Following immense push-back from the greater LGBT community uniformed police officers will again be allowed to participate in Sacramento PRIDE events this weekend, and a new set of police department policies will be enacted to build trust with the LGBT community.

The announcement made Thursday by the Sacramento Police Department and Sacramento LGBT Community Center, reversed a decision the center announced last week that uniformed officers would not be allowed to participate in order to “protect” transgender people and QPOC who “experience fear and anxiety provoked by the uniform.”

After an immense outcry from the greater LGBT community that exclusion is not an LGBT value and further negotiations with SPD, the police department agreed to create an LGBTQ liaison in its outreach unit, and create a standing “LGBT Community Advisory Committee” to recommend policies to better serve the LGBT community and “remove all barriers” for the community to interact with law enforcement. The SPD will also co-create a new training program that “elevates the voices of the “marginalized” trans and QPOC communities and discusses the role of implicit bias,” the release said.

Meanwhile the roughly 16 lower staff members with the Sacramento LGBT Community Center released a statement Thursday night saying they have taken a no-confidence vote against their Board of Directors following the decision to allow officers in uniform to attend PRIDE events and are demanding the immediate resignation of Carlos Marquez, the board’s president, and any board members who agreed to allow officers to march in their uniforms.

We wholeheartedly disagree with the decision that this concession to the police force is a powerful symbolic and visual cue that prioritizes those with the most power and influence over our most marginalized community members whether they are transgender, nonbinary, Black, Brown and other POC folks, intersex, undocumented, disabled, unhoused, sex workers and others in the community that are often ignored, misgendered, abused and murdered by folks in SacPD and other law enforcement uniforms.

There is no word on what the “collective action” will be.

Sacramento PRIDE will take place June 8-9 at Capitol Mall.