{"id":157,"date":"2021-03-22T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.232.64.53.nip.io\/berks\/?p=157"},"modified":"2023-09-13T16:27:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T16:27:25","slug":"statement-on-muhlenberg-police-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastandsup.org\/berks\/2021\/03\/22\/statement-on-muhlenberg-police-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Statement on Muhlenberg Police Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Stephen Hughes with one of his grandsons and dogs. Photo provided by Anjie Hughes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>On Monday, March 15th, a Muhlenberg Township Police officer shot and killed Anjie Hughes\u2019s father, Stephen Hughes, who had recently undergone chemotherapy treatment for 6 tumors in his brain. The treatments had a record of leaving him tired and emotional, as he was losing his vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe police didn\u2019t need to kill him,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cWhat they did to my father was completely unjustified. It\u2019s so wrong. They forced their way into his bedroom and instead of trying to calm him down, they pulled out a gun at point blank range and murdered him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re a close-knit family, and he was a wonderful grandfather. My son hasn&#8217;t stopped asking to see him,\u201d said Hughes, who lives in Pottstown with her husband and son. Her son was one of seven grandchildren that adored Stephen. \u201cDad had asked to see the kids because he had another appointment coming up and knew that he\u2019d be too weak to play with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not the first time a health crisis has been met with police violence, noted Celine Schrier, lead organizer with Berks Stands Up. But this does not change the fact that justice must be delivered for Stephen and his family. The officers need to be held accountable and Berks County must invest into alternative response programs.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/denverite.com\/2021\/02\/02\/in-the-first-six-months-of-health-care-professionals-replacing-police-officers-no-one-they-encountered-was-arrested\/\">We don\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel here, we can look to places like Denver\u2019s Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program to get started.&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe need to meet these situations with trained crisis intervention counselors instead of police with guns,\u201d said Schrier. But that\u2019s not what happened to Stephen Hughes. After receiving a call from an unidentified female, police officers on the scene responded by opening a locked door where Hughes was alone and allegedly issued demands to drop a knife. They tased him, then shot him in the chest.&nbsp;At this time, his family has been unable to corroborate that Stephen even had a knife at the time of the encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe rely entirely too much on police for all kinds of situations where they\u2019re not appropriate,\u201d said Schrier. \u201cAnd this gets in the way of imagining public safety in ways that supports all of us, regardless of who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPolice violence isn\u2019t going to fade away on its own. To end this crisis we need systemic change. Berks County\u2019s governments must move funding away from the violent policing, which has failed our communities time and again, and invest in people-focused solutions to truly protect and defend the public they are elected to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Together we must reimagine public safety as a system that includes social work, crisis intervention, and real community investment in education, housing and healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The investigation is currently in the hands of the Berks County District Attorney\u2019s office, which has close ties to county police departments. Berks Stands Up urges the DA John T. Adams to hand off the investigation to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro\u2019s office to ensure officers are held to account. In addition, we are calling for the release of the initial call and all dispatch and incident time logs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Statement Updated 3\/23 to reflect new information &amp; quote by request of the family.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen Hughes with one of his grandsons and dogs. Photo provided by Anjie Hughes On Monday, March 15th, a Muhlenberg Township Police officer shot and killed Anjie Hughes\u2019s father, Stephen Hughes, who had recently undergone chemotherapy treatment for 6 tumors in his brain. The treatments had a record of leaving him tired and emotional, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"News Post","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Statement on Muhlenberg Police Violence - Berks Stands Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pastandsup.org\/berks\/2021\/03\/22\/statement-on-muhlenberg-police-violence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Statement on Muhlenberg Police Violence - Berks Stands Up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Stephen Hughes with one of his grandsons and dogs. Photo provided by Anjie Hughes On Monday, March 15th, a Muhlenberg Township Police officer shot and killed Anjie Hughes\u2019s father, Stephen Hughes, who had recently undergone chemotherapy treatment for 6 tumors in his brain. 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