Zhoie Perez slouched against the holding cell wall in Men’s Central Jail and closed her eyes, hoping a guard would jolt her awake with the words she’d been waiting for: The bus is here! Time for court!
The 51-year-old just needed to make it back to court one more time so she could be sentenced and, she hoped, released. She’d been jailed months earlier, but since then had repeatedly missed hearings — usually, she was told, because the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department didn’t have enough buses.
Sometime after noon, another transgender woman in the holding tank asked a deputy whether a bus would come for them. The deputy told her no. Irate, the woman shrieked, shoved something in the holding cell toilet and started frantically flushing to flood the cell…