By Princess Harmony Rodriguez
A rally in Harlem organized by the Trans Women of Color Collective. Photo credit: Douglas Sanders
At 207 Juniper Street, in the City of Brotherly Love, stood a bar called the Key West Bar and Grille. It had its own rich history, having been Philadelphia’s only integrated gay bar, but there, twelve years ago, lives were irrevocably changed. On any given night, there are thousands of people drunk in bars in Philadelphia. We are often reminded, however, that what are normal occurrences for the general public, are crimes for trans people of color. “Crimes” that make us targets of police and police violence. Trans women of color are stopped, harassed, assaulted and murdered by police with impunity. The conversation about police violence must include us, because our bodies, too, lay dead at their hands.
On December 22nd, 2002, a black trans woman named Nizah Morris was drunk at Key West. Three officers, Elizabeth Skala-DiDonato, Thomas Berry, and Kenneth Novak, were dispatched to the scene after a 911 call was placed by concerned friends. Skala-DiDonato offered Ms. Morris a courtesy ride to her home and Berry accompanied them. Then, according to the police, Nizah sobered up and left the vehicle at 3:25 AM. Minutes later, at 3:27 AM, she was found bleeding and unconscious in the middle of the street. Thomas Berry was again dispatched to her location, where he declared a crime had not taken place, covering her face while she was still alive. Had she been taken to a hospital as soon as she had been found, she more than likely would have lived. Instead she was left on scene for 40 minutes. She was taken to the hospital at 4:13 AM and she died 8:30 PM on Christmas Eve, of a wound that could only have come from the butt of a gun.
While police say they do not know who or what killed her, the answer is obvious. The officers involved in her final moments, Elizabeth Skala-DiDonato, Thomas Berry, and the third officer sent to Key West who never accounted for his whereabouts between 3:13 and 3:25 AM, Kenneth Novak, were more than likely her murderers. Nizah Morris’ death highlighted the immeasurable social and emotional distance between the trans community and the Philadelphia Police Department.
If everyone who reads BGD gave as little as $10, we’d be fully funded for the next 10 years. GIVE today and help amplify marginalized voices.
All over the United States, police and transgender people are often at odds, the result of decades of policing that did not stop crimes but enforced the unwritten laws of patriarchy and ensured social conformity. Black and/or Latinx transgender people often find ourselves the target of increased police hostility, because of white supremacist, transphobic policing being distinctly opposed to our continued existence.
In Philadelphia, trans women of color are often profiled as sex workers, drug addicts, or just plain criminals. Some of us are sex workers and/or drug addicts, the end result of being targeted for discrimination by the same oppressive system that profiles us. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re actually doing something illegal, though, because being transgender (resisting patriarchy’s desire for our lives) is – essentially – illegal. There used to be a competition among the officers of the Philadelphia Police Department. Precincts and individual officers would compete to see how many transgender women they could arrest or stop in one night. Did they ever stop this cruelty? I don’t know but they adopted new standards and policies that would, on paper, give the impression that transgender people are respected by the Philadelphia Police Department. Those new policies came about as the end result of a laundry list of complaints the transgender community has presented to the PPD, complaints like assault, sexual violence, and unrelenting insults during arrest.
Sometimes what minor privileges we may have as individuals save us from the full depth of police violence and sometimes they don’t. Despite being a trans woman of color from a lower economic class, I was able to attend a relatively inexpensive university in the city of Philadelphia. I was standing at the corner of Broad and Diamond, walking back home after visiting a friend, when two cops in an unmarked car and two more in a police cruiser pulled up and started catcalling and mocking me. They were asking for sexual favors, propositioning me, assuming I was a sex worker only because I’m transgender (I was, but they didn’t know that). It wasn’t until they noticed that I had my school’s lanyard with my school ID card on it that they became completely silent and their demeanor changed. They sped off as soon as they got the chance. I didn’t think about it much when it happened, I was shaken over it, but I realized that my school ID conferred upon me the illusion of class privilege. I still had the privilege that came with being a college student and that was my saving grace that night. I had other run-ins with the police where I wasn’t so lucky, but that incident stood out to me.
What many don’t realize is that the police brutality the trans community faces is directly tied to other forms of discrimination we face. Some TWOC are thrown out of their homes (even as children) and have to support themselves by attempting to get a job. Discrimination against transgender people in the workplace causes us to be unemployed or underemployed, so we have to turn to sex work. As sex workers, we get mistreated by clients and the police. Police violence against sex workers, and those presumed to be sex workers, goes unpunished and uninvestigated because sex workers are seen as expendable by clients and worthy of destruction by the state. It’s a vicious cycle that is worsened by the constant threat of police violence towards anyone who is transgender or gender non-conforming.
There are thousands of us, on any given day in any city, who are harassed and abused by police. It’s why, even when we’re the victims of crime, we don’t ask for help. We’re often the ones who end up arrested, injured, or emotionally traumatized even in the process of asking for their help. There have been times, in Philadelphia, where cisgender people get into fights with us. Like anyone else, we respond by defending ourselves but what happens when we do? We’re often the ones carted away.
We must expand the conversation surrounding police brutality to include trans women who have been victimized or murdered by police. People like Nizah Morris, who was murdered for what is done by (white) cis people every single day in this country with nary a peep from the police, can’t fight for themselves. We must take up the fight for them, for our sisters who have been harassed but survived, and ultimately for ourselves, because the next time it happens it may be us.
Princess is an unapologetic trans afro-latina survivor, creator, and anti-violence activist. Her latest projects include a Title IX teach-in, a book by and for trans women in recovery, and a zine about heroin addiction. There’s no hope on dope and our disease dies in the light of exposure.
BGD accepts writing and video from queer and trans people of color! SUBMIT your work.
Do not republish anything from this site without express written permission from BGD. For more info, go here.
