The report of a homicide prepared by police included basic facts: the gender of the deceased. The name. The sort of basic information that would comprise any police report, that would be expected of any police report. And yet, it’s not only the subject of controversy, but outrage. What could possibly make the recording of facts so very wrong?
Laverne Cox says she “sobbed and wept” after reading a new report from ProPublica about multiple transgender murder victims who were repeatedly misgendered by the police departments and agencies charged with working the cases.
Cox said the lack of policies in place to ensure transgender murder victims’ gender identities are respected was an “injustice on top of injustice.”
The complaint is twofold. First, that the deceased is “misgendered,” such as a transgender female will be noted as a male based on biological attributes. The second is that the police will “deadname” the transgender victim, using the person’s legal name rather than the name by which they preferred to be known. ProPublica found this practice to be pervasive.
Studies show that transgender women are disproportionately likely to be victims of violent crime, not just in Jacksonville, but nationwide. Yet most local law enforcement agencies persist in handling these cases much like the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, or JSO.
There are reasons why this is the case, which are well known but rarely mentioned as the reasons are controversial as well and deemed offensive. Denying the reasons has done nothing to save people’s lives, but political correctness is apparently more important than survival.
Across the nation, ProPublica found, some 65 different law enforcement agencies have investigated murders of transgender people since Jan. 1, 2015. And in 74 of 85 cases, victims were identified by names or genders they had abandoned in their daily lives. Our survey found that arrests have been made in 55 percent of the killings of transgender people nationwide in the last three and a half years. The overall clearance rate for murders in the U.S. is only slightly higher, at 59 percent.
Clearance rates for homicides are relatively poor for everyone. Cops aren’t nearly as good at investigating as TV shows would suggest. In the murders of transgender people, they’re slightly worse. 55% rather than 59%. This minor difference might be easily explained by the circumstances surrounding the murders, but advocates chalk it up to misgendering and deadnaming.
Advocates say that not using the name and pronoun a person was known by can slow down an investigation during its most critical hours. People who knew the victim or who saw them in the hours before they were murdered might only have known them by their preferred name and gender.
“If Susie is murdered, don’t use ‘Sam,’” said Monica Roberts, an activist and journalist who tracks murders of transgender people. Roberts worries that deadnaming both prevents the community from identifying victims and fosters mistrust of police.
It would seem to be a matter of sound investigation to seek information using the most effective tools, such as using the name with which people would be most likely to recognize in the course of investigating a murder. But the issue extends beyond the police seeking to investigate a murder into police “respecting” the victim’s transgender identity.
In investigating the murders of Walker, English and James, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says it has just followed its policy, which is to identify people based on a medical examiner’s report and whatever name and sex are listed on their state identification.
After Walker’s death, the sheriff’s office referred to her in reports and public statements as a man and released a male name to the media, one she hadn’t used in years. Friends and activists called the agency, asking officers to respect Walker and use her chosen name, but say they were told that wasn’t how the agency handled such cases.
While it may seem “respectful,” to use a person’s preferred name rather than “whatever name and sex are listed on their state identification,” it raises significant issues as well. An autopsy report that lists the deceased as female, because that was her preferred gender, when the person was biologically a male, would raise bizarre issues at trial as to the accuracy of the autopsy.
There would be questions about whether the deceased was “out” to family and friends outside the transgender community. How long would a transgender person have to identify as transgender or use a fictitious* name before the police would adopt it as the official name for reporting purposes?
What if the person changed names, since there’s no reason their preference couldn’t change from time to time as they decided a different name was more to their liking? There’s nothing wrong, per se, with wanting to be known by a name other than the one given at birth, but if names can be changed at will, they no longer serve much use as identifiers.
There is a significant difference between conducting an investigation based upon a person’s chosen name rather than their official name, as a matter of sound law enforcement investigatory practices. After all, asking about “Sam” to people who knew her as “Suzie” isn’t merely politically incorrect, but incredibly ineffective. If you want to find a murderer, asking the wrong questions because of official policy is idiotic. But as obvious as this may seem, it’s not the problem about which Laverne Cox complains.
“I have been saying for years that misgendering a trans person is an act of violence. When I saw that I am referring to cultural and structural violence,” Cox wrote in a note posted to social media about the article. “The police misgendering and deadnamng [sic] trans murder victims as a matter of policy feels like a really good example of that cultural and structural violence.”
Calling things you find wrong or unpalatable “violence” is certainly the trend among definition-challenged people, but it ignores the problems raised in favor of political agenda. Police should investigate and solve, to the extent they’re capable, the murders of transgender people as they would any other murder victim. To do so, they should use the tools most effective to accomplish their task, regardless of policy as to what should appear in official reports for the sake of technical accuracy.
But to reduce objective reality to a matter of political correctness, even if Cox “feels” that it’s “cultural and structural violence,” contributes nothing to finding killers and closing murders. As ridiculously ineffective as it is to canvas the transgender community with the name “Sam” when she went by “Suzie,” it’s similarly ridiculous to cry “violence” for failure to put the gender agenda ahead of ascertaining, prosecuting and convicting the killer.
*While it’s politically incorrect to characterize a transgender person’s preferred name as “fictitious,” it remains an objective fact that the person will have an “official” name, the one on her birth certificate, social security card, driver’s license, that government recognizes as the name of that person.
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Yup, she should take it up with God. He obviously made the mistake when he gave the victims the wrong body.
The rest of us just work with what God taught us.
How many of you are in there?
Just to be clear, KP is *not* Bill.
So maybe not that many.
Hey, hey! You thought I was not paying attention?
I’m paying attention, and do not necessarily like what I’m seeing.
If I had anything impotent to say, or contribute, I would have said it already. Ha.
This post-mortem fiasco is a serious conundrum, but I got more serious issues to worry about. Hope they can straighten it out, but the prospects do not look good. Reasons. (Trademark, however you make that little designation which everybody recognizes, but nobody pays no nevermind toward.)
The real Bill is really Bill.
I’m sure KP just has a frog in his pocket.
A frog that knows its catechisms is impressive.
But not a vicar.
With profoundest apologies to Mr. Whitman and the Synoptic but otherwise pseudonymous Mark:
That largely depends on my moods.
I am large. I contain multitudes.
My name’s Legion. I’m many.
So, just call me any
Old name which you think that includes!
So it’s cool that they were murdered, but ‘Laverne Cox says she “sobbed and wept”’ that the reports used the wrong names and pronouns? Sounds like some misplaced priorities.
She’s not suggesting the murders aren’t important, but her tears are for misplaced and counterproductive priorities. At least it saved Cox from committing suicide, so that’s a good thing.
Adding an AKA alias would be even more violent, indicating that the cops know the “correct” name but are loath to use it standalone.
Henceforth, I prefer to be called “Satch” rather than Horace Debussy Jones.
And a Happy what-would-have-been 99th Birthday to Huntz Hall.
If you want to be known by a different particular name, fine. There’s a procedure for legally changing it. But until then the Vital Statistics people are going to recognize your birth name only.
And the notion that homicide detectives will not use your “street” name (nothing pejorative intended) in searching for your killer is ridiculous.
But what happens when the M.E., M.E. investigator, homicide detective or prosecutor join the parade?
Defense: Your report indicates the victim was female. Is that an accurate conclusion?
M.E.: The investigator determines that.
Defense: But during your post, didn’t you find evidence of surgical removal of a penis and the beginning of breast augmentation?
M.E.: I noted “surgery.” To say more would be shaming the corpse.
Defense: But didn’t you think the sex of the victim might be wrong? That is, the victim was probably Sam, not Suzie?
M.E.: I don’t consider that because deadnaming the corpse would do violence to the corpse.
Defense: When you’re alone, how do your shoes get tied?
M.E.: I wear loafers.
On the bright side, the cross could last days. There would just be no way to stop.
Loafers? Did you think I wouldn’t see what you did there? Am I a light weight?
I was just giving you stuff for closing.
These “advocates” are making a lot of assumptions about police investigations. The fact that police have recorded a decedent’s name as it exists in state records and used the decedent’s biological gender in the initial police report does not mean that detectives are not following leads linked to the {Ed. Note: Changed this word, because reasons.] transgender person’s aliases and transgender activities. This is like assuming detectives don’t pursue information with the “street names” of dead gang members, simply because the police reports are filled out with the decedents’ legal names. There is no reason to suppose this is true, or that it has any effect on the progress of the investigation. The real gravamen of the “advocates'” complaint is that the police reporting makes it slightly harder for “advocates” to compile their stories and statistics on [Ed. NoteL And this one.] transgender mortality rates and possible “hate crimes.” (Even this is perhaps a matter of a few days delay, cut short when friends and associates of the deceased [Ed. Note: This one too.] transgender post their”misgendering” and “dead-naming” complaints all over the Internet).
Before you ask, I understand that you’ve chosen your epithets with care, but don’t use my blawg to deliberately denigrate anyone, no matter how little you agree with them, for shock value. I pick my battles. You don’t get to pick them for me.
Noted (although) Ru Paul says [Ed. Note] is fine.
These “advocates” are making a lot of assumptions about police investigations.
Far more than this article covers. I stumbled across a site cataloging “transgender” murders, quite possibly the site managed by the specific advocate mentioned here. Step One in her methodology seems to be categorizing any and every murder of a transgender individual as a hate crime because the victim was transgender. Any failure of the police to solve the crime was attributed to trans-phobia. The great offense of “misgendering” is a big focus of the site, including ‘misgendering’ of victims who are found sans clothes. So, it’s a great offense in the eyes of this lunatic if a male found without any clothes or ID is identified by the police as John Doe, even though the now dead and unable to communicate his preferences wants to be known as a Jane Doe.
If we aren’t in the Crazy Years now, I dread to think how much inane things will get.
Yes, there are issues that aren’t covered in this post, the categorization of all murders of transgender people being hate crimes regardless of the actual reason for killing (i.e., a drug deal gone bad) is one of them. What that means isn’t that you ought to introduce issues beyond the scope of the post, but rather try your best to stay on topic or comment about it on a post that discusses it. Elsewhere.
Do we not provide a process by which a transgendered person may change her or his legal name, and have their gender on their identification changed? The state is not your buddy. It doesn’t have intimacy, it has records.
You’re such a slave to systems.
IANAL, but I wonder what the charge sheet for the murder would list for the name of the victim – their legal name or their preferred name? Does this have any effect on the way that the prosecution would proceed – i.e., might the perpetrator be able to use a “bad” charge sheet to avoid conviction, as a technicality?
By “charge sheet,” I assume you’re referring to the indictment. If the indictment listed a name of a person the govt says doesn’t exist as the person killed by the defendant, would that be a “technicality”? Is a deft entitled to know the identity of the person he’s accused of killing?
It seems that would be sporting, especially if the deft has killed a lot of people and needs the specific information to form a belief as to whether the charge is founded.
Why call it gender and give the lunatic fringe an opening? It’s sex, the boring kind.
Like it or not, transgender people exist. Changing the semantics won’t make them disappear.