KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ A frightened Kansas City mother rushed to the nearest police station one afternoon in September after her 14-year-old hadn't come home from school.
At the front desk, Judith Boris shared every detail she could think of that could help police find him.
What he was wearing when he went to his classes that day. Descriptions of his hair and eye color. His height. His weight. The scars on his face.
Then, police asked for the teen's name.
"Legal name? Or what name he goes by?" Boris asked.
It was an important question in this case. The teen is transgender, answers to a name different from his legal name and uses male pronouns, Boris explained to police.
But later in a missing persons flyer distributed to local media, police primarily identified the missing teen by his legal name and used the wrong gender.
LGBTQ advocates say that can endanger people who are transgender and can lead to law enforcement losing the trust of a community that already fears being targeted or discriminated against.
Melissa Brown, a local advocate with the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project, said seeing the flyer for the missing teen "did break my heart." The bulletin left out key details and included "a bunch of misgendering," putting the teen at risk, she said. The teen was eventually located, but the case is now being investigated as a possible sexual assault.
The Kansas City Star is not naming teen as the newspaper generally does not name minors who may be victims of assault.
People who identify as transgender can be more at risk as victims of violence. At least 24 transgender or gender-nonconforming people have been killed in the U.S. this year, with three of those deaths occurring in the Kansas City area, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
A report released in November by the FBI counted 7,120 hate crime incidents in 2018. Of that total, 168 incidents were motivated by gender identity bias, a 41% increase from 2017.
The Kansas City Police Department has been praised by one national figure for being forthcoming in identifying victims of homicide who are trans and for having an LGBTQ liaison officer. But it falls short, local advocates suggest, when the liaison isn't looped in on cases like that of the missing teen.
In response to questions about the missing teenager's case, Kansas City police spokesman Capt. Tim Hernandez said he could not say why the flyer was written the way it was or why it lacked essential information such as the child's age and physical description. The flyer was written by officers in the Missing Persons Unit.
Any misunderstanding or miscommunication "was unintentional," Hernandez said.
Unintentional or not, some advocates say this is one example that shows those in law enforcement need ongoing training to better serve people in the LGBTQ community.
When it comes to gender identity, police and advocates agree that sometimes complications can arise. Both say there are ways to navigate them.
When police don't correctly identify transgender people who are victims of violence, it can "diminish trust within the community, confuse investigations and reinforce the very prejudice at the heart of this violence," said Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.
Misgendering _ whether done intentionally or through carelessness _ undermines the ability of law enforcement to investigate when a person who is transgender is a victim of violence or has disappeared, McBride said. Police reports that describe a victim as a man in women's clothing, or use the person's former name, can also problematic and disrespectful, according to advocates.
"Outing" a trans person who has gone missing also could put them or their family members in danger, said Steph Perkins, executive director of PROMO, a Missouri-based LGBTQ advocacy organization.
When a person's gender identity is unclear or unknown, advocates often suggest that police should avoid choosing a gender or use neutral pronouns until more information can be obtained.
Brown was out of town when Boris' child disappeared in September, but remembers seeing the brief missing-persons bulletin that identified the teen using incorrect pronouns.
"This actually endangered (the teen) even more putting this out, so that's where my concern is," Brown said. "Is KCPD listening to the community? Are they hearing when we're saying this is not how that person identified. Can you please shift that language?"
Brown works with the Anti-Violence Project to provide services to those experiencing trauma, harassment and violence, including hate crimes. Brown said concerns of hate violence came up in the case of Tamara Dominquez, 36, a transgender woman who was run over with a vehicle and killed near Independence and Spruce avenues in the summer of 2015.
When the first police and media reports came out about Dominquez, "there was a lot of misgendering; people deadnamed her," Brown said, meaning some identified her by her previous name.
The driver was arrested and charged in 2016. Luis Sanchez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and armed criminal action and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2018.
"We founded a group specifically for trans people of color after that so that they could have a space to heal and empower each other because we believe still that that was hate violence, a hate crime," Brown said. "Of course, the police have to do special steps to identify this hate violence."
