The way cops in Jacksonville and other jurisdictions investigate the murders of transgender women adds insult to injury and may be delaying justice.
By Lucas Waldron and Ken Schwencke
ProPublica
Jacksonville is not unique. Transgender people are routinely misidentified by law enforcement officials in cities across the country.
If you watch a 2016 video on her Facebook page, you can see Amia Tyrae swaying to the tune of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” Her eyelashes are meticulously sculpted and her lips, coated in light pink gloss, shimmer as she looks directly into the camera.
Earlier this year, Tyrae was shot to death at a motel in Baton Rouge. In reports provided to the media, police described Tyrae as a “transvestite” — an anachronistic term now widely considered a slur — and a man.
“It’s like a slap in my face,” said Alexis White, a transgender woman who described herself as Tyrae’s mother. In the transgender community, “mother” is a term of respect and devotion used for elders in the community, who often fill a familial role when people have been estranged from their birth families.
White said that hearing Tyrae described as a man was hurtful.
“Her name was Amia. She was a trans woman,” said White, “She was very sweet. She was loved by many.”
Don Coppola, a spokesperson for the Baton Rouge Police Department, said the department does not have a formal policy on how to identify transgender victims of crimes.
Pushed to explain how the department would refer to a transgender person, Coppola said police would use the person’s sex assigned at birth, noting “if it’s a male, it’s a male.”
Despite her close relationship with Tyrae, White said that the Baton Rouge Police Department never contacted her or other people she knows in the trans community to verify Tyrae’s identity.
When 24-year-old Ty Underwood was gunned down by a football player at Texas College in 2015, police reports initially noted that Underwood, who in Facebook photos has long dark hair and manicured nails, appeared to be female. Despite her appearance, and despite the fact that she had identified as a woman for years, the Tyler Police Department described her as a man throughout police records and in interviews with ProPublica.
In a supplemental police report, a detective noted that “there were no female breast (sic)” on Underwood, and later wrote that “the victim was a male dressed as a woman.” Records also show the Tyler Police Department referred to both Underwood and her friends as transvestites in internal documents describing the murder investigation.
The Dallas Police Department is one of the few local agencies that makes an effort to use preferred names and pronouns in order to build trust with the transgender community.
When Carla Flores-Pavon was found strangled to death in her apartment in Dallas in May 2018, Deputy Chief Thomas Castro of the Dallas police said the department made an effort to refer to her as “she” and “Carla” during their investigation.
“When we go out to the community and talk about somebody, we have to identify them by the way they identified,” Castro said, adding that it wouldn’t do the department any good to use a name that nobody knew her by.
Aea Celestice in her friend’s tattoo studio in Jacksonville. (Gioncarlo Valentine for ProPublica)
Police who incorrectly describe the gender of murder victims often don’t have internal policies that account for transgender people. Tyler Police Department spokesperson Don Martin defended his department’s decision to call Ty Underwood a man, saying that the department uses whatever sex is listed on a victim’s government-issued ID.
But something as simple and critical as having the correct name and gender on a driver’s license or voter registration card can prove unattainable for many transgender people. A person who is carrying an ID that does not match their outward appearance faces a higher risk of violence or harassment.
Transgender women told ProPublica that common interactions like showing IDs at a bar, or to vote, can identify them as transgender to others — a process known as “getting clocked.” According to a 2015 survey of transgender people, nearly one-third of people who presented an ID that did not match their appearance reported being harassed, denied services or attacked.
Several women told ProPublica about job opportunities that disappeared after potential employers discovered they were transgender. Without a job, transgender people start falling through society’s cracks. They can lose access to medical care, become homeless, or be forced into sex work.
For those reasons, one of the biggest steps people take when they’re transitioning is to legally change their name and gender marker — the “M” or “F” on identity documents. But a patchwork of state and federal regulations can make those changes complicated and expensive — and for some, impossible.
“Job-wise, [changing your name] helps,” said Savannah Bowens, a 30-year-old transgender woman in Jacksonville. “I think one of the root causes to why we deal with so much in our community is jobs.”
Bowens changed her name in 2017, after an employer noticed her old name on her driver’s license and called her into the office to question her about it. She decided then that she needed to legally update her identification.
Savannah Bowens, a 30-year-old transgender woman living in Jacksonville. Bowens is a pastor at her church and outspoken about the fight for respect in the transgender community. (Gioncarlo Valentine for ProPublica)
“I don’t want to become a statistic,” Bowens said about potentially losing a job. “I don’t want to have to be that girl that people see walking the streets or prostituting.”
The consequences of getting clocked range from derogatory comments to death. In 2016, Dwanya Hickerson, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, killed Dee Whigham, a 25-year-old nurse, by stabbing her 190 times in a hotel room in St. Martin, Mississippi. Hickerson, who admitted he had been chatting with Whigham online for several months before meeting in person, claimed he “lost it” after discovering she was transgender during sex.
Name and gender changes to official documents can sometimes require court orders or come with onerous restrictions. In some states, such changes are not available to those with felony convictions, or require genital surgery that people may not want or be able to afford. For transgender people who move to states other than the ones they were born in, changing official records can be a bureaucratic nightmare.
About half the states bar felons or other people with criminal histories from changing their names. Cost can also be a factor. Name changes run from $25 to $400, though many courts will also waive those fees for people who can’t afford them.
Those who go through the court process are by no means guaranteed the desired outcome. Judges have broad discretion to deny name and gender marker changes, and it’s not uncommon for them to do so. The Utah Supreme Court heard arguments this year from attorneys representing two transgender people who were not allowed to change their gender on official documents.
“It’s a very frustrating, disjointed legal system right now for gender marker changes,” said Arli Christian, the state policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE.
The NCTE rates 11 states — Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming — as the hardest places for changing a gender marker on state IDs. In those states, doing so requires body-altering surgery or a court order from a judge. The process for getting a court order can often require proof of surgery, too.
According to Christian, judges more frequently deny requests to change genders on IDs than names.
“This is not a process that should be in the courts,” Christian said. “Judges are not experts in gender identity.”
In Jacksonville, one of the victims, Antash’a English, was described by police with her correct name, but was also described as a man. That’s because English had legally changed her name, but not her gender identification on official documents. Her fiancé, Robert Johnson, said that English had wanted to change her gender ID but she didn’t know it was possible without having genital surgery.
Aea Celestice hopes to move out of Jacksonville. “I can’t maintain this existence much longer,” she said. (Gioncarlo Valentine for ProPublica)
Just last month, a transgender woman was found dead in a parking lot in Orlando, Florida. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office press release described the victim as a man “wearing a wig” and “dressed as a female.” Local news outlets soon started publishing and broadcasting stories describing the victim as a “man dressed as a woman.” The trans community responded with anger.
Monica Roberts, the Texas journalist who has been chronicling the murders of trans women for years, was the first reporter to identify the name the victim lived by, Sasha Garden. In a post published on her blog, she condemned the local media coverage.
“As you probably guessed,” Roberts wrote, “Sasha was deadnamed and horribly disrespected by the local Orlando media.”
When ProPublica first contacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, spokesperson Jane Watrel said that the agency uses the name and sex listed on the victim’s state-issued identification when describing homicide cases. Watrel later clarified that, after speaking to Garden’s family, the department would begin using female pronouns to describe Garden during their investigation.
In a subsequent press release, Orange County Sheriff Jerry L. Demings wrote that the department did not intend to be insensitive and apologized.
In contrast, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has not publicly acknowledged or apologized for misgendering and misnaming transgender victims, though in a recent interview with a local news station, Sheriff Mike Williams acknowledged that there had been a “lack of sensitivity” when referring to the victims.
In June, a few days after Cathalina James’ slaying, local activists and representatives from statewide advocacy organizations, gathered in Jacksonville City Hall to demand the city council do more to protect transgender women.
“Every day I wake up, I put on my clothes, I step outside, I don’t know if I’m going to make it home safe. And if I make it home safe, I don’t know if I’m going to be in one piece or not,” said Paige Mahogany Parks, a local activist, imploring the city council to investigate why so many trans women had been murdered.
“There’s no relationship with the JSO and the trans community as a whole,” she added.
Chloie Kensington, an activist and personal friend of English, said the city was mistreating trans women.
Pointing directly at the council members, Kensington vowed during the meeting, “I for one will march in every pair of damn stilettos I have to hold each and every one of you accountable.”
On June 27, JSO’s Twitter account put out a video of the car they said was driven by James’ killer. The post referred to her by the male name she was given at birth. It also said she was transgender and that she went by the name Cathalina.
A JSO spokesperson told ProPublica that the tweet was not a sign of a new policy. Using the victim’s gender and chosen name, according to the sheriff’s office, fell under the category of “additional details.”
But the pressure the trans community is putting on JSO may be having some effect. On Aug. 2, JSO announced the creation of a group of officers that will serve as liaisons to the LGBT community.
For Jacksonville resident Savannah Bowens, the transgender woman who changed her name after an employer questioned her about it, respect is worth the fight.
“There has to be somebody that says ‘I have had enough,’” she said.
“When I die? I don’t want to be called a male,” she went on. “That is not who I lived my life as, that is not my legacy, and I want to be respected as who I am. People knew me as Savannah. They knew me as she.”
ProPublica is investigating the barriers transgender and gender-nonconforming people face in changing their name or gender marker on government-issued IDs. If you’ve had problems changing your name or gender marker, ProPublica wants to hear about it.