Accountability?
Image credit: Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times
“We are all aware of the all too frequent news stories about the mentally ill who come up against law enforcement instead of mental health professionals and end up dead.” --from “Living with Schizophrenia” by Deborah Danner, January 28, 2012
In case you don’t remember Deborah Danner: Police were called to the apartment of this 66-year-old mentally ill African-American woman in October of 2016, when neighbors reported her being “loud and disruptive.” NYPD protocol requires officers dealing with people with mental illnesses to wait for specialized units; failing that, they must either retreat or try to subdue using only non-lethal force (i.e., a stun gun). Sergeant Hugh Barry--who happens to be white--disregarded this protocol, entered Danner’s bedroom, and shot her dead.
Barry claimed self-defense, contending that he feared for his life (of course) because Danner threatened him, first with a scissors and then with a baseball bat. There were no other witnesses in the room--apart from Ms. Danner, whom Barry left in no condition to contradict him. A grand jury heard Barry’s testimony, but also considered other evidence accumulated during “months of investigation.” And this time the grand jury actually indicted Barry, charging him with “second-degree murder, first- and second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.”
Barry will almost certainly be acquitted, of course, as is the norm, but an indictment is still better than the usual consequences of nothing at all.