How bad is the epidemic of violence against transgender women? It's hard to know. - Vox

But are these murders a growing epidemic? The answer, worryingly, is we don't know. Local, state, and federal governments don't collect much data on trans populations or violence against them, which means the 21 deaths we know about are — at best — a bare minimum, and it's unclear how big of a problem those deaths signify.

"There's very little data on violence against transgender women of color," Chai Jindasurat, the co-director of community organizing and public advocacy at the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), told me. "There's so much data that needs to be collected for us to make the case that we know we can and should be making to policymakers about why this issue is so important."
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That's important, because if we don't know exactly how many trans people are in the US, we can't figure out the rates of violence they face. And further demographic breakdowns could give more insight into who, exactly, is more likely to face violence — whether, for example, trans women of color are at greater risk.

But we also don't know how many trans people are victimized by violence each year. The biggest issue is that trans people often aren't correctly identified by authorities. If a homicide victim has a penis, police will assume that person is a man. If a victim has a vagina, police will assume that person is a woman. That's it. Police will rarely question if the victim identified differently — at least until family, friends, and media bring it up. (As one example of how bad this can be, the Advocate, an LGBTQ news outlet, reported that one woman, Jasmine Collins, wasn't identified as trans for two months.)

How bad is the epidemic of violence against transgender women? It's hard to know. - Vox

UPDATED::Transgender Woman Shot Dead In Maryland Shopping Center

UPDATE:: Transgender woman fatally shot in Maryland; suspect arrested

Gawker reports that a witness saw four or five teenagers surround Ziona, and an argument quickly ensured. Soon after, one of the men reached for his gun and fired.

On Friday, authorities arrested Rico Hector Leblond, 20 of Germantown, charging him in connection with Ziona’s murder.

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Zella Ziona, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was fatally shot Thursday evening in a suburb outside of Washington, D.C., police officials told BuzzFeed News.

Ziona is the 21st confirmed transgender or gender-nonconforming person killed this year — the highest number recorded by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), which tracks violence against LGBT people.

Ziona was shot in the upper body in an alley that separates the Montgomery Village Plaza and the Montgomery Village Crossing shopping centers in Gaithersburg, Maryland, police said.

The Montgomery County Department of Police has not identified a suspect.
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An initial call to 911 identified Ziona as a woman, Starks said Friday.

However, as Natasha Plotnikov, a spokesperson for the department, told BuzzFeed News, police later identified the victim as male because “the identification was [at the scene] and we went by the driver’s license.”

Starks also said that during Ziona’s media treatment, it was reported back to those at the scene that her gender was male.

“After deepening the investigation and speaking with family and friends,” Starks explained Friday, “it was learned that she was a transgender female.”

Detectives are asking anyone with information about the shooting to contact them at (240) 773-5070.
Transgender Woman Shot Dead In Maryland Shopping Center

Sadness Follows Murder of Man Motivated by Hate | Advocate.com

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs issued a strong statement Thursday denouncing what it called “the hate violence motivated homicide of Ricky Griffin,” a murder that led to an arrest Monday in Dallas.

Police say Kieron Alexander, 25, beat Griffin to death and tried to set him on fire in an apartment in northeast Dallas Monday.

According to the advocacy group, Griffin was not gay, although officers said Alexander told them Griffin made “unwanted sexual gestures toward him.”

“We are deeply saddened by the death of Ricky Griffin,” said Osman Ahmed, research and education coordinator for the NCAVP at the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

“While Ricky Griffin did not identify as LGBTQ, the antigay statements made by the alleged offender highlight the disproportionate threat of homicide for gay and bisexual men, and people perceived to be gay or bisexual, and point to a possible ‘gay panic’ motivation in this homicide.”

Officers arrived at the Dallas apartment around 6 p.m. Monday and found Griffin, 54, dead on the living room floor. He appeared to have suffered blunt force trauma to the head, The Dallas Morning News reports.

Sadness Follows Murder of Man Motivated by Hate | Advocate.com