Toronto police say they are working to improve their relationship with the city’s transgender community, even as some transgender people say they’re being targeted by officers.
“The policy itself requires that interactions with transgender-transsexual people will take full account of their human rights,” said Alok Mukerjee, the chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. “And give them the same respectful treatment as anybody else.”
In turn, people in the transgender community say they’re still stigmatized and often mistaken for prostitutes.
The comments from both sides come in the midst of the city’s huge annual Pride celebrations, and just weeks after Ontario became the first jurisdiction in North America to protect the rights of transgender people.
Police began tracking the number of times officers search or detain people who identify themselves as transgender in 2010. That year, it happened 186 times. In 2011, that number rose to 244.
– CBC.ca
My LJ-friend, Morgan Page, is quoted in the article.
