South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Police struggle to connect in LGBTQ+ communities
Most transgender murder cases unsolved
In the nearly eight months since a transgender woman was shot dead in the middle of a crowded South Florida street, Bree Black’s case has all but gone cold.
No one has come forward with any leads, police say. It’s a phenomenon that experts and advocates who study violence against transgender people know all too well.
They say the problem stems from the lack of protections for transgender victims in state hate crime laws and is exacerbated bylaw enforcement mis treating, mis gendering, or misnaming the victims. A potential salve for the problem is on the horizon in Broward County, where a league of first responders recently formed an LGBTQ+ liaison coalition.
At first, law enforcement identified Black, 27, by a name she didn’t use. They released her “legal” name, the one she was assigned at birth.
But no one knew her by that name. They knew her as Bree, or sometimes called her by her nickname “Nuk.”
Using a transgender person’s non-preferred name is negatively referred to by LGBTQ+ advocates as “deadnaming.” It’s a mistake that can sometimes cost law enforcement the possibility of solving transgender murder cases, because it jeopardizes the trans community’s trust in the agency and witnesses don’t come forward — or simply because they don’t know who law enforcement is asking for more information about.
The rate of transgender murder cases that are solved nationally is well below the national clearance rate for murders in which the victims are cisgender, meaning their gender is the same as the one they were assigned at birth. Nationally, the murder clearance rate is about 62%, according to the FBI’s 2020 uniform crime report.
The FBI does not factor gender status or identity into the report. In fact, there’s no comprehensive log of transgender murders in the country. It’s up to nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and independent research teams to keep track of violence against transgender people.
When the victims are transgender, the rate drops down to about 44%, according to preliminary data compiled by Brendan Lantz, an assistant professor in the college of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.
“That’s an alarming dropoff,” he said. And it’s even lower in Florida, where the rate is about 40%, according to Lantz’ research.
Lantz’ research team at the Hate Crime Research and Policy Institute set out to create the first comprehensive database of transgender murders in the U.S. starting late in the summer of 2020. They’ve worked backward from there, and so far have compiled mostly complete datasets going back to 2018.
The team is still collecting the data, so the numbers are subject to change. Their preliminary data shows that Florida has led the country in the number of murders targeting transgender people for the past two years. Out of the 90 or so recorded murders, 10 of them were in Florida. The next closest states were Ohio with eight cases and Texas with seven cases. No other state had more than six murders of transgender people.
Out of Florida’s 10 cases, only four of them were solved or cleared in some way. Nine of those cases involved some degree of misgendering the victims, Lantz said.
“I think it’s really important to look at the relationship between misgendering, deadnaming and clearance rates,” he said. “The cases are less likely to be solved if we’re deadnaming the victims and not using the right details. If you’re putting the wrong name out into the world, you’re not going to get all the information you could when you’re trying to solve that case.”
After releasing Black’s birth name, law enforcement had LGBTQ+ community leaders release information about Black’s case to the public. Tatiana Williams, director of a nonprofit called TransInclusive Group, talked with Black’s family and friends to determine Black’s preferred name and gender pronouns. Williams advised that Black’s pronouns were she/ her, and sometimes went by they/them as well.
Since then, LGBTQ+ employees at the Broward Sheriff ’s Office started a coalition that includes at least one liaison from every local l aw enforcement agency in Broward County. The group recently participated in a seminar called “LGBTQ+: An Ally’s Guide.”
They’ve also raised the reward for information regarding Black’s case to $8,000, said Sgt. Donald Prichard. Those with information should call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-4938477.
“In the case of Bree Black, the frustration remains that even though detectives know there were multiple witnesses on scene at the time of the murder, none came forward with information to help this case,” Prichard said. Detectives received several tips “which contained no actionable information that would help move them forward in the case,” he said.
Communication between law enforcement and the LGBTQ+ community is key, according to Gina Duncan, the director of transgender inclusion for Equality Florida, a political advocacy group that advocates for civil rights and protections for LGBTQ+ populations.
“Those agencies that have embedded, ingrained, engaged LGBTQ+ liaison teams who are talking to the community ... that’s kind of one of the secret sauces of not getting it wrong,” said Duncan, who develops transgender cultural competency training programs that are certified for use in law enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“If you’re communicating with the community, if you know the community, you know who to reach out to whether you need training, whether you need help in identifying someone who maybe is either non-binary or fluid in their gender identity and presentation,” she said.
Having LGBTQ+ liaisons in place can help at every level of law enforcement, whether it’s a patrol officer pulling someone over for a routine traffic stop, filing a report with the person’s accurate gender or knowing how to properly and respectfully engage with a transgender person, Duncan said.
“Education is the critical component of that in reference to what trans-affirming language looks like in a situation where a law enforcement officer pulls over an attractive blond woman and gets handed a driver’s license that has ‘Bill Smith’ on there and the picture doesn’t exactly match up,” she said.
“When someone says to a transgender person ‘what pronouns do you use’ or ‘what name would you like me to call you’, transgender people know that’s code for ‘I want to respect you. I understand the dynamics of being transgender and I want to make sure that I don’t misgender you or mistreat you in any way.’ ”
That situation has come up before for Coconut Creek Police officers, said Sgt. Barb Hendrickx. She’s the sergeant over the community involvement unit and also serves as the LGBTQ+ liaison for the department.
Hendrickx said the officers in her unit have called her for guidance when they were out on the road or in the community and encountered someone who is transgender in a traffic stop or a situation where they were arresting someone.
“They’ll say ‘this person is telling us to refer to this person in this specific way’ or ‘what do we do when we take them to jail?’ ” she said. “So I was looking to see if my questions were going to be answered in the seminar.”
The seminar covered most of the specific questions she said she had.
“One of the biggest things I took away from it is referring to someone the way they want to be referred to as vs. what legally is on their driver’s license,” she said. “Because even though it says male or female, that may not be how they identify, and out of respect it’s important to build that bond and build that respectful relationship with them.”