Gays are targets for criminals

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community is a vulnerable one. Its members are generally not well-liked, they may not have family support, and the police often dismiss their claims of discrimination or abuse, sometimes ignoring serious cases simply because an LGBTQI person is involved.

One police officer, a corporal, who is also gay, expressed his suspicions that a person or people were targeting members of the LGBTQI community for robbery and murder. He stressed he had no proof of this, but believed that LGBTQI people should be alert.

The officer said over the years he had known criminals to target gay parties, assuming the patrons would have good jewellery and a lot of money to spend.

“Previously they were targeted for robberies, assaults and different crimes, but now the game has stepped up to murder.

It just moved from one level to the other,” he said.

To his knowledge, he said there had been at least five gay men who were killed this year alone: three were Guyanese, one a Jamaican, and one a Trinidadian.

The murders occurred in the west, along the east-west corridor, and in central Trinidad He admitted there had been murders in the community from time to time but he personally began noticing an increase over the past year.

The circumstances also caught his attention because, whereas most murders in the country were committed by shooting, the gay men were either strangled, stabbed, or beaten. There was also the fact that most were from other Caribbean countries.

In addition to the previously mentioned vulnerabilities, he said the LGBTQI community become “easy prey” when they go out, get drunk, spend money, and look to get intimate.

NO JUSTICE The officer said a homophobic attitude has been alive and well for decades throughout the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. He said officers, especially male officers, did not want gay people around them as if they were afraid being gay was “catching” or a gay man may be attracted to them.

He said he knew of several instances in which gay men were told to leave the police station even before they could make a report, possibly sending them to their deaths.

Even if a report was taken, he said many times there was victim blaming or shaming so that the victim was reluctant to report any crimes against them.

Other times, he said the police simply ignored the cases, refusing to investigate them because an LGBTQI person was involved.

“Why do you think so many gay murders go unsolved?” he asked.

Not wanting to reveal too many details, he recalled a crime that was committed about three years ago in which two men arranged to meet in person after speaking to each other on a gay dating site.

“That was an easy case to solve because everything was online,” he said. “But from the time the police heard it was linked to that (LGBTQI), that was it.” He said the attitude of officers affected him personally as a gay friend of his was murdered last year. Because of numerous eye witness accounts in that instance, a suspect was identified, but he said the police never even brought the person in for questioning.

However, he said the lackadaisical attitude of some officers towards investigating crime was not only directed at the LGBTQI community.

He told Sunday Newsday before he joined the police service he had all types of friends and remained in contact with many of them, making him a well-informed officer.

He said over the years he volunteered critical information on a variety of cases to 800-TIPS, 555 and more directly to senior officers, but no one listened.

“Imagine I, as an officer, am going to senior people and giving them first-hand information about murders, which could have get (sic) me set up... I am part of the organisation, you would think they would listen, but no. It makes no sense. There is no proper follow-up procedure.” He said even if a mat ter was brought to court, the magistrate or judge easily accepts the “gay panic” defence. “The defence is always the same,” he said. “They come around me with that macomere thing and I trip. You pick up a man, he buying drinks and food for you whole night, and two o’clock in the night he says, ‘Hey, leh we go home by me.’ You gone home by the man and then you get gay panic in the man room? And the court accepts it very easily and the prosecution doesn’t force it.” TAKING ACTION Because of these concerns, the LGBTQI community is mobilising for safety and their rights.

The safety campaign calls on the membership to Watch • Send • Stop offer simple messages: Be aware. Watch out for each other. Help find solutions.

Colin Robinson, president of CAISO (Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation): Sex and Gender Justice, stressed that, although they had no evidence that the murders were bias-related, they were aware that the LGBTQI community was vulnerable.

“We just know people of the LGBTQI community are vulnerable in particular ways,” Robinson said. “The police and society are not friendly to us, so the kind of support that other people might have, we don’t have.

There is a cost for us to even report a crime, Sometimes when we do, we lose because we lose the support of family when we are outed.” Therefore, six organisations decided to mount a campaign to try to get more information from the police and encourage then to investigate the cases more fully, as well as to ask people to be more careful and to take care of each other.

These organisations include Womantra, Friends for Life, the Silver Lining Foundation, I Am One, the Women’s Caucus of TT, and CAISO.

Luke Sinnette, a clinical social worker with Friends for Life explained that the campaign involved safety tips such as sending a friend your location when you go to lime, or warning others about an individual. The idea is to encourage LGBTQI people who refuse to report crimes because of negative experiences with police, and to ensure accurate information about the number and nature of violent crimes against LGBTQI communities is disseminated.

“What we know for sure is that because of the vulnerability that gay men face, it makes them a target for criminals,” Sinnette said.

“Being catfished online by would-be criminals becomes easier when we are afraid to find relationships in our everyday life. It also makes reporting or investigating these crimes more difficult if one is not out.

“The murdered young men had the further stigma of being migrants from fellow Caribbean countries. It means that they are on their own and things like family support is often missing. If they have over-stayed, they might not speak out against exploitation by employers for fear of deportation. When vulnerabilities like these begin to add up, people are more likely to be in an emotional state that can make them a target.” In addition to tips and data collecting, Sinnette said support was one of the biggest component of the campaign.

He said if a victim of crime called the “hotline,” he would help them sort out the facts so that the case could be documented.

The next step would be to find out the person’s immediate need and act on it, then to meet the person and try to counsel them and provide support in any possible way.

The police officer suggested that his colleagues be given sensitivity training to encourage them to focus on the offence committed and to make a conscious effort to solve the crime rather than focussing on the person’s race, status in society, gender or sexuality.

He is also asking investigators to reopen some cases in which they knew that the murder victims were gay, examining the cases from the angle of violence against homosexuals, and making connections with similar cases with the hope that they would be solved.

He is also suggesting that investigators begin to collect DNA samples so that when a proper related law is instituted, police would be able to solve cold cases.