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On the night of November 11 th, 2012, Leon Ford was pulled over by Pittsburgh policeman in a traffic stop that would forever modify the course of his life. He was 19 at the time, and the officers had actually misidentified Ford as a suspect who had a comparable name Officer David Derbish jumped into the automobile while the engine was running, and after a struggle that sent out Ford’s automobile crashing into a neighboring patio, Derbish shot Ford 5 times. Among the bullets struck Ford’s spine, leaving him paralyzed, and the event was caught by one of the police cars’ dashcams
Ford was eventually acquitted of exacerbated attack charges. Derbish, now a detective, remains on the police force. The city of Pittsburgh settled with Ford for $5.5 million, six years after he was shot.
Because then, Ford has actually become an author and a public speaker.
Ford states he’s seen a shift in the public’s attitude towards cops shootings and authorities violence considering that he was shot. “Individuals are frustrated, they’re losing tasks, they’re home, on social media all day, viewing TELEVISION, and they can’t overlook what’s been going on,” he said.
Ford’s views have actually changed as well, and he says he mores than happy to see more youthful people more politically aware than he utilized to be. “When Jordan Miles got beat up by the authorities, I didn’t get included,” he said, describing a 2010 cops cruelty event where three Pittsburgh law enforcement officer detained and beat a Black high school student due to the fact that they (improperly) declared he had a weapon. “I just wasn’t politically engaged, I didn’t understand who the mayor was, who my state representative was.”
These days, Ford says the shift in viewpoint is most convenient to see when he’s speaking to teenagers. These are 8th graders with a strong understanding of political structures,” he states.
Ford states he can’t see smartphone videos of authorities violence and has mixed sensations about how extensively such videos– including one that reveals the death of George Floyd– are shared. “They are triggers for me,” he states. “I think about how distressing it is, how his household feels seeing people share it over and over. But then there are individuals who if they didn’t see the video, they wouldn’t have actually been outraged.”
These videos have made it a lot more difficult to disregard to authorities cruelty, which he thinks is an advantage. However he wishes that the videos weren’t necessary to convince individuals how severe the issue is. “We’re seeing lots of these videos go viral each and every single year and anybody who thinks realistically has to be questioning what is really going on,” Ford says. Authorities departments are militarized in neighborhoods of color, he continues. “They do not make people feel safe– I’ve never ever felt safe, my whole life, not simply when I was shot,” he continues. “You’ve got to fulfill individuals where they are, however many leaders in a lot of cities across America are so disconnected from what’s going on in their communities.”
That is why Ford says the discussions around defunding cops should have severe consideration. The city of Pittsburgh’s 2020 operating expense was $608 million, and $115 million– about 19 percent– was devoted to the cops department. In his view, that’s not what lowers criminal activity. He indicated using ShotSpotter technology, which identifies the sounds of gunshots. It’s reactive instead of proactive, and it’s expensive: in 2018, Pittsburgh city council signed a three-year agreement with ShotSpotter for $3.4 million. Ford doesn’t think it’s worth it.
” If you invest that ShotSpotter money into sending young men and women to trade school, for instance, that’s what will lower crime,” he says. “Individuals are out there just trying to make it the very best they can.”
Last year, Ford chose to run for a seat on the Pittsburgh City Council. His platform was about seeking strong change in Pittsburgh’s political structures, which he stated frequently left lots of individuals not feeling like their voices were heard.
He says he found out a lot really rapidly about how politics and political alliances work in Pittsburgh. “It resembles, I’m going to go change all this however I need to go into a system that can swallow you whole. Some people are developed for that, they can navigate that area, but it’s something I wasn’t going to do, and it wasn’t going to be good for me,” he says. He eventually left of the race. And anyway, the platform he has is already large enough to have an effect on politics without him needing to make political sacrifices.
These days, Ford is in therapy for the PTSD he got from his shooting. “It made me recognize: there’s so much more I can do,” he said, including that he hopes to continue conversations about mental health care and cops violence.
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