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New report finds disparities among LGBTQ+ community and police
Widespread mistreatment and harassment by law enforcement continues to sow doubt and mistrust of police among LGBTQ+ people despite LGBTQ+ people also facing higher rates of crime victimization than their peers, according to a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Despite some progress in police-LGBTQ+ relations, due in part to an evolving legal landscape, the findings suggest that these gains have not uniformly reached all segments of the LGBTQ+ community. Those who experience intersecting forms of marginalization stemming from their gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, or socioeconomic status disproportionately continue to experience more negative interactions with the police,” says Jordan Grasso, Ph.D. candidate in criminology, law and society and a co-author of the report.
Using survey data collected by NORC at the University of Chicago, the American Civil Liberties Union, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Irvine, found disparities between LGBTQ+ people and non-LGBTQ+ people, and within the LGBTQ+ community in reported experiences with police. Among the findings:
- LGBTQ+ people as a group experience more adverse treatment by police than non-LGBTQ+ people as a group. This is particularly pronounced among bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary people, who are more susceptible to experiencing insulting language and physical force from the police.
- More than one in four (26.8 percent) of transgender people report experiencing physical force by police. Black transgender people were the most likely to have experienced physical force by the police among all LGBTQ+ people by race.
- Transgender and nonbinary respondents (44.9 percent and 33.1 percent, respectively) were significantly more likely than LGBTQ+ cisgender men (14.6 percent) to have experienced insulting language by the police.
- LGBTQ+ people were more likely to be the subject of police search, detainment, or arrest and more likely to be placed in police custody.
- Almost 20 percent of LGBTQ+ people had been arrested by the police compared with 13.6 percent of non-LGBTQ+ people.
- Nearly one third of transgender people (30.7 percent) had been arrested.
- At the aggregate level, LGBTQ+ people (71.0 percent) were less willing to call the police for help in the future compared with non-LGBTQ+ people (86.9 percent), and there were important differences based on sexual orientation and gender.
- Lesbian and gay people (80.4 percent) were almost as likely to say they would call the police for help as non-LGBTQ+ people (86.9 percent). However, only 68.5 percent of bisexual and 60.2 percent of queer+ people indicated that they would call the police for help in the future.
- Latine LGBTQ+ people (57.8 percent) are significantly less likely to call the police for help in the future than white LGBTQ+ people (74.1 percent)
- Transgender respondents (61.3 percent) were far less likely than cisgender LGBTQ+ men to call the police for help in the future, and approximately one-quarter of nonbinary people (27.4 percent) were willing to call the police for help. Cisgender LGBTQ+ women (71.5 percent) are also less likely to call the police for help than cisgender LGBTQ+ men.
The full report, Policing Progress, includes policy recommendations such as:
- Reduce negative encounters between police and community members including ending policies and practices that require or incentivize officers to engage in aggressive tactics, such as quotas for citations or arrests, and ceasing enforcement of consensual sex work.
- Adopt specific policies and practices that ensure fair and equitable treatment of LGBTQ+ people, including prohibitions on the use of explicitly hateful language and frisks and searches aimed at determining someone’s gender.
- Carefully consider police presence in public LGBTQ+ spaces and events, such as pride parades and festivals.
- Implement strong oversight with meaningful community involvement to ensure police are held accountable for rights violations and mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people.
- Repeal existing laws that explicitly criminalize LGBTQ+ people and expression, and oppose any proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including those that would criminalize necessary medical care or criminalize drag.
“The harassment and mistreatment of LGBTQ people by law enforcement is fueling a crisis of criminalization and mistrust. While they’re much more likely to be survivors of physical and sexual violence, LGBTQ people are far less likely to have faith police will do anything but expose them to even more danger,” says Emily Greytak, ACLU’s director of research. “Fifty-five years after the police raided the Stonewall Inn, this report finds how little has changed and what can be done moving forward to help ensure the safety and dignity of all members of the LGBTQ community.”
The Stonewall Uprising began on June 28, 1969, when police raided a gay bar at the Stonewall Inn in New York. The event marked the start of a six-day protest that launched the gay rights movement.
Grasso points out that the study uses a nationally representative sample of LGBTQ+ people to unpack the experiences with and attitudes toward the police.
“Despite a complex and fraught history between LGBTQ+ communities and the police, this demographic is often overlooked or under-discussed in research related to policing and law enforcement,” Grasso explains. “Considering the current context and rising rate of anti-LGBTQ+ laws nationwide, these concerns must be more systemically explored and understood. Additionally, the report raises questions about the extent of progress in police-LGBTQ+ relations, especially since the Stonewall era.”
The report’s findings suggest that regardless of the inclusion of more LGBTQ+ identifying police officers, increased police training about LGBTQ+ issues, and legal and political progress in the form of hate crime laws and marriage equality, many of the disparities in police interactions between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ people in the United States remain.
“Perhaps most striking is that we find that these disparities are most pronounced due to the experiences of transgender, nonbinary+, bisexual, and queer+ people who are disproportionately more likely to experience police contact and perceive these contacts as more negative,” Grasso says. “Conversely, gay and lesbian people, especially those who are cisgender, have experiences that are more akin to those of non-LGBTQ+ people. These patterns compel further research on the trajectory of police-LGBTQ+ relations and the persistence of relational patterns reminiscent of the Stonewall era.”
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