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For several years after the 1998 Columbine high school massacre, and again after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, I wrote so often about the causes and consequences of American gun slavery that I felt a bit like the 19th-century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, railing against an evil that seemed indomitable.

In our own time, the real root causes of our gun mayhem seem so hard for Americans to understand or even to rebut that my efforts to highlight them especially in theWashington Monthly in 2016 and in theAtlantic, with law professor Daniel Greenwood, as well as on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC hardly altered public perceptions.

So I left off for a while, recognizing that most of us perceive only what we're incentivized most strongly to perceive, and ignore what we're pressured and trained to ignore.

But those incentives and pressures are shifting now. Let me try again to help the perceptions and responses get ahead of what's really driving gun violence.

RELATED:Gun violence is the health care crisis we're ignoring

The most powerful immediate drivers are fairly obvious: First, the aggressive marketing and easy availability of guns, some of which shouldn't even be in any civilian hands. Second, the racial and ethnic or religious hatred that drove Dylann Roof in a Black Charleston church in 2015, Robert Bowers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and Peyton Gendron in a Buffalo supermarket this month, among others. Third, the mentally deranged but seemingly "raceless" rage that drove Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, Stephen Paddock at a Las Vegas concert in 2017, Nikolas Cruz in Parkland in 2018 and Salvador Ramos in a Texas elementary school this month. Those are the virulent symptoms and accelerants, but not the root cause that grips millions of us so tightly and intimately that we're too numb to it to be alarmed or even to name it, let alone change it.

I'm not thinking about the evil in our divided human hearts that runs back to the Garden of Eden and to Cain's murder of Abel. I'm not even thinking mainly about American jurisprudence that has reinforced the Second Amendment and its enthusiasts. I'm thinking about the jurisprudence that, even more directly if more subtly, has expanded First Amendment protections of the commercial speech that indoctrinates us, 24/7, to embrace narrow, self-interested strategies of "self-improvement" and protection.

That kind of commercial speech, rendered ever more relentless, more intrusive and more intimate, strikes me as the main reason why we're losing our capacity and inclination to bind our sense of selfhood to our contributions to the good of the whole to "enlightened self-interest," as Alexis de Tocqueville and others called it.

Commercial speech is degrading our public and private lives, not malevolently or conspiratorially but for the most part mindlessly. It's groping us, goosing us, titillating us, tracking us, indebting us and, sometimes, as in commercials for drugs and home-protection systems, intimidating us, bypassing our brains and hearts on its way to our lower viscera and our wallets. Even ads that are "entertaining" incentivize defensive selfishness and greed.

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Some conservative Roman Catholic thinking calls for a "common good constitutionalism" aimed at reconfiguring and curbing self-interest by redirecting the energies unleashed by today's markets ber allesneoliberalism. But a theocratic, semi-authoritarian solution won't work in our society, which in its best civic-republican mode is "ethical and pragmatic, disciplined and free," as a mentor of mine, the late literary historian Daniel Aaron, put it.

To renew that civic-republican ethos, we need first to face a hard truth that, in my experience, many Americans consider too close for comfort: Commercial speech, combined with social media, has deranged the public sphere by fragmenting, privatizing and alienating millions of us, and I don't mean only the shooters.

The toxic effects of commercial speech and social media have deranged the public sphere by fragmenting, privatizing and alienating us by the millions. I don't just mean the shooters.

Those who become shooters have indeed been mentally disturbed or especially susceptible to displacing their early personal hurts and resentments, often consequences of social fragmentation and family disintegration. But many others among us "merely" embrace conspiracy theories and believe whatever Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson tell them. Still others and here's where it gets too close for comfort for many of us depend on retirement accounts or other forms of investment in the publicly-traded corporations and private-equity ventures that sustain the deluge of commercial speech that's miseducating and disorienting the most impressionable, most vulnerable and most badly stressed among us.

That deluge peddles false escapes into impulse buying and degrading entertainment, and for almost the last three decades social media platforms have amplified and catalyzed the viral spread of the violent displacement of rage and envy by the most deeply wounded among us.

Retirees, gung-ho investors and financial managers are all implicated in the investments that bypassing other people's brains and hearts in ways that weaken their inclination and ability to sustain public trust. The hard truth that few of us want to face, including those of us who produce "news" as well as consume it, is that the commercial "speech" that our employment and our supposed standards depend on must somehow be altered and curbed.

A rare acknowledgment of the problem in the form of a boast came in CBS president Les Moonves' famous declaration, at a Morgan Stanley conference in 2016, that Donald Trump's presidential campaign "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."

One necessary step will be reversing the Supreme Court's notorious Citizens United ruling, which extended First Amendment protections to corporate "speech," both in the form of direct campaign contributions and untraceable, unlimited "dark money" spending.

That kind of jurisprudence hands the megaphone, along with almost incalculable political power, to incorporeal entities, and leaves ordinary citizens who struggle to advance the public interest feeling powerless and straining to be heard. It doesn't strengthen speech but hollows it out, incentivizing selfishness and leaving us with empty platitudes. Pumping corporate speech into politics leaves a vacuum in public beliefs and virtues that clueless armed citizens have too often tried to fill by besieging state capitols and storming the U.S. Capitol.

These are too often the same people who refuse to wear masks because masks protect others more than themselves. Many of them buy guns not in the theoretical interest of making society safer, but to protect themselves against a society that they're making less safe day by day.

Still others work for investment banks and hedge funds, or pour their money into them, not to make business more efficient and effective but in order to accumulate enough wealth to insulate themselves from the decay their own activities accelerate, whatever clouds of pious public rhetoric they may offer. Others offer gifts, including large philanthropic donations, more intended to make themselves look good than to help the wounded and bereft around the world whom their activities have damaged.

"How many conservative economists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. The Invisible Hand will take care of it." That's an old joke about the false presumption that through some magical process a greater good will flow from everyone pursuing their own individual "good," and the less interference there is from "bleeding heart," "busybody" big-government liberals, the better.

Mass shootings may not be inherent in capitalism, but they stem from our individual drive to maximize narrow self-interest without considering the unintended consequences.

The accelerating danger of mass shootings and other forms of gun mayhem may not be inherent in capitalism as such, but in our long-internalized, individualistic drive to maximize personal profit and narrow self-interest, rather than reconciling what we do to "make a living" with its unintended consequences. The real danger lies in denying that a democratic polity must ultimately have sovereignty over an economy, and in pretending that wealth is anything more than a necessary support for a commonwealth.

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a'prey, when wealth accumulates and men decay," wrote Oliver Goldsmith in 1777, as the American republic was being born. Now that the republic is in danger of dying, let's take that warning to heart and find ways to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to defending its truth.

That kind of idealism may have been outflanked in our current era by developments that can only be described as fascist. We may have to move to tighter organizing and take to the streets. We may have to follow the example of unarmed peoples who've brought down vast, national security states in Eastern Europe, in South Africa, in British India by following the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., with disciplined purpose and our eyes on the prize, even at risk of death.

Read more on America's epidemic of mass shootings:

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Gun violence, neoliberalism and Citizens United: We can't change things without facing the truth - Salon

Bill Cotterell| Capital Curmudgeon

Uvalde mass shooting: US mourns after 19 children, two teachers killed

Families and the country are left to grapple with grief after a shooting in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Scott L. Hall, Jessica Boller and Anastasiia Riddle, USA TODAY

Walking along a busy San Francisco thoroughfare on the day I got out of the Marine Corps, I was amused to see so many guns for sale in shop windows.

Id awakened that day in a barracks full of trained, disciplined Marines who knew what they were doing. We kept our rifles in a locked rack and, when we had a good reason to fetch them, the Officer of the Day would watch us sign the weapon in and out. There wasnt a round of ammunition anywhere nearby.

Yet there I was, on a downtown street with my mustering-out pay in my pocket and all kinds of guns available to anyone.

It seemed strange, in my youthful naivet, that well-trained military members zealously guarded their weapons while civilians put more regulations on dogs than instruments which, in the wrong hands, are deadly. But back then, I probably hadnt heard much about the Second Amendment or its political potency.

Covering politics and government in several states for 50-plus years, I heard all the legal arguments and the cheap bumper-sticker slogans usually in stories of unimaginable tragedy. And now, we hear it again; this time, its 19 little kids and two adults at an elementary school in west Texas.

When in Gods name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? President Biden asked. When in Gods name do we do what needs to be done?

Probably not this time. Even if Biden was popular and had solid support in Congress, guns are politically untouchable.

As if by script, the shock and horror will dissipate and both sides of the never-ending gun debate will hurl Facebook memes and slogans back and forth for a while. Neither side will even admit that the other has a point.

That Second Amendment the Republicans hold so dear really does refer to a well-regulated militia. But our Supreme Court is likely to skip ahead to the part about the right of the people to keep and bear arms. And gun-control opponents correctly argue that criminals wont obey any law thats why we call them criminals and you cant deter illogical people with logical laws.

But shouldnt we try? Drunk drivers and heroin dealers dont obey laws either, but we try to stop them.

Must we live this way? Is burying 10 innocent people in Buffalo one week, and 21 in Texas the next, just a price we pay so some people can get rifles like Rambo uses?

As a journalist, I wont yield an inch on the First Amendment. But its tempered by laws against plagiarism, libel and slander. And we register our companies so you can find out who owns the presses and what they publish.

In various towns, Ive registered my house, my car, my marriage, the birth of my son, and my dog. The government hasnt confiscated them, so why shouldnt guns be registered?

But thats more impractical than ever in the current political climate.

More from Bill Cotterell:

On the day Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people and wounded 17 others in Parkland, my wife and I landed in Australia on vacation. The Sydney TV nets were full of commentators saying it was all so simple just forbid private gun ownership and collect all the guns. Problem solved!

I was tempted to phone the TV station and ask if they had any idea how impractical no, impossible that is.

And sure enough, then-Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature responded to Parkland with a few tepid measures, which promptly got tied up in court.

Biden is right about one thing: Other countries dont have this slaughter. If our leaders werent afraid of the gun lobby, maybe they could find out what those countries do and, even if it takes a constitutional amendment or two, go for it.

More likely, our leaders will issue statements about how our society is too violent, how families need to instill in our youth the values of responsibility and respect that we grew up with a generation ago. Then they can keep those statements handy for the next time it happens and the time after that, and the time after that.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com

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Do we really have to live with mass shootings? | Bill Cotterell - Tallahassee Democrat

AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)A rattled Greg Abbott described for reporters the moment of abject terror that he endured when the gubernatorial candidate Beto ORourke suddenly talked to him.

Without warning, out of nowhere, there he appeared, saying things, the Governor of Texas said. Im still shaking just thinking about it.

Accusing ORourke of hiding behind the First Amendment, Abbott asserted, That amendment was written in the eighteenth century and was intended for use only in times of war, such as when Paul Revere warned that the British were coming.

Abbott said that he would secure twenty-four-hour police protection to shield himself from future terrifying incidents of ORourke speaking, and that he would take measures to safeguard fellow-Texans from similar outbursts.

One measure under consideration is a two-week waiting period between ORourke thinking of something to say and being permitted to say it, aides to the Governor confirmed.

The No. 1 problem facing Texas today is Beto ORourke making sudden, unprovoked comments, he said. We must pass new, strict laws to protect Texans from Beto ORourkes sentences.

Read more:
Shaken Greg Abbott Describes Moment of Terror When Beto ORourke Talked to Him - The New Yorker

If April is the cruelest month as T.S. Eliot and thousands of amateur dinner-table philosophers have attested then May may be the most poignant month.

And so, as the fifth month roars to a close amid rising temperatures, blooming wildflowers and great summer expectations, let us consider several late-month anniversaries that speak to us at this difficult moment in the American passage. They involve, as so much of our history does, our tortuous, tortured and tardy racial reckoning.

May will forever be remembered as the month in which George Floyd was mercilessly, senselessly and needlessly killed in Minneapolis, triggering a nationwide reexamination of our views on race.

This month also includes the birthdays of Jim Thorpe (the first Native American to win Olympic gold medals, a standout baseball and football player and film star) and Malcolm X (a controversial civil rights leader and prominent member of the Nation of Islam). Both left huge footprints in the pathways of American life.

It also is the birth month of John F. Kennedy, for most of his life a reluctant foot soldier in the struggle for racial justice, but in his last six months a strong voice for the cause he described as being as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.

Kennedy came to his conclusion about racial justice (We are confronted primarily with a moral issue) only after a long-forgotten May moment, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnsons 1963 Memorial Day speech at Gettysburg, where, in marking the 100th anniversary of the landmark battle there, he said, One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

That speech jolted Kennedy, prompting him to deliver his reprise of his vice presidents call to arms, saying, One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.

Now we approach another 100-year anniversary, and the tensions that surround American presidents and their approach to race are rippling through the country again. Monday is the centenary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, and the anniversary is important because it illuminates the assumptions of that time and the tensions of our own time.

Two American presidents were present to commemorate the life of a third American president. Both were Republicans. Both were white.

One was Warren G. Harding, who had been in office for only 13 months and had, in October 1921, told a large crowd in Birmingham, Alabama, that racial discrimination was the problem of democracy everywhere, if we mean the things we say about democracy as the ideal political state, adding, to the discomfort of the audience and the outrage of Birminghams ruling grandees, Whether you like it or not, our democracy is a lie unless you stand for that equality.

On that May 1922 dedication day, he said the 16th president knew he had freed a race of bondmen and had given the world the costly proof of the perpetuity of the American union.

Also on the dais was William Howard Taft, who after being president was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court. He spoke of Lincolns instinct for justice, truth, patience, mercy and love of his kind, simplicity, course, sacrifice and confidence in God.

There were other speakers, all of them also white except for Robert Russa Moton, grandson of a slave. Here the educator who succeeded Booker T. Washington as the principal of the Tuskegee Institute clashed with Taft, one of the most prominent figures in the first quarter of the 20th century.

A dozen days before the dedication of the memorial, Taft asked to see Motons remarks. This was a fateful, and disgraceful, moment of conflict, a collision between the commemoration of the freedom won in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the freedom of expression enshrined in the First Amendment. Taft objected to several elements of the Moton text and insisted that this passage be excised:

My fellow citizens, in the great name which we honor here today, I say unto you that this memorial which we erect in token of our veneration is but a hollow mockery, a symbol of hypocrisy, unless we together can make real in our national life, in every state and in every section, the things for which he died.

Also cut was this evocative passage:

With equal truth, it can be said today: No more can the nation endure half privileged and half repressed; half educated and half uneducated; half protected and half unprotected; half prosperous and half in poverty; half in health and half in sickness; half content and half in discontent; yes, half free and half yet in bondage.

Moton, a late addition to the proceedings someone recognized that an event celebrating Lincoln could not be conducted without at least one Black speaker was not invited to sit with the white speakers. Indeed, Black people in the audience were shunted off to a roped-off area, prompting the Chicago Defender, the prominent Black newspaper, to remark, The venomous snake of segregation reared its head at the dedication.

Nonetheless, Moton argued in his remarks that greatness for Abraham Lincoln lies in this, that amid doubt and distrust, against the counsel of chosen advisers, in the hour of the nations utter peril, he put his trust in God and spoke the word that gave freedom to a race.

Today the legacy of Lincoln, like that of the Founders and Andrew Jackson, is being reexamined. He remains known for his Emancipation Proclamation, but other elements of his life his opposition to interracial marriage, his advocacy of shipping Black people to Africa, his hostility to racial equality and skepticism of the abolitionism movement are receiving new prominence.

In dedicating the Union cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863, Lincoln employed various forms of dedicate six times in a speech of only 272 words.

At the centenary of the dedication of his own memorial, we might dedicate ourselves to the notion that, as he put it in a speech that transformed the Civil War from a battle for preservation of the Union into a crusade for the abolition of slavery, this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

DAVID M. SHRIBMAN is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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SHRIBMAN: On 100th anniversary, Lincoln Memorial reminds us of unmet aspirations - Sharonherald

SAN DIEGO

When San Diego police officers opened the front door to Rosa Calvas apartment studio in East Village, the 26-year-old was holed up in her bathroom.

Calva, in the throes of a mental health crisis, had thrown items a bucket, mop and more out of a window and onto the street below. A bystander reported being struck by flying glass.

Newly released body-worn camera video shows that in a span of 20 minutes, officers gave her repeated commands to walk out of the 5-by-5-foot bathroom and surrender as a police dog barked repeatedly. When she did not, they used a tool known as a Halligan bar to enlarge a hole they noticed in the door, then fired pepperball rounds inside.

The officers and the police dog then moved in. The officers kicked open the bathroom door and, within seconds, Calva, who was holding a steak knife, was shot four times and bitten by the dog.

Police at the time said Calva threatened officers with the knife. The footage shows she was holding the knife in air, the blade pointed up, when Officer Andres Ruiz shot her in the chest and abdomen.

Calva was seriously injured but survived. She was arrested and later charged in San Diego Superior Court with assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer. Her case is still pending.

The series of events was captured on the officers body-worn cameras, but the San Diego Police Department withheld the footage for two years despite a state law enacted in 2019 that mandates the release of video related to such shootings within 45 days, with few exceptions.

The law is intended to increase transparency in cases of shootings by police officers.

The Police Department released the footage May 20, three weeks after the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for open and transparent government, sent the city attorney a letter that argued the law required police to disclose the video. The coalition also threated to sue.

Along with the body-worn camera video, the Police Department released reports and other records tied to the now-completed investigation. The records reveal that the San Diego County District Attorneys Office cleared Ruiz and that the department determined the officer followed policy.

But the shooting, in light of the footage, has raised concerns.

One use-of-force expert, former Los Angeles County sheriffs lieutenant Roger Clark, said the officers failed to properly handle the situation. Clark, who reviewed the records last week at the Union-Tribunes request, said officers forced a confrontation at a moment when Calva was not a danger to the public.

This is not de-escalation, Clark said.

Rosa Garcia last year as she speaks over the phone with staff at Las Colinas Detention Facility to inquire about her daughter, Rosa Calva, who was shot by San Diego police on May 23 and later charged in San Diego Superior Court in connection with the incident.

(David Hernandez/San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Commission on Police Practices, which reviewed the departments internal investigation into the shooting, also raised concerns. In a report to the department, commissioners said they hoped the department realized there are other means of de-escalation available and urged the department to consider additional training in that regard.

Calvas mother, Rosa Garcia, said she believes police used excessive force and wants accountability. Two years after the shooting, Garcia still is deeply troubled about the way police treated her daughter.

My daughter is not El Chapo, Garcia said. Shes mentally ill.

San Diego police spokesperson Lt. Adam Sharki said the department holds its members to the highest professional standards.

We hear the communitys concerns about this incident, he said.

He said shootings by officers are rare and reviewed thoroughly.

Even if a shooting is deemed lawful and within policy, the department continues to review the tactics and actions of the officer to determine if there are learning points which can be incorporated into training going forward, Sharki said in a statement.

He said Ruiz remains a San Diego police officer.

It was around 9:50 p.m. on May 23, 2020, when police started receiving 911 calls about Calva. Several callers said she had broken her window in her fourth-floor apartment on Market Street near Park Boulevard and was throwing items, including a bucket, mop and folding chair, onto the street below. Two callers said they thought Calva might jump out of the window.

Audio of the 911 calls indicate one caller told a dispatcher he was struck by glass. He told the dispatcher he did not need medical attention.

According to the reports and the body-worn-camera video, officers tried to call Calva, but the number they had did not work. Officers summoned additional resources, including a police dog, and entered the apartment building. They gathered in a hallway on Calvas floor and shouted orders for her to surrender.

Outside, officers saw Calva near the window, waiving a knife, according to officers account of the incident.

Around 11 p.m. officers used a key to open the front door. They noticed blood smeared on the floor and cabinets, although is unclear in the records why the blood was there, or if Calva had hurt herself.

A police canine handler ordered Calva to walk out.

Rosa, this is San Diego police. Were not going anywhere. We want to help you, the officer shouts, according to body-worn camera video.

The officer then tells her she is under arrest and warns her that if she doesnt surrender, police would release a dog. The officer repeats commands as the police dog continues to bark.

There is no response inside the apartment, according to the video, so the police dog and two officers enter the unit and clear the common areas.

An officer then grabs a Halligan bar and hammers the bathroom door, enlarging an existing hole. Another officer fires several volleys of pepperball rounds through the hole.

Some officers had donned gas masks to protect themselves from the pepper spray-like chemicals. Others cough repeatedly. There is still no response from Calva.

The canine handler then sends the dog to squeeze through the hole, but the canine struggles to enter. Calva pokes her hand through the hole, with the knife in hand.

The handler orders the dog to go In, in, in, in! but to no avail as he and Ruiz trail behind.

Ruiz is seen in the video kicking open the bathroom door, but Calva is behind it. The dog handler struggles to open the door all the way.

When the handler finally enters the bathroom, he grabs Calva and appears to push her body, as if to try to pin her against a wall. He grips her right hand as she holds the knife in the air, the blade pointed upwards.

Ruiz appears to aim under the handlers torso and shoots Calva at close range. She falls to the ground and the police dog bites her left arm.

The knife lands near the toilet.

The shooting marked the fourth time Ruiz fired his gun in the line of duty. In the first two shootings, then-District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis cleared him. Her office did not review the third because no one was struck by Ruizs gunfire.

In the most recent case, Ruiz told investigators Calva was about to stab the other officer in the face. District Attorney Summer Stephan noted that the evidence indicates Ruiz was incorrect; the blade was pointed toward the ceiling. But, Stephan said, Ruizs perception in the moment was reasonable because Calva didnt drop the weapon.

Under the totality of circumstances, Ruiz was justified in shooting Calva, Stephan wrote in a letter to the Police Department.

San Diego police Detective Sgt. Jared Thompson reviewed the case for any policy violations and reached a conclusion similar to Stephans: He said that based on all of the circumstances, it was reasonable for Ruiz to believe Calva, with a knife in hand, presented an imminent threat which justified the shooting. Thompson said in a report that officers tried to de-escalate the situation for nearly 30 minutes, citing the commands officers gave Calva and their use of a police dog and peperball rounds.

Clark, the use-of-force expert, said the officers took the wrong approach and escalated the situation with their use of a police dog and pepperballs. He said Calva was contained in the bathroom, which did not require officers to act quickly to subdue her.

This should never have happened this way, he said.

He said a basic lesson rookie officers are taught is if you increase the stress, (a persons) ability to comply decreases.

What I see in these videos is, Youre going to do this my way, exactly as I tell you, or Im going to come and get you, because I am the police, Clark said. Thats the culture. They know they can do this stuff. Theyre not culpable.

Clark said police should have summoned crisis negotiators. The San Diego Police Department has an Emergency Negotiations Team, which works to persuade individuals to surrender, including individuals who are suicidal or barricaded. The team tries to engage in dialogue instead of force.

Clark was one of three use-of-force experts the Union-Tribune contacted. Others did not respond or were unavailable.

Police reform advocate Tasha Williamson, who also requested the body-worn camera video under state law, said she believes the Police Department withheld the footage because it does not show the department in a good light.

She shared several of the same criticisms as Clark. She said the shooting shows that officers unnecessarily put themselves in danger and in situations where they end up feeling the need to use force.

Why not wait this out? Why not call SWAT? Why not have negotiators come in? Why not do all the precautions that are needed to save her life and diminish the risk to officers instead of saying we waited 25 to 40 minutes and that was enough time? she asked. Her life is worth hours.

The reality for us in the community is this was withheld because it was horrific, she said.

The incident occurred two days before the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, which at the time led to protests and outrage over police brutality and racial injustice. Williamson said she believes the video was withheld to mitigate public outcry in the aftermath.

The San Diego Police Department at the time denied requests for the video, citing an investigation and a criminal case against Calva.

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said the public had the right to see the videos a while ago, at least once the investigation into the shooting wrapped up, if not earlier. He said state law does not allow agencies to withhold video of shootings by police officers based on ongoing court proceedings.

An exception in the law allows agencies to withhold video if they prove that the release of the footage would interfere with an active investigation, but Loy said the Police Department did not do that. He added that at some point the argument that an investigation was ongoing was not plausible.

When they want to release body-cam video of shootings, they do it, and they do it right away, Loy said.

Calva was charged in San Diego Superior Court with assault with a deadly weapon and assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, with a special allegation that she was armed with a knife.

A judge ruled later based on a psychiatric evaluation that Calva was mentally incompetent to stand trial and suspended the court case until her competency could be restored. The ruling was based on a finding that Calva was unable to understand the court proceedings and assist in her own defense. As is common in such cases, Calva was sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County for treatment.

Calva later returned to San Diego County and was allowed to undergo treatment as part of the countys Mental Health Diversion program. If Calva completes the treatment, her case will be dismissed.

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San Diego police shot a mentally ill woman who had a knife in 2020; they just released the video - The San Diego Union-Tribune