Police launch hate crime investigation after video shows trans women violently removed from bar

Police in California have launched a hate crime investigation after a group of transgender women were forcibly removed from a bar in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend.

The trans women were celebrating their participation in a local Pride event along with other male and non-binary staff members from the Latino community-based health care organisation Bienestar Human Services at Las Perlas bar on Friday night when the altercation occurred.

The videos, which have since gone viral after being posted to Facebook, show security staff violently grabbing the trans women, as well as a gay man, and carrying them outside, in some instances throwing them into a wall and dragging them through the crowded bar as patrons looked on.

A Facebook user by the name of Khloe Bienestar, who uploaded the videos to her page the next day, said it all began when a couple next to their group began insulting them with transphobic comments, slurs and death threats.

She later said the security staff “didn’t use any force” towards the couple that began insulting them at their table. The disturbing video, which at one point shows a woman asking “what happened?” before she gets dragged out of the bar by security, arrived as deadly violence against transgender people is on the rise, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Jennifer Bianchi was filmed in one of the videos pleading with security staff to let her retrieve her shoe before she was violently thrown out of the bar.

“It’s been so traumatizing,” she told The Guardian on Monday. “I feel it was an assault, and it was a violation of my human rights.”

She also said the man in the couple who began insulting her group appeared “violent,” asking: “Why would they kick us outside? They were putting our lives at risk.”

The man who was insulting the group slapped one of the trans women before security forcibly removed them, another trans woman involved in the incident told the newspaper.

“He said he was going to come back and shoot us all,” she added.

The couple allegedly involved in the altercation have not yet been identified by police. The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Owners of Las Perlas bar have apologised to the LGBTQ+ community for the incident, vowing to donate its profits from the weekend to Bienestar.

The bar has also announced it was hiring a new security team that has received “sensitivity training,” as well as an independent outside counsel to assess what happened over the weekend.