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Phoebe Judge: This episode contains language
that may not be suitable for everyone.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: I was sitting on a sofa
watching Oprah and I had fixed me some Long
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Island iced tea, watching Oprah. And he was sitting in the chair across from
me.
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And next thing I know, he gets up and come
and sit beside me. And I said, "Something ain't right with this.
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There's something that's about to happen." Phoebe Judge: In December 2009, Patti Shaw
was watching TV with her cousin's friend.
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A man who said his name was Anthony. Anthony was much younger than Patti. She was in her mid-40s and he was in his early
20s.
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She didn't know him that well, but her cousin
had vouched for him, suggesting that Anthony
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rent the spare bedroom in Patti's apartment. So far, he'd only spent one night there.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: I wanted him to look at
me like a mother figure or like a aunt.
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No, that didn't happen. He kept looking at me a certain way, but I
didn't want to believe that he was liking
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me like that. Phoebe Judge: Patti says Anthony put his hand
on her leg. Patti Hammond Shaw: And I said, "I know he's
not touching me."
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Oprah was saying something that was important,
and I turned around slowly and gave him a
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look like, "Don't do that." Phoebe Judge: Patti had collected a lot of
decorative plaster statues.
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They were all around her apartment. One of them was in the shape of a lion. Patti Hammond Shaw: He took the lion that
was sitting on that column and hit me across
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my head right here. You see this little dent? He hit me, bust me in my head. It immediately swelled up to the size of an
apple.
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Phoebe Judge: She picked up another one of
her statues and threw it at Anthony. They started to fight, and Patti says she
ran into the street and flagged down a police
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car. Patti Hammond Shaw: And I said, "Officer,
officer, I'm being assaulted in my house."
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Now at this point I had blood dripping, my
tooth was knocked out, my eye was swollen.
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And when the policeman came, he said, "Who
is the president of the United States?"
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I said, "You asking me,
who is the president of the United States. I've just been bust in my head with a statue,
my eye is black, my tooth is gone out of my
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mouth. And you asking me, who is the president of
the United States?" And he said to me, "Well, answer the question."
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And I said, "Barack Obama." And then he said, "Well, I'm going to have
to put you under arrest."
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I said, "Under arrest? For what?" Phoebe Judge: The officer told Patti that
she was being arrested because they believed
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that she was the one who assaulted Anthony. They also said Anthony was underage, which
turned out not to be true.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: And so he said, "Put your
hands behind your back." I said, "No, I'm not."
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He said, "Yes, you are. And don't resist." I said, "OK, not a problem." I said, "Let me get my keys and let me set
my alarm and lock my doors."
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And he said, "No, we'll take care of all that." So they take me outside and put me in one
police car.
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And he said, "We have to take you to the hospital
because this doesn't look good.
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Your face looks terrible." And I said, "OK, not a problem." Phoebe Judge: They took her to a hospital
in Southeast D.C.
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And handcuffed her to the bed. Patti had been to that hospital before, she
was already in their computer system.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: I was registered under
Patti Hammond Shaw. And they gave me a armband that said Patti
Hammond Shaw.
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Phoebe Judge: But when the officers fingerprinted
her, a different name came up, and things
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got a lot more complicated. Patti Hammond Shaw: After leaving the hospital,
I'm transported to, I think it was Sixth District.
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Sixth District gives me an armband saying
my birth name, sex: male. And I said, "That's not who I am."
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I said, "Look at this. This is who I am." And they said, "No, with your fingerprints
and everything, it came back to, this is who
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you are. And so we got to go on the fingerprints. And we're going to have to put you in a cell
with the men."
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I said, "No, you're not going to put me in
the cell with the men." Phoebe Judge: For today's story, guest contributor
Lauren Ober spent time with Patti and her
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lawyer, and takes us behind the scenes of
what happens when the police decide your gender
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for you. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Patti Hammond Shaw: Are you recording?
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Lauren Ober: I am. Patti Hammond Shaw: You should have said we're
starting. Lauren Ober: We're starting.
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[Laughter.] Red light means we're on. We're on. Patti Hammond Shaw: OK. Lauren Ober: I visited Patti at her apartment
in Southwest D.C.
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It's tidy and well-appointed with a balcony
that offers some pretty great views of the
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city. Patti's two dogs, Crushio and Toya, did not
appreciate having a visitor. So Patti banished them to the bedroom.
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I started our chat by asking Patti to describe
herself. Patti Hammond Shaw: I'm 5'7", thick, very
attractive, full lips.
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Had my eyebrows pulled to make my eyes slanty. I have permanent makeup. I have large breasts, large behind, small
waist, like Betty Boop.
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Like Jill Scott, and Chaka Khan, a combo of
those two. A very strong woman, very independent, very
cautious of who I allow in my circle.
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Lauren Ober: Patti figured out her gender
identity pretty early on in life. Patti Hammond Shaw: Growing up as a child,
I had already knew that I was transgender.
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Well, wanted to be transgender. My mom used to only buy me doll babies. She would never buy me like a GI Joe or a
truck, because I wouldn't play with it.
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I would break it up and throw it in the trash. So she know to buy me feminine things, like
jump rope, et cetera.
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And I had one doll baby. And I sucked a pacifier till I was 4. Lauren Ober: Patti says her mother kind of
liked that her male child had some feminine
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characteristics. It was endearing. Her father, who was mostly out of the picture,
did not.
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On the rare occasions when he would come around,
he'd tell Patti's mother that she was raising
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a sissy. As she got older, Patti began to take steps
to change her appearance. When you started having surgery, did you have
a vision of a person that you wanted to be?
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Patti Hammond Shaw: I did. I always admired Chaka Khan. I always admired Phyllis Hyman, because Phyllis
Hyman was a tall woman, but she was very confident
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with her size. And I said, "OK, they're full-figured, but
they're very confident and very sexy."
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I said, "OK, I can do it." And I've been happy with my decision, ever
since. Lauren Ober: Patti had gender reassignment
surgery on December 14th, 1993, and went through
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the process of legally changing her gender. She had her birth certificate amended, as
well as the name and sex on her driver's license.
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In the eyes of the law, she was female. And yet when the D.C. Police ran her fingerprints, she came up as
male.
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She was already in their system because in
1984, Patti was arrested for sodomy, which
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was illegal in D.C. until 1993. The D.C. Police gave her a Police Department Identification
Number, also known as P.D.I.D.
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And according to that number, her gender was
male, the gender she was assigned at birth.
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So it didn't matter what she said or what
her driver's license said. The police didn't believe her.
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Jeffrey Light: What often happens is that
when that violence is reported to the police,
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the police see transgender individuals as
being untrustworthy. Lauren Ober: Patti's lawyer, Jeffrey Light.
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Jeffrey Light: There's some interesting societal
factors that go into that. One of them is thinking that transgender people
are somehow misrepresenting themselves.
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They really are a man, but they're saying
a woman, and so they're untrustworthy.
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Other times, the issue is that somebody says
their name, when they're asked by the police,
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but their ID gives a different name. And law enforcement might think that the person
is lying about their name or trying to hide
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something, when in fact the person's just
giving the name that they're called. Lauren Ober: This is what happened to Patti.
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She kept trying to explain that they were
making a mistake and that she should not be
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detained with men, but no one listened. In lockup, she was strip searched — in front
of male detainees.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: It was about 10 of us
lined up against the wall. And they made me take off my clothes.
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They made me be the first one, and the rest
of the guys was in another part of the cell.
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And then they're searching between my legs,
told me, open my legs, lift up my balls and
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my penis. I said, "I don't have them." And he said, "That's what you all say, turn
around, put your hand up against the wall."
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They search under my breasts. He felt between my legs. But if you felt between my legs, then you
should know that it was a vagina and not a
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penis. Lauren Ober: After they processed her, they
sent her to the male side of D.C.'s Central
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Cell Block to await arraignment. There, she says, things got worse. Patti Hammond Shaw: All night, early in the
morning, I'm just constantly being assaulted
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by the guys, asking to see my vagina and asking
to see my breasts. And they standing up at the bars and saying,
if I didn't show him then when we get in the
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bullpen, they was going to beat my head to
the white meat. Lauren Ober: After that Patti was moved to
a pre-trial holding area, run by the U.S.
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Marshals, and again, she was forced to be
in the men's cellblock. But here, it wasn't just the other detainees
who were causing problems.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: When you first come through
the U.S. Marshals, they're making jokes and
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making fun. And they just belittle you, they make fun
of you like you're a joke.
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No, I'm a human being and I have rights. Lauren Ober: Finally, her case was called.
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She was charged with assaulting Anthony, the
younger guy from the apartment, but Anthony
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didn't show up for court. The prosecutors couldn't find him, so the
case against her was dismissed.
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But Patti knew that the way she'd been treated
was wrong, and she hired a lawyer to prove
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it. Patti Hammond Shaw: And I said, "Now you will
believe me, because now at this point my voice
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is going to get louder and I'm getting ready
to make some noise." Lauren Ober: What's interesting is that on
paper, regulations had already been put into
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place that should have allowed Patti to be
held in a cell with other women, regardless
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of what the computer said. Jeffrey Light: D.C. regulations were fairly
clear that individuals who are transgender
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should be treated as their gender identity
and expression. But at the same time, other regulations said
that men and women are to be kept out of sight
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and sound of each other in order to avoid
potential safety issues, harassment, and that
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sort of thing. So the D.C. government and the U.S. Marshal
service took that position that they didn't
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know that Patti Shaw was a female, and therefore
they were entitled to put her wherever they
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thought was appropriate. Lauren Ober: My question is, do they look
at IDs? I mean, her ID says that she is female, her
driver's license says she's female.
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She has a female name. She presents this female. And, although this is irrelevant, she has
had a gender reassignment surgery.
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So how did they not know she was female? Jeffrey Light: One of the really interesting
things we learned during this case, is how
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the D.C. Police and the U.S. Marshal were determining
somebody's gender. And as it turns out, the first time an individual
was arrested in D.C., it was recorded in this
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P.D.I.D. system, what their name and gender
was. And then it would never be changed.
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So even if an individual changed their birth
certificate, changed their driver's license,
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did everything possible to legally change
their name and gender, the P.D.I.D. system
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would never be updated. Lauren Ober: We reached out to D.C. Police many times to talk about this case,
but never got a response.
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One of the hardest things to understand about
this story is that if Patti had not been in
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the system at all, there shouldn't have been
a problem, she would have been detained with
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other women. But because she was in the system as male
from when she was fingerprinted back in 1984,
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she was put with men. It was like nothing that had happened over
the last 25 years mattered.
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Her legal gender didn't matter. Her physical body didn't matter. The computer said male, so the officers put
her with men.
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Or at least that's the reason they gave. Patti sued both the D.C. Police and the U.S. Marshals in federal court,
on the grounds that they violated her constitutional
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rights, including her right to reasonable
search and seizure and her right to due process.
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In other words, being searched by male officers
and locked up with men was a threat to her
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safety and violated her rights, not as a trans
woman, but as a woman. Patti's lawyer argued the case from that point.
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Jeffrey Light: There hadn't been a lot of
litigation under the fourth and fifth amendment
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of the rights of transgender individuals. What we ended up doing in this case is applying
the line of cases that look at the rights
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of women, how they're to be treated under
the constitution. And so cases that say, it is clearly unconstitutional
for a man to strip search a woman in the absence
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of emergency circumstances. We argued, and the court agreed, that that
line of cases should apply.
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The court further agreed with us that there's
no reason to differentiate a transgender woman
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from any other kind of woman. And as Patti frequently said during the case,
"I mean, is this how you'd want your mom or
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your sister to be treated if they were arrested?" Lauren Ober: The judge ruled in Patti's favor
and wrote in her opinion that Patti's constitutional
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rights had been violated. Police appealed, but before the case went
back to trial, they settled out of court.
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Patti received an undisclosed sum of money. The monetary compensation wasn't the only
victory.
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Her case impacted how trans people should
be treated by law enforcement. Jeffrey Light: One of the parts of the settlement
with D.C. was that they would have a new procedure
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for placement and search of transgender individuals
who are in the Central Cell Block underneath
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the courthouse. And so somebody who is arrested and placed
in Central Cell Block will hopefully not have
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the experiences that Patti had, because the
policies have changed. Lauren Ober: The other change might seem like
a minor detail, but it actually addressed
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the crux of Patti's troubles: the P.D.I.D. computer system. Thanks to Patti, it can now be changed to
reflect a person's legal gender.
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Patti Hammond Shaw: It was like finally, my
voice is being heard. And I'm glad that I was able to be the one
to help change the law.
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But it should have never came down to this. I don't care if I'm locked up 50 million times,
still respect me.
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OK, I'm a female, I'm a woman. Lauren Ober: These days, Patti keeps herself
to herself.
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She doesn't go out much except to walk her
two elderly dogs. And she's heading back to school to get her
commercial driver's license.
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She wants to be a city bus driver. I feel like you'd be a good Metrobus driver,
because they don't take any shit.
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And you're a lady who doesn't take shit. Patti Hammond Shaw: No, I don't. I stand up for my rights, sure.
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Phoebe Judge: Lauren Ober. [Music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and
me.
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Audio engineering help from Rob Byers and
Russ Henry. Special thanks to Erica Daniels.
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Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal. You can find them at thisiscriminal.com.
00:17:50
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
00:18:02
We're coming to the West Coast to do a little
tour in a few weeks. You can find out more information at thisiscriminal.com.
00:18:09
We'll be in Seattle, San Francisco and Los
Angeles, and we'll start here in Durham, North
00:18:13
Carolina. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
Foundation and Mailchimp.
00:18:19
Celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
00:18:25
Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.