Fort Lee police release video of shooting of Victoria Lee
Police body camera video shows the fatal encounter between Victoria Lee and officers July 2024 in Fort Lee.
On Sunday, July 28, the family of Victoria G. Lee, 25, called 911 for an ambulance as Lee experienced a mental health crisis and needed to go to the hospital. Instead, police broke down the door against the family’s wishes, and ultimately a Fort Lee cop fatally shot Lee.
The shooting is still under investigation by the state Office of the Attorney General, but the family wants answers.
The current status of the officer who fired the fatal shot is not known, as the Office of the Attorney General and the Fort Lee Police Department declined comment on his status. The mayor of Fort Lee has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Lee’s death is the latest in a line of fatalities at the hands of law enforcement while the victim experienced a mental health crisis. For some it serves as a reminder about what steps need to be taken to address this issue in New Jersey and across the United States.
“My reaction was that I was horrified that this had to happen again,” said Zellie Thomas, an elementary school teacher and activist from Paterson. “Especially in the wake of not only Andrew Washington and Najee Seabrooks, but also in the wake of Sonya Massey.”
In response to the death of Lee, the Attorney General’s Office announced last week revisions to the police ‘use of force’ policy which would require police to contact mental health professionals in situations involving a barricaded individual. Despite these changes, many are pushing for more to be done. Still, some advocates wonder how far those changes will go.
Now, the fatal shooting of Lee is sparking a continuation of the conversation, begging the question of what needs to be done to address the issue of how police handle mental health crisis situations and how to ensure that similar deaths do not occur in the future.
Policing and mental health crises
There has been much discussion in recent years about whether police officers are the right people to respond to such calls.
Activists, advocates and experts have long argued that alternative personnel such as mental health professionals should be the ones to respond instead of police officers, or alongside them.
According to Dr. Frank Edwards, associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers-Newark, there is something “fundamentally broken” about U.S. policing.
“We need to ask really hard questions about whether police officers are the right people to be responding to these kinds of crises,” said Edwards. “Miss Lee’s family needed support and needed help, but the only thing available to them, just by the fact that they requested an ambulance, was an armed officer who was primed and ready to shoot.”
According to Edwards and a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, police officers in the United States kill more people than in just about any of our peer countries including Canada and European nations.
The human element from an individual officer also needs to be considered, said Brian Higgins, a retired police officer who served with the Bergen County police for nearly three decades.
“Not having spoken to him, I can imagine, having spoken to many officers that have been involved in a situation, that he is reliving that situation over and over in his head wondering, ‘Did I make the right decision? Is there something else I could have done?’ I am sure it is a living hell for him right now and all of the other officers involved,” Higgins said.
Activists such as Thomas, an active member of Black Lives Matter Paterson who spoke to the issue at a rally for justice for Victoria Lee on Aug. 15, agrees with Edwards that alternatives to how such a crisis is handled need to be explored.
“Someone who is going through a mental health crisis does not need an armed police officer, but an unarmed mental health professional, who may be an EMT, who is trained specifically to handle these types of situations,” Thomas said.
Editorial: Victoria Lee death proves NJ needs new police protocols for people in mental health crises
Corey Teague, another community activist who served on the Paterson Board of Education, also wants to see mental health professionals be on call when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis.
“Our state Legislature needs to really put more work in to make sure that it is mandatory that during a mental health crisis, a mental health counselor is with the officer,” said Teague.
What is being done in New Jersey?
Earlier this year, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Najee Seabrooks and Andrew Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act, named after two men who were killed by local police officers in 2023.
The goal of this bill is to establish a community crisis response advisory council and a community crisis response pilot program.
The state-advisory council, which will oversee the pilot program and will be responsible for coming up with the best practices and recommendations, was supposed to start holding meetings 45 days after Murphy’s bill-signing on Jan. 12, but as of July none have been held.
The bill will provide $12 million over three years to municipalities in six eligible counties: Camden, Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex and Passaic. The money will fund the establishment of community crisis response teams that will be operated by community-based organizations within qualifying towns.
These groups will offer professional on-site community-based intervention such as outreach, de-escalation, stabilization, resource connection and follow-up support for individuals who are experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
Each team will receive up to $2 million annually but need to be located in the specific counties and must meet the population requirements.
Nonprofit groups in Paterson, Camden, Newark and Trenton were awarded grants to set up pilot programs for community crisis response teams.
Groups in Bergen County, where Lee was killed, are not eligible to receive funding from the program.
In 2021, the ARRIVE Together program was created.
Through ARRIVE Together, statewide law enforcement can work with a mental health alternative response program to intervene or follow up with people experiencing a mental health crisis. The program aims to provide resources to individuals who may need it the most.
Originally a pilot program in three municipalities, it expanded to all 21 New Jersey counties in 2023.
The ARRIVE Together Dashboard shows a map that illustrates which resources and ARRIVE models have been implemented in each county.
Bergen County follows the co-response and follow-up ARRIVE models. The co-response model allows law enforcement officers, not in uniform, and mental health professionals to respond on scene simultaneously. In the follow-up model, law enforcement officers respond on scene alone and mental health professionals follow up with the individual to provide mental health and support services at a later date.
The mental health providers in Bergen County are Care Plus New Jersey and CHB Care.
The municipalities in Bergen County that participate in the ARRIVE Together program are Elmwood Park, Englewood, Hackensack, Lyndhurst, Paramus, Rutherford and Saddle Brook.
Fort Lee does not participate in ARRIVE Together.
“Where it stands right now, the ARRIVE Together Program isn’t everywhere,” said the activist Thomas. “The Najee Seabrooks and Andrew Washington bill pilot isn’t for every county or city. What we need to do is establish funding for alternatives in all communities, not just certain communities, all communities so that we are all safe.”
However, on Thursday, nearly one month since the death of Lee, the state Office of the Attorney General announced the expansion of ARRIVE Together as well as revisions to the state’s Use of Force Policy.
Per the Attorney General’s announcement, funds, which will come from part of the recent budget allocation by the state to expand the ARRIVE Together program, will now be made available to support the provision of “critical incident tactical and negotiation teams with experienced mental health professionals.”
The grant funds will be available in all counties.
As for the revisions to the Use of Force Policy, Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin announced that tactical and crisis negotiation teams will now be required to identify and enter into agreements with qualified mental health professionals who will be able to respond to a hostage situation or a barricaded individual.
Officers will be advised to wait for appropriate resources in a barricade situation, unless forcing a resolution would be “immediately necessary to prevent injury or death.”
Additionally, law enforcement will now be allowed to consider alternative strategies such as tactical disengagement or disengagement through the assistance of community-based groups such as crisis response teams or mental health providers through ARRIVE Together.
Finally, new mandates will require an immediate response by an on-duty supervisor in the case of a barricade situation and that tactical response teams must be a Tier 1 or Tier 2 SWAT team who is equipped with less lethal weapons, among other things.
Although, with the announcement of these revisions, it does appear that state law enforcement is hearing the public’s calls for change, some are asking how much of a difference it will make.
Following the Attorney General’s announcement, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, acknowledging the state’s recognition that something must be done, but questioning what exactly will be different.
“The new directive shows the state recognizes that something must be done to stop police from killing people in mental health crisis in NJ – over and over again – and that police behavior to date has been unacceptable,” reads the statement. “Since last year, it has claimed the lives of Najee Seabrooks, Andrew Washington, and most recently Victoria Lee. The directive contains some important elements, for sure. But the devil is in the details and implementation.”
The NJISJ’s statement points out that use of force policy already requires slowing down and de-escalation and that community responders were on scene when Seabrooks was killed but were prevented from engaging.
It questions whether SWAT team presence will increase militarization instead of reducing it.
“What will really be different now?” the statement asks. “We look forward to learning more about how this directive will be operationalized and – crucially – what the consequences will be for violating.”
It finishes by emphasizing the need to “double down” on the development of non-law enforcement responses to mental health crises.
“We cannot be a state that normalizes police violence against our most vulnerable,” said the NJISJ.
While time will tell what these revisions bring, the retired officer Higgins, said that he is seeing much more change to use-of-force policies today than he did in the past.
“Use-of-force guidelines for the AG when I was a young cop didn’t change much. It was at least a decade, and very little changes,” Higgins said. “Maybe there would be a change based on the addition of tasers, other less than lethal. But when officers can shoot, when they can use deadly force, stayed pretty much unchanged. Now it seems like it’s changing pretty regularly.”
The last time the Use of Force Policy in New Jersey was revised was in December 2020. These were the first revisions to the policy in two decades.
Higgins attributes the increase in changes to the level of attention that such incidents receive, likely due to the presence of social media which allows an incident like the death of Lee to be known across the country quickly.
The Paterson activist Teague recognizes the revisions made by the attorney general are steps in the right direction. “I’m glad to see that they realize and accept the need for mental health professionals to be present, even during potential hostage situations,” he said.
“They should approach mental trauma cases with all available measures and exhausted prior to the use of any deadly force,” he added. “What we have witnessed in the past is the use of deadly force immediately which has caused so much pain in community and an overall distrust in law enforcement.”
Continuing the conversation and steps forward
Victoria Lee family want Fort Lee police body camera footage released
Henry Sukjin Cho, the lawyer for the Lee family, speaks about Victoria Lee’s fatal shooting by Fort Lee Police during a mental health episode in July.
While many experts and community leaders recognize that New Jersey has seen some progress in terms of mental health crisis interventions, many say there is still work to be done, especially when it comes to the funding of crisis response programs.
According to Edwards, additional funding and intricate planning are necessary to make change.
“We need to have a widespread plan to develop alternatives to the police to respond to these kinds of crises. That’s going to require funding and that’s going to require a lot of planning,” Edwards said.
The professor from Rutgers-Newark said that municipalities, counties, the state police and mental health care and social services organizations need to be involved in shaping local and statewide crisis response teams.
Thomas agrees that funding toward programs like ARRIVE Together and the Seabrooks/Washington Act is only the beginning of what needs to be done to support crisis invention and prevention.
“I’ve seen a small step recently with the recognition of community crisis teams for these types of emergencies. I think this small investment is not enough, we need large investments,” said Thomas. “Just like we largely invest in policing, we need to largely invest in these alternatives that will keep people who are the most vulnerable safe from police violence.”
In addition to the development and implementation of alternative response methods, Thomas believes that continuing the conversation and encouraging awareness is an important part of resolving the issue and making New Jersey’s communities safer.
He also emphasized the importance of focusing on the harm that is caused by institutions and not the harm that is caused by individuals.
“I think when we talk about police violence, it always gets framed as an individual sense, as a bad cop versus a good cop, and we should not take this stance. We know that there are good people. We know that there are bad people. We know that sometimes good people make bad choices,” said Thomas. “It is not about whether the officers who killed Lee were good or bad, it is about this institution that should not have been there in the first place, instead of an institution that could have given her the care and support she needed and have done so in a non-violent way.”
Dr. Sheetal Ranjan, professor of justice studies at Montclair State University, echoed the idea that the issue is a systematic one.
“The issue is much larger than any individual police officer; it is a systemic problem. Just as you wouldn’t want a brain surgeon performing a knee replacement, a police officer should not be the primary responder to a mental health crisis,” said Ranjan.
According to Higgins, who still works as a public safety consultant and teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, many members of law enforcement agree with the idea of alternative responders.
“Every police officer I have spoken to, or representative of an agency, said ‘look, if you want to give mental health calls to mental health counselors, and not call police until you need us, we’re good with that.’ So, I don’t see this move in policing to hang onto this or to be the first responders in mental health crises,” said Higgins. “Everyone I have spoken to in law enforcement embraces this idea of leaving mental health situations with professionals in the mental health world.”
Ranjan also expressed the need for more funding not only in program implementation, but also in research, saying that the law enforcement-mental health co-response “currently lacks adequate funding for both implementation and thorough research.”
She continued, “The data is just starting to come in from different parts of the country, with varying results. I believe this variability in outcomes is due to differences in how the co-response model is implemented across different regions.”
Ranjan also said that the shortage of qualified psychiatrists needs to be addressed when discussing solutions to those experiencing mental health problems. She mentioned a Montclair State University program called Healthcare Approaches to Justice Collaborative that conducts research and offers evidence-based strategic guidance to new and existing programs.
In terms of resources to implement new programs, Higgins says that it is about even more than funding and planning, explaining that it also takes time and additional resources to implement new programs and procedures.
“A lot of these police departments, particularly in Bergen County … most are not that big,” said Higgins. “Every officer has work and positions assigned, so you don’t have the flexibility to take them off a shift, to train them, to assign them to this, so it is going to take some time to figure out how this is going to look.”
Other community activists like Teague want to see officers complete more training that will help them be more equipped to handle a mental health call.
“I would advocate for any new officers to complete social and emotional training,” said Teague. “We need to understand where officers are in terms of people. Are you a people person, do you like people? It may seem like a funny question, but it is important because if you have a short temperament when it comes to people, giving them a gun is not going to be a solution.”
Teague believes this training will help establish a better relationship with police and their communities.
Teague serves as an adviser to his community in Paterson where he bridges the gap between residents and the police department by sharing the concerns of the people with the chief. “The overall relationship between the police and the community has improved by leaps and bounds compared to where we were back in 2019,” he said.
According to Higgins, police are currently being taught things like de-escalation techniques and the utilization of time, but that responding to mental health calls are a balancing act.
“If somebody wasn’t immediately in danger, time was always your friend. People who are paranoid become less paranoid. People who are angry kind of calm down,” said Higgins. “So, time is usually your friend when it comes to these. The flip side of that is when you wait too long, people can get hurt, innocent people can get hurt. So, it is a balancing act.”
He explained the need to focus on more than just police and consider the idea that more resources need to be available all the way around including for people in crisis, family members, law enforcement and existing programs.
What happened in Fort Lee?
During the early morning hours of July 28, Fort Lee police officers responded to a 911 call at The Pinnacle apartment complex in Fort Lee. According to statements from the state Office of the Attorney General, a man called to report that his sister was having a mental health crisis and needed to go to the hospital.
The caller reported that “his sister was holding a knife,” according to the Attorney General’s statements.
When officers arrived, they found the caller in the hallway outside of the apartment. Two females, one of which was later identified as Lee, were inside of the apartment. One officer opened the door and saw the two women, who shut the door and told the officers not to enter the apartment.
According to the Attorney General’s statements, the police breached the door of the apartment after the women did not comply with their request to open the door.
Lee then approached the officers in the hallway and Officer Tony Pickens Jr. fired his gun, striking Lee in the chest. The Attorney General’s Office said that Lee was taken to Englewood Health hospital and was pronounced dead at about 1:58 a.m.
On Friday, Aug. 16, the police officers’ body camera footage and the 911 recordings were released by the Attorney General’s Office. The graphic footage shows the moments leading up to Lee’s death including the moment when the officer shot and killed her.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, the investigation is still ongoing.
Since the shooting took place, the Lee family has written its own statement, which was submitted to NorthJersey.com by their attorney on Aug. 7, detailing the morning of July 28 as they remember it.
According to the family’s statement, Lee, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017, was experiencing a mentally unstable condition. Lee’s mother recommended that she go to the hospital, but she refused.
Her brother, Chris, made two calls to 911. One call to request an ambulance, and the other to provide more information. During the second call, Chris informed the 911 operator that his sister had a pocketknife, emphasizing its small size, and requesting that police do not enter the apartment, according to the family’s statement.
The family maintains that Lee was never a threat to the people around her at the time of the shooting and that the knife was no longer in her hand when she was shot. Instead, she was holding a 5-gallon Poland Spring plastic water jug, which can be seen in her hand in the body camera footage.
They also said that Lee was shot in her side and that the “unnecessarily aggressive approach taken by police” led to her death.
Additionally, according to the family’s statement and a statement made by their attorney, Sukjin Cho, at a press conference on Aug. 13, the family did not see any ambulance or paramedics in the apartment even after the shooting took place.
The family’s statement said the police picked Lee up and carried her out of the apartment. Cho said that they do not have a lot of information about what happened after that, as Lee’s mother and brother were “taken to a different area” and then to the police station for questioning before going to the hospital where they were told that Lee was dead.
Now, the Lee family, with support from several advocates and Korean civics and community associations, is demanding a thorough and quick investigation into the incident with the hopes of bringing justice to Lee.
In a second statement from the Lee family, submitted to NorthJersey.com by Cho on Aug. 22, days after the release of the body camera footage, they said, “Last Friday, we went through the nightmare again watching multiple body-cam video recordings of our daughter being shot and killed by the police. Our entire family has been and remains in shock and grief following these events.
“The police ignored multiple requests from our family to wait outside and not enter the apartment, as we were successfully calming Victoria down. Instead of working with the family’s efforts or waiting for a first responder trained in mental health, the Fort Lee Police treated Victoria as if she were a violent criminal, by escalating a mental health situation that had already been verbally de-escalated,” says the statement. “Even if the police felt that they could not wait to enter our apartment, they had multiple non-lethal options available to handle the situation safely.”
In discussing the events of that night, Higgins too questions why the officers believed that they needed to go in or gain entry at that time, wondering what exactly Lee’s brother said.
“If he is telling them he is very concerned, she’s very dangerous, then the officers don’t have much choice, time is of the essence,” said Higgins. “If he didn’t, the question would be what made the officers believe they had to move at that particular time.”
The family’s statement later says, “Finally, even individuals without expertise in the mental health field understand that the first step is to keep a patient with mental illness calm. In failing to de-escalate this mental health situation, the Fort Lee Police Department ignored the pleas of our family, who were most familiar with both Victoria and her mental condition.”
Representatives from several advocacy organizations are hoping that this tragic outcome may lead to action, to ensure that Lee’s death is the last time someone in New Jersey seeking help during a mental health episode is fatally shot by police.
“We need to know what happened that night. Why a call for help ended in a tragedy and what measures will be taken to prevent such incidents from happening again,” said President Adrian Lee of the Korean American Association of New Jersey during the Aug. 13 press conference. “This tragedy underscores the urgent need to improve police training and response protocols for dealing with individuals facing mental health issues.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 22:28:00
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