Chloe Lucero, a 27-year-old whose “outward appearance” appears male but is identified as a woman on her driver’s license, is suing Portland’s police after male officer Kevin Macho allegedly groped her top and bottom parts during a traffic stop — instead of waiting for a female officer, as Lucero requested (although the department’s manual does not require compliance with such requests). She’d like $200,000 please. The Oregonian reports:
According to the suit, officer Kevin Macho pulled over Lucero on Nov. 2, 2008 near Northeast Schuyler Street and First Avenue as she was driving home from a birthday brunch with her family. The suit states that Macho screamed “Give me the bottle,” then opened the driver’s side door and yanked Lucero by her left arm in an attempt to get her out of the car.
The suit claims that Lucero said she had no bottle and hadn’t been drinking, but the officer shoved Lucero against the car, examined her license and searched her “viciously and hurtfully, groping Chloe’s breasts and genitalia.” The officer didn’t find any evidence of drinking, so he wrote Lucero a ticket for failing to signal, driving in the wrong lane and failing to yield, according to the suit. “He told Chloe to plead guilty because he hated going to court and would make Chloe’s life miserable if he had to appear,” states the suit, which was filed Friday in Multnomah County Circuit Court by Beaverton attorney Dan DeNorch.
As Bilerico notes, it’s a bit unclear — and The Oregonian does a crap job in explaining — whether Lucero identified as a trans man or a trans woman. Though certainly not always the case, people who identify as something other than their birth sex will dress in the gender they identify with, and changing your license to match your gender identity is an obstacle, which is what makes this case a bit confusing. But then Lucero claims she wanted a female officer to pat her down, thus indicated she identifies as a woman, which is why we’re going with female pronouns.
Allen D.
As a current police academy student (who just recently passed the tests regarding searches, etc)… the officer’s actions make sense to me.
If the suspect appears male, part of the standard male search involves “scrunching” the entire chest region to check for weapons or other contraband. As for the genitalia, hopefully there’s a dash cam video that will show what happened there. Having your private personal parts touched -briefly- (known as the “bump and go”) is another standard part of a seach. You’re supposed to go up just high enough to make sure there’s not a gun or other possible weapon.
In regards to the request to have a female officer do the search — again I would assume this goes back to the suspect appearing as a man. If a man asks to have a woman search him, the answer would be a resounding “hell no”. So, hmm.
So, there’s my thoughts on that.
what do you know?
@Allen D.:
You wern’t there so you REALLY DONT’ KNOW what happend do you?
It’s pretty fucking DUMB to make judgements about things when you don’t have all, any, or the right facts. In fact you don’t have any facts at all do you? just guessing, that the officer was in the right. What do you base that opinion on? The fact is denying someones allegations of rape is abuse in it of itself motherfucker.
gg allin lives, and he’s coming for YOU
what do you know?
@Allen D.:
You wern’t there so you REALLY DONT’ KNOW what happend do you?
It’s pretty fucking DUMB to make judgements about things when you don’t have all, any, or the right facts. In fact you don’t have any facts at all do you? just guessing, that the officer was in the right. What do you base that opinion on? The fact is denying someones allegations of rape is abuse in it of itself motherfucker.
gg allin lives, and he’s coming