An artist managed to sneak ACAB into the New York cops Pride Month design

New York city cops... they ain't too smart

It’s Pride Month in the USA, which means that brands and weird government organisations slap a rainbow filter over their logo, tweet out something like “yass queen, you know what’s slay? Home and contents insurance”.

On the one hand it’s a kind of depressing capitalist sign of progress - it’s GOOD that queer people are now accepted enough that brands want to exploit us for money. But on the other hand, Pride was a protest and a celebration, not a marketing opportunity for banks.

Traditionally some of the controversial figures in the rogue gallery of people who use Pride for their own nefarious gains are the police.

Cops at Pride is a yearly discourse tradition for the queer community, followed only by “kink at Pride” and “Love Actually is bad” in terms of regularity and rabidity. There’s a lot to talk about here, including the politics of “acceptable” protest at Pride - but also why cops love to present an LGBTIQ-friendly facade, but at the same time have an enduring history of violence AGAINST the LGBTIQ community, with specific focus on POC and trans people.

This is a problem all around the world - cops at Pride, police at Mardi Gras in Australia. Considering these events were formed, mostly, as a protest against police violence and examples of this violence continue to this day, I think it’s a valid point of contention. I constantly think of a queer news story I reported on once, about Australian police invaded the wrong people’s home, breaking a queer mans arm so badly it required multiple surgeries, and doctors feared would be left un-useable.

No cops marching in Pride when they’re also committing violence against the community.

Which is why it’s incredibly funny that the official Twitter of Keechant Sewell, Police Commissioner of the City of New York, tweeted out a new Pride Month design, including some of their brum-brum cars, their eyor-eyors.

It’s hard to verify the identity of accounts these days on Musk’s Twitter, but unless this is a very convoluted prank stretching back for many years of committed police commissioner posting, this is the real deal.

Hang on, computer enhance!

All colours… are beautiful. A lovely, if suitably vague message of affirmation, typical of brands during Pride. I remember when I worked at a publication owned by a billboard company, the billboard people felt like they needed to put up something on their many billboards during the Black Lives Matters protests - and settled on the milktoast message of “say no to racism” lol.

ANYWAY.

People were quick to notice that behind this delightfully vague message is actually a moment of queer protest - All Colours Are Beautiful, ACAB, All Cops are Bastards. ACAB - the universal anti police slogan.

Beautiful! Hilarious!

Nobody has stepped forward clarifying any intention behind this – so there’s a chance that it could be an innocent mistake by some mortified cop designer. There’s also people pointing out that police have even tried to lean into the ACAB messaging in an effort to reclaim the term, and we could all be taken on a kind of odd ride here.

“gather all the sexiest cops in Germany… we need their beautiful faces. And get the dog too!”

But I think it’s much funnier to believe that some queer graphic designer just got paid a bunch of money to put ACAB on cop cars.

I’ve reached out to the NYPD for comment, and will update if I get anything useful (they’re all asleep right now).

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