POLITICS
Police Union Calls Ritchie Torres First Class Whore
Union outraged after out gay lawmaker calls for probe of possible work slowdown
BY EMILY DAVENPORT
The Sergeants Benevolent
Association (SBA)
smeared out gay Bronx
City Councilmember and
Congressional candidate Ritchie
Torres as a “fi rst class whore” on
September 4 after he called for an
investigation into a possible work
slowdown at the NYPD.
Torres participated in a press
conference earlier in the day with
Brooklyn Borough President Eric
Adams outside City Hall in Manhattan,
where they called for an
independent investigation into a
possible slowdown in police responses.
“In 2020, we saw nearly a doubling
of the surge in summertime
shootings. The NYPD is making
fewer gun arrests, solving fewer
cases and responding more slowly
to gun crimes in progress,” Torres
said. “The dramatic increase
in gun violence can be best explained
by the dramatic decrease
Out gay City Councilmember Ritchie Torres was targeted by the Sergeants Benevolent Association on
Twitter.
in gun enforcement. That’s why we
are calling for an investigation to
examine whether there is, in fact,
a work slowdown, and to what extent
has the work slowdown driven
the growth in violence in New York
City.”
That prompted the SBA — led
by its president, Ed Mullins — to
issue the slur later Friday afternoon
NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL/ JEFF REED
criticizing Torres for his position.
Their tweet included a photo
of Torres being arrested at a 2017
rally against the Trump administration’s
plans to cut Housing and
Urban Development funding.
“He sic we go America this is
what a fi rst class whore looks like
RITCHIE TORRES. Passes laws to
defund police, supports criminals,
& now because he’s running for offi
ce he blames the police to protect
what he voted for. Remember Little
Ritchie? Meet LYING RITCHIE,”
the SBA tweeted.
Torres responded with a retweet
in which he blasted the SBA as a
“bona fi de hate group masquerading
as a union.”
“The racism, misogyny and homophobia
of Ed Mullins gives @
realDonaldTrump a run for his
money,” Torres charged.
He accidentally tweeted at the
Small Business Administration
in his tweet, but Torres corrected
that with the SBA’s offi cial Twitter
account, adding, “I intended to refer
to the NYC hate group, not the
small business agency.”
The accusations that Torres and
Adams made of a possible police
slowdown were also critiqued by
the Police Benevolent Association
on Twitter — though their response
to Torres was far less caustic.
COMMUNITY
➤ COP UNION V. RITCHIE, continued on p.36
Trans Woman Found at Bronx’s Beach Drowned
Days after 23-year-old is found in the sand, medical examiner says no signs of foul play
BY MATT TRACY
The 23-year-old transgender woman
who was found dead at Orchard
Beach on August 31 accidentally
drowned, the city medical examiner
told Gay City News on September 4.
Elie Che, who lived in London before moving
to New York City, was found shortly after 6
a.m. on Monday morning when police offi cers
found them unconscious and unresponsive in
the sand. EMS responders rushed to the scene,
where they pronounced them dead.
Days later, the medical examiner declared
Che’s cause of death to be accidental drowning
at the beach, which sits at the base of Pelham
Bay on the east side of the the Bronx. There
were no signs or indications of trauma or struggle,
according to offi cials.
It is not clear when Che, who was living in
GOFUNDME
Elie Che, 23, drowned by accident at Orchard Beach on August 31,
and the medical examiner said there were no signs of trauma or
struggle.
Manhattan, died or how they drowned. Further
details surrounding the circumstances of their
death remain unclear.
While the medical examiner referred to Che
as Ellie Williams — and the initial police report
deadnamed them — they went by the name Elie
Che on the GoFundMe page they created as well
as on social media platforms like Instagram.
They described themself as a Black transgener
woman. An individual who identifi ed as a friend
of Che contacted Gay City News to say Che used
the pronoun they/ them.
Che created a GoFundMe page in July in a
plea for help as they struggled to survive fi nancially.
They wrote about their experiences navigating
life as a Black transgender woman and
the employment discrimination they faced, as
well as the hardship they endured during the
coronavirus pandemic.
Che had more than 4,000 followers on Instagram,
where they most recently posted photos
of themselves in Harlem on August 21.
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