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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Wed Jan 28, 2015, 02:48 PM Jan 2015

Your Son Is Deceased

BY RACHEL AVIV

Stephen Torres was meeting with a client at his law office, in downtown Albuquerque, on April 12, 2011, when he received a call from a neighbor, who told him that police officers were aiming rifles at his house. He left work and drove to his home, in a middle-class suburb with a view of the mountains. There were more than forty police vehicles on his street. Officers wearing camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests had circled his home, a sand-colored two-story house with a pitched tile roof. Two officers were driving a remote-controlled robot, used for discharging bombs, back and forth on the corner.

Stephen’s wife, Renetta, the director of human resources for the county, arrived a few minutes later, just after three o’clock. A colleague had heard her address repeated on the police radio, so her assistant pulled her out of a meeting. When Renetta saw that the street was cordoned off with police tape, she tried to walk to her house, but an officer told her that she couldn’t enter the “kill zone.” “What do you mean ‘kill zone’?” Renetta asked. “Ma’am, you can’t go any further,” the officer said.

Renetta and Stephen found each other at the southern end of the street. There were nearly eighty officers and city officials on the street, many of whom they recognized. Stephen saw a police-union attorney, who defended officers when they were in trouble. Renetta saw the city’s attorney, who worked in the same building and on the same floor as she did, and the deputy chief of police, whom she’d known in graduate school. “I kept looking her way, but she would not make eye contact with me,” Renetta said.

Renetta knew that the only person at home was the youngest of her three boys, Christopher, who was twenty-seven and had schizophrenia. Two hours earlier, he had stopped by her office for lunch, as he did a few times a week. Then he visited an elderly couple who lived two houses away. He said that he needed to “check up on them”; he often cleaned their pool or drove them to the grocery store. Because he found it overwhelming to spend too much time among people, he tried to do small, social errands, so as not to isolate himself.

more

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/son-deceased

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Your Son Is Deceased (Original Post) n2doc Jan 2015 OP
K&R SamKnause Jan 2015 #1
k&r&tears uppityperson Jan 2015 #2
It's a long article, but one everyone should read because THIS is 1monster Jan 2015 #3
oh.......god. :( BlancheSplanchnik Jan 2015 #4
I couldn't finish reading the article HeiressofBickworth Jan 2015 #5

1monster

(11,012 posts)
3. It's a long article, but one everyone should read because THIS is
Wed Jan 28, 2015, 04:58 PM
Jan 2015

what our law enforement entities have become -- what they are trained to be. Like someone in the article says, I would not call the police if there was a crises...

HeiressofBickworth

(2,682 posts)
5. I couldn't finish reading the article
Thu Jan 29, 2015, 10:33 PM
Jan 2015

I knew the outcome -- the officers responsible would never be held accountable. We see it over and over again all across the country. Whether the victim is a person of color, or suffering from some kind of mental instability, regardless of the degree of provocation, the police have only one solution -- kill them. No problems....

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