The reign of terror of the Chicago Police Department continues unabated after two more people—one entirely unarmed—were killed Saturday. A 55-year-old community activist and mother of five, Bettie Jones, and 19-year-old student Quintonio LeGrier were both killed by police firing on them after a domestic disturbance involving LeGrier, who was emotionally disturbed. CBS News reports:
Janet Cooksey says her 19-year-old son, Quintonio LeGrier, was a college honors student studying engineering who recently had been dealing with some mental health issues, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.
Family members reportedly called police to their home Saturday because the teen was threatening his father with a baseball bat. Detectives described LeGrier as being "combative" before he was shot.
"I used to watch the news daily and I would grieve for other mothers, other family members, and now today I'm grieving myself," said Janet Cooksey, LeGrier's mother. "When do it come to an end?"
Fifty-five-year-old Bettie Jones, a mother of five, lived in the same building. She was reportedly waiting for police to respond, then got shot along with LeGrier.
This seems to be the country’s preferred way of dealing with mentally ill black folks: killing those in the throes of a crisis and imprisoning the rest. The Washington Post police shooting tracking effort shows that 243—over a quarter—of the 965 officer-involved killings this year have involved signs of mental illness among those killed.
Many of the most high-profile killings of black people over the past two years have involved mental illness; from Dallas officers shooting and killing Jason Harrison for possession of a screwdriver to St. Louis officers killing Kajieme Powell and then Thaddeus McCarroll for possession of knives to Baltimore police killing unarmed Spencer L. McCain after his suicide threats. Each of these incidents shares a common thread: police were called to respond to mentally ill black people who were armed with non-projectile weapons or unarmed and then killed them without de-escalation attempts.
Of course, Chicago’s police department reflects the worst of the standard tyranny of American policing as its campaign of violence against black people—especially mentally ill black people—persists despite upheaval at its highest ranks, federal investigations, and promises by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Officers laughed as they prodded Philip Coleman to death with a Taser while in custody. Coleman had been arrested after a suspected mental health crisis. Dash camera footage of the killing of Laquan McDonald, the incident which sparked most of the current scrutiny into the department, shows that he was behaving erratically and was suffering from a drug or mental health crisis—neither of which necessitated shooting him 16 times.
With this most recent incident, Chicago police leave it unambiguous: they are not there to help black people or to do anything really aside from killing, imprisoning, or on a few occasions torturing them. There simply isn’t a justification for the shooting, especially when officers had to have either known about Jones’s presence or were unaware. Both situations would have necessitated that police be cautious.
But there’s the thing. Protocol for Chicago police—like most police—is not really what’s on the books but what actually happens and what is defended by the law. That protocol is killing black people, mentally ill people, and other people on the margins of society. And the protocol is followed so often that it can no longer be seen as an unfortunate side effect of necessary justice but a purpose of policing. It has become quite clear that no level of commitment to “community policing” as promised by Emanuel—let alone any other promise from a mayor’s office that has for years enabled and protected police violence—can be trusted without a serious reassessment of the purpose and necessity of police.