Najee Seabrooks, Andrew Jerome Washington, III. Victoria Lee. All three were fatally shot by police officers in New Jersey within the past two years. All three were having a mental health crisis when they were killed.
With a lawsuit filed in August and the death of 25-year-old Victoria Lee, a Korean American woman in Fort Lee, N.J., about a month before, N.J. police are under criticism for their handling of mental health situations.
“All of those cases have shown that the police are definitely not the right response for mental health situations,” Rev. Dr. Charles F. Boyer, pastor of Greater Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Trenton, N.J., and co-founder of the organization Salvation and Social Justice, said to The Final Call.
“Whether it’s these issues, whether it’s the long-storied history of the racism and White supremacist groups that have taken root in New Jersey’s police departments, I’m on the side of police should not be the responder for anything that is non-violent,” he added.
Lawsuit against Jersey City Police
Courtnie Washington, Andrew Washington’s sister and administrator of his estate, along with civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger and N.J. attorney Randy Davenport, filed a lawsuit on Aug. 21 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
The 17-count suit comes approximately one year after police killed Mr. Washington, who is Black, on Aug. 27, 2023. The lawsuit is against the city of Jersey City; six police officers, a police sergeant, a police captain and a deputy chief; two EMTs; Hudson County, N.J.; Jersey City Medical Center and RWJBarnabas Health, a healthcare network.
Counts include excessive force, warrantless entry, civil conspiracy, discrimination based on disability, assault, battery, false imprisonment, negligent training and supervision, negligence and wrongful death.
The complaint claims that Jersey City Police Department (JCPD) officers dispatched to check on Mr. Washington’s safety during a mental health episode instead broke down his apartment door, shot him twice and tased him.
Days before the police interaction, the family repeatedly called a mental health hotline asking for trained mental health professionals, according to the 63-page complaint.
On the day of the police shooting, the family called again requesting that a mental health professional visit the home, as they were concerned Mr. Washington had not been taking his medication.
Police arrived instead, along with EMTs trained for physical health emergencies.
The officers deployed their emergency service unit, “a heavily armed, SWAT-like force trained to respond to armed criminal suspects and terrorism events,” the complaint says.
“The ESU officers, equipped with helmets, shields, tasers, guns, and other tactical gear and weapons, stacked themselves immediately outside Drew’s front door on the second-floor landing and stairwell, and broke down the door shortly after arriving.”
The complaint accuses the JCPD, Jersey City Medical Center, RWJBarnabas Health and/or Hudson County of going against established policies when dealing with someone experiencing a mental health crisis, such as de-escalation techniques, sending out mental health teams and relying on trained mental health professionals.
“Drew was a beloved son, brother, cousin, and nephew. Drew was part of a close-knit neighborhood in Jersey City, and lived on the same street he grew up on.
Drew had a diagnosed mental health disability for over 25 years,” the complaint says. “Having a mental health disability is not a crime, and the price of asking for help during a mental health episode should not be a death sentence.”
Mr. Washington was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and would have bouts of psychosis involving auditory hallucinations.
A family member told The Final Call that the family has been in distress.
“It’s hard to find closure after you lose a loved one in such a way and constantly being reminded of it and you have to go to trial,” she said.
The Final Call was told that the family is staying silent and is not discussing the case or what happened on Aug. 27, 2023, due to the upcoming trial and will not be discussing autopsy results or footage unreleased to the public.
Excessive force in New Jersey
In 2020, across New Jersey, two out of every three uses of force by law enforcement involved a civilian suffering from mental health or substance abuse issues, and over half of all fatal police encounters occurred in similar circumstances, according to the state’s attorney general’s office.
As a response to the startling trend, in 2021, the office, along with the Department of Human services, community stakeholders and the New Jersey State Police, introduced the “ARRIVE Together” program. The program pairs law enforcement officers with mental health professionals with a focus on de-escalation.
But Jersey City opted out of the program.
The attorney general’s office also revised the state’s use-of-force policy in 2020 and issued expanded misconduct reporting requirements that took effect in January 2023.
According to the updated directives and policies, all forms of physical force are prohibited except as a last resort after attempting to de-escalate, and all forms of deadly force are prohibited except as an absolute last resort when the officer reasonably believes that such action is necessary to protect the officer or another person from death or serious bodily injury.
In addition, law enforcement agencies are required to report misconduct in the form of discrimination or bias and excessive force in violation of departmental policy or the attorney general’s use-of-force policy.
The use-of-force policy includes a list of de-escalation directives.
“If Defendants had followed state use of force requirements and/or reasonably accommodated Drew by following well-known de-escalation principles and/or calling and waiting for a trained mental health professional, Drew would be alive today,” the lawsuit says.
Similar to Mr. Washington, Victoria Lee, who had bipolar disorder, was going through a mental health crisis in Fort Lee when her brother called 911 asking for “just an ambulance.” He was told officers had to be sent. He then made a second call canceling the request but was told mental health calls cannot be canceled.
The ARRIVE Together program is not available in Fort Lee.
Due to the death of Ms. Lee, New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin is once again updating the state’s use-of-force policy and expanding the ARRIVE Together program.
Community-led solutions
Earlier this year, New Jersey passed another law, the Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act, named after Najee Seabrooks and Andrew Washington. It granted a few grassroots organizations funding for community-led public safety measures. One of those organizations was Salvation and Social Justice in Trenton, N.J.
Co-founder Rev. Boyer described the ARRIVE Together program as a “good first step,” but he and his organization are advocates of community-led first responder models that do not involve police.
“We know that this unnecessary interaction between police and people heightens the risk for something to go bad. And so while ARRIVE Together is OK, the order of the day is to drastically reduce the footprint of police in Black communities. We should be building our own public safety infrastructure,” he said.
“At the end of the day, it makes all the sense in the world to increase the footprint of community-led solutions and decrease the footprint of police,” he concluded.