Cops

Most of us never have any contact with police unless we need them and as trans-persons we worry about how we will be treated when we do meet them. I had three encounters with the police, the first encounter was what I called “The Squirrel, the Cop and Me” and you can read about it here. My next meeting with the police was in Kittery Maine when I was in an accident back in 2008 and my last time in needed the police was earlier this month during another accident.

In the Albany Times Union there is an article about the training that the police are now getting,

Police, transgender groups building trust
Albany's law enforcement officials to rewrite protocol and procedures, create new training
By Paul Grondahl
Monday, December 24, 2012

ALBANY — A group of transgender people and crime victim advocates have been meeting monthly with Albany police and law enforcement officials to rewrite protocol and procedures and devise training for officers intended to preserve the dignity of transgender people who are arrested.

The group has been discussing thorny issues surrounding the arrests of transgender people, including how body- and strip-searches should be conducted, how to handle confinement in police lockup and how to identify transgender individuals if they present and define themselves as female but their driver's license categorizes them as male.

The group is working against a backdrop of pervasive fear and mistrust of police on the part of transgender people. A recent national survey found that 29 percent of transgender people said they had been verbally harassed by cops.
[…]
"It's all about building a new and positive relationship between the transgender community and law enforcement," Romero said.

"We have a diverse community in Albany and our job is to make sure we recognize and respond to that," Cox said. "It's our duty to treat everybody fairly and equally, with respect and dignity as human beings."

I have to say that all my encounters with the police have been very positive. They have always used the proper pronouns and have treated me with respect. I can only hope that others have the same experience that I had with the police. But I know some haven’t, that their encounters were anything but positive. I also know that I am lucky to live here in the Northeast because in other parts of the country trans-people do not have it as good as we have it here.