At 2 a.m. on Sunday July 7, 2018, I awoke out of a dead sleep to the sound of a woman screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I don’t know how many times she screamed the word “help” or exactly how long it took me to come out of sleep, figure out that it wasn’t a dream, and realize that a woman really was screaming and I was hearing it.

It took another second of paralysis for that to sink in before my partner in bed next to me said, “did you hear that?”

“Someone’s screaming for help.”

It took several agonizing seconds for us to get our pajamas on. I ran outside while my partner fumbled with his shoes, but the screaming had stopped. I stood still, trying to listen, and realized with horror that I might be too late. A commotion finally came from an apartment three down from mine. That should give you an idea of how loud the woman was screaming. A man came out of the apartment and into the parking lot, followed by a very angry, but very alive, woman.

That was when my partner decided to call the police—a decision he now regrets, though he wasn’t the only one to call.

The two of us stood huddled in our jammies, watching the couple fight to make sure no one was hurt. It’s hard to say how long it took for the police to arrive—probably five to ten minutes. I didn’t hear any sirens, only the sound of cars approaching and doors slamming shut out of sight. Three officers then walked around the side of the apartment building and slowly approached the couple.

At the sight of the police, the woman turned around and started storming toward her apartment. The officers shouted at her to stop, placing their hands on their holstered firearms. They didn’t draw their weapons, but my mind flashed back to all of the video footage I’ve unfortunately watched of police shooting and killing unarmed suspects. My only comfort came from the fact that the couple was white, so they stood a much better chance of surviving.

The officers separated the couple and spent about five minutes interviewing them. After that, an officer walked over to the woman and handcuffed her. They informed her that she was under arrest. Stunned, I listened to the woman start to sob, and then a bit of hell began breaking loose.

People were angry. One neighbor, who had been watching through the window, started yelling at the police. “What are you doing?” he shouted repeatedly, “She screams for help, and then you come and arrest her?”

Another man approached from a different apartment building, having heard the commotion and also demanding an explanation. My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing. The woman was being led off by the one female officer, away from her apartment, in only her nightie. Stories about women being sexually assaulted by police and prison guards shot through my head. I started following her, terrified, but feeling that I couldn’t just do nothing.

My partner, being afraid of cops (as so many of us are), started yelling at me to come back. He regrets doing so. I regret listening to him. We both regret the entire night.

My partner yelled at the woman to stay quiet and get a lawyer. Meanwhile, my mind was racing.
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The detained woman had been led out of sight, back to the police vehicles. The two remaining officers were looking on edge, trying to respond to the few members of the community who had come out to voice their displeasure. I remember the female officer coming back to me and my partner, who was upset to the point of going into “say every word that comes into his head” mode. All I could do was ask the officer in a shaking voice, now crying, if the arrested woman was given anything to wear. It took two tries to get an answer to my question.

“She’ll be given something.”

Translation: No.

The officers started telling everyone to go inside. We refused at first, still afraid that the cops might do something violent to our neighbors. Eventually, it became clear that there would only be talking, and I went back into my apartment.

I had work the next day, but I couldn’t sleep. I felt both helpless and useless, my mind going over all the things I could have said or done to intervene. Instead of sleeping, I found a place online where I could submit a complaint about the local police. I wrote that the officers on the scene acted aggressively by putting their hands on their guns and telling bystanders to go inside, that they made an arrest in very little time without the aid of a domestic violence advocate, and that they hauled off a woman in a nightie without allowing her to put on some reasonable clothes.

Later that morning, in the light of day, I surprisingly got a call from an officer, who attempted to explain away some of my complaints. When I expressed that this was not good enough, he asked me if I wanted to come down to the station to file a complaint, which I thought I had already done.

My partner and I decided to go together, mostly because I was too scared to go alone. We’re both white, so we didn’t expect to be brutalized, but we were still afraid—of authority figures, of guns, and of the amount of police misconduct that goes on in this country.

Sergeant Collins was friendly and took the time to read through the police reports and the complaint I had made. I was a little confused as to why we were even there. I had expected to pick up an official complaint form to fill out either there or at home. Then he started talking.

He spent about the next half hour “explaining” why the police acted as they did. It felt as though he was attempting to talk me out of making a complaint. Then he admitted that it was “very unusual” for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this? Were the bystanders who have personally witnessed all the nearly daily incidents of deadly police brutality not filing complaints against the offending officers?

Information on how many complaints are filed against police in any given area, whether by arrestees or by bystanders, is hard to come by. And where it does exist, it often seems fishy.

In Seattle, criticisms about how the police handle complaints go back decades. A news release by the Washington State ACLU from 2009 called for an Independent Office for Police Accountability due to the fact that people who file complaints against the SPD have been “ignored, dissatisfied, and even threatened with libel suits.” In the nearby suburb of Bothell, where I live, complaints are handled internally. The vast majority of complaints against the police that are handled by said police are thrown out, so that doesn’t inspire much confidence.

He admitted that it was very unusual for bystanders to an arrest to file a complaint against police. This surprised me. Were people not doing this?
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When it was found that the LAPD went through 1,356 allegations of biased policing without upholding a single one, the Police Commission president finally decided that they needed to look at how they handled investigations into these complaints.It seems utterly impossible that there were no incidents of “biased policing,” aka racial profiling, seeing as black Californians account for 17 percent of all arrests in the state while making up only six percent of the population. But according to the president and cofounder of the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA, racial profiling by police is “excruciatingly difficult” to prove.

The LAPD’s Biased Policing and Mediation reports include a description of the department’s adjudication process. It starts with the accused cop’s commanding officer, then goes through undefined “multiple levels of review” as the matter is investigated. There are multiple steps where higher authorities can “disagree” with the decision of the lower, ending at the Chief of Police. If that happens, it goes to whatever “officer director” applies in the specific situation.

What I can gather from all this as an average citizen without a criminal justice or law degree is that there are many ways to throw a complaint out and only one narrow path to sustaining the complaint—which brings the accused to a Board of Rights tribunal whose decision can be overturned by a court of law.

There is no standardization on how a police department should handle its complaint procedures. In New Jersey, for example, they just don’t bother to investigate 99 percent of brutality complaints. In Tacoma, Washington, not far from where I live, only 10 percent of complaints against police were sustained during a 12-month period investigated by Reuters. In Chicago, a recent and exhaustive report found 125,000 complaints against 25,000 officers from 1967 to 2014. Only 660 led to firings. Seven officers racked up over 100 complaints each over their careers, and were able to get away with this clear pattern of misconduct because this was the first report in the history of the department that made it possible to “to identify officers with a long history of complaints.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?

Following the Chicago Tribune’s report, the U.S. Justice Department found “a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution” within the Chicago Police Department. It also found evidence of racial bias in the use of force, and that these problems are “largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force.”

How can you eliminate problem officers from a police department if you can’t even identify them?
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In a recent video by Truth Be Told, DeRay Mckesson pointed to police unions as the source of these problems. These unions have worked tirelessly for the past 40 years to codify protections for officers into department policy, union contracts, and even local and state law. Police officers often get a “cooling off” period in which they cannot be questioned by investigators after a complaint is made. Most get their disciplinary records erased after a set period of time. Others get special information about the case, including the identities of the individuals who made the complaint.

The last thing I would want a rogue cop to know is that I filed a complaint against them. If citizens aren’t filing complaints against police, maybe it’s because they think that it’s pointless at best and dangerous at worst.

It dawned on me that Sergeant Collins did not understand why I was there. He was probably hoping I would either withdraw my complaint or accept his explanation and go away.

Realizing this, I just wanted to get out of there, but I had no idea how to end the interaction. Then, as Sergeant Collins and my boyfriend were discussing why cops had to go for their deadly weapons any time anybody did something they didn’t like, the officer demonstrated the action by grabbing at his holstered firearm himself.

My partner couldn’t handle it. His fear of guns is worse than mine. We both left in tears. I held back long enough for Sergeant Collins to get me an official complaint form, and before I could leave, he again tried to “explain” what the cops had done. I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol.

My problem was with the protocol. It was about an entire system of policing that is failing to protect and serve those it claims to.

I complained because I have legitimate concerns. I don’t understand why cops have to grab at their guns all the time, and why they don’t understand (or don’t care) that doing so is literally a death threat. I don’t understand why they had to threaten to kill a tiny woman in a nightie. Being told that the cops were afraid of weapons in the apartment doesn’t alleviate my concerns that she could have been sexually assaulted or make me feel any better about the complete lack of dignity with which they treated her.

I know that women can be domestic abusers, and I don’t know thing one about that couple. But I don’t understand how you decide who to charge within five minutes of talking without the aid of a domestic violence advocate. What I do know is how often women are arrested and imprisoned for lashing out in self defense. What I do know, and can’t ever forget, is the sound of that woman screaming for help as loud as her lungs would allow her.

I finally managed to tell him that it wasn’t just about these individual cops and whether they had followed protocol. My problem was with the protocol.
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These are some of the things I said in an impassioned email I sent to my mayor, the Bothell Chief of Police, and the Bothell City Council after my meeting with Sergeant Collins. Again, to my surprise, I got a reply, this time from Mayor Andy Rheaume himself. To my disappointment, it was more of the same—an attempt to explain away the things I had complained about, ignoring the systemic roots of the issue. I wrote back, begging him not to brush me off.

I haven’t heard from him since.

I don’t know what came of the charges against the woman. I haven’t seen her or her partner since that night. I do know that she was booked at the King County Jail in Seattle on Sunday and set free on conditional release Monday afternoon. I hope she’s okay, and I hope her and the guy she was seeing stay away from each other.

What I did make sure to find out was whether my complaint had been filed into official record—and it has. I received an email from Captain Ken Seuberlich of the Bothell police, and he spoke on the phone with my partner. That conversation seemed to go well, and the Captain wanted to speak with me on the phone as well. But when we spoke, it was more of the same excuses.

This was a mild experience compared to so many of the violent and disturbing incidents of police misconduct that go on in the U.S. I feel traumatized from what I witnessed, and I didn’t see anyone hurt, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed. But I know that happens daily, and that’s why I complained—because I could see the roots of the problem at work even here. Cops treating civilians in their pajamas like threats. Cops trying to talk bystanders out of making complaints. Cops refusing to look past the surface of the problem. Cops seemingly ignorant of the fact that many civilians are terrified of them.

Maybe some of my complaints were unwarranted, but I’m still glad I made them. And I’m glad I had the fortitude and the protection of my privilege to follow through and refuse to withdraw my complaint or let it go. Nothing will change if we’re not willing to constantly demand change at the core of the policing system that kills so many and is designed to allow killer cops to get away with murder. We’re facing a group of people who have given themselves special privileges, and are defended by the legal system every step of the way.

The police are supposed to protect their communities, not terrorize them. I’m not letting this go until I see real change.

Data indicate law enforcement officials have killed nearly 500 civilians this year alone.

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By Celisa Calacal

The number of fatal shootings by police officers in the first half of 2017 is nearly identical to the number of shootings recorded during the same time period in 2016 and 2015, according to the Washington Post’s police shootings database.

Police have shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of the year, and authors John Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins write that police killings are set to reach 1,000 for the third year in a row. According to the Post’s database, which began in 2015 following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 992 people were killed by law enforcement officers in 2015 and 963 were killed in 2016.

“These numbers show us that officer-involved shootings are constant over time,” Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, told the Post. “Some places go up, some go down, but it’s averaging out. This is our society in the 21st century.”

Data from 2017 show that armed white males are the category of people killed the most by police officers, a continuing trend over the past two years. However, black males are killed at disproportionately higher rates. While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims. According to Mapping Police Violence, a database that tracks the number of black people killed by police officers, blacks are three times more likely to be fatally shot by officers than white people. The Post’s police shooting database shows that the number of black men killed by police has been declining — 50 were killed in the first half of 2015, 34 in the same period in 2016 and 27 so far this year.

While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims.

Of the 492 people killed by police, 27 were reported unarmed. One such victim was 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was slain in April leaving a party in a Texas neighborhood when an officer fired several shots into a moving vehicle.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year. In June, Seattle police shot and killed 30-year-old Charleena Lyles, a mentally ill black woman who was pregnant at the time. She had called 911 to report an attempted burglary at her home, and officers allege she pulled a knife on the two officers. Reports from The Seattle Times revealed that one of the officers was not carrying a Taser at the time of the shooting, a violation of department policy.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum, said the shootings of mentally ill individuals can be avoided. “We know we can make a difference in cases where the person is mentally ill and in cases where someone is not armed with a gun,” Wexler told the Post.

An estimated 8% of police departments across the country have had an officer fatally shoot a civilian since 2015. LAPD officers have killed 47 people since 2015, the highest number of any police department in the country. Phoenix police have killed the most people in 2017, fatally shooting eight.

Holding Hands With The Police May Kill Us

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons. Data from the Washington Post suggest the agency’s figures are significantly lower than the actual number. Former FBI director James Comey called the FBI’s system of tracking fatal police shootings “embarrassing and ridiculous” last October. On Saturday, the agency said it would move forward with a data collection program to gather information on police shootings in 50 local and federal law enforcement agencies, with the intention of forging a nationwide system in 2018.

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons.

In October 2016, the Department of Justice said it planned to collect more comprehensive data about police shootings. But under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee who has called consent decrees a hindrance to law enforcement efforts, it is unclear if the agency will follow through on its promise.

Not only has the number of people fatally shot by police remained about the same as in previous years, so has the number of officers indicted for fatal shootings. Previous reporting from the Post reveals that from 2005 to 2015, just 54 officers had been charged, though police killed thousands during that period. More often than not, law enforcement officers were acquitted of all charges.

How We Learn To Love ‘Good’ White Men With Guns

In the past month, several officers have been cleared of charges after fatally shooting civilians. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of all charges for killing Philando Castile during a traffic stop last July, though Castile was complying with Yanez’s orders. A week later, Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was acquitted in the shooting death of Syville Smith. In the case of former University of Cincinnati officer Raymond Tensing, who fatally shot Samuel DuBose in 2015, a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn’t come to a verdict. A separate trial for Tensing last fall also ended in a hung jury.

This story originally appeared on Alternet. Republished here with permission.

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