Transgenders, Police Face Cultural Chasm on Hollywood Streets

Well after midnight on a recent chilly weekend, long stretches of Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards were lined with scantily dressed people lingering on sidewalks, wading through traffic, waving at cars.

Some were men, some were women, and some were people who have taken on the dress and identity of the opposite sex, often with the aid of surgery or hormones.

To Los Angeles police, the growing amount of prostitution by male-to-female transgenders in Hollywood “is pretty obvious. It’s not some imaginary thing we have made up,” said vice Sgt. Emalee Baptiste.

Indeed, transgender advocates acknowledge that prostitution is a major problem in their community. That, however, doesn’t justify getting picked on, they add.

More than most people, transgender residents say, they are likely to be stopped because of how they look, even if they have broken no law and are only going to the numerous clubs and bars in the area.

“They stop me even when I am not dressed up,” complained a transgender who identified herself only as Nikki. “I can just be wearing sweat clothes and going to the store.”

That, community leaders add, constitutes misconduct by police: profiling.

The hot-button issue of selective enforcement based on stereotypes is driving a welter of reforms in law enforcement agencies across the country, including the LAPD. But the controversy in Hollywood suggests that profiling allegations can mask a variety of more nuanced and complex interactions between authorities and a group whose members feel singled out.

“There is a perception that all transgenders are going to face harassment, that they are going to be considered prostitutes,” said Shirley Bushnell, a transgender advocate.

To a large degree, transgenders’ complaints are based on fuzzy questions of respect, education and mutual understanding that are hard to track or quantify. The conflict is one in which cultural differences and minor slights between two vastly different groups play out daily on the streets of the city.

One study cited by Maria Roman, a transgender outreach worker for the nonprofit community service group Bienestar, found that 50% of those living in the Hollywood area were involved in the illegal sex trade.

But transgender advocates say that even when police stop them legitimately, they are likely to be asked disrespectful questions, such as why they feel a need to dress in women’s clothing, or whether their breasts are real.

The LAPD recently launched a massive data collection effort to help sort out legitimate law enforcement practices from profiling. The system relies on officers filling out a form every time they stop someone, and is resented by many LAPD officers even as civil libertarians applaud it.

However, data collection aims chiefly to spot profiling based on race, and seems unlikely to shed much light on allegations made by transgenders, who are not tracked and who may be listed on the forms under either gender.

Many Are Poor Latino Immigrants

Moreover, police say that people who say their tactics are biased don’t understand how blatant and prevalent prostitution is in the area. “What is profiling?” asked Baptiste. “I mean, you come out here as Joe Citizen and you tell me what you see.”

Transgenders come from all walks of life, but in Hollywood, large numbers are immigrants from Latin America.

Many are poor, undocumented and speak no English. They often have been cast out by their families, beaten and jailed by Latin American police, and ridiculed in societies with little tolerance for gender bending.

Although the community is plagued by unemployment and prostitution, Hollywood’s male-to-female transgenders have also made gains in political consciousness and strength in recent years.

They are people “who overcome . . . who survive,” said Greta Estrada, 27, a transgender former prostitute from Mexico who works as a housecleaner.

All these factors have made heightened sensitivity to civil rights issues part of the character of this community.

Alejandra Larines, a transgender exotic dancer from El Salvador, makes this clear as she shakes her long, auburn hair over her head to reveal where she was grazed by a bullet during her homeland’s civil war, and talks of being beaten for behaving like a girl.

Respect Issue Focuses on Pronoun

In contrast to Latin Americans, “Americans are a much more gentle, more understanding people,” said Larines, who wears a red, white and blue flag pin on her sweatshirt. “They don’t discriminate. For this, I love the United States.”

For this reason, also, she has high standards for the police.

At the root of many such complaints is a single theme: respect.

Although transgender activists have made a variety of hard-to-prove allegations against officers, from unnecessarily rough and abusive treatment to contemptuous acts such as squeezing their breast implants during searches, the most typical complaint is simply that the police are scornful and derisive.

Often the issue comes down to a single pronoun: The cops refer to male-to-female transgenders as “he.” The transgenders prefer “she.”

For people whose nerves are worn raw from lifetimes of being bullied and laughed at, such small gestures of respect and acceptance have deep significance.

Police in the United States know better than to kick, pull hair and demand money like Mexican police, said Estrada, the former prostitute. But they “assault you mentally,” she said. “And mental is worse. It is on the inside. I’ve forgotten the physical abuse I suffered, but the mental things I remember always.”

For their part, LAPD vice officers dismissed the idea that profiling is a problem, and deny more serious allegations of patterns of misconduct. They say such allegations show a misunderstanding of how police work.

Although morale appears high in the Hollywood station’s vice unit and officers seem eager to perform their jobs well, the mention of transgenders’ complaints is greeted with testy impatience.

Officers resent citizen complaints they see as trivial and contributing to a disciplinary system they perceive as overly punitive. They also resent the new requirement that they fill out a racial-profiling data sheet every time they make a stop.

Data collection will shed no light on transgenders, who aren’t tracked. Officers view it as just one more sign that the public doesn’t trust them, doesn’t give them credit for their efforts, doesn’t understand the challenges they face.

Moreover, the cultural chasm between officers and the male-to-female transgenders appears wide.

Most vice officers are men. Heterosexuality is assumed, and vague suggestions of homosexuality fuel a certain amount of ribbing.

Much of it is pretty light stuff. At roll call, a sergeant seeks nominations for a best female cop award. The officers immediately offer the name of a male colleague, accompanied by guffaws. A plainclothes officer’s story of a gay man’s advance during a previous shift is an invitation to be roundly razzed. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” one co-worker jokes.

Their attitude toward transgenders is not so much hostile as uncomprehending--even as the transgenders demand to be understood, at least as far as the use of pronouns goes.

“If I am going to walk around with a flower pot on my head, people are going to stare at me,” Baptiste says midway through a conversation about the transgenders’ complaints. “If I don’t want them to stare, I shouldn’t wear a flower pot.”

A moment later, though, she seems to regret the remark and grows more serious. “I don’t understand the gay aspect,” she confesses. “They say it’s something born into them, but . . .” she trails off.

A Minor Infraction as Probable Cause

LAPD officers combat prostitution by cracking down on a variety of minor infractions to discourage it. “Double parking. Open containers. Seat belts. We use anything we can in our favor to have probable cause to stop this person,” vice Lt. Patrick Shields said.

They also deploy plainclothes officers to conduct stings.

Contrary to the advocates’ claims, said Baptiste, transgenders involved in prostitution probably get less attention from police than female suspected prostitutes do.

“My guys are heterosexual,” she said. “They probably [conduct stings on] women more because they feel more comfortable with it.”

Baptiste herself--a slight, ponytailed supervisor--is no magnet for complaints, according to supervisors. She has a reputation for being able to connect with many types of people and defuse confrontations. Her secret, she says, is to let people vent, and make them think that “they are someone, that they have a say in this.”

But even the careful Baptiste was adamant that rank-and-file LAPD officers should not be expected to go to excessive lengths to indulge people’s demand for “respect”--a subjective quality anyway, she said.

In particular, she said, officers shouldn’t have to address people they perceive to be male as “she.”

“Are we supposed to be humoring people?” she asked. The force is too big, the range of viewpoints too varied, and the diversity of Los Angeles too vast to make it work, she said. Plus, even the most considerate officers are bound to slip up.

“I don’t think it’s fair. They [officers] aren’t doing it to be mean or spiteful or angry. If they know they have a man in front of them, they are going to say ‘he.’ ”

What if a simple matter of changing pronouns resulted in fewer complaints?

“In the world there is never a time when everyone is happy,” Baptiste replied. “You get numb to it.”

What if in exchange for using the word “she,” officers no longer had to fill out racial profiling data collection forms?

Baptiste looks surprised, then thoughtful. “In that case, I would change my pronouns in a heartbeat,” she said.

Capt. Michael Downing of the Hollywood station said the exchange shows how officers’ resentment of reforms such as data collection affects attitudes in the LAPD. A defensive climate in the department may make it more difficult for managers to inspire officers to be creative and expand what might be termed soft skills, such as improving interpersonal communication, he said.

Discipline is important, he said, and punitive measures necessary. But Downing believes that other rewards and incentives are also needed if officers are to show initiative and learn to relate to diverse communities--to become, as he put it, “the whole officer.”

‘Let Us Let Them Know We Are People’

Downing has won praise from the transgender community for his effort to reach out. But he acknowledges that it has been difficult to ensure that reforms are embraced by rank-and-file officers.

Transgender residents of Hollywood say such changes--more respect, more understanding, different pronouns--might go a long way toward reducing more serious complaints.

“Look, I would not give people liberty to be prostitutes,” said Ana Hara, a former transgender prostitute who now cleans offices. “Just let us speak, let us answer first. Let us let them know we are people--just normal people, not the object of some joke.”

Shirley Bushnell, transgender