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Law Enforcement Violence
Against Women of Color

by Andrea J. Ritchie

Used with permission of author. Originally

appearing in Color of Violence: the incite! anthlogy (South
End Press, Cambridge, MA: 2006)
1 Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

Cau Bich Tran, a twenty-five year-1d Vietnamese woman, shot to death
by a police responding to a call for help at her San Jose home. (1)

Malaika Brooks, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant shot
by a police officer in November 2004 with a fifty-thousand volt Taser gun
outside the African American Academy in Seattle, where she was drop-
ping her son off for school. (2)

Mrs. Afaf Saudi, a sixty-eight-year-old Egyptian permanent US resident,
forcibly removed from store in Greensboro, South Carolina, “hog-tied”
and tossed into a police cruiser, suffering a broken shoulder, a broken
rib, and a mild heart attack in November 2004, (3)

Jaisha Akins, African Ame;
from her St. Petersburg, Flori

. five, handeuffed and forcibly removed
a, school by the police. (4)

Margarita Acosta, a sixty-two-year-old Puerto Rican grandmother,
slapped and beaten by police officers before being shoved into a police
van without her shirt or shoes. (5).

Mrs. H., an undocumented Latina woman sexually assaulted by a Los
Angeles police officer responding to her 911 call for help when a man
was beating her in her home. (6)

Frankie Perkins, a Black woman choked to death by Chicago police of-
ficers who believed she had swallowed drugs. (7)

Jalea Lamot, a Latina woman sexually harassed by officers responding to
acall for emergency medical assistance, who, along with her family, was
beaten and pepper-sprayed once the officers realized she is transsexual
®)

An African American woman who plays on the D.C. women’s football
team arrested after using the women’s bathroom at a local restaurant. (9)
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

In workshops on law enforcement violence against women I often ask
participants to jot down the first name or image that comes to mind when I say
“police brutality.” None of these women’s names or experiences come up. The
same is true when 1 ask them to note the first image that comes to mind when
T say “violence against women.” Yet, clearly, these experiences are manifesta-
tions of both

To date, public debate, grassroots organizing, litigation strategies, civil-
ian oversight, and legislative initiatives addressing police violence and miscon-
duct have been almost exclusively informed by a paradigm centering on the
‘young Black or Latino heterosexual man as the quintessential subject, victim,
or survivor of police brutality. (10) To cite just one example of how pervasive
this paradigm is, one need look no further than a 2002 call-to-action from the
Black Radical Congress. an organization which embraces a gender analysis in
its Principles of Unity. In seeking support for a boycott of the City of St. Louis
in response to several incidents of police brutality. the call states:

(egardless of the city, the scenarios of police violence are the

same; only the names and faces change. A handcuffed black male

shot to death because he allegedly lunged at an officer: a black youth

running from an officer and posing no threat is shot in the back: car

chases by police that kill innocent bystanders; a black man shot to death

because police thought he had a weapon; and the scenarios go on. (11)

Not much has changed in this regard in recent years, although our understand-
ing of racial profiling and arbitrary detentions has broadened to include the
experiences of Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim men. These
narratives of racial profiling and police brutality, as well as prevalent quantita-
tive comparisons of the frequency and nature of traffic stops experienced by
“African Americans,” “Hispanics,” and “whites” which fail to analyze data
along gender and racial lines, dominate discourse and debate around race-based
policing and police violence to the exclusion of the experiences of women of
color.

Yet women and girls, and particularly women of color, are sexually
assaulted, raped, brutally strip-searched, beaten, shot, and killed by law enforce-
ment agents with alarming frequency, experiencing many of the same forms of
law enforcement violence as men of color, as well as gender- and race-specific
forms of police misconduct and abuse. Dramatic increases i the number of
African American and Latina women incarcerated pursuant to “law and order”
agendas and “war on drugs” policies over the past two decades suggest that po-
lice interactions with women of color are increasing in frequency and intensity.
3 Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

(12) The “war on terror” continues to reached into the lives of women of color
across the United States as well as abroad in the form of harassment, violence,
and sexual abuse at the hands of military and law enforcement agents, includ-
ing federal immigration and “homeland security” officers. “Zero tolerance” and
“quality of life” policing practices have particular impacts on young women

in schools and on the streets, women street vendors, and women engaged in

sex work which are rarely addressed in our assessment of or resistance to these
policies. Itis long past time that law enforcement accountability and organizing
integrate and address the experiences of women of color- not just as mothers,
partners, and children of men of color targeted by systematic state violence and
the criminal legal system, but as both targets of law enforcement violence and
agents of resistance in our own right.

Similarly, women’s experiences of police brutality- rather than police
protection- in the context of domestic violence interventions, implementation of
mandatory artest policies, and policing of racist, homophobic, and transphobic
violence (“hate crimes”) have not generally been addressed in service provision
or in challenging violence against women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgen-
der (LGBT) individuals, and people of color. Rather, mainstream organizations
advocating on behalf of and providing services to survivors of intimate vio-
lence, sexual assault, and racist, homophobic, and transphobic violence continue
to rely almost exclusively on law-enforcement agencies as the primary, if not
exclusive, response to interpersonal violence.

‘The proliferation of mandatory arrest policies across the country is
leading to increased arrests of domestic violence survivors, who then become
subject to further violence in the criminal justice system, including use of force
during arrest, threats to emove and removal of children into state custody,
abuse strip searches, and other violent and degrading conditions of confinement
‘The impacts of our almost exclusive reliance on such law enforcement-based
responses to violence in our homes and communities fall disproportionately on
women of color, poor and low-income women, and lesbians. For instance, a
New York City-based study found that a significant majority (66%) of domestic
violence survivors arrested along with their abusers (dual arrest cases), were
African American or Latina. (13) 43% were living below the poverty line, and
19% were receiving public assistance at the time of their arrest. (14) Lesbian
survivors of domestic violence are frequently arrested along with their abusive
partners by law enforcement officers who frame abuse in same-sex relationships
as “mutual combat” (15) Alternatively, police base their decisions regarding
who is the abuser in lesbian relationships on raced and gendered presumptions
and stereotypes- the abuser must be the “bigger” partner, the more “butch” part-

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 4

ner, the woman of color, or the person who is less fluent in English. Similarly,
survivors of homophobic and transphobic violence have also been subject to
arrest, as well as frequent verbal abuse and blame, by officers acting on similar
stereotypes. or on a belief that survivors of such crimes “brought in on them-
selves” by simply being who they are. (16)

Until we challenge mainstream police accountability and antiviolence
organizing to take up the challenge of integrating and addressing these realities,
women of color survivors of law enforcement violence will continue to find that
their experiences are not reflected in the dominant paradigms of police brutal-
ity and violence against women, leaving their voices largely unheard and their
rights unvindicated.

‘This is not to say that women of color’s experiences with law enforce-
ment violence have never been the subject of discourse or organizing. In an
essay entitled “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Rac-
ism.” Angela Y. Davis commented on police against Black women involved
in struggles for Black liberation in the sixties and seventies. (17) Indeed, the
FBI's recent increase of the bounty on Black freedom fighter Assata Shakur's
head serves as a potent reminder of the day she was shot three times by New
Jersey state troopers during a traffic stop as she stood with her hands in the air
by the side of the road. (18) Angela Davis has also described a personal experi-
ence of finding a woman by the side of a highway who had been raped, first by
a group of strangers, then by police officers who stopped to “investigate.” (19)
In a chapter of Resisting State Violence, Joy James cites a report entitled
“Black Women under Siege by New York City Police,” published by the Center
for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College four years before the
Rodney King incident brought police violence to the forefront of the national
consciousness. (20) The report documents incidents of police brutality against
Black women which garnered virtually no national attention, including, among
others, cases in which a police officer intentionally drove a patrol car into a
woman, officers severely beat a woman who had witnessed a police assault on a
Black man, and an officer maced a handeuffed women in the eyes.

In 1984, when Eleanor Bumpurs, an elderly and disabled African Amer-
ican grandmother, was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest fired by officers
who had come to assist in her eviction from public housing (because she was
less than ninety dollars behind in her rent), Black communities in New York
City rose up in outrage. (21) In 1998, when Tyisha Miller was shot twenty-
four times by police officers who, responding to a distress call, found her in the
midst of an epileptic seizure in her car, yet claimed she pulled a gun-which was
never found- Black communities in Riverside, California, took to the streets.

s Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

(22) When Margaret Mitchell, “a frail, mentally ill, homeless African Ameri-
can woman in her 50s,” was stopped, harassed, and then shot by San Francisco
police officers in 1999, Earl Ofari Hutchinson argued that controlling images

of Black women as “menacing” inform brutality against African American
women in much the same way as do similar controlling images of black men
(23) When US Customs authorities” practice of racially profiling and strip-
searching Black women at airports on the presumption that Black women are
“drug mules” was challenged in the nation’s courts and on the floor of Congress,
national mainstream civil rights organizations began to recognize, albeit only

in that limited context, that Black women are also targets of law enforcement
abuses. In 2002, Sista II Sista, a New York City-based organization of young
African American and Latina women, made a video about sexual harassment of
‘young women in their neighborhood by local police officers, and successfully
organized their community to speak out against this form of law enforcement
violence.

However, the few incidents of police violence against women of color
which have commanded national attention continue to be viewed as isolated.,
anomalous deviations from the police brutality “norm.” Perhaps the over-
whelming silences are yet another manifestation of the ongoing sublimation
of women of color’s experiences to those of men in struggles for racial justice.
Perhaps police violence against women of color is experienced as merely one
strand in a seamless web of daily gendered/racialized assaults by both state and
private actors, unworthy of the focused attention commanded by police brutality
against men of color perceived as a “direct” form of state violence. Violence by
law enforcement officers is also seen as beyond the explicit scope of mainstream
conceptions of gender-based violence, which, in the United States, focus on the
“private sphere,” failing to imagine women as subjects of sate violence in public
spaces. Perhaps women’s experiences of such violence have not been integrated
into the dominant discourse surrounding violence against women because they
are dissonant to as society which has invested considerable energy in framing
law enforcement agents as protectors rather than as perpetrators of violence
against women.

‘The challenge, then, is to bring these experiences to the center of our
organizing against both state and interpersonal violence against women of color
and our communities. Doing so will not only give voice to survivors of law en-
forcement violence, who, more often than not, are women who are also vulner-
able to other forms of state, community, and interpersonal violence. It will also
challenge us to move beyond law enforcement-based responses to violence and
toward community-based responses which truly promote safety for women of

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 6

color.

Policing Gender, Policing Sex

Systems act as though they have a stake in keeping gender lines clear.
If you step over them, you are treated as a suspicious character. (24)

You want to act like a man, I'll treat you like a man. —Statement made
by a police officer immediately before punching an African American
lesbian in the chest. (25)

In 2002, DC police officers grabbed an African American woman by the neck
and smashed her face into a door, and then proceeded to force her to unzip her
pants. Upon seeing that she was wearing men’s underwear, they demanded
“Why are you wearing boys’ underwear? Are you a dyke? Do you eat pussy?”
@6)

As the Audre Lorde Project, the first center for lesbian, gay, bisexual,
‘Two Spirit, (27) and transgender (LGBTST) and people of color in the United
States, emphasizes, law enforcement agencies uphold and enforce society’s
raced, gendered. and class structures, conventional notions of “morality,” and
social norms established by dominant groups. (28) Accordingly, individuals
whose existence, expression, or conduct defies these structures are, at best, ob-
jects of suspicion, heightened attention, and harassment by law enforcement of-
ficers, and, a worst, disposable people tuned over to police to punish or ignore
as they please.

Enforcement of racialized gender boundaries and regulation of sexual
conduct are two comerstones of police interactions with women of color. From
enforcement of historical laws prohibiting people from wearing apparel associ-
ated with the opposite gender, (29) to present day enforcement of social expec-
tations regarding use of gender-segregated facilities such as restrooms, (30) law
enforcement agents have explicitly policed the borders of the binary gender
system. Additionally, police officers engage in subconscious gender policing;
departure from socially constructed norms of “appropriate” gender expression
is perceived as grounds for suspicion and securing submission to gender roles.
(31) Such perceptions are further complicated by presumptions of criminal-
ity based on race or class. Moreover, law enforcement agents have historically
acted and continue to act on racialized gender stereotypes which reinforce exist-
ing systematic gendered and raced power relations. And, through historic laws

7 Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

making it an offense for a woman to be found in the streets unaccompanied at
night (32) and current prostitution laws, morals regulations such as “lewd con-
duct” statues, and, until recently, sodomy laws, police have been charged with
enforcing dominant sexualities and punishing sexual “deviance.

Individuals perceived to be transgressing racialized gender norms or
who are framed within gendered racial stereotypes are more frequently subject-
ed to verbal abuse, invasive searches, and use of excessive force during encoun-
ters with police; are more likely to suffer abuse while in police custody: and are
often denied protection by law enforcement when crimes are committed against
them. The interactions of transgender women, often perceived as the “ultimate™
‘gender transgressors, with law enforcement are generally marked by insistence
on gender conformity and punishment for failure to “comply,” including harass-
ment, verbal abuse, and physical violence at the hands of police, often based
on perceptions that they are fraudulent, deceitful, violent, or mentally unstable
because of their perceived gender disjuncture. (33) Women framed as “mascu-
line™ including African American women, who are routinely “mascunlinized”
through systematic racial stereotypes (34)- are consistently treated by police as
potentially violent, predatory, or noncompliant regardless of their actual con-
duct or circumstances, no matter how old, young., disabled, small, or ill. (35)

As a result, they are subjected to verbal abuse in interactions with law enforce-
ment officers, their handcuffs are tightened excessively, they are called “fucking
dyke” while being beaten, and generally treated with greater physical harshness
by law enforcement officials. (36) Working-class or low-income women are
also perceived as more “masculine” than middle- or upper-class women, and
therefore subject to greater violence by law enforcement officers.

(37) Young women wearing “thuggish attire,” s current hip-hop fashions are
sometimes described, have also been reported to attract greater police attention
than other women. (38)

Similarly, lesbians are often “defeminized” and “dehumanized” by
the criminal justice system, and therefore subjected to considerable abuse by
law enforcement agents. (39) Women perceived to be lesbians often based on
‘gender nonconforming appearance or conduct- are regularly called “dyke,”
“bulldagger.” and “wannabe man,” and subject to violence during interactions
with law enforcement. For instance, an attorney in Chicago reports that one of
her clients, whom she describes as very “butch,” is subjected to constant haras
ment by police, and is frequently “slammed up against a wall, patted down, and
verbally assaulted.” (40) One sixty-five-year-old African American lesbian who
lives in senior public housing in San Francisco is so frequently beaten by police
officers responding to complaints by homophobic neighbors that she now says.

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 8

“If Ineed help, I call the fire department. If they show up, at least it's not with
‘guns drawn.” (41) One advocate reports knowing an African American lesbian
sex worker who is hit and “roughed up” by police officers so frequently that she
is inured to the abuse. (42)

Violation of gender norms through public sexual conduct deemed
inappropriate- be it engaging in sex work or expressions of affection between
women- also gives rise to heightened police surveillance, harassment, and
abuse. Two ground-breaking reports by the Sex Workers' Project in New York
City document significant rates of violence experienced by sex workers at the
hands of police: 30% of street-based sex workers and 14% of indoor sex work-
ers interviewed reported violence by police officers. (43) “Reported incidents
included officers physically grabbing and kicking prostitutes, as well as beat-
ing them; one incident of rape; one woman was stalked by a police officer; and
throwing food. Sexual harassment included fondling of body parts; giving
women cigarettes in exchange for sex: and police offering not tot artest a prosti-
tute in exchange for sexual services.” (44) 16% of indoor sex workers reported
sexual assault or rape by police. (45)

Sexual harassment and abuse of lesbians aimed at securing sexual
conformity is also prevalent. For instance, a South Asian lesbian reports that,
in Los Angeles, when two women walking down the street are visibly a couple,
officers driving or walking by will laugh and throw kisses. (46) Lesbians also
report being regularly asked by police officers if they “would like to know how
it felt with a man.” (47) According to one researcher, women perceived as les-
bian are also the subject of increased attention by law enforcement because they
are perceived to be taking something that is not theirs to take, intruding on male
territory and undermining male privilege by having sexual relationships with
other women. (48) As a result, officers “get a kick out of breaking down their
self-esteem, they feel that they need to be broken.” (49)

Transgender women are framed by law enforcement agents as not only
the ultimate gender transgressors, but also as overly sexualized, as indicated by
the fact that they are pervasively profiled as sex workers and routinely subject to
sexual abuse by police officers. (50) They are also frequently subject to sexual-
ized verbal abuse- officers regularly call transgender women of color “fags.”
“whores,” “sluts,” “bitches.” and “prostitutes” when they encounter them on the
street. (51)

‘While the degree to which police are enforcing gender lines or acting
on racialized gender stereotypes varies between law enforcement interactions
with women of color, it is clear that the role played by gender in law enforce-
ment violence has received insufficient attention in our analysis and organizing.

9 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

‘What follows is the beginnings of development of an analysis of both “conven-
tional” and more “gender specific” forms of law enforcement violence which
centers gender along with race and class.

Racial profiling and use of force

In February of 1996, Dr. Mae Jemison, the first Black woman
astronaut, was stopped by a Texas police officer who alleged she made
an illegal turn in the hometown. Upon discovering that Jemison had an
outstanding traffic ticket, the officer cuffed her, pushed her face

down into the pavement, and forced her to remove her shoes and walk
barefoot from the patrol car to the police station. Commentators opined
that, because she was wearing a low-cut afro hairstyle, she was mis
taken for a man by the police officers. (52)

In early 1006, Sandra Antor, a 26-year-old African American nurs

ing student from Miami, was traveling along Interstate 95 to visit
fiiends in North Carolina when she was pulled over by an unmarked
car driven by a state trooper. A video camera on the dashboard previ
ously recorded Officer Beckwith making approximately 15 traffic stops
over the course of the day. Rather than approaching Ms. Antor’s car
with a friend, “How ya’ doin'2” as he had previously done with white
motorists, the trooper charged out of the patrol car, gun drawn, scream
ing repeatedly at the top of his lungs “Roll your window down NOW!
Roll your [expletive deleted] window down NOW!™ Approaching the
car swiftly until his gun was pointed directly at Ms. Antor’s head, he
proceeded to violently yank the driver side door open and tear at Ms.
Antor’s clothes, screaming “Out of the car NOW! Out of the damn car
NOW!™ Ms. Antor is heard explaining that she’s having trouble get
ting out of the car because she has her seat belt on. Beckwith
continues to pull violently on Ms. Antor’s clothing and scream at her
until she finally manages to disengage herself and begins exiting the car
slowly. Beckwith then yanks her out of the car, throws her down to the
‘eround on her hands and knees, shoves her into a prone position,

face down on the asphalt in the right lane of the fast-moving highway,
shoves his knee into her back, and proceeds to sit on her.

Although the videotape clearly shows that Antor put up absolutely
10 resistance to the officer’s abuse, Beckwith is heard screaming “Quit
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 10

fighting me!” and seen striking her as he handcuffs her. Once Ms
Antor is cuffed, Beckwith rises quickly and screams, “Stand your ass
up lady, NOW! You're fixin’ to taste liquid hell in just a minute,”
threatening to use pepper spray on the completely subdued woman.
Once she manages to rise, the officer drags Ms. Antor to the patrol

car, yelling “Get in the fucking car!” Ms. Antor’s perception of the
incident as motivated by both her race and gender is unwavering.

‘When asked what she believed the patrol-man was thinking when he
was hitting her, she immediately responds “Damn Black bitch.” She
‘20es on 1o say “He was pissed...he couldn’t believe this bitch didn’t
stop him. Who the hell do you think am? Don’t' T know where I am?
‘This is his neck of the woods,” adopting a white souther accent for
the last sentence. “That is how I interpret it,” she says, summarizing

in a single statement the historical context in which she perceived her
experience, as well as the inseparable role played by her race and gen
der identity in the officer’s conduct. (53)

A Latina from Douglas, Arizona, says, “I have been pulled over so
many times I can’t even count them, sometimes with no reason at

all. Once or twice the Border Patrol told me they received an anony
mous tip about someone driving a car similar to mind. I've been told
that my car looked weighted down, so it looked suspicious! I've heard
alot of rapes and killings by the Border Patrol. It seems like the Border
Patrol feels that they have the power to do whatever they want.”

Going forward, our efforts to combat racial profiling and police brutality must
recognize and refect that women of color have been and continue to be sub-
jeet to racial profiling and the use of force on streets and highways across the
United States. For instance, Amnesty Internationals 1998 Rights for All report
on police misconduct and abuse in the United States suggests that a pattern and
practice of assaulting African American women developed among he all-male,
all-white police force in Riverdale, a Chicago suburb which saw a dramatic
increase in the number of Black residents in the mid-1990's.

Linda Billups was stopped by police while driving home from church
with her four young children in September 1993; she was...manhandled.,
arrested and charged with several offenses including assaulting an off
icer. All charges were later dropped, except for driving without

child restraints. Dianne Overstreet was reportedly kicked, thrown to
11 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

the ground and subjected to racial slurs after an officer stopped her for
allegedly going through a red light in February 1994. At least eight
[B]lack women were assaulted in separate incidents in two years. (55)

Similarly, at an October 2003 Amnesty International hearing on racial profiling
held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Native women reported frequent traffic stops, during
which no citations would be written, of cars with tribal license plates. (56)

‘Women of color's experiences in traffic and street stops are often
uniquely gendered. For instance, in 2001, a rash of traffic stops of Latina
women took place in a low-income community in Suffolk County, Long Island,
during which women would be forced to perform sexual acts and/or strip in
public. (57) In one case, instead of being issued a traffic citation, a woman was
forced to walk home in her underwear. (S8) In two others, officers were alleged
to have forced women to have sex with them after pulling them over for traffic
infractions. (59) More recently. two New York City police officers followed
a 34-year-old woman home after stopping her for traffic offense, and subse-
quently forced her to perform oral sex on them in her apartment while her three
children slept nearby. (60)

‘Women of color, and particularly African American and Latina trans-
‘gender women, are also routinely profiled on the streets as sex workers by
police, regardless of whether they are actually engaging in sex work at the time,
or whether they are involved in the trade at all, and subjected on stops, strip
searches, and arbitrary arrest and detention on this bias. Additionally, racial
profiling of women of color has branched out from streets and airport lounges
to more gender-specific contexts, including delivery rooms across the nation,
where drug-testing of pregnant women fitting the “profile” of drug users- young,
poor, and Black- has given rise to a new race-based policing phenomenon: “giv-
ing birth while Black.” (61) Similarly, as demonstrated by professor Dorothy
Roberts in her 2003 book, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, “moth-
ering while Black” gives rise to more frequent allegations of child abuse and ne-
slect against Black women, be it for perceived neglect resulting from poverty or
for alleged failure to protect their children from witnessing abuse against them
in the home. (62)

Use of force against women of color is also uniquely informed by
racialized and gendered stereotypes- officers often appear to be acting based
on perceptions of Black women as “animalistic” women possessing superhu-
man force, Latina women as “hot-tempered mamas,” Asian women as “devi-
ous.” knife-wielding martial arts experts, and so on. The operation of one such
stereotype is apparent in the case of Cau Bich Tran, 25-year-old Vietnamese

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

mother of two, who was shot to death by police responding to a call for help at
her San Jose home in 2003. She had locked herself out of her bedroom and had
called 911 for helping getting back in. When police arrived at her home, she
was sitting in the kitchen holding a vegetable peeler which she had been using
t0 try to jimmy the door open. When she began explaining what had happened.
using the vegetable peeler to point at the bedroom door, a police officer standing
six to seven feet away from her immediately shot the woman, who was four feet
eleven inches tall and weighed ninety pounds, in the heart. (63) She was dead
within three minutes of police responding to her call for assistance.

‘These stereotypes are also apparent in the shooting death on August
15, 1998, of Ms. Cora Jones, a 79-year-old Black woman who suffered from
Alzheimer’s disease, who was partially blind and deaf, and used a wheelchair.
(64) Ms. Jones was in her home when a drive-by shooting occurred nearby.
Twenty police officers subsequently stormed the house, and began beating Ms.
Jones” great-grandson. who allegedly came down the stairs with a gun to protect
his family in the wake of the drive-by. (65) Ms. Jones yelled at the intruders,
whom she may not have known were police officers, to top beating her great-
‘randson. (66) When the officers maced her, her great grandson begged them to
let him calm her down. (67) Instead, the officers proceeded to shoot Ms. Jones
in the chest at point-blank range as she sat in her wheelchair. (68) The officers
later claimed that she had a knife, and the Detroit police force ruled the shoot-
ing a “proper use of force,” coldly stating “a shot was fired and it went where it
was directed.” (69) It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that a nearly
80-year-old woman who could neither se, hear, nor walk, and was the victim of
a dangerous crime, posed such a danger to twenty armed police officers that she
needed to be shot at point-blank range as she sat in a wheelchair, regardless of
whether she held a knife.

Presumptions about Black motherhood also inform police violence. Tn
December 1993, Los Angeles police shot twenty-seven-year-old Sonji Taylor
after they cornered her and her three-year-old son in a rooftop parking lot where
she had parked her car to go Christmas shopping. According to her family. the
police officers surrounded Ms. Taylor for half an hour before she was killed.

The officers claimed that Ms. Taylor was holding her son hostage with a kitchen
knife while repeating “the blood of Jesus.” Ms. Taylors family maintains

that the knife was a Christmas present, Ms. Taylor never harmed her son, and
that “the blood of Jesus” was a phrase Ms. Taylor repeated when in danger, a
product of her Pentecostal upbringing. The scene is easy to imagine- a ter-
rified Black woman, holding a Christmas present, trying to protect her child,
surrounded by strange men in a lonely parking lot, seeking protection from her

13 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

20d. At some point, the officers charged Ms. Taylor, maced her, and tore her
son from her. The officers say they shot Ms. Taylor after she “lunged” after
them, as no doubt any mother would to protect her child, alleging that they had
10 choice but to act in self-defense. The autopsy revealed that Ms. Taylor was
shot twice in the chest, and then seven times in the back. The fact that several
shots had “mushrooms” indicated that she was also shot while lying facedown
on the ground. This incident clearly reveals the operation of gender-specific
controlling images informing police responses to Black women: as a Black
mother, Sonji Taylor was presumed to be harming and holding her own child
hostage, and this predominant stereotype of Black motherhood cost her her life.

‘These incidents illustrate the fact that, while racial profiling and the use
of force against women of color take many of the same forms as they do with
men of color, there are clearly gendered dynamics at play which require a more
complicated analysis of racial profiling and a more complex approach to police
brutality organizing and advocacy. Moreover, racial profiling takes place in
‘gender-specific contexts-such as implementation of mandatory arrest policies, in
which women of color are disproportionately perceived to be perpetrators of do-
mestic violence rather than survivors- and takes gender-specific forms- such as
sexual harassment and assaults of motorists- which are unlikely to be uncovered
by conventional cop-watches and monitoring of existing traffic stop statistics,
‘These examples therefore bolster the need to center women of color’s experi-
ences within police accountability organizing and advocacy in order to ensure
maximun effectiveness for all members of communities of color

Rape, Sexual Assault, and Sexual Harassment

19-year-old Clementine Applewhite was walking down the street in her
hometown of ~ Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with two friends at ten o’clock in the
evening when they were approached by a uniformed, on-duty officer traveling
ina police k-9 unit. The officer told the three women that they would be arrest-
ed for vagrancy if they did not get off the street. The young women explained
to the officer that they were walking to a friend’s house several blocks away,
‘and began to hurry along as they attempted to comply with his order. After the
women traveled a few more blocks, they were again stopped by the officer and
his companion, a uniformed corrections officer, and told that the officer would
flip a coin to determine who went to jail. Losing the coin toss, Ms. Applewhite
was ordered into the patrol car and told to keep her head down. The officer then
drove to the Memorial Stadium, where he forced Ms. Applewhite to have oral
sex with him at gunpoint. Both officers then proceeded to rape her. during this
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic i

time, another officer came upon the, but turned around and left the area at the
request of the first two. (70)

An African American lesbian reports being raped by a police officer
who forced his way into her apartment at gunpoint and told her prior
to assaulting her that he was “teaching her a lesson” because the world
needed “one less dyke.” (71)

An Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officer in Pomona,
California was convicted in 2004 of demanding sex and cash from two
Chinese women seeking asylum. (72)

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by on-duty law enforcement of-
ficers are foremost among gender-specific forms of police brutality directed at
Black women. Sex workers in particular report endemic extortion of sexual
favors by police officers in exchange for leniency or to avoid routine police
violence against them, as well as frequent rapes and sexual assaults. As de-
scribed by fellow contributor Sylvanna Falc6n, immigrant Latina women, both
documented and undocumented. are routinely raped by local law enforcement
and border patrol agents in the borderlands between Mexico and the United
States. (73) Officers are also reported to regularly sexually harass young La-
tina women perceived to be gang members, in one instance telling them “give
me a piece of your ass and I'll let you go.” In some cases, sexual harassment
takes place in the context of police response to domestic violence. In July 2005,
a police officer working in a Chicago suburb was charged with “official miscon-
duct” for asking women strip naked when he responded to domestic violence
calls. (74) In a number of domestic violence cases involving lesbians, officers
have made comments to the effect that “this wouldn’t happen if you were with a
man, you need to try a man,” and suggested that they, in fact, might be the man
for the job.

‘The city of Eugene, Oregon, recently paid $667.000 to a woman who
was sexually assaulted by Roger Magafia, who was recently convicted of sexu-
ally abusing more than a dozen women over a period of eight years and against
whom eleven other suits are pending. His case, while unique in that it resulted
ina criminal conviction and substantial penalty, is common in other respects.
Officer Magafia preyed on domestic violence survivors, women involved in the
sex trade, others who use controlled substances, and women who are labeled as
mentally ill first threatening arrest and then offering leniency in exchange for
sexual acts. In some cases, he was conducting “welfare checks™- which allow

15 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

officers to enter residents’ homes by simply stating that they believe a person’s
well-being is at risk- at the time he raped and sexually assaulted women. He
frequently conducted inappropriate and abusive searches of women on the side
of the road. Many of the women who eventually came forward said they did
not initially report the abuse because they were afraid of police retaliation and
feared they would not be believed. One woman told of Magaiia putting his se
vice weapon up against her genitals and saying he would “blow her insides out
if she told anyone. Nevertheless, police files indicate that at least a half a dozen
officers and supervisors heard complaints from women that they had been raped
or sexually assaulted by Officer Magaiia and one of his fellows officers before
either one was arrested. (75)

Some community organizing around sexual harassment by law enforce-
ment officers has taken place. As described in their piece in this anthology,
Sista 11 Sista, a Brooklyn-based collective of working-class young and adult
Black and Latina women, began organizing against sexual harassment and
violence by law enforcement officers in their neighborhood after two young
women from the community were killed by police officers. (76) One was killed
during a dispute with her mother on their stoop when a police officer stopped
to intervene, and ended up shooting the young worman in the chest, claiming
self-defense, while the second was killed by her boyfriend, who was an aux-
iliary cop. As they were organizing around these incidents, young women’s
experiences of daily sexual harassment by police officers began to come to
light, and they decided to use video to document sexual harassment by officers
from New York City's 83rd Precinct. They subsequently screened the video
and performed skits depicting sexual harassment by police during a neighbor-
hood block party outside the precinct house. The event was a success, leading
the community to take up the issue in their ongoing police accountability work.
Sista 11 Sista’s work in this area serves as an important example of developing
joint antiviolence and police accountability organizing strategies that link state:
‘and interpersonal violence in the ways they manifest in our every day lives.

Responses to Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

On September 28, 1999, 39-year-old African American Bronx resident
Cherae Williams called 911 for help because her boyfriend was beating
her. (77) Frustrated by responding officers’ refusal to even get out of
their patrol car to assist her or take her complaint, she asked for their
names and badge numbers. (78) The two white officers responded

by handeuffing Ms. Williams and driving her to a deserted parking lot.
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 16

During the drive to the parking lot, a terrified Ms. Williams managed
to get one hand out of her handcuffs only to be pepper sprayed by the
officers. When they arrived at the lot, the officers pulled Ms. Wil
liams out of the patrol car by her hair, repeatedly shook her and struck
her head against the car, and beat her so badly she suffered a broken
nose and a broken jaw which had to be wired shut. (79) Ms. Wil
liams appeared before a New York City Council hearing on police
responses to domestic violence complaints in October of 1999, testify
ing that “[the officers] beat me until I was bloody...they left me there
dead and with a warning. They told me if they saw me on the street,
that they would kill me...I called the police to prevent a serious inci
dent, and they brutalized me.” (80)

Society’s reliance on law enforcement-based responses to violence against
women has had a number of unintended consequences, not the least of which
is increased vulnerability of survivors to violence- at the hands of both their
abusers and law enforcement officers. Often, police brutality against women
of color and their families occurs when they seek assistance in the context of
domestic violence or sexual assault. As a result, “law and order” agendas and
“touch on crime” policies have not necessarily increased women of color's safe-
ty from violence- instead, fear of police violence o of inappropriate responses
to interpersonal violence by law enforcement agents, combined with the lack of
altenative responses, often leaves women of color with nowhere to turn when
we face violence in our homes and communities. Moreover, in the current anti-
immigrant climate, the absence of societal responses to violence that does not
rely on law enforcement agencies, increasingly more concerned with detecting
and deporting undocumented women than protecting them, increases immigrant
women’s vulnerability to violence.

Police interactions are very much informed by racialized notions of
‘gender which dictate who is a legitimate survivor of domestic violence and
sexual assault, and who is likely to be a perpetrator or violence. For instance,
one African American woman testified at a 1999 Amnesty International hearing
on police brutality in Los Angeles that on one occasion police officers respond-
ing to a “family quarrel” at home beat her as her children were locked outside,
powerless to answer their mother’s cries for help. She reported that she was
subsequently gagged with a rag by officers, and beaten again until she fainted,
at which point officers dragged her acoss her yard to their police car. (81) In
June 1994, Rebecea Miller, a twenty-two-year-old Black woman was shot and
Killed at close range in the hallway of her apartment, with her two-year-old son

17 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

ather side, after police were called to intervene in a fight with her boyfriend.
(82) On September 10, 1997, Oakland police responding to a neighbor’s do-
mestic disturbance call, proceeded to shoot Venus Renee Baird in the chest in
front of her family, alleging that she attacked the police officers with a butcher
knife. (83)

‘These incidents highlight the pervasive nature of the archetypes govern-
ing the manner in which women of color are perceived. AT their most vulner-
able, subjected to physical abuse in their own homes, women called on law en-
forcement officers for help. Rather than “serve and protect,” officers brutalized
them, either for daring to challenge or seek protection from violence, or simply
because they were acting on stereotypes that framed women of color as violent
and requiring submission by physical force regardless of the context. These
women’s experiences undermine the women's movement’s purported succes
in increasing women’s safety by exposing violence in the “private sphere” of
the home and sensitizing law enforcement officers to take domestic violence
seriously. Rather, they expose one of the failures of the mainstream domestic
violence movement, which has been to contribute to perceptions of victims
of domestic violence as almost exclusively white and middle class, excluding
women of color from the “battered woman” narrative and, therefore, the right
to protection by law enforcement. They also illustrate the isolation women of
color survivors of both interpersonal and law enforcement violence face in light
of the mainstream antiviolence movement's failure to integrate their experiences
into their analysis, strategies, and advocacy.

The “War on Drugs”

Frankie Perkins, mother of three daughters, aged four, six, and
sixteen, was on her way home one evening, crossing an empty lot,
when she was stopped by police, who later claimed that they had seen
her swallowing drugs, and tried to get her to spit them up. Witnesses
state that the officers simply killed her, strangling her to death. Autopsy
photos reveal bruises on her face and rib cage, and show her eyes swol
len shut, and the hospital listed her cause of death as strangulation. (84)

Lori Penner, a Native woman living in Oklahoma, testified at a 2003
Amnesty International hearing on racial profiling that her house was
raided in August of that year by law enforcement officers claiming to be
searching for drugs. During the raid, she stated that her fifteen-year-
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 18

old daughter “was jerked out of the shower and forced to stand naked
in front of three male officers. She was taken to her room to put some
clothes on where she had to get dressed in front of three officers.

the police laughed and smirked at us when no drugs were found. One
officer had the audacity to tell my daughter she cleaned up nice and
Tooks good for a fifteen-year-old girl. (85)

Myths and stereotypes implicating women of color in the drug trade have also
proven deadly when acted upon by police officers. In South Seattle, Washing-
ton, in October 1997, Theresa Henderson, like Frankie Perkins, was choked to
death by police who alleged that she tried to swallow a small amount of co-
caine and claimed that they were merely attempting to recover “evidence.” (86)
Danette Daniels, a pregnant Black woman, arrested for dealing drugs in June of
1997 by New Jersey police officers, was shot to death by officers as she sat in
the squad car, after an alleged “scuffle.” (87) Witnesses deny that Ms. Daniels
was involved in any drug transaction at the time of her death. (8)

Additionally, in the “war on drugs.” the potential consequences of a
drug conviction which, as discussed in greater detail in this volume by Patricia
Allard, can include long mandatory prison sentences; loss of child custody: loss
of access to public housing, food stamps, and cash assistance; loss of profes-
sional licenses; and denial of access to government loans for higher educatior
have given law enforcement officers increased power, and have therefore in-
creased the likelihood of police abuse of women of color. From arbitrary stops.
strip searches, and detentions based on perceptions of women of color as “drug
mules” to increased leverage for police extortion schemes such as those in
which officers routinely demand sexual acts in exchange for leniency, it seems
beyond question that the “war on drugs” has increased the prevalence of law
enforcement violence against women. For instance, a Milwaukee police officer
was recently charged with dropping drug charges against a South Dakota wom-
an in exchange for sex. (89) In another case, recently before the federal Ninth
Circuit of Appeals court, Darla Morley was allowed to proceed with her suit
against the LAPD based on a March 1999 drug raid. During the raid, Motley
was shoved against a wall, and a police officer entering her baby’s room pointed
a gun at the child while others rifled through her belongings. (90) However,
beyond documentation of rising incarceration rates of women of color, the na-
ture and quality of police interactions with women of color in the context of the
“war on drugs” has yet to be systematically examined or addressed. (91)

19

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic

‘The “War on Terror”

In early March 2003, F., a former high school teacher who describes
herself as “hapa” (mixed race) and gender-queer, was walking in down
town Los Angeles around midnight with two friends, when two men
wearing purple shirts and black pants approached them, telling them,
“You have to stop, you have to stop.” Although the two men did not
identify themselves as law enforcement or security officers until later,
they immediately grabbed the three friends by the arms. An unmarked
police car pulled up, and two men jumped out, guns drawn, also

failing to identify themselves as police officers at the time. One of the
men placed a gun to F.’s friend, G.s head. Although F. was the small
est of the three, she was grabbed by three of the men. The officers then
began questioning F. regarding the contents of her backpack, which, in
addition to several antiwar buttons, had one button with two joined
women’s symbols on it and another which said, “We're here, we're
queer, get used to it.” The officers then grabbed her and threw her

up against a wall with enough force to “bust” a cell phone in her back
pocket, and held her there with her feet barely touching the ground as
they questioned her.

One of the men wearing a purple shift, whom F. believes, based
on the information she later obtained, was assigned to patrol the busi
ness district as part of a “homeland security” initiative, told her that
they had received reports of people engaged in “un-American stuff” in
the area. The officers repeated their questions regarding what was in
Fs bag, and then began demanding to know what was under F.’s sweat
shirt. The officers next asked if F. was a boy or a girl, and tried to unzip.
her sweatshirt, asking what she had on underneath. Despite her pro

tests that she did not consent to a search, the officers grabbed Fs arms
and held her down while another officer pulled up her sweatshirt and T-
shirt and groped her chest area, while asking her repeatedly, “What

are you, are you a boy or a girl?”, and grabbing her inappropriately.
According to F., one of the officers had his gun drawn during the

entire search, while another was telling her, “You need to calm down
and cooperate” When describing the incident, F. wryly commented- “It
was not pretty.” (92)

One of the officers then grabbed F. by the hair, pulling her face up
toallow him to take her photograph.” One of the officers asked her,

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 20

“Why do you dress this way?” while another was heard saying under
his breath, “What i it, is it a he or a she?” F. was then placed in
handcuffs so tight they cut F.’s wrists and interfered with circulation
t0 her hands. When F. asked the officers to loosen them, they refused.
‘When a marked police car arrived on the scene, the three friend repeat
edly asked why they were being detained. The officers threatened
several times to call the INS, asked them, “Why don’t you go back
where you came from?” called them “towel head lovers,” and told
them “If you are against war, you are for terrorism.” AT one point,

F. said something to G. in German. The officers, assuming she was
speaking Arabic, reportedly said, “You're one of them.” Later on, at
the police station, when F. removed the hat she had been wearing as
she sat handcuffed to a bench, revealing long hair, one of the arresting
officers walked by and said, “Oh maybe it is a girl.” Another

officer reportedly walked by and asked a third, “Is that the one that's
ahe-she? It must be a girl, look at her hair” Charges against . were
eventually dismissed. Her complaint against the arresting officers is
still pending

‘The voices and experiences of Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and
Muslim women- and women perceived to be members of these groups- have
been noticeably absent from the discourse regarding the impacts of the “war on
terror” on communities of color in the United States. This does not mean, by
any stretch of the imagination, that they have escaped its grasp. Rather, domi-
nant anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism represents Arab, Muslim, and South Asian
women as passive victims of their violent, misogynist men, without agency
and in desperate need of “liberation” by Western militaries and feminists alike,
thereby eliminating the possibility in the popular mind that they would be tar-
gets of state violence in the context of this very “liberation.”

However, images of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian women as poten-
tial suicide bombers are increasingly gaining currency, as evidenced by the case
of sixteen-year-old Tashnuba Hyder, a South Asian Muslim living in Queens,
New York, who was recently the subject of the first terrorism investigation
involving a minor. FBI agents who had monitored her visits to an Internet chat
room where sermons by an Islamic cleric in London were posted showed up
at her home one day, pretending to follow up on a missing persons report filed
five months earlier when Tashnuba briefly left home with a friend. The agents
immediately began going through her diary, papers, and home schooling materi-
als, focusing on one essay discussing the positions taken on suicide by various

20 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

religions and another about the Department of Homeland Security, in which she
stated she felt that Muslims were being targeted and “outcasted” by the state
since 9/11. Three weeks later, based on a “secret” declaration, a dozen federal
agents raided her home at dawn, citing the expiration of her mother’s immigra-
tion papers and justification for taking the daughter into custody. Without pro-
viding her parents with any information as to her whereabouts for two weeks,
Tashnuba was transferred to a juvenile detention center in Pennsylvania where
she was interrogated, without a parent or lawyer present, by the members of the
FB Joint Terrorism Task Force, and released only upon her mother’s agreement
toa “voluntary departure” to Bangladesh. Another Muslim girl, Adama Bah,
‘was also detained as part of the investigation. (93)

Since 9/11, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim women have also been
routinely subject to street and airport profiling. Women who wear the hijab are
disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. For instance, in December
2001, a Muslim woman wearing a veil was stopped by police for driving with
suspended plates. Rather than simply write her a ticket upon production of a
valid driver’s license and registration, the officer arrested her, shoved her into
the patrol car, and made inappropriate comments about her religion and her veil
(94) Tn November 2001, a Muslim woman was asked to remove her headscarf
in an airport- even though the metal detector had not gone off when she went
through it- and taken to a room for a full body search. (95) Transgendered
‘women also report increased profiling as potential terrorists based on assump-
tions that they are “disguised” as women. These cases, and countless others
‘which have ot yet come to light, must also guide our analysis and our antivio-
lence and law enforcement accountability organizing efforts in the post-9/11
world

“Quality of Life” and “Gang” Policing

‘While the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” have played significant roles
in driving law enforcement policies and practices over the past decade, two
additional trends in law enforcement have also influenced and contributed to
police interactions with women of color. In an effort to address what are often
described as “quality of life” crimes, many local governments have either
passed or increased enforcement of legislation establishing juvenile curfews and
prohibiting activities such s loitering, panhandling, unlicensed street vending,
public drunkenness, urination in public places, graffiti, and sleeping on public
benches or parks. (96) These provisions lead to criminalization of normally
noncriminal behavior and are often discriminatorily enforced.
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

Provisions targeted at those congregating in and using public spaces or
living on the streets disproportionately impact homeless, precariously housed.
and low-income women of color and youth who have limited access to private
spaces, as well as individuals providing vital outreach services to those com-
munities. “Gang policing” initiatives have been intricately intertwined with
“quality of life” policies and often serve as a pretext for profiling and haras
ment of groups of young people of color in schools and neighborhoods. Latina
lesbians are reportedly profiled by police as gang members under these poli-
cies, at times based on gender-nonconforming appearance, behavior, and attire,
such as wearing baggy pants. (97) Asian girls have also been subject to “gang’
profiling based on stereotypes regarding criminal activity among recent East
Asian immigrants. (98) School safety officers and school police charged with
enforcing “zero tolerance” policies are reported to routinely harass and abuse
‘youth, particularly youth of color, engaging in profiling based on race, ethnicity,
religion, gender, gender identity. sexual orientation, or style of clothing, as well
as arbitrary stops and searches. (99) Sexual harassment and abuse of young
women of color has also been reported, as well as violent arrests and detentions
of young women of color- once again revealing the operation of gender policing
and racialized gender-based stereotypes in current police practices.

Conclusion

Gender, sex, and race policing, as informed by stereotypical and archetypal rep-
resentations of women of color, clearly underlie law enforcement interactions
with women of color. Brutal physical and psychological assaults on women of
color by police officers appear to be informed by beliefs that deviations from
socially constructed norms of gender and sexual expression are legitimate bases
for suspicion. Consequently, use of force on the part of state agents becomes
necessary, as women of color, by their very existence, are seen as threats who
must be met with brutal force; are sexually available and subject to sexual
subjugation at the hands of police officers: are vessels fro drugs swallowed or
concealed: and/or are instruments of “terror.” Yet the complexity of the interac-
tion of structural oppressions in police encounters with women of color is not
reflected within analytical and organizing frameworks which allow for consider-
ation of only one axis of oppression- such as race-based police brutality against
men of color or gender-based interpersonal violence against white women.

A reformulation of our struggles against police brutality to integrate an
analysis of state violence based on gender and race, as well as other structural
oppressions such as class, national origin, occupation, gender identity. and

23 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic.

expression, sexual orientation, age, and disability is clearly required. Similarly,
arevisioning of our struggles to end violence against women is required to inte-
‘grate women of color’s experiences of state violence, as well as s intersections
with interpersonal and community violence. The experiences of the women
whose stories are recounted and countless others counsel strongly in favor of

a critical examination of current approaches to violence against women, and

the development and support of alternative, community-based accountability
strategies which prioritize safety for survivors, community responsibility for
creating and enabling the conditions which permit violence to take place, and
transformation of private and public gender relations. These experiences not
only challenge the effectiveness of law enforcement-based response to domestic
and sexual violence against women, but serve as a bass for pursuing collabora-
tions between antiviolence and anti-police brutality organizers to develop such
‘community-based responses to violence against women which do not involve
the criminal legal system.

Through such coalitions, all of our movements will be better able to
integrate women of color’s lived experiences into our organizing and advocacy
strategies- after all, a woman’s gender, race, immigration status, economic
status, and gender identity can all converge in a single interaction with a law
enforcement agent committing or responding to violence against a woman of
color. Indeed, until the role of law enforcement agents in perpetrating and facili-
tating violence against women of color and their communities is examined and
addressed, we cannot claim to be working toward safety for all women.

Notes

1 Glennda Chui, “More Than 100 People March in Protest of San Jose Shoot-
ing,” San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 2003

2 Hector Castro, “Pregnant Woman *Tasered” by Police is Convicted,” Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, May 10, 205.
3 “City Misses Opportunity,” Editorial, Greensboro News & Record, March 10,

2005; Margaret Moffett Banks and Eric Collins, “Witnesses Say Police Conduct Fine,”
Greensboro News & Record, November 9, 2004; Margaret Mofett Bans, “Muslims Ask
Apology in Arrest,” Greensboro News & Record, November 8, 2004; “Condemn Atiack
on Mrs. Afaf Sauci.” Letter to the Editor, Greensboro News & Record, November 8,
2004,

4 “Video Captures Police Handeuffing 5-year-old Girl,” Associated Press. April
22,2005; “A Current Affair to Show S-year-old's Arrest Today.” April 24, 2005, hitp:/
wivw.acurrentaffiar.com/daily/todayshow/index htr.

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

s Patrick Gallhue, “Family: Cops Attacked Us,” The Brooklyn Paper, August 18,
2004,

6 Press release issued by survivor's attorney in preparation for officer’s sentenc-
ing, March 16, 2005 (on file with author).

7 ‘The Stolen Lives Project, Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement, 2nd ed.
(New York: October 22nd Coalition, 1999), 171

8 Brandon v . County of Richardson, Brief on the Gender Public Advocacy Co-

aition, et al.,amici curiae, at 8 (Neb. Sup. Ct. 2000), citing Lamot v City of New Yok,
(S.D. N.Y. Nov. 23, 1999)

9 Jane Doc, personal commurication,

10 Dayo Foyalan Gote, Tamara Jones, and Joo-Hyun Kang, “Organizing at the
Intersections: A Roundtable Discussion of Palice Brutality through the Lens of Race,
Class, and Sexual Identites,” in Zero Tolerance, Quality of Life and the New Police
Brutality in New York City,ed. Andrea McArdle and Tanya Erzen (New York: New
York Universiy Press, 2001).

11 “Call to Action,” Black Radical Congress, April 2002, on file with author

12 ACLU, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, and Breaking the Chains,
“Caught in the Net: The impact of Drug Policies on Wormen and Fanilics” report,
March 15, 2005, 16-18; Marc Mauer, Cathy Potler, And Richard Wolf,“Gender and Jus-
tice: Women, Drugs and Sentencing Policy,” report for the Sentencing Project, Novem-
ber 199, available at hip://www sentencinproject org/pdfs 9042 p.

13 Mary Haviland, et al.,“The Family Protection and Domestic Violence Inter
vention Act of 1995: Examining the Effects of Mandatory Arrest in New York Cit
report by the Family Violence Projectof the Usban Justice Center, May 2001

1 hid

15 Amnesty Intemnational, Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Aginst
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People in the US (London: Amnesty Interna-
tional Publications, 2006).

16 Ibid

17 Angela Y. Davis, “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to
Racism.” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub-
lishers, 1998).

18 Evelyn A. Williams, “Statement of Facts in the New Jersey Trial of Assata
Shakur,” June 25, 2005, available at hitp//sivw. assatashakur org/appeal_case_facts_
2005 b (accessed August 29, 2005)

19 Angela Y. Davis, “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to
Racism.”

20 Joy James, Resisting State Violence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1996)
21 Temy Morris, No Justice, No Peace: From Emmett Till 0 Rodney King

(Brooklyn: Afrocentic Productions, 1993), 41; Selwyn Raab, “Officer Indicted in Bum-
purs Case.” New York Times, February 1, 1985; Selwyn Raab, “Ward Defends Police
Actions in Bronx Death,” New York Times, November 3, 1984; “Then, After the Kill-

25 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchie

ing,” Editorial, New York Times, November 2, 1984
22 Dayl Fears and Greg Krikorian, “Family Asks Why Police Shot Woman,”
Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1998; “Riverside, CA, Officers Who Shot Tyisha
Miler Fired From Force,” Jet Magazine, July 5, 1999.

23 Amnesty International, A Briefing for the UN Committee against Torture
(London: Amnesty International Publications, 2000); Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “New
Menace to Society? Police Shootings of Black Women Are the Deadly Consequences
of Stercotypes.” Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1999.

24 Rebecea Young, presentation at the National Development and Research Insti-
tutes, summarizing the results of an extensive study of the treatment of lesbians within
the criminal justice system, drug treatment facilities, and homeless shelters, February
23,2004,

25 Ibid,

26 Kara Fox, “Maryland Lesbian Alleges Metro Police Abuse in Artest,” Wash-
ington Blade, April 26, 2002

27 Asignificant number of Native Americans do not identify as “gay.” “lesbian,”
“bisexual,” or “transgender,” associating these identities with predominantly white
‘communities. Many Native Americans, particularly those living in urban areas, have
adopted the term “Two Spirit” to include individuals living alternative gender identities
and expressions as well as those living seam.-gender-loving existences. See Sue Ellen
Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang, ed., Two Spirit People: Native American
‘Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997);
Lester B. Brown, ed., Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women and Gay
Men (New York: Haworth Press, 1997).

28 See Audre Lorde Project, “Police Brutality against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
‘Two Spirit, and Transgender People of Color in New York City,” draft report, July 14,
2000 (on file with author).

29 “Inthe era of Stonewall, laws against cross dressing were common. Indeed,
the most recent case of such archaic laws being struck down was in San Diego, just a
handful of years ago. It would not surprise me f there are locales in the United States
where such laws are still on the books. Many of them required that a person, if so
dressed, had to be wearing three items of their birth gender’s clothing. Some were more
stringent, with some biological females having to get special licenses in order 1o wear
pants in public.” Gwen Smith, “Transsexual Terrorism,” Washington Blade, October 3,
2003; see also Leslie Fineberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1998); Phyllis Frye, hitp://www.transhistory.org/history/TH_Phyllis_Frye himl
(citing Houston Code struck down in 1981). These laws, known as “sumptuary laws.”
required that individuals wear a minimum number of articles of “gender appropriate”
clothing. Such regulations persist to this day inside correctional facilities in the United
States.

30 Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Toilet Training, video (New York: Sylvia Rivera
Law Project, 2003); People in Search of Safe Restroom Web site, hitp://www.pissr.org.

Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

31 Young, presentation at the National Development and Research Institutes.
32 Kate De Cou, “US Social Policy on Prostitution: Whose Welfare is Served?”
New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement 24 (1998): 427, 435-437.

33 See Amnesty International, Stonewalled.
34 C.Nicole Mason, Executive Director, National Women's Alliance, personal
‘communication with author, October 10, 2003.

35 Young, presentation at the National Development and Research Institutes.

36 Ibid

37 Mason, personal communication with author, October 10,2003

38 Young, presentation at the National Development and Research Institutes; Ma-

son, personal communication with author, October 10, 200;
tional, Stonewalled.

39 Kendall Thomas, presentation at Lavender Law Conference, New York, NY,
October 18, 2003; Joey Mogul, presentation at Lavender Law Conference, New York,
NY, October 18, 2003

see also Amnesty Interna-

40 Joey Mogul, People’s Law Office, personal communication with author, No-
vember 2003

41 Jennifer Rakowski, Communities United Against Violence, personal communi-
cation with author, October 2003,

42 Ujima Moore, personal communication with author, November, 2003.

43 “Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Work in New York City.

report by the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, 2005; “Revolving Door:
An Analysis of Street-Based Prostitution in New York City,” report by the Sex Workers
Project of the Urban Justice Center, 2003. Both are available at hitp:i/www.sexworker-
sproject.org (accessed August 29, 2005).

44 Sex Workers Proje
45 Sex Workers Proje

46 Simmi Ghandi, personal communication with author, November 2003; Am-
nesty International, Stonewalled.

47 Amnesty International, Stonewalled.

48 Young, presentation at the National Development and Research Institutes;

Amnesty International, Stonewalled.

49 Young, ibid

50 Amnesty International, Stonewalled.

s1 Ibid

52 Kathryn Russell, The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black
Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions (New York: New York
University Press, 1999).

53 This accountis based on a feature aired on the NBC news program Dateline,
entitled “Road Warior,” in which the video tape of the incident is shown, and Ms. Antor
and Officer Beckwith are interviewed. See also “Black Woman Abused by White South
Carolina State Trooper Sues State,” Jet Magazine, April 29, 1996; “White South Car
lina State Trooper Fired After His Video Camera Shows Him Abusing Black Woman,”

27 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic.

Jet Magazine, April 8, 1996; “Woman Dragged From Car by Police Sues State,” CNN
News Briefs, April 4, 1996, https//www.cnn.com/US/9604/04/newsbriefs/index | htm;
Fred Bruning, “Rogue Cops and Civilian Beatings,” Newsday, April 1996.

54 “Justice on the Line: The Unequal Impacts of Border Enforcement in Arizona
Border Communities,” Border Action Network report, 2000, 11. Available at hitp://
wivwborderaction.org/PDFs/BAN-Justice.pdf (accessed July 26, 2006).

55 “Rights for AlL” Amnesty International report, 1998, available at hitp://www.
rightsforall amnesty.org/info/report/index.htm (accessed July 26, 2006).
56 Geneva Horse Chief, “Amnesty International Hears Testimony on Racial Pro-

filing,” Indian Country Today, October 16, 2003
57 Shelly Feurer Bomash, “A Few Bad Cops, or a Problem with the System?”
New York Times, February 11,2001
58 Andy Newman, “Suffolk County Officer is Charged in Abuse of Female Driv-
few York Times, March 29, 2002

Domash, “A Few Bad Cops, or a Problem with the System?"

Al Baker, Janon Fisher, and Matthew Sweeney, “Two Officers Are Charged in
New York Times, November 22, 2005; “Woman Says Officers Sexually

" New York Times, November 21,2005

61 See, for example, Dorothy E. Roberts, “Pus
Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privac
104 (1991): 1419-87; Lynn M. Paltrow, “Background Concerning Ferguson et al, v.
City of Charleston et al” National Advocates for Pregnant Women report, available at
hitp/svwwadvocatesforpregnantwomen.orgissues/ferguson_history.htm (accessed July
26, 2006); Lynn M. Paltrow “McKnight Background,” National Advocates for Pregnant
‘Women report, available at http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.orgissuesmek-
nightbekrd.htm (accessed July 26, 2006).
62 Dorothy E. Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York:
Basic Books, 2003).
63 “Police Killing in San Jose Raises Questions,” Asian Pacific Islander Legal
Outreach report, August 1, 2003, available at hitp://www.geocities. com/apilegalout-
reach/Uploads/CauTran htm (accessed August 29, 2005)
64 Stolen Lives Project, Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement, 200.
65 Ibid

66 Ibid.
67 Ibid

68 Ibid

6 Ibid

70 Applewhite v. City of Baton Rouge, 380 So. 2d 119 (La. App. 1979).

71 “Ga. Deputy Acquitted of Raping Lesbian, Found Guilty of Violating Osth

of Office,” Washington Blade, March 26, 2004; “Lesbian Rape Trial Begins in Geor-
gia,” the Advocate, Mach 17, 2004; Joe Johnson, “Alleged Rape Victim Testifies in
Court,” Online Athens, March 16, 2004, available at https//www.amren.com/news/
news04/03/1T/onelessdyke.html (accessed August 29, 2005): “No Hate Crime Charge in
Lavw Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic 2

*One Less Dyke’ Rape Case,” Online Athens, August 26, 2003, available at hitp://www.
queerday.com/2003/aug/26/no_hate_crime_charge_in_one_less_dyke_rape_case himl
(accessed August 29, 2005).

72 “Former INS Officer Gets 4-year Prison Term.” Los Angeles Times, November
23,2004
73 See chapter 14, in this anthology, Sylvanna Falcdn, “Securing the Nation

through the Violation of Women’s Bodies: Militarized Border Rape at the Us-Mexico
Border"; See also Coalicién de Derechos Humanos/Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras,
Violence on the Border, press release, February 25, 2004.

74 “Excofficer Accused of Telling a Woman to Disrobe,” Chicago Sun-Times, July
23,2005,
75 “Eugene, Oregon, Setlles Two Suits with Women Abused by Cops,” Associated

Press, August 12, 2005; C. Stephens, “Magana Verdict,” KVAL 13 News, June 30, 204;
“Trial Begins for Perverted Eugene Cop Roger Magana: Media is Shut Out,” Portland
Independent Media Center, June 4, 2004, available at hitp://www.publish.portland.
indymedia.org/en/2004/06/290053.shtml (accessed August 25, 2005); “Victim Speaks
Out About Perverted Eugene Cop,” KVAL 13 News, March 13, 2004; “Magana Records
Revealed,” KVAL 13 News, March 4, 2004; “Four More Women Accuse Eugene Of-
ficer of Abuse.” KATU 2 News, December 11, 2003

76 See Sista Il Sista, “Sistas Makin' Moves: Collective Leadership for Personal
Transformation and Social Justice.” in this anthology.

77 Greg Smith and Tara George, “Officers Accused of Beating Woman,” New
York Times, March 2, 2000; Juan Forero, “Two Officers Are Accused of Beating
‘Woman Who Asked for Their Names and Badge Numbers,” New York Times, March
2,2000; J. Zamgba Browne, “Two Officers Sentenced in Assault of Black Woman,
Amsterdam News, November 15, 2001

78 Forero, “Two Officers Are Accused of Beating Woman."

79 Smith and George, “Officers Accused of Beating Woman"; Forero, “Two Offi-
cers Are Accused of Beating Woman"; “National Briefs,” Pittsburg Post Gazette, March
2,2000.

80 Smith and George, “Officers Accused of Beating Woman.”

81 Kwame Dixon and Patricia E. Allard, Police Brutality and International Human
Rights in the United States: The Report on Hearings Held in Los Angles, Califoria

Chicago, Hllinois, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fall 1999 10 (London: Amnesty Inter-
national Publications, 2000)

82 Stolen Lives Project, Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement.

8 Ihid

84 Ibid; Amnesty International, “Rights for All" report.

85 Horse Chicf, “Amnesty International Hears Testimony on Racial Profiling.”
86 Stolen Lives Project, Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement.

87 Ibid, 226,

8 Ibid

89 Gazette Extra, July 19, 2005,
29 Law Enforcment Violence Against Women of Color- Andrea J. Ritchic.

90 “Appellate Court Says Officers Can be Held Liable in L.A. Raid.” Associated
Press, September 22, 2004.
91 See ACLU etal, “Caught in the Net.” supra note

92 E. personal communication with author, February 2004,
93 New York Times.

94 Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, “Wrong Then, Wrong
Now: Racial Profiling Before & After September 11,2001, report, 2003, 22
95 Ibid.

% e National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “No Homeless People.
Allowed,” report, 1994; Robert C. Ellickson, “Controlling Chronic Misconduct in City
Spaces: of Panhandlers, Skid Rows, and Public-Space Zoning.,” Yale Law Journal 105
(1996): 1165: Dirk Johnson, “Chicago Council Tries Anew with Anti-Gang Ordinance,”
New York Times, February 22, 2000; Steve Miletich, “Sidewalk Law is Posted,” Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, May 19, 1994; Michael Ybarra, “Don’t Ask, Don't Beg, Don't Sit,”
New York Times, May 19, 1996.

97 Personal interview with Sylvia Belran and Alex Sanchez of Homies Unidos,
January 29, 2004.
98 Amnesty International, Stonewalled; see also Leadership Conference on Civil

Rights Education Fund, “Wrong Then, Wrong Now.”
99 Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), forthcoming research report; National
Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), forthcoming rescarch repor.
vists in need and for folks behind bars. We seek the total
abolition of prisons and work on projects in support of this cause.

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