Community Policing
Building Relationships with Transgender Individuals
W6D2
02/26/2015
This article is preparing you and essentially trying to raise awareness when it comes to transgender individuals and interacting with them in a way that is comfortable for yourself and your agency but also for the individuals being victimized. Does the agency you are interested in have policies? Does it provide guidelines on how to interact with transgender individuals? These are all questions that law enforcement organizations need to consider.
According to a study done at Williams Institute of the University of California, there are nearly 700,000 transgender individuals living in the United States. Law enforcement has an obligation to provide services just as they would for any other person. It states that transgender individuals are victimized by hate crimes and assaults more than others. A Latina immigrant survey, reported that 69 percent of respondents knew of a transgender who was murdered, 61 percent were victims of sexual abuse, 78 percent experienced random acts of violence such as being attacked on the street or insulted, and 34 percent reported being robbed, and all because they were transgender. These individuals are …show more content…
Close to half of the respondents of the NTDS survey reported being uncomfortable talking to police. Some are reluctant to report hate crimes or any crimes in general to law enforcement because of negative experiences. It seems to be more common for transgender people of color and transgender women. Difficulties with identification of transgender individuals cause major anxiety and misunderstandings with law enforcement. Not all policies require people to update name and gender on identification documents so many people have identification that does not match their gender, identity or