Do more to end transgender murders, US authorities urged

LONDON: Police and politicians must do more to stop the murder of transgender people, US activists said, as the killing of four women in Florida since February threw a spotlight on rising levels of violence against gender minorities nationwide.

In the first seven months of this year, 16 transgender and nonbinary people have been murdered, said the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy group – one quarter in two districts of Florida.

“We are all very upset with how it has been responded to,” said Amanda Nelson, a campaigner in Jacksonville, Florida, where three transgender women were shot dead in separate incidents, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Thursday.

“We haven’t been given much support from Jacksonville Sheriff ’s Office ... All the murders that have happened, it just feels like it’s non-stop and I think all of us are exhausted,” said Nelson of the Jacksonville Transgender Action Committee.

The LGBT media monitoring group GLAAD said 2017 was the deadliest year on record for

All the murders that have happened, it feels like it’s non-stop and I think all of us are exhausted.

Amanda Nelson

transgenders in the United States with 26 murders, many of whom were women of colour.

Nelson said initial Jacksonville police reports that used the victims’ birth names and incorrectly identified them as male could have hindered investigations, as many people who knew the women did not know their old identities.

The most recent victim in Florida was Sasha Garden, 27, who was found dead from traumatic injuries on Thursday in Orlando in Orange County, the county Sheriff ’s Office said on Twitter, while also appealing for information in the homicide case.