The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal is hearing an Edmonton 2SLGBTQ+ advocate’s gender discrimination complaint against the Edmonton Police Service.
Marni Panas says she filed a human rights complaint after a 911 call on the night of Apr. 11, 2019, turned into an ordeal where she was misgendered multiple times, and one police dispatcher assumed the transgender woman Panas was calling about was a sex worker.
Panas, who is also trans, worked with EPS as a member of the sexual and gender minority liaison committee, and helped with police Chief Dale McFee’s apology to members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community for past harms.
He delivered that apology in May 2019, less than a month after the incident that prompted Panas’s complaint.
Giving evidence to the tribunal this past April, Panas said her experience with the 911 call eroded her trust in police to the point that she questions whether she can safely call them for help.
“How I felt in the moments after that, just such a loss of dignity, respect — that I didn’t matter,” she said.
“That is something that, honestly, has not left me since that night, those feelings.”
Panas filed her complaint alleging EPS violated her rights under the protected grounds of gender, gender expression and gender identity in 2020.
The complaint also states that documents Panas received from EPS after filing a freedom of information request related to the case were addressed to “Mr.” Marni Panas and began with “Dear sir.”
Derek Cranna, the lawyer representing EPS in front of the human rights tribunal, said Monday that EPS’s position is that Panas wasn’t denied the service she was seeking, because police did a welfare check for the friend she was calling about.
Cranna said the first dispatcher who misgendered Panas made “unfortunate” comments, but they don’t rise to the level of discrimination.
When it comes to the second dispatcher, who insinuated Panas’s friend was a sex worker, Cranna said some of what he said was inappropriate, and could be construed as discriminatory.
That EPS employee is scheduled to give evidence at a later date, with Cranna saying he will be asked for context about his conduct and intent.
The tribunal hearing is scheduled to conclude after two more days of evidence in September.
History of the case
Panas dialled 911 after her friend didn’t check in with her as planned after a date.
During her evidence to the tribunal. Panas said safety checks are routine for her and many of her friends, especially if they’re meeting someone they don’t know well, or a person from a dating app. If someone doesn’t check in by a set time, the other person calls for help.
Panas said her friend had never missed a previous safety check, and when she still couldn’t reach her an hour past the designated time, she was terrified she might be in danger.
“I know the stats. These are all the things that are in my mind at this time, just hoping that she’s going to be safe,” Panas said.
“High rates of sexual violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment faced particularly by members of the transgender women community. That’s why I take this role so, so, so seriously.”
CBC News Edmonton2:51Marni Panas police call
Marni Panas called police on April 11, 2019, concerned her friend was in crisis. Listen to an excerpt from that call, now the subject of a human rights complaint against Edmonton Police Service.
The 911 dispatcher Panas spoke to first referred to her as “sir” three times during the call, including once after Panas corrected him, saying “I am not a sir,” and that she hadn’t asked to be called that.
He referred Panas to the EPS non-emergency line, and when she called and explained the situation, that dispatcher initially said the call “might be jumping the gun.”
Panas said there’s a real chance of risk “because they’re trans people, we need to take this seriously.” The dispatcher responded, “They shouldn’t be in that profession, now should they?”
Panas was emotional as she told the tribunal about her reaction at the time.
“In one moment, in one line, everything that I told you I did to change legislation, to work with the chief of police — all of those connections, all of those privileges that I had, everything that I had has been wiped out,” she said.
“Now I feel that my being a trans woman, being a trans woman on a date, is now assumed to be a sex worker. And that neither of us are worthy of support, of help. Everything changed in this moment.”
Recommendation for training
Allan Davis — an EPS employee of more than 30 years, including 26 years as a sworn officer — took Panas’s initial 911 call.
He told the tribunal Monday that he called her “sir” because he didn’t know at first that she was a woman, and he made a mistake and “slipped back into habits” when he repeated it after she objected.
“In my lifetime those have been respectful ways to address people. We are a paramilitary organization, we still use sir and ma’am for our officers,” he said.
Davis also said he’d never heard of the idea of a safety check-in after a social date, even for cisgender women meeting up with men.
“I go back to my experience, faulty or not. … I can understand now that perhaps that is more the norm or something that happens more often in that [gender-minority] community, but at the time I wasn’t aware of that.”
An investigation by the EPS human resources division, submitted as evidence to the tribunal, concluded Davis didn’t intentionally misgender Panas, and recommended no further action against him.
But it also recommended a review of bias awareness training in the police communications branch, as well as inclusive language training.
In a statement to CBC News, an EPS spokesperson said police bias awareness training started in 2017, including some training on trans and non-binary people. but that’s evolved into “more specific training” over the last year.
The spokesperson added that EPS has been delivering 2SLGBTQ+ training to every police recruit class since August 2019, and that’s also part of the police dispatch training curriculum.