Chapter 13

Police Do Not Protect Us, and Other

Lessons I learned As a Queer Victim
Allyn Walker

In the spring of 2010, I went clubbing with Caitlyn, a friend I had known since high school.
I had just moved to New York City to start my master’s program in social work. Caitlyn,
who by this time was an experienced New Yorker with three years there under her belt,
already knew all the best ways for Queers to meet other Queers in the city. At the time,
I had identified as a woman, and a lesbian, and I was thrilled to have a lesbian friend to
show me around and explore the gay parts of the city with.
Caitlyn and I took the 1 train from our dorms in Morningside Heights down to the Vil-
lage to go to Henrietta Hudson. Henrietta’s was my favorite lesbian bar in the city at that
time. I loved the vibe there: low lighting, loud music, teeny, overpriced drinks. That night,
I was feeling confident. I had a couple of drinks with Caitlyn. I locked eyes with Jones, a
mysterious someone I had never met before. They were shooting pool, looking dashing in a
fedora. We danced together, then talked outside while Jones and Caitlyn shared a cigarette.
It could have been the perfect night out for a new New Yorker.
I left with Caitlyn around 2:00 am. We were walking from Henrietta’s to the 1 train at
Christopher Street when two girls approached us. They looked to be a bit younger than my
21 years—probably teenagers. They asked me for a dollar for the train. I unzipped my small
clutch, which I was already carrying in my hand, and gave one of the girls a dollar.
Then they asked me if I like girls. I’ve thought about this question, and my response, so
often since. I’m not sure if I thought they were hitting on me or if I thought they were asking
surreptitiously for directions to Henrietta’s, or if I didn’t think about it at all, but I smiled
and answered, “Yeah, I like girls.”
Abruptly, I felt myself being slammed against a wall, and I saw about six of their friends,
who had been almost an entire block away, running toward us. Caitlyn and I were both
held against a building, as this group groped at my breasts and groin. At first, I froze—I
can’t remember how long I was held there. Fifteen seconds? A minute? But then I pushed my
way out and started running for the train. Moments later I realized I was alone. Terrified,
I screamed for Caitlyn. Then, somehow, she was out too, and we ran to the 1 train together,
without looking back.
It took us some time to process what happened, but the ride on the 1 from Christopher
Street to 116th gave us a while. At first, I was just shocked. “What the fuck just happened?
Did that really just happen?” And then I was embarrassed. And ashamed. That I had dis-
closed my sexuality to a stranger at 2:00 am on the street, that I had been drinking and
maybe had poor judgement as a result, that I had given a stranger money (to this day I no
longer carry cash—it feels too unsafe). And then I was angry. I gave them the dollar they
asked for, and then they pushed us against a wall and grabbed our parts! Caitlyn joked that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003400981-15
144 Allyn Walker

I should be glad I hadn’t given them more. “At least it was a cheap assault!” It wasn’t funny,
but we laughed at that until our train ride ended.
By the time I had arrived home, it occurred to me that what happened to us would likely
be considered a hate crime. Only a few months prior, President Barack Obama had signed
into law The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which, in
part, expanded hate crimes definitions to include crimes motivated by the victim’s status as
a member of LGBT communities. The legislation had felt so important to me at the time—
an acknowledgement that we existed, that we should not be the targets of violence based on
our genders and the genders of those we loved. An acknowledgement that we deserved some
kind of protection. I wanted to feel protected, too. And knowing from my prior experiences
as a victim’s counselor that so many crimes go unreported, I felt a responsibility to report
this to 911. So I called.
A woman picked up, and I explained to her what had happened. “This happened on
Christopher Street?” she asked. I confirmed. “You should have stayed there to call 911.
Now you’re in a different precinct.” Despite her lecture about how crime victims should
apparently stay in the place they were attacked to make a report, she wanted to make sure
I was okay. She asked if I was hurt at all, and if she should send emergency medical services.
I said no. I was physically okay. I just wanted to report what had happened. She told me the
police would be arriving at my dorm soon.
Shortly thereafter, a bevy of police officers was congregating in and just outside of my
dorm room. EMS arrived as well, even though I had already said I didn’t need them. I sat on
my bed to recount what had happened. Two or three male police officers entered my small
room, with one female officer and multiple other male officers waiting in the hall. The offic-
ers crowding my room asked a number of questions, while standing. All I could think about
was how their junk was at eye level, and how that would have been even more traumatizing
had I experienced worse just before. I never asked them to sit down. I wish I had.
The officers asked questions in an even tone, almost seeming bored as I explained what
happened. Then I recounted that those who joined in—the girls’ friends—included a boy,
and at that point, the officers began jumping over each other with questions. “A boy? How
old? Did he touch you? Where?” I couldn’t recall seeing who had touched me, specifically.
I was annoyed. Why should that have been when they started to care? Why should the gen-
der of the people who sexually assaulted me matter? “Forcible touch,” the police officers
corrected me. “Not sexual assault.” In insisting on this language, these officers communi-
cated to me that my experience of being sexually violated was unimportant. It was clear to
me that their own definitions—of both gender and law—were all that mattered to them.
As the week wore on, I continued processing the assault, and I brought it up at dinner
with “B.” B was a White, gay man several years older than me, whom I knew through a
friend. He had a well-paying job in the medical industry, and knowing I had little dispos-
able income as a graduate student, he frequently invited me out to dinner at fancy restau-
rants and paid, just to be nice. I told him about what had happened. The first words out of
his mouth in response were, “Were they Black?” I wanted to scream at him or at least to
challenge him: “Why in the fuck would you assume that? Why in the fuck would that mat-
ter?” But I didn’t. I no longer talk to B.
A couple of weeks later, I received a call from police in the precinct where I was attacked.
They asked me to come to their office to look at photos and potentially identify who had
attacked us. I made an appointment for an upcoming date, but I felt conflicted about doing
 Police Do Not Protect Us, and Other Lessons I learned As a Queer Victim 145

so. What would happen if I couldn’t identify anyone? If I couldn’t remember their faces?
What would happen if I could?
The question, “What would happen if I could?” was the one I agonized over. Ultimately,
I didn’t want them to be charged. I didn’t know why they had done what they had done,
but as far as I could tell, they were likely teenagers who thought they were playing a game.
Yes, I had been terrified, ashamed, and angry, and this event would continue to affect how
I behaved in and thought about my city for many years to come. But what was justice here?
I wanted them to know what they did was wrong. I wanted to know why they did what they
did. I wanted them to know how it had affected me. I didn’t want them to do it to anyone
ever again. And I also didn’t wish them any harm. Involvement in the justice system would
have been unequivocally harmful. I was working at the Correctional Association of New
York at the time, as an intern with their Prison Visiting Project. I spent my days hearing
from incarcerated people about their terrible experiences in jails and prisons, and I knew
the harms of the system more than most. But I didn’t know what my options were in this
situation, and as far as I could tell, the only two were to do nothing, or to look through
photos of potential suspects.
So I went to the police station, still unsure of what I was going to do, still unsure of what
the right thing to do was. A police officer sat me down with a binder full of mugshots. They
had no leads on who had done this to me, and as far as I could tell, they had done no inves-
tigating up until this point. The best they could offer was to look through photos of people
who had been previously arrested in the area. Looking through the photos, I never saw one
that rang any bells. I couldn’t bring anyone’s faces to mind in the first place—I had just been
thinking that one of the photos might jog my memory. But it didn’t. I was almost relieved.
I never heard back from the police after that day. As far as I know, they went no further
into my case than having me look through those photos.
When we talk about the need for police in our society, we often talk about the need for
protection. But the police did not protect me from harm. They weren’t there to keep this
from happening. A few months later I moved further north in Harlem. Police were on
every block of that neighborhood. Why were they out there standing on every single block
north of 125th Street, where the residents were mostly Black? Why were they nowhere to
be found when I was being pushed against a wall in Greenwich Village, a majority White
neighborhood? Why were they nowhere to be found in the neighborhood I was still living
in as a White graduate student surrounded mostly by other White students? (I’m not really
asking. We know why.)
Beyond the police not protecting me from initial harm, they did not make me feel pro-
tected when I asked for help. Upon responding to my initial call, I was scolded for keeping
myself safe by leaving. I did not feel safeguarded by the officers in my dorm room, towering
over me, their focus only on the boy in the group, and their correction in the language I used
to refer to my experience. I did not feel defended by the police asking me to look through
some random photos, and never calling me back.
And I would not have felt supported by the options provided to me as a victim if these
teens had been found. Justice would not be a year in jail (the maximum sentence for forcible
touch in New York). It would not be extra penalties for the hate crimes that may have been
attached. It would not have been probation or community service. Justice to me could be
restorative: a conversation between myself and these teens, so they could know the harm
they had caused, and I could know that they recognized the wrongness of their actions, that
146 Allyn Walker

they would never want to do this to another person. Justice could look like societal trans-
formation: it could involve these teens being educated by their parents and communities
about LGBTQ people’s accomplishments, so they would not have thought in the first place
that attacking people for being Queer would be fun. Maybe justice would involve having
late-night hours for community centers so teens can drop in and hang out in a supportive
atmosphere, or financial help for families so that parents can be around at night. Justice
could look like this volume, a collective sharing of experiences by us, for us, to know we
are not alone.
There is more I could say here. There are connections I could make about a system that
criminalizes Black people and other people of color and points to their arrests and impris-
onment as measures of safety for White people like me. There are connections I could make
about a system that has historically vilified Queer people that continues to vilify Queer
people of color, Queer migrants, Queer sex workers, and other Queer people just trying to
survive. There are connections I could make about the potential in transformative justice
practices, and how we should look to individuals and community outside of oppressive
systems to keep us safe. I’ve said these things elsewhere, and I’ll keep saying them. For now,
I’ll just say this; these direct lessons I learned as a victim myself:

Police do not protect us. Queer people are not made safe by hate crime laws. The crimi-
nal processing system cannot save us from harm.

We need support. We need community. We need each other.