I understand your anger. I understand the extreme frustration. I've worked hard on behalf of disadvantaged people (though not transgendered people specifically).

You are conflating issues. The officer can use the wrong pronouns while still being able to explain what a hate crime is.

I consider these phrases to not be remotely cutesy but to represent the level of disgust I had reading and writing about this.

I didn't read the officer's quote as "she was murdered because she was transgendered but we don't consider that a hate crime." I read it as "she was murdered, we don't know why yet and we're investigating it like any murder right now and not a hate crime specifically."

I am glad she had what sounds like amazing family who loved her so hard. Peace to Yazmin. the world is filled with horrible, brutish people. It is just heartbreaking.

Seriously people, get off this. Nobody is going to be shocked if his turns out to be a hate crime. But making blind assumptions when you know nothing about what happened is foolish. Anything could have happened that night. Wanting to find out facts is not a bad thing.

"Obviously it's a hate crime"

I'm sorry, Officer Rodriguez, but are you trying to suggest here that killing someone because they're transgender isn't a specific enough reason? Or maybe that the reason doesn't count because it's not on your official "hate crime" cheat sheet?

They need evidence that is a hate-crime before they can investigate it as such. It is very likely that this was a hate-crime and they know that, but if they make that presumption now they could potentially overlook evidence pointing them in another direction. It could taint the investigation. All they know is that…

The other day one of my friends posted a picture of the mountains and captioned it "How can you not believe in God when you look at this?" You know why I can't believe in god, because of this. Fuck this. Fuck this times infinity.

With the exception of her father (who continued to use male pronouns, despite his daughter's identity),

Your response isn't totally fair. Most people who are murdered including transgendered people KNOW their murderer. So the idea that they may have been killed by some random act of violence even if transgendered is remarkably low. Certainly its a factor to be evaluated. But it isn't the only factor. So I…

No. He's referring to the crime/overall situation. Replace "male living as a female" with, say, "woman who adopts cats." You would never think "it" referred to the victim. "It" is clearly the act and not the person.

as someone may have said above, I don't think the police are allowed to publicly commented on aspects of the case that are often decides in court. Hate crime is a term with heavy legal meaning so I believe one needs to jump through some litigation hoops before they're allowed to use it out loud.

Don't judge her father in parenthesis like that. You're nobody to that family.

Of course, this probably was a hate crime and it's great that you're bringing attention to it. But there's no reason to lambaste our police officers for not using perfect Jezebel-approved language when they're forced to give a verbal statement in a high-pressure situation. They're doing their best to protect us.

Actually, I got the impression "it" was meant to refer to the case, not the person.

I know, I was going to say...what if it was her girl/boyfriend who did it? It seems incredibly personal, like domestic violence. Hell, what if another trans woman did it?

I think it is a horrible crime but i'm confused by your refutation of the quote above. The officer said that he did not think that she was killed b/c she was transgender which is why he didn't consider it a hate crime. It could have been a hate crime—the police officer could have been wrong about that but I am not…

I'll play devil's advocate for just a moment. Just because a black trans woman was horrifically murdered, doesn't mean she was murdered because she was a black trans woman. People are murdered, burned, and dumped all the time for various reasons. Were her genitals targeted in some way? Because that'd be a glaringly…