"Police Said She Would Not Follow Their Orders and a Sergeant Shot Her."

Bit by bit, though, her story is being revealed. From today's SF Chronicle:

Those who knew Williams said she was a pleasant person to deal with.

Williams went to Elmira Street near the Bayview district to pick up a friend Thursday...

[Williams] was considered a friend to several homeless people on the streets of San Francisco...

when [Clylinka Micra, a homeless man's] wife was the victim of an attempted rape inside a tent at a homeless encampment, Williams pulled the attacker off her.

According to the article, no weapon was found on Williams or in the car. And yet a police sergeant, for reasons we will probably never know, saw fit to fire at her, fatally wounding her, while her car was wedged into a truck she had plowed into.

Whatever the reason, if any is ever put forward by the officer, the real reason she, or at least many victims of police violence, was shot, lies in the title of this piece. She would not follow their orders, so they shot her. It might as well just be the footnote to a prison log:

"Shot while trying to escape."

Failure to comply means physical violence, tasering, and, in Jessica William's case and so many others, death.

Who knows whether these particular officers were enraged by Williams refusal to obey to the point of losing any sense of proportion? What we do know is video after video shows other police, other deputies, other prison guards, totally losing it when someone refuses their orders, even when the victims are intoxicated, mentally ill, autistic, or deaf. We watch as people are dragged and thrown to the ground, beaten, repeatedly shocked and face death by firing squad because of the cult of compliance.

Only when policy AND the first reaction of police is stop, back off, assess, and deploy alternative tactics and personnel, rather than pressing forward and neutralizing at all costs in a fury over failure to react to commands, will the orgy of deaths to the likes of Jessica Williams, Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, David Washington, and so many other documented and undocumented victims come to an end.