There are certain incidents that immediately take me back to another place and another time and the recent officer involved shooting in Mount Vernon is one of them.
Nearly fifteen years ago, police responded to my father’s apartment after his medical alert device was accidentally activated. What began as a welfare check for a man with medical conditions ended with my father, Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., being killed by police.
The circumstances in Mount Vernon are different. The police were reportedly serving a mental health commitment order but one similarity is impossible for me to ignore, both encounters involved a person in crisis an effort to protect life but ultimately escalated to the use of deadly force.
I’m not writing this because I have already decided whether the officers were right or wrong, I’m writing because my father’s case taught me something that I will never forget and that is never allow a press release to become the final word.
When I learned that officers reportedly spent hours negotiating before deciding to enter the apartment, I immediately began asking the questions that every member of the public should be asking and that is who authorized the decision to breach the apartment?
What specific circumstances caused commanders to conclude that negotiations had reached their end, what changed after several hours that made immediate entry necessary and what department policies governed that decision? Were all available crisis intervention strategies exhausted before officers entered?
Since 2021, Westchester County has recognized that responding to people in crisis requires more than a traditional law enforcement response. That commitment led to the creation of Project Alliance, an initiative announced by then County Executive George Latimer following recommendations from the County’s Police Reform and Reimagining Task Force. Project Alliance was built on a simple but important principle that when someone is experiencing a behavioral health crisis, the goal should be to bring together law enforcement, mental health professionals, peer specialists, hospitals, and community partners to maximize every opportunity for de-escalation and safely resolve the crisis whenever possible.
That raises additional questions.
What role, if any, did those resources play in this incident?
Were behavioral health specialists consulted?
Was a Mobile Crisis Response Team requested?
If those resources were available, how were they incorporated into the response and if they were not involved why not. These are the questions that every community should ask whenever deadly force is used during a mental health intervention.
I’ve heard the reports that the individual was armed with two knives. If that’s what the evidence shows, then the public deserves to know that. But here’s the question no one seems to be asking. If officers had hours to negotiate, why was there suddenly no time left? What changed, who made the decision to breach the apartment, and what policy authorized that decision? This is an effort to understand the decisions that took this incident from a mental health intervention to the use of deadly force. What happened between the beginning of that mental health intervention and the moment an officer fired a weapon.
This incident did not begin with a robbery or officers chasing a fugitive, It began with a person experiencing a mental health crisis and that distinction matters because the objective was crisis intervention and when a response intended to protect life ends with the use of deadly force, every decision that led to that outcome deserves careful examination.
If this investigation reveals deficiencies in policy, training, tactics, supervision, or crisis intervention, then have the courage to acknowledge them and make the necessary changes.
Because at the end of the day, justice is not built on assumptions. It is built on transparency, accountability, and a willingness to examine every decision that led to that moment.
We owe the public more than a press release.
