To understand the tension between the cops and some people in Albuquerque, you have to go back to a Tuesday in April.
It was after the Justice Department had accused the Albuquerque police of engaging in a pattern of excessive force. In March, a homeless camper named James Boyd was shot and killed. Then a 19-year-old woman was killed.
Music teacher Caro Acuna Olvera was eating dinner when a friend called her with the news.
"She was like, 'Caro, Facebook is blowing up, do you know what's happening? ... They killed Mary!' And I was like, 'Who? Who killed Mary?' 'The police killed Mary,' " Olvera recalls.
The victim was Mary Hawkes, a former student of Olvera's. She was a woman whose parents were drug addicts, who had grown up in foster homes, who wrote poetry, lived on the street, loved animals, sold drugs and did drugs, too.
The night Hawkes was killed, police say, an officer spotted a young woman driving a stolen truck. They later found the truck with a phone Hawkes used. They looked at her Facebook profile, matched her picture with a police database, then found her near an old address.
When they found her, she ran and an officer chased her. Police say when she waved a gun, the officer shot her three times ā in the head, upper arm and shoulder.
On a video released by police, officers told rescue units that Hawkes was "heavily bleeding and not breathing."
The shooting outraged some people in Albuquerque. Olvera helped arrange vigils and protests.
Protesters wondered: The Justice Department scrutinizes the police for excessive force, and then cops go and kill a 19-year-old?
[For more of this story, written by Kelly McEvers, go to http://www.npr.org/2014/09/30/...-and-public-scrutiny]
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