The New Jersey Attorney General released body camera footage showing police fatally shooting Victoria Lee, who was experiencing a mental health episode, outside her apartment in Fort Lee. Lee’s family called the police response unnecessarily aggressive, as she was holding a water jug, not a knife, when she was shot. The family had previously made mental health calls for Lee and had received understanding responses from emergency responders in the past. The police officers repeatedly demanded that Lee open the door and threatened to break it down, despite her objections. When the door was breached, Lee approached the officers with the water jug, and an officer fired a fatal shot. Lee was pronounced dead at the hospital. Stop AAPI Hate and AAPI New Jersey criticized the police response as unjust and unwarranted, stating that officers did not adequately de-escalate or prioritize non-lethal tools during the encounter. The family’s attorney declined to comment, but prior to the video’s release, he mentioned that Lee had been managing her bipolar disorder and had never been violent during previous mental health episodes. The family believed proper mental health protocols should have been followed, rather than the use of lethal force against Lee.
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