"She Was Begging Him to Stop": Cherrie Moore, Beaten by Officer During Mental Health Crisis, Fights Back with Ben Crump

On the morning of May 29, Cherrie Moore,  a 34-year-old Black woman weighing approximately 90 pounds, was in the middle of a mental health crisis when Shelby, N.C. officer Karson Hyder straddled her body and punched her in the face with a closed fist. A Ring doorbell camera caught everything. She pleaded for him to stop. He didn't. She suffered a possible broken nose and a busted lip. This is what "help" looked like for a Black woman in crisis.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump flew to Shelby to represent Moore, and he didn't mince words before a packed congregation at City of God Family Worship Center. He named the ugly, recurring truth: that when Black people experience mental health crises, law enforcement treats it as criminality, not illness. "They don't look at it as a mental health crisis," Crump said. "They look at it as a criminal issue and far too often, the sister and brother end up dead."

Cherrie Moore could have been dead. Instead, she's left with physical injuries, a prior arrest by the same officer, and the indignity of watching the system respond to her brutalization with a misdemeanor charge. Hyder was fired and charged with misdemeanor assault,  a charge Crump made clear is nowhere near sufficient. His standard for justice was blunt: "It's the same thing that justice would be for the state's attorney's daughter if she was brutalized. We want equal justice."

Then there is her father, Gregory Moore, still waiting for a phone call that has never come. "They haven't reached out to me none, whatsoever. No calls, nothing," he said. "'Mr. Moore how are you doing, is everything alright?' They haven't called or nothing and I think that's very sad."

No call. No accountability. A woman beaten on camera while crying out for mercy, and the institution responsible cannot even pick up the phone. For a Black woman in America, this is not an aberration,  it is a pattern. And that is what makes it so devastating.

Link: WCNC