On September 28, 1999, 37-year-old Cherae Williams called 911, hoping for help after being beaten by her boyfriend. But when the NYPD officers arrived, they didn’t believe her – and brutally beat her instead!
Williams asked for their badge numbers – so the officers handcuffed her, forced her in their car, and drove off to an empty parking lot. There, they pulled her out of the car by her hair, beating her so badly they fractured her jaw and broke her nose.
“They told me if they saw me on the street, that they would kill me,” Williams later testified. “I called the police to prevent a serious incident, and they brutalized me.”
Unfortunately, Williams’ story is not uncommon.
Today, over 40% of Black women in the U.S. have experienced domestic violence. Black women are also 2.5x more likely to be murdered by men than white women – and 92% of those murders are committed by Black men. We need to work in our communities to change these numbers!
Especially because, when they call the police for help Black women are “more likely to be killed by police when unarmed than any other group.”
How can we make change? Divesting from the police and their illusion of protection is important, but so is building communities that find ways to PREVENT domestic violence and provide actual care and support to survivors.