lawsuits

Portland Cops Sued For $200K After Male Officer Allegedly ‘Gropes’ Trans Driver

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.

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