No Peace, No Justice
The day before Thanksgiving, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced no charges would be brought against the five Detroit police officers who killed Porter Burks. In response to a request for help from Mr. Burks’ older brother, police shot 38 rounds, hitting Mr. Burks 19 times. He died on the street.
The killing of Mr. Burks was followed a few weeks later by the shooting of Ki’Azia Miller. Her family, too, had called the police for help.
Neither person had committed a crime. Both are dead at the hands of police. Neither person needed to die.
Mental health crises happen frequently in any community. By early November Detroit Police had been called upon 20,465 times for assistance during mental health related incidents. Most of them do not result in deaths. When they do, police must be held accountable.
In response to these two deaths and the growing community outrage over them, Chief James White has called for increasing mental health services in the state. White said, “This is a regrettable situation, but it reflects our current situation. The Detroit Police Department has done its part to address this crisis, but to the extent that we’ve been able to,” White said. “We’ve paired up with mental health specialists. … We have implemented a crisis intervention strategy. But that is not a foolproof strategy.” At a Board of Police Commissioners meeting White went so far as to say police should not be responding to nonviolent mental health calls at all and should be exploring new strategies and nonlethal methods for others.
The Chief is finally acknowledging what community activists have been saying. Police are not a solution to a mental health crisis. A mental illness is not a crime. There are alternatives that work. Activists have consistently pointed to programs like the CAHOOTS program in Oregon, or the STAR program in Colorado. Both have strong records of increasing community safety without resorting to police of force.
It is striking that while Chief White appears to recognize that these deaths require some new thinking, the County Prosecutor seems locked into the old, tired idea that police actions need to be protected from prosecution. Using language that dehumanized Mr. Burks, Worthy repeated the Chief’s story that the police did all that they could to de-escalate the situation.
She said responding officers had minimal time to “eliminate the threat.”
This is the same prosecutor who in 2010 proposed to jail parents if the missed parent teacher conferences. Nearly a decade later she pushed for new legislation to hold parents accountable when their children were shot accidently with unsecured weapons in their home. Using existing legislation Worthy had established the most punitive record for accidental child shootings anywhere in the nation.
While both these ideas were met with outrage and disbelief, it is revealing to see the thinking of the Prosecutor. She is willing to go after parents, even in moments of great tragedy, to make a larger point about responsibility.
But she does show the same willingness to hold the police accountable. Nor does she use the power of her office to raise serious questions about the use of force and the loss of life at the hands of police.
Worthy’s actions, like those of most of the City Council and the Mayor, are holding on to a system that is broken beyond repair. As a community we need to create safety and care for one another. We cannot depend on the police for peace, or the prosecutor for justice. We can only depend on each other.