Update on Memphis police beating

Coverage of the police beating of Duanna Johnson is picking up in the Commercial Appeal. On Friday, the paper ran this story Police Director Larry Godwin's disgust at what is captured on the now famous video tape. It looks as if he is taking some of the appropriate steps in dealing with the disaster:

"There are going to be issues," Godwin said. "I'll deal with those issues. We don't have some code of silence here. If an officer does wrong, there are consequences because it taints the other 99.5 percent of the men and women in the department who work hard for the city."

On Saturday, the paper's editorial, while sloppily using the word "lifestyles," condemned the action of the officers involved and questioned the sheriff's focus on finding how the tape had been released.

The Shelby County Sheriff's Office, meanwhile, is intent on finding out how the videotape was leaked to an attorney. That's all well and good, but we trust they have been just as diligent investigating why their jail personnel didn't intervene.

Godwin got it right when he said McRae's job the night of the arrest was to treat his prisoner with respect and dignity while processing her into the system.

In a city where the perception is that African-Americans are unjustly hassled by officers, McRae's and Swain's actions are particularly injurious to efforts to diminish that perception and to build better relations with the African-American community. Beyond race, the officers' actions compromise the trust the community has in police officers. Losing that trust negatively affects the quality of officers' efforts to keep us safe.

National and local reactions to police officer's attack on transgender woman pour in

The Human Rights Campaign was among the first to condemn the vicious assault by a Memphis police officer upon a transgender woman in custody.

"This type of profound violence is the exact thing that police officers are supposed to protect people from," said HRC President Joe Solmonese. "HRC is calling for a full criminal investigation and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law."

The news was picked up quickly by national GLBT blog Bilerico, with Alex Blaze providing the coverage.

Locally, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition was the first group to release a statement. President Marisa Richmond calls out Shelby County DA and potential gubernatorial candidate William Gibbons:

"This reprehensible attack upon a person who was not resisting simply because of her gender expression has no place in a civilized society," said Dr. Marisa Richmond, President of TTPC. "The brutality of this attack must be dealt with by the judicial system. If Shelby County District Attorney, William Gibbons, who is reportedly considering a run for Governor in 2010, will not prosecute the officers involved for this obvious hate crime, then he should be removed from office for dereliction of duty," continues Richmond.

Out & About Newspaper has run its own story. In that piece, the Tennessee Equality Project said that our Shelby County Committee has reached out to local law enforcement to find ways of preventing this kind of incident from happening again, even as we condemn the attack. In the interview, we also called on Senators Alexander and Corker to support the Matthew Shepard Act, which would add gender identity and sexual orientation to federal hate crimes protections.