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2 Black-led organizations sue SPD, city of Syracuse for alleged permit scheme

Wiley Chen | Contributing Photographer

The complaint is related to a city permit that the organizations said impacts their ability to hold events on city or county property, specifically celebrations surrounding Juneteenth and Pride.

By Richard PerrinsSenior Staff Writer

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The Black Artist Collective of central New York and BlackCuse Pride filed a lawsuit against the city of Syracuse on July 1.

The case docket names the city, Mayor Ben Walsh, the Syracuse Police Department and SPD Chief Kenton Buckner as defendants. The complaint is related to a city permit that the organizations said impacts their ability to hold events on city or county property, specifically celebrations surrounding Juneteenth and Pride.

According to a post on BAC’s Instagram, a clerk and a lieutenant at SPD informed organizers that because they had signed permits for the use of the Syracuse Inner Harbor on June 19, they had additionally agreed to have uniformed police present. The permits also gave the police the right to search attendees as well as arranged an overtime rate of $55 an hour per officer, according to the post.

BAC was informed these impositions were at the discretion of SPD, meaning the department would have control over how many officers were at the event and how much the organizations would have to pay the officers and the officers’ actions while at the event, BAC said in the post on their Instagram.



“We do not want to … further risk involuntary searches of queer bodies, of trans bodies, of black and brown bodies, of our bodies,” BlackCuse Pride said in a statement on Facebook.

In the Facebook statement, BlackCuse Pride said that SPD mandated a similar team of officers be present at their SOUL of Pride Cookout as a condition of the permit and against the organization’s wishes.

“After a year of protesting, calling out injustices, holding government authorities and private enterprises accountable for their lack of respect of human life — in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery — the fact that we still have to go to lengths to explain this wrongness only to be unheard and run over is harmful to say the least,” the BAC said in a statement on Instagram.





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