Home / News + Politics / Nation / Los Angeles County becomes first jurisdiction to ensure medical examiners investigate and record LGBTQ violent deaths
Los Angeles County becomes first jurisdiction to ensure medical examiners investigate and record LGBTQ violent deaths
Motion seeks to ensure data is collected and can be used to shape policies to better protect at-risk LGBTQ people
Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office – Photo: Cbl62, via Wikimedia.
Los Angeles County has become the first jurisdiction in the country to pass a motion ensuring medical examiners and coroners investigate — and keep track of — all violent deaths involving LGBTQ victims, including suicides, potential bias-motivated crimes, and homicides.
The motion, sponsored by County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Sheila Kuehl, requires the Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office to develop a plan and timeline for how it will go about collecting data on the sexual orientation and gender identity of victims of violent crimes — which will be included in annual reports, institute training for employees on how best to collect that data and how to be culturally sensitive when dealing with LGBTQ victims, and report back to the Board of Supervisors on a quarterly basis to update them about how implementation of this initiative is going.
It is currently not mandatory for medical examiners or coroners to track information about sexual orientation or gender identity or include it in death records, and in places where such tracking does take place, there is often no uniform training or a set of best practices.
But activists hope that by instituting procedures and practices to do so, the information gleaned from the data collection will be used to inform government, medical, or professional policies that will help target the root causes of suicide or anti-LGBTQ homicides, thus saving lives.
“The work of the Medical Examiner and Coroner’s [Office] is vital, as it often is used to gather evidence and information that can be used in a criminal proceeding,” Barger and Kuehl’s motion rads. “However, this work can also highlight disparities in mortality rates, and provide valuable insight that can be used to guide policies, resources, and law enforcement efforts to protect at-risk communities. … By tracking this data, it will allow us to better understand these disparities and develop policies that seek to address them at the County level.”
The Trevor Project, which specializes in suicide prevention and support for LGBTQ youth, praised the motion, saying collecting data would help shed more light on the issue of what causes or contributes to suicidal ideation.
“We know that too many LGBTQ people die by suicide every year, but because of gaps in the data collection process, we don’t actually know how many, and that lack of information limits our ability to prevent future suicides,” Sam Brinton, the head of advocacy and government affairs for The Trevor Project, said in a statement.
“We are grateful to Los Angeles County for taking action to ensure that L.A. County medical examiners and coroners will have the training and resources they need to accurately and respectfully account for a deceased individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” Brinton added. “Only through routine, systematic, evidence-based data collection can we learn the lessons we need in order to save LGBTQ lives.”
Robert Davis pleaded guilty earlier this week to the murder of gay journalist Josh Kruger. He has been sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors claim Davis entered the 39-year-old Kruger's home in Philadelphia's Point Breeze neighborhood last October and shot him seven times before fleeing.
Kruger managed to call for help before stumbling outside his house and collapsing on the sidewalk. He was taken by police to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Earlier this year, Davis waived his right to a preliminary hearing and indicated that he intended to plead guilty to charges related to Kruger's death, as well as to charges of aggravated assault and illegal gun possession for an unrelated incident in which he fired a gun at someone at a SEPTA train platform last September. No one was injured in that incident.
There’s always something new at D.C.’s Capital Pride Parade. The route might get tweaked. Some contingent goes particularly over the top, or there might be a surprise protest.
This year, however, one new cut in the Capital Pride carat was Miss Maryland USA, Bailey Anne.
Not only is she just a few weeks into the title, but this year marked her very first visit to the Capital Pride celebration.
“I have not felt comfortable in my own skin,” says Anne, who joined the DC News Now contingent. “To have the support of our community, for them to make space for me, that’s something I don’t take lightly.”
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