Heather Panter: Transgender Homicides and Policing Policy
From bias to better practice?
Dr Heather Panter is a former police officer turned criminologist. She is a Senior Lecturer in LJMU’s School of Justice and a member of the Centre for Advanced Policing. With over a decade of frontline experience in American law enforcement, she brings a personal perspective to her research on policing, institutional bias and LGBT+ inclusion. Her research examines how US and UK police perceive LGBT+ identities and LGBT+ police, including the implications of how LBGT+ homicide victims are depicted in investigations and in the media. Heather’s work bridges lived experience and academic inquiry, challenging systems from within and advocating for meaningful change.
Her move into higher education wasn’t about leaving policing behind, it was about understanding it more deeply. ‘I realised pretty quickly’, she explains, ‘that existing as a gender non-conforming person in policing wasn’t enough to shift the culture. Being an advocate in uniform only went so far’.
That realisation, sharpened by deeply personal experiences of gender bias and institutional silence, became the foundation of Heather’s research journey. Now based at LJMU, she’s using that journey to discover and challenge the structural blind spots in how police forces understand, support, and represent LGBT+ identities—both within the force and across wider society.
‘You can’t be a social scientist without being a social warrior’
Heather’s early observations as an officer are arresting: male-assigned individuals presenting femininely were ostracised or sidelined, while female-assigned individuals exhibiting traditional masculinity were embraced, even if gender non-conforming. It was this sense of a systematic dissonance that sparked her initial PhD, which would lead into her first book. Transgender Cops: The Intersection of Gender and Sexuality Expectations in Police Cultures (2018), was the first publication globally to examine the societal and occupational factors behind the lack of acceptance of transgender individuals in policing. It provided evidence-based policy recommendations to address these issues.
Her doctoral work explored the lived experiences of transgender police officers in the UK. One early interview with a British officer unexpectedly shifted the entire trajectory of her project. ‘I genuinely thought she was a cis lesbian’, Heather recalls. ‘We’d been talking for over an hour when I asked if there was anything else she wanted to add. That’s when she said, “Actually, I’m trans—and we need help”’. It was a moment that stopped Heather in her tracks. ‘I had to check my own privilege, step back, and ask—what am I missing here? What don’t I see because of where I sit in the community? That moment shifted everything’, she recalls.
That interview opened the door to deeper conversations, new networks and eventually, a strong connection with the National Trans Police Association (NTPA), a group supporting trans police officers across the UK. From that point on, her research became a bridge between trans officers and institutions, helping shape police policy across several forces and forging new relationships with organisations like the NTPA. It’s a body of work rooted making beneficial changes and in giving voice to those too often overlooked. ‘If your research isn’t making an impact, then why are you doing it? As a social scientist, I have a duty to look at the uncomfortable stuff—and find ways to make it better’, she says. In doing so, Heather’s work directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 5 (Gender Equality), Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), pushing for a more inclusive, equitable, and accountable approach to policing.
Her research has since expanded into how transgender homicide victims are handled—and often mishandled, by police investigations in the United States. She is currently collaborating with non-profits in both the US and UK to develop best practices for how transgender victims of homicide are identified and represented, both by law enforcement and in the media. It’s an area where seemingly small oversights can have enormous implications. ‘Too often, cases are delayed or mishandled because the victims are misgendered or misrepresented. That’s not just bad practice—it’s a matter of justice’. Misidentification can severely affect case solvability, leading to fewer leads, fewer witnesses, and ultimately, fewer answers.
As part of this work, Heather is developing a technical note with the Trans Doe Task Force, a US-based trans-led non-profit that focuses on researching and identifying LGBTQ+ missing and murdered persons—particularly those who may have been transgender. The organisation also educates the public, media, and forensic professionals about the unique challenges of Trans Doe cases. The forthcoming technical note will offer guidance for medical and forensic professionals on appropriate terminology and documentation in homicide cases, including recommendations for postmortem reports.
One of the long-term goals is to change documentation procedures to better support homicide investigations and ensure dignity and accuracy in how victims are recorded. While the UK now includes ‘gender’ on death certificates, it is still absent from the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death. In the United States, gender is not systematically recorded during the postmortem documentation process, and significant inconsistencies exist nationally in how gender is documented. Moreover, in many countries, gender is not recorded at all during death investigations. These gaps in documentation hinder the ability to accurately identify and understand mortality disparities within LGBT+ communities. Heather and her collaborators hope to push for international standardisation to address these critical gaps and improve justice outcomes for transgender victims.
In many of the American cases Heather has studied, police investigations were delayed or derailed due to misgendering. In one instance, officers circulated a flyer with a masculine image to LGBT+ venues while asking for help identifying a victim, who had in fact lived and presented as a woman for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, no one recognised the person in the photo. The disconnect stalled the case and reflected a deeper, systemic problem: how institutions frame identity can directly impact justice.
As part of a study of US transgender homicides 2013-2023, Heather has compiled a comprehensive dataset of how these cases showed distinctive characteristics and whether these were reflected in the police disclosure during and after the investigation. This piece of research used detective skills honed in her previous law enforcement role. She examined obituaries, court documents and funeral announcements to understand not only how victims were killed, but to create a robust typology of how they were (mis)remembered and what happened in the case as a result.
The dataset is a tool for boosting investigations and to help agencies recover community trust in law enforcement, particularly among LGBT+ populations who already experience marginalisation in the context. It has an economic benefit to law enforcement, as misgendering results in wasted resources when officers pursue false leads or fail to reach key witnesses who don’t recognise the person being described. This inefficiency places an additional burden on already overstretched police forces, diverts funding and resources, as well as drags out timelines for grieving families seeking closure. When misgendering occurs in official records, it doesn’t just hinder investigations, it shapes how deaths are reported, how victims are remembered, and contributes to the erasure of trans people from public memory and statistical data. Perhaps most crucially, though, misgendering strips victims of dignity in death, misrepresenting who they were and how they lived. Accurate identification isn’t just a procedural necessity; it’s a matter of respect, remembrance, and justice.
Toward better forensic practice
At LJMU Heather advocates for inclusive, evidence-based policing and weaves her research into teaching, challenging students, many of whom are current or aspiring police officers, to think differently by examining assumptions that might cloud an investigation. The goal is to equip everyone to identify specific opportunities for improving outcomes. This includes looking at the standard information collection for victim identification.
‘There’s still no box for gender identity on post-mortem reports’, she says. ‘Yet we’re recording things like the brand of socks a victim wore’. This problem reduces the chances of solving a case, and the implications go further. When victims are misrepresented, community trust erodes, families are retraumatised and critical information can be lost. That’s why Heather is advocating for change—not just in policing, but in how coroners, pathologists, journalists and others record and communicate gender identity.
‘I’m not saying a coroner should look at someone and assume they’re trans just because they’re wearing a dress,’ Heather explains. However, ‘if someone is biologically male and presenting in a feminine or non-conforming way—say, wearing a skirt or makeup—that detail might not influence the investigation at all, but it could be crucial to identifying them accurately’.
Her point is powerful: ‘If we can document every minute detail of a crime scene, surely, we can note how a person presented. That kind of accurate, respectful documentation can make all the difference—not only in solving crimes, but in honouring lives’.
Looking ahead: Impact through training
Heather’s work has already begun to shape police practice and contribute to a deeper cultural understanding within UK policing. An ongoing project on transgender homicides—listed on the College of Policing’s research project map to ensure its findings are shared across police constabularies, focuses on improving forensic methods, understanding offender motivations, and recognising patterns of violence targeting transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Working alongside Dr Amanda Farrell, whose input was instrumental in refining the project’s direction, Heather is helping to bring critical forensic insights to the forefront of this under-researched area. The project has already led to multiple research outputs, including significant forthcoming work.
Ultimately, the work will support more effective investigative approaches. and enhance the understanding of homicide trends in this marginalised community. The work opens new avenues for benefitting society and increasing the number of successful investigations, including ways of describing victims to the public. Heather highlights, ‘I’d love to create operational training for the media, for coroners, for anyone involved in presenting victims to the public. We need consistency, we need empathy, and we need to stop criminalising victims’.
Sometimes, sustaining this work means navigating resistance—both personal and institutional. ‘There are still departments that won’t let me near their officers […] I get hate mail’. But Heather explains how she has drawn support from colleagues and emphasises the value of increasing these collaborations between researchers.
Impact mentorship
As an early-career academic working in a highly sensitive and often politicised field, Heather has experienced first-hand the challenges of pursuing meaningful change in fraught areas. While her work has had a tangible influence on police policy and public understanding, the emotional and institutional weight of her subject matter can be considerable.
Impact-related mentorship, she says, is one area where more structured support would make a real difference, not only for herself, but for others working on topics that face similar resistance or misunderstanding. At LJMU, she has found solidarity through cross-disciplinary research communities such as QLJMU, which brings together staff working on LGBT+ topics. While she is currently the only member from policing studies, the network has provided a valuable space for connection, informal peer support, and taking methodologies in new directions. Future research will explore how police forces interact with other marginalised communities, including the d/Deaf community.
Heather’s reflections also speak to a wider issue in groundbreaking research impact. Universities must be able to create inclusive research cultures that support sensitive work to be carried out for the benefit of others. For researchers developing evidence-based means of tackling stigma, bias, and identity-based injustice, access to mentorship and an engaged scholarly community isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.
Heather spoke with Elysia Greenway