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San Francisco’s Pride parade is one of the largest in the world, regularly attended by tens of thousands of people. This year, San Francisco police officers will not march in the city’s parade this year as an act of protest after the event’s board of directors asked them not to wear uniforms.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed called her boycott of the San Francisco Pride parade over its ban on police uniforms a “very hard decision.” Board directors for SF Pride put the ban in place after the 2019 parade where police had a tense confrontation with protesters.

During the San Francisco Pride parade in 2019, protesters demonstrating against police and corporate participation delayed the parade for about an hour. Police arrested two people that year, including one who alleged excessive force and retaliation in a federal lawsuit that the city eventually resolved with a $190,000 settlement.

San Francisco Pride’s decision to ban police officers from marching in uniform in next month’s parade elicited strong reactions last week: Law enforcement, firefighters, Mayor London Breed and openly gay District Six Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who previously served as the Police Department’s lead spokesperson, all said they would boycott the 52nd annual event because of it.

The ban doesn’t apply to police officers providing security at the parade. It requires only that the ones who march wear anything but their full police uniforms.

The backlash shows how, even in liberal San Francisco, asking cops to leave their dress blues at home can be controversial despite a years-long national effort to create more distance between the LGBTQ community and a fraternal order that doesn’t have a history of treating queer people justly.

While San Francisco Pride announced its police uniform ban in 2020, pandemic-related parade cancellations kept it from being tested until now, which is why some local politicians and residents are in such a huff. But bold political stances have always been part of this city’s annual celebration of LGBTQ community and culture, which culminates with the summer weekend procession that regularly draws massive crowds in the tens of thousands.

The roots of this particular stance go back six years.

After the Orlando nightclub massacre in June 2016, local Pride organizers announced increased security — metal detectors and roughly 25% more police — at its “racial and economic justice”-themed parade that year.

This happened at a moment when Black Lives Matter was ascending behind its work to bring attention to police killings, including the 2015 death of Mario Woods, shot 20 times by San Francisco police officers for reportedly refusing to drop a knife. The Bay Area chapter of Black Lives Matter backed out of participating in the Pride parade as a grand marshal, with BLM member Malkia Cyril noting at the time that “increasing the police presence at Pride does not increase safety for all people.”

At the time, then-SF Pride board President Michelle Meow said she understood the BLM move and that, going forward, Pride would rethink “what safety means outside of police protection, because that is not the answer,” the Guardian reported.

Five months later, the U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report about the San Francisco Police Department, detailing the same institutionalized racial bias that BLM had cited for sitting out the Pride parade.

By 2019, anti-police demonstrators blocked the parade route on Market Street at Sixth Street for almost an hour, The Chronicle reported. Video footage circulated on Twitter shows officers shoving people, and at one point dragging a protester across the pavement. In the background, parade-goers can be heard shouting, “Cops out of Pride!”

SF Pride asked that the city’s Department of Police Accountability look into SFPD’s actions. When the city responded a year later by saying it found no evidence of wrongdoing, local Pride leaders issued a statement condemning the findings and announcing the uniform ban.

From 2017 to 2021, LGBTQ organizers in New York, Washington, D.C., Denver and other cities either banned uniformed officers from marching in their parades or disinvited cops altogether.

The actions push back against power structures, like police, that have historically mistreated marginalized communities. Even today, LGBTQ people are much more likely to be arrested than straight people and remain overrepresented in every facet of the criminal legal system, according to a report last year from the Prison Policy Initiative.

In a statement Monday, Breed called her parade boycott a “very hard decision.” Dorsey, the man she appointed supervisor, labeled the uniform ban a “policy of exclusion.”

San Francisco’s Transgender District responded in an Instagram post Thursday specifically calling Breed’s choice “a betrayal of inclusive values and ethics that have defined the city... as a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community for decades.”

While the relationship between local law enforcement and the LGBTQ community is less fraught than in other parts of the country, anti-LGBTQ hysteria is resurgent in some states, shaping school curriculum and legislation. And trans people remain far more likely than cisgender people to experience physical violence when interacting with police, according to the Anti-Violence Project.

Even the SFPD lacked a policy requiring officers to refer to transgender, gender variant and gender nonbinary individuals by their preferred pronouns until 2018.

Let me echo the point BLM made six years ago: Law enforcement uniforms and guns don’t signify safety for everyone. SF Pride’s ban isn’t anti-police. It’s pro-peace of mind for groups rarely afforded it.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips appears Sundays. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

Justin Phillips joined The San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 2019, Justin also began writing a weekly column for The Chronicle's Datebook section that focused on Black culture in the Bay Area. In 2020, Justin helped launch Extra Spicy, a food and culture podcast he co-hosts with restaurant critic Soleil Ho. Following its first season, the podcast was named one of the best podcasts in America by the Atlantic. In February, Justin left the food team to become a full-time columnist for The Chronicle. His columns focus on race and inequality in the Bay Area, while also placing a spotlight on the experiences of marginalized communities in the region.