The alleged killings of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies will cast a shadow over tomorrow’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, organisers admit, but hope the event can reunite the community.
Mardi Gras chief executive Gil Beckwith said today the deaths were a “horrific loss” and the event’s festival over past days had been “very difficult”.
She believed many of the thousands of people expected to attend the 46th parade through Darlinghurst in the city will use the event to grieve for the couple who were allegedly killed by a serving New South Wales police officer.
“A lot of people will use it to mourn … and we will be providing space for people to express themselves,” she said at a media briefing today.
The deaths of Baird and Davies have also thrown the Mardi Gras’s often troubled relationship with the police back into the public glare.
But the request that police not march has now been overturned on the condition officers involved do not wear their uniforms as usual.
City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the entire community was still hurting after the killings but backed the decision that police officers should continue to march.
“It is a positive step… we need to work side by side,” she said.
Moore said the police still had work to do in improving relations with the LBGTIQ community and pointed to the findings in the report by NSW Supreme Court Justice John Sackar into the police response to gay hate crimes.
“But we’ve coma a long way… we don’t want to go back.”
Beckwith said organisers were making every effort to ensure their would be no repeat of it in Sydney tomorrow.
“Our objective is to make the march safe for everyone across the community.”
