One Thing Stood Out

At last night’s TDoR one city stood out and that was Jacksonville Florida they had three murders there of trans women this year and they were tied with Chicago which is a much larger city.

‘We Have Targets on Our Backs’: How Jacksonville Became America’s Transgender Murder Capital
Three of the 22 reported killings of trans people in America this year have taken place in Jacksonville, Florida—the victims all black trans women.
The Daily Beast
By Samantha Allen
November 19, 2018

As the Transgender Day of Remembrance approaches on Nov. 20, black transgender women in Jacksonville aren’t just mourning. They are also afraid.

Out of the 22 reported killings of transgender people in the United States in 2018 so far, three took place in Jacksonville, more than in any other city.

All three of those homicide victims were black transgender women: Celine Walker was shot in a motel on Feb. 4, Antash'a English was gunned down in a June 1 drive-by shooting, and Cathalina Christina James was killed in a motel on June 24. Another transgender woman was shot repeatedly in June, but survived—and police charged her alleged attacker in July.

After LGBT advocates criticized the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for misgendering these victims—rather than using the names and genders by which they were known in the community—the JSO created a nine-officer LGBT Liaison Team in August, as WJCT reported, in order to forge better ties with the community.

But now, months later, some black LGBT advocates say that relationships with the police remain strained.

It sound like the LGBT Liaison Team is just a show organization to parade out at press conferences and hasn’t really done anything.

But Kittle is still firmly of the belief that the LGBT Liaison Team is “a publicity stunt.”

“Creating this team literally was just to stop the momentum—and to split us up against the affluent white gays who were upset at first,” she told The Daily Beast, alleging that the Liaison Team has been selective about who they meet with: “They don’t want to talk to me and they don’t want to talk to people like Paige [Mahogany Parks].”

The police department continues to identify victims with their legal name and gender erasing their trans identity.

Such policies can impede investigations into transgender homicides, LGBT anti-violence advocates say, because many in the transgender community won’t recognize a deceased friend by their legal name and therefore can’t provide information to police until it is too late.

In fact, it is often the case that local communities do not even know that a transgender person has been killed until Houston-based blogger and transgender advocate Monica Roberts confirms it by cross-checking local media reports with social media accounts.

Unfortunately, this is the policy of many police departments around the country and I really don’t think that they care about us and that they only put in a halfhearted effort in catching the murders. That many police department view the murders as “it’s just another black trans woman.”

We will not be erased in life and death.