Najee Seabrooks Dedicated His Life To Reducing Violence In His Community. Then He Was Killed By Police.

The shooting

The shoot­ing last Friday fol­lowed a stand­off between Seabrooks and police that last­ed more than four hours, accord­ing to Paterson Press. Police had respond­ed to calls of a men­tal­ly dis­turbed per­son in his home, and when they arrived at the scene Seabrooks had alleged­ly bar­ri­cad­ed him­self inside the apart­ment. After pro­longed nego­ti­a­tions, police claim, Seabrooks let offi­cers into his homeand then charged at them with a knife. According to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, two offi­cers fired their weapons at Seabrooks, strik­ing him. He was lat­er pro­nounced dead at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson. On Wednesday, the attor­ney general’s office released the names of the offi­cers who deployed their weapons: Anzore Tsay and Jose Hernandez. Both were mem­bers of the emer­gency response team. Officials say they could not deploy their Tasers because Seabrooks had bro­ken pipes in the apart­ment and start­ed a small fire that left sig­nif­i­cant amounts of water on the floor, mak­ing the use of the elec­tri­cal device too dan­ger­ous. “The police was here for hours try­ing to calm him down and bring him out of the apart­ment, but he decid­ed to turn the apart­ment on fire,” Councilman Luiz Velez told NBC New York. Paterson police did not respond to sev­er­al requests for com­ment from Yahoo News.

The state attor­ney general’s office is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and we express our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, loved ones and friends, and col­leagues of the dece­dent,” Dan Prochilo, a spokesper­son for the attor­ney general’s office, told Yahoo News. “Our office is com­mit­ted to thor­ough­ly, fair­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing fatal police encoun­ters.” Prochilo added that the office will make all infor­ma­tion avail­able, includ­ing video, when the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete. Paterson Mayor André Sayegh has been qui­et since Friday’s shoot­ing, accord­ing to local res­i­dents. On Saturday he issued his only state­ment on the inci­dent, wel­com­ing the attor­ney general’s review and say­ing that “prayers and con­do­lences are with Mr. Seabrook’s [sic] fam­i­ly, friends and our impact­ed com­mu­ni­ty.” When con­tact­ed by Yahoo News, his office shared the same state­ment, adding that it had “no fur­ther com­ment at this time.” During one of the speech­es Tuesday night, an attendee shout­ed, “Where is the may­or? He knocked on my door to vote for him dur­ing elec­tion time, but I don’t see him here!

Community distrust in Paterson leadership

For many crit­ics in the com­mu­ni­ty already on edge fol­low­ing Seabrooks’s killing, each pass­ing day with no addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion only adds to the angst and frus­tra­tion. “In Memphis, they fired the cops with­in two weeks,” Larry Hamm, chair­man of the People’s Organization for Progress, a social jus­tice advo­ca­cy group, said, ref­er­enc­ing Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man fatal­ly beat­en by Memphis police fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop in January. “If they had let the Paterson Healing Collective inter­vene, he would be alive today.” “How many Black men need to be killed before they take us seri­ous­ly?” Councilman Michael Jackson said before enter­ing a City Council meet­ing where only 20 res­i­dents were allowed inside.

The Black Lives Matter chap­ter in Paterson has pre­sent­ed a list of demands for the city, which include the imme­di­ate release of police body cam­era footage of the inci­dent and plac­ing the offi­cers involved in the shoot­ing on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The group, spear­head­ed by leader Zellie Thomas, also demands a restruc­tur­ing of the city’s police depart­ment that would include cre­at­ing a civil­ian com­plaint review board to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of police wrong­do­ing in addi­tion to invest­ing more mon­ey in com­mu­ni­ty groups that give Paterson res­i­dents pos­i­tive out­lets. “We have to open up people’s eyes that police offi­cers are not the only solu­tion to crises,” Thomas told Yahoo News, not­ing that conver­sa­tions about actu­al change come to a halt once the con­ver­sa­tion about the real­lo­ca­tion of police fund­ing comes up. The Paterson Police Department rep­re­sents more than 16% of the city’s bud­get, receiv­ing more than $43 mil­lion last year, which is more than dou­ble the per­cent­age that New York City allo­cates to its police depart­ment.

History of Paterson police violence

Seabrooks’s death isn’t the first case in which Paterson police have come under scruti­ny for their han­dling of peo­ple hav­ing a men­tal health cri­sis. In January 2019, 27-year-old Jameek Lowery died after con­sum­ing ille­gal drugs and express­ing feel­ings of “para­noia” before being repeat­ed­ly struck by police offi­cers try­ing to restrain him on an ambu­lance gur­ney. A law­suit filed by Lowery’s fam­i­ly cites at least three oth­er instances — two of them fatal — since 2012 in which Paterson police shot indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health episodes. There was also the death of 25‑year-old Thelonious McKnight, who was killed in late 2021 while flee­ing police. Hamm believes that the issue of race can­not be ignored. Paterson has just over 157,000 res­i­dents, made up of 87% Black and Hispanic res­i­dents and 8% white res­i­dents, accord­ing to the lat­est cen­sus data. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 Paterson offi­cers are white, while about 62% are Black or Hispanic. “There is a dif­fer­ent way that they treat Black peo­ple in dis­tress from white peo­ple in dis­tress,” Hamm said. Michael Mitchell, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of African American stud­ies and crim­i­nol­o­gy at the College of New Jersey, told Yahoo News that the need for trans­paren­cy is urgent. “It is no secret that the Paterson Police Department is inun­dat­ed in a legit­i­ma­cy cri­sis due to the city’s tox­ic cop cul­ture,” he said in an email, point­ing to a recent Paterson police cor­rup­tion case. “Therefore, the urgency in releas­ing pub­licly the body-worn cam­era footage from the police emer­gency respon­ders involved can­not be over­stat­ed. A time lag in trans­paren­cy only exac­er­bates com­mu­ni­ty dis­trust in the insti­tu­tion pub­licly fund­ed to pro­tect and serve them.”

Police intervention with mental health crises under scrutiny

While many men­tal health advo­cates believe that offi­cers need addi­tion­al train­ing to deal with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health crises, oth­er advo­cates say police should not be involved at all unless the per­son is armed and an imme­di­ate threat to oth­ers. They say police are sim­ply unqual­i­fied to han­dle the nuances of such sit­u­a­tions. In New Jersey, Mitchell notes, the pilot pro­gram ARRIVE Together, which pairs police with men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als dur­ing cri­sis calls, is show­ing promise, and Gov. Phil Murphy recent­ly announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment in expand­ing the pro­gram statewide. “It is crit­i­cal that police agen­cies and offi­cers under­stand and oper­ate under the recog­ni­tion that you can­not respond to every per­son the same,” Mitchell said. “There can be no ‘one size fits all’ approach to polic­ing, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis.” Last year a three-dig­it National Suicide Prevention Lifeline num­ber, 988, offi­cial­ly launched, allow­ing any­one wit­ness­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis to call, text or chat to talk to some­one. But a Yahoo News report found that many states did not have the resources to staff and sup­port the line adequately.

Over the last few years, sev­er­al cities, includ­ing New York, Chicago and Denver, have launched pro­grams that replace police response with men­tal health emer­gency respon­ders and have seen suc­cess. But crit­ics argue that the move­ment exists in far too few places and is expand­ing far too slow­ly. In Paterson, progress on the imple­men­ta­tion of a task force has been incon­sis­tent at best. Mayor Sayegh intro­duced a cit­i­zens’ de-esca­la­tion task force in December 2021, but, accord­ing to Thomas, the group has nev­er met and has not rolled out a sin­gle new reg­u­la­tion. “This task force was sup­posed to be able to research best prac­tices and best poli­cies for offi­cers to be equipped with de-esca­la­tion prac­tices and poli­cies, and over a year lat­er, that de-esca­la­tion task force still has not met,” Thomas said. “What if that task force had met and was already research­ing some of the things we are propos­ing now and imple­ment­ed it? It could have saved his life.”

Seabrooks’s legacy

According to those who knew him best, Seabrooks will be remem­bered by the com­mu­ni­ty as some­one who would do any­thing for those in need. His fam­i­ly start­ed a GoFundMe to cov­er funer­al expens­es and cre­ate a trust fund for his daugh­ter. His moth­er, Melissa Carter, told the CBS News local affil­i­ate in New York that her son loved his city so much that he gave of him­self in spite of his own per­son­al cir­cum­stances. “He planned toy give­aways, he donat­ed, he had home­less dri­ves,” Carter said. “All he want­ed to do was help the community.”

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