Stonewalled, still demanding respect: police abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the USA

The USA, like many countries, has a long history of both criminalizing homosexuality and failing to protect LGBT people against violence and discrimination. In the past three decades the LGBT rights movement has made significant progress in promoting greater recognition of the rights of LGBT people in the USA and in confronting human rights abuses by law enforcement officers. Police departments have increasingly been held to account for their treatment of LGBT people. Anti-discrimination legislation at the local level has greatly facilitated this and many police forces provide some level of training about working with the LGBT community. However, this report shows that serious police abuses, including gender-based violence amounting to torture and ill-treatment, against the LGBT community persist. The abuses reported ranged from sexually explicit, abusive language and threats to sustained beatings and rape. Some reports involve the use of excessive force during arrest. Others show that victims of crime, if they are lesbians, gay men or bisexual or transgender individuals, are at risk of abuse from the officers called to assist them. The common factor is that the reason for the abuse is police reaction to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Many transgender and gender variant people have told Amnesty International (AI) that they have been subjected to searches which were humiliating and unnecessary. They also expressed their very real fear of being detained inappropriately in gender-segregated cells where they are at risk of assault and sexual violence by other detainees. AI's research has shown that police responses to crimes against LGBT people, including domestic violence, are often inadequate, and indeed sometimes hostile. This pattern has become so entrenched that fear of reporting crimes is widespread among many sectors of the LGBT community. AI is particularly concerned against people who have come forward with complaints against police officers.

Includes bibliographical references and appendices.