Stand with Eli: End Inhumane Jail Conditions for Trans Folks

ETA: Everything in here has been approved by Eli, and I read him the final write-up to give his ok before it was posted. He is aware that this information is out there.

9.11.2024

My name is Becky Peterson, and I’m writing this to establish a bail and legal fund as my cousin Elijah spends his 36th birthday sitting in the Dane County Jail in Madison, Wisconsin today. To many this may sound like a fantastical tale made up to condemn law enforcement officials, but I am confident every word is true. Eli is one of the strongest people I know, and this has nearly broken him.

“Law enforcement would literally have to go to war with the public to make arrests if other people experienced jail like trans people experienced jail. There would be ubiquitous noncompliance.” ~Eli 9/9/24

In Madison, Wisconsin, a “Sanctuary City” for transgender people, an incarcerated man spent 46 days in solitary confinement in Dane County Jail between July 13th, 2024 and September 1st, 2024, because he was born in the wrong body. For 8 of those days he was stripped naked and left in his cell with nothing but a blanket because he was on a suicide hold that he was left on by administration despite repeatedly being cleared by psych. For 3 weeks as he protested their denial of toilet paper, he was told to wipe with that same blanket. For over a month he was denied the most basic hygienic care such as showers, soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. He was allowed to change clothes once a week. He was kept in total isolation 23 hours per day, denied anything except paper in his cell, restricted from contacting the outside world, refused mail, and arbitrarily denied even music.

Dane County Jail is a facility that has had plumbing issues for decades. For a week there was an inch of sewage in Eli’s cell. They gave him tap water to drink that was “as white as skim milk”. This is a man awaiting a bail reduction hearing, supposedly innocent until proven guilty. These would be atrocious conditions anywhere on earth, and they are happening right here on our beautiful Isthmus, nestled between Lake Monona and the state Capitol building.

“Eli was born into shame, chaos, violence, addiction and rejection and had to rise up, and I still am. [Deadname] was born into privilege and just had to blend in.” ~Eli 9/10/24

To be fully transparent, Eli used to work for Madison Police Department (MPD). He was one of the first officers on MPD to openly transition while employed there, and he experienced a great deal of abuse for doing so. As he began to see the cracks in the facade, he witnessed wrongdoing perpetrated by the police that should have never happened. An example of this is his witness to an open wrongful death suit involving a 16-year-old child in 2020 (Abdoul Malick Sillah vs. City of Madison, et al).

Eli concedes, “Due to electronic monitoring of communication from the Dane County Jail, I have to limit the information I can share on any open criminal cases. In summary, however, I had a few open cases out of Jefferson County from 2022-23 that I will openly attribute to a very long and public battle with alcoholism.”

In July 2024, after 7 months of sobriety, Elijah began to reconcile some of the trauma from his past, including that which stemmed from acts of violence perpetrated by police. He began to quickly realize that if you’re not with them, you’re against them. What followed was a relentless barrage of persecution and prosecution, the majority of which was by MPD and Dane County Sheriff Office (DCSO). That has resulted in constant charges filed against him, starting in early July 2024, the probable cause for each becoming more bizarre and fictional as time progressed. Even more shocking, MPD chose to charge him with felony possession of a firearm that their own Officer removed from lockup and hand-delivered to him in their time off work, advising him it was legal.

On one of these occasions, Eli was arrested for provoking a disturbance trying to remove someone from his own apartment who was actively attempting to assault him. Eventually this person was able to attack him, knock him unconscious for 5 minutes, strangle him while he was unconscious, and leave him for dead bleeding out on the floor. He ended up with 10 stitches and a brain bleed. He also ended up with a charge of disorderly conduct, and another trip to jail. He was stone cold sober at the time, confirmed by blood draw. I became aware of Eli’s legal troubles at this time, because he posted a picture of his injuries on Facebook on 7.31.24 with the caption, “I’m done with silence. Buckle up, #madisonpolicedepartment.”

Silence was exactly what they wanted though, and I don’t believe it is a coincidence that when I next heard from Eli, he was still sitting in segregation. I received a call from Eli’s mother on 8.15.24 asking me if I could foster his dogs, as they’d already been boarded for several weeks, and they needed a longer term solution until some headway could be made in getting Eli back home. Eli and I started talking about the dogs once a day when he was allowed out of his cell for one hour to make collect calls, and that was when I started learning the details about what had been going on in the jail.

At first they outright admitted that they were putting him in segregation because they did not have any suitable options for him as a transgender man. When his protests became louder, and he began filing grievances and begging to be put anywhere with other inmates, even if it was in female housing, they asked him if he would go off his gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy (HRT), shave his facial hair, and go by another name. They cited PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) as the reason he could not be housed with other men. They then started telling him that the reason he was being kept in segregation wasn’t because he’s trans, but because of his “behavior” and “attitude”.

Part of the reason some may write this off as the ravings of a desperate man is because it doesn’t seem like it should be legal, the way he’s been treated. And that is part of the problem. It is egregiously illegal to have done what Dane County Jail did. Two statutes provide the basis for solitary confinement use in Wisconsin; 302.40 covers Discipline and 308.04 covers Administrative Confinement. Dane County kept him in segregation for far longer than allowed by 302.40, and denied him the due process guaranteed by 308.04. His Constitutional rights were also violated. The 8th Amendment to the Constitution states Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Despite the illegality of their actions, however, Dane County Jail continued to treat him inhumanely, and acted with an air of impunity. It wasn’t until myself and others began reaching out to the jail, the Governor’s office, the Department of Corrections, civil rights organizations, and local news stations that the jail took him out of solitary confinement and moved him to maximum security administrative confinement with some of the most behaviorally troublesome women in the jail. While there, he became a PREA victim due to the jail’s, “We’ll see how he likes this” approach of housing him next to someone with a list 27 names long of people she can’t be around in the jail already.

It wasn’t until Eli’s PREA complaint about the sexual abuse he experienced was substantiated on 9.1.24 that he was moved to female general housing. Within three minutes, the supposed “criminals” had respectfully asked his name and pronouns, and welcomed him with open arms. When I spoke to him his first night there, he was helping another inmate with her Spanish lessons, and he has started learning more about law and assisting the women there write statements to read at their court dates. Classification, the people who were making the decisions about his housing all the way through, sent a deputy to ask him his pronouns on 9.9.2024, nearly two months after they initiated contact with him.

Eli is recognizing the disproportionate harm that policing does to queer, racialized, and other margianalized communities. He is making amends for any contributions he made to a system of oppression fueled by the Police Victim Complex. He knows there is a lot of work left to do, and when you’re up against entities as large and powerful as MPD and DCSO, the road ahead can look insurmountable. That is why I am starting this fund. Eli needs to be able to bail himself out after the bail/bond reduction hearing on Thursday, September 12th. He will then need to be prepared to hit the ground running on a Section 1983 lawsuit against Dane County for the discrimination and inhumane treatment he received in the jail. I’m starting this GoFundMe with a goal of $10,000, but that may be increased in the future as bail is decided and more firm numbers for legal fees are determined.

This can’t happen to another transgender person. There is no reason that trans people can’t have the same rights kept intact while awaiting trial as any other inmate that enters Dane County Jail. Eli is committed to advancing the rights of transgender inmates in Dane County Jail. Any funds that do not go to his bail and legal fees will be directly applied to activism efforts geared toward changes for transgender inmates locally incarcerated.