Manny Fernandez, Sarah Mervosh and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

There was Henry Newson, a black man who had just been discharged from the hospital and was waiting for a ride home when two officers working security questioned why he was there. He refused to leave, and a white officer punched him in the face.

There was Craigory Adams, also black, who knocked on his neighbor’s door late one night carrying a barbecue fork — to keep stray dogs away, he said — and the neighbor called police. A white officer pointed a shotgun at Adams but said he wasn’t meaning to fire it. He did, striking Adams in the arm.

These names and others have all been brought up again in the days since Jefferson, a 28-year-old black woman, was shot and killed in her bedroom this month by a white police officer who was standing outside her window. In the largely black and Hispanic neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth, where Jefferson lived, and in others nearby, many residents recalled times when they had tried calling police — and ended up sorry that they did.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said the Rev. Kyev Tatum, who is part of a coalition asking the Justice Department to investigate “overaggressive policing” in Fort Worth’s communities of color. “This is historic and it is systemic, and we understand that racism is at the heart of this.”

The long-simmering tensions boiled to the surface this month after Jefferson became the sixth person to be killed by Fort Worth police since June. Four of the six were black.

Five years after a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, stoked a national debate over race and policing, Fort Worth is far from the only community where residents complain that the conversation in their city never really went anywhere.

In Dallas, just 30 miles east of Fort Worth, a similar case played out tragically over the last year: A white off-duty police officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison earlier this month after she mistakenly entered the apartment of a black neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, and shot him to death while he was watching television.

“There’s a pattern,” said Craig, 49. “They want to say that it’s not racially motivated,” she said. “It’s just obvious to the eye that it is.”

Jefferson’s death drew hundreds to a vigil outside her house in Fort Worth. At City Hall, protesters held signs reading “Say Her Name.” And on the Democratic presidential debate stage last week in Ohio, Julián Castro brought up Jefferson’s death to discuss police violence.

Fort Worth has a storied history as a Western outpost — it lives up to its Cowtown nickname with twice-daily cattle drives in the historic district — but today, the nation’s 13th largest city is in some ways two different places, divided along racial and economic lines. It is home to Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, the wealthiest person in Texas, but neighborhoods like Jefferson’s are dotted with abandoned homes.

Most of the police force, about 65%, is white — as are the mayor, the city manager, a majority of the City Council and now the police chief, after the department’s first black chief was fired earlier this year. Black and Hispanic residents, who together make up a majority in the city, complain that they often feel ignored by city leadership and unfairly targeted by police. Black residents on their own make up about 18% of the population, but they accounted for 40% of arrests in 2017.

The latest turmoil began after midnight Oct. 12, when Jefferson was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew. Two officers responded to a neighbor’s report that her doors were open. As Jefferson grabbed a gun from her purse, one of the officers fired the fatal shot through a bedroom window without identifying himself, police said. The officer, Aaron Dean, who quickly resigned, now faces a murder charge.

From the beginning, city officials knew the case was going to be unlike any of the previous police shootings. The mayor, Betsy Price, said the interim police chief, Ed Kraus, called her at about 6:30 a.m. and told her the essence of what had occurred overnight.

“He just said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be pretty,’” Price recalled. “‘It’s too early. I don’t have the details yet, but it looks like the wheels fell off.’”

Public resentment had been building for years. In interviews, many residents said they knew people who had been shot, shocked by stun guns or wrestled by police. At least four highly publicized encounters have been documented in video footage and lawsuits. Some of those officers have faced criminal charges and left the department; others remain on the force.

‘Why Don’t You Teach Your Son Not to Litter?’

One of the first cases to incite outrage was Craig’s arrest in December 2016.

It started with flavored raisins. Craig’s 8-year-old son dropped some raisins onto the street outside her white neighbor’s house. The man grabbed her son by the back of the neck and pushed him down to pick up the raisins, she said.

Craig called 911 and a white officer, William Martin, responded. As seen in body-camera footage and cellphone videos, one of the first questions Martin asked was, “So why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” After Craig told him that her neighbor did not have the right to put his hands on her son, whether or not he had littered, the officer asked, “Why not?”

As Craig grew agitated, he added, “I’m just asking.”

Martin told her that if she did not stop yelling at him, “you’re going to piss me off, and I’m going to take you to jail.”

Moments later, the officer pushed aside one of her daughters, Jacques Hymond, who was 15 at the time, pulled out his taser and pointed it at Craig as he forced her to the pavement. He later handcuffed and arrested Craig, along with Jacques and Craig’s other daughter, Brea Hymond, who was 19 at the time.

Craig said she had hoped her arrest would serve as a warning of the need to make changes in the police department. A task force appointed by the City Council examined issues of race and culture in the police force, but major reforms never happened. The officer was suspended for 10 days but remains with the department.

“I believe it will continue, because I’m not seeing any consequences behind the actions that these police officers are taking,” Craig said. “If there’s no punishment behind it, why not keep doing it?”

Another incident occurred in August 2017, when Dorshay Morris called 911 to report that her boyfriend was drunk and threatening to kick in her door. She had a knife in her purse to protect herself.

The two officers who arrived made her feel like a criminal, she said. When she refused to give them her ID, the officers grabbed her by the hair, and Sgt. Kenneth Pierce, who is white, ordered a rookie officer to shoot her with a taser. She was taken into custody and charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She said she spent four days in jail. The charges were later dropped. Pierce was fired but was reinstated after he appealed.

“I never was supposed to be arrested,” Morris said in an interview this week. “I was the caller.”

Six Fatal Police Shootings

So far this year, Fort Worth police officers have fired shots at nine people, killing six and injuring two. The fatal shootings have all happened since June and are more than the department had in the previous two years combined.

Policing experts caution against extrapolating from one year of data — the numbers can fluctuate from year to year — but six fatal shootings is more than most police departments in similarly sized cities have recorded. For example, in Indianapolis, police have fired at three people this year, killing one. And in San Francisco, police have not fired a gun at anyone this year, a spokeswoman said.

In one of the fatal cases in Fort Worth, an officer shot a white Army veteran who had barricaded himself with a rifle in his father’s home. Police said they thought he had pointed the rifle toward them when he was shot, but in fact, it was a flashlight.

In another scrutinized case, an 18-year-old black man who was a person of interest in a homicide was killed while holding a gun and running from police, according to video footage. Activists noted that he was shot in the back.

In each of the fatal shootings this year, the victims were armed. In several, they had barricaded themselves inside a home or vehicle in a standoff with police. Still, four of the six victims, including Jefferson, were black, and community members have questioned whether police could have done more to de-escalate or avoid risk.

“Just because they had firearms doesn’t warrant a death sentence on the street,” said Pamela Young, an organizer who is pushing for community oversight of the police department.

The mayor and police officials have apologized for the killing of Jefferson, which they condemned as inexcusable. City leaders said that they planned to bring in an outside team of experts to review the police department, and that they were working on other changes to improve diversity and accountability.

“Please, do not let the actions of one officer reflect on the other 1,700,” Kraus, who has been on the job since May, said during an emotional news conference. “There’s absolutely no excuse for this incident, and the person responsible will be held accountable.”

In an interview, Price said she had heard from some black residents who said they feared police so much that they would no longer call them for help. She was deeply worried by that sentiment. But she flatly rejected the idea that the city’s white leadership was not engaged with black residents.

“I am in the minority community more than anywhere else,” the mayor said.

The tensions gripping the city were on full display Oct. 15 when residents poured into City Hall for the City Council’s first meeting after the shooting — so many that a large, frustrated crowd was forced to wait for hours outside.

Many residents demanded to know not only what the city was going to do for the family of Jefferson — who many call “Tay” — but for everyone else.

“You mentioned that we need to provide Tay’s nephew with anything he needs,” Jen Sarduy, a black Fort Worth resident, told the council. “He needs his aunt alive. He needs to not have witnessed her murder. He needs the city to be equitable and just and safe.”

This article originally appeared in

Fort Worth Police Have More Violence to Answer For, Residents Say

FORT WORTH, Texas — Before there was Atatiana Jefferson, there was Jackie Craig, a black woman who called police to report that her white neighbor had grabbed her son — and found herself pinned to the ground by the officer who responded.

But when the information was relayed to two police officers who responded, it was classified as an “open structure” call, a vague term that can mean anything from an abandoned house to a burglary. The officers parked about a block away, spoke in low voices as they crept through the yard and did not knock on the door to announce themselves as the police.

This sequence of events, explained in more detail on Tuesday, offered one potential explanation of what happened in the confusing moments before a white Fort Worth police officer abruptly shot through a bedroom window on Saturday and killed the 28-year-old black woman who lived inside. But exactly what the officer saw when he fired the single fatal shot was still in question, even as officials condemned his actions as inexcusable and pursued a rare murder charge against a police officer.

The woman, Atatiana Jefferson, had been up late playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when she heard noises outside. Her nephew told the authorities that she had pulled a handgun from her purse and pointed it at the window, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.

But it was unclear what the officer, Aaron Y. Dean, saw when he looked into the window, which was obscured by the reflection of his flashlight on the glass, at least according to the body camera video released by the police. Dean has declined to give an interview to investigators, according to the arrest warrant, and his partner on the call said that she saw only Jefferson’s face in the window at the time of the shooting.

Dean, 34, resigned from the department on Monday and was arrested later that day. He was charged with murder. Prosecutors will present the evidence to a grand jury, which will decide whether or not to issue an indictment.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Jefferson’s brother, Adarius Carr, said the problems in the Fort Worth Police Department extended beyond the actions of a single officer.

“This rookie cop is not going to be the scapegoat for what happened,” he said. “Yes, he is going to take his punishment, but the system failed him. Whoever senior who was with him failed him. Whoever sent him out failed him. The training failed him. There is a lot that has to get fixed.”

Community leaders have complained that the shooting exacerbated a mistrust of the Police Department, particularly among black residents. Six people, of various races, have died in police shootings in Fort Worth since June.

Dean graduated from the police academy in March 2018, according to state records. He joined the Fort Worth Police Department the next month. He had previously taken classes at the University of Texas at Arlington, chipping away at his degree from the spring of 2003 through the spring of 2011. He graduated with a degree in physics, a university spokesman said.

A lawyer for Dean could not be reached on Tuesday.

He appeared to live with relatives in nearby Arlington, on a quiet street of tan-brick houses about 12 miles east of where Jefferson was shot. No one answered the door at the Dean family residence, a low-slung home with a neatly trimmed lawn. Officers with the Arlington Police Department kept watch on the house throughout the afternoon.

Manny Ramirez, the president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, said that police officers approach open structure calls prepared for any number of situations: a burglar in the house, doors left open by residents, abandonment. Still, Ramirez said that everyone he had spoken to within the department was dumbfounded as to why Dean opened fire.

“He’s such a young officer, not in age, but just young in tenure,” Ramirez said. “It’s one of those things where we’re all at a loss and there’s no way to explain it. We can’t understand how this happened.”

Smith, the neighbor who called the police early on Saturday, was distraught after learning that Jefferson had been killed. “I’m shaken. I’m mad. I’m upset. And I feel it’s partly my fault,” he told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram later that day. “If I had never dialed the Police Department, she’d still be alive.”

At a news conference on Tuesday, Ed Kraus, the interim police chief, said that the department was investigating how information about the neighbor’s call was relayed to the responding officers.

“The information came from the neighbor to the call-takers and while it was relayed to the dispatch, it was determined to be an open structure call,” Kraus said, adding that officers probably would have acted differently if they believed they were responding to a simple check on the well-being of a family.

He said he could not speculate on Dean’s mindset at the time of the shooting, and a police spokesman declined to comment on whether Jefferson was holding the gun, as her young nephew told the police, or had anything else in her hands at the moment she was shot.

Kraus has defended Jefferson’s right to have a gun in her own home and said there was “no excuse” for Dean’s response.

He grew emotional on Tuesday as he described the reaction from other officers in the department, who he said had overwhelmingly thanked him for taking action against Dean. He praised officers who he said worked hard to build relationships in the community — and would have to pay the price in lost trust.

“I likened it to a bunch of ants building an ant hill, and somebody comes with a hose and washes it away,” he said. “They just have to start from scratch.”

Police Add Details on Call That Led to Fatal Shooting

FORT WORTH, Texas — When James Smith called a nonemergency police number at 2:23 a.m. on Saturday, he opened with a note of concern: “I’m calling about my neighbor.” He had noticed that his neighbor’s doors were open, the lights on in the middle of the night, and he was worried. “It’s not normal for them,” he said.

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Manny Fernandez, Sarah Mervosh and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Articles written by the author

Fort Worth Police Have More Violence to Answer For, Residents Say

Police Add Details on Call That Led to Fatal Shooting