New Developments on the Sage Smith Case

Today (3/30/17), the Daily Progress reports that THREE MONTHS AGO the Charlottesville Police Department classified Sage Smith's disappearance as a homicide. Why was this not announced by the Charlottesville Police Department in December when they reclassified the case as a homicide investigation?

I can only speculate that the reason this has happened after four long agonizing years for Sage's family is that it was because she was a transgender woman, not a U.Va. coed who went missing. Remember all the resources poured into the cased of two U.Va. women who went missing? Perhaps their lives were more valuable because they came from wealthy families that attended a prestigious university, not some poor transgender woman of approximately the same age demographic as the missing U.Va. students. Perhaps I am being unfairly cynical, but I don't think so.

I do find it very disturbing that the Charlottesville Police Department reclassified this case as a homicide in December and is just now making that known to the public, almost four months later. What are we to make of that?

Here is the article from today's Daily Progress.

 Search for Sage Smith now a homicide investigation

• BY LAUREN BERG

More than four years ago, Sage Smith took a walk near West Main Street in Charlottesville on her way to meet an acquaintance and was never seen again.

On Wednesday, Charlottesville police said they are now investigating the case as a homicide.

“Sage wouldn’t have just walked off,” Smith’s grandmother Lolita “Cookie” Smith said. “Somebody took Sage from me. Something happened.”

Charlottesville police reclassified the case in December but waited to release the information publicly out of consideration for Smith’s family, Lt. Steve Upman said. After a shuffle in positions and roles at the police department, detectives also wanted time to take a fresh look at the case. There are no new searches planned, he said.

Smith, a transgender woman, was last seen Nov. 20, 2012, when she left an apartment on Harris Street and walked toward West Main Street to meet someone, according to police. The case was first classified as a missing person investigation and has remained active since Smith’s disappearance.

Police said Wednesday that the reclassification means the case is now a criminal investigation, which opens up resources outside the department — such as the United States Marshals Service — and could add weight to investigative tools such as search warrants.

“A missing person is not a criminal case, so we do not have the same investigative leeway,” Upman said. “By moving it to a criminal matter, it affords us not only additional resources outside the agency, but [also] provides more opportunities to search phone records and computers, that kind of thing.”

“That was not the reason to change it, but those are opened up,” he added.

City police said in 2012 that they had limited power to search Smith’s credit card and cellphone records because the case was not a criminal investigation.

Though police said they don’t have evidence of foul play, they reclassified the case because of its suspicious nature and how much time has passed with no sign of Smith. No single element of the investigation led to the decision, Upman said, but all the available evidence made it the most appropriate step.

Calling her granddaughter a “happy, go-lucky person” who loved to dance, Lolita Smith said she is angry that it took Charlottesville police so long to reclassify the case.

“Frankly, I don’t understand why they waited so long,” she said. “It’s been four years. I think the Charlottesville Police Department dropped the ball from day one.”

“I’m angry,” she said. “I don’t understand how some cases can be solved within a matter of days or weeks and my grandchild’s case hasn’t been solved yet.”

Police said they have been in contact with the family since the case began and are actively working to resolve it.

“It remains an active investigation and one we’re committed to hopefully solving,” Upman said.

Police said they designated the case as a homicide, rather than a death investigation, because there is not yet any hard evidence that Smith is dead.

“We haven’t heard from him since he went missing,” Upman said. “We’re hopeful death is not the outcome, but there is no new evidence and nobody has heard from him.”

The last person seen with Smith — who was 19 when she disappeared — was Erik Tyquan McFadden, then 25, who has since disappeared, as well. Police called McFadden a person of interest in the case, describing him as a black male, standing at 5 feet 10 inches, with black hair and brown eyes.

When he learned the case was reclassified, Bemeche Hicks, a friend of the Smith family, said he was glad to hear it brought back into the spotlight.

“I’m curious as to what information they have to make it into a homicide investigation, but I’m glad to know they have reopened it, more or less,” Hicks said. “Maybe they’ll get more information to bring people forward — whether it’s people who have information or maybe are associated criminally.

On the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

On Tuesday January 27th, the world observed seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz in Poland by the American army. Approximately 300 Jewish survivors of this nightmarish extermination prison were able to attend on what to me was one of the saddest and most somber occasions in my memory.

The memory of the liberation of this death camp in the last days of World War II is quickly slipping from our consciousness as fewer and fewer survivors of the Holocaust survive to remind us. With their passing, the reality of man's inhumanity to man appears to have diminished as well as the world's resolve to never let such an atrocity to occur again.  Perhaps the world has never learned the lessons of such sadistic oppression and annihilation of a people based on race or religious beliefs or ones' identity. I base that statement on observing many genocides that have been perpetrated on races of people and various peoples of faith and identity all over the world that have occurred in my lifetime as the world community looks on and turns a blind eye.

Presently, we have seen a resurgence of antisemitism in Europe the Middle East, Africa and here in the United States. We see daily reports of terror attacks by Muslims on Jews and Christians in the name of Allah, both by organized military groups and by individuals all over the world. We live in a climate in which our President Obama is unwilling to name violent acts by Muslims for what they are: Islamic terrorism. Nor is Mr. Obama willing take any real effective action to end the violence and oppression of Jews, Christians, women and other minorities.

Whether this is due to a position of sympathy for Islamic perpetrators of violence or outright fear of naming and condemning the perpetrators of violence as Islamic extremism has yet to be determined. We may never know his true motivations for many years to come, as it is only the passage of time before history allows the truth to come to light about what is happening now. Will it be too late or will it ever happen at all?

There is a profound failure of the good people of the Islamic faith to confront the radical violent elements of their faith and take a stand against them. It is no different than the failure of the good people of Germany who would not take a stand against the violence perpetrated against Jews, Gays, Gypsies, and people with mental and developmental disabilities in the name of racial purification by the Nazis.

 It is no different than the good people of the America who turned a blind eye to the terrible and horrific violent oppression of Black Americans in America after the American Civil War was settled and the institution of the enslavement of Black people was ended, yet their institutionalized suffering, oppression and disenfranchisement continued through the late 1960's.

It is a failure that will end in more instances of genocide and the oppression of people of all races and faiths and identities. If allowed to continue, it will result in the same end for us that Nazi Germany came close to accomplishing against others who were not of the Aryan race.

While the American Left appears to be apologetic and quite tolerant towards Radical Islam, they ignore the threat to their own cherished values. They will not be spared as the rest of us will not be spared. Our President Obama seems to harbor an animus towards the Jewish people that is palpable and he seems to tacitly embrace the culture of violence and destruction towards all those who are different or believe differently than Radical Muslims do.

As a woman of transsexual experience, I am fearful of the policies of the White House. While the Obama administration has done more to promote the civil liberties and freedoms that I enjoy because of legislation he has enacted, the policies he pursues in the international arena will lead to the violent oppression of Jews, Christians, women, gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. Even their lives will be sacrificed simply for being who they are or for their religious beliefs.

The passage was written during the Jewish Holocaust by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It is as true today as when it was written. What will you do when they come for you because of your identity or your beliefs? Who will stand for you?