Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
African American women, nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper” case, yielded an arrest just this July. Oftentimes when women disappear, law enforcement doesn’t take their cases seriously enough soon enough. By the time bodies start appearing, buried in the desert or dumped along back roads and alleys, evidence linking vic- tims with their murderers is too difficult to recover. This was the story in Albuquerque, according to former Albuquerque Tribune crime reporter Maggie Shepard, who says the city’s missing-persons unit had long been mismanaged—a “throwaway unit.” Shepard recalls how a missing-persons detective, un- trained and lacking procedures to follow, classified a missing 18-year-old Navajo woman as a runaway after questioning her boyfriend and his family. “It turns out [he] is suspected of killing her,” says Shepard. “Of course it was easy for him to say, ‘Yeah, she went back with her family’ [instead of] ‘Oh wait, no, she’s stabbed and dead in the desert.’” The families of the Mesa victims echo Shepard’s criti- cisms: “Up to the femur being found, there was…a lot to be desired,” says Dan Valdez, the father of murder victim Gina Michelle Valdez. “I don’t mean to sound harsh about it, but I think they just put her file in a filing cabinet and forgot about it. After the bodies were found, they snapped to attention. But they should have spent more time.” Shepard noticed a disconnect between procedure and desire among officers on the ground. “Officers would say to me, ‘You know, I’d like to follow this, but the report says “missing, closed,”’” says Shepard. Handling missing-adult cases is tricky, say officials from APD. “It’s not against the law to go missing,” says APD Chief Ray Schultz, pointing out that his department re- sponds to several calls each day that involve an adult tak- ing off or wanting to disappear. But some cases receive more attention than others. Whereas the disappearances of white or wealthy women snap investigators and the media to attention— think Elizabeth Smart or Natalee Holloway—that’s not al- ways the case when it comes to Hispanic, African American or indigenous women. In 2008, former law enforcement officer Derrica N. Wilson from Virginia founded Black and Missing Inc., a nonprofit organization focused on bringing awareness to missing persons of color—what she calls a “severely underserved population.” (But not a small population: According to the FBI’s 2008 figures, more “These were kind of a little bit tougher for us…because of [the victims’] lifestyle.” —APD CHIEF RAY SCHULTZ 38 | SPRING 2011 than 280,000 of the nation’s 778,000 missing were people of color—and that number excludes Latinos, who are counted as white.) In Canada, too, indigenous and human- rights organizations are calling for investigations into the disappearances of at least 582 First Nations women in the country over the past 36 years. When it comes to the West Mesa murders, Chief Schultz has an explanation for the discrepancy in how missing per- sons cases are handled: “These were kind of a little bit tougher for us…because of [the victims’] lifestyle.” Ah yes, their lifestyle. It can take extra police work to track down missing women who are living on the streets or working as prostitutes. Their families may have lost touch with them or not reported them missing right away. Perhaps they are alive and don’t want to be found. But re- sources can be put to the task, and doing so can halt a chain of killings. These women are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends—what does it take for a community to find them worthy enough to expend those resources? investigators, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Communities need to help women who experience abuse, drug addiction or mental illness before they become crime statistics. This requires a new attitude, one that acknowledges and treats, rather than punishes and puts at further risk, some of the most vulnerable mem- bers of the community. To raise community awareness in Albuquerque, the A nonprofit Young Women United has drawn attention to women who struggle with drug addiction, homelessness or abuse, and also to the vulnerability of women released from city jail (sometimes they’re dropped off late at night in a dark area lacking services or access to public trans- portation). In the months following the discovery of the 11 women’s bodies, the group organized vigils of family members and friends of the victims. Services for mentally ill or drug-addicted women who have been incarcerated are scarce in Albuquerque. But at least one option available is Crossroads for Women, which offers housing along with counseling, life-skills education, case management, group therapy, vocational services and family services (it can serve 42 women in the two programs that it runs). Most people don’t understand how difficult it is to exit homelessness, says Crossroads founder Elizabeth Simpson, pointing out that the women it serves are typically sur- vivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse, and most have suffered domestic violence as well. Therefore, a www.feminist.org LL VICTIMS, REGARDLESS OF COLOR, CLASS, GEN- der or lifestyle, deserve equal treatment from police