Philly DA's Crime-Tracking System Shows LGBTQ Domestic Violence Remains A Major Issue

By Michele Zipkin, Special to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star

February 19, 2022

In an effort to provide better resources to victims and defendants, staff members in the Victim Services Unit of the Philadelphia’s District Attorney Office have been using an LGBTQ+ arrest identification sheet to pinpoint crimes in the queer community.

Since the Victim Services team, under District Attorney Larry Krasner, began using the tracking system in November 2020, it has helped them accurately identify 53 arrests that involve members of the LGBTQ community.

Those 53 arrests generated 54 Municipal Court cases, 81% of which are domestic violence cases, Kelly Burkhardt, the office’s LGBTQ+ liaison and victim services coordinator, said.

At 37%, aggravated assault is the most common lead charge of those cases.

“What it really speaks to is a lot of people’s anxieties, frustrations, not being able to handle their anger, various things with communication,” Burkhardt told the Philadelphia Gay News.

The senior data analyst in Krasner’s office, Tyler Tran, played a main role in devising the arrest identification sheet. Each night the tracking tool searches through the arrests that were made the previous day, “looking for” designated keywords like “gay,” “lesbian,” “transgender” and others. If any of the keywords appear, the tool emails Burkhardt, Tran, and another DAO staffer.

The tracking tool has helped pinpoint LGBTQ-related crimes with about 55% accuracy, Burkhardt and Tran said. That percentage is due in part to words that sometimes trigger the sheet that have nothing to do with a person’s sexual orientation or gender. Out of that 55%, Burkhardt is working on 58 active cases, 10 of which are non-fatal shooting cases and 27 of which are domestic violence cases. But the 55% accuracy makes it difficult to gauge trends in LGBTQ-related crimes.

“We don’t know what the spreadsheet isn’t picking up on, we don’t know what it’s missing,” Tran said. “We can say that 75% of our alerts have been for domestic violence, that doesn’t necessarily mean that 75% of the incidents that involve the queer community are domestic violence.”

Regardless of the exact percentages, however, the number of recent domestic violence cases has led Burkhardt to consult the DA’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee to get feedback about finding more robust resources where she can direct victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence.

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