PHOTO/ANDY WILLIS
CHICAGO, IL – Friends and family gathered in May at the corner of Irving Park and Western where Michelle Robey had been gunned down by the Chicago Police. Michelle’s sister Stacey, an emergency room nurse working in Las Vegas, spoke for the family to a crowd, following a march to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house.
Stacey shared her pain and understanding about her sister’s killing with the People’s Tribune. She had been in California on February 10, 2017 when her mother called to tell her that Michelle had been shot by the police. Just five weeks earlier, Stacey had seen her sister, who suffered from a mental disability, and assured their mother that they had nothing to worry about. Michelle had interacted with the police many times in her neighborhood and her “middle class” family had no reason to think the police would harm her, much less kill her.
As an ER nurse, Stacey regularly encounters people suffering psychotic episodes, sometimes even armed patients. “We call first security backup and try to de-escalate the situation. Sometimes we have to take weapons off people, but we only do that without incident generally. It happens all the time. We don’t carry guns, so we can’t shoot people.”
“As an ER nurse, I am held to a high level of accountability. If I make a mistake or harm someone, it could mean my license. I don’t believe Chicago police officers are held to the same level of accountability. I just want the same standards. We undergo so much training on how to deal with crises with mentally ill people . . . how could the police not need it more than we do?”
Stacey sees the use of deadly force by the police as more than a local or isolated problem. Recently she reached out to the family of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African American man, shot down by the police in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, California. “I just heard about it on the news and my heart just broke for that family, because I know what it feels like to lose a family member to violence.”
Stacey explained, “This is a local problem, but it is also a national problem. Yes, it’s definitely a Chicago issue. It’s an issue for New York. It’s a Sacramento issue, Salt Lake City, Utah issue. Nobody wants to look at it as a national issue, but it is a national issue because it’s gone crazy in our major cities across the United States.”
The country as a whole is awakening. Community control of the police force is on everyone’s mind. Do police serve the people? If so, why aren’t they held to the same standards as an ER nurse?
People who step up and demand real community control of the police are involved in protecting all of us, no matter our race or nationality. As Stacey said in front of the Chicago mayor’s house, “Michelle should be here!”
