El Paso Police Department Issues New Policies To Accommodate Gender-Diverse Individuals

Written By BlabberBuzz | Thursday, 01 February 2024 11:10 PM
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El Paso Police Department Issues New Policies To Accommodate Gender-Diverse Individuals

The El Paso Police Department has unveiled a series of innovative policies designed to transform the interaction between law enforcement officers and "gender-diverse individuals."

This initiative, which is the result of extensive discussions with LGBTQ community organizations, including the Borderland Rainbow Center, mandates officers to inquire about preferred pronouns and names. It also prohibits them from conducting searches to ascertain an individual's sex.

El Paso Executive Police Assistant Chief Zina Silva, during a Tuesday meeting, stated, "Back in September of 2023 you directed the city manager and the city attorney to evaluate policies and training that would improve how transgender and gender diverse individuals will be identified by the El Paso Police Department, both internally and externally," as reported by KFOX14.

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Silva emphasized that the primary obligation of the force is to "respect and uphold the dignity, human rights, and constitutional rights of all persons." She then outlined some of the new changes. Officers are now required to collect data from those they apprehend, including their "preferred name, gender identity and pronoun." Silva further stated that officers must address individuals by the name they provide. Moreover, officers conducting frisks must articulate the reasons for their suspicion.

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The department's internal affairs division will issue quarterly reports detailing any complaints related to "bias-based policing."

The policy shift has drawn criticism from some quarters. However, others, including Borderland Rainbow Center Executive Director Amber Perez, view it as a positive development.

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"We can't change the past," Perez said, according to ABC7, "but what we can do is take this first moment and run with it, and continue the conversation, and to be able to speak to each other with respect, to speak to each other with this idea of 'hey, it's ok is sometimes we agree to disagree, but at the end of the day we're all here to make our community better.'"

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