Duanna Johnson Murdered

Tuesday's NYT reports the murder last week of Duanna Johnson in Nashville. The police say they have no suspects. Back in February, Johnson, a transgender woman, was beaten by two Memphis police officers inside a police station; the case came to light in June, when her attorney released the videotape of the attack to the media.

It's hard to know for sure how much the Memphis Police Department has reformed since then, but the available reporting suggests that they have been moving in the right direction. The Times reports:

In June, the department fired Officer McRae and Officer Swain, who was a probationary officer, and asked the Tennessee Equality Project, a gay rights group, to hold training sessions for officers about sexual orientation.

HRC put the killing in a broader context:

Johnson’s murder is the third murder of a transgender person in Memphis since 2006. Tiffany Berry, a twenty-one-year-old African American transgender woman, was shot and killed on February 16, 2006. Ebony Whitaker, a 20-year-old African American transgender woman, was murdered by an unknown assailant and found dead on July 1, 2008.

Johnson's attorney said her death will not stop her estate from continuing the pending civil suit against the Memphis Police for the February beating.

I'm not an expert in this, but it would seem to me to be a conflict of interest for the police department to be investigating the murder of someone who had a lawsuit pending against them.

Hopefully the attention from the Times article will keep a spotlight on the MPD so they know the world is watching.