New Mexico Mercury

The release of a video showing the latest Albuquerque police shooting and killing of a homeless man camping in a restricted area in the foothills of the Sandía Mountains casts yet more serious questions about one of the state’s largest law-enforcement agencies. Two Albuquerque Police Department (APD) officers each fired three shots at 38-year-old James Boyd, who police claim made threatening moves and refused to drop a knife in each of his hands.

However, a police video showed that Boyd was turning away from officers when he was fired upon with bullets and beanbags and he quickly collapsed. Then, as police officers approached Boyd’s prone, motionless body, another officer released a K-9 Unit German shepherd that quickly began biting the man’s leg before officers callously handcuffed him.

When I first saw this video it took my breath away and then broke my heart and made me sick to my stomach when I watched it again. I could not believe that the police believed they had run out of alternatives than to shoot this troubled man, who appeared to be talking logically toward a solution. The actions of the police in the video are plain to see -- and dramatically different from the explanation offered by new APD Police Chief Gordon Eden who called the shooting “justified.”

Boyd’s death at the hands of police is just the latest in a disconcerting series of Albuquerque police killings, lawsuits and raises questions about the leadership, tactics, training and hiring of APD’s officers. And sandwiched between all of the APD incidents, are two questionable shootings by the New Mexico State Police, one in which a woman in Santa Fe was shot and killed after an unjustified car chase, and another case where an officer shot at a fleeing van driven by a woman with her young children in Taos County.

It’s no wonder every time the New Mexico police release a video, it goes viral on the Internet and gives our state yet another black eye. I can only imagine if the show “Cops” was along for the ride during the Sandia Mountains’ incident, then it would have been there in HD, for all the world to see.”

Hundreds of protesters from throughout New Mexico and even out of state marched through downtown Albuquerque on Tuesday night to show their disgust of this totally unnecessary killing of a mentally ill man.

The lack of resources and programs to help those who are struggling with mental-health issues is quite evident in incidents like these. We can only expect more preventable tragedies like these senseless police killings, especially after the governor’s total destruction of our behavioral health care system last year. This troubling incident is only going to deepen the gap between the police and the public, which becomes more and more fearful of the actions of those who are supposed to protect them.

We all need to reflect and learn from what is happening right before our eyes. People suffering from mental illness in our communities need treatment and our compassion, not the barbaric militaristic justice more common to battlefields and the callous dismantling of treatment programs that could help them.