Letters, 2003, Demonstrating April 20, Flags May 17

 

I began writing letters in 2003 to editors of newspapers located in Florence (my residence), Coos Bay, and Eugene, Oregon. President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was the impetus. Subsequent policy and conduct of Republican Party officials have motivated me ever since to vent. I wish to share some of my letters to represent whatever you wish to discern of the political history of our country since 2000. They will enumerate detail of what transpired that you may have forgotten or did not know. Consider this series a history of the frustrations of a liberal Democrat appalled at the damage that the modern Republican Party has wrought upon our country, on the verge now – I and many others believe – of becoming an autocracy.

***

(From an article printed by Brookings June 1, 2003)

The Iraq war validated a basic rule of American politics: the American public closes ranks in times of national crisis. In the prolonged march to war, the public was divided and ambivalent about the wisdom of invading Iraq rather than relying on continued United Nations weapons inspections. Most of those doubts evaporated once the bombs began falling. And the surge of patriotism not only boosted public support for President Bush, but extended beyond the White House to raise optimism about the country’s institutions and American society as a whole.

…

Iraq dominated the headlines throughout the fall of 2002 and into the winter of 2003. Public opinion on the wisdom of war, however, stabilized relatively early and slightly in favor of war. Gallup found that from August 2002 through early March 2003 the share of Americans favoring war hovered in a relatively narrow range between a low of 52 percent and a high of 59 percent. By contrast, the share of the public opposed to war fluctuated between 35 percent and 43 percent.

Not surprisingly, Republicans (75 percent in favor) backed war more strongly than did Democrats (only 40 percent). …

In sum, public opinion on the eve of war with Iraq was permissive—it was willing to follow the White House to war but not demanding war. About 30 percent of Americans were convinced that war was not only just but necessary. Another 30 percent firmly believed that a war could not be justified. The remaining 40 percent could imagine scenarios in which it made sense to go to war as well as scenarios in which it didn’t. It was this “movable middle” that the Bush White House targeted in its public comments in the weeks leading up to war.

Once Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 19, support for the war surged to 72 percent in Gallup’s polling and remained there throughout the fighting. President Bush also benefited personally, gaining greater public approval; in the first days of fighting, Gallup recorded a 13-percentage-point rise. The increase, however, was much smaller than either the 35-percentage-point leap Bush enjoyed immediately after September 11—or the 24-point jump his father received at the start of the 1991 Gulf War.

The modest nature of Bush’s Iraq rally reflected a deep partisan split over the wisdom of the war. More than nine out of ten Republicans supported the decision to go to war, as against only half of Democrats. …

In the weeks immediately after the capture of Baghdad and the end of major combat operations, Americans continued to support the decision to invade. In late April, Gallup found that seven in ten Americans believed that President Bush had been right to order this attack. Support held even though nearly two out of every three people surveyed thought that the war was not yet over. Nor were Americans overly concerned about continued sporadic fighting or scenes of looting in Iraqi cities. More than eight in ten Americans said that they believed that things were going “very well” or “moderately well” with the end of major fighting in Iraq.

Not surprisingly, given the speed with which U.S. forces unseated Saddam Hussein, most Americans also were optimistic about the war’s consequences. In late April the share of the American public saying that the United States and its allies were winning the war on terrorism stood at 65 percent, up from 37 percent two weeks before the start of war. This optimism roughly equaled what Gallup found in the immediate aftermath of the Afghanistan war. The newfound confidence in America’s success in the war on terrorism was clearly boosted by the overall rally effect. When specifically asked whether the Iraq War had made Americans safer, the share of the public saying yes was somewhat lower at 58 percent (Smith and Lindsay 1-3).

Work cited:

Smith, Caroline and Lindsay, James M. “Rally ‘Round the Flag: Opinion in the United States before and after the Iraq War.” Brookings, June 1, 2003. Net. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opinion-in-the-united-states-before-and-after-the-iraq-war/

***

Protests against the run-up to the invasion had been taking place every Saturday morning on the corners where two major highways (US Hwy 101 and OR Hwy 126) met in the heart of Florence. I did some shopping at the nearby Safeway store one Saturday, saw that protesters were present on the corners, and decided to join them, thinking, How can I be critical of what the President is doing and not participate in these demonstrations?

I took a place on one of the corners, beside two women, neither of whom I knew. Every protester present was a stranger to me. One of the two women told me to expect a visit by one or several staunch supporters of the President. All right, I thought. This could be interesting.

Minutes later a somewhat squat, burly guy approach us. He was wearing a hat that indicated he was a veteran. He stopped about three feet from us and proceeded to stare us down. We gazed back at him neutrally.

At last, he said, a sneer animating his face, “I wanted to get a good look at you!” He scrutinized in particular me. I returned his expression.

“You ever been in the service?” he asked, disrespectfully.

“Yeah. Two years in the Army. 1958 to 1960.”

He looked surprised. “I was in Korea,” he countered. A few seconds passed. He questioned how I could oppose the reasons Bush had for invading. I answered that his statements were “simplistic.”

“Simplistic,” he scoffed and walked away, headed to scrutinize another group.

This experience caused me to write this letter.

***

A veteran of the Korean War said he wanted to “get a look at” our faces at our April 12 rally in Florence opposing President Bush’s war and his domestic agenda. I salute him for having served in Korea. I would salute him for having the conviction to express his point of view had he not been rude. I disagree with his assertions that we are unpatriotic and that we should withhold our demonstrations until the war in Iraq is finished.

Protesting a wrong is not unpatriotic. It does not connote lack of support for our soldiers. These young men and women put in harm’s way by the president are our nation’s treasure. May they safely and humanely finish the task put upon them. Every American prays for their security and also, I would hope, that of noncombatant Iraqis. What we protest is Bush’s unilateralist policy!

Our demonstrations must continue. We must indicate to mindful Americans that this administration has made considerably worse just about every one of our domestic and international problems.

Not to demonstrate is to suggest that the president’s domestic agenda is not destructive of civil rights, health and environmental protections, fiscal stability and fair economic practices. Not to demonstrate is to validate his foreign policy of intimidation and pre-emption, of transforming Uncle Sam into the world’s bully, of saying, “We have the greatest military; we know best; we are going to make sure the world complies with our interests.”

Printed April 20, 2003, in the Eugene Register-Guard

***

Several weeks later American flag poles, inserted in holes drilled in sidewalks in downtown Florence, stood like sentinels on parade. Quite a display of patriotism, I thought, driving past. I learned that the city official responsible was a staunch Republican. A day or so later I submitted this letter to the local paper.

***

A few words regarding the intended display of hundreds of American flags throughout the town on forthcoming Sundays.

If they are displayed to honor the sacrifices of our soldiers “in circumstances beyond their control” as well as to express our love of country, yes, do it.

If they are displayed to deflect criticism of and/or to extol the Bush administration and the Republican Party, such an action is out of line.

Let us hope that patriotism and politics are not being mixed.

Printed May 17, 2003, in the Siuslaw News

Bad Apples, The Beat Goes On Part Seven, Andrew Brown Jr., April 21, 2021

A New York Times review of bodycam footage showing the fatal police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in April raises questions about whether officers were in imminent danger when they used lethal force as he drove away to avoid arrest.

The officers have not been charged in the shooting. R. Andrew Womble, the district attorney for North Carolina’s First Judicial District, determined that they were justified in their actions because Mr. Brown was using his car as a “deadly weapon.” He said police body-camera videos “clearly illustrate the officers who used deadly force on Andrew Brown Jr. did so reasonably” and only when their lives were in danger.

Mr. Brown’s family members and their lawyers have described the shooting as an “execution.”

A review of slowed-down bodycam footage by The Times shows that 13 of the 14 gunshots — including the fatal one — were fired as Mr. Brown was driving away from officers, not at them. The footage was presented by the district attorney at a press conference and is from four officers’ cameras.

Sheriff Tommy Wooten II of Pasquotank County said that “while the deputies did not break the law, we all wish things could have gone differently. Much differently.”

Here’s what the videos of the 20-second interaction show.

The police officers arrive in a Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office pickup truck at Mr. Brown’s house at 8:23 a.m. on Wednesday, April 21, to execute search and arrest warrants. According to the prosecutor, the police team had been briefed that morning that Mr. Brown, 42, had previous convictions and a history of resisting arrest.

Mr. Brown is sitting in his vehicle outside his house after returning from a drive that morning, the prosecutor added. The officers approach him with their weapons drawn, shouting orders at him

Mr. Brown does not comply with officers’ orders. The situation escalates.

As two officers reach the driver’s-side door, Mr. Brown backs up the vehicle, and grazes but does not injure an officer.

Mr. Brown ignores officers’ repeated commands to stop the car, and lurches the vehicle forward while steering it sharply to the left, putting officers at risk.

The car initially moves toward the same officer who had been grazed moments earlier. This officer does not move away from the vehicle, but takes a step into Mr. Brown’s path. It’s unclear if the officer is trying to obstruct Mr. Brown’s escape, or trying to evade the car.

The officer briefly places his left hand on the hood of the car, and this is when another officer fires a shot that Mr. Womble said “entered the front windshield” of the car and was not fatal. That contradicts a preliminary internal investigation report, which found that no bullet went through the windshield.

The video shows that there is a brief pause in shooting while Mr. Brown steers his car between two officers. At this point, as Mr. Brown accelerates and drives away, three officers fire 13 more shots into the side and rear of Mr. Brown’s car. One of the shots is fatal, hitting Mr. Brown in the back of his head. His car crashes into a tree 50 yards from his home.

In justifying the police's use of lethal force, Mr. Womble said Mr. Brown “drove recklessly and endangered the officers." He also argued that “they could not simply let him go.”

But the legalities around this can get complicated. “The Supreme Court has never authorized the use of deadly force simply because someone is resisting arrest or fleeing,” Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and former federal prosecutor, said in an interview about the footage. He also said that “sometimes the best policing is to let the suspect go.”

The officers’ actions may have violated their department’s guidelines. The Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office’s use-of-force policy states that shooting at a moving vehicle is “rarely effective,” and that officers should fire at a moving vehicle only “when the deputy reasonably believes there are no other reasonable means available to avert the imminent threat of the vehicle.”

Seth Stoughton, a law professor and policing expert at the University of South Carolina, questioned the officers’ actions at the time Mr. Brown was speeding away. “Deadly force is only justified while there is an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm,” he said. “Once the vehicle has driven past the officers and they are now to the side of it, or behind it, as it's going away from them, there is no more imminent threat.”

Beyond the shooting of Mr. Brown, the videos show that officers may have placed some of their colleagues and others at risk. In their line of fire was a neighbor’s house and an unmarked white police minivan.

Mr. Womble said that while the white minivan was in the path of the bullets, there was no danger to the officers inside.

Michael Anthony Gordon Sr., whose house was in the line of fire, told The Times that a bullet from the shooting entered his kitchen, and that no one was home at the time. Mr. Womble stated that one shot fired by the police was believed to have ricocheted, and hit the house.

The district attorney’s decision not to press charges closes a state-level criminal case, though a federal civil rights case is ongoing (Koettl and Kim 1-4).

[The following are excerpts from the April 26 airing of the MSNBC program “The ReidOut” hosted by Joy Reid]

Reid:… in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, yet another black life came to a premature end after a police interaction. Andrew Brown Jr. was shot and killed by multiple sheriff`s deputies who the sheriff`s department claims were carrying out search and arrest warrants. He now joins Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Ma`Khia Bryant, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, just to name a few other black Americans killed by police, and that`s just recently.

Also today, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice would investigate whether there was a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing in Louisville, Kentucky, which may have led to the death of Breonna Taylor. And we`ll have more on a little bit later.

For several nights now, hundreds have taken to the streets in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, demanding that the sheriff release the body cam video of Andrew Brown`s killing. Elizabeth City Mayor Betty Parker has joined those calls, and so has Governor Roy Cooper, writing in a tweet that Brown`s death is extremely concerning and body camera footage should be made public as quickly as possible.

Now, what we know about Andrew Brown Jr.`s death is murky because the sheriff`s department has not release very much information. Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten has not made himself available to the public since a press event last Wednesday. The deputies who shot Brown were wearing active body cameras at the time of the shooting. Sheriff Wooten declined to identify the officers involved and declined to say how many shots they fired.

Media reports citing police scanner audio indicate that Brown seems to have been shot in the back while in his car. And today a family lawyer told reporters that Brown was shot in the back of the head. One eyewitness told the Raleigh News and Observer that she heard the first shot and ran outside and watched deputies continue firing. She said the deputies unloaded on him, meaning Andrew Brown Jr.

…

REID: And on Saturday, Sheriff Wooten posted a Facebook live video reading from prepared remarks, he said he would release the video if granted permission.

SHERIFF TOMMY WOOTEN II, PASQUOTANK COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA: Only a judge can release the video. That`s why I`ve asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to confirm for me that the releasing of the video will not undermine their investigation. Once I get that confirmation, our county will file a motion in court, hopefully on Monday to have the footage released.

REID: The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is leading a probe into the shooting. Today, Andrew Brown Jr.`s family was allowed to view body camera footage, but only after deputies redacted it. And Brown`s family was ultimately allowed to see only a 20-second snippet of the video. It remains unclear when or if the full video will be released to them or the public. The video has not been viewed by NBC News.

Joining me now, Bishop William Barber, Co-Chair of The Poor People`s Campaign and a former president of the North Carolina NAACP, and Ben Crump, attorney for the Family of Andrew Brown Jr.

And, Ben, I saw that press conference today. There were a lot of angry folks there, a lot of angry local people. I want to play a couple of them. This is Andrew Brown Jr.`s son, Khalil Ferebee.

KHALIL FEREBEE, ANDREW BROWN`S SON: It`s like we`re against all odds in the world. My dad got executed just by trying to save his own life.

REID: Multiple people calling that an execution. Were you able to see that video yourself, Ben, and would you characterize it as an execution?

BENJAMIN CRUMP, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Well, Joy, our co-Counsel, Chantel (ph), got to see the video (INAUDIBLE). And the reason was this county attorney, they are for whatever reason, and we don`t understand it, they continue to try not to be transparent. They said no lawyers who were not barred in North Carolina could come with the family to see the video.

So we had Attorney Lassiter go in and see the video, and she took copious notes of the 22nd video that said three main things to us, Joy, and it was number one, the fact that when they turned on the video, they were already shooting. And so we don`t know what transpired to them shooting the video. They were swearing at him, telling them to show the hands. He had both his hands on the steering wheel.

And you can see that clearly from the video, his son, as well as Attorney Lassiter said, and the fact that he never used a car to put them in any jeopardy or danger. He was evading them the whole time. They were shooting at him from the side and behind while he was getting away from them.

And the final point is it confirmed what we had already heard, that all the shots were from the back.

…

REID: … Do you feel like this is an attempted cover-up? I have never heard of a video being redacted before even the family could see it. Does that sound normal to you?

CRUMP: It doesn`t at all, especially when it`s the family. We`re not talking about what`s released to the public. Bishop Barber knows Eastern Carolina better than I will ever know. But the one thing that just was appalling to us was the fact that not only would you only show them 20 seconds, you redacted their faces, but you then release the warrant and all the criminal history of Andrew Brown to assassinate his character, but you will blot out the faces of those officers and not give their names. Well, we want to see their rap sheet since they are putting out the rap sheet of Andrew Brown.

And finally, Joy, my eight-year-old daughter could understand that, that if you`re only showing 20 seconds of a video, then you`re hiding something, because of Andrew Brown would have did something bad in there, we wouldn`t need a judge to silent. They would have that all over the news.

…

BISHOP WILLIAM BERBER, CO-CHAIR, THE POOR PEOPLE`S CAMPAIGN: This a city where there the state university is. It`s in Eastern North Carolina. There is a long history of police conduct in Eastern North Carolina. And people know it. They know the arrogance. This is where Jesse Helms and others had his stronghold.

…

… I talked to the attorney general of the state along with Dr. Spearmon. You should know this. The D.A. right now, Brother Crump knows this as well, could call the state attorney general, just like they did in Minnesota, and say take this case. Now, North Carolina, the local has to ask for it. The state can`t take it from him. But the local D.A. could right now say, this is too messy, we`ve messed it up. Give to it the state A.G. and they can handle this. All that could be done in 20 seconds.

...

REID: I just want you to clear up something first in the law. People keep talking about the fleeing felon rule. You said something today that I thought was very important to repeat. You said the most dangerous thing apparently to police is a black man running from them. Under the fleeing felon rule, police are not allowed to shoot somebody simply because they are fleeing, correct?

CRUMP: Absolutely. The United States Supreme Court has a rule that it is not against the law to flee from police. And it should not be the death penalty just because you`re black and you`re running away. We never hear about them Joy and Bishop Barber shooting white men in the back. But them shooting black men in the back in America is almost like a cliche. I mean, Jacob Blake Jr., in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Walter Scott in South Carolina, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Christian Hall, Oakland, Pennsylvania, I mean, Anthony McClain in Pasadena, California, who literally ran out of his shoes and they shot him in the back.

...

BARBER: Then you have to have proper -- when you find that someone has murdered someone, shot them in the back and they`re a police, a warrant, a badge and a gun is too much powerful for someone trigger-happy, there needs to be prosecution without immunity, there needs to be imprisonment and there needs to be fellow investigation of pattern and practice. It`s been a long time overdue in Eastern North Carolina. This case needs to make it happen.

And you`re right. We need to get these things passed. We don`t need Sinema or Manchin blocking this. This is serious business. This is about people`s lives. And we can see clearly if you don`t have the kind of federal law to standardize this stuff, then you have one thing happening in one county, another thing happening in other county, depending on the sheriff, depending on the D.A. No. We need accountability, transparency and truth, and we need it right now.

REID: Absolutely. And I will add to that, just from my -- you know Bakari Sellers said something. He is very familiar with the media, to people in my profession, don`t fall for the banana in the tailpipe. Don`t run with Andrew Brown Jr.`s history, because police do this on -- Rudy Giuliani used to do this when he was Mayor of New York. Police would kill somebody, and their whole juvenile record comes out, everything about them, well, they`re not a choir boy. Don`t fall about that. This is not about this dead young black man`s history. This is about him getting killed. Don`t fall for that.

We don`t want to hear stories all about whatever he ever did wrong in his life. We need to know why he was shot and killed, whether he was shot in the back while he was driving away. That is the story that just my plea to those of us who are covering the story. Bishop William Barber, Ben Crump, thank you both very much. Really appreciate you both (Transcript 1-5).

When a jury last week found former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin guilty in the second-degree murder of George Floyd, the rare conviction of an officer on the job brought relief and a glint of hope that a transformative moment for policing in America was within reach.

While no one expected a shift overnight, a string of shootings by law enforcement officers nationwide — particularly the killing of Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man, in North Carolina — in the hours after the verdict was announced is viewed by some as a major setback. Civil rights leaders, activists and some law enforcement experts say the deadly violence points to a difficult realization that belies the outcome of Chauvin's trial: People will continue to die at the hands of law enforcement, and one ex-officer's conviction was never going to rewrite a system that many agree remains critically flawed.

"Sending Chauvin to prison doesn't make Floyd's family whole, it doesn't change an individual cop from pulling the trigger, and, most importantly, it doesn't change the system that's broken," said Dawn Blagrove, a lawyer who is executive director of Emancipate NC, an advocacy nonprofit that seeks to end mass incarceration in North Carolina. "It's going to take America growing a conscience about the deplorable systemically and institutionally racist system and challenging the status quo."

The events of the past week have crystallized broader conversations about effective and constitutional policing, particularly in communities of color, as well as about tracking and reducing agencies' use of excessive force and what alternatives to lethal and excessive force should look like.

…

"The law enforcement model is set up so that a measure of a good officer is the number of arrests and the number of lockups. Even for small traffic stops, they're looking for a gun and drugs — those are the big scores where officers get rewarded," said James Nolan, a professor and chair of sociology at West Virginia University, who is a former police officer in Wilmington, Delaware.

"So even the conviction of Chauvin isn't going to change anything, because the police mindset is still in place. It's what keeps them being hypervigilant and suspect of everyone," he said. "That's why cars look like weapons, cellphones look like weapons, and everything looks dangerous" (Ortiz 1-2).

[Paste the following on Google to watch a CNBC produced video of the police arriving on the scene of the shooting and commentary made by attorneys for the Brown family]

Video shows moments leading up to police shooting of ...

[Paste the following on Google to watch TMZ produced bodycam video of officers shooting at Brown’s car and chasing after it]

Andrew Brown Jr. Shooting Video Released, Cops Keep Job ...

Works cited:

Koettl, Christoph and Kim, Caroline. “Andrew Brown Jr. Shooting: Videos Cast Doubt on Police Use of Force.” The New York Times, May 22, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/22/us/andrew-brown-jr-shooting-body-cam-video.html

Ortiz, Erik. “Andrew Brown Jr.'s Shooting Exposes 'Enduring Flaws' in Policing, Experts Say.” NBC News, April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/andrew-brown-jr-s-shooting-exposes-enduring-flaws-policing-experts-n1265541

“Transcript: The ReidOut, 4/26/21.” MSNBC, April 26, 2021. Net. https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-reidout-4-26-21-n1265447

Bad Apples, The Beat Goes One Part Six, Ma'khia Bryant, April 20, 2021

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The voice on the 911 call is a teenage girl’s, and it is quavering, as if she has been crying.

“I want to leave this foster home,” she tells the dispatcher. “I want to leave this foster home.”

When two police officers arrived at the home in Columbus, Ohio, they reported later, they met an agitated ninth grader, Ja’Niah Bryant, who told them that the fighting at 3171 Legion Lane was getting worse and worse.

They said there was nothing they could do, and this seemed to push her over an edge. She became “irate,” the officers wrote in their report, and told them that if she was not allowed to leave, “she was going to kill someone.”

Twenty-three days later, Ja’Niah called 911 again, telling the police that she and her older sister were being threatened by two young women who used to live at the house. Officers arrived in the middle of a melee outside the house, and one of them fatally shot Ja’Niah’s 16-year-old sister, Ma’Khia Bryant, who was lunging at one of the women, brandishing a steak knife.

The shooting, which occurred moments before a jury in Minneapolis convicted Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, released a new wave of anger over shootings by the police. To calm the furor, the Columbus police quickly released body camera footage, which showed some of the fight outside the house and, they said, demonstrated that the officer had acted to protect the other woman.

But Ms. Bryant’s tragic death was also preceded by a turbulent journey through the foster care system, which had cycled Ma’Khia through at least five placements in two years — after her own mother was found to be negligent — despite efforts by their grandmother to reunite the family.

Ohio places children in foster care at least at a rate 10 percent higher than the national average, and child welfare officials here are considerably less likely than in the country as a whole to place children with their relatives. Black children, like Ma’Khia and her sister, account for nearly a third of children removed from homes — nearly twice their proportion in the population.

A review of Ma’Khia’s pathway through foster care shows that it failed her in critical ways.

Research has demonstrated that children fare far better when they remain with family members, a practice known as kinship care. It also shows that each successive placement causes additional trauma, further setting back a child in crisis.

…

What the Bryant sisters wanted, Ja’Niah said, was to return to their family.

“We can go to Mommy or Grandma, it doesn’t matter, as long as we can get off the system,” Ja’Niah recalled Ma’Khia telling her younger siblings, who were also in foster care. “That was her biggest thing, she didn’t want to be in the foster care system until she was 18.”

…

The oldest of four children born to Paula Bryant, a nursing assistant, and Myron Hammonds, Ma’Khia was removed from her mother’s home in 2018, and spent 16 months living with her grandmother Jeanene Hammonds.

When her grandmother was kicked out by her landlord, the siblings went into foster care and spent two years cycling through short-term placements, arrangements that dissolved one after another.

People who knew Ma’Khia had trouble recognizing her in the chaotic footage of the shooting released by the police. Staff members at her school saw her as quiet and diligent, the kind of student who would hug her teacher’s aide every morning before math. She had a tight knot of girlfriends, who lavished one another with affection.

Aaliyaha Tucker, 16, recalled her once coming to school with her hair in an outrageous style she called a “rainbow horn,” extending vertically from the top of her head and then bursting into a mop.

“She didn’t care what other people thought of her,” said Aaliyaha, who allowed tears to run down her face. “She taught us how to love ourselves.”

By this spring, when Ma’Khia’s sister placed the first call to the police, her life in foster care had spiraled into dysfunction and disorder, family members said. And it was about to get much worse.

In 2018, Paula Bryant had moved with her five children — including a teenage son from a previous relationship — into a house in West Columbus, where, she said in an interview, the landlords did not mind her credit problems. Mr. Hammonds, Ma’Khia’s father, did not live with the family and Ms. Bryant described herself as raising the children largely on her own.

…

The family had been on the radar of Children Services for several years, amid repeated complaints that the two youngest children were absent from school. In February 2017, Ms. Bryant took Ma’Khia, Ja’Niah and two younger siblings to one of the agency’s offices and said “she was at her wits end” and could no longer handle them, according to a Children Services document outlining the case. The children, Ms. Bryant told the agency, had “no respect” for those around them.

…

Ms. Hammonds, their grandmother, took the four children into her two-bedroom apartment, sleeping on the couch so the children could have the beds.

“I was worn out,” she recalled. “I was doing all the laundry, all the cooking, and I was working a part-time job at the time. And it was difficult because these children came from a lot of dysfunction.”

Then her landlord found out that the children had moved into the apartment and told her she would have to move. …

…

… the county placed all four children in foster care.

Ms. Hammonds slept wherever she could for several months — sometimes in hotel rooms, sometimes with friends, and many nights in her car — until she secured a home that could accommodate the children. In December 2019, Ms. Hammonds submitted a petition to the court for their return, but it was rejected.

The girls, meanwhile, were placed in group homes. Ja’Niah recalled that, not long after their grandmother dropped them off, she and Ma’Khia were told they had to go into separate rooms for physical examinations. When she emerged, her sister was no longer there.

“I said, ‘Where’s my sister?’” she said. “It was like, ‘We don’t know, we’ll check,’ but he never got back. So that’s when I realized we were being split up.”

After that, Ja’Niah said, the two sisters moved through half a dozen living situations. There was, she said, a foster home so strict that Ma’Khia was often not allowed to leave the house; a group home with dog feces on the floor; a foster mother who screamed at the top of her lungs, not realizing Ma’Khia was recording it all on her phone.

Even when the living situation was good, and a foster parent in Dayton mused about adopting Ma’Khia, her sister was not interested, Ja’Niah said. “She wanted to get back to me, to family. To Columbus,” she said.

At school, Ma’Khia kept her family issues to herself. Jessica Oakley, the teacher’s aide who worked with her at Canal Winchester High School, recalled her as “a hard worker, a sweet girl, very shy.” At the end of ninth grade, she made the school’s honor roll.

She was diligent about schoolwork, and continued to seek out Ms. Oakley’s assistance even when the school shut down because of the coronavirus, once spending eight hours with her teacher on a Google Hangout, going through all her homework.

“She was definitely my girl,” Ms. Oakley said.

She said it was rare for Ma’Khia to mention anything about her family — except for Ja’Niah.

“She was very protective of her sister,” she said. “She was like, ‘No one messes with my baby sister.’”

…

The two girls ended up at Ms. Moore’s house on Legion Lane — not far from their grandmother’s house, and together for the first time since they left her care.

The suburban home is neat and well-tended, with bunches of artificial yellow flowers poking out of the turf beside the door. The two sisters would make TikTok videos, dance, go skating, or go to an amusement center called Scene75 that has rides and video games, Ms. Moore said. Ma’Khia, she said, was not troublesome.

“She’s a quiet girl. She doesn’t start fights anywhere. She wasn’t a troubled child,” she said. “She was fun. She loved her family. She loved her siblings. They were close.”

Still, Ms. Moore placed repeated calls to 911 in which she seemed to struggle to manage the children she had taken in.

Sometimes, she was calling to report that a teenager had “gone AWOL,” failing to return home by curfew. But late last year, Ms. Moore sounded deeply shaken as she asked the police to remove a 10-year-old boy — or, as she put it, “one of my irate foster youths” — from her home.

…

Ms. Cates, who formerly cared for Ma’Khia, said Ms. Moore faced a problem common to many foster parents: The agency expected her to work full-time outside the home, a situation that forced her to leave foster children unsupervised.

“I believe she was a loving, caring foster parent,” she said. But, she added, “foster parenting is a full-time job.”

By this spring, Ja’Niah said, Ms. Moore’s home had become increasingly tense. In the weeks leading up to the shooting, she said, Ms. Moore had accused the girls of stealing the cards that carry cash benefits for food.

And she said Ms. Moore sometimes left them unsupervised, or with former foster children, women in their 20s who, she said, berated them and mocked Ma’Khia’s speech impediment.

After school on April 20, the two Bryant girls found themselves alone in the house with Tionna Bonner, 22, one of Ms. Moore’s former foster children and, Ja’Niah said, her special favorite.

Ms. Bonner, who had come to celebrate Ms. Moore’s birthday the previous day, was now scolding the girls, saying they were habitually disrespecting Ms. Moore.

“She’s like, ‘My mom told you all to clean up this house, it’s dirty,’” Ja’Niah said.

The dispute escalated quickly, but when Ja’Niah called Ms. Moore, who was at work, she said she was too busy to get involved, Ja’Niah said. So each of them called for backup: Ja’Niah called her grandmother, and Ms. Bonner called another young woman, Shai-Onta Craig-Watkins, 20, who had lived in the house as a foster child. …

Ms. Hammonds rushed over and described standing on the stairway inside, trying to protect her granddaughters as the older women threatened to beat them up. Ms. Bonner had pulled out a knife, Ja’Niah and her grandmother said, and Ma’Khia had grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen. Ja’Niah went into her room and called 911. In the call, placed at 4:32 p.m., Ja’Niah asked for help as people shouted in the background.

Someone could be heard saying, “I’m not scared of no knife.”

“It’s 3171 Legion Lane,” Ja’Niah told the dispatcher. “We got Angie’s grown girls trying to fight us, trying to stab us, trying to put her hands on our grandma. Get here now!”

Twelve minutes later, the police arrived.

In a brief lull, Ms. Craig-Watkins left the house and the sisters began to pack up their things, thinking the worst of the situation was over. As they rushed out of the house, their father was pulling in to come to their aid. But also arriving was Ms. Craig-Watkins, who had returned with two more people. The two groups crossed paths, and Ms. Craig-Watkins spit toward the family, Ja’Niah and Ms. Hammonds said.

“I feel like that really made Ma’Khia really mad when she spit,” Ja’Niah said. “That’s when everything just went left.”

A police officer stepped out of his car and walked toward the driveway just as Ma’Khia turned her attention to Ms. Craig-Watkins and could be heard on a video from a neighbor’s surveillance camera threatening to stab her.

As Ma’Khia charged, Ms. Craig-Watkins tumbled to the ground, and Ma’Khia’s father tried to kick her. Ma’Khia turned to Ms. Bonner and backed her up against a car.

Ma’Khia raised a knife, and Officer Nicholas Reardon, a white 23-year-old who was the first officer to approach the scene, shot four times at Ma’Khia, who slumped down.

As Ma’Khia’s body lay on the ground, police officers led Ja’Niah inside Ms. Moore’s house, along with her father’s young son.

Ja’Niah turned on the television to find some cartoons for her younger brother to watch. Instead, what flashed on the screen first was a news report: a jury in Minneapolis had found Mr. Chauvin guilty of murdering Mr. Floyd.

Before an officer took her phone, she sneaked into a bathroom and made one more call for help.

“I called my real mom — my biological mom — and I told her, I said, ‘I need you. They just shot Ma’Khia. Get here now,’” Ja’Niah recalled. “I needed her” (Bogel-Burroughs, Barry, and Wright 1-7).

As Officer Reardon got out of his vehicle, he encountered seven people outside a two-story brick home and asked, “What’s going on?” Yelling could be heard in the background.

An unidentified girl appeared to fall to the grass after being attacked by Ms. Bryant and then kicked by an unidentified man. The video footage then showed Ms. Bryant, who was holding a knife, appearing to lunge toward a person dressed in pink who was pinned against a car parked in the driveway.

“Hey! Hey!” Officer Reardon said as he pulled his gun. “Get down! Get down!”

He fired four quick shots, and Ms. Bryant dropped to the ground at the edge of the driveway.

A witness yelled, “Why did you shoot her?”

The officer responded, “She came at her with a knife,” apparently referring to Ms. Bryant and the person dressed in pink.

Chief Woods said Columbus officers were allowed to use deadly force to protect somebody who was in danger of being killed by another person. A Taser, he said, is generally reserved for situations where there is no immediate threat of death. Officers are not required to call out that they are about to fire their weapon, he added, though they try to if there is time.

“Were there other options? Not if she was about to stab that woman,” Dr. [Geoffrey P.] Alpert [a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina] said, adding that a Taser could take too long to deploy, and that the less-than-lethal weapons are not 100 percent reliable. “He’s protecting her life, not his own,” he said. “What if it didn’t work and she ended up killing this woman?”

Still, Ms. Bryant’s family and activists across Columbus questioned why the officer shot Ms. Bryant.

“I don’t know why he shot her,” Ms. Moore, Ms. Bryant’s foster parent, said. “I don’t know why he didn’t Tase her, why they didn’t try to break it up.”

She added, “At the end of the day, it wasn’t worth all this.”

Tensions over police shootings of Black people were already raw around Columbus. In early December, Casey Goodson Jr., 23, was shot to death at the entrance of his home by a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy who had been searching for someone else. Two weeks later, Andre Hill was shot by a Columbus police officer who was later charged with felony murder (Williams, Healy, and Wright 1-2).

Bryant’s death has become a debate that questions a child’s actions — and worthiness to live — instead of another example of the racism of policing and the institution’s failure to provide wholesome support, care, and safety for the communities it serves. The insistence that Reardon had no other option than to take Bryant’s life to save others — though he risked everyone’s life in the process — displays the lack of consideration and value that society places on the lives of Black girls and women.

Treva Lindsey, a professor of African American women’s history at Ohio State University, told Vox that there are those who won’t see Bryant as a victim but as someone who brought this on herself. And even for those who do see her as a victim, they’ll still victim-blame, erasing the systemic oppression — including that Black children are far more likely to be in foster care than their white counterparts, and kids in foster care are often exposed to high levels of violence — that brought her to being killed at the hands of the police.

“People will say ‘I’m really sad this whole scenario happened, but had she not had that knife …’ That becomes the ‘but,’ the qualifier, the caveat. And too often we have a caveat when it comes to defending, protecting, and caring for Black girls,” Lindsey said.

… Bryant’s death sparked debate across media and social media about whether the officer should have shot the 16-year-old.

On Face the Nation, Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), a former Orlando police chief, vehemently defended the officers’ actions, saying that police are forced to make calls in the heat of the moment. “Everybody has the benefit of slowing the video down and seizing the perfect moment. The officer on the street does not have that ability. He or she has to make those split-second decisions, and they’re tough.”

...

… Psychologist Merushka Bisetty explained in an essay for Vox that children like Bryant may “present with aggression and an inability to self-regulate their emotions and, consequently, engage in behaviors that can seem aggressive or involve weapons,” but that doesn’t mean that these situations “require or should be met with violent force.” Instead, it’s the role of intervening professionals to stop an aggressive interaction from becoming fatal.

That the reaction to Bryant’s killing has turned into a debate about whether the use of force is justified is an attempt to “displace blame onto the victim and their family rather than on the systems that created situations that led to her death,” Bisetty, who has provided services in shelters, schools, and jails, wrote. “It is worth considering whether Bryant might have still been alive today if a mental health expert — or someone else trained in nonviolent deescalation — had responded to the call.”

It’s also worth considering whether the police officer would have fired shots if Bryant or the people involved in the altercation were white. There are countless examples of police peacefully apprehending white boys and men wielding weapons. …

…

“It’s important for us to continuing highlighting and vocalizing how the inhumanity of white supremacy shows up in the lives of Black women and girls,” Lindsey said. “When we’re equipped with the full truth of how it operates, we have a better chance at rooting out the operating system of white supremacy and anti-Blackness” (Cineas 1-7).

[Paste the following on Google to watch a 3 minute ABC-produced video]

New video shows Columbus police shooting of teenager Ma ...

Works cited:

Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas; Barry, Ellen; and Wright, Will. “Ma’Khia Bryant’s Journey through Foster Care Ended with an Officer’s Bullet.” The New York Times, May 8, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/us/columbus-makhia-bryant-foster-care.html

Cineas, Fabiola. “Why They’re Not Saying Ma’Khia Bryant’s Name.” Vox, May 1, 2021. Net. https://www.vox.com/22406055/makhia-bryant-police-shooting-columbus-ohio

Williams, Kevin; Healy, Jack; and Wright, Will. “ ‘A Horrendous Tragedy’: The Chaotic Moments before a Police Shooting in Columbus.” The New York Times, updated May 8, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/columbus-police-shooting-bryant.html