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Photograph via Kansas City Police Department illustration by the Guardian The Kansas City police say they are reviewing all evidence given to them in the Greene case and that “savvy” detectives would be able to handle leads from online and in the LGBT community. And Dionte Greene ended up with a gunshot to the face in the driver’s seat of his car. Moments later, Dionte Greene’s friend heard yelling. “He looks just like his Facebook picture,” Greene allegedly said. As they spoke, according to other friends with knowledge of this conversation, the man started walking towards Greene’s car. When Greene arrived at the pre-arranged meeting spot in a quiet residential area just miles north of his home, he was on the phone with a friend who could sense that Greene was a little nervous about the meeting. But something changed, and the “trade” agreed to meet up that night, Greene’s friends said. The “trade” was very much on the fence about having sex with men, according to accounts of these messages, and he very much did not want his sexual secret to be found out. Trade is a man you don’t necessarily trust – more of a risk than many are willing to take.Īccording to friends who saw his private messages, Greene had been in correspondence online with this “trade” for some time prior to their meeting, as the man apparently tried to decide whether or not they should meet up. “Trade” is a version of “on the down-low” – terms used within black LGBT communities to describe a man who doesn’t “appear gay” but who engages in sex with men unbeknownst to his family and most of his friends. But before the party, Greene had plans with some “trade” he had been talking to online, several of his friends told me. On 30 October, Dionte Greene finished work before midnight to attend a “turn-about” party, where people show up dressed as a different gender. Not Dionte.” Photograph courtesy of Coshelle Greene illustration by the Guardian “It’s been really tough,” a friend said, nearly a month after the killing and on the eve of the Ferguson grand jury decision. Especially when the cops would rather not check an extra box. Greene’s mother and many of the other people I interviewed in Kansas City fear that since Greene’s body was discovered in a low-income, high-crime area that is predominantly black, his case will merely be classified as another crime against a black person by a black person – rather than a modern kind of true crime against a gay man who was also black, by a man who may have been afraid of the truth.Īnd they should be worried, because justice vanishes too often with cases that force police departments and even the most progressive communities to consider victims who lived at the intersection of multiple sexual and gender identities – the complex people who are at a much higher risk of facing hate-motivated violence, or even perpetrating it.Įspecially when you’re black. “Being that he wasn’t a street person, and didn’t have enemies, I lean towards it having to be someone who was on the down-low or someone so against gay people that they would do this.” he was quiet – not a problem child,” Coshelle Greene told me late last month, as a nation began to confront what justice looks like for young black lives lost too soon. One human’s self-doubt can be the end of another’s life, and even with hate crimes on the rise across the US, that letter of our lethargic law means we’ll never know about violence we’re already not doing enough to prevent. But in the eyes of the law – or at least law enforcement – that man’s alleged sexual interest in Greene means this killing and others like it cannot be considered hate crimes.
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In the minds of Greene’s family and friends, there is no doubt that he was murdered because he was gay – probably, they say, by the man he decided to meet.