Around 3 am Monday morning, deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s department responded to a mental health call at Anthony Anderson’s San Leandro home. According to the Sheriff’s department, the 40 year-old Anderson was holding an object the officers thought was a weapon. They shot him twice.
Cat Brooks is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Anti-Police Terror Project. She says Anderson’s killing was preventable.
"Alameda County needs to fully fund so that there's 24/7, 365 non-carceral, non-police, non-sheriff responses to community crisis. That includes mental health, domestic violence, substance overutilization. There's just no reason to send badges and guns to these kinds of situations," Brooks says.
The case is being investigated by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. State law requires that he evaluate every police shooting of an unarmed civilian. Brooks connected Anderson’s death to Steven Taylor’s, who was killed by police in 2020 while he was in the middle of a mental health crisis.
"I've been asking for years, how many, how many deaths, how many violent, um, abuses of power, how many unwarranted incarcerations, how many exacerbations to people's traumatized mental health? How many lawsuits, how many millions of dollars are the sheriffs gonna pay out?"
Anderson hosted popular weekly “funk nights” at the Starry Plough in Berkeley. At 9:00 p.m .tonight, the Starry Plough will pay tribute to Anderson with live music.
