On a Saturday night two years ago, Stann Fransisco was driving back home to New Mexico after visiting their parents in Connecticut. Crossing through Texas, they were just reaching the small, well-lit town of Stratford when they knew they were too tired to keep driving safely, so they pulled off the highway to rest their eyes for a bit. As they hopped into the back seat to join their service dog, they suddenly saw flashing police lights. Officers approached the car.
“One officer said, ‘It smells like you’ve been having a party in here. Is that right?’” Fransisco, a white nonbinary person in their 30s, told Filter. “He said, ‘Well, if you haven’t been having a party, you won’t mind if we check your car.’”
Moving quickly, the officers violently handcuffed Fransisco, took their keys and called animal control to confiscate their dog. Then they searched the car.
“One yelled, ‘Show me your track marks, you fucking junkie! We found your needles and drugs,’” Fransisco said. The cop held up their prescription bottle of testosterone. “I said, ‘Those aren’t drugs, that’s my medication. I’m trans.’”
“The second it went out of my mouth, I think ‘Oh, fuck’ … I’m sitting there in a sundress and they see male hormones after they’ve been waiting to get me alone because they think I’m a girl.” [...]
“Criminalization has made it easy for pharmacists to deny my [testosterone] prescription, which has happened to me many times,” Artemis McGettigan, a trans student in Dearborn, Michigan, told Filter. “[Pharmacists] have told me in the past that ‘It’s corporate policy, they’re not allowed to fill that type of prescription … but I knew that was false because other CVS locations, for example, were able to fill it.” A CVS media representative told Filter that its policies “do not prohibit our pharmacies from filling testosterone prescriptions.”
Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) are electronic databases through which medical professionals and law enforcement can track someone’s prescription history. Initially designed to combat “diversion” of controlled substances with potential for addiction, they are often used to monitor testosterone prescriptions and the people who receive them. Many in the trans and gender variant community, especially those who aren’t fully public about their gender identity, fear being listed on PDMP—they could be outed by anyone with access to the database.
L. Lanzillotta, a Virginia-based trans man and Filter contributor, recalled meeting with a psychiatrist who didn’t know he was trans and to whom he had no plans to out himself. But that decision was made for him as soon as the psychiatrist pulled up what he strongly suspects was the state’s PDMP.
“She knew I was on testosterone after checking something on her computer, even though I hadn’t said anything,” Lanzillotta told Filter. “Naturally, she quickly deduced why.”
[...] They handcuffed me in the backseat of the police SUV, but they left my seatbelt unbuckled. “Am I being held against my will?” I rasped. “Am I being held against my will?” I repeated the question over and over. I knew the words weren't right but the question remained. Neither of the officers in the front seats answered me. Ever since they handcuffed me and animal control took my service dog, I waited for the magic words: “You have the right to remain silent.” I knew what to do once my rights were read. It never happened.
In the Sheriff's Jailhouse, the officers took turns assaulting me.“Which part of you is a trans, then?” One officer asked, scanning my naked body up and down. “Is it this part?” He asked, slapping my breasts. “Or is it this part?” He slapped me upside the head. Another officer entered the room with my shoes, sundress and underwear.
“I think it's this part,” the other officer said, poking at my genitals.
“Which room do you want to be in, then? Big boys or little girls?” They asked me. Before I had a chance to reply, they all laughed.
A third officer handed me a pink jumpsuit with brass button snaps up the front, without socks or underwear. He then ordered me into a jail cell on a cement floor without water or food. I was remanded to solitary for the first 10 hours of my captivity. Sharing the cell adjacent to me were two cisgender women, named Nicol and Val. I didn’t find out until the morning that it was Nicol’s voice guiding me through my panic attack. [...]
My bail was set at $2,500. My bond was $250 and I also had to pay $250 to get my car back from the tow yard. $500 is nothing to buy your freedom, especially for someone like me who is privileged enough to have resources. However, I wasn’t permitted to obtain those resources in a timely manner. I didn't get a phone call. I wasn't legally arrested, so I had no rights. Even then, no one asked me for cash to make my problems go away immediately. This was a long-game shakedown. It was about using me to fund another week's worth of pay for an entire town: for the officers who arrested me after midnight getting overtime, the judge working Sundays, the tow yard open and even the dog catcher who billed me for $25 to get my service dog back.
I got incredibly lucky and was able to pay my way out of jail. I had nothing in my vehicle that was illegal in Texas. Cannabis is illegal there, but I have a medical cannabis card in New Mexico. If I had my medicine with me, I might still be in that jail. The tow yard was full of cars with out-of-state plates. The majority of them are in New Mexico and Colorado, both places with legal cannabis use. My testosterone isn't illegal, but it is a federally controlled substance by the Drug Enforcement Agency, even though it was prescribed by a doctor. My needles are prescribed for intramuscular use, not intravenous. The cops searched for anything incriminating in my car. My toiletry kit somehow ended up in their hands. My used needles were stored safely at the bottom of my bag with the empty bottle of testosterone. How they surfaced so swiftly remains a mystery to me.
What I do know, though, is LGBTQ+ people (especially Black transgender people) are incarcerated at higher rates than cisgender, heterosexual people. I was fortunate enough to slip out of the prison death machine when I left the state.
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