Justice for Kayla Moore

Did you hear how Kayla Moore was killed by police, in downtown Berkeley in the night of February 12, 2013?[1] Her roommate John Hayes called the police and said that Kayla Moore had thrown him out of their apartment in a dispute, that she was schizophrenic and off her meds, and suggested she be taken into custody for a mental-health check-up. When the police arrived, Kayla Moore met them at the door and said that she didn’t think they were real police officers and that she was not feeling safe. Unsurprisingly, the person inside the police armor thought that that made no rational sense. The person inside the police armor had its own rational sense to ride on and started by checking the computer system for outstanding arrest warrants. They found one for John Hayes and promptly arrested him. For Kayla Moore, they found one with a matching legal name, an address in neighboring San Francisco and a date of birth twenty years earlier than hers. They concluded, “we might as well take him.” They ordered her caregiver to leave the apartment and gave the cue for capture.

Kayla Moore’s strength as she fought surpassed all the police persons’ expectations. It probably had something to do with her un-right thinking that she was not dealing with real police. She probably felt the absolute unsafety—not just the unsafety of two police officers in her home who are arresting another innocent person, as it unfortunately happens every day—but the total unsafety that doesn’t know what unfortunately and innocent-person mean because there is no-time for such no-sense. As the person locked their handcuffs around her, Kayla Moore pulled away “like a raging bull.” Maybe it was “the kind of courage that’s borne of resignation” and ignited into electricity by panic.[2] A fear used “for something other than suppressing the self,” for the one-and-only other thing that it impossibly-necessarily needs to be used for.[3] The police later marveled that she must have been under the influence of “some kind of stimulant.“

After calling back-up, the person was literally on Kayla Moore with five or six police officers who used their combined body weight and all their strength and “a little extra” to restrain her kicking legs while she lay face-down and handcuffed with her arms behind her back. Her yells “get off me,” “don’t touch me,” and “you’re hurting me” were heard and not heard and heard and not hear and heard and not heard by the person one time too many. As for the police, they describe it best themselves: “I remember hearing ‘Get off me’ a few times….I don’t remember specifically what he was screaming…I mean, you hear it, I mean you hear certain things, but you don’t—I drown them out.” The neighbors heard Kayla Moore’s calls too, and weren’t called to see that they were answered either. They probably thought rightly that she was yelling vainly at real police, as the police do what they unfortunately do every day. So no back-up arrived for Kayle Moore, and her power short-circuited.