Last week, the District’s transgender community suffered a rash of violent crime that left two transgender persons dead and one in the hospital.
On Aug. 16, Bella Evangelista was shot dead by a man who had solicited her for oral sex and later discovered she was transgender. Antoine Jacobs was immediately arrested and charged with her murder, which has been flagged as a possible hate crime. On Aug. 20, Punana Walker was found shot in Northwest Washington and taken to a hospital, where her condition is improving. Early on the morning of Aug. 21, Emonie Kiera Spalding was found dead in Southeast Washington. This Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police Department charged Antwan D. Lewis with her murder. The three crimes have no connection except that each victim, born male, had chosen to live as a woman.
But these horrific crimes have illuminated one bright spot for the District’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community: the success of MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, which was founded three years ago as a part of the Department’s increasing focus on “community policing.” By building trust with the LGBT community, the GLLU has been able to ease concerns, give valuable advice and quickly solve the crimes.
According to GLLU supervisor Sgt. Brett A. Parson, the Unit responded immediately to the scenes of last week’s crimes, helped identify the victims and gathered information about the crimes from members of the transgender community that resulted in the two arrests. (Parson said the MPD is quickly progressing toward an arrest in the Walker case.) In addition, the Unit joined other groups last weekend to reach out to the transgender community with support and safety advice.
“Unequivocally, this has shaken their foundation of safety,” Parson said. “We’re reminding the transgender community that they are not immune from crime.”
Cyndee Clay, executive director of D.C’s Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, has been very pleased with the cooperation between the GLLU and organization such as HIPS, Us Helping Us, and La Clinica de Pueblo that reach out to the transgender community. Parson called HIPS at 4 a.m. Thursday morning with information about the recent attacks to assist its outreach efforts.
“I think the Liaison Unit has been exemplary trying to work with using existing community resources,” Clay said. “There have been instances with other police units that did not go nearly as well as this one did. They’ve worked really hard to be a community policing unit.”
Sadly, this latest rash of anti-transgender violence is anomalous, but not uncommon. A survey of D.C.’s transgender population conducted by Us Helping Us in 1999 and 2000 indicated that 43% of respondents had been victims of violence or crime. Since 2000, a total of seven transgender persons have been murdered.
No amount of community policing may stop the crimes of violent hatemongers, but the success of the GLLU has proven it an invaluable resource in the aftermath of those appalling acts.
