Just days following the chief’s historic apology for the 1981 bathhouse raids, the Toronto Police Service unveiled its new ‘It’s In Our Hands’ mural on Friday, June 24 as part of Pride 2016 celebrations.
The mural, located at 425 Church St., represents the service’s “past, present and future” relationship with the city’s LGBTQ2S communities, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said in a statement.
“This mural is a spot of permanent reflection for the TPS and for the community,” Saunders said in a statement. “We will only be successful in our relationships of today if we acknowledge and learn from our past.”
Not every one at Friday's mural unveiling, however, felt the gesture was a genuine one, as Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted the unveiling event chanting, “No pride in police.”
The protestors claimed that, much like Saunders' public apology for the 1981 bathhouse raids, the media event surrounding the mural unveiling on Friday during Pride Month was a publicity stunt.
Both, said Black Lives Matter co-founder Rodney Diverlus, are “PR tools used to mask the reality of police relations amongst the queer and trans community, black people, indigenous people, sex workers, et cetera,” he said after disrupting the unveiling.
Black Lives Matter, he added, is still waiting for the police to meet the demands it made after its tent city protest outside police headquarters on College Street this spring. At the time, the protesters called for a face-to-face meeting with Saunders and an overhaul of the Special Investigations Unit.
Meanwhile, the mural project, which took almost a year to complete, was created in partnership between the service’s Divisional Policing Support Unit and the City of Toronto’s StreetARToronto Program - an innovative partnership program developed by the city’s Transportation Services Division.
Since its inception in 2012, StART has become a leader in developing partnerships that result in award-winning street-art installations.
This latest ‘It’s In Our Hands’ installation, spearheaded by local graffiti artist SPUD1, includes components that recognize the history between the LGBTQ2S community and the Toronto Police Service.
For an explanation of each of those components, go to www.torontopolice.on.ca/churchstmural/
- with files from the Toronto Star
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