Author: Andrea Padilla

Philadelphia City Council will hold public hearings to examine the police department’s crowd-control tactics used during Sunday’s Pride festivities in the city’s Gayborhood, a response that drew criticism from LGBTQ+ community leaders who have called the display of force unacceptable.

Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat who represents the city at-large and is Council’s first openly LGBTQ+ member, introduced legislation Thursday to authorize Council to hold hearings on the response, citing video and eyewitness accounts of “aggressive police tactics,” such as physical confrontations between police and celebrators, as well as the use of mounted and motorcycle officers to disperse crowds.

Images and videos that circulated widely on social media this week showed officers pushing attendees, as well as police on horseback dispersing crowds from the sidewalk. Multiple officers were seen on video with their faces covered, and others barricaded Gayborhood streets. Police said 15 people were arrested.

“It’s clear that this was a lack of communication, a lack of planning, and a lack of clear on-the-ground decision making of what to do in this situation,” Landau said Thursday.

Holding hearings in Council “is not going to heal the pain and trauma that happened on Sunday,” Landau said, but it will “answer strategic and tactical questions.”

”We need to work towards a time when the Gayborhood is safe and open and welcoming to every member of the queer community, but especially to Black and brown queer people and trans people,” she added.

The city sponsored an official Pride march and festival on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sunday, but many also gathered to celebrate in the Gayborhood, near some of the city’s best-known LGBTQ+ establishments.

During an acknowledgment of Pride month in Council on Thursday, Mark Segal, the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and a fixture of the city’s LGBTQ+ community, said he was looking for accountability and wanted to know: “Who was in charge Sunday?”

“No police should be wearing a mask in Philadelphia,” Segal said to applause. “No motorcycle should be up on the sidewalk. Police on horseback should not be hurting citizens. The police should not be running around with Tasers. People should not be punched. People should not be fenced off like animals.”

Council unanimously approved a resolution to hold hearings. They are not likely to take place until fall, as Thursday was Council’s final meeting before adjourning for summer recess.

The move to hold hearings is a notable step for a Council that has largely steered clear of public criticism of the city’s police department in recent years. While individual members have taken issue with discrete tactics or policies, most have been satisfied with the leadership of the force under Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, who took the helm in 2024 when Mayor Cherelle L. Parker appointed him to the role.

Bethel said the police department is investigating the agency’s response during the Pride festivities, and a police spokesperson said that five officers who wore facial coverings may face discipline for violating department policy.

Parker said in a statement that senior members of the administration were examining the response. During an unrelated news conference Thursday, she said that “accountability will be reached.”

“Rest assured we’re going to do the research. We’re going to find out what happened and where accountability is appropriate,” Parker said.

More than a dozen LGBTQ+ residents and Pride attendees came to Council on Thursday to tell lawmakers about their experiences Sunday and call for an investigation.

Philadelphia resident Jazmyn Henderson, a longtime activist in the city, was in the Gayborhood on Sunday and said she witnessed police using aggressive crowd-control tactics.

She said she did not think Council’s resolution was enough to make her feel safe going forward.

“I think City Council is delusional,” Henderson said. “I think the city is delusional, and they think that that resolution meant anything to any of the Black and brown people who were brutalized, assaulted, hurt, or mistreated by the cops on Sunday.”

Sergio Cea, political director of the progressive political group Reclaim Philadelphia, testified during Council’s public comment section that he was tear-gassed by officers in West Philadelphia during a wave of civil unrest in 2020 and, following Sunday’s events in the Gayborhood, he does not feel safe in the city from what he described as “police violence.”

“I really welcome the resolution that Rue Landau is presenting, but we need to go beyond that,” Cea said. “We are not safe.”