opinion & features

Andrea Ritchie isn’t shy about her thoughts on the American justice system, or lack-there-of when it comes to the LGBT community. The New York-based police misconduct lawyer, and co-founder of INCITE! Women of Colour Against Violence, has recently co-authored a book on the subject and was in Winnipeg this summer to speak at the International Copwatch Conference about the role of law enforcement and its impact on LGBT communities.

“For me, the police are one of the central focus points for addressing and stemming systems of violence and systems of domination, because they are literally the front-line soldiers in enforcing these things,” says the activist. “I think as a system, the police are about maintaining the existing social order, an order that includes violence against certain people and power for certain people at the expense of others, controlling some populations, to allow other populations to dominate.”

Copwatch is premised on a group of volunteers going out to locations and neighbourhoods where police activity is present, filming people’s interactions with police, and then advising them of their rights and what resources are available to them, explained Ritchie, but she noted this has its limitations.

“Copwatch can’t be there in the booking room or the patrol car when the officer is propositioning someone, or sexually harassing them ... it doesn’t work for certain contexts where a lot of violence occurs against women and LGBT people,” she points out. 

To address that and other issues, Ritchie led a workshop on resisting the racialized policing of gender and sex, focusing on ways to connect communities and affect change. She drew in part on her recently published book Queer (In)Justice, which she co-authored with Joey Mogul and Kay Whitlock.

Queer (In)Justice shares stories like those of Monica James, a black transgender woman who was accused of being deceptive and untrustworthy while on trial for attempted murder after the prosecution claimed she was lying about her sex. She had run afoul of Louisiana’s “crimes against nature” laws, which impose harsher penalties for the solicitation of oral or anal sex than they do for general prostitution. The penalties include having a sex offender designation emblazoned on one’s driver’s licence.

Ritchie emphasizes that selective enforcement of existing laws and often obscure laws – for example, loitering inside a building – gives police the tools they need to target the LGBT community, particularly LGBT people of colour and economically disadvantaged LGBT people. The result is the criminalization of LGBT people, despite the perceived move towards equality through the repealing of American sodomy laws and the sporadic legalization of same-sex marriage.

The police misconduct attorney also points out that the examination of our colonial history is needed to understand current issues surrounding race, class, and queer criminal archetypes in the Americas. Noting that the first recorded punishment of sodomy in the Americas took place in present day Panama in 1513, Ritchie says the colonial legacy still influences our society’s ideas of gender and sex, and the perceived role race plays in defining sexuality, such as the stereotype of the overly sexually aggressive black woman, which can portray women of colour as unfairly dangerous and eventually garner them increased sentences.

Ritchie says that when most people think of police brutality, the image that still jumps to mind is the Rodney King beating, which occurred in Los Angeles in 1991. The attorney notes that some people don’t automatically view sexual abuse, harassment or even rape as a form of police brutality, because the public image of police brutality is so tied to public violence, something that she says needs to change so that all abuses of power can be addressed.

In one of many efforts to fight discrimination, Ritchie is currently counsel, along with co-author Joey Mogul, in a civil rights action challenging unconstitutional and overly invasive searches of transgender people by New York City Police officers to establish their sex. Although the case has generated positive dialogue, and is expected to establish new search guidelines, Ritchie and her colleagues argue it’s grassroots efforts that are needed to effectively change the way laws are enforced and justice is rendered. 

“Efforts have been made by some police departments, and I don’t want to discount those efforts, but it doesn’t change the fundamental function of the police,” says Ritchie, emphasizing that changes needs to come from outside the police system to end discrimination against the queer community.

Ritchie believes that if real equality is going to be sought, people in the LGBT community need to reach out across the economic and racial divides that separate them. In Queer (In)Justice, Ritchie and her co-authors argue that advances trumped as major steps towards equality, such as same-sex marriage, have not by and large benefited the economically depressed or homeless LGBT individuals, or queers of colour who still face criminalization and disproportionate interaction with the legal system. “I’d really like to see people reach across the divides, I think it’s needed,” concludes Ritchie.

– Shannon Vanraes is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer.

Sidebar

Queer (In)Justice

The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

Tracing the roots of queers vs cops

Although this book probably isn’t one you would pack for an uplifting day at the beach, Queer (In)Justice from Beacon Press is a poignant and searingly honest analysis of queer experiences with the American justice system. Tracing miscarriages of justice from first contact with police, to the courts and all too often to death row, co-authors Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock draw on their formidable experiences in law and activism to outline the role “justice” plays in maintaining social norms and the effect that has on the LGBT community.

Beginning with the impact of early colonization on perceptions of homosexuality and crime, Queer (In)Justice also explores criminal archetypes such as the “gleeful gay killers” and “hard-core lesbians” that still find a place in American courts. By making connects between race, class, sex and gender, this is a book that challenges the traditional ideas of equality and progress.