Freyja Odinsdottir. Photo by Juniper St. Butcher

Trans woman Freyja Odinsdottir is running for Denton County sheriff in hopes of changing a system of oppression

Steven Monacelli | Contributing Writer
steven@proteanmag.com

There may be a new sheriff in town in Denton County. At least, that’s what candidate Freyja Odinsdottir is hoping for. While Odinsdottir has prior experience in law enforcement — including previously working for the Denton County Sheriff’s Office as a corrections officer, a supervisor and a member of the special operations team — she is far from your typical candidate for sheriff.

Notably, Odinsdottir is a trans woman running a write-in campaign to unseat an incumbent sheriff, Republican Tracy Murphree, who threatened physical violence against any transgender woman who dared to enter a public restroom occupied by his daughter during his 2016 campaign.

Moreover, Odinsdottir is a single mother of two who, in addition to pursuing a master’s degree in exercise physiology, presently works as a dominatrix and adult content creator.

Her identity as a trans sex worker, Odinsdottir said, has led to harassment and even threats against her life. “I’ve been the target of a lot of vitriol,” she said. “A lot of people have dug up my dead name and tried to slander or smear me on social media. I have eyes and ears in the seedier parts of the internet and have been informed that it is ill advised for me to see any new clients right now because the idea has been floated of trying to lure me into a trap.”

But Odinsdotter isn’t intimidated; this is, in fact, far from her first dash with danger.

Before working for the Denton County Sheriff’s Office, Odinsdottir worked at a lot of other dangerous jobs. She started working as a bouncer in New York City when she was just 15 years old, then enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in the infantry in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I am not a stranger to facing death.” she said.

Still, Odinsdotter takes the threats seriously, noting that she is “worried about my children and my partners. I am worried about what will happen to them or how it could impact their lives if something were to happen to me.”

Odinsdotters’ campaign began — in spirit, at least — on June 1 when she was the first person arrested in the protests against police brutality in the city of Denton. Following her arrest, several of her politically-minded friends encouraged her to run for sheriff, given her background in law enforcement.

But it took a while for her campaign to begin in earnest, due in no small part to Odinsdotter’s own reluctance.

“I said no a lot,” she recalled. “But eventually, the other alternative candidate said they didn’t want to do it, so I said yeah. The reason I am running now is because … something needs to move. Someone needs to do it.”

What is it that needs to move? Odinsdotter said her biggest priorities are ending the aspects of the system that maintain racial inequalities and fighting corruption in law enforcement. A key part of her focus is a return to sound policing principles, specifically, those of Sir Robert Peel who, in 1826, framed the authority of law enforcement as rooted in the desire of the community for the police to have that authority.

Odinsdotter points specifically to issues like qualified immunity and the need for real higher standards. “Cops talk all the time about how they’re held to a higher standard, and yet they can get away with crimes that your average civilian can’t,” she explained. “Where’s the higher standard? I think there should be an absolute zero tolerance for excessive force [by police]. I don’t think there is a justification for shooting a man seven times in the back.”

Ultimately though, Odinsdotter doesn’t believe that the burden of ending crime should fall on law enforcemen. Instead, she said, law enforcement must be one part of a much larger effort in which the primary focus is addressing mental health, economic oppression and economic instability.

“It’s not that some people are driven to crime more than others; it’s about resources,” she said.

Properly allocating police resources is key, Odinsdotter said, adding that she would work with the district attorney and with legislators to stop the prosecution of petty drug offenses and consensual sex work. That would allow her to reallocate resources to more significant issues like violent crime, human trafficking and cartel activity as well as toward rehabilitation and harm reduction efforts.

Specifically, Odinstotter said, she would like to take civil forfeiture funds — typically spent on tactical equipment — or county funds generally and instead spend the money on better training, benefits and pay for the officers to encourage the recruitment and retention of good officers. She believes that current training and hiring practices do not value intelligent officers, an issue that must be addressed, she said, in order to achieve better policing.

Higher pay and better training would come with higher standards of integrity, too, Odinsdottir continued. “Integrity should come on its own — doing the right thing even if no one is looking. But if it’s not there on its own, the way you get that is through transparency and accountability. You have to hold officers accountable for their actions.”

Odinsdottir believes this higher standard extends to notions of bravery and fearlessness, too. “A lot of the violence that happens between police and the public is a result of cops just being cowards,” she said. “If you show up to an occupation where violence is an inherent risk and you are not ready to die, every day, then you have no business being in that occupation. … For all the times that I’ve been shot at, I can never say I was in fear for my life because when I punched into work, it was no longer about my life.”

And in terms of rehabilitating the community’s relationship with police, such standards are key, she added. “You need to be able to say there are good cops and that we reject these bad cops. But at this point it has become endemic,” she said. “It’s a problem that has been around so long that the rot has been promoted to the top.”

And that explains why Odinsdotter is seeking the position of top cop in Denton County after having left her previous career in law enforcement.

“When I first got into law enforcement, I thought that if I were just a good cop and did a good job, I would get promoted,” she said. “But I learned real quick that it didn’t matter. If I wasn’t willing to fall into these systems of oppression, I wasn’t going anywhere.”