Tag: Truman Dickerson

  • Family says Dorchester man fatally shot by police officer was experiencing mental health crisis

    Truman Dickerson

    Attorney Ben Crump (center) speaking at the Grant A.M.E. church on Thursday. Crump is representing the family of Stephenson King Jr., a Dorchester man who was fatally shot by a Boston police officer last month. Credit: Truman Dickerson

    A high-profile civil rights attorney representing Stephenson King Jr.’s family said Thursday that King was in the midst of a mental health crisis when Boston police fatally shot him and that body camera footage from his shooting should be released.

    “If the officer did nothing wrong, then we should be able to see it on the video,” said attorney Ben Crump, adding that “we believe that video will reveal very disturbing actions.”

    King, a 39-year-old Dorchester man, was fatally shot by Officer Nicholas O’Malley March 11 after King stole a woman’s vehicle and parked it on a street in Roxbury. O’Malley fired three shots as King was maneuvering the car, believing, according to his defense attorney, that King was about to strike another officer on scene.

    O’Malley was arraigned on a manslaughter charge March 19. He pleaded not guilty and was released on personal recognizance. An assistant district attorney said body cam footage showed King was trying to drive away when O’Malley fired the shots and that neither officer was in danger of being struck. 

    King’s family painted a picture of a man with serious, unaddressed mental health issues who was loved by his family and failed by the state’s mental health system. His father, Stephenson King Sr., said King had been to two hospitals the day of the shooting but was discharged from each.

    “His father took him to the hospital, and he somehow got released, and he went to another facility and exhibited paranoia symptoms even there, and then he left,” Crump said. “He took a car and then he parked it. None of it makes any sense.”

    Though members of King’s family met with Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office Thursday morning, Crump said he and the family have yet to see body camera footage of the incident.

    Asked directly if he would sue the Boston Police Department to gain access to the body cam video, Crump deferred, saying “we intend to explore every possible legal remedy available to the family to get justice.”

    Boston City Councilor Miniard Culpepper, whose district includes the area where King was shot, said he asked the council to file a summons for the video Wednesday, but it was objected to.

    “The video will show us the truth about what actually happened,” Culpepper said. “When we ask to see a body cam video, it should be readily available.”

    Culpepper said he would again ask the council to file a summons next week. He said he believes Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox is within his rights to independently release the video, despite the ongoing investigation by Hayden’s office.

    Members of King’s family, who took turns speaking at the pulpit of Grant African Methodist Episcopal Church, teared up at points as they described a loved one who was crippled by delusions.

    “He still loved his nieces and nephews, his brothers and sisters. He still came to every function that we had,” said King’s sister, Ebony King Gibson.

    King “was one of the kindest, most generous young men,” said Tina Petigny, the fiance of King’s father.

    Petigny said she would often see King speaking to people who weren’t actually there. King’s father said King had recently been putting pieces of paper into electrical sockets, believing that people were watching him.

    King’s father, a retired Massachusetts corrections officer, said he wants to see the video of the shooting.

    “I want to see his face when it really happened,” he said. “Knowing my son, he would’ve been home. He would’ve been home.” 

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Among city’s Black clergy, Rev. Jesse Jackson’s spirit lives on

    Among city’s Black clergy, Rev. Jesse Jackson’s spirit lives on

    When Pastor John Borders was serving as the chaplain of the Suffolk County Jail in the late 1980s, he invited the Rev. Jesse Jackson to speak to his congregation of prisoners.

    Around that time, in a conversation Borders said he’ll “never forget,” Jackson admonished the young pastor for not doing enough to prioritize social justice in his ministry.

    “You and the other clergy need to work harder at bringing together the elected officials and the clergy in Boston to solidify the social justice agenda,” he recalled Jackson telling him.

    Borders, who now leads Morning Star Baptist Church in Mattapan, said those words continue to inform his ministry – pressing him, he said, to use the pulpit as a vehicle to bring about social and political change for Boston’s Black population.

    “We must not only walk in that path [of spiritual piety], but we must develop a praxis,” Borders said. “And that was a social justice praxis. He helped me with that.”

    Jackson, who died Feb. 17 at age 84, led a life that was hardly limited to a church’s pulpit. In 1965, while a student at the Chicago Theological Seminary, he led 20 students and a third of the seminary’s faculty to Selma, Alabama, where peaceful protesters had been brutally beaten by state troopers.

    Two years later, prior to finishing his theological studies, Jackson left school to focus entirely on furthering the Civil Rights Movement under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

    For the remainder of his life, through two presidential campaigns and thousands of speaking appearances, Jackson used his status as a religious leader (he was ordained by the minister of a Chicago church after he went to work for King) to advocate for greater economic and educational opportunities for Black people.

    “His life really taught me … that the pulpit was not a place to retreat from politics, but it was actually a platform for us to bring more clarity to our community, to our cities, to our country, and to the world,” said Rev. Willie Bodrick, the senior pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury (shown above).

    In 2017, Jackson spoke to the congregation at Grace Church of All Nations in Dorchester. Karen Foxworth, the wife of A. Livingston Foxworth, the senior pastor of Grace Church of All Nations, was present for the speech.

    She said his being there was “historical. Everybody was just really hinged to the word, because of his history and his knowledge and his fight and his experience. We really got a lot out of it.” 

    Borders, who described himself as one of Jackson’s “young protegees” in Boston, said his emphasis on social justice inspired him to co-create an initiative that would later become the Boston TenPoint Coalition, a project that successfully and drastically reduced youth violence in the city.

    “The gangs had come into Morning Star Baptist Church and tried to kill a man,” Borders said, referring to an attack in 1992 in which a group of young men stabbed a 21-year-old man eight times during a memorial service at the church. “That led to clergy meeting at Morning Star for over six months from every faith and every religion in America.” 

    That initiative, together with Operation Ceasefire, helped bring down Boston’s youth homicide rate by two thirds by 1997, according to data from the Bridgespan Group. 

    “Reverend Jackson’s life continues to reinforce the opportunity for us to see truth to power,” Bodrick said. “Also to advocate, and to ensure that our advocacy becomes action that supports the most vulnerable.”

    This story is the product of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Police seek suspects who assaulted pregnant woman in Uphams Corner supermarket

    Police are searching for two teenagers who allegedly assaulted a pregnant woman in a Dorchester supermarket Sunday. One of the suspects threw a stolen tub of yogurt at the woman’s face, according to a police report.

    Police responded to a reported larceny in progress around 1 p.m. at Brother’s Market, a supermarket on Dudley Street, police said. 

    Two managers told police that a group of teenagers “came into the store and attempted to steal items” but employees at the store blocked the door and the teenagers put back the items and walked out, the report said.

    One of the teenagers then walked back into the store and stole “a tub of yogurt and put it in her pocket” before walking back out, the report said.

    A worker at the store, who was described in the report as seven months pregnant, followed the teen “to retrieve the yogurt,” the report said.

    The worker told police that as she approached the teen, “another female pushed her back.”

    “The female who stole the yogurt then threw the yogurt at her hitting her in the left side of the face,” the report said.

    Police described the teen who allegedly threw the yogurt as a “light-skinned female, about 14-18 years old, [with] long bright red hair in a ponytail.”

    Police described the teen who allegedly pushed the pregnant woman as a “black female, about 14-18 years old, [with] long bright red wavy hair.”

    Boston police are asking anyone with information to call 617-343-4275.

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.