Black faith leaders are calling for the firing of officers who were involved in an incident that left an Indianapolis resident, 39-year-old Herman Whitfield III, dead. Whitfield was having an apparent mental health crisis inside his parents’ home last month.
According to the Indianapolis Star, several clergy members have called for the termination of the officers. The report notes that faith leaders say the officers involved should also be prosecuted, even though they have not reviewed body camera footage of the encounter.
The Star also notes that Whitfield’s father said he called the police because his son was “having a psychosis,” and requested an ambulance. However, the man was tased when he “moved quickly towards an officer.”
The official police statement says that Whitfield was moving around the home, naked and sweating. Officers observed him bleeding from the mouth and began to communicate with him to prepare him for transportation by ambulance, the statement says.
As Whitfield continued to struggle despite more than 10 minutes of negotiating and de-escalation tactics by officers, he was tased two more times and handcuffed. Medics entered the home and found him unresponsive and he was transported to the hospital, where he later died.
While the clergy members said they have not seen the footage, Josh Riddick, a community organizer for Faith in Indiana said, “We know that when a family calls for help and an unarmed man ends up dead, policy wasn’t being followed.”
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said that it has a “responsibility to our officers, Mr. Whitfield’s family, and the community to only draw conclusions once all information regarding the information has been presented to the Chief and the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office,” according to a tweet.
The officers involved have been identified as Steven Sanchez, Adam Ahmad, Matthew Virt, Dominique Clark, Jordan Bull, and recruit trainee Nicholas Mathew. They have all been placed on administrative leave.
The faith leaders also took the opportunity to use Whitfield’s death to illustrate the need for improvements to the department’s crisis response team, which consists of an officer and a clinician, that responds to some special incidents, but only on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
The city is planning to announce changes to the team, and advocates have called for those changes to be detailed within the next 30 days.
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