After being arrested for shoplifting at Sapell’s in Lakewood, Robin Spitfire Adelmann found herself at the Lakewood Police Department on Dec. 21, 2014.
The booking process and the stint in jail were standard-issue police protocol. Robin, a transgender woman living at a women’s shelter in Cleveland, says the officers were polite — issuing her a cell in the female block and acting respectfully overall. But when a detective got to her the next day for paperwork and questioning, Robin began hearing the all-too-familiar tones of Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” filtering through the police department building. Nearby at another desk, Det. Thomas McLaughlin had started “blasting” the song on a stereo or computer, Robin says.
“I look at the detective [questioning me] and I’m like, ‘You know why he’s doing that, right?’ And the detective was like, ‘Hey, what can ya do?'” Robin says. After the song ended, McLaughlin cued up “Lola” by the Kinks, known for its lyrics about a man meeting a transgender woman. The detective interviewing Robin got up and asked McLaughlin to knock it off (“Hey!” Robin says she heard McLaughlin say, “it’s a good song!”).
After reading our December feature story on a 2011 assault on two transgender women in Cleveland, Robin reached out to Scene in January to concur with that story’s main subject that all manner of harassment takes place on a regular basis for transgender people. It’s a constant, she says.
“This song is like the bane of our existence,” Robin, a tall blonde, continues, referring to a number of incidents involving the Aerosmith tune and the transgender population writ large. “I’ve been in bars when guys have seen me and gone up to the jukebox and played that fucking song.” And she says that it’s one thing to deal with 20-something morons out at the bars, but when an allegedly professional detective at, say, Lakewood Police Department pulled that move, the pain became too much.
Over coffee at a spot in Steelyard Commons on a cold January afternoon, Robin tells Scene that she ended up in a nearby emergency room the night she left the police department on Dec. 22. She had washed down a handful of painkillers with liquor.
“I live in a homeless shelter, but things have been going well for me,” she says. “I’m really loving the fact that I decided to transition and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But some of this is really difficult. I hear that kind of stuff on the street every single day, no matter what. So when I heard it from a professional police officer who is supposed to protect us, it was just too much.”
She filed a complaint the following morning, on which she followed up today over the phone and learned that McLaughlin had been verbally warned and ordered to undergo some sort of sensitivity training. McLaughlin has worked with the Lakewood Police Department since 1992.
Scene picked up the call logs for the Dec. 21 theft. The responding officer reported arresting a male shoplifter.
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2015.
What the hell would make someone so stupid and cruel?
I expected more from Lakewood PD. This is unacceptable behavior. When the President of the United States sticks up for transgender people in the State of the Union speech, it’s way past time for people like Dec. Thomas McLaughlin to grow up and stop embarrassing himself, the police department, and the city of Lakewood.
Shameful lack of empathy on display by the police. Makes you wonder how they would deal with someone on the street who didn’t fit the mold.
If there were something funny about the situation perhaps Robin would have laughed, but there was nothing funny about this situation. The intent of playing that song was to insult. The act was extremely unprofessional, hurtful and entirely inappropriate.
ZERO tolerance should be the policy!
So much for equal rights, when you have officers (guardians of the community) acting like immature imbeciles!
If ya’ll knew what a great detective Officer McLaughlin is like I do, ya’ll would stick a sock in it and stop with the jibbity jabbity. I recall a hair raising incident on Andrews Avenue just a few years ago where Det. McLaughlin saved the day. A group of black banditos from Cleveland randomly targeted the house of a Lakewood School crossing guard for burglary. He came home after lunchtime duty and caught the punkers hauling stuff out of his abode.
Det. McLaughlin was among those who came charging to the scene. He cornered one of the hoodrats in a backyard and placed him under arrest. The slimy spermer locked his hand onto a fence and would not release it. Det. McLaughlin made a fist and pounded on the idiot’s paw until he released his. In the process, Det. McLaughlin BROKE HIS OWN HAND!! How’s that for a dedicated public servant?
Those of you who swing at the Lakewood Public Library with frequency have certainly seen Det. McLaughlin in action as he moonlights there several days per week. I tell you I saw him standing out behind in the parking lot on a lazy Sunday afternoon several years back. He was taking in some fresh air when in the distance there were loud squeals of a car tire. Sounded like horseplay, except it was something you had to see to believe.
Flying down Mars Avenue was car going 50…60 miles per hour trying to run down a bicyclist. The hooptie flew onto Detroit and then back around the Dollar General parking lot. Without the slightest hesitation, Det. McLaughlin slipped into his cape and was a goshdurn superhero you had to see it to believe it. He ran right into the middle of it. He managed to stop the car and rescue the bicyclist. Here’s the amazing part: He did it all without drawing his piece. He projected his voice and used some strong body language to get things under control. Turned out the driver was chasing some fella who he thought stole his bicycle. It was right out of a superhero movie. No doubt Det. McLaughlin saved that man’s lives.
So, before all ya’ll bring out the boiling oil and bury him, ya’ll ought to pause and get real cause this ain’t nuthin but a slow news day and that’s all it is.
Did you use a Lakewood city computer to write that? Or did you write it on your phone during work hours?
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
If someone had to go down to the station to pick up their grandmother who was mugged and knocked down and trampled in the process, and a cop played Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer I do not think you’d be laughing!
This is hilarious
This is especially fuct when you consider the diverse & progressive population of Lakewood. Im sorry Robin had to deal with this severely immature behavior.
Trannies are gross.
The song is funny and I hate when a dude decides to put on a dress and thinks his gender magically changed. This used to be labeled a mental disorder but now it’s just a sign of the times. It all goes back to parenting. Who wants to bet he had horrible parents?