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.
Stephens wife, Renetta, the director of human resources for the county, arrived a few minutes later, just after three oclock. 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 couldnt enter the kill zone. What do you mean kill zone? Renetta asked. Maam, you cant 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 citys attorney, who worked in the same building and on the same floor as she did, and the deputy chief of police, whom shed 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.
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http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/son-deceased
uppityperson
(115,674 posts)1monster
(11,012 posts)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...
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts).
HeiressofBickworth
(2,682 posts)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....