By Lauren Walker
On a quiet Sunday in July 2012
in broad daylight, six police officers in Michigan repeatedly shot an
African-American man struggling with homelessness and mental illness. While the
killing of Milton Hall prompted local outrage and a federal investigation, the
U.S. Department of Justice announced in February that it failed to find
“sufficient evidence of willful misconduct” to prosecute the policemen.
This Monday, more than two
years later, the ACLU released footage obtained from the Hall family’s lawyers
and used it as part of its testimony before the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, in order to put
pressure on the federal government. While a bystander video was shown on CNN
shortly after the shooting, the newly released dashcam video shows the incident
with unprecedented detail.
In the video, Hall, 49, is seen standing in a
Saginaw, Michigan, parking lot surrounded by eight police officers with their
guns drawn and pointed at him. During the short stand-off, a police dog began
to growl and lunge toward Hall, who took out a small pocketknife in response.
It was when he turned to the dog, the ACLU says, that police showered Hall with
a stream of bullets.
The officers fired 46 shots in
a matter of seconds, hitting Hall 14 times. Once on the ground, an officer
turned him over, handcuffed him, and put his foot on Hall’s back—with “his
blood running down the street like water,” Jewel Hall, Milton's mother, told
the ACLU.
Milton Hall was born on April
25, 1963 in Saginaw. His mother told the ACLU that Hall spent his days as a
community worker who fought for equal rights. He was an avid reader,
researcher, and even received training from Rosa Parks. In his mid-20s, signs
of Hall’s mental disability started to appear.
“As long as he was on his
medication and all, he did fine. It was when he wasn't on his medication that
he was impatient. He'd sometimes become intolerant,” Jewel told the ACLU. “But
when he was on his medication, he maintained.
"It's been devastating to
our family; it was devastating to the community. And justice still has not been
served," she said. "There needs to be a change in how police deal
with situations like the one that ended my son's life. Our leaders have to
address conditions that allow police to use excessive and deadly force with
impunity."
"As a civilian, Mr. Hall
had every right to expect that the police would protect his life, but instead,
he was the target of what resembled in many ways a firing squad,” Mark Fancher,
a lawyer with the ACLU of Michigan, said. "The government cannot act as if
the life of a homeless black man has no value. Saginaw deserves justice not
only for Milton Hall, but for the entire community that has been devastated by
this inexplicable act of police violence."
The hearing, held on Monday,
focused on racially biased policing in the United States. While the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has no legal authority, the ACLU
hopes the testimony will serve “as a wake-up call for the desperate need to
address police misconduct against the black citizens of this country,"
said Michael Steinberg, the legal director of the ACLU of Michigan. “The power
behind these international tribunals is to draw attention to the problem and to
put pressure on the United States to abide by human rights principles.”
