Donate to Community Members Legal Defense Funds

On Sunday afternoon, Lancaster City Police Department sent a lone, armed police officer to meet Ricardo Munoz, who was suffering an acute mental health crisis, after his sister placed a non-emergency call concerned about his well-being and the well-being of her mother. Arriving on the scene alone and unprepared to de-escalate the situation, the officer shot and killed Munoz after Munoz charged the officer with a knife.

Residents gathered and protests built throughout the day. All summer members of our community (and Lancaster Stands Up) have been organizing protests demanding changes to policing, criminal justice reform, and accountability. Munoz’s tragic death underscores the failures of our system. 

Though the protests on Sunday were mostly peaceful, that night there were incidents of escalation and property damage. It is unclear who caused the damage or their relationship to the protest, but police seem to have made arrests of whoever they could grab in the vicinity.

On Monday and Tuesday, District Attorney Heather Adams filed outrageous and politically motivated charges against those protesting our broken policing system, clearly aiming to intimidate other community members from speaking out and calling for change.

Now it’s up to us to help our neighbors defend themselves from trumped up charges and exorbitant.