August 05, 2026
Thom Carroll/for PhillyVoice
During a City Council hearing on Wednesday, the LGBTQ+ community demanded accountability from the Philadelphia Police Department for its response to Pride parties in the Gayborhood on June 7.
At a public hearing on the police response to Pride celebrations in the Gayborhood, city council members and LGBTQ+ leaders expressed skepticism and anger over the department's justification for its aggressive crowd control.
The department deployed 150 officers on June 7 to the Center City neighborhood, where queer residents had gathered for dancing, parties and bar hopping. As seen in numerous videos posted to social media, officers on horseback and motorcycles took over the barricaded streets and, in some cases, sidewalks. A few wore masks to conceal their faces, and at least one brandished a Taser. Multiple people reported physical and verbal abuse by police.
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According to Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, officers were responding to groups of minors who were fighting and climbing on top of a parking garage in the area. During his testimony before City Council on Wednesday, Bethel produced videos that allegedly depicted the tumult, but each clip was blurred, making it difficult to distinguish the action. Bethel said he had altered the videos to protect the identities of minors.
This choice drew an immediate response from Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who interrupted to press for specifics.
"We can't see that video," Thomas interjected. "I don't know what I just watched, right? So help me understand."
After Bethel clarified that the clip showed a group of teenagers fighting, Thomas pressed on.
"So when I think about (Pride), I think about mostly adults," Thomas said. "These are kids, so help — just 'cause you pulled the video up —help us understand how this incident with these children that I can't really see has to do with adults."
By Bethel's account, the group of "about a thousand" minors grew restless because there was "nothing for them to do." The official Pride parade and festival had moved this year from the Gayborhood to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and implemented a $10 entry fee. Bethel was aware that revelers would continue to gather in the neighborhood regardless, citing 10 planning meetings to prepare for this scenario. But he said the incident began brewing before a police detail was scheduled to patrol the area at 3 p.m.
The department decided to "push the crowd out," Bethel said, with the aid of motorbikes and two horses. Though the commissioner insisted the horses were not "charging" pedestrians, he said their presence was meant to intimidate.
"They did exactly what they're supposed to do," he continued. "When people see a horse, they run."
Officers also erected barricades to control the crowd and, Bethel said, prevent attackers from mowing down pedestrians with their cars. An officer used a Taser, he added, but was "arcing" it so the device created a sound without hitting anyone. The department will no longer allow arcing as part of its policy, the commissioner said.
Masking was never part of the department's dress code, Bethel clarified upon request from multiple councilmembers. The "eight or nine" masked officers his department has identified are in the middle of a disciplinary process.
In a contentious exchange, Thomas pressed Bethel to articulate the "culture" of Philadelphia police and whether any officers had reported their colleagues' behavior.
"It doesn't really feel like we're having a conversation that can put us in a position of earning the trust of a lot of the people who feel like the trust has been lost," Thomas said. "Because some of this stuff is, let's just call it confusing. ... Do we have a police department where the culture is, if I see somebody doing something wrong, I can say something? Or do we have the culture of a police department whereas though if I see somebody doing something wrong, this is my brother, this is the brotherhood, I'm not doing nothing."
Thomas's inquiry drew applause from the audience, which expressed displeasure with Bethel throughout his roughly 40-minute testimony. Councilmember Rue Landau also took issue with the commissioner's account, which she called "painful and perplexing."
Landau, who convened the hearing, fact-checked Bethel early into his testimony. When he showed a photo of Landau, council's first openly queer member, at the Pride parade on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, she interjected that it was from 2025 to cheers from the audience. Landau contended that Bethel repeatedly contradicted himself in saying he knew and prepared for the gathering in the Gayborhood but couldn't anticipate the crowd.
Part of the problem, Bethel said, was the lack of organizers. He compared the celebration to the similarly unofficial afterparties for the Mummers Parade on Second Street and Greek Picnic on South Street. Those events, he said, had community members "helping manage it."
"When you described Greek Picnic going to South Street and Mummers going to Two Street, you did not say that there was nothing there for them," Landau countered. "Because to us, there is never nothing there in the Gayborhood for us. There is community, there are bars for people who are over 21. There is music, there is fun, there is absolutely community. And when you saw young people in the parking garage, they were dancing. They weren't fighting."
Double standards were also a theme in the subsequent public comments. Queer Philadelphians questioned why police were not similarly concerned about Eagles fans climbing poles or unruly late-night crowds outside McGillian's Olde Ale House, suggesting a bias toward LGBTQ+ revelers, particularly Black and brown ones. Witnesses from the scene on June 7 described officers using gay slurs, yelling at people having medical emergencies and flinging women over their shoulders. Christian Orr said he was pushed by police "no less than five times" while trying to walk home.
"Only adult bullies scapegoat children," C. Michael Robinson, another commenter, said.
One of the last people called to the podium was Tyrell Brown, whose Philly Pride 365 organizes the annual parade. He had not planned to speak, but he said he felt compelled after "inconsistencies" with the police account. Law enforcement had received guidance from the event's organizers, he said, and he had the emails to prove it.
"My thing is about shared accountability and really accepting the fact that mistakes were made this year," he said. "And I think that I have to take accountability, and that means that I have to make changes in the way that I organize things. But if I'm going to do that, and I'm going to tell the truth, then goddamn it, the people that work in our institutions, that get paid by our tax dollars, should be ready to tell the truth about the things that were communicated to them, about the things that they were planning for, and then also about how we can have shared accountability about planning forward."
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