A COMPLAINT against a councillor who said police officers “prancing around” at the front of a gay pride march do not create “fear or respect” has been dismissed.

Cllr Mark Warters made the remarks during a discussion calling for police and fire services to be “funded properly” at a City of York Council meeting on July 19.

The independent councillor for Osbaldwick and Derwent ward said: “Locally, respect is undermined as well when communities that don’t see a police officer from one year to the next witness officers prancing around at the head of the recent gay pride march, which hardly creates fear and respect among potential offenders.”

A complaint was made against Cllr Warters for his remarks.

A report into the incident said: “The context of his comments is that they come towards the end of a contribution which may perhaps be summarised as calling for a return to some ‘old fashioned policing’.”

An independent expert and a barrister who investigated the complaint said it was not clear who the councillor was failing to treat with respect and that they could not see how the comments breached any equality policy.

The report says the barrister added: “The term ‘prancing’ was not as she understood it linked to anybody's sexual orientation.”

The report said: “Whatever the intention behind them it would be hard to disagree that Cllr Warters’ choice of language was, at best, poor.

“However, the words were used during a political debate. In my view there is no real prospect of finding that the words used fall outside the scope of the “offensive, shocking, disturbing, exaggerated, provocative, polemical, colourful, emotive [or], non-rational” language that is protected by the right to freedom of speech.”

The standards complaint panel found that the case should not go for further investigation.