Reporting from Indian Country

Thanks go to the  Marshall Project,  which named this  In These Times   article  a top  criminal-justice piece of 2016, and to Democracy Now! for a segment on it. In These Times  also  published my companion story on the Native Lives Matter movement.   S uquamish Tribe descendant Jeanetta Riley, a 34-year-old mother of four, lay facedown on a Sandpoint, Idaho, street. One minute earlier, three police officers had arrived, summoned by staff at a nearby hospital. Her husband had sought help there because Riley—homeless, pregnant and with a history of mental illness—was threatening suicide. Riley had a knife in her right hand and was sitting in the couple’s parked van. Wearing body armor and armed with an assault rifle and Glock pistols, the officers quickly closed in on Riley—one moving down the sidewalk toward the van, the other two crossing the roadway. They shouted instructions at her—to walk toward them, show them her hands. Cursing them, she refused. “Drop the knife!”