On April 4, the very day that the nation was commemorating the life and death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., police in New York City shot and killed an unarmed black man. Of course, this is not unlike any other day—but it is a terrible and tragic reminder of how far we have to go toward Dr. King’s dream of a country that respects the dignity and humanity of all people.
As NPR reports, police arrived on the scene after receiving calls that a man was brandishing a silver firearm and pointing it at people on the street.
The object turned out to be a metal pipe with a knob on the end. The man reportedly had bipolar disorder. [...]
Four of the five police officers who responded to the scene fired on the man after he took a "two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers," Monahan said.
The man, identified by The New York Times as 34-year-old Saheed Vassell, was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.
For lots of people, generally those who have never been subjected to police violence or have nothing to fear from police officers, the temptation is to say things like: “let’s wait for all the facts” or “how do we know this was about race?” Indeed, we don’t know all the facts (at least, we don’t know the story that police officers are telling). And we can never truly know what’s in someone’s heart. But here’s what we know without question: There is a pattern of police violence where they routinely kill unarmed black people disproportionately than they kill others. There is also a pattern where police kill people with mental illness 16 times more than other civilians. So it’s not unreasonable to question why this keeps happening and demand accountability and change.
According to NPR, Vassell was well-known to residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood where he was killed. And they never saw him as a threat, especially given his mental illness. This serves as an important reminder that people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else and, very often, are more likely to harm themselves than others.
Residents told news outlets that the younger Vassell was well-known in the neighborhood as "mentally ill but generally harmless."
"All he did was just walk around the neighborhood," 38-year-old Andre Wilson, who said he knew Vassell for 20 years, told the Daily News. "He speaks to himself, usually he has an orange Bible or a rosary in his hand. He never had a problem with anyone."
"Every cop in this neighborhood knows him," resident John Fuller told the Times, saying police should have been familiar enough with Vassell to not shoot him.
Witnesses say that the police fired almost immediately upon their arrival. And it’s unclear whether or not they had any verbal exchange with Vassell, with some witnesses saying they didn’t hear them say anything while others say they exchanged a few words.
Three of the four officers who fired at Vassell were not in uniform, Monahan said. He told reporters that they fired a total of 10 rounds at Vassell. None of them were wearing body cameras.
The New York State Attorney General announced on Thursday that an investigation is being opened into Vassell’s death. The video and photos from the shooting show Vassell pointing the pipe he was holding like a weapon. Sure, this was likely suspect to the officers. But it still doesn’t answer why they shot and killed him, especially because we know that white armed mass shooters so very often get taken into custody alive. As per ABC News:
The suspect's father, Eric Vassell, told WABC his son was bipolar but wasn't on medication. He was unsure why Saheed was holding a pipe, but he told WABC that his son sometimes worked as a welder.
Although he admitted that pointing a pipe at people may have caused panic, Eric Vassell said the officers acted rashly.
"Police always have a choice," he told WABC in an interview Thursday. "They should not train them to kill. They should train them to protect life, to save life as much as possible."
"And the way they killed him, they didn't give him no choice," he continued.
In the past several weeks, we’ve been having more conversations about gun violence in America. But those conversations are incomplete without including police violence. While we can’t label all officers, we can with certainty say that there is a culture of violence and harm embedded in the profession and it is very often directed at people of color and the mentally ill. This mirrors the widespread beliefs in society that people of color, specifically blacks, and people with mental illness are dangerous and deserve to be criminalized. Until we have that conversation, all of our efforts to end gun violence will be for naught.