Shawn Vestal: It took a while, but cruel news spread fast

All day Saturday, Alison Collins was waiting for something to happen.

For the police to stop by with follow-up questions. For the news media to report what had happened. For the community to stand up and say … something.

A homeless, transgender woman had been beaten in Collins’ bakery-slash-bar, Boots, the night before.

“This happened Friday night,” she said. “By Saturday evening, nobody had ever said or done anything about it.”

So Collins made a phone call. What happened next is the silver lining on the cloud, and it’s a big, bright one. One at a time – through phone calls, emails, social media and finally a packed-house showing before the City Council – Spokane residents demanded the city’s institutions do something. And they did. The news media covered the uprising and the crime prominently early this week. The police obtained security camera images of two suspects and released them. Within hours, two men had been identified and arrested: Adam R. Flippen and Marc A. Fessler. They’ve pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and malicious harassment, which is the state’s hate-crimes law.

Meanwhile, the support for the victim, Jacina Scamahorn, came from all over the community, Collins said – including people you might not expect to be allies for transgender people.

“I don’t think that would have happened 10 or 15 years ago,” said Collins, who owns Boots on West Main with her husband, Arden Pete.

And while she’s concerned about reports from witnesses that officers were dismissive and “eye-rolling” at the scene, she said she was later contacted by a police official who told her the department was looking into the officers’ response.

“The end result is, they’re hopping on it,” she said. “I had a great deal of anxiety – I wanted to handle this carefully because we have a number of officer friends. … I didn’t want it to turn into ‘The police are bad.’ I don’t think that at all. I think a couple of people might need sensitivity training.”

According to witnesses and police reports, Scamahorn was standing outside of Boots on Friday night when one of the two men, who had been drinking at Zola next door, directed slurs toward her. Scamahorn responded by spitting at him and returning to Boots; the men allegedly followed her inside the cafe, hitting and kicking her, and screaming obscenities and epithets. She suffered broken bones in her face. Collins was not there at the time, but an employee called her. She expected that Saturday would bring more activity in the case, and when she hadn’t heard anything by that night, she called Rick Eichstaedt, the executive director of the Center for Justice, whose offices are across the street. Eichstaedt sent an email to Blaine Stum, head of the city Human Rights Commission, and contacted police Chief Frank Straub and NAACP President Rachel Dolezal.

Stum got that message Sunday morning. He headed down to Boots, where he heard more about what had happened and spoke to Scamahorn.

“She thought she was alone,” Stum said. “She thought no one would care. It always breaks my heart to hear that, because it happens too often.”

Stum, who works as Councilman Jon Snyder’s legislative assistant, contacted Straub and Tim Schwering, the department’s director of professional oversight. Collins also spoke to Schwering that day, who told her the department would investigate the complaints about officers’ behavior. The department’s handling of that matter will be telling.

Stum, meanwhile, began spreading the word. He created a Facebook page urging people to show up to Monday’s council meeting. About 150 people did. About 20 testified.

“I was just really impressed and amazed at the strength of the community to come together and rally for someone many people there didn’t even know,” Stum said.

For Collins and Stum, the assault was clearly a hate crime – a crime motivated by bias against a class or group of people. Stum said he’s been explaining this week why he thinks it’s important to have this designation and not to just treat all assaults as though they were the same.

“A hate crime is not just sending a message to the victim,” he said. “It’s sending a message to anyone who is like the victim.”

I’m not sure the delay in public response was as unusual as some of Scamahorn’s supporters have found it. It’s common, for example, for weekend violence in and around bars to either not be reported or to become public early in the following week, and sometimes police investigations proceed more slowly than those involved might hope.

Collins said, “Perhaps it would be the same for any assault, but I’m not so sure.”

Imagine, Collins said, if she had been the victim of the attack.

Imagine if she – a longtime Spokane resident, a business owner, a woman – had stepped outside of Boots on a Friday night. Imagine if she had been greeted with some filthy epithet from a couple of men, and if, in frustration and anger, she spit on one of them and marched back into Boots. Imagine that they followed her in, punched and kicked her, calling her vulgar names all the while. Imagine that she was left with a black eye and broken bones in her face.

“If that was me,” Collins said, “I think it would be a different story.”

So she picked up the phone and made it a different story.