Memphis cops brutally beat trans woman

Yet another incident of police brutality has been captured on videotape—this time against a transgender woman in Memphis, Tenn.

While in the booking room of the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center in Memphis on Feb. 12, Duanna Johnson was taunted by a police officer, who called her over to be fingerprinted by using an anti-LGBT slur and the term “he/she.” When Johnson courageously told the officer that she would not respond to that language, the officer put on gloves, wrapped a set of handcuffs around his knuckles and proceeded to beat Johnson with them.

The videotape, which was leaked to the press in June, shows an officer holding Johnson’s shoulders while another officer continuously beats Johnson across the face and head with the handcuffs. She is then maced, handcuffed and left on the ground. A nurse appears later in the tape, only to walk past Johnson—who suffered a gash to her head—and treat one of the officers for a scrape.

Johnson is now filing a $1.3 million lawsuit against the City of Memphis. Her lawyer, Murray Wells, told local WMC-TV on June 18, “We were optimistic that [the Memphis Police Department] would be as outraged about this as we are, and we haven’t gotten any indication that they’re interested in it at all.”

One of the officers involved, James Swain, was a new officer serving a probationary period, and has since been fired. The other, Bridges McRae, has been placed on administrative duty until a hearing is held.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s lawyer told Media Archive that they were not allowed to file a complaint about the incident. The reason? It is being “investigated” by the police department’s Internal Affairs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.