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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. All of us here are still a little bleary-eyed after an exciting weekend of football. Congratulations to Argentina for their first World Cup win in three decades.

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Now for our first story today, back in October 2019, hundreds of mourners gathered at the Concord Church in Dallas, Texas to say their goodbyes to Atatiana Jefferson. On that day, next to the baby blue casket was a large photo of Atatiana looking up and bouquets of white and blue roses gathered all around.

Speaker: Today, it's really about celebrating Atatiana's life, to remember the impact that she had, to remember the type of person that she was, to remember that she was a loving person, a smart person, a caring person, a gentle person, a person that was loved by her family and her friends.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Among the mourners and family were dozens of Fort Worth police officers, and most of the members of the city council and city manager, all paying their respects to the young woman whose life was cut short by Fort Worth police officer, Aaron Dean.

October in Fort Worth can be warm, but it was cool on the night Atatiana was killed. The cool where sometimes you might leave the front door open and let fresh air roam through the house. Because on this side, Atatiana was babysitting her eight-year-old nephew and they'd been playing video games till late at night. They tried to make burgers as a late-night snack, but they'd burned them, so the door was open.

At 2:23 AM, a neighbor called a non-emergency number asking to check on the open door to make sure that the neighbors were safe.

Speaker: I made the call because I thought that they were going to do what I called them to do, check on my neighbor, and they didn't do that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: At 2:28 AM, police officer Aaron Dean, showed up to the house and made his way to the backyard with a flashlight in one hand and a pointed gun in the other, he looked into her bedroom window, saw Atatiana, and almost immediately Aaron Dean shot his gun. By 2:30 AM Atatiana Jefferson was dead. Three years later, her nephew remembered the details of that horrible night in court, and he said he'd been confused, unsure of what, whether he'd seen was real or a dream. On Thursday, a Texas jury convicted Aaron Dean of manslaughter.

Speaker: It is my understanding that the jury has reached a verdict. Is that correct?

Speaker: Yes, your Honor.

Speaker: Is it a unanimous verdict?

Speaker: Yes, your honor.

Speaker: Verdict agrees with the jury find the defendant, Aaron York being guilty of the offense of manslaughter.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joining me now is Andrea Ritchie Richie, co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition and co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization. Andrea, welcome back to The Takeaway.

Andrea Ritchie: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Prosecutor sought a murder conviction. They received a conviction of Dean on Manslaughter. Is Jefferson's family and community feeling a sense of justice and closure?

Andrea Ritchie: I don't know because I'm not in community with them, but what I do know is that both of her parents aren't here to see this day and that a prosecution won't bring back the aunt that her nephew saw shot down before his very eyes trying to protect him. I think that's one piece of the puzzle that is missing in these moments where we think that we've solved the problem when in fact we've left people in the community without healing and repair, and we haven't stopped the next incident where this might happen.

The Washington Post recently released a study showing that 178 people were killed just in the last three years in a similar situation where someone was concerned for their safety and instead they wound up dead. I think those are the conditions that we need to be looking to when we're thinking about what satisfaction, what justice, what repair looks like in this case. I think it requires us to examine what happens when we send an armed police officer into a situation when someone, as the neighbor just said, is just wanting to make sure that someone is okay.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Black women also are particularly vulnerable to police violence. Again, to go back to The Washington Post, according to data from the post, Black women account for about 28% of unarmed individuals who are killed by police since 2015. Even though Black women account for only about 13% of women overall, what does that tell you, this vulnerability?

Andrea Ritchie: I think there's many ways in which Black women are, according to one study, the group most likely to be killed by police when unarmed. I think welfare checks are definitely a primary site in which that happens. Again, as speaks to why having police be people who are responding to calls for folks to check on people or make sure that they're safe is all too often a deadly option.

I think also there are multiple ways in which Black women are perceived to be threats, even when, as you and I have discussed, they are simply at home asleep like Breonna Taylor or simply questioning police officer's actions like Sandra Bland or in a situation where the cops are waging a war on drugs or responding to a call for assistance around domestic violence or sexual assault.

There are many ways in which Black women find themselves in the crosshairs, not only of state violence, but also interpersonal violence that brings police to the scene. Then perceptions of Black women as inherently a threat and dangerous can often lead to additional violence in those situations.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What are the alternatives? If you see your neighbor's door open at 2:00 in the morning, who else would you call but the police?

Andrea Ritchie: I might call my neighbor and find out if they're okay. If I don't get a response, I might call some other neighbors and for all of us to go check and just make sure everything's all right. I think the neighbor in this case tried to call a non-police response line, tried to call a city agency that would check without sending an armed police officer. I think the problem is that the police often monitor those calls and make their own decisions about whether they should be the ones to show up or the unarmed responders that the person initially called.

I think there are so many ways that we can ensure that we are looking out for each other and not delegating that responsibility to what turns out to be a deadly force in at least 178 cases over the last 3 years. I think we need to think about how we keep each other safe and how we look out for each other. I certainly don't blame anyone involved in this incident. The neighbor attempted to not call the police and just to check on and make sure that his neighbor was safe, and unfortunately, the city's response was one that proved deadly.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It does feel to me like there are at least maybe 200 different pieces to this. One is the point that you're making about having alternatives for welfare checks for just community, city-based authority that can help us in those spaces that aren't armed officers. The other piece does feel like perhaps not justice, but at least conviction, potentially being meaningful. I do want to listen here to Amber Carr, who is Atatiana Jefferson's sister, and this is not long after she was killed.

Amber Carr: You want to see justice, but justice don't bring my sister back.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the point you made, Andrea. It doesn't bring her back. On the other hand, it is relatively rare for police officers to be charged, to be arrested, to be convicted even when they're killing unarmed civilians. I'm wondering if conviction even of manslaughter in this case of Aaron Dean can move towards change.

Andrea Ritchie: I think that the point you just made is where the problem lies, which is that it's rare and there is a real temptation here to exceptionalize the officer involved. I've seen a lot of coverage that questions whether he had a personality disorder, whether he was an appropriate person to be hired as a police officer. There's a real temptation in cases where there is a prosecution to frame this officer as the exception and not the rule.

I think and to not look at this as an unfortunate yet natural consequence of sending armed police officers in response to a safety check or as a welfare check. I think that Washington Post number, which I'm sure is a conservative estimate and undercount because we have so little information often about what led police officers to someone's home and the situations in which they were harmed or killed by cops.

I think that systemic piece ends up missing when we focus on a single prosecution of a single officer. It requires us to turn to the system that made Atatiana's killing possible for justice. While we might in 1 out of 100 cases, get some result there that leaves the other 99 cases unresolved without any accountability or justice or healing, or repair. It also doesn't stop the next one from happening since 2019, since this prosecution was begun again, hundreds of people have been killed in a similar situation.

That's where I think we really need to focus. How do we make sure that we build a world where Atatiana Jefferson would still be here as her sister said. How do we build a world where we wouldn't be in a position where we can't bring her back that I think, is where we really want to focus. Rather than exceptualizing a single officer and a single outcome in a single case.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We have to take a quick break, more of this conversation in just a moment.

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You're still with The Takeaway and we're in conversation with Andrea Ritchie Richie, author of Invisible, No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. Andrea, I want to look at another case, out of Louisiana from that same year, 2019, Ronald Green was killed in police custody that year, just recently announced that those five officers are now finally being charged when you name check date for us, Atatiana was killed in 2019.

When we look at Ronald Green having been killed in 2019, obviously all of that before Derek Chauvin murders, George Floyd and Chauvin has been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced. Why is it taking so long?

Andrea Ritchie: At this? From what I understand, in that case, because there was an extensive coverup up to the highest levels of governance. That even the people who were willing to look at the video or commented, characterized it as awful but lawful that this is part of the normal course of policing. That this is not, exceptional, just is an indication of how deeply embedded violence is in policing.

I think there was, of course, a coverup, but even among the people who had access to the information that belied the cover-up, there was an acceptance that this is actually just how policing happens. This is policing, an appropriate, response to a Black man driving on a road to be reunited with his family and I think that's the lesson here, which is that unless something comes to light in the way of a video, whether it's of George Floyd being murdered or another Black man being murdered on the side of the road, that this violence is just normalized and is part of the everyday reality of policing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Do you see a possibility that since 2020,-- I guess on the one hand, I hear you citing these numbers, these statistics and behind each one, a human, a story, not unlike Atatiana's, and yet I also want to hold on that the uprisings of 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd might mean something for how local policing is happening. What do about change that may have come to Fort Worth, that may have come to Minneapolis, to any community?

Andrea Ritchie: I think the proof is in the pudding of the same statistics which show that cops continued to kill people often in the same ways that George Floyd was killed or Ronald Green was killed on a daily basis. I think what has changed is public perception and understanding of what policing is and whether there's possibility for changing it from what it has proven itself to be over and over again.

I think, for instance, a case like Ronald Green indicates that body cameras that were touted as the ultimate accountability mechanism have proven absolutely not to be in this case, the officers tampered with them, concealed the footage. The governor of the state himself looked at the footage, didn't see a problem there, and everything would've carried on as normal. Had the family, the community, the media not pressed for video that was being concealed, and officers were spinning a story that this man had died in a car crash in the same way that officers were getting ready to spin a story that George Floyd had a medical emergency that they had nothing to do with.

I think community are getting more and more clear that this is not something that is going to be fixed with a technological fix like body cameras. It's not going to be fixed through one prosecution of one cop. It's something that we have to look to more systemically. I really was looking to the words of, Ronald Green's mother, Mona Harden, who in response to the indictments was still saying, Louisiana State police still make and break their own laws.

I think that is still the case regardless of, what happened in individual officer's case, whether it's Derek Chauvin or these five officers. I think the general public, what changed since 2020 is that more and more of the general public are clear about that and are clear about thinking about how do we take cops out of situations where they might kill a young woman in her home who is playing games with her nephew, and protecting him against what she believes is an intruder.

How do we take cops out of a situation where they can chase a man down back roads and tase and beat and drag him on the ground until he dies? How do we take police out of the situations where they're able to engage in this violence where they're making and breaking their own laws?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Andrea Ritchie Richie is the co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition and Co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization. Andrea, thanks so much for being with us.

Andrea Ritchie: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.

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