EDMONTON–Police Chief Dale McFee apologized to Edmonton’s LGBTQ community Friday for a history “marked with discrimination and marginalization” by police.

Addressing a crowd gathered at police headquarters, McFee said the apology was part of a reconciliation process with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit Edmontonians.

“Many people in this room will immediately recall the raids, the mistreatment during arrests, and even public shaming — these are just a few known and visceral examples,” he said.

“We know there is much more in the history of our service that is unnamed, unheard and underground. That we don’t fully understand the full extent of our impact on this community is a statement in itself.”

McFee said instances where police were indifferent or ignorant to harassment, discrimination, bullying or violence were also “greatly damaging,” and acknowledged the Edmonton Police Service’s own members have been affected.

He said discriminatory actions have caused pain, eroded trust and created fear, leading members of the public and the police service to feel unsafe on the streets, in their workplaces, and in their homes.

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“This is not just a history. It is a legacy,” McFee said.

“We know this is still happening today. Perhaps not as actively or intentionally as in the past, but it is a systemic part of our structure and practices that demands our vigilance to address.

“As we try to understand our biases toward sexual and gender minorities, we need to be mindful of the compounding impact of factors such as race, economic status, mental health or ability in this community’s experiences with the police.”

In July, Calgary’s police chief at the time, Roger Chaffin, formally apologized for the Calgary Police Service’s role in the marginalization of and discrimination against LGBTQ Calgarians.

Edmonton police have had a similarly complicated history with the LGBTQ community, but former chief Rod Knecht had declined to follow Calgary’s lead on an apology before McFee was sworn in as chief in February.

Former police commissioner Murray Billett, who co-founded the EPS Sexual and Gender Minorities Community Liaison Committee in 1992 after police arrested gay men in a river valley park and released their names to the media in what he characterized as a sting operation, has called on EPS in the past to make an apology.

On Friday, he said he was brought to tears.

“I’m disappointed it took this long, but it was worth waiting for,” Billett said.

He said the apology was clear and inclusive and will set an important tone, not only for LGBTQ Edmontonians, but for the city and province at large.

The most infamous example of police discrimination against Edmonton’s LGBTQ community was the Pisces bathhouse raid in 1981, when officers arrested dozens of gay men who were outed when their names were published in newspapers, sparking the city’s early Pride movement.

Shelley Miller represented most of the men in court as a young lawyer, and said the way they were treated shook her faith in her profession.

“It was heartbreaking. Their lives were completely upended, their privacy was completely eradicated, their names were ran on television, which is something I’d never seen or heard of before anywhere,” Miller said Friday.

“Some of them lost their jobs, some of their families were very upset because they hadn’t known that they had this quality in their lives. And I’m not sure if any of them have ever recovered from the pain of being treated like a serious criminal.”

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Miller said McFee’s speech was comprehensive, heartfelt and meaningful.

“I was completely gratified and consoled,” she said.

McFee said EPS has already selected consultants to organize meetings with LGBTQ community members and intends to start the work immediately.

He wants to hear from community members to better understand the impact of past discrimination and get advice on moving forward. McFee said the success metrics of that work will be developed by community members — not by police.

He said the apology is not an accomplishment in itself, but the beginning of a continuous journey.

“We will listen intently,” he said. “We cannot just rely on institutional knowledge.”

But the city’s LGBTQ community is divided in the wake of recent controversies, and some are skeptical police can repair eroded trust.

At the Pride parade in June, a group billing itself as a coalition of queer and trans people of colour blocked the floats on Whyte Ave. to make a series of demands, including halting all police and military from marching in future parades.

Festival organizers agreed to comply and launched a series of community consultations that grew heated, and ultimately ended up cancelling the 2019 festival.

Shay Lewis, who identifies as non-binary, was one of the 2018 protesters. They said the apology seems like a positive step, but whether it means anything will depend on what programs come out of it and how consistent those programs are.

While Lewis is tentatively hopeful about the promise to reach out to the community, they pointed out that it’s not necessarily that simple.

“The folks who run queer organizations in this city are traditionally the folks who support the police force, just because those individuals tend to be part of institutions that have positive relationships — or are part of groups and communities that have better relationships — with the police force. So they can find those organizations to pair with,” Lewis said.

“The issue is the communities that directly feel affected, and more often than not don’t trust the police force, have no real incentive to engage with them, because they’re being welcomed into a bureaucratic system that doesn’t seem to offer much change.”

Activist groups RaricaNow and Shades of Colour brought a list of seven demands to the Pride Festival Society in March, including $20,000 for each of their organizations to create “well-funded QTIBPOC specific spaces at Pride.”

The festival society invited representatives from the two groups to its April 4 board meeting, but the groups brought at least 20 more people with them for support, and when they refused to leave, police were called.

Days later, festival organizers announced the cancellation.

Adebayo Katiiti with RaricaNow, a group representing LGBTQ refugees, said his group accepts the chief’s apology but needs urgent action to address social justice issues.

He said RaricaNow is eager to work with EPS to discuss advocating for changes to federal policies that are hurting community members, some of whom are facing deportation.

Katiiti, a transgender man from Uganda, said he does not personally trust police, but other RaricaNow members are optimistic that change is coming.

“We are looking for actions,” Katiiti said. “Because we’ve seen people apologizing and nothing happened.”

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