A Los Angeles sex worker called 911 to report being held in a motel room against her will. When the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) showed up, one of the officers shot her.
The woman, Linda Becerra Moran, died on February 27 after nearly three weeks on life support.
Advocates in the area are both mourning Moran’s death and worrying about what message it will send. “This has such chilling connotations for survivors in L.A….if they’re afraid that police are going to shoot them when they call 911,” Snakeoil, executive director of the nonprofit Sidewalk Project, told the Los Angeles Times.
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Snakeoil described Moran as a possible victim of sex trafficking.
Moran called 911 on February 7 and began talking about being in a motel, a man next door, and money. She spoke a mix of Spanish and English, was crying, and was clearly very upset. Her story was somewhat disjointed, but when asked if she was being forced, she said yes.
A dispatcher alerted police of a “possible kidnap suspect.” It’s unclear if police looked for this alleged perpetrator at the San Fernando Road motel where they arrived.
On Sunday, the LAPD released audio of the 911 call and video footage of a portion of the police encounter with Moran, which was captured on officers’ body cameras.
Moran Repeatedly Told Cops to Leave Before Holding Knife to Her Own Neck
One of the videos starts off showing some officers in and around Moran’s hotel room. They tell her to sit down and proceed to examine her head, which she said was hit “many times.” At this point, the officers are not exactly rude but not particularly nice or reassuring, either. It certainly isn’t what you might describe as a “trauma-informed response.”
Moran’s head does not appear to have visible injuries, and the officers seem frustrated. They talk about her among themselves as if she isn’t there. It’s upsetting to watch, because no matter what has or has not happened to this woman, it seems clear that she is going through something—and the officers know this. “She told the [Emergency Broadcast Operations] that she’s thinking about killing herself,” one of them says on the video. Moran herself later tells them that she wants to “commit suicide.”
Subsequent body-camera video shows Moran getting agitated as one of the officers comes near her. She says “Do not touch me!” and a cop who identifies himself as the supervisor yells at her, in Spanish and English, to “calm down” and “relax.” Moran proceeds to move further back into the room and crouch down beside a mini-fridge, crying. An officer tells the supervisor that Moran told them she had been raped.
Moran repeatedly tells the officers to leave. As one of the officers steps closer to her, she becomes more upset, crying out in Spanish “don’t touch me” and “leave me alone.” At this point, multiple officers begin walking toward her as she backs into the corner. She then pushes the mini-fridge so that it forms something of a blockade between her and the police.
After telling them several more times to leave, she pulls a kitchen knife from a drawer and holds it to her own throat.
Some of the officers pull out their guns. The supervisor tells them to back up a bit.
They all exit the hotel room to the outside corridor. The supervisor instructs someone to “be lethal” and someone to be “less lethal.” He tells one of them to shut the door in case she comes forward.
Cuffed Before Care
A third body-camera video shows Moran still in the back corner of the hotel room, knife to her own neck, as an officer points a gun at her from the other side of the room’s doorway.
The image perfectly encapsulates the trouble with police responses to mental health crises.
Yes, Moran has a knife, but at this point she is still quite far from the officers, who stand outside the room and could easily get further away if need be. There’s no need for one of them to be pointing a raised gun at her—an action rather contrary to their stated goals of trying to get her to calm down and relax.
Moran keeps telling them to go. They remain outside, and the gun remains pointed at her.
Eventually she starts to walk across the hotel room, still holding the knife to her neck. It’s not clear what she’s intending to do, but she is certainly not brandishing the knife at police or charging at them or anything like that. They all remain outside of the room and could clearly have backed further away before taking any other action.
Instead, one of the officers immediately fires at her.
Moran stumbles toward the bed and collapses, dropping the knife.
The cops then enter, slowly, and roll her over and cuff her hands behind her back before carrying her out of the room. They then lay her on the pavement outside of the hotel room before administering any medical care. At the end of the video, one officer can be seen uncuffing her and another doing chest compressions.
The officer who shot Moran was Jacob Sanchez, according to the LAPD.
Seeing Victims ‘Through the Lens of Criminality Rather Than Vulnerability’
After Sanchez shot her, Moran “was hospitalized in grave condition,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “The decision to end life support was approved by the ethics committee of the hospital where she was being treated after attempts to reach family members in her native Ecuador were unsuccessful.”
The Times goes on to paint a complex portrait of Moran, a 30-year-old trans woman and ardent Catholic who had engaged in survival sex work.
Kim Soriano, a researcher with the Sidewalk Project, remembers Becerra Moran for her independent-mindedness.
“She was just determined to survive. She was very resilient; like she knew what she wanted and she knew what she liked and what made her comfortable,” Soriano said, who would run into her while researching her dissertation on police treatment of trans and queer people at MacArthur Park.
A devout Catholic, Becerra Moran owned a five-pound statuette of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which took up most of the space in the battered suitcase that she lugged around.
“She told me that she carried it all around with her and it offered her protection,” said Soriano. Once, she recalled, Becerra Moran saying of the statuette: “Be careful with her, because she’s come a long way with me.”
Over the months, the two of them bonded, Soriano said, talking often about Becerra Moran navigating life as a trans woman of color who supported herself as a sex worker while living on the streets. For her, threats were everywhere. Gangs. Drugs. Police.
Soriano said Becerra Moran was among the park regulars who expressed a grudging acceptance of law enforcement. Like the others, she’d gotten swept up by the seemingly endless cleanups targeting drug use and theft in the area—tents were dismantled, belongings seized and people forced to leave. And yet she ultimately felt police were there for protection, Soriano said.
“She called them when she needed help because she was being held hostage and trafficked and they met her with even more violence,” Soriano said. “Maybe she did believe that they would be some type of lifeline for her.”
Leigh LaChapelle of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking told the Times that this case reminds us that the police aren’t the best people to help survivors of sex trafficking. “They see them through the lens of criminality rather than vulnerability and treat them as people who need support,” said LaChapelle. “I’m so worried about this getting written off as a mistake or as a sort of exception.”
More Sex & Tech News
Against the Take It Down Act: People of all political stripes have been applauding the Take It Down Act, which would set new standards and requirements for the removal of what has been called “revenge porn” and is now being dubbed “nonconsensual intimate imagery” (NCII). But while the measure may sound good in theory, it is ripe for being weaponized, suggests Adi Robertson at The Verge. Even in normal times, it would have serious civil liberties implications. And we are not in normal times.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted back in February, “the Act mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without addressing the problem it claims to solve.” And:
The takedown provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored. The legislation’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove content within 48 hours, meaning that online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will have to comply so quickly to avoid legal risk that they won’t be able to verify claims. Instead, automated filters will be used to catch duplicates, but these systems are infamous for flagging legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting.
The Verge‘s Robertson seems mostly concerned that some politically favored companies might “get away scot-free” after ignoring the law. I think the bigger concern is that the law—whose requirements will be fleshed out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—could be selectively enforced in ways advantageous or pleasing to those in power. This is especially a concern under a president like Donald Trump, who thrives on personal flattery and favors and doesn’t much care for constitutional law. But it’s ripe for abuse by any administration.
Criminalizing trans people in public spaces: A bill that passed the Montana house on March 1 would essentially create a second indecent exposure statute, with a lower mens rea requirement, targeting transgender people and/or drag queens. Under House Bill Number 446, the crime of indecent exposure—knowingly or purposely exposing one’s genitals or intimate parts in a manner likely to cause “affront or alarm”—would generally still require an intent to “abuse, humiliate, harass, violate the dignity of, or degrade another,” or to “arouse or gratify the person’s own sexual response or desire or the sexual response or desire of any person.” But the bill would create a new crime of indecent exposure in a public place (including restrooms, locker rooms, dresser rooms and all sorts of private businesses) “to members of the opposite biological sex or opposite the person’s sex observed at birth,” and this would not need to include any intent toward abuse, humiliation, sexual gratification, etc.
The way the statute is written is confusing; there is also some language about exceptions when a minor is accompanied by a parent or guardian, but other language of the statute does not seem to require a minor be involved any exposure. This less intentional—but equally punished—form of indecent exposure could certainly ensnare someone who is not at all gender-nonconforming. But it also seems clearly written to apply to situations involving drag shows and transgender individuals using facilities that match their gender identity.
The era of app store age verification is here: Utah may soon require app stores to check the ages of anyone who wishes to download apps; the stores also must get parental consent before allowing minors to download many apps. “Similar bills have been introduced in at least 12 other states,” notes the Associated Press, but Utah is the first state where such a measure has passed the Legislature.
Social media companies have applauded the bill. “Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way. The app store is the best place for it,” said Meta, X, and Snap in a joint statement.
But “the app stores say app developers are better equipped to handle age verification and other safety measures,” reports the AP:
Requiring app stores to confirm ages will make it so all users have to hand over sensitive identifying information, such as a driver’s license, passport, credit card or Social Security number, even if they don’t want to use an age-restricted app, Apple said….
Apple considers age a matter of privacy and lets users to decide whether to disclose it. The company gives parents the option to set age-appropriate parameters for app downloads. The Google Play Store does the same….
Under the bill, app stores would be required to request age information when someone creates an account. If a minor tries to open one, the bill directs the app store to link it to their parent’s account and may request a form of ID to confirm their identity. [Bill sponsor Told] Weiler said a credit card could be used as an age verification tool in most cases.
If a child tries to download an app that allows in-app purchases or requires them to agree to terms and conditions, the parent will first have to approve.
The requirements will take effect in May if Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs the bill into law.
See also: “First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control.”
Consumer welfare standard on display at Amazon antitrust hearing: At a recent hearing on the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Amazon, it was clear that we emerged from Lina Khan’s Biden-era FTC with the consumer welfare standard mostly unscathed, suggests economist Brian Albrecht. “The FTC’s case remains solidly consumer welfare centric,” he posted to X last Friday. “No hesitating on that point.”
More from Reason Foundation policy analyst Max Gulker:
Language policing in South Carolina: In medical terminology, a miscarriage is officially called a “spontaneous abortion” or “incomplete abortion,” and treatments for it—which include some measures also used in elective abortions—may be referred to as abortion procedures. A bill in South Carolina would amend the South Carolina to disallow this. House Bill 4130, introduced last week, says “the medical record of a patient whose pregnancy terminated due to a miscarriage may not be coded by the healthcare facility or practitioner, or otherwise designated by the facility or practitioner, as an abortion or a medical procedure or healthcare related to an abortion.” Writes Jessica Valenti: “If this bill passes, politicians—not medical professionals—would dictate how pregnancy loss is recorded and how medical language is defined.”
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