Transgender individuals face some of the most vicious and persistent forms of street harassment, including from the police.
“Last week, Mitchyll Mora, a youth leader at a group called Streetwise and Safe told me about an experience he had last spring, on his way to a poetry reading on the Lower East Side. Dressed in a style he called non-gender-conforming — makeup, boots, long earrings — he was stopped and searched by the police for no reason he could understand. The police made him throw his hands up against the wall, invoked a gay slur and grabbed his buttocks, he said. “I should have tried to file a report, but it’s hard to feel empowered in this kind of situation,” he said.
Mr. Mora did recount this story in testimony to the City Council last October in support of the Community Safety Act, proposed legislation that would, among other things, require police officers to explain themselves to those they have stopped and provide them with a document, including the officer’s name and information on how to file a complaint, if necessary, at the conclusion of a police encounter…
Johanna Vasquez, who at age 16 came from El Salvador, where, born male, she always felt the instinct to be female and suffered terrible abuse and prejudice because of it, she told me. Two years ago, she said, she was stopped by police officers at 2 a.m. outside a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue, waiting for a taxi. She pleaded guilty to charges that she was loitering with intent to sell herself, feeling that she had no other choice, she said, but she denies having any involvement in prostitution. She had been similarly accused in Texas, she told me, a matter that resulted in her deportation years earlier.
Last year, the Police Department responded positively to requests from advocates that it revise its Patrol Guide to ensure that transgender men and women receive more sensitive treatment. But Ms. Vasquez continues to feel constrained. She told me tearfully, “I don’t go out at night, and I fear that even if I go to the pharmacy I’ll get arrested.”
RightRides shared the story on their Facebook page along with this additional information:
“During our community forum in Jackson Heights last summer, we learned from community members that NYPD police have been profiling LGBTQ folks, especially Transgender folks, in the neighborhood for quite some time. Community members shared with us stories of being discriminated against by police, being harassed by police and being wrongly incarcerated for prostitution. The struggle continues to make our streets safer and that means calling out NYPD when they are the ones doing the harassing. #policeharassment”
Amen. The streets should be safe for EVERYONE. Police should be our allies, not our harassers and tormentors. It’s time for change.
