Last month, Sophia Gabrielle Stanford was at the center of a fundraising campaign. The GoFundMe page described the trans activist as a victim of a “brutal and aggressively blatant hate crime” in which assailants had beaten her unconscious with a bat in southeast Portland.
The campaign and shocking story went viral. However, the police reports raise questions about what happened that night.
In the early hours of Sunday, Feb. 10, emergency services received a call about a woman, identified as Stanford, found on a sidewalk with scrapes on her face and knuckles, claiming that she may have been assaulted. The responding officer, Edgar Mitchell, noted that Stanford smelled of alcohol.
“I asked [Officer Zachary Roe] what happened,” the report states. “Roe said the individual admitted to being intoxicated, and Roe believed the person fell and hit her head.”
Stanford either could not or would not state her name to the police. The responding officer was unable to discover Stanford’s name and claims that she made a threat: “If you don’t treat me right, my people will get you,” she said, according to the report.
Continue reading “Inside the suspicious rise of gay hate crimes in Portland”
