Instead of protecting female-only spaces, the Norfolk Police Department in Virginia has spent $57,424.95 to “provide toilet partitions, shower drying area partitions and related finish work at shower area of NPD Women’s Locker Room,” allegedly in order to accommodate trans-identified individuals, according to communications obtained by IW Features.
Previously, the department locker room had only transparent shower curtains, Norfolk Officer Meghan Grabow previously told IW Features. The renovations added dividers and walls to create privacy, but those additions also took up floorspace and divided an already small locker room.
The renovation came after an alleged incident in the Norfolk PD when a transgender-identified male recruit entered the women’s locker room and stared at Grabow when she was undressed, as IW Features previously reported. The department also allegedly demanded that officers address the male recruit as a female and use female pronouns. When officers attempted to gain clarity, the department reportedly retaliated by suspending officer Grabow and firing officer Martin Powers when he stood with female officers.
Working in the police department’s administrative office as a civilian employee, Norfolk resident Greta Sanchez received ongoing emails about the renovation.
“I was livid because I did not expect to see a number close to $60,000,” said Sanchez after uncovering the renovation’s cost via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The department had already implemented its 2020 policy requiring officers to address transgender-identified individuals with “preferred pronouns”; forbidding officers from questioning an individual’s “gender identity” unless “legally necessary”; allowing trans-identified individuals to select whether a female or male officer performs pat-down searches; and when possible, providing transgender-identified suspects with single-holding cells.
Officers were forced to comply, and Norfolk taxpayers footed the bill.
Sanchez told IW Features that after she heard about the locker room incident involving officer Grabow, she decided to speak up at a September 2024 city council meeting. Working in one of the police department’s buildings, she was concerned about potentially being forced to share private women’s spaces with males.
“I am just speaking up on this as a married woman who works for the city because it’s not right,” she recalled telling a state senator to raise awareness of the issue. “It’s disrespectful to me as a married woman to be in that kind of a position with another man naked in a locker room, showering, changing… and they’re not doing this to the male locker room. They’re only invading our [female] space.”
At the city council meeting, Sanchez asked city representatives why female police department employees were not being provided female-only private spaces.
“I was met with disdain,” she said. “I was pretty upset when I left that meeting.”
But Sanchez was not deterred. In November 2024, she returned to the city council with documentation of similar incidents around the country demonstrating the potential consequences of not protecting female-only spaces. But she said her concerns were again dismissed.
By then, she had also heard about the police department’s locker room renovation and asked the city council about it.
“They told me my questions were ridiculous, even though [department employees] were getting daily emails from the department that the locker room was going to be closed because of renovations,” Sanchez said. “When I asked why they weren’t demolishing the male locker room, they told me that [my] questions are ridiculous.”
“They wouldn’t answer my question when I asked who approved it… [and] who’s paying for it,” she elaborated.
Bernard Pishko, the city attorney, also told Sanchez that “nobody is compelling in our city the use of preferred pronouns for gender.” However, according to officer Powers, Pishko was present in a meeting where Powers and three other officers provided accounts of the police department compelling officers to use “preferred pronouns.”
Sanchez left her documentation with the city council to further discuss the matter, but she said she never heard back. In the meantime, she submitted her FOIA request and discovered just how much money from taxpayers’ pockets the police department was spending on the bathroom renovation.
At work, Sanchez said police employees were confused as to why only the female locker room was under construction. She explained that women’s locker rooms in police departments are already smaller than the men’s locker rooms due to the ratio of female to male officers.
“They’re taking an already small space and making it even smaller to occupy a man,” Sanchez said.
The ordeal led Sanchez to leave her job with the city.
“I can’t be in a place where this is allowed to happen,” she explained.
But like officers Grabow and Powers, she knows that this incident is not isolated and could have greater consequences for officers and citizens alike, in Norfolk and beyond.
“This is going to spread across our little area if we don’t do something about it,” she said.
