Saturday, we gathered in East Flatbush, in front of the home of Dwayne Juene, a mentally ill man who was killed on July 30th, to protest the killing of the mentally ill by the NYPD.
Arriving, a woman gave me a flyer declaring: "The killing of Dwayne Jeune, a 32 year old black man, is the latest in an ongoing saga of police murder of people in mental crisis who either called for help or whose families did. Whether the request is made for the police or an ambulance, if the cops show up first the results are often deadly. Three of four police who responded in this case had been "trained" but did not spend time talking with the family to figure out how to redirect and calm Mr Jeune. Mental health workers - not police uniforms with weapons - should have been the first on the scene."
July 31, the NY Times reported.
The
man, Dwayne Jeune, 32, was shot after he advanced on the officers with
“a large carving knife” in the apartment, after two shocks from a stun gun failed to subdue him, Terence A. Monahan, chief of patrol, said at a news conference at the apartment complex.
Unfortunately, the incident is not without precedent. The NYPD has made a practice of escalating these situations, instead of cooling tempers. Recent incidents include the cases of Eleanor Bumpers, Mohamed Bah, and Deborah Danner. After the Bumpers killing, over three decades ago, the police said they were beginning to train their officers in dealing with the mentally ill, but this seems to have had little effect. This spring, the NYPD again said it was implementing such training, but the one unity already trained to deal with the mentally ill, the Emergency Services Unit, never seems to be on the scene.
Arriving at his home at 1370 New York Avenue, Black Lives Matters activists were speaking. They were joined by members of Rise and Resist members and others, including ACT UP veterans Maxine Wolfe and Alexis Danzig
Kate Barnhart, of New Alternatives, carried a sign of David Felix, another mentally ill man, who was shot by the NYPD last year.
There is just way too much violence out there, too many guns, just too much.
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