Arizona Reaches Tipping Point for Police Reform
Last year, I drafted an article to reflect on a gathering of over 2,600 Phoenicians at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church on Tuesday, June 18th, 2019. Spurred by recent civil rights violations and police misconduct caught on video, the community came together to share personal experiences and protest police brutality.
With bleeding hearts, we heard first-hand accounts from victims like Edward Brown, paralyzed from the waist down from a police shooting, and Dravon Ames and Iesha Harper, the family violently acosted by the police with guns drawn in response to a call about their four-year-old daughter taking a Barbie doll out of a store. Similar to the circumstances surrounding George Floyd’s death, the alleged violation of the law, did not merit the forceful police response (or the need for any police response at all).
While tightly packed in church pews, we listened to story after story. Emotions were high, but the community kept its poise. People did not show up for vengeance, but for the chance to share their experience, ask for recourse, and receive the answers they’ve been waiting for with regard to the police altercations that led to the death of their loved ones.
Along with first-hand accounts, data shows that officer-involved shootings with Phoenix PD more than doubled in 2018, from averaging 21 per year (years…
