{"id":1381,"date":"2016-07-26T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2016\/07\/26\/annotation-tuesday-rachel-aviv-and-your-son-is-deceased\/"},"modified":"2025-02-10T20:22:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T20:22:55","slug":"annotation-tuesday-rachel-aviv-and-your-son-is-deceased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2016\/07\/26\/annotation-tuesday-rachel-aviv-and-your-son-is-deceased\/","title":{"rendered":"Annotation Tuesday! Rachel Aviv and “Your Son Is Deceased”"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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This New Yorker story about a fatal police shooting could have seemed like \u201csame old, same old.\u201d After all, I\u2019ve consumed (and sometimes written) countless death-by-cop sagas during my 50 years as a journalist. But Rachel Aviv\u2019s narrative stands out as something special.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Why? For one, she delves deeply into the history of the dead man\u2019s severe mental illness.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A huge percentage of unarmed people shot by police are severely mentally ill, which means they might not correctly evaluate the words and actions of police officers confronting them.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Christopher Torres was 27 when he was shot to death in his back yard. He suffered from schizophrenia, and the story is filled with humanizing details such as the touching anecdote in this paragraph: \u201cOccasionally, when Christopher was under stress, he imagined that he had a wife and children, somewhere in the city, whom he\u2019d abandoned. Renetta reacted calmly and offered to look for them. \u201cWe\u2019d get in the car and search for his family,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce we\u2019d driven a while, Christopher, by the grace of God, would let go of the idea and feel O.K. and be ready to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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One of the tragedies of this case was that Christopher didn’t get a chance to be seen, publicly, as a person separate from his diagnosis. His schizophrenia diagnosis was offered almost as an explanation for his death. I hoped to convey that the shooting froze his life at a particularly difficult moment with regard to his illness and that he was deprived of the chance of moving beyond it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The story paints a police department awash in machismo. It gives this damning statistic: \u201cIn the five years before Christopher\u2019s death, the Albuquerque Police Department shot thirty-eight people, killing nineteen of them. More than half were mentally ill. In Albuquerque, a city of five hundred and fifty thousand, the rate of fatal shootings by police is eight times that of New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I spoke with Aviv about the story via email. The questions and answers have been slightly edited for length and flow.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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My questions are in red, his responses in blue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Your Son Is Deceased<\/h2><\/a>\n\nPublished in the New Yorker on February 2, 2015.<\/strong>
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\n<\/a>How did this story come about?<\/span>I had been interested in the phenomenon of police officers committing acts of domestic violence and being protected by the \u201cblue wall of silence,\u201d as it is often called. As I was researching this, my search terms somehow led me to a petition by a father in Albuquerque whose son had been killed by the police. The petition made it sound as if the son was one of many who had met the same fate. From there I began collecting names of young men (mostly Hispanic) who had been shot by the Albuquerque police.<\/span><\/span>
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\nStephen Torres was meeting with a client at his law office, in downtown Albuquerque, on April 12, 2011, when he received a call from a neighbor, who told him that police officers were aiming rifles at his house. He left work and drove <\/a>Did you ask what he was thinking during those minutes?<\/span>I believe I did ask him, and it was precisely what one would expect (fear, alarm), so I didn\u2019t think it was necessary to articulate what was probably obvious.<\/span><\/span> to his home, in a middle-class suburb with a view of the mountains. There were more than forty police vehicles on his street. Officers wearing camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests had circled his home, a sand-colored two-story house with a pitched tile roof. Two officers were driving a remote-controlled robot, used for discharging bombs, back and forth on the corner. <\/a>Why did you decide to include the robot detail?<\/span>I guess because it really seemed as if these offers were having fun, playing with toys that were totally irrelevant to the task at hand.<\/span><\/span>
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\nStephen\u2019s wife, Renetta, the director of human resources for the county, arrived a few minutes later, just after three o\u2019clock. A colleague had heard her address repeated on the police radio, so her assistant pulled her out of a meeting. When Renetta saw that the street was cordoned off with police tape, she tried to walk to her house, but an officer told her that she couldn\u2019t enter the \u201ckill zone.\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean \u2018kill zone\u2019?\u201d Renetta asked. \u201cMa\u2019am, you can\u2019t go any further,\u201d the officer said. <\/a>This is so effective, having the words \u201ckill zone\u201d so close to \u201cher house.\u201d We don\u2019t know who the dead person is yet, so it builds a sense of dread, and also the lingo also suggests inhumanity in the police department. Did you know when you saw the words \u201ckill zone\u201d you would use it?<\/span>Yes. Actually it was one of the reasons I decided to pursue the story. I watched a YouTube video of Steve and Renetta describing the scene, and the idea that their neighborhood had been labeled a \u201ckill zone\u201d just seemed incomprehensible. It was after watching that YouTube video that I decided to get in touch with them.<\/span><\/span>
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\nRenetta and Stephen found each other at the southern end of the street. There were nearly eighty officers and city officials on the street, many of whom they recognized. Stephen saw a police-union attorney, who defended officers when they were in trouble. Renetta saw the city\u2019s attorney, who worked in the same building and on the same floor as she did, and the deputy chief of police, whom she\u2019d known in graduate school. \u201cI kept looking her way, but she would not make eye contact with me,\u201d Renetta said.
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\nRenetta knew that the only person at home was the youngest of her three boys, Christopher, who was twenty-seven and had schizophrenia. Two hours earlier, he had stopped by her office for lunch, as he did a few times a week. Then he visited an elderly couple who lived two houses away. He said that he needed to \u201ccheck up on them\u201d; he often cleaned their pool or drove them to the grocery store. Because he found it overwhelming to spend too much time among people, he tried to do small, social errands, so as not to isolate himself. <\/a>Talk a bit about how you used this graf to humanize Christopher, and establish him.<\/span>It was important to me to establish\u2014in a way that didn\u2019t feel saccharine or forced or exaggerated\u2014that this was a gentle person who was pretty much universally trusted.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWhen Stephen asked the police what had happened to Christopher, he was told only that there was an \u201congoing criminal investigation.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>Again, effective use of impersonal police lingo. Did you deliberately use it?<\/span>Yes, I found it revealing that this impersonal language allowed officers to distance themselves from the human tragedies that they were witnessing (and causing).<\/span><\/span> Stephen offered to let the officers inside the house, but they refused. Stephen called a close friend on the force, who said that a person had been taken off in an ambulance earlier in the afternoon, at around two o\u2019clock. Stephen called the three main hospitals in Albuquerque, but Christopher hadn\u2019t been admitted to any of them.
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\nStephen called a neighbor, Val Aubol, who lived across the street, to find out what she could see. Aubol peeked through the shutters of her front window and saw ten officers lined up against a neighbor\u2019s garage, next to the Torreses\u2019 house. The SWAT team\u2019s Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck was parked in front of them. When Aubol went into her back yard, she saw a rope dangling from her roof. An officer had climbed up and was pointing his gun at the Torreses\u2019 house. Another officer was crouching behind the gate at the side of her house. She told the officers that she\u2019d spoken with Christopher\u2019s father, but an officer waved her back inside. \u201cStay in the house!\u201d he shouted. <\/a>At this juncture, are you sharing what you see as neutral details? Or are you sending a message to readers early in the narrative about a police department shot through with incompetence and\/or blood lust?<\/span>I don\u2019t see these as neutral details, but I was trying to deliver them in a somewhat \u201cneutral\u201d tone, so that the reader is the one coming to the conclusion that there is incompetence here.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAt around five-thirty, a female officer stepped out of a mobile crime unit, an R.V. where detectives processed evidence, and waved the family over. \u201cShe was so detached,\u201d Renetta said. \u201cAll she said was \u2018I regret to inform you that your son is deceased.\u2019\u00a0\u201d She did not tell them how their son had died or where they could find his body. The Torreses asked if they could go home, but the officer said that it was still an active crime scene.
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\nAbout half an hour later, Val Aubol heard a booming noise, and her ceiling shook. The officer on her roof had shot a flash-bang grenade, which produces a concussive blast of noise and light, onto the Torreses\u2019 front patio. The device temporarily blinds and deafens anyone near it.
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\nIt is not clear what the officers thought they were doing at that point. In a report filed later that day, one officer wrote, \u201cDetectives believed another person was inside the house refusing to exit. Supposedly they saw movement in the house.\u201d Another wrote, \u201cThere may be three people still inside the residence and all were possibly armed.\u201d
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\nNot long afterward, several officers used a battering ram to open the Torreses\u2019 front door, which had on it a \u201cWelcome\u201d sign decorated with an Easter bunny. <\/a>Wonderful contrast there. Where would you say you fall in the \u201cshow\u201d versus \u201ctell\u201d camps of writing?<\/span>\u201cTelling\u201d comes less naturally to me than \u201cshowing.\u201d There are passages further down where there is a need to describe what is happening on a more systemic level, and my editor had to push me to be more explicit about asserting the nature of the connection between this incidence of police violence and other shootings throughout the country.<\/span><\/span>The officers searched the laundry room, the basement, the attic, and four bedrooms, dumping the contents of drawers onto the floor. No one was home.
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\nAlthough there were no suspects to apprehend, the neighborhood was still filled with cops, who had heard on the police radio that an officer had shot someone. According to Thomas Grover, a sergeant with the Albuquerque Police Department, who resigned a few months after Christopher\u2019s death, shootings by officers set off a ritual in the department: other officers quickly reported to the scene. \u201cIt was just team spirit, I guess,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone would say, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s a shooting, we got to get there, everyone\u2019s going down there.\u2019 It was a place to be seen.\u201d He said that in the hours after a shooting cops would ask one another, \u201cWas it a bad shoot? Or a good shoot?\u201d
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\nThe Torres family learned how Christopher died from watching the news the next day. At a press conference, the department\u2019s chief public-safety officer said that two officers had tried to arrest Christopher at home, but, when he resisted and grabbed a gun from one of them, the officers felt that their lives were in danger. The local television stations ran an unflattering picture of Christopher with his eyes bugged out. One station reported that the \u201cpolice suspected Torres is responsible for several violent road rage incidents around the city.\u201d The police department said publicly that Christopher had a lengthy criminal history, which was untrue. He\u2019d never been convicted of a crime, though he had been arrested once, for public affray, disorderly conduct, and impersonating an officer: he\u2019d fought with a man who had illegally carried his gun into a restaurant where Christopher was eating. Christopher told the man that he was a government agent, tackled him, and took the weapon. When asked to show his credentials, Christopher flashed his library card.
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\nIn the five years before Christopher\u2019s death, the Albuquerque Police Department shot thirty-eight people, killing nineteen of them. More than half were mentally ill. In Albuquerque, a city of five hundred and fifty thousand, the rate of fatal shootings by police is eight times that of New York City. Renetta vaguely remembered hearing about many of the deaths in the local media. Nearly every time, the police announced that the person who had been shot was violent, a career criminal, or mentally ill. \u201cI just assumed that these men must have done something to merit being killed,\u201d she said. \u201cOn the news, they relayed these really sinister stories about the men, and they\u2019d flash these horrible pictures. They looked frightening.\u201d <\/a>How did you decide where to place the context about the police department?<\/span>I tried to wait until the moment where the reader might be asking him\/herself those questions.<\/span><\/span>
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\nGrover, the former sergeant, said that when officers shot someone the department typically ordered a \u201cred file\u201d on the deceased. \u201cThe special-investigations division did a complete background on the person and came up with any intelligence to identify that, you know, twenty years ago, maybe, the person got tagged for shoplifting,\u201d he said. \u201cThen they gave the red file to the chief.\u201d <\/a>Did Grover worry about retaliation, or at minimum broken friendships, as a result of being quoted by name?<\/span>I think the broken friendships had already occurred\u2026<\/span><\/span>
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\nMore than a thousand people attended Christopher\u2019s funeral, at the Catholic church where he prayed with his parents every week. Stephen, in his eulogy, said that he considered the chief of police, Raymond Schultz, his friend. The Torreses\u2019 sons used to play soccer at the same neighborhood club as Schultz\u2019s children; after the kids\u2019 games, the fathers would play. \u201cI called Ray\u2019s office and conveyed a personal invitation for him to join us this evening,\u201d Stephen said. \u201cI promised him that he would be treated with all due courtesy and respect. If he\u2019s not here, then I ask those police officers who are here, who are some of my dearest friends\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. please convey the following message to him.\u201d
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\nStephen said that his son\u2019s shooting resembled that of many young men in Albuquerque who were mentally ill and had been killed by police. He begged the chief and the mayor, who worked in Renetta\u2019s building, to meet with him to discuss what had gone wrong. \u201cMy wife and I extend our hands to you, Mr. Mayor, and to you, Chief Schultz,\u201d he said. \u201cPlease don\u2019t reject our offers.\u201d Schultz was not there. He and Stephen never spoke again.
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\nChristopher had been an easygoing, athletic child, but when he was nineteen he grew more private and sensitive. He was reluctant to leave the house and, eventually, to emerge from his room. He often seemed distracted, as if he were listening to something. A voice kept saying to him, \u201cWell, Chris, I\u2019m here, so let\u2019s get moving.\u201d He wondered if Jesus was talking to him, but he also doubted it. \u201cHe felt like maybe he was coming under a depression,\u201d Renetta told me. \u201cHe had a great sense of humor that seemed to have been dulled.\u201d
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\nAfter Christopher received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, in the winter of 2003, his older brother Daniel, who was twenty-four and worked at an auto shop, quit his job and moved home to take care of him. For two years, he tried to make Christopher\u2019s days placid and predictable. Like many people with schizophrenia, Christopher had a low tolerance for abrupt movements or loud noises. When the family watched television or listened to music, they kept the volume low. If they argued, they did so quietly.
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\nIt took Christopher two years to adjust to the antipsychotic medications that were prescribed for him. Eventually, the voices he heard became less compelling, and he began working at a metal-fabrication shop. His boss, George Montez, described him as shy, focussed, and deferential. He said that the only time he saw Christopher agitated was when colleagues bickered. \u201cIt was just horsing around, but it upset him,\u201d Montez said.
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\nAccording to the treatment notes of Christopher\u2019s psychiatrist, Kevin Rexroad, Christopher was amiable and not inclined toward drama. When Rexroad asked how he was feeling, he responded, \u201cI\u2019m O.K. How are you?\u201d Christopher\u2019s most persistent symptom was anxiety, which Rexroad traced in part to grief over the onset of his illness. Christopher felt that he was falling short of his own expectations. A therapist who briefly helped him with anxiety wrote that his goals were to \u201cfeel good about self,\u201d be \u201cproud of where I\u2019m going,\u201d and \u201cread a little more.\u201d <\/a>How did you obtain what would normally be confidential medical information?<\/span>The medical records were obtained by the lawyers who represented Christopher\u2019s family. I asked the family for permission\u2014we had a long conversation about why I felt it would help me characterize Christopher and make readers identify with him more easily\u2014and they then conveyed that to the lawyers, who released the records.<\/span><\/span>
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\nOccasionally, when Christopher was under stress, he imagined that he had a wife and children, somewhere in the city, whom he\u2019d abandoned. Renetta reacted calmly and offered to look for them. \u201cWe\u2019d get in the car and search for his family,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce we\u2019d driven a while, Christopher, by the grace of God, would let go of the idea and feel O.K. and be ready to go home.\u201d <\/a>This paragraph is heartbreaking. You\u2019ve created a character we feel for in just one anecdote. Can you talk about that a bit?<\/span>I was really moved by the patience and affection that Renetta showed towards her son; it was such a gentle and accepting way of approaching his delusions. I liked this detail because it was so specific to this particular family\u2019s way of processing and dealing with Christopher\u2019s illness.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAfter Christopher had worked at the metal-fabrication shop for a few years, Stephen urged him to take classes at a community college. But the idea of being surrounded by peers who might think that he was odd caused him so much anxiety that he couldn\u2019t sleep. In August, 2010, Renetta e-mailed Rexroad to say that Christopher had been perceiving invisible dangers: when Stephen told him to do a household chore, Christopher reacted as if he\u2019d been threatened. \u201cGiven a little bit of time and space he then comes back around,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAs you know sometimes we walk a very fragile line and strive not to cause any undue agitation.\u201d
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\nA few months later, in February, 2011, when Christopher was driving, another vehicle pulled in front of him into the left-turn lane. At the red light, Christopher got out and walked to the car in front of him, pounded on the windows, and pulled the driver\u2019s door open. The woman driving the car said that it seemed as if he had mistaken her for someone else. She shut her eyes and prepared to be attacked. <\/a>You\u2019re showing here how unpredictable he could be, contrasting sharply with the psychiatrist and boss. Was this a way to suggest why cops might not have known how to handle him?<\/span>I\u2019m not sure if an impression of unpredictability was necessarily what I was after; but it did seem to me that this was an instance where he was not occupying consensual reality\u2014he was not seeing things as they were, and that was a symptom of his illness.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWhen she opened her eyes, Christopher had turned around and clutched his hair, as if he realized what he\u2019d been doing. The woman called 911 and reported the incident to the police. She described Christopher as \u201cpsycho\u201d and told the police that if she\u2019d had a gun in her car she would have shot him.
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\nAbout two months later, C. J. Brown, a thirty-nine-year-old detective, interviewed the driver and then filled out a warrant for Christopher\u2019s arrest. Brown didn\u2019t know that Christopher had a mental illness, even though police records showed that he had stated, during his first arrest, that he had schizophrenia. Brown said, \u201cSo basically just\u2014you know, at that point, I had a guy that just had a bad attitude while driving.\u201d <\/a>Would a well-trained, well-intended police officer have known about Christopher\u2019s mental illness before visiting the home?<\/span>Yes. If Brown had looked at the records, he would have seen that the Torres family had already alerted the police about Christopher\u2019s mental illness, after a previous arrest.<\/span><\/span>
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\nBrown, who is five feet ten, weighs two hundred and twenty pounds, and has short, receding brown hair, had been an officer with the department for four years, since 2007. At the time, the department had been ordered by Mayor Martin Ch\u00e1vez to expand by at least a hundred officers, to bring the total number up to more than a thousand. Ch\u00e1vez had promised to reduce crime and quality-of-life infractions, and he developed a program that allowed officers to use nuisance-abatement laws to evict people from businesses and from homes.
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\nThe crime rate had been declining for nearly a decade, but the city still ranked in the top fifteen per cent in the country. To recruit new officers, the department advertised on billboards throughout the East Coast and the Midwest. In 2007, the department installed a twenty-five-foot billboard on a wall in downtown Manhattan: it featured a panorama of the Albuquerque skyline and promised a five-thousand-dollar hiring bonus, retirement after twenty years, a \u201ctake home car and more.\u201d <\/a>This is such a great detail \u2013 everyone will go \u201cwhoa\u201d about this, imagining it in Manhattan. Talk a little about using such details, instead of a recitation of facts, so it becomes more real.<\/span>I thought this illustrated how completely desperate the department had become.<\/span><\/span>
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\nNevertheless, the department struggled to find qualified officers. \u201cWe took a beating from the city council,\u201d Schultz, the chief of police, told me. \u201cThey berated us. They kept saying, \u2018We\u2019ve given you the money\u2014how come you don\u2019t have those numbers?\u2019\u00a0\u201d
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\nThe department accepted officers from other police forces, even if they had been disciplined or fired, and it sometimes waived the psychological exam. Steve Tate, the director of training at the Albuquerque Police Academy, said that, after the hiring push, he noticed new cadets \u201cexhibiting some characteristics that I thought were a little strange.\u201d \u201cThey were not in charge of their emotions,\u201d he told me. \u201cPeople were breaking down into tears.\u201d He spoke with the head of the department\u2019s psychological unit, and asked why so many officers seemed psychologically unstable. \u201cI could pick up a sense of worry from her,\u201d he said. \u201cShe described to me feeling as though they were strong-armed into seating people that they didn\u2019t feel were ready.\u201d Peter DiVasto, a contract psychologist for the department, said in a deposition that psychologists felt that they were supposed to \u201cerr on the side of acceptance.\u201d He testified that \u201cdeputy chiefs had been threatened with firing unless those numbers went up.\u201d <\/a>You obtained numerous remarkable direct quotations. How did you build trust with current and former law enforcement personnel so that they would speak so candidly on the record?<\/span>One thing I did was tell the officers who else I had spoken with. I think they felt: if that person talked to her, I feel comfortable doing it, too. Also, some of them had already given depositions, so I told them I had already read the deposition and wanted to put some of their comments in context.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAt meetings with the police chief and his deputies, Tate said he pleaded to reject applicants who seemed erratic. He said that a \u201ccommon phrase was \u2018Well, we got seats open, so let\u2019s give them a try.\u2019\u00a0\u201d The department began accepting candidates whose \u201cbackgrounds were so bad it was just, like, wow,\u201d he said. There were cadets who had admitted to crimes and had been repeatedly disciplined in previous jobs. Of the sixty-three officers who joined the Albuquerque police force in 2007, ten eventually shot people.
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\nBrown had already been rejected by the Albuquerque Police Department, in 1995, because he had bad credit, which was seen as a sign of recklessness. He ended up in the Roswell Police Department, three hours south of Albuquerque. While he was there, a city councillor brought a civil-rights lawsuit against him\u2014she alleged that he had arrested her for exercising her right to free speech\u2014and five citizens filed complaints. He was accused of injuring a man by throwing him to the ground; of humiliating a mother when arresting her for speeding; and of pointing his gun at someone who got out of his car too slowly. Later, he estimated that he had drawn his gun during a traffic stop on at least ten occasions. In 2005, he applied to work for the police department in Rio Rancho, just north of Albuquerque, but he was rejected for having a bad attitude.
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\nSince the last time he applied to the Albuquerque Police Department, Brown had been in two car accidents and filed for bankruptcy\u2014events that the department typically considered indications of instability\u2014but his second application was accepted, and he was given a signing bonus of five thousand dollars. He didn\u2019t take a psychological exam. His training lasted six weeks.
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\nThe day that Christopher was killed, Brown arrived at the Torreses\u2019 house wearing bluejeans, black sunglasses, and a shirt that said \u201cBuell Motorcycles.\u201d He said that he found it easier to approach people when he wasn\u2019t wearing a uniform.\u00a0<\/a>So obviously Christopher wouldn\u2019t know who he was, and might feel a bit threatened by him, right?<\/span>Right.<\/span><\/span> He was joined by another officer, Richard Hilger, who wore jeans, an untucked T-shirt, and hiking boots. They rang the doorbell, but no one answered. They could see the living room through the slats of the window blinds; no one appeared to be home. They were about to return to their car when Hilger heard a noise in the back yard. According to statements made later by both officers, they walked toward the fence and Hilger called out Christopher\u2019s name. <\/a>Did approaching suspects when not in uniform violate written rules or generally agreed-upon best practices?<\/span>It did not.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\u201cYeah,\u201d Christopher said, approaching the fence from the other side. He wore plaid pajama pants, a white undershirt, and flip-flops.
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\n\u201cI just want to talk to you real quick,\u201d Hilger said. <\/a>Did you quickly accept this version of the conversation? Was there a body camera recording with audio?<\/span>Yes, there was a body camera recording.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\u201cYou\u2019re talking to me,\u201d Christopher responded.
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\n\u201cWell, can I talk to you face to face?\u201d
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\n\u201cWe\u2019re face to face right now.\u201d
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\n\u201cYou have a felony arrest warrant,\u201d Brown said.
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\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t.\u201d
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\n\u201cYes, you do. You have a felony warrant for your arrest.\u201d
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\n\u201cI haven\u2019t done anything wrong,\u201d Christopher said. \u201cThis is my back yard.\u201d
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\nAccording to Brown, Christopher said that the officers would have to fight if they wanted to arrest him. When Christopher took a step backward, Brown jumped the four-foot fence, breaking part of it, and tackled Christopher. \u201cHe went to hit me, I punched him, and then the fight was on,\u201d Brown said. Hilger followed his partner into the back yard by removing a panel of the fence. \u201cI basically bum-rushed them all,\u201d he said.
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\nA twenty-four-year-old neighbor, Christie Apodaca, who lived behind the Torreses, heard someone shouting, \u201cI live here. What are you doing? I live here.\u201d She ran to her fence and looked through a coin-size hole in one of the wooden panels. Christopher had gone to her high school, but she\u2019d only spoken to him once or twice. She saw him on his hands and knees, about twelve feet away from her. One man pressed his weight onto Christopher\u2019s lower body and another punched his right side and his face.
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\nApodaca ran inside her house to call 911. She told the dispatch operator, \u201cI think the other guys are trying to rob the place.\u201d
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\n\u201cMa\u2019am, are you on\u2014is this on Sunrose?\u201d the operator asked, naming the street where Christopher lived.
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\n\u201cHuh?\u201d
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\n\u201cIs this on Sunrose?\u201d
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\n\u201cYes.\u201d
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\n\u201cO.K. Those are officers that are on that scene.\u201d
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\nOutside, Brown and Hilger tried to handcuff Christopher, but he tucked his hands underneath him, and flailed his head and legs. On Hilger\u2019s police radio, which was on for just a few seconds, Christopher can be heard yelling, in a high-pitched voice, \u201cI\u2019m a good guy! This is my house!\u201d
\n
\nThe officers tried to pin Christopher to the ground, but they said that he was somehow able to rip his right arm free and grab Hilger\u2019s gun. They said that he wouldn\u2019t let go, even as they punched him. Brown unholstered his pistol, a nine-millimetre handgun that he\u2019d owned since he was sixteen. <\/a>What an amazing detail. How did you find that out?<\/span>He casually mentioned this in his deposition.<\/span><\/span>He pressed the muzzle against Christopher\u2019s back and pulled the trigger. He didn\u2019t hear any noise, and wondered if the gun had malfunctioned. He squeezed the trigger again. This time Christopher said, \u201cOw.\u201d Christopher was still trying to get up, so Brown shot him in the back a third time.
\n
\nApodaca heard the shots, and went back outside and looked through the same hole in the fence. This time, she saw Christopher lying down, facing the ground. He was handcuffed, but he wasn\u2019t moving. The two men stood next to Christopher\u2019s body, looking down. A few minutes later, Emergency Medical Services arrived. One man picked up Christopher\u2019s legs and another lifted his shoulders, and they carried him out of the back yard.
\n
\nThe day after the shooting, Apodaca went to the office of a lawyer, a family friend, and told him that she had witnessed her neighbor\u2019s death. \u201cThe way I saw him treated\u2014I just couldn\u2019t put that together,\u201d she said. While she was there, the lawyer called an officer he knew in the police department, and told him that there was an eyewitness to Christopher Torres\u2019s shooting. For several months, Apodaca waited in vain for someone from the department to call.
\n
\nAlbuquerque lies at the intersection of two interstate highways, one stretching from California to the East Coast and the other from Texas to Wyoming. A local saying is that many citizens, intending to drive from one coast to the other and start a new life, end up living in Albuquerque when they run out of money. A fifth of the residents live below the poverty line, many of them in the southeast part of the city, which is often called the \u201cwar zone.\u201d Wealthy residents tend to live in the northeastern corner, at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. The division reflects the social climate throughout the state, which has the widest income gap between rich and poor in the country. Gilbert Najar, the director of the police academy in Silver City, New Mexico, who worked for the Albuquerque Police Department for twenty-five years, told me that the department \u201cdid policing one way in the South Valley, where there were a lot of immigrant families and people of lower socioeconomic status, and we knew we could violate their rights. But we did not dare commit those tactics in the affluent neighborhoods, where we knew they would file complaints on us.\u201d <\/a>Did Najar worry that talking to you frankly might poison his relationship with the police department?<\/span>He didn\u2019t express this concern.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nSince 1987, the police department has shot at least a hundred and forty-six people. The shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, looked almost routine to people in Albuquerque. They had seen such incidents many times before. Few people protested, and no one paid much attention. Police violence appeared to be a matter of concern only to Albuquerque\u2019s underclass: those who are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, Native American, or Hispanic and poor. David Correia, a professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, told me, \u201cThere\u2019s this myth here of tri-cultural harmony\u2014indigenous people, Mexican-Americans, and Anglos\u2014but this precarious arrangement is built on a long history of violence against Spanish-speaking and indigenous people that still plays out.\u201d <\/a>How did you decide where to place the paragraphs of socio-economic-political context, and how much depth to include?<\/span>Similar to my answer about the context on the police department, I tried to think about what point in the story the reader would be asking him\/herself these questions. I don\u2019t want to give the info before those questions come up\u2014then the reader won\u2019t be as interested.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nThe city has hired a succession of experts, a new research team every few years, to analyze the police department\u2019s use of force, but officials seem to have viewed the act of commissioning a report as a proxy for doing something about the problem. Samuel Walker, an expert in police accountability who was hired in 1996 to co-author one of the reports, after the police killed thirty-two people in ten years, said, \u201cWhen we gave an oral presentation to the city council, I had a very strong impression that many city-council members were not interested.\u201d He described his conversation with Martin Ch\u00e1vez, the mayor, as one of the most hostile interviews he\u2019s ever conducted. He said that the police chief would not look him in the eyes when he briefed him. One city-council member refused to meet with him or return his calls. <\/a>Did you receive any pushback from your editor about the first sentence of this paragraph?<\/span>No.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nHis report highlighted the department\u2019s incompetence in responding to people with mental illnesses. The city lacks a comprehensive mental-health-care system, and cops are often called to assist people in the midst of psychotic episodes. When these people don\u2019t follow the officers\u2019 orders, they are sometimes beaten or shot. Grover, the former sergeant, told me that \u201cthere was a running joke within the department: don\u2019t threaten suicide with officers, because they\u2019ll accelerate it.\u201d
\n
\nFive years after Walker\u2019s report, and fourteen more fatal shootings, another task force concluded that the department needed to create an oversight system in which officers would suffer consequences for abusing their authority. In 2006, after sixteen more deaths, the city hired a team of consultants to do another report, which noted that \u201cmany recommendations made in this report are based on issues voiced by the prior consultants that are still valid and should be addressed.\u201d
\n
\nWhen Mayor Richard Berry took office, in 2009, his transition team tried to draw his attention to a speech, delivered by an ethics scholar at an international conference for police chiefs, called \u201cHow Police Departments Become Corrupt.\u201d The speech described the four stages of dysfunction in a police force. The transition team said that the department appeared to have entered the third: employees abide by the \u201cunwritten rules of internal politics\u201d; leaders are promoted because of their relationships, not their work; and officers \u201crationalize doing unethical things during conversations with each other.\u201d In its report on the department, the transition team wrote that the department showed at least one sign of having entered the fourth stage, exhibiting a commitment to \u201ckeep corruption out of the newspapers at any cost.\u201d
\n
\nThe report contained seven paragraphs about corruption; but, by the time it was submitted to the mayor\u2019s office, in November, 2009, those paragraphs had been deleted. In their place was a discussion of the problem of \u201cserial inebriates,\u201d citizens who drained the department\u2019s resources. Paul Heh, a senior sergeant, presented the original version of the report at a city-council meeting in 2011, but he was told after two minutes that he had exceeded the time limit for speaking, even though he had arranged to speak longer. The city council voted on whether Heh should be permitted to continue his speech, and ruled against him.
\n
\nHeh worked for the department for twenty-four years, and he said that early in his tenure he noticed that small lapses went unpunished. The department\u2019s rules stated that \u201cpersonnel will not write a police report of alleged officer misconduct in the line of duty either by citizen request or of their own initiative.\u201d Supervisors were responsible for handling claims of misconduct, a policy that allowed them to screen the account that entered official records. Samson Costales, a retired officer, said, \u201cThey tell us that we have to cover for each other, because we are a brotherhood, and brothers in blue don\u2019t like rats,\u201d a mentality that he said he learned from his training officers. \u201cYou don\u2019t challenge another officer; you don\u2019t testify against him\u2014you lie if you have to. The code existed long before I was a police officer, and I can\u2019t see it ever going away.\u201d
\n
\nIt was widely known that many people in the department were having extramarital affairs with other officers. \u201cThese guys would pass these female officers from one to another,\u201d Heh said. \u201cIt all grew from there.\u201d Cassandra Morrison, a sergeant who retired in 2013, described the department as an \u201cold-boys\u2019 club,\u201d where certain men became untouchable. \u201cAs women, we were thought of as a subculture,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you wanted to move up, you had to kiss somebody\u2019s ass, rub somebody\u2019s elbow, take somebody out to dinner, or have sex with somebody.\u201d The social hierarchy in the department rewarded an exaggerated masculine ethos, which Schultz seemed to encourage. When asked by a local reporter about extramarital affairs within the department, he pointed out that his officers were young, attractive, and in good shape. \u201cThere\u2019s nature at play,\u201d he explained.
\n
\nIn the legal-training materials distributed to officers, the lesson on strip searches featured a cartoon of five male officers staring through the window at a silhouette of a naked woman\u2014with a shapely butt and enormous breasts, which she is fondling\u2014the object of their search. The lesson on arresting prostitutes showed a drawing of a hairy transvestite with a single breast, which droops to her potbelly. \u201cHow d\u2019ya know I ain\u2019t jus another purty face out shoppin\u2019 fer my family?\u201d she asks the officer who has come to arrest her.
\n
\nMorrison said that officers were socialized to be cynical about civilians. \u201cWe\u2019re taught to almost dehumanize them,\u201d she said. \u201cIt just got to the point where it\u2019s, like, they\u2019re a piece of shit. We don\u2019t care if they raped a baby or were speeding in traffic\u2014everybody\u2019s a piece of shit.\u201d Early in her career, she was often injured, because she fought with people while arresting them. Then she took a forty-hour course offered by the department in crisis-intervention training, a model used by many police departments to help officers communicate with suspects, particularly those who are mentally ill. She never got injured on duty again. She became a senior instructor in the class, but it was held in low regard by many of her colleagues. By 2007, fewer than thirty officers were taking the course each year.
\n
\nThe Albuquerque Police Department acquired weapons and resources from both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department, which lends police departments surplus military gear. Until recently, officers were also permitted to come to work with guns that they had bought themselves. For some, the weapons functioned as status symbols; expensive, military-style ones were valued highly. Najar, the police-academy director, said that the leaders of the Albuquerque police force, like those of many departments around the country, stated publicly that they subscribed to the theories of community policing, a model that encourages officers to embed themselves in the communities they serve, but that those ideals never permeated the culture of the department. The people the cops arrested were usually strangers. Officers approached them with \u201call their fears and biases and prejudices,\u201d he said.
\n
\nTwo and a half months after Christopher\u2019s death, Stephen Torres wrote to Mayor Berry, alerting him that another unarmed man had just been killed by police. An officer hired the same year as Brown had shot a twenty-two-year-old man who appeared to be in the midst of a mental breakdown. The officer, Sean Wallace, thought that the man was holding a gun. It turned out to be a spoon. Shortly after the shooting, Wallace received five hundred dollars from the Albuquerque police union, which routinely gave money to officers to help them \u201cdecompress\u201d after a shooting, according to a statement issued by the union\u2019s president and vice-president. Wallace had already shot two other unarmed men, killing one of them. He has since received a department award for outstanding service.
\n
\nStephen told the Mayor, \u201cI trust that you agree with us that we do have a problem.\u201d He noted that he still had not heard from Schultz or anyone in the police department. \u201cMay we please hear from you?\u201d he wrote. A few months later, when Schultz\u2019s mother died, Stephen wrote him a sympathy card. \u201cI was still thinking maybe we would work on this together,\u201d Stephen told me.
\n
\nOne of Renetta\u2019s friends, Jewel Hall, the president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center, which promotes diversity and human rights in Albuquerque, met with Mayor Berry in July, 2011, and asked him to join her and other activists in inviting the U.S. Justice Department to investigate civil-rights violations by the police department. She believed that the shootings reflected an \u201c\u00e9lite attitude toward certain neighborhoods and certain citizens.\u201d She added, \u201cTheir lives are not valued by those in charge.\u201d The meeting was brief. Berry told her he thought that Albuquerque\u2019s police force was one of the finest in the country. (Later, when the city council passed a resolution requesting that the Justice Department investigate the police force, Berry vetoed the measure.)
\n
\nRenetta worked in the same building as Berry, and when they ended up in the same elevator they would greet each other awkwardly and then look away. When Renetta ran into him or other top city officials, she imagined that they were thinking, There must be some reason that they killed your son. (Berry told me, \u201cWe don\u2019t think any less of the Torreses as a family, and I hope they wouldn\u2019t think any less of us, even though this is a tragic situation.\u201d)
\n
\nHaving worked in government for thirty-three years, Renetta said that she didn\u2019t expect the city to respond to her husband\u2019s pleas. \u201cYou don\u2019t know these people,\u201d she told him. Stephen worried that Renetta\u2019s cynicism was a symptom of grief. \u201cShe worries me,\u201d he said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t think that the city gives a damn.\u201d
\n
\nRay Schultz told me he knew that Stephen Torres was waiting for him to call, but that he couldn\u2019t contact the Torres family, because he didn\u2019t want to compromise the internal-affairs investigation into Christopher\u2019s death. Although the internal review was completed roughly a month after the shooting\u2014a police-department detective interviewed Hilger and Brown in the presence of a union attorney, a union representative, and a \u201cbuddy officer,\u201d who provided emotional support\u2014the case still had to be considered by an Independent Review Officer, who was supposed to produce another set of findings, which the department would then review. Schultz said that when he retired, in 2013, this process had yet to be completed.
\n
\nAccording to Schultz, a few wayward officers were responsible for the shooting deaths. \u201cLike any other organization, you have that two per cent that are making bad decisions,\u201d he said. In November, 2012, the Department of Justice announced that it would investigate the Albuquerque police force. In a memo, Schultz informed commanders that \u201cmost likely the DOJ will find that APD has its house in order.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Have your officers stand tall and be proud to be part of our great department.\u201d
\n
\nStephen and Renetta Torres met regularly with other parents whose children had been killed by the police. \u201cWe are the family that no one wants to be part of,\u201d Ken Ellis, one of the parents, told me. In 2010, his son, a twenty-five-year-old Iraq War veteran, threatened suicide by pointing a handgun at his head outside a convenience store. Several police officers tried to negotiate with him, until an officer saw him \u201ctwitch\u201d and shot him in the neck. Ellis drove a truck covered with images of the faces of his son and eleven other young men who had been fatally shot by Albuquerque officers. On one of the back windows, he had a picture of Christopher Torres, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and tentatively smiling. Ellis said that officers had approached him and advised him to take down the pictures, but he refused.
\n
\nLike many of the families, the Torreses filed a lawsuit against the police department shortly after their son was killed. They also asked the district attorney to press charges. Renetta said that, among the families, paranoia became normal. On her iPhone, she kept seeing an invitation to join a wireless network called Surveillance Van 2. Her neighbor Richard Simes noticed it, too, and drove around the neighborhood looking for the source. He eventually installed surveillance cameras in front of his house and reviewed the footage every day. He said that if he found himself in a crisis he wouldn\u2019t call the Albuquerque police.
\n
\nChristie Apodaca, the eyewitness, found herself minimizing the time she spent outside her house. The police department had not contacted her, but she noticed a police car parked on the street in front of her house almost every day for seven months. \u201cHe could have been there for another reason,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I found it very strange that when I walked out to see what was going on he would drive away.\u201d
\n
\nThe Torreses\u2019 daughter-in-law, Nicol, their son Daniel\u2019s wife, said she initially assumed that everyone was being skittish. Then she and her husband noticed that Albuquerque officers kept cruising around their small suburb, even though it was outside the city limits. She told me, \u201cAs a white person from the East Coast, with no run-ins with the law, I was very na\u00efve.\u201d Nicol is a research psychologist for the county\u2019s juvenile-detention center, and she believes that her response to Christopher\u2019s death\u2014she was vocal at city-council meetings\u2014has foreclosed the possibility of promotions at work. People avoid her in the hallways. \u201cI don\u2019t get invited to the meetings that I used to, because the mayor will be there or the chief of police will be there,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one is going to come out and say, \u2018Your career is ruined,\u2019 but these are the signs.\u201d One day after work, she found a note wedged underneath her windshield wiper. It said, \u201cShut up and watch what you\u2019re doing.\u201d
\n
\nThe Torreses\u2019 oldest son, Matthew, who is a lawyer, sometimes crossed paths with Officer Brown at the courthouse. It infuriated him to know that Brown was testifying in other cases, and that his statements were trusted in court. \u201cHe still thinks he\u2019s a cop and I have no business glaring at him,\u201d he said. \u201cI think he murdered my brother, and I\u2019ll do everything I can to make him uncomfortable.\u201d
\n
\nWhen Matthew saw that Brown had arrested someone for marijuana possession and that the defendant had no lawyer, he took on the case for nothing, even though his practice is devoted to family law. At the first hearing, he requested that the judge allow him to interview Brown about his unethical behavior. Matthew said that the judge looked bewildered\u2014the defendant hadn\u2019t even shown up in court\u2014and called for a recess. Then she dismissed the case. <\/a>Is there a suggestion here that the judge was protecting Brown?<\/span>I\u2019m not sure, as I wasn\u2019t there. I imagine she was trying to avoid an explosive confrontation that was not quite legally relevant.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nIn thirty years, no officer in Albuquerque has been indicted for shooting someone. Until recently, officer shootings were evaluated by what the district attorney called an \u201cinvestigative grand jury.\u201d The jurors did not have the authority to indict, even if they wanted to. They were tasked only with determining whether a shooting was \u201cjustified\u201d or \u201cnot justified.\u201d
\n
\nThe grand jury lent the process an illusion of objectivity: the district attorney could say that the decision rested with citizens. But prosecutors are dependent on their relationships with police, and the grand jury\u2019s decisions\u2014every shooting in Albuquerque was deemed \u201cjustified\u201d\u2014may reveal less about the facts of each case than about the way that prosecutors presented it. After an article on investigative grand juries in the Albuquerque Journal<\/em>, by a reporter named Jeff Proctor\u2014one of the few local journalists who consistently questioned the police department\u2019s narrative about its shootings\u2014a judge asked the district attorney, Kari Brandenburg, to suspend the practice, in 2013. Brandenburg now reviews the details of police shootings herself and determines whether or not to put the case before a more conventional grand jury.
\n
\nIt took nearly three years for Brandenburg to decide that there was not enough evidence to charge the officers who killed Christopher Torres. She based her decision on the police department\u2019s internal report, which was finally released to the Torreses\u2019 lawyers, Randi McGin and Kathy Love, in 2013. The thirty-nine-page report never mentions Christie Apodaca. It notes that if Christopher were still alive he would have been charged with resisting arrest, disarming a police officer, and aggravated battery on a police officer, in addition to the charges that brought the officers to Christopher\u2019s home. The report was titled \u201cAggravated Battery on a Police Officer.\u201d The first page identified Christopher as the suspect. The State of New Mexico was listed as the victim.
\n
\nIn the years leading up to Brandenburg\u2019s decision, the Torreses\u2019 lawyers met with Brandenburg three times. They tried to persuade her to indict the officers in Christopher\u2019s death, because the public had lost faith in the police department. Brandenburg, a chatty woman whose office is decorated with animal knickknacks, told the lawyers that she disagreed. She remarked that when she goes to the grocery store or the dentist\u2019s office people approach her and say, \u201cI think the police are doing a good job, and they ought to shoot more criminals.\u201d Brandenburg told me that she still hears this sentiment. The people who make these comments are \u201cnot evil people,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they lack understanding. They talk as if it doesn\u2019t matter if somebody were to die.\u201d
\n
\nFour months after Brandenburg declined to bring charges, the Torres family won its civil lawsuit. The judge referred to statements by Apodaca, who testified at the trial, and wrote that she found no credible evidence that Christopher had threatened the cops with a gun. Brown, in his testimony, wouldn\u2019t admit to regretting any decisions. \u201cMy choice to jump over the fence was a reaction to his choice not to partake in our conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you are asking me \u2018would\u2019ve\u2019s\u2019 or \u2018could\u2019ve\u2019s,\u2019 I mean, I could have not gone to work that day.\u201d
\n
\nRichard Hilger appeared more tentative. He said that Christopher, in his attempt to fight the officers, delivered only a \u201cglancing blow\u201d that did not injure anyone. He also acknowledged that some officers in the department might feel pressure to lie in order to corroborate a partner\u2019s story.
\n
\nShortly after the civil trial, the Department of Justice published a report detailing how the police fostered a \u201cculture that emphasizes force and complete submission over safety.\u201d The Department of Justice then began negotiating a settlement agreement with the city and the police force. In an e-mail last June, the chief of police, Gorden Eden, who was appointed in early 2014, wrote to his dispatch operators, \u201cPlease comply and advise your people: NO one is to meet with DOJ\u2014no one!! DOJ and its representatives have held several meetings with APD officers. This is a CRITICAL MATTER! No one. Make it clear to everyone, it\u2019s got to stop immediately.\u201d
\n
\nThe Department of Justice has investigated more than fifteen police departments in the past four years, and its description of police practices in Albuquerque is arguably the most disparaging. The settlement agreement, which was released this fall, requires that all officers use body cameras (which had previously been required but whose use had not been strictly enforced); that the specialized units, including the canine, bomb, and SWAT teams, more clearly document and justify their activities; and that the department establish a committee that will develop new policies for responding to people who are chronically homeless or mentally ill. To address what it called a culture of \u201cpervasive and deliberate leniency,\u201d the agreement instructs that supervisors in the department be far more vigilant about documenting misconduct. But it does not seek sanctions against officers who had previously used excessive force. Eden said that, in part because of the department\u2019s contract with the police union, \u201cit\u2019s almost impossible to do retroactive discipline, once the time frame has expired.\u201d If officers resist the reforms, Eden said, he will encourage them to retire.
\n
\nMayor Berry, who was re\u00eblected in 2013, told me he hoped that the department, by implementing the required reforms, would make Albuquerque a model for the rest of the nation. He traced the number of fatal shootings to the lack of mental-health services in the city, but declined to speculate about other factors that had led the department to its current state. \u201cI just don\u2019t spend any of my time or energy worrying about who did what, why, and when,\u201d he said. \u201cThe last thing I want to do as mayor is play the blame game.\u201d
\n
\nThe officers who killed Christopher Torres have never been disciplined. They returned to work after three days of paid leave. Renetta and Stephen Torres are skeptical that the culture and values of the department can change when the cops have not been held accountable. Many of the families who have protested the department\u2019s shootings believed that officers would be charged in the deaths of their sons. When the district attorney declined to bring charges in their own case, they had set their hopes on the cases of other families. Now there is only one case left that has a chance of going to trial: the shooting of James Boyd, a homeless schizophrenic man whose death, last March, was captured on video.
\n
\nBoyd had been camping illegally in the mountains when an officer ordered him to gather his belongings, including two small knives, and sleep somewhere else. Boyd responded to the request by making threatening, nonsensical comments. Soon, forty-one officers reported to the mountain, and several of them pointed rifles at Boyd. An officer named Keith Sandy, who had been hired the same year as Brown, called Boyd a \u201cfucking lunatic\u201d and joked to a colleague that he\u2019d like to fire a Taser shotgun at Boyd\u2019s penis. (He later told detectives that he and his colleagues talked so much \u201cgarbage to one another\u201d that they developed a safe word, \u201cchina,\u201d so that they would know when to stop joking.) As Boyd bent down to pick up his belongings, Sandy threw a flash-bang grenade at his feet. When Boyd reached into his pocket and brought out his knives, Sandy and another officer fired six shots at him with their assault rifles. It was the department\u2019s thirty-ninth shooting since 2010. (When citizens protested the shooting by marching through the city, an undercover officer, dressed as a hippie, walked along, videotaping activists.)
\n
\nLast October, Kari Brandenburg told a police-union attorney that she was leaning toward filing murder charges against the officers who shot Boyd. Within weeks, Brandenburg found herself the target of an investigation by the Albuquerque Police Department. Her twenty-six-year-old son, who was addicted to heroin, had stolen thousands of dollars of his friends\u2019 belongings, and Brandenburg had offered to reimburse them. In late November, an Albuquerque detective gave the state attorney general an investigative file that he said showed that Brandenburg had bribed and intimidated witnesses. In a recording of a conversation between officers working on the case, a detective with the Criminal Intelligence Unit acknowledged that the evidence against Brandenburg appeared insubstantial. He said, \u201cThere might be charges\u2014they\u2019re super-weak\u2014it\u2019s probably not gonna go anywhere, but it\u2019s gonna destroy a career.\u201d
\n
\nA week after the investigation became public, Brandenburg told me that she would continue as district attorney, despite calls for her to leave the office. When I asked her if she saw the investigation as a form of intimidation, a way to prevent her from indicting the officers who shot Boyd, she said, \u201cI think right now it\u2019s best if other people connect the dots.\u201d
\n
\nOn January 12th, Brandenburg filed counts of murder against the two officers who shot Boyd. The case will now go before a district judge, who will determine if there is probable cause to send the officers to trial. At a press conference announcing the charges, Brandenburg said, \u201cI am not going to be intimidated.\u201d
\n
\nThe next day, the Albuquerque police shot and killed another person. According to the police department, the man, who was suspected of stealing, ran away from the officers and fired his gun in their direction. Two cops returned fire, killing the man. One of the cops had killed a civilian in 2011 and the other had been sued in 2010 for using excessive force. Brandenburg sent a prosecutor from her office to the scene of the crime, as she has at every officer shooting in the past decade. But, for the first time, the police barred the prosecutor from attending the police briefing or participating in the investigation. The police department\u2019s attorney told her to go home, saying that her legal advice was not needed.
\n
\nThe Torreses disagree about whether the city has ever apologized to them. Last summer, Mayor Berry met with Stephen and two other fathers, Ken Ellis and Michael Gomez, whose sons had been shot by police officers, men who have since been promoted. Berry extended his condolences and said that he prayed for them. Stephen is satisfied that it was, he said, \u201cas close to an apology as the Mayor\u2019s legal team would allow him.\u201d Renetta, who still hopes that someone will accept responsibility for Christopher\u2019s death, considered this another instance of a politician knowing when to use \u201cnice little phrases.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s hard to be encouraged when you\u2019ve already seen so much double-talk,\u201d she said. <\/a>Did you sometimes interview Stephen and Renetta separately?<\/span>Yes, I found it helpful to interview them separately because they both had very different personalities and modes of speaking and attended to different sorts of details when answering my questions.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nWhen Christopher\u2019s death was first described by the police department, Stephen had contemplated suing the city for slander, until he realized that the dead have no right to be protected from defamation. He couldn\u2019t understand how Christopher, in the course of an afternoon, had been turned into a stereotype: a dangerous schizophrenic. The family had rarely told people about Christopher\u2019s diagnosis, because they were wary of the meanings that people ascribed to the word. Christopher\u2019s first psychiatrist had told the family, \u201cLet\u2019s hope it\u2019s a brain tumor and not schizophrenia, because a tumor we can do something about.\u201d
\n
\nRenetta said that she struggled to accept that \u201cyou can\u2019t always set things right in the world of your child.\u201d She believed that Christopher had been getting better every year. The side effects from the medications, like muscle stiffness and lethargy, had become less distracting. He was opening up to the idea of going to school. He still heard occasional voices, but, for the most part, he had stopped believing what they said. \u201cChristopher was trying to figure out, \u2018How do I fit in?\u2019\u00a0\u201d Renetta said. \u201cHe was so close to finding his way.\u201d <\/a>How did you reach your decision about the ending?<\/span>One of the tragedies of this case was that Christopher didn\u2019t get a chance to be seen, publicly, as a person separate from his diagnosis. His schizophrenia diagnosis was offered almost as an explanation for his death. I hoped to convey that the shooting froze his life at a particularly difficult moment with regard to his illness and that he was deprived of the chance of moving beyond it.<\/span><\/span>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker writer talks about a police department awash in machismo and parents who are told their home is in a “kill zone”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[196],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","authors-steve-weinberg"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAnnotation Tuesday! 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