On Feb. 15, 2024, Annie Jump Vicente, an extremely visible and outspoken trans rights advocate in WeHo (West Hollywood), was involved in an altercation with a Block by Block Ambassador. [Editor’s note: The Ambassadors are a civilian auxiliary to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The city-funded, uniformed guards conduct patrols on foot and bike.]
Annie Jump says that the Ambassador sexually assaulted her by grabbing her breasts, and that she acted in self-defense. Annie Jump’s defending herself against the attacker resulted in her arrest and a subsequent felony charge for “an assault with a deadly weapon” (pepper spray), which she has been fighting for the last 24 months.
I will begin this article by stating that Annie Jump and I are co-founders/co-directors of a non-profit org. I was out of the country when the incident happened so I have no direct knowledge of it; however, based on my personal relationship with Annie Jump, I have first-hand and intimate insight into Annie Jump’s activities as a citizen auditor in WeHo and occasional antagonism/harassment that she suffered at the hands of Block by Block employees, leading up to the incident on Feb. 15, 2024.
This article is very deliberately subtitled “NOT A CAUTIONARY TALE,” where another title such as “Our Right to Self Defense” would have been a more obvious choice. By choosing this rather counterintuitive subtitle, I wanted to draw attention to my and many others’ suspicion that there is a malicious intent surrounding her cases to make an example out of Annie Jump.
The authorities want to discourage others from being as vocal, unafraid, and persistent as she has been when it comes to advocating and defending the rights of queer people, the poor, and unhoused. She has never been someone who reserves their activism only for weekend “permitted” protests.
Annie Jump was seen engaging in conversations with Block by Block Ambassadors almost daily; she had very specific objectives of questioning them about the nature of their job. (Pushing the unhoused out of public spaces in the name of anti-loitering and calling cops on them is not “de-escalation.”) The interactions sometimes spawned uninvited hostility accompanied by open displays of transphobia; misgendering Annie Jump was a common behavior amongst Block by Block Ambassadors. Once, Annie Jump says, an Ambassador even went so far as to threaten to kill her four-legged companion, Sweet Dee.
Before adding historical and political contexts to the cases, what needs to be emphasized here is that Annie Jump maintains, and her defense argues, that the physical aggression was initiated by the Ambassador when he grabbed her breasts. Annie Jump was wearing a bodycam at the time of the incident; the footage was seized by the LASD upon her arrest and later entered into evidence at the request of her legal counsel. Her defense contends the footage clearly establishes that she acted in self-defense.
There is security camera footage that shows the altercation from afar, only from one angle, without sound. The footage was released right after the incident to the media and has been circulating on the internet.
I’ve received messages from perfect strangers claiming that “it is clear from the footage that Annie Jump was the aggressor.” I find this extremely disturbing and problematic because of the dangers of the media’s influence on pre-trial public perceptions.
It seems to me that some people have already made a judgment against Annie Jump, despite the principle of the presumption of innocence.
I highly recommend that people check out the New Jersey Four (as told in a 2014 documentary film “Out in the Night”) legal case, where a group of Black lesbians were labeled in the media as a “Gang of Killer Lesbians” and sentenced to prison for defending themselves from a homophobic sexual assault. (Their names were later substantially cleared, but not till after some in the group had served eight years in prison.)
Lastly, I would like to address an accusation that has been made against Annie Jump that she is a racist and that her “attacks” on Ambassadors were racially motivated. Nothing is further from the truth. Annie Jump has always engaged all Ambassadors equally, regardless of their race. It is true that Block by Block Ambassadors are disproportionately made up of Black and Brown folx. If we were to discuss the racial dynamics, as Annie Jump, a person of Puerto Rican descent, has often pointed out, we need to acknowledge the fact that the system is structured so people of color are often made to do white people’s bidding: namely, harass/abuse/criminalize fellow POCs.
Annie Jump asked many difficult questions, which made WeHo’s liberal establishment extremely uncomfortable. They succeeded in pushing out the most vocal trans activist from the city, and now are attempting to lock her away where her voice can no longer be heard. In the political climate where the federal government speaks of its desire to put bounties on the heads of us trans activists, Annie Jump’s cases should be closely watched.
As a trans person, a trans rights activist, a parent of a trans child, an immigrant, a child of Hiroshima where more than 300,000 civilians were subjected to the grossest form of state violence in 1945, I cannot allow us to live in a world where we can be silenced and disappeared for being bold and fearless fighters for human rights.
Author’s Note: Annie Jump has three cases that she is fighting: one felony and two misdemeanors. This article focuses on her felony case. The third case was added to the list very recently. I am calling it “a phantom case” because the LASD claims they arrested her in June 2024, which Annie Jump says she has no knowledge of or recollection of. Annie Jump’s next pre-trial court date is Feb.19, 2026.
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