Guilty Until Proved Innocent

For many trans women you are guilty until you’re proved innocent, especially if you’re a colored trans woman.

Transgender people are being profiled as sex workers. AG’s directive fails to address the issue. | Opinion
NJ.com
By Derek J. Demeri
December 17, 2019

In recognition of International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I ask New Jersey today to do better for its people.

Last month, the attorney general issued a statewide Directive Governing Law Enforcement Interactions with Transgender Individuals. The new directive makes great strides on respecting people’s dignity when arrests are being made but fails to acknowledge how stereotypes and prejudice of transgender and gender-diverse people play into why arrests of the community are being done in the first place. The deafening silence when it comes to the profiling of transgender women and non-binary femme individuals as sex workers is particularly salient.

As the New Jersey Task Force on Transgender Equality recent noted in their Report and Recommendations, transgender women of color are frequently profiled as sex workers by law enforcement. One-third of Black transgender women who interacted with police reported that law enforcement assumed they were engaging in prostitution. While the new directive states law enforcement cannot “[c]onsider a person’s actual or perceived gender identity or expression and/or sexual orientation as a basis for reasonable suspicion,” its value falls flat without explicit guidance on the issue of profiling transgender women as sex workers.

Particularly if you happen to be carrying condoms in your purse. You want to play it safe and it comes back to bite you in the a**.

This profiling has led to serious repercussions especially when condoms continue to be used as evidence of prostitution in New Jersey. In a conversation with Gary-Paul Wright, executive director of the African-American Office of Gay Concerns in Newark, I learned that the Port Authority Police Department attempted to arrest a Black transgender woman who was working as a public health outreach worker. Why? She was handing out condoms to other transgender women of color and that fit the definition of “promoting prostitution” under New Jersey’s laws. California recently banned using condoms as evidence because of the serious public health consequences it has on the wider community.

After a night out with your boy friend or girl friend you stop by an all night convenience store to get a coffee for the ride home and a cop walks in sees you’re trans and automatically assumes that you are working the street, he empties your purse and finds condom… guilty! The cop presume you are a street worker because what else would you be doing out at that time of night with a condom?

Many a nightmare for trans people have begun that way.

However, one can never feel dignity when they are being profiled and arrested for being transgender in a public space. New Jersey can, and must, do more.