California police officers are stopping transgender people for subjective reasons, and not because they necessarily witnessed a crime or violation taking place, at vastly different rates than their cisgender peers, according to a newly released state report that alarmed LGBTQ advocates.
The draft report, released by the state attorney general, is based on data that 58 of the state’s biggest law enforcement agencies were required to collect. It reveals that when a transgender person was stopped by police in 2021, there was almost a 50/50 chance that it wasn’t for a traffic violation or some other immediately apparent infraction.
Instead, officers listed “reasonable suspicion” as their rationale for stopping transgender people nearly half the time, according to data that law enforcement agencies must collect. That means the officers believed they had justification to suspect the person was likely committing a crime.
For transgender people, the proportion of these “reasonable suspicion” stops was 44% — four times the figure for cisgender people.
“The reality is that many trans people have been pushed to the sidelines. Society creates a system that excludes us.”
-Maria Roman-Taylorson, Vice President & COO, The TransLatin@ Coalition