People arrested as cops clash with Pride party-goers in Washington Square Park

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Several people were arrested on Sunday evening at New York’s Washington Square Park during Pride celebrations in the area, as tensions between Pride-goers and the police suddenly boiled over.

Twitter users described NYPD officers as having used pepper spray on Pride attendees who were in the Greenwich Village park early on Sunday evening after those celebrating became angry with how the police responded to a break in the metal barricades surrounding the popular park. 

Social media users described officers as shoving one of the broken barricades into a woman who was on the other side. 

The force that was used was seemingly enough to anger Pride participants who were already wary of any police presence following a confrontation in the same park, at the same event last year. 

Riot police were then seen surrounding the area donned in riot gear including shields, helmets and visors. Some police officers had their batons drawn at the ready for any kind of encounter.

Around the parks perimeter, officers formed a chain on police bikes before scores of them flooded the park. 

There were at least three confirmed arrests with fears that things might flare up once again, after dark.  

‘There’s talk of mace happening right now at Washington Square Park. There is a sea of cops here,’ Twitter user Christine Chung wrote early on Sunday evening. 

‘I am currently watching NYPD charge Washington Square Park with riot gear (helmets, pepper spray, batons) … potentially to break up pride celebrations? It certainly looks like they are confronting people celebrating pride from my vantage point,’ wrote Meredith Cash. 

‘The NYPD has attacked the Queer Liberation March, used pepper spray, and arrested at least one person. Now they’re out in force, and riot gear, threatening more arrests. This is why it’s no cops at Pride. 

When DailyMail.com asked for a comment from the NYPD over the use of pepper spray, an officer said that ‘no official details had yet been relayed from the field’. 

At least one person could be heard chanting through a megaphone: ‘The NYPD is not welcome at Pride!’ to encouraging cheers of those gathered nearby.

One Twitter user attempted to explain how the melee broke out with Pride-goers who were congregating close to the iconic arch and a metal barricade was moved to create more space for those inside the park. 

Cops already inside the pen started forcefully shoving it back and a woman became agitated and shoved it back at the officers.  

In return, another officer then pushed the metal barricade back in a woman. 

Parkgoers then ran over to the barriers to yell at police for not being more careful and hurting a woman. It’s at this point the NYPD is said to have deployed pepper spray.  

Over the last month the park has often been the scene of anti-social behavior with everything from illegal boxing matches, to raves and drug taking occurring within the vicinity, although the majority of this has occurred after nightfall, often with police attempting to enforce a curfew. 

Tensions were already high between the NYPD and those celebrating Pride after organizers of New York City’s event decided to ban LGBTQ police officers from marching in uniform. 

For those looking to march for LGBTQ rights, the Reclaim Pride Coalition held its third Queer Liberation March from Bryant Park to Stonewall National Monument and Washington Square Park. 

The liberation event does not allow police or corporate participation. 

The march commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising, sparked by a police raid on a gay bar and tensions between law enforcement and some parts of the LGBTQ community still exist, a half century later. The ban is set to last until at least 2025.

Last year, the NYPD attacked marchers or partiers twice during Pride weekend.  

The role police officers should play in the annual parade has been debated for years, but it took on new heat amid a national reckoning around police brutality.

New York City’s streets a year ago were awash in protests over the death of George Floyd and clashes between demonstrators and officers. 

‘Folks still have challenging and traumatic and many times horrific relationships with law enforcement,’ said John Blasco, a parade regular. ‘If you’re an officer … of course you should be able to celebrate and express your pride, but you don’t need to do it in a uniform that has perpetuated violence against many of the people who are trying to celebrate their pride that day.’ 

For others, presence of LGBTQ police marchers is an expression of hard-fought diversity and inclusion that should be celebrated, a hallmark of how integral LGBTQ people are in the fabric of American life. 

‘Why should I have to hide a part of me,’ asked Ana Arboleda, a sergeant with the NYPD who has marched in the parade several times and is the vice-president of the Gay Officers Action League. ‘Why should I have to take off (the uniform) as if I´m ashamed?’ 

The ban is not the first for a Pride march; Toronto Pride hasn’t allowed uniformed police since 2017, and Vancouver Pride started limiting their role then as well, while Capital Pride Alliance started doing so in 2018. Denver PrideFest isn’t allowing law enforcement to take part in its virtual event this year, and neither is the Capitol Hill Pride Festival, which takes place in Seattle but is separate from Seattle Pride.

In New York City, an alternative to the Heritage of Pride event called the Queer Liberation March, organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition as a rebuttal to what they consider a too-corporate, too-comfortable main parade, has never allowed a police presence since its 2019 inception. 

In Washington Square Park on Saturday night, the park endured yet another night of debauchery in what has become a flashpoint for the city’s out-of-control crime rate. 

Large groups of party goers who had congregated at the park were dancing and playing music well beyond Saturday night and into Sunday morning, breaking a midnight curfew.

There were even three impromptu boxing matches that took place on Friday night, together with referees and time keepers. 

A fighter dislocated his shoulder during one of the bouts, but as of noon Sunday, no serious violence or arrests had been reported in the park, as had been in prior weeks.  

‘Starting Monday, the NYPD is going to empty out the park at midnight and stay consistent with it,’ a source described as close to the department and a neighbor of Greenwich Village’s Sixth Precinct told The Village Sun on Thursday, just prior to the weekend’s festivities. 

‘They’re going to bring in as many officers as they need and say, ‘Point your feet in that direction and go.’ They will be asking everyone to leave the park.’   

Revelers made the best of the unenforced curfew on Saturday and early Sunday morning, with a group of young merrymakers gathered in a circle with dancers in middle while others congregated around a drummer. 

Meanwhile, a mobile DJ was set up with a mixing station and a large speaker. Amplified music has been a key complaint of neighbors, but their complaints haven’t stopped the loudspeakers and crowds revelers. 

The pride march had ended earlier in the day on Saturday, with marchers seen dancing in the park’s iconic fountain.

For the second consecutive year, the lingering pandemic consigned New York’s annual Pride march to the virtual world on Sunday, even as its alter-ego, the Queer Liberation March, took its edgier message through the streets of Manhattan.

The NYC Pride march, the city’s marquee LGBTQ+ event now in its 51st year, became a made-for-TV production as a cautionary measure to prevent coronavirus infections, which have dropped sharply as the number of people vaccinated has grown.

Only a small number of guests were invited to the group’s three-block areas where floats and musical acts paraded for the cameras, but organizer Sue Doster said ‘something in the millions’ of viewers were expected to tune in. 

Meanwhile, thousands of people organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, whose parade began as a protest to the Pride march two years ago, marched more than 30 blocks down New York’s Seventh Avenue with rainbow flags and signs that included ‘Liberation and Justice.’

Coalition cofounder Jay W. Walker said the group was hoping to draw up to 70,000 marchers.

Under sunny skies with muggy conditions that felt like 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a racially mixed crowd of men and women chanted ‘No Justice, No Peace,’ and other slogans, some critical of the New York Police Department.

After linking last year’s message to the Black Lives Matter movement, Walker said this year’s theme is returning to the coalition’s standard: ‘None of us are free until all of us are free.’

Although the group had urged marchers to wear masks, few did. Last year’s march produced no discernable spike in new coronavirus cases, he said.

Both events commemorate the June 28, 1969, uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, when patrons fought back during a police raid. The defiant stand gave birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

The two groups have differed over their policies on police participation in their events, which the Reclaim Pride Coalition opposes. But Heritage of Pride last month also decided to bar uniformed police officers from its future parades. Doster said many of its Black, brown and trans members feel threatened by their presence.