My brother, Marvin Booker, was 56 years old when he was killed. Marvin was a peaceful street preacher who also struggled with mental illness and drug use. None of this changed the fact that he was a kind and loving man. He was no risk to anyone. What haunts me when I think about his life, about all the years he worked to do good in this world, are the handful of minutes it took to end it. 

A little over ten years ago, the Denver police arrested Marvin on a low-level drug charge. While being booked into the jail, my brother paused before following an officer’s order to leave the waiting area and tried to first retrieve shoes he’d left in a waiting area before being booked. In response to this small act of perceived disobedience, several officers pinned my 135-pound brother face-down to the ground with a choke-hold. Now, the Denver Sheriff’s manual itself warns that “brain damage or death could occur if the technique is applied for more than one minute.” 

Yet, even as he lay motionless on the floor, the officers continued to hold my brother down, tasing him and choking him for 2 minutes and 55 seconds. They waited another 4 minutes and 48 seconds before a nurse arrived to try and resuscitate him. It took 7 minutes and 43 seconds to kill my brother in that jail. 
It took 7 minutes and 46 seconds to kill George Floyd. Just three seconds separate the time it took to kill these two Black men. 
Video: Reverend Spencer Lamar Booker & Mrs. Gail G. Booker address Marshall's passing and Senate Bill 21-062.
When my brother was killed, I was angry and tired and desperate for justice. And now we are not alone. People are angry. People are tired. And people are no longer willing to silently struggle under the yoke of our injustice system. For too long, Black Americans have been over-policed and over-incarcerated. 

Too many Black bodies bear the marks of police brutality, too many communities have been torn apart by our broken system of mass incarceration and too many families have had to count the minutes it took to kill their loved ones. Enough is enough. 
I am writing to you to ask you to join us in this fight towards justice. Right now, lawmakers are being asked to consider Senate Bill 21-062. There are many reasons I support this bill, but the one that compels me to write to you is that it would have likely saved my brother’s life.

If SB21-062 had been passed in 2010, my brother would have been handed a summons instead of being arrested. He would have never been dragged into that jail. It makes me wonder: How might he have spent those 7 minutes and 48 seconds that killed him? Maybe he would have walked another block of the Denver streets he loved. Maybe he would have delivered another sermon to someone in need. Maybe he would have given me a call. But I am not asking you to give us back that time. SB21-062 was not the law and my brother died in that cell. 

But there are more Marvins out there. There are more brothers, fathers, preachers, leaders, and human beings just trying to stay alive. And many of them, like all of us, have made mistakes. Some need help as they face their struggles, whether it’s drugs or poverty, but none deserve to rot in a jail cell waiting for their day in court or to die there. And yet, as long as our response is to arrest them, to incarcerate them, to brutalize them, we will do nothing but continue to perpetuate pain and rob precious minutes from families like ours. 

Some police have talked about wanting to help victims and champion public safety. But are we too not victims? Is public safety not ensuring people aren’t jailed - or even killed - for their addiction or mental health struggles? If we want to help victims, defend public safety and ever achieve true justice, we must build a better system where - yes, some people who really are dangerous are held in jail - but where people charged with low offenses, or people charged with higher-level offenses but who are not a safety risk to others, are allowed to remain free pretrial until and unless they are convicted. It is time to end this cruel era where who’s in jail is more about wealth than anything else. Jails should be for people who are dangerous, and just being accused of a crime should mean something different than being convicted. In simple terms, if they haven’t done any harm, don’t be alarmed. 

I ask you to please support SB21-062, for me, for my family, for Marvin, and for all the many people in your district who ask for a little grace, a little mercy, and just the possibility of a second chance.

Thank you, On Behalf of the Booker’s Family /s/ Reverend Spencer Lamar Booker & Mrs. Gail G. Booker

Learn more about SB21-062

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On March 9, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Douglas County family whose 11-year-old son, A.V., was handcuffed, restrained in the back of a police car for hours, injured, traumatized and held on $25,000 bail after an unnecessary School Resource Officer (SRO) response.

“I have never as a parent been tested like I have with this situation with J.L.” 

As the mother of four children with four different personalities and learning styles Heidi Laursen was used to wearing different hats to advocate for her kids. She had one daughter who was in gifted programs, who all the teachers loved, one with a variety of strengths and talents, who rarely required additional support, and another daughter who had dyslexia and required accommodations through an IEP. While there were a few initial challenges to get her daughter the help she needed, that process was mostly positive. But when her youngest child, J.L., showed signs of needing accommodations she found the process “jaw-droppingly different.” 

J.L. started having some behavioral problems in preschool. His teacher recognized him as “eccentric” but smart. As an ECE student at Dora Moore, J.L. was seen as misbehaving in class and was later banned from the Christmas program. That incident and the idea that he was “bad” increased J.L.’s feelings of despair when he came back to school the next year for Kindergarten. Not long after school started Heidi remembers J.L. saying things like, “I’m bad, I’m trash,” and “I wish you never grew me. I want to die.” She sought outside counseling for J.L. and his negative talk dramatically decreased. When Heidi went to the school asking for more help for J.L. she was initially told they didn’t offer IEPs for kindergarteners.

Heidi tried her best to be proactive with J.L.’s school but was consistently bogged down by bureaucracy. She continued to ask for help and a meeting was set for early February only to be cancelled and rescheduled by the school three times. When it finally took place in mid-April, Heidi was told that it was too close to the end of the school year for them to perform an evaluation and it would have to be pushed to the fall. In the meantime, J.L.’s behavior continued to escalate. One day, he made a mess in the classroom, and the school called Denver Public Schools security before calling J.L.’s parents.

When Heidi was finally informed about the incident, and when she arrived at school, she had two conversations that haunt her to this day. One was with the principal, who specifically instructed her not to comfort J.L. because she said Heidi coddled him too much. The other was with a boy who saw her coming to pick up J.L. and told her: your little boy just got arrested. “I could definitely see why a little kid would view it like that,” Heidi said. “But it made my heart cringe with pain to hear it.”

Yet, nothing would make her heart sink like the sight of one officer holding J.L. by his legs while another held his arms and shoulders. To her horror, when she got to the classroom she found her 6-year-old son struggling and suspended in the air. J.L. was writhing and breathing heavily - not quite hyperventilating, but not normal either. It was too much to take in. When Heidi approached, the officers let him go and she hugged J.L. and held him until his breathing slowed down and he was calm. She started picking up the classroom and was encouraging J.L. to start picking up too. His father arrived and did the same. Eventually J.L. started picking up. Things seemed to be calming down until Heidi said the principal came in with the custodian and told J.L. that he should feel really bad for all the extra work he caused and for what he'd done. J.L. re-escalated and ran out of the classroom. His dad went after him and brought him back to the classroom. They finished picking up the crayons and other objects on the floor, then left for an emergency counseling session with J.L.’s therapist.

While J.L. was not formally diagnosed his therapist thought he might be a child with high performing autism. But without any accommodations or understanding from the school that J.L. processes differently, he only received punishment and so did his parents. J.L. received an out of school suspension for a day after the classroom incident. When he returned, Heidi and J.L.’s father were informed one of them would have to stay with J.L. until 10 a.m. every day for a week and that  J.L. couldn’t go on the class picnic or class trip unless he was accompanied by a family member. One of J.L.’s older sisters had to chaperone since Heidi had already missed too much work due to the school’s requirements.

Struggling without support in school, J.L.’s parents continued to seek outside help. Those evaluations confirmed that J.L. suffered from debilitating anxiety and sensory issues. J.L. wasn’t “bad” - he just needed better solutions at school. But that support was still a long way away. The next year while still waiting for accommodations J.L. had several outbursts and was removed from the classroom. Heidi said they were often informed after the fact. Next, they were told that they needed to pick up J.L. up every day at 11:30 a.m. until the school could figure it out. That lasted about three weeks until the family was connected with Advocacy Denver in the hopes of getting J.L. the free and appropriate education he was entitled to. His advocate quickly got him back to a full time schedule but a day later he was suspended for having an outburst. Once again, the SROs were called in. Heidi said they were called at least three times — three that she knows of.

“I was notified and provided documentation of the incident that took place in the fall, probably because our advocate was involved,” Heidi said. “Until then, I didn’t even know they were supposed to provide a written notice. I was verbally told about another incident by the teacher. When our advocate requested records, we found out that the school had not been documenting any of the calls made to the SRO’s or providing us with notifications. We have no idea how many other times J.L. was restrained.”

J.L.’s IEP wasn’t being met and to Heidi it felt like they were trying to push him out of school. “I felt like the bad guy,” she said. “They didn’t want him. No one at school was talking to me anymore.” Heidi wasn’t the only one who felt like the bad guy. The stigma of SRO calls and suspensions instead of IEP accommodations made J.L. feel worse about himself than ever. In the end, the family switched him to another school in the hopes of getting him the help he needed and a fresh start.

“My heart sank learning about how J.L. hated going to school,” Heidi said. “I want J.L. to be in a better situation and I don’t want any other kids to go through that.”