I, Becky Taha’Blu, am a survivor and community advocate working at the intersection of gender justice, racial equity, and institutional accountability. My leadership and that of others with lived experience reveal harms that the current mechanisms refuse to resolve.
In a 2018 traffic stop, I was allegedly sexually assaulted by the arresting officer. Saturday, May 5, during the early morning hours, an Auraria Campus Police Department officer pulls me over for an alleged traffic violation in the City of Denver on northbound Interstate Twenty-Five (20th St & I-25). I stopped, rolled down my window, and turned off my vehicle. The Officer allegedly violated my civil rights during this encounter. I can be heard stating in the Auraria Campus Police Department Computer-aided dispatch (CAD):
“I can’t allow you to assault me, Sir.”
This statement occurred at approximately 4:11 a.m. on May 5, 2018.
Shortly after this incident, two other officers from the Denver Police Department arrived. I also told the Officers that my breast had been exposed and that I would take the BAC test. I was placed in a second pair of handcuffs and put into a Denver Police vehicle. I begged the officers, but they refused to give me a BAC or my jacket to cover up, or my shoes. They would not until they “searched” my vehicle. I was terrified. Black people die in police custody.
At approximately 4:45 a.m., I tried to confide in the Denver DUI Officer, who drove me to jail, that the arresting officer had allegedly assaulted me. That was a mistake, and I knew it would be. I told the officers I wanted an attorney, a Sex Assault Nurse Examiner, and I wanted to press charges against the alleged assaulting officer. The Officers allegedly fabricated the report to tell a different sequence of events leading to physical contact, and the denial of my breathalyzer test. Dispatch logs have shown a different series of events than what officers claim. I was later charged with false reporting and a slew of other charges.
In Colorado and elsewhere, liability frameworks like the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act subvert accountability even when immunity is the punishment. We need accountability, decriminalization, and survivor-centered legislation to provide social and emotional restitution for people. We must refrain from using security theater alongside white saviorism and move toward transformative justice, accountability, and lived-expert-led voices in policy.
Centering survivors’ voices provides solidarity so that all caged voices can truly sing free. SB26-097 repealed Colorado’s prostitution statutes, ending arrests for consensual sex work and freeing police to address real violence, trafficking, and exploitation instead of unknowingly perpetuating harm. As one survivor put it, “Police contact is horrible … I would be most worried about being abused by the police.” Forcing survivors of state violence into the criminal justice system only deepens PTSD and systemic harm.
Criminalizing sex work gives police broad power over marginalized people, creating conditions where abuse and coercion can occur. Colorado has attempted partial solutions. Debates around Colorado Senate Bill 26-097 highlight the deeper issue: Removing criminal penalties would allow sex workers to report violence without fear of judicial retaliation. Colorado law House Bill 22-1288 was intended to allow sex workers to report sexual assault without fear of prosecution. Until survival is no longer criminalized, “safe reporting” laws function more as performative reform than meaningful protections; they remain largely symbolic while sex work itself is still criminalized. If reporting violence risks exposing someone to surveillance, harassment, or later charges, safety is theatrical.
Like a caged bird longing for freedom, survivors of state violence long for freedom from virtue signaling legislation, the illusion of safety as constraints, erasure of trauma, and silencing of lived experience—especially BIPOC queer and femme folks, sex workers, and other marginalized identities. This is my opinion from my expertise in my own lived experience.
