National activists call Decatur 'new ground zero' at Princess Theatre event

Jan. 9—Families affected by police brutality or recklessness and Black Lives Matter activists welcomed Decatur to "a club that nobody wants to be a part of" at a Saturday panel discussion organized by Standing In Power at the Princess Theatre.

"Steve Perkins has created the new ground zero," said Andrew Joseph Jr. "I've watched it personally move from Ferguson to George Floyd, and now it's here in your backyard. And the world is watching."

Perkins was shot and killed in his front yard by a Decatur police officer in the early hours of Sept. 29. On Friday, Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson announced that the shooter, former officer Mac Bailey Marquette, was indicted by a grand jury for murder.

Family, friends, and supporters of Perkins celebrated what would have been his 40th birthday last weekend with several events, including the panel.

Joseph was one of three parents on the panel who said they lost a Black son to policing. Michael Brown Sr., father of 18-year-old Michael Brown who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and Mona Hardin, mother of 49-year-old Ronald Greene who died in 2019 after a confrontation with Louisiana state police also spoke.

The troopers involved in Greene's death were the first law enforcement officers to be indicted in that state's history, according to moderator Marquell Bridges. One former trooper faces a negligent homicide charge.

"What keeps me from giving up is, because I'm back and forth, I've yet to grieve the murder of my son," Hardin said. "When I speak of my son, it's hard for me to speak of him in the past tense."

According to The Associated Press, Louisiana state police refused to release bodycam video of Greene's death for two years while they claimed he died in a car crash. Once AP finally acquired the video, it showed a trooper repeatedly striking Greene in the head with a flashlight and later boasting about the beating.

Joseph said racism is the root of all other problems and that change can only come from having difficult conversations.

"Ultimately, I would like to stay home and not have any families to visit," he said. "Not have any Black and brown boys and girls to have to fight for. But, let me be the first, Decatur, Alabama — the Perkins family — to welcome you to a club that nobody wants to be a part of. An unarmed Black man is murdered every 26 hours."

Following Brown's death in Ferguson, The Washington Post found that data on fatal police shootings was underreported. Because of this, The Post began to keep a record of every person shot and killed by an on-duty police officer in the U.S. in 2015.

White people since then are killed by police at an average rate of 2.3 per million, per year, according to The Post. Black people, who make up roughly 14% of the population, are killed at a rate of 5.9 per million, per year. There were 1,153 people shot and killed by police in 2023, according to The Post. Of those, 941 were armed. Of the 213 Blacks killed, 174 were armed.

"My family was pulled left and right," Brown Sr. said of his experience navigating the aftermath of his son's death. "It took us almost six years to grieve."

A grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot Brown. The Ferguson police chief ultimately resigned, Brown's family won a wrongful death lawsuit, and the Department of Justice compelled the city to reform its policing.

Bridges asked the panel to respond to Mayor Tab Bowling who, in a video uploaded to social media, was heard telling Perkins supporters "it's time to move on."

"When my son died, I died," Joseph said. "I had to learn how to get out of bed again. Put one foot in front of the other. Go back to somebody's job. Just basic hygiene, to get out of the bed and take a bath and brush your teeth, was a task. I was worried about my name."

Joseph's son, 14-year-old Andrew Joseph III, died while trying to cross a highway after being kicked out of a fair by Florida deputies, who allegedly left him at the roadside without contacting his parents, in 2014. A jury ordered the sheriff's office to pay $15 million to Joseph's parents in 2022.

"My wife spent at least two weeks in that dead child's room, sleeping on his pillow so she could have his scent just one last time," Joseph said. "I can remember us laying in bed, and I know she was sleeping because I heard her snoring, and I looked at her face and her eyes were closed and her pillow was soaking wet. She's laying there crying in her sleep. And there's nothing that I can do."

Joseph's account touched the audience. One woman rushed out of the auditorium sobbing.

"They stole things that they can't give back," Joseph said. "You have no authority to tell me how long I can be angry, how long I can be sad. Steve Perkins has the power to bring this place together; he has the power to burn it down. This is an atom bomb waiting to explode."

Several Black Lives Matter activists also spoke on the panel, including Melina Abdullah, a professor of pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and cofounder of the Los Angeles chapter of BLM.

"The ultimate goal of my organizing is to remember that the world that we've inherited is not the world that we have to accept," Abdullah said. "Policing in this country comes from slave-catching. It's not a few bad cops. It's the entire system. That doesn't mean we don't need public safety systems. We need public safety systems, but I've never felt safer because blue lights pulled behind me in traffic."

Panel member and lawyer Joseph Fouche explained that organizing at a local level is important for three reasons: ending qualified immunity, collecting data for the Department of Justice to investigate, and creating legislation for police oversight.

"All of this can be done at a very granular, city level, where all of us in this room can start with our cities to try to get state legislation and, ultimately, federal legislation to end qualified immunity," he said.

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that in many cases shields law enforcement officers from civil liability for their actions.

Bridges told Perkins' supporters that they still have a long way to go.

"I don't want the community of Decatur to think just because you have murder charges that your fight is over and you can just go home," he said. "Now, you have to go even harder, because they're going to do everything they can to appeal, to use qualified immunity, to get away with murder."

— david.gambino@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438. @DD_DavidGambino