BALTIMORE — The state of Maryland will pay $750,000 to Amber Canter, a transgender inmate who sued after she said she was beaten and discriminated against by correctional officers at Baltimore’s Central Booking.
“Amber’s main motivation for bringing this lawsuit was to help other transgender inmates just like her get over all the obstacles, the retaliation, the misgendering, the discrimination that they face on a daily basis,” her lawyer Malcolm Ruff, of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren.
The assault on Canter
Video of the incident showed a correctional officer appearing to place Canter in a chokehold inside Central Booking—the state-run jail in Baltimore— in June of 2019, while two other officers were in the same room.
Canter was then taken into a common area while two officers held her.
She said she went unconscious and the video showed her being dropped on the concrete floor on her face.