pride Toronto cocktail party, which was also held at The 519. The timing of that event — just two days after a clampdown on civil liberties during the G20 — led queers to rally outside the building for more than two hours.
Tomorrow’s event has virtually the same cast of characters, except the OPP — not Toronto Police — are at the centre. Both agencies were involved with the Integrated Security Unit that policed the city during the G20.
“As a collective of concerned queers,
trans folks, community members and former prisoners, we oppose the
519’s decision to again welcome police into our safer places, the OPP’s
long history of brutal policing of indigenous communities and crack
downs on reserves, the raiding of factories and massage parlours for
undocumented workers, unwarranted searches and unlawful detentions in
low income neighbourhoods, police harassment and sexual assault of
trans women suspected of being sex workers, the institutionalization
and incarceration of people with disabilities and neurodiverse people,
the profiling of racialized folks especially youth, the homophobic and
transphobic violence by police covered up as accidents, homeless sweeps
and the criminalization of dissent,” say protest organizers on Facebook.
No Pride in Policing
Sat, Sept 18, 11am
Rally outside The 519 Church Street Community Centre in Cawthra Park
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