BlackLivesMatter“If you don’t feel safe with the police department, then who do you feel safe with? Do you just ignore crime or ignore something that’s not right? A Fort Worth woman was shot and killed in her own home early Saturday by one of the police officers sent to do a wellness check on her residence. This is the seventh shooting of a civilian by the department since June 1, and the sixth to be fatal.
“It makes you not want to call the police department,” James Smith told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Smith is struggling in the wake of the shooting: He’s the one who dialed a Fort Worth non-emergency number after noticing his neighbor’s door was ajar and lights were on in the home of Atatiana Jefferson, 28, her aunt, and an 8-year-old nephew.
“I’m shaken. I’m mad. I’m upset. And I feel it’s partly my fault,” Smith explained. “If I had never dialed the police department, she’d still be alive.”
But Smith didn’t pull the trigger. A white police officer, who police say joined the department in April 2018, is the one who killed Jefferson. A little under two minutes of bodycam footage has already been released, and indicates that the unnamed shooter fired his service weapon once, into the window of a dark room.