This Is How We Rise

SAY HER NAME: LINDA BECERRA MORAN

Linda Becerra Moran called 911 because she needed help.

That sentence should land like a simple fact. Because when a person being held hostage calls the police, the ending is supposed to be rescue and safety. 

Not death. 

But Linda didn’t get rescued. She was shot and killed by the LAPD. Linda, a trans migrant woman of color, reached for the one number America tells you to dial when you’re afraid, and LAPD officers fatally shot her.

Linda’s story exposes something our systems keep trying to hide in plain sight. The way “help” becomes punishment when the person asking is already viewed as disposable. 

When the survivor is a trans woman. 

When she is brown. 

When she is a migrant. 

When the word “sex trafficking” enters the picture, that label that quietly turns them into a suspect if they aren’t the perfect victim.

Police departments love the language of rescue. 

They pose as saviors while building policies that treat survivors like problems to be managed, contained, controlled. 

Linda wasn’t met as a person in crisis. She was met as a threat. 

Officers yelled orders in English despite it being clear she was a Spanish speaker. 

They responded to visible distress with commands, escalation, force. See the video here, but a warning, it is violent.

Linda spent her final conscious moments being handled as an inconvenience and an object rather than a human being who had already been harmed.

This is what it looks like when “anti-trafficking” rhetoric collides with policing. Survivors are told to report. Told to seek help. But when they don’t fit the narrative portrayed in the media, their pain is filtered through suspicion. 

Is she lying? 

Is she unstable? 

Is she dangerous? 

The state’s reflex is not care it is control. And control becomes violence. Fast.

The cruelest part is that Linda’s story isn’t even rare. It fits a pattern when mental health is involved.

Families across the country know this script by heart. 

When a loved one spirals, breaks, panics, dissociates, becomes suicidal. A parent calls for help, terrified. A partner calls, begging responders to come gently. A friend calls because they don’t know what else to do. 

Instead of clinicians, de-escalation specialists, or trauma-informed care, a badge and a gun arrive, because that’s who we send when we don’t know how to hold human suffering.

When a person is in mental distress, urgency is not the same thing as danger. 

Emotion can be seen as “noncompliance.” 

Confusion becomes “erratic behavior.” 

A cry for help becomes “a threat.” 

And when the moment gets messy, as trauma always does, police reach for what is easy and what they’re built to use.

Force.

Linda’s death is not a failure of procedure. 

It is the predictable result of a system that treats certain people’s survival as optional. 

When survivors call for help, they should not have to gamble their lives on whether they will be believed, understood, or treated as human.

Linda should be here. Linda should have been protected. Linda should have been treated like someone worth saving.

Thank you to the invaluable and tireless work from all the amazing people at The Sidewalk Project, please read how you can stand up for Linda below.

SAY HER NAME: LINDA BECERRA MORAN.

SAY HER NAME: LINDA BECERRA MORAN

On Tuesday, 1/27, the Board of Police Commissioners will conduct their so-called “employee performance evaluation” of the officers who tortured and murdered LINDA BECERRA MORAN. Linda was a trans migrant woman of color who was being held hostage – and who was fatally shot by police when she called them for help on 2/7/25. For nearly a year since her death, LAPD has made continous desperate, pathetic attempts to downplay and conceal Linda’s murder, in the hopes that public outrage will die down. But we will NOT allow this state violence to go unchallenged. We, Linda’s community, will never forget her.

In Linda’s name – SPEAK UP AND FIGHT BACK at BOPC on 1/27!

1. SHOW UP IN PERSON at the LOS ANGELES BOARD OF POLICE COMMISSIONERS meeting at LAPD HQ TUESDAY 1/27 AT 9:30AM or join on ZOOM;
2. Engage with our SOCIAL MEDIA to get more information about Linda and ongoing updates about this fight;
3. EMAIL LAPC by Monday 1/26 at 5pm (feel free to use or adapt our sample letter below);
4. SHARE this toolkit with a friend.

1. SHOW UP AT LAPC

The LAPC meets every Tuesday at 9:30am at LAPD Headquarters (100 W 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90012). See below for talking points you can prepare ahead of time – but also, please feel free to just show up. Even if you don’t give public comment, your presence will have a huge impact! The more of us in the room, the more pressure we put on the Commissioners regarding their complicity in state violence. You’ll be able to honor Linda’s life and support folks who knew her personally; protest the hatred, contempt, and fear which Chief McDonnell has for the communities he allegedly “serves and protects”; and get more context from community members and organizers as they expose the violent, racist, sexist, transphobic impact and intent of policing in our city.

If you’re joining virtually via the BOPC ZOOM, sign in a few minutes before 9:30am. If you intend to give public comment, make sure to hit the “raise hand” button as soon as the meeting is open. Space is extremely limited and will fill up almost immediately — literally, within a few seconds. You will be given one minute for each agenda item you wish to speak on, for a maximum of three minutes. We recommend asking to speak on “ALL ITEMS” when you are called on to give comment, so that you’re automatically guaranteed the max 3 minutes. Suggested public comment ideas below.

2. GET THE LATEST UPDATES ON THIS FIGHT FROM OUR SOCIAL MEDIA:

Instagram @thesidewalkprojectla 

Twitter @TheSidewalkProject 

Instagram @stoplapdspying

Twitter @stoplapdspying

You can also sign up here to get the LAPC’s meeting agenda sent to you directly each week. If you want to be further involved in the fight to honor and uplift Linda, feel free to reach out at stoplapdspying@gmail.com. 

3. EMAIL BOPC BY MONDAY 1/26 AT 5PM. Feel free to copy/paste or adapt our sample letter below. Please send to policecommission@lapd.online and cc cityatty.help@lacity.org; communityrelationsoig@lacity.org with the subject line Public Comment: Agenda Item 6A: Linda Becerra Moran.

To the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners:

I am writing regarding Agenda Item 6A, the so-called “employee performance evaluation” of the officers who denigrated, distressed, and murdered Linda Becerra Moran on 2/7/25. Linda called 911 for help. The Foothill Division officers who responded to her call understood that they were being sent to rescue a woman being held against her will. And yet – as the critical incident video clearly shows – the pig who shot Linda perceived her only as a threat to his own safety, backing away in fear as he opened fire on a crying and anguished woman. By failing to provide even a semblance of oversight for countless prior instances of LAPD’s institutional racism, transmisogyny, and sexual violence, this Commission is responsible for Linda’s death.

Subsequent to Linda’s death on February 27th of last year, LAPD took over a week to even acknowledge her death – which occurred at their hands, and while Linda was being held in their custody. LAPD treated Linda like a criminal from the first moment they made contact with her. As evidenced by LAPD’s critical incident video (and despite LAPD’s blatant effort to edit, redact, and misconstrue the events of that video), the officers engaged with her as if she was subhuman. They continued to yell orders at her in English, long after it was clear that she was a monolingual Spanish speaker; they grabbed at her head as if to examine her, then cursorily dismissed the possibility that she might be injured (needless to say, no specifically designated medical professional was present); they discussed the genital wounds she had sustained as a result of sexual assault in a tone of disgust, bordering on amusement; they displayed ongoing unconcern, if not impatience, with her obvious and extreme distress. In short, Linda spent the final minutes of her conscious life being tortured by these officers. 

When Linda put a knife to her own throat with the intent to die by suicide, the cops made no attempt whatsoever to insure Linda’s safety, or even to disarm her (if you can call holding a knife to one’s own throat “armed” – specifically, a six-and-a-half-inch kitchen knife from which the sharp tip had been removed). These cowardly, bloodthirsty officers, trained not only in trauma-informed responses but also basic hand-to-hand combat, proceeded to back away from Linda, towards the door, until one of them shot into her chest from across the room. Following this lethal assault, the officers shouted at an immobilized, bleeding, and almost totally unconscious Linda to “calm down,” and handcuffed her. They then continued to hold Linda hostage, guarding her in her room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center. It remains wholly unclear as to why an armed guard was required to protect the rest of the civilian populace from a woman who was unconscious, and on life support, upon entering the hospital on February 7th until her death on February 27th. LAPD, along with its enablers in city government, treat survivors not as people in need of support, but as subhuman targets to terrorize and dispose of. 

Despite obvious, objective evidence that officers wantonly gunned Linda down, and despite ongoing public outrage in the Police Commission meetings in the weeks and months following her death, this Board has yet to make any meaningful acknowledgement of her death. We – the citizens whose voices you are supposed to represent – have no reason to expect anything from the BOPC beyond your violent, century-old tradition of silently rubber-stamping of LAPD’s version of events. No reform could have saved Linda’s life, and no justice can bring her back. But we can honor her by reminding the Board that you have her blood on her hands. You do not deserve to speak her name, let alone pay false compassionate lip service to her memory – still less to discuss the “legality” of her murder in anodyne terms, in closed session. 

We remind the Board that your only course of action to save future lives is to defund and abolish LAPD: an organization whose purpose, in practice and intent, is to terrorize and disappear people like Linda – migrant folks, trans folks, unhoused folks, women of color – folks who were, and are, fiercely loved and remembered by their communities. We will never forget Linda. And we will continue to fight, forever, in her name.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

SUGGESTED TALKING POINTS FOR PUBLIC COMMENT (or simply read the letter above):

1. GENERAL CONTEXT
   1. Linda Becerra Moran was a trans woman of color who was being held against her will. She called the police for help, and they shot her.
   2. The department took over a week to even acknowledge her death – which occurred at their hands and in their custody.
   3. To say that LAPD treated Linda like a criminal is an understatement. As evidenced by LAPD’s critical incident video (and despite LAPD’s blatant effort to edit, redact, and misconstrue the events of that video), the officers engaged with her as if she was subhuman. They continued to yell orders at her in English, long after it was clear that she was a monolingual Spanish speaker; they grabbed at her head as if to examine her, then cursorily dismissed the possibility that she might be injured (needless to say, no specifically designated medical professional was present); they discussed the genital wounds she had sustained as a result of sexual assault in a tone of disgust, bordering on amusement; they displayed ongoing unconcern, if not impatience, with her obvious and extreme distress. In short, Linda spent the final minutes of her conscious life being tortured by these officers. 
   4. When Linda put a knife to her own throat with the clear intent to die by suicide, the cops made no attempt whatsoever to insure Linda’s safety, or even to disarm her (if you can call holding a knife to one’s own throat “armed” – specifically, a six-and-a-half-inch kitchen knife from which the sharp tip had been removed). These cowardly, bloodthirsty officers, supposedly trained not only in trauma-informed responses but also basic hand-to-hand combat, proceeded to back away from Linda, towards the door, and then shot into her chest from across the room.
   5. Following this lethal assault, the officers yelled at an immobilized, bleeding, and almost totally unconscious Linda to “calm down,” and handcuffed her. They then continued to hold Linda hostage, guarding her in her room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center. LAPD, along with its enablers in city government, treat survivors not as people in need of support, but as subhuman targets to terrorize and dispose of.
   6. It remains wholly unclear as to why an armed guard was required to protect the rest of the civilian populace from a woman who was unconscious, and on life support, upon entering the hospital on February 7th until her death on February 27th. 
2. BODY CAM FOOTAGE
   1. After taking a week to even acknowledge her death, LAPD released doctored body camera footage that represents a distressing and dishonest account of state violence, designed to sanitize LAPD’s murder. Despite the heavily edited and delayed release of the footage, the videos still reveal the disgusting reality: LAPD killed Linda Becerra Moran simply because she was a trans woman of color.
   2. We know that the real purpose of body cam footage is to absolve cops, not to hold them accountable – at enormous expense to the taxpayer.
   3. LAPD routinely does not release raw unedited body cam footage; this is a counterinsurgency strategy to minimize public outrage. There are obvious temporal gaps throughout the video. Cutting from the camera of one officer to another is an obvious excuse to conceal the terrorization these pigs inflicted on Linda before her death. WE DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE FULL, UNEDITED BODY CAM FOOTAGE OF EVERY OFFICER.
   4. The 911 call has also obviously been edited with malicious intent to mislead the public. At one point, the dispatcher addresses Linda by name – but we never hear Linda introduce herself, although that exchange must have occurred. LAPD is attempting to imply that the call was totally anonymous – with the intention to justify the fact that these officers assumed Linda was the perpetrator of crime, not the victim of it, from the moment they saw her. Meanwhile, we know that Linda went out of her way to identify herself to the operator. And what other misconduct was edited out of this call?! WE DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE FULL, UNEDITED 911 TAPE.
3. MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
   1. This is by no means the first time that someone experiencing a mental health crisis has called the police for help, only to be murdered or attacked by those very officers. Between 2017 and 2024, 31% of shootings by LA police involved a person perceived by officers to be living with mental illness or experiencing a mental health crisis (Boyle Heights Beat).
   2. On May 2nd, 2024, 40-year-old Yong Yang’s parents called the LA County Department of Mental Health for help with their son. DMH called police to the scene, who shot and killed Yang in his parents’ own living room. 
   3. In July 2023, 35-year-old Jessica Brown, a Black woman recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, was carrying nothing but a metal pipe when she was shot by LAPD’s so-called “less-lethals,” a gun that fires foam rounds and a Taser. Seconds after the “less-lethals” were discharged, LAPD opened fire with live rounds, murdering Brown.
   4. Takar Smith, a 45-year-old Black man, was fatally shot on January 2nd, 2023, after his wife had spent days trying to get help for him. She told the 911 dispatcher she called that Smith was living with schizophrenia. LAPD discharged a Taser at Smith; then, almost immediately, fatally shot him.
   5. On January 3rd, 2023 in a neighborhood in South Central, LAPD shot and killed 35-year-old Oscar Leon Sanchez when they discovered him holding a so-called “makeshift stabbing weapon” (??) and behaving extremely erratically. His family told media that Sanchez had been struggling with his mental health ever since his mother’s recent death.
4. OFFICER TRAINING
   1. LAPD’s claim that officers had no choice but to shoot Linda contradicts their own de-escalation policies – not that those policies have ever been more than PR stunts. The fact that LAPD continues to receive billions in funding for so-called “training” while their kill count rises only confirms what we already know: police violence isn’t a failure of the system. It IS the system.
5. POLICING OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
   1. The police claim to “rescue” trafficking survivors while criminalizing, brutalizing, and even murdering them. Even by their own twisted logic, LAPD’s justifications fall apart. 
6. LAPC COMPLICITY
   1. Despite clear evidence that officers gunned Linda down, the Police Commission rubber-stamped LAPD’s version of events, as they always do. LAPD will follow their usual playbook: release a statement feigning concern, drag out an “investigation” until public outrage dies down, and probably ultimately rule the murder “within policy.” They did it after LAPD murdered Keenan Anderson, Daniel Elena Lopez, Keith Porter, and countless others. This is not oversight. It’s complicity. But we will not let outrage die down, and we will not let Linda be forgotten.
7. FURTHER RESOURCES
   1. Foothill Area OIS 02/7/25 (NRF004-25) – This is LAPD’s critical incident video. It is incredibly disturbing on every level – in terms of the actual shooting, the horrific manner in which the police demean Linda and exacerbate her suffering, and the attempt to logically, rationally justify the actions of the officers (who, of course, were motivated solely by racism and transmisogyny). Please look after yourself during and after viewing. 
   2. LA Times – “A trans sex worker called 911 to report being kidnapped. LAPD officers shot and killed her” – The LA Times do a good job of amplifying this story, contextualizing Linda’s life, and exposing officer misconduct, but they insert bizarre editorialization about Linda “prompting officers to draw their weapons.” We recommend focusing on direct quotes from members of The Sidewalk Project, who knew Linda personally.
   3. LGBTQ+ community demanding justice after sex trafficking victim was shot by LAPD after calling for help – Full video recording of the vigil held to honor Linda on 3/14/25 by The Sidewalk Project, TransLatin@ Coalition, and CAST (Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking).
   4. Family of woman fatally shot by LAPD officers at motel in Arleta files lawsuit against city of LA – CBS
   5. “Just Tell Her To Calm Down”: Police Shoot Trans Woman Who Called 911 For Help – Huffington Post does a good job of emphasizing the edited/manipulated quality of the body cam footage.
   6. Family of transgender woman who was shot, killed by LAPD files lawsuit against city of Los Angeles – ABC
   7. Linda Becerra Moran, a Trans Sex Worker, Called 911 for Help. She Was Shot and Killed by an LAPD Officer. – Them.
   8. LAPD officer shoots and kills “kidnapped” trans woman after she calls 911 for help – PinkNews
   9. Linda Becerra Moran said she had been kidnapped. A police officer shot her after telling her to drop a knife. – This Advocate article is good if you’re looking for a very short but in-depth read to send to someone who isn’t already an abolitionist. Unlike a lot of the other coverage above, this piece does not imply causality between Moran allegedly “stepping towards the officers” and Officer Jason Sanchez murdering her. It also flags that this is not an isolated incident, but a pattern of state violence.
   10. A trans woman called 911 for help. Police shot & killed her. – LGBTQ Nation