Charleena Lyles City Council Meeting A Forum For Anger, Frustration Over Many Issues

SEATTLE, WA - A Seattle City Council committee held a public hearing Tuesday night to discus the killing of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother of four, on June 18. The meeting was hosted by the Council's Gender Equity, Safe Communities, and New Americans Committee, chaired by Councilwoman Lorena González.

At the beginning of the meeting, called the meeting a "community conversation." But the forum was less a conversation, and more an outpouring of frustration over a range of issues affecting minority communities in Seattle, and nationwide - racism, marginalization, bias, police brutality.

Watch the hearing via the Seattle Channel here:

Lyles was shot and killed by two Seattle police officers on Father's Day after the officers went to Lyles' apartment to take a report of a burglary. Seattle police - and the officers - have said that they chose to open fire after Lyles pulled a knife on them. Lyles' family and many others have criticized the use of deadly force; neither officer was equipped with a Taser, but they did have less lethal weapons on them, according to the department.

Some of Lyles' family had declined to take part in the Tuesday hearing. Andre Taylor, the brother of Che Taylor, who was killed by Seattle police last year, is acting as a sort-of spokesman for Lyles' family. He posted on Facebook Monday that the family would not participate in the hearing because there would be no one from Seattle police present, mainly Chief Kathleen O'Toole. O'Toole has said that she can't answer questions about Lyles because the situation is under investigation.

"We asked for a public meeting for a chance to talk directly in public to Chief O'Toole. And this public hearing falls short. We will not be participating. We asked specifically for a meeting space where the police chief and her officers would address questions. And this public hearing, which is being described as being for Charleena is not what we asked for!" Taylor wrote on Facebook.

Taylor was especially critical of Tuesday's meeting because top-ranking members of Seattle police met with Taylor and his family in the Wedgewood neighborhood after Che Taylor was killed.

Gonzalez has said that Tuesday's meeting should be about members of the community being able to "express the grief they need to express" but not necessarily for an investigation of police activity. Gonzalez did invite O'Toole, but the chief declined.

Councilman Mike O'Brien said that O'Toole and other members of the department should've been at Tuesday's meeting.

"At a minimum, they can be here and listening," he said.

Councilwoman Kshama Sawant said she sent a letter to O'Toole requesting the chief appear at the hearing. Instead, Sawant said, O'Toole criticized Sawant for not being aware of investigative procedures.

Sawant said O'Toole told "[you show] a disappointing level of ignorance in Seattle police policies and a clear disdain for the investigative process."

Lyles' father, Charles Lyles, spoke first. In a moment of levity, he began by correcting everyone on the pronunciation of his daughter's name: "CHAR-leena, like 'CHAR-coal'" he said, admitting with a smile that he originally thought she would be a boy, and had intended to name the child after himself.

Charles Lyles went on to explain that his daughter was not the type of person who would want to attack police, especially in front of her kids.

"My daughter loved life," he said. "There's no way she would've wanted the cops to come in and kill her, especially in front of her kids. Her boyfriend kept harassing her and he burglarized her house. She called the police that day to take a report of someone burglarizing her house. For some reason, they shot her five times. They're trying to say she had knives? She didn't have knives."

Charles Lyles said he didn't want to get into the legal matter of his daughter's death. But Charles Lyles Sr., Charleena's grandfather, directly called out police brutality and a lack of training as problems.

"We need to do something to put a stop to these unnecessary killings," he said. He said that police aren't getting access to training that helps them diffuse situations where people might be armed.

A woman who identified herself as Lyles' downstairs neighbor accused the police officers who responded to Lyles' apartment - Steven McNew and Jason Anderson - of dehumanizing Lyles before they entered her apartment. The officers did discuss Lyles' mental health before meeting her; they also referenced an incident earlier in June when Lyles allegedly held a pair of scissors while police were in her apartment investigating a domestic violence incident.

The neighbor said that Seattle police have treated her disrespectfully in the past, too, likely because she lived in low-income housing.

"My question here is, can we get a tangible commitment from leaders in the city to make sure that these police officers stop criminalizing and dehumanizing our children and other people that live in these communities?" she said.

Attorney Sheley Secrist, who is running for City Council, asked all the black women in the packed meeting hall to stand up.

"So often we are invisible," Secrist said. "We are here: see us. We cry not just for the death of Charleena, we cry because we are dying; we are burying our children; we cry because this is impacting our community and we're depending on a system that has failed us too often."

Many of the speakers were just plain angry: about Lyles' death, about other deaths - Che Taylor, John T. Williams, Renee Davis; about a criminal justice system that doesn't work for the communities it's supposed to serve; that another black person has died in an interaction with police; that four children don't have a mother.

Rose Jackie Floyd compared Charleena Lyles' treatment by police to her sister-in-law, a white woman. Floyd's sister-in-law struggled with drug addiction, and was in touch with police across King County countless times. But those interactions were positive, Floyd said, and seen as opportunities to address the addiction problems.

"She was walking around in the world blonde haired and blue-eyed and probably had more outrageous behavior than Charleena ever had," she said. "And why was that? Because those officers - white and not white - saw somebody whose wedding they could've gone to, somebody's birth they could've been at. They wanted to give that person a break so she would make it another day.

"That's how racism operates in this occasion ... " she continued. "Where was that caring for Charleena? Where was it? Why did nobody see somebody's whose graduation they might be at?"

That's white privilege, Floyd said.

Some were angry - but also hopeless that Lyles' death will be just another in a long list, from Eric Garner to Sandra Bland to Philando Castile, and that nothing will change.

"What is f---ing going to be different this time?" one woman roared.

Image via Neal McNamara/Patch.com