The Victor Project held a protest at the Idaho State Capitol on Saturday. Around 50 people showed up to support this grassroots organization out of Boise and show their support for Victor Perez's family.
This stems from April 5, when Pocatello police responded to a 911 call for domestic violence. After the police arrived, they instructed 17-year-old Perez to drop a knife. However, Perez did not speak English. Perez was autistic and also suffered from cerebral palsy. When Perez didn't cooperate, the police fired nine times, and Perez died days later in the hospital.
"It was so incredibly heartbreaking, it’s a very personal issue to me with him having autism," said Cyrus Wisdom of the Victor Project. "I’ve worked with a lot of people with autism and have members of my family with autism. It just broke my heart and infuriated me."
The Victor Project aims to be a catalyst to change law enforcement tactics, especially when it comes to people with mental disabilities. They have more protests planned as they hope to use community engagement, legal advocacy and collaborative partnerships to prevent a future tragedy from happening.
"Our main goal is implementation and utilization of crisis and prevention teams as well as further training for police in de-escalation tactics and non lethal techniques," said Wisdom "We would also like a thorough investigation done into this specific case."
The Victor Project has also started a petition. Petition organizers hope to gather enough signatures to submit the petition to the Attorney General in Idaho and ultimately, have their case heard at the federal level.
"We are trying to spread awareness and get some change made so something like this doesn’t happen again," said Wisdom.
For more information on the Victor Project, click here.
