Our Enemies in Blue. Kristian Williams
with minors. Rates of sexual assault rising to the level of FBI index crimes were found to be significantly higher among law enforcement officers than the general population.…
Other studies found that up to 2 in 5 young women reported sexual harassment by law enforcement, and that young women of color, low income women, lesbian and transgender women, and otherwise marginalized women—as well as men and transgender people—are particularly vulnerable to sexual misconduct by law enforcement. Sexual harassment and assault have been reported to be particularly pervasive during traffic stops and in the context of police cadet programs intended to engage youth from the community. It is also reported to take place with alarming frequency in the context of responses to requests for assistance or investigation of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Sexual harassment and assault by law enforcement officers may take many forms, ranging from sexual comments, to unwarranted call backs to crime victims, to extorting sexual favors in exchange for leniency, to unlawful strip searches, including searches to assign gender, to forcible or coercive sexual conduct, including rape.7 It is by no means an isolated phenomenon, and while not an officially sanctioned law enforcement activity, is facilitated by the authority vested in law enforcement officers.8
Similarly, separate testimony submitted to the Task Force on behalf of over 45 LGBT organizations pointed out that,
As noted by the NAACP’s recently released report, Born Suspect, LGBTQ people of color experience gender and sexuality-specific forms of racial profiling and police brutality. Additionally, LGBTQ people, particularly LGBTQ youth and people of color, also experience pervasive profiling and discriminatory treatment by local, state and federal law enforcement agents based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or HIV status.
Over the past decade, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) has found that law enforcement agents have consistently been among the top three categories of perpetrators of homophobic or transphobic violence against LGBTQ people reported to anti-violence organizations. In a recent national survey of LGBTQ people conducted by Lambda Legal, a quarter of respondents who had in-person contact with police reported at least one type of misconduct or harassment, including profiling, false arrests, verbal or physical assault, or sexual harassment or assault. LGBTQ people of color, LGBTQ youth, low-income LGBTQ people, and transgender people were much more likely to report an experience of at least one type of police misconduct or harassment.… Across the country, non-heterosexual youth are more likely to be stopped by the police and experience greater criminal justice sanctions not explained by greater involvement in violating the law.… Investigations of local police departments in New Orleans and Puerto Rico by the U.S. Department of Justice have documented patterns and practices of profiling and discriminatory policing of LGBTQ people, and a number of local organizations have documented department-specific patterns and practices.9
These more recent studies echo the patterns and practices of police misconduct identified by Amnesty International in its 2005 report Stonewalled: Police Misconduct and Abuse Against LGBT People in the United States—widespread homophobic, transphobic, and sexual harassment; name calling and verbal abuse by law enforcement officers; profiling and discriminatory enforcement, including citation of possession or presence of condoms as evidence of intent to engage in prostitution-related or lewd conduct offenses; failure to respect gender identity and expression when addressing members of the public, and during arrest processing, searches, and placement in police custody; unconstitutional and unlawful searches to assign gender; sexual assault and rape by law enforcement officers; and dangerous placement and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in police custody.10
By incorporating an analysis of the ways in which systemic police violence affects all members of our communities in both similar and unique ways, this literature has informed and driven the work described in the afterword to this edition—envisioning, and more importantly, enacting, a world without police—while offering the clearest of rationales for doing so. Ultimately, police operate as a source of violence rather than safety—even for those the law claims to protect—for reasons deeply rooted in the history of policing that Our Enemies in Blue so clearly lays out for us.
Our Enemies in Blue critically informs and provides an essential basis for analysis of present and future possibilities in the current moment, and offers examples and criteria by which to evaluate our efforts. What does prevention and response to violence look like? And given the history of police and policing through the present day, can the police ever be the ones to provide them?
—Andrea J. Ritchie
Brooklyn, NY
March 2015
Andrea Ritchie is a Blacklesbian police misconduct attorney and organizer who has engaged in extensive research, writing, litigation, organizing, and advocacy on profiling, policing, and physical and sexual violence by law enforcement agents against women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She was recently awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to engage in documentation and policy advocacy around the experiences of women of color—trans and not trans, queer and not queer—of profiling and policing. Ritchie helped found and coordinate Streetwise & Safe (SAS), a leadership development initiative aimed at sharing “know your rights” information, strategies for safety and visions for change among LGBT youth of color who experience of gender, race, sexuality and poverty-based policing and criminalization, and now serves as the organization’s Senior Policy Counsel. Ritchie is co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press, 2011) and serves on the steering committee of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR).
1: Police Brutality in Theory and Practice
In the first hours of 2009, police boarded a Bay Area Rapid Transit train, responding to a call about a fight. They detained several young men, most of them Black, among them one named Oscar Grant. As Grant was lying face down on the platform being handcuffed, one officer, Johannes Mehserle, drew his gun, shot him in the back, and killed him.
The entire incident was recorded on video from multiple angles. Several witnesses were filming with their cell phone cameras when Grant was shot; afterward, they hid the cameras from police, and then posted the footage on the Internet. Within days, demonstrations were organized in Oakland, and quickly escalated into riots—beginning with an attack on a police car parked in front of the BART headquarters. More than 300 businesses and hundreds of cars were damaged in the unrest. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, an armored personnel carrier, and more than a hundred arrests, but demonstrations continued for weeks.1 A year later, Mehserle was tried and convicted, but of manslaughter rather than murder. Rioting resumed. Damages were estimated at $750,000.2
While clearly a limited victory, the Mehserle verdict remains remarkable. Looking back over the fifteen previous years, the San Francisco Chronicle could find only six cases in which police were charged for on-duty shootings, and none of the thirteen officers involved were convicted.3 “If there’s one lesson to take from this,” a participant in the unrest was later to conclude, “it’s that the only reason Mehserle was arrested is because people tore up the city. It was the riot—and the threat of future riots.”4
Grant’s killing marked the start of a cycle of unrest affecting west coast cities for the better part of two years, manifesting not only in militant protests and riots, but arson, sabotage, and ambush attacks. In October 2009, several unoccupied police cars were firebombed in Seattle; a few days later, on Halloween, two cops were shot in a drive-by attack, and one died. The following month Maurice Clemmons ambushed four cops in a Lakewood, Washington coffee shop, killing them all. On January 29, 2010, Portland police shot and killed an unarmed Black man named Aaron Campbell as he was trying to surrender; his family had called 911 because they feared he might be suicidal. In March, they shot and killed a homeless man, Jack Collins, as he approached holding an Exacto knife. Then in May, they shot and killed a young Black man named Keaton Otis, whom they had pulled over because (as one officer explained) they thought he “kind of look[ed] like he could be a gangster.” Each shooting was followed by protests of increasing militancy, as well as after-hours attacks on the offices of law enforcement agencies. In August 2010, Seattle