The mayor of Newark, New Jersey has promised a full investigation into apparent police mishandling in the case of a Black transgender woman found dead in April.
Moore, 26, was discovered outside a YMCA in Newark on April 1. According to those close to her, Moore lived and worked at the YMCA, which provides residential housing for low-income people. Authorities ruled her death a suicide, which prompted an outcry from friends, family, and civil rights organizers who accused law enforcement officials of ignoring important facts in the case and failing to conduct a full investigation.
On Thursday, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka responded by the growing outcry by releasing a statement in which he pledged a “full review and transparency in the Newark Police Division’s handling of the death of Ms. Moore.”
“We believe the police followed all necessary policies and procedures around Ashley Moore’s death,” Baraka said, in remarks published by the local news site Insider N.J. “But the handling of the case has raised concerns of her family and the [LGBTQ+] community. We fully expect to inform them of our police actions and answer any lingering questions they may have about Ms. Moore’s death to the absolute best of our ability.”
In addition to reopening the case, Baraka announced that the city would establish a policy intended to “treat members of the [LGBTQ+] community with the respect and dignity all human beings and their families deserve.”
Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose has subsequently ordered Essex County prosecutors and the Homicide Task Force to re-open the case — although he says that the initial finding of death by suicide was appropriate. “To date, our detectives have not discovered evidence to the contrary,” he told local news site TAPinto Newark.
An incident report, however, contradicts the assertion that Moore took her own life. It indicates that she might have been the victim of a sexual assault, with strangulation marks on her body and telltale bleeding.
Even with the re-opening of the case, local advocates say the situation indicates a callous disregard for LGBTQ+ citizens by local authorities.
Moore’s mother, Starlet Carbin, says she was never informed of her daughter’s death, and had to learn about it on her own on Facebook. Once she was in touch with police, Carbin says, she received conflicting information about the circumstances, with some police telling her that her daughter was hit by a driver and others saying she fell from the building.
“All the information I obtained I got on my own,” Carbin said, in comments previously cited by them. “No one contacted me to let me know my child was dead.”
A spokesperson for the police called the delay in informing Moore’s family “unfortunate.” But local authorities also failed to involve their own local partners in the queer community, including Beatrice Simpkins, executive director of the Newark LGBTQ Center. Simpkins is a liaison to the police department and helps ensure authorities follow best practices and exercising cultural competency in dealing with LGBTQ+ people.
According to Simpkins, police neglected to investigate Moore’s death. If authorities claim that there’s no evidence of homicide, she says, it’s because they haven’t looked.
“Part of this is because of the fact that Ashley is a Black trans woman, whose lives are not seen as valuable or worth the attention that someone else’s life may be worth,” Simpkins told TAPinto Newark. “The institutional attitude was, ‘Well, just another dead Black kid on the street.’”
Moore’s death was recorded amid an epidemic of trans homicides in 2020. In 2019, HRC tallied at least 27 deaths of transgender or gender non-conforming people in the U.S. due to violence, most of whom were Black transgender women. This year’s number, 26, has already matched the total number of homicides in all of 2019, with four months left to go.
The 2020 count doesn’t include Moore or Tatiana Hall, another Black trans resident of New Jersey whose death launched calls for an investigation earlier this year.
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