Police policy on transgender suspects goes too far

Police in NJ's largest city have to absorb ten pages worth of new guidelines on what they can and can't say to transgender suspects. To me this sounds like it was written by people who were either never cops or long forgot what it's like to be one in the real world.

If police are dealing with someone they strongly suspect is using heroin and find hypodermic needles on them, they are instructed to consider that those needles might be being used for hormone therapy. (Who will be the first to sue the police for being too slow in getting an overdosing heroin addict help because they were busy following instructions to be politically correct?)

When filling out an arrest report a transgender suspect's legal name can be relegated as an alias. (Because legal documents are apparently meaningless and legal names mean nothing today and if Steven identifies as Stephanie then not representing that in arrest documents would be emotionally hurtful.)

Transgender suspects must be allowed to be held in single person cells. (What happens when they run out of room because too many people for their own safety can just claim transgender status?)

When possible transgender suspects will have a say in the sex of the officer who searches them. (That will certainly waste time officers could be using in protecting and serving more of the public.)

When contacting parents about their child, officers must not tell a parent what their child's sexual orientation is. (Because apparently a police officer's main goal is to disrupt the life of a child and cause strife in a family.)

The West Orange police department is also working under similar rules and in fact this may soon go statewide as the attorney general's office is developing guidelines that would apply everywhere.

Newark's new policy is already far above what is required of them, yet National Center for Transgender Equality has already complained that it ought to include more protections for non-binary people. That's people who don't identify as male or female. (I guess Newark PD will need to add more check off boxes on forms to be politically correct and of course cost tax payers even more money.)

This is all nonsense. The main issue should be that police don't mistreat transgender people. Calling them derogatory names. Being physically rough because of their own attitudes. Things like this. But that is a policy that should already apply to all groups. This policy is all about bending the police department to a near ridiculous degree. If a suspect is physically, biologically male and is being legally processed there shouldn't be any reason to cloud the legal issue by documenting descriptions that don't actually match the suspect. Good luck catching an escaping suspect who appears physically male when in processing he was recorded as female.

Police have such a difficult job as is. Now they're turning our police cruisers into mobile therapy offices.

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