Trannie Attack!

Special thanks to Dillon for sending this story. I had heard about this but had not see it in print. Read on...



Transvestite crime gangs pester Magazine Street owners


Robyn Lewis, owner of Dark Charm fashion and accessories for women,
represents the first line of defense for the Magazine Street shop owners.
She is the first to see them come strutting in their pumps down St. Andrew
Street, the bewigged pack of thieves who have plagued the Lower Garden
District since May. Like an SOS flare, Lewis grabs her emergency phone list and starts calling.

“They’re coming,” she warns Eric Ogle a salesman at Vegas, a block down
Magazine Street. Ogle, who was terrorized by the brazen crew two months
earlier, alerts neighboring Winky’s where manager Kendra Bonga braces for
the onslaught.

Soon every shop owner in the 2000 block of Magazine Street has been alerted.

Sarah Celino at Trashy Diva eyes the door, ready to flip the lock at the
first sight of the ringleader’s pink jumpsuit and fluorescent red wig.

Down at Turncoats, where the fashion-happy gang once made off with more than
$2,000 in merchandise, store manager Wes Davis stands ready.

Davis said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They survived Hurricane
Katrina’s Category 3 winds and the ensuing looters. They reopened despite
the long odds of doing business in a devastated city. The last thing the
Magazine Street shop owners expected to threaten their survival was a crime
ring of transvestites.

“They’re fearless,” said Ogle. “Once they see something they like they won’t
stop until they have it. They don’t care, they’ll go to jail. It’s really
gotten bad. You know it’s ridiculous when everyone on the block knows who
they are.”


Expensive tastes

The transvestites first appeared in March when they raided Magazine Street
like a marauding army of kleptomaniacal showgirls, said Davis, using
clockwork precision and brute force to satisfy high-end boutique needs.

They first hit Vegas March 31 while Ogle was working.

“They come in groups of three or four. One tries to distract you while the
others get the stuff and run out the door. It’s very simple,” Ogle said.

Next door at Winky’s, Bonga heard people screaming inside Vegas, then saw a
blur of cheap wigs and masculine legs in designer shoes streak past her
door.

“All of a sudden our UPS guy dove out of the store and tried to tackle them
and there’s little Eric from next door on the sidewalk with a bunch of
stuff he managed to grab from one of the guys,” Bonga said. “The other two
guys took off down the street and jumped into a car driven by a real girl.”

Ogle gave police a description of the perpetrators — African-American males
ranging in height from 6 feet to 6-5. They all wore the same midriff shirts
and wigs with twisted, dreadnaught hair.

“They’re all very skinny and very flamboyant,” Ogle said.

Two hours after the police left, the transvestites returned to Magazine
Street to storm Turncoats just a block away from Vegas, and made off with
more than $2,000 in merchandise.

“They move like clockwork,” Davis said. “Two thousand dollars is a lot for
our store to lose, especially being in the slow summer season. It makes it
so I can’t even mark my stuff down as much as I want to because I’m trying
to make up for what I lost.”

In the ensuing weeks, the gang of transvestites continued their reign of
terror. Sometimes they come dressed as men, though Bonga said it is obvious
who they are based on their delicately plucked eyebrows. Sometimes they
bring 2-year-old children to add to the level of distraction. They once
returned to Vegas holding an “infant” that really was a Cabbage Patch doll
wrapped in a blanket.

“They’ll make themselves scarce for a few weeks and then one day you’ll be
busy with a customer and all of a sudden there’s a whole slew of them in
your store and there’s nothing you can do because you’re there by
yourself,” Lewis said.


Scarce evidence

The New Orleans Police Department investigated the Turncoats robbery but
unless police catch a shoplifter in the act or in possession of stolen
property there is little they can do besides take a report, said NOPD
spokeswoman Bambi Hall.

“If store security states that someone took something, and then by the time
we apprehend them they don’t have the property, then there’s really nothing
we can do because it’s their word against the (suspect),” Hall said.

Lewis said she understands the understaffed NOPD has bigger priorities than
to “catch a drag queen running down the street with an armful of clothing.”
So the store owners created their own watchdog system unofficially known as
the “Drag Queen Alert List,” a comprehensive phone roster of every business
on the block with stars next to those who carry guns.

When one shop owner spots a gang member, they immediately warn everyone on
the block and raise their defenses in unison.

When they enter Turncoats, Davis said he locks them inside the store, which
“freaks them out,” and they leave.

Celino said she doesn’t even wait for them to enter the store.

“A couple weeks ago, a group of them was outside and one looked like the guy
who came in here and ripped us off so I locked the door on them,” Celino
said. “I know maybe that’s rude, if they really were innocent people, but
there’s nothing else we can do. You look like the queens who ripped us off
so I’m sorry but I have to lock the door.”

Ogle and Bonga say they regret being forced to resort to such profiling but
they feel they have no other choice. The transvestites, Ogle said, appear
to be drug-addicted and fearless in their lust for designer shoes, jackets
and jewelry.

“The city’s not functioning the way it was and I’m sure a lot of them were
getting some kind of government aid, which they probably aren’t getting any
more so they’re incredibly desperate,” Ogle said.

And sometimes violent.

When Lewis co-owned Trashy Diva, they attacked one of her partners in the
French Quarter location, throwing her to the ground and tossing a heavy
mannequin on top of her.

“They’re kind of confused because they think they’re women so they don’t
mind hitting women, but they’re dudes. If you get hit by one it’s like
getting hit by a dude. ... Because the police are so poorly staffed, we’re
kind of on our own but the system we have seems to be working. I haven’t
seen them in at least a week but they’ll be back. They’re never gone for
long.”•