Edmonton LGBTQ advocate takes police complaint to human rights commission
A prominent LGBTQ advocate is taking her complaint against the Edmonton Police Service to the province’s human rights commission after a police dispatcher repeatedly misgendered her and assumed her transgender friend was a sex worker.
Marni Panas says a year after that phone call, and despite an offer to meet with the EPS employee involved or help update the service’s training, she has received little indication her concerns about systemic bias in the police service are being taken seriously.
“I felt quite dismissed throughout the process,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a situation where if I ever find that I’m in need of protection or help again, I don’t know if I’ll phone Ed
It’s a striking rebuke from Panas, a trans woman who has worked closely with Edmonton police as it publicly attempts to repair its relationship with LGBTQ people. Panas sits on the EPS sexual and gender minority liaison committee and says she helped Chief Dale McFee draft his apology last year to the LGBTQ community for decades of police injustice.
Panas filed the complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission on Tuesday, and it was accepted on Thursday.
As of Friday afternoon, EPS spokesperson said the service had not received formal notice of the complaint, but would cooperate fully with any investigation or mediation.
Police call now subject of human rights complaint
Panas dialed 911 on April 11, 2019, when her friend failed to check-in during a date, the first of two calls now the subject of the complaint.
The two friends had a long-standing agreement: if either missed a safety-check in, the other should call police.
The 911 dispatcher misgendered Panas repeatedly on the call before referring her to the non-emergency line, suggesting the incident was possibly not a matter of life and death.
“It could be,” Panas replied in a recording of the call obtained by Panas through a FOIP request and reviewed in part by CBC News.
Edmonton police and that scares the hell out of me.”
When Panas then called the non-emergency line and explained the situation, the dispatcher’s first response was to suggest she might be overreacting.
“OK, we might be jumping the gun on this,” the employee said in the recording, before asking Panas for her friend’s address.
Panas responded, “there’s a very real chance they’re at risk because they’re trans people, we need to take this seriously.”
The employee interrupted Panas. “They shouldn’t be in that profession now should they,” the employee said.
Panas was audibly shocked. “Did you just assume my friend is a prostitute?”
“They’re meeting with a client for something, maybe they shouldn’t be meeting with these people is what I’m saying,” the employee continued, as Panas interjects to say her friend is not a sex worker.
The employee does not apologize, and demands to know the circumstances of the date. Panas provides the employee with an address to check on her friend, who was later found safe by police without incident.
Panas says she was misgendered multiple times on the 12-minute call, of which she figures roughly 90 seconds was dedicated to her friend’s well-being.
‘I felt that my friend’s life didn’t matter’
The dispatcher’s response reveals a lack of understanding about the heightened risk of gender-based violence facing trans people, Panas says. A survey of trans people conducted by the Trans PULSE Project in Ontario found 25 per cent of respondents had experienced physical violence because they were trans. A further 24 per cent reported having been harassed by police.
“I felt that my friend’s life didn’t matter. I felt like my own life didn’t matter,” Panas said in an interview Friday.
“The fact that I had to argue with this officer to tell him why we’re at risk and why it was important that he send help, that I had to argue for my safety, that is service delayed,” she said. “Even if it was delayed 30 seconds, somebody could die in those 30 seconds. That scares me, that terrifies me, that should scare anybody.”
The EPS dispatcher’s comments also reflect a troubling bias against sex workers, says Mona Forya, an escort and member of PIECE, an Edmonton sex worker peer support network. CBC News agreed to use her work pseudonym to protect her identity out of fear for her safety.
Forya says the comments imply a sex worker would be partly to blame in a case of violence at the hands of a client.
“I don’t think someone should have a job like that if they’re so opinionated,” she said. “Somebody being that judgmental is frightening and it obviously puts us at peril.”
Marginalized people must feel assured that when they reach out for help, they will be supported and validated, says Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton CEO Mary Jane James.
“This situation gives us all the opportunity to reflect on our own internal biases and assumptions, and to hold ourselves accountable for the ways our actions can harm others,” she said in a statement.
Panas sent a text of the night of the incident to EPS Supt. Brad Doucette, who sits on the service’s liaison committee. Doucette was apologetic and helped her draft a police complaint the next day.
Investigation found employee failed to meet EPS standards
An investigation by the Human Resources Division found the employee failed to meet EPS standards and was “dealt with accordingly in line with EPS policies and procedures governing civilian employees,” police spokesperson Patrycja Mokrzan said in a statement.
EPS refused to provide more information about the actions taken, saying the employee was entitled to confidentiality on employment matters.
Panas says she also has received no indication from police that bias training had been revised to specifically include the experiences of trans and non-binary people, or sex workers.
An EPS bias training module from 2019 makes no mention of those groups specifically, the FOIP documents show. The EPS spokesperson says training on inclusive language will be rolled out to the entire service this year.
Frustrated by what she calls a lack of accountability, Panas filed the human rights complaint against EPS on Tuesday, days before the one-year deadline to submit lapsed. The complaint alleges EPS violated her rights under the protected grounds of gender, gender expression, gender identity and source of income.
It also notes the FOIP documents Panas received from EPS were addressed to “Mr.” Marni Panas and began with “dear sir.”
“We can’t afford our police service not to act professionally, with fairness and equity,” she said.
Panas says she continues to have a good relationships with police members, but the service needs to do more to address systemic discrimination.
“I would be happy to work toward ensuring this never happens again. That door will always be open, but they need to accept some humility and some accountability,” she said.
EPS will have an opportunity to respond to the complaint before the human rights commission determines next steps.
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