The DC Stabbings (another trans murder)

[xploring666]

omg..this just saddens me.

girls becareful..always carry
some type of protection.

i've been through sooo much
that i'm very lucky to be here today.

I dont know how you girls are brave enough to go through everything you do. From coming out to putting up with being physically threatened for who you are and everything in between. You are all heros.

[dabaldone]

These murders are reaching epidemic proportions and yet there is no outcry even from the so called LGBT community...sad indeed.

Oh the LGB community would have reacted in a heart beat... if the press had been told that a guy was screaming fag as he stabbed two flamers, one lethally, in broad daylight.

Just look at how fast the Syracuse shooting got reported on the LGB blogs... when the SYR PD & DA were telling reporters the victim was a feminine "gay guy killed for being gay."

But then when the truth was revealed... you didn't see any mass protests or outcry from the LGB groups demanding the press be more tolerant in their coverage. No, you only really saw that kind of outrage in #'s within trans spaces.

-edited for clarity-

Amen Sarah, I should have left the "t" out. There have been 4 or 5 murders in the metro Detroit area over the last 5 or so years and not one suspect has been arrested. I would bet that other major cities have the same issues...a police force and population that simply ignores the voilence that plauges the trans community

[SarahG]

Who Botched the Gender Identity of a D.C. Homicide Victim?

Posted by Amanda Hess on Aug. 31, 2009, at 2:11 pm

BLOG_nana-2
Vigil attendees pay their respects to Tyli’a Mack.


On Wednesday, Aug. 26, one person was killed and another critically injured in a daytime stabbing outside 209 Q St. NW. In the hours following the homicide, police and reporters gathered witness testimony, formed a description of the suspect, and chased likely motives. This time, cops and journalists were also forced to devote resources to another developing story: the gender of the victims.

Within three hours of the incident, three local news sources had independently verified the victims’ gender identity with police. They all got it wrong.

Fox 5 news reporter Roby Chavez gave this report at 3:59 p.m., about an hour and a half after the stabbings occurred. “D.C. Police sources tell Fox 5 officers found two transgender male victims in front of the building when they arrived,” Chavez reported.


At 4:36 p.m., the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan filed his item on the stabbing, also published in the next day’s paper. “Police said the victims, whom they described as ‘transgender males,’ were stabbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Q Street NW.”

WUSA9’s Bill Starks weighed in at 5:23 p.m.: “Officers…arrived and found two transgender males in front of the building at 209 Q Street, both suffering from stab wounds.”

The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro was the first to nail down the correct gender identity of the homicide victim, who has since been identified under her legal name, Joshua Mack, as well as her chosen name, Tyli’a. At 7:06 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred, Chibbaro wrote, “One transgender woman was stabbed to death Wednesday and another was in stable condition with stab wounds from an unknown assailant.”

But even after Mack’s correct gender identity was established, the struggle continued. In “D.C. Transgender Community Outraged After Fatal Stabbing”—filed more than 24 hours after the incident occurred—ABC 7 reporter Sam Ford announced: “One transgender is dead, another is in critical condition.”

Mack was not a “transgender male,” a “transgender man,” or a “transgender.” Mack was a male-to-female transgender woman who clearly appeared to be female. On the reward poster for her homicide, she’s shown wearing eye shadow, shaped eyebrows, and two long braids. “Of course, when the one young lady was murdered and the other was hospitalized, we were quite upset [with the media coverage] because they aren’t transgender men—they are transgender women,” says Brian Watson, the director of Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted both victims as clients. “I know both of the young ladies that were attacked, and they lived their lives as transgender women. They looked like women. For me, there shouldn’t have been any confusion about them being males. If you saw them on the street, you would see they were females.”

Since the victims in this case clearly presented as women, how were they initially identified as “transgender males”?

Chavez, Duggan, and Starks all attributed the “transgender males” identification to “police sources.” Duggan says that the department’s public information office provided him the term. “The police department put it out there, and we went on what they said,” says Duggan. Starks got even more specific, sourcing the terminology to Quintin Peterson, the public information officer on duty when news of the stabbings broke. “‘Transgender males’—those were his exact words,” says Starks. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble or anything, but that’s what was said.”

Peterson denies that the police originated the term. “‘Transgender males’ was never used. Not by me or anyone in this office,” he says. “We cannot be held responsible for the terminology the news media chooses to use. We did not put anything out other than what the correct terminology is.” Acting Lieutenant Brett Parson, the police department’s top liaison to the GLBT community who was on scene shortly following the stabbing, similarly defers the misidentification to media reports. “It’s the media that seems fixated on their gender identity. That issue did not come from the chief of police,” says Parson. “We’ve had to correct the media on countless occasions because they have been reporting, insensitively, terms that are not used in the community.”

Wherever the term “transgender males” originated, no one really wanted to touch it. Starks says he never asked Peterson for clarification on what the term “transgender males” actually meant. “I didn’t ask him to go beyond that,” he says. “I assumed that it was referring to a person who may be in the process of either a sex change or someone who is dressing in the clothing of another gender.” When asked if “male” refers to the victim’s biological sex or gender identity, Starks was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he says. Duggan says that the Post avoided parsing the term with a deft use of punctuation. “It was a short brief that we wrote really fast, so we decided to use, in quotes, ‘transgender males,’” says Duggan. “I got beat up a lot over that, because I wasn’t educated on [the terminology] at the time, and I was quickly educated on it.”

For cops and journos, employing the correct terminology is more than a matter of respect. Both D.C. police procedure and Associated Press style mandate that transgender individuals be addressed in accordance with their gender expression. According to the AP Stylebook, reporters are to “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” And in 2007, D.C. police adopted one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender policies, which states that when a police officer is unsure of a person’s gender identity, “the member shall inquire how the individual wishes to be addressed (e.g., Sir, Miss, Ms.) and the name by which the individual wishes to be addressed.”

Of course, ascertaining the correct terminology becomes more difficult when the transgender individual is dead. Sometimes, even the victim’s family can’t help identify the preferred gender. ABC 7’s story on the stabbing included a quote from Mack’s brother, Aaron Walker: “I’m just hurting right now. My mom, she’s got 10 boys, and that’s one of my little brothers and for me to see him pass like that,” Walker said of Mack. (ABC 7 also misidentified Walker as “Aaron Hall,” proving that newsroom slip-ups are sometimes based in sloppiness, sometimes in ignorance).

In the event that a victim’s gender identity is unclear, sometimes it helps to do some reporting. Chibbaro took care to verify Mack’s gender identity with “sources both in the community and in law enforcement” before publishing his story, three hours after the first news of the stabbing hit. “This misidentification is not always the fault of police, or the press, or others—this is something that everyone is grappling with,” says Chibbaro. “The first concern that I have, and that I think the Washington Blade has, is whether the information is accurate.”

As the scene of the daylight stabbing grew dark, reporters set about correcting the terminology in their stories, abandoning “transgender males” for “transgender women” and swapping “he” for “she.” But for some members of the transgender community, the damage had already been done. “[S]ix hours and (at least) six edits later, we finally have gender appropriate language in an article based on a double homicide attempt that was clearly motivated by hatred and transphobia,” wrote one commenter on the Fox 5 story. “[I]’m saddened on so many levels.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/b...micide-victim/

[SarahG]

Vigil for slain trans woman draws 250
Police working ‘non-stop’ to find killer in ‘possible’ hate crime


Sep 04, 2009 | By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.

About 250 people gathered amid raindrops in Northwest D.C. last week to remember a 21-year-old transgender woman who was stabbed to death as she and a friend were walking to the offices of a transgender services organization.

Police said they found Joshua Mack, who used the name Tyli’a “NaNa Boo” Mack, and another transgender woman suffering from stab wounds about 2:30 p.m. Aug. 26 on the sidewalk in front of 209 Q St., N.W.

Mack was pronounced dead about a half hour later at Howard University Hospital, police said. The second victim was treated at an area hospital for stab wounds and released Aug. 28, according to people who know her. Police said the second victim’s identity was being withheld because of her status as a witness.

Officials with Transgender Health Empowerment, the D.C. group that organized the vigil, joined activists in calling on city leaders, including Mayor Adrian Fenty, to speak out more forcefully against hate crimes, violence and harassment targeting the LGBT community.

Earline Budd of THE said Mack was a long-time client of the organization, which provides social services and HIV prevention programs for transgender people.

Mack and the friend accompanying her at the time she was attacked were walking to and within blocks of the THE offices, at North Capitol and P streets, N.W., friends of Mack said.

As of Wednesday, police said they had no suspects in the Mack slaying or in the stabbing of the second victim.

Police listed the incident as a “possible” hate crime based on preliminary findings of their investigation, said acting Lt. Brett Parson, who oversees the police’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit.

“I want to simply assure you that all the resources available to the detectives of our homicide branch are being brought to them,” Parson said at the Aug. 28 vigil. “They have been working non-stop since this happened and they will continue to work this case until we bring it to a closure.”

Among those attending the vigil were more than a dozen members of Mack’s family, including both parents and a brother and sister. The family members joined Parson and friends of the slain transgender woman in calling on possible witnesses to come forward to help police apprehend the person responsible for the killing.

“All I want them to do is come and tell what they know,” said Beverlyn Mack, Tyli’a Mack’s mother.

At a news conference one day earlier at THE headquarters, Beverlyn Mack and other family members said they knew Tyli’a Mack was transgender and that the family respected and loved her.

“My child was born like everyone else — through a mother’s womb,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s fair for other people to take other people’s lives.”

Christopher Dyer, director of the mayor’s Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Affairs, read a letter at the vigil from Fenty to Mack’s family expressing his condolences over the death of Tyli’a Mack.

Some of the people at the vigil said the mayor and other city government officials have not done enough to address anti-trans and anti-gay hate crimes. They pointed to police reports showing the number of LGBT-related hate crimes have increased in the past two years.

“I want to say that GLOV stands with the transgender community completely,” said Chris Farris, co-chair of Gays & Lesbian Opposing Violence. “We all stand united in asking the mayor of this city to condemn hate crimes against the LGBT community. Stop sending letters and start showing up.”

Gay D.C. City Council member David Catania (I-At Large) told the gathering that city leaders should speak more forcefully than they have against anti-LGBT violence.

“This is an opportunity for every leader in this city, whether elected, whether appointed, whether in the pulpit, to stand up and say this is not acceptable,” Catania said.

“To the family, our profound condolences,” he said. “But to every one of us, let’s go to all of our leaders and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ We want to hear Sunday in the pulpits in this city that this kind of attack is unacceptable, that the lives of GLBT members are every bit as valuable as every other citizen in this city.”

Carla “Magoo” Peatross, a resident of the street where Mack was stabbed and who identifies as transgender, said she was certain that the person responsible for Mack’s death doesn’t live in the immediate neighborhood.

“We have young transgenders and we have older transgenders on this block,” Peatross said. “And they accept them. They never have problems.”

Budd escorted Mack’s family to the location on the sidewalk in front of 209 Q St., N.W., where Mack and her friend were found. Bloodstains were still visible on the sidewalk before rain that fell during the vigil began to wash them away.

http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=256199

[SarahG]

duplicate

[mikejones]

This is horrible. RIP to the poor girl.

[Distance]

Were they street workers? In any case, it is just horrible....

[SoCaliDude]

Possible hate crime? What Bull Shit! Fuckers!

[lochaber]

girls becareful..always carry
some type of protection.

Just wanted to add, that if you do choose to carry some item for protection or defense, try and get some training in it, and practice using it. Also, try to be aware of what is legal in your area, and rights and all that.

I'm not trying to say not to carry something, I just feel that having knowledge and skills is more effective then merely carrying something. Even if your just thinking of something like pepper spray, get several identical cans, and use a couple of them up testing and practicing, and try to do this on at least a semi-regular basis. Also read up on the info on them to get some idea of their applications and limitations.

One other note, not sure how this applies to other items, but if you are carrying a knife, and are asked why you are carrying it by a cop, never say 'for protection' or similar statements. Always claim (even if not entirely true) that it is a tool. If pressed for examples, you use it for opening envelopes, trimming loose strings, and eating apples. Merely stating that you carry something for 'protection' or 'defense' is considered evidence of intent to use the given item as a weapon in many areas. cops, bleh.

Anyways, I think it's a good idea to look into some form of (preferably non-sport oriented) martial art in addition.

It's sad that these things happen, and even sadder that when they do happen, they are handled inappropriately, but you are the only one you can rely on.

[TommyFoxtrot]

I've lived in D.C. for over 20 years, and I can tell you that not every street in bustling with tourists and members of Congress. You can walk 5 or 6 blocks away from the Capitol and find yourself on a quiet residential street, where a mugging or stabbing could take place and no witnesses are present.

Are you familiar with this location?

I know that area and its not that busy

Correct. the 200 Q St. area is in a neighborhood called Shaw and at 2 p.m., on a weekday, you can walk down an almost deserted street. It's a fairly quiet location, it is not downtown D.C.

Anyways, the point is a horrible crime was committed. My gut feeling tells me that they were stabbed by a deranged man, a man, who would have stabbed anyone walking down that street.

Yeah I've been down there a few times and I could see it happening. On top of the relative seclusion, there are those trees lining the sidewalk that obscure vision for people looking down the street.