Violent deaths of transgender people hit new high
Five of the deaths were during past three weeks
A record number of transgender and gender nonconforming people – 32 – have been killed by violence this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Those statistics include five deaths in the past three weeks, said the LGBTQ advocacy group, which began keeping records in 2013.
But that number is likely even higher, “since many trans people killed by violence are misgendered by police and can be misreported in the media,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD.
“Violence facing transgender Americans, especially Black trans women, requires urgent resources and attention from federal state, and local government agencies and elected officials,” she said.
On Oct. 7, Brooklyn Deshuna, a 20year-old Black transgender woman, was found fatally shot in Shreveport, Louisiana. Just a day before, Felycya Harris, a 33-year-old Black transgender woman, was shot and killed in Augusta, Georgia.
Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, a transgender woman from Puerto Rico in her mid-30s, was found fatally shot Sept. 30 in San Germán, Puerto Rico.
Two days earlier, Mia Green, 29, a Black transgender woman was killed in Philadelphia.
Aerrion Burnett, a 37-year-old Black transgender woman, was found dead of a gunshot wound on Sept. 19 in Independence, Missouri.
“It is ridiculous that we have to continue to hashtag our friends’ names and add them to a list of names to be memorialized every year, and that we expect it,” Carter Brown, executive director of National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, told USA TODAY in July.
“We expect it because too many trans women of color are continuously being murdered and beaten with minimum or no consequence being brought to the assailants.”
A June 2020 report from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and Equality Florida found that 2018 saw a 41% increase in reported crimes directed against transgender individuals.
While just 16% of the trans population in the U.S. is estimated to be Black, 79% of known trans homicide victims were Black, the report showed.
And in 2017, which held the previous high of transgender murders of 29, 71% of victims of hate violence were people of color, 52% were transgender and 40% were transgender women of color, according to a report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs that year.
Cabot Petoia, spokesman for National Black Justice Coalition, which is an American civil rights organization, said in a statement that these attacks “highlight the epidemic of violence that too many members of the trans community face – a problem that appears to be accelerating.”
The organization, which also records transgender homicides, has recorded 35 murders of transgender people this year.
“The violence that Black trans women and femmes experience at the intersection of anti-Blackness, misogyny and transphobia is a public health issue – a sign of a society that needs to heal,” Petoia said. “We need urgent action pushing for both legislative and community-based protections for our Black trans, femme, and gender nonconforming siblings.”