A Sex Worker Called 911 In Distress. Cops Came to Her Hotel Room and Shot Her.
Linda Becerra Moran died on February 27 after nearly three weeks on life support. On Sunday, the LAPD released video of her being shot.
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," Soma 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."
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