Milwaukee police will no longer immediately report the gender of crime victims
The Milwaukee Police Department's decision not to immediately report the gender of crime victims in media releases — in addition to not reporting victims' race — is being praised by LGBTQ+ groups and criticized by those pushing for more transparency from law enforcement.
Heather Hough, MPD chief of staff, said Thursday that the decision came after discussions the department had with members of the LGBTQ+ community. It was announced late Wednesday afternoon.
Although such talks had been ongoing, they took on new urgency last year after three Black transgender women were killed in Milwaukee in a nine-month period.
In all three cases, initial police media releases about those homicides — and news reports that relied upon them — misidentified the gender of the victims.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have said such misgendering and deadnaming — using a former name — of transgender victims can be considered another form of violence.
"It's a way to preserve the dignity and privacy of all victims," Hough said. "MPD wants to ensure the best service possible for our entire community."
The department's standard operating procedure says it will be "responsive and proactive with the media, providing accurate information in a timely and professional manner." The policy recognizes the relationship is "essential" to keeping the public "well-informed" and to "minimize inaccurate reporting regarding police matters."
Transparency advocates say better information is a better answer
Advocates for open records and transparency are concerned that the policy is too broad and withholds basic information from the public.
"At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we take great care to report stories about crime and public safety with context and sensitivity. To do this, we need to be able to identify trends and provide a full picture of what is happening in our community," editor Greg Borowski said. "This change makes that harder, though we remain committed to the task.
"We share the goal of not misgendering transgender victims of crimes. But if there are concerns about bad information being released, the best remedy is to assure that only solid information is released — not to put up new barriers that make it harder for the public to know what is happening in their neighborhoods and throughout the community."
Hough said the policy only applies to information released "proactively" by the department in media releases and won't change information available through open records or crime statistics.
Reporters and members of the public can file open records requests for more detailed information, but receiving the records can take weeks. If an investigation remains ongoing, police can decline to release reports.
Timely information about a crime victim's gender has been used by journalists to identify trends and report them to the public, such as a spike in domestic violence homicides last year and a series of sexual assaults on a popular bike path.
Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan state group that works to protect access to public meetings and records, said the new policy is "a terrible idea."
“Does the public really not have a right to know if minorities, for instance, are disproportionately victims of crime?" Lueders said. "Does it not have the right to know if people are being killed because of their gender?”
Lueders argued that race and gender are often relevant details in a person’s homicide, especially in hate crime cases.
Both Lueders and Tom Kamenick, president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, said they didn’t know of any other law enforcement agencies in the state that pledged not to report the gender of crime victims.
The police department should strive for accuracy, Kamenick said.
“If they’re struggling to get it right, the answer is to do a better job of making sure their information is accurate and correct, rather than just not putting their information out there in the first place,” he said.
Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office releases more information with fatalities
Government agencies and journalists typically rely on public records to help identify someone.
Transgender people face legal, financial and other barriers to changing their name or sex on their driver's license or other official records. Often, the information in public records doesn't reflect their identity.
That presents a challenge when it comes to accurately and sensitively providing information about a crime.
While Milwaukee Police Department media releases contain basic information about an incident, including victims' ages and the general location where the incident occurred, the department has left the task of publicly identifying those killed in homicides, car crashes and other incidents to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office.
That office uses fingerprints, DNA or dental records to confirm a person's identity. It does release demographic information to media, including the name, age and race of the person who died. Milwaukee police stopped reporting the race of crime victims in media releases years ago.
The medical examiner's office also maintains a public database with the age, race and gender, but not the name, of those whose deaths it's investigating. The reports rely on government records and have misgendered individuals in the past.
The medical examiner's office hasn't announced any changes to how it releases information to the public.
More: Community calls on better enforcement of hate crimes against transgender people
LGBTQ+ community organizations worked with MPD on the change
Staff at Diverse and Resilient, a local LGBTQ nonprofit, worked with the Milwaukee Police Department’s LGBTQ liasion to develop the policy.
Not listing gender provides dignity and privacy to transgender crime victims and their families, said Justin Roby, Diverse and Resilient's director of finance and human resources.
In the example of a homicide of a transgender person, the victim’s loved ones and close friends would already know about it, Roby said.
There’s “no need to divulge it to the public,” he said.
Asked whether the policy would hinder efforts to collect data and bring awareness to the issue of homicides of transgender people, Roby said people are already aware.
He also said data collection on transgender homicides is already flawed, and the issue is underreported, as transgender people are often not identified as such in law enforcement databases.
If a transgender person is killed and police incorrectly report their gender to the media, it causes harm to the victim’s family and friends, Roby said.
“I have listened to countless trans sisters worry about how they will be identified upon their death. That’s harm, that’s trauma,” he said. “They are worried that, after all of the work that they’ve done to accept themselves … at their death, they’d be disrespected."
More: Homicide charges filed in death of Cashay Henderson
Brad Schlaikowski, founder of Courage MKE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Milwaukee's LGBTQ+ youth, applauded MPD's decision, calling it an "absolute necessity" to prevent undue trauma.
"What if they're not out yet to their friends and families? What if their families don't accept or know they're trans?" Schlaikowski said. "It's an intimate, delicate conversation to have."
Withholding a victim's race or gender won't compromise police investigations or squelch residents' right to know information that's key to public safety, he said.
"The police have a job to do. We have to let them do their job. … We just don’t know where this person is in their life's journey. We have to protect that," Schlaikowski said. "This person has already been hurt by crime. Why hurt them more?"
Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this story
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee police stop including victims' gender in media releases
