Community demands change following Taser tragedy
By
Jaimeson Champion
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Published Oct 10, 2008 11:26 PM
On a recent windy night in Brooklyn, the flickering glow of a dozen small
candles illuminated a bouquet of flowers with a note, bearing the inscription
“We Love You, We Miss You.” The makeshift memorial marks the spot
on Tompkins Avenue, in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Iman
Morales was killed on Sept. 24 by a member of the New York Police
Department’s Emergency Service Unit.
Morales was a friendly and hardworking man who had a psychiatric disability. He
was emotionally distressed on the afternoon of Sept. 24 when he climbed,
unclothed, onto a ledge outside his apartment. He was then shot with a Taser
gun by a member of the ESU, causing him to plunge more than 10 feet to his
death on the sidewalk below.
Following this avoidable tragedy, on Oct. 2 the cop who gave the order to use
the Taser gun on Morales committed suicide, leaving behind three young
children.
Morales’s brother, Jesse Hernandez, said: “One of the things my
brother always said was that he wanted to change the world. Hopefully this will
change something. Hopefully no one will ever have to go through this
again.” (New York Post, Oct. 3)
Many community groups and organizations in Brooklyn and around the city are
saying that this tragedy must serve as a catalyst for a complete overhaul of
the way in which emergency situations involving individuals with psychiatric
disabilities are handled in New York.
At a rally and march organized by Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric
Disabilities on Oct. 1, demonstrators called on the city to end the
SWAT-team-like tactics too often employed by the ESU and instead implement
community intervention
teams with trained mental health workers and complete community oversight.
The rally featured speakers from 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the
National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights and Make the Road New York, among
others.
Freeborn Gill, a speaker from RIPPD, said: “We stand in solidarity to
stop this kind of abuse. We demand that the commissioner come out and speak to
us and listen to the resolutions that we have. ... The whole NYPD needs to be
revamped. ... There needs to be an intermediary between the community and the
NYPD.”
Lisa Ortega from RIPPD said that community intervention teams would be
committed to nonviolent de-escalation techniques performed by mental health
workers, not armed cops. Ortega explained that community intervention teams are
already being used successfully in other cities in the U.S. and that community
input and community oversight in the creation and implementation of these teams
is absolutely essential.
Ortega told Workers World: “Training alone isn’t going to do it.
You could have the best training in the world but if there is no
accountability, if there is no community oversight, then it’s a
façade and it does not work.”
Indeed, the city’s only other means for responding to situations
involving individuals with psychiatric disabilities are 23 mobile crisis teams
(MCTs) spread throughout the five boroughs. These teams are contracted out by
the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to private, for-profit hospitals
around the city. Many of these teams have drawn criticism for their lack of
accountability to the community, as in the death of Khiel Coppin.
Khiel Coppin was an 18-year-old African American with a psychiatric disability
who was killed on Nov. 12, 2007, when the NYPD fired 20 rounds at him outside
his Gates Avenue apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. They claimed they thought the
hairbrush he had in his hand was a deadly weapon.
Bedford-Stuyvesant, a community largely of Black and Latin@ people, has
frequently suffered racist violence and indignities at the hands of the
police.
In the hours before Coppin’s death, his mother had contacted an MCT
through Interfaith Hospital in Brooklyn and asked them to come assess and
assist her emotionally distraught son. The team went to Khiel’s apartment
but left without seeing him after his mother informed them that he had
momentarily left the premises.
Members of Coppin’s family were critical of the MCT, saying the team left
prematurely and missed a critical opportunity to prevent Khiel’s death.
Increased community oversight and accountability could prevent these types of
service lapses.
Immediate action must be taken so that these types of tragedies never occur
again. For more information, visit www.rippd.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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