Porter Burks.Photo: Facebook
Like other young people his age, Porter Burks enjoyed music and liked to dance.
But when the 20-year-old Detroit, Mich., native was in the throes of a psychotic episode due to his paranoid schizophrenia, he was irrational and unable to think clearly — a hallmark of his mental illness.
On Oct. 2, his family called police for help when he was in the middle of a psychotic episode and was wielding a pocketknife.
In an incident that was captured on police body camera footage, Burks was shot 19 times and died,The Detroit Newsreported.
On Tuesday, attorney Geoffrey Fieger filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Detroit and five unnamed Detroit police officers in Wayne County Circuit Court.
The wrongful death lawsuit claims gross negligence, assault and battery and wanton and willful misconduct and states the officers were in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In a phone call with PEOPLE, Fieger called the shooting “an execution.”
“If he had been a wild animal, they would have used a tranquilizer gun,” he tells PEOPLE. “Yet he is a human being — and they executed him at relatively long range.
“It’s beyond barbaric.”
The case underscores how much is wrong with the way the mentally ill are treated when in crisis, says Fieger.
“Mental health has literally been defunded and has been defaulted to the police and jails,” he says.
This needs to change, he says. Law enforcement also has to change the way it deals with the mentally ill, using body armor and tranquilizer guns instead of using guns,” he says.
In Burks' case, when officers encountered him in the street in the early morning hours of Oct. 2 after his brother called 911 because he had come back to the house with the pocketknife and the family was concerned about his mental health, officers told him they would take Burks to the hospital if they found him, the lawsuit says.
Detroit Police Department
When officers located him shortly after, “he was standing in the middle of the street,” says Fieger. “He wasn’t a threat to anyone because it was 5 in the morning.”
According to the lawsuit, “they instructed a confused, exhausted and mentally ill young man to put down his pocketknife.”
They did this, the lawsuit says, with most of them with their “firearms drawn and pointed towards him.
“The officers were 40 to 50 feet away from him,” Fieger tells PEOPLE.
The officers started carrying out a plan to apprehend Burks, the lawsuit says.
“At the moment mentally ill Porter Banks took a step forward with his hands raised above his (head) in a non-threatening manner,” the lawsuit says, and while officers were approximately 50 feet away from Burke, “the ‘highly-trained’ DPD CIT De-Escalation Team opened fire and executed the 20-year-old African-American, mentally ill man with 38 shots from their guns.”
Fieger tells PEOPLE, “It was a shooting gallery. This was an inexcusable use of deadly force.”
On Tuesday, Detroit Police Chief James E. White released a statement calling the shooting “truly a tragic event.”
“The Department will continue to advocate for greater resources for the mental health community and will take every opportunity to improve its response to people suffering from mental illness,” White said in the statement.
“We firmly believe that if appropriate mental health facilities and treatment plans had been available, this situation may have been avoided.
“Regrettably, the DPD remains the primary emergency response service for individuals suffering from mental health emergencies.“Since the case is now “the subject of active litigation, the Department will no longer provide commentary on this still-pending investigation.”
According to the lawsuit, Burks had suffered from mental health issues since he was in high school.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, like one of his grandparents did, the lawsuit says, his mental illness often caused psychosis. “He saw hallucinations and heard voices that were not there,” the lawsuit says.During one of his hospitalizations, he thought a squirrel was living inside him and “his efforts to extricate the squirrel were to no avail,” the lawsuit says.
“While his friends advanced through high school, Burks enrolled in an extended inpatient mental health program for treatment,” it continues.
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“This was not the life the adolescent Mr. Burks had chosen for himself,” it says.
When Burks was getting regular treatment, which includes taking his medicine, “he could respond normally,” the lawsuit says.
One of the hallmarks of diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Fieger tells PEOPLE, is that patients “do not comply.”
Medications can often become less effective over time.
On Oct. 1, 2022, Burks' mother called police when he came to the family’s house with a pocketknife, the lawsuit says.
“She called police to request that they help get her son safely to the hospital for treatment,” the lawsuit says. “This request was not unusual since the DPD were very familiar with Mr. Burks” and had taken him to the hospital before.
His brother called the police in the early morning hours when Burks came to the house again with a pocketknife.
His family “thought they were doing the right thing,” says Fieger.
source: people.com
