DECATUR, Ala. — Steve Perkins’ friends and family remember him as a lively and loving man, a husband and father of two daughters. He worked as a manager at a pet food manufacturer and diligently went to the gym. His dream was to open a gym of his own one day.
His death at the hands of police just over a year ago has led to a wave of public activism and engagement with city government.
“We’re still trying to wrap our hands around the fact that it’s been a year,” said Aneesah Lige, a friend of the Perkins family who helped launch a social justice nonprofit in the wake of Perkins’ death. “It feels like it just happened because we’ve never stopped demanding answers. We’ve never stopped demanding justice for Steve. We’ve never stopped making our presence known for a whole year. And that typically never happens in a lot of places when it comes to such a tragedy. You know, people move on.”
Perkins, 39, was shot and killed in his front yard in the early hours of Sept. 29, 2023, by officers from the Decatur Police Department. His death sparked a murder charge, police officer firings, a federal lawsuit and a police department investigation.
Nicholas Perkins, Steve Perkins’ brother, said in a recent interview as the anniversary of his brother’s death approached that they have not had time to mourn.
“I wish we weren’t here at all,” he said. “But the way I’m feeling now is just, I gotta deal with it, and I can’t wait for it to be over with. So maybe we could probably start the healing process because we haven’t had a lot of time to actually do that and have a lot of time to grieve. Maybe after this we still won’t, because there is definite work to do within the city. It has been a rough year.”
Representatives of the Decatur Police Department (DPD) said officers were called to Steve Perkins’ home at about 1:30 a.m. the morning of the shooting after a tow truck driver said a man threatened him with a gun while he was trying to repossess Perkins’ truck. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency alleged that Steve Perkins “brandished a weapon” toward a Decatur police officer.
Ring bell camera footage that emerged captured a police officer saying “Police, get on the ground,” immediately followed by about 18 gunshots. Perkins’ supporters say officers didn’t give him the chance to put his gun away.
The Decatur Police Department; Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson; Decatur Mayor Tab Bowling and Decatur City Council members did not respond to requests for comment.
Many people in the community rallied around Steve Perkins. Lige formed Standing in Power, a social justice nonprofit, with concerned residents Terrence Adkins and Lawrence Souffrant.
“It could have been any of us, any of our family members,” Lige said. “The community is grieving together, which makes it bittersweet, because we have to bond because of this, because it has made us stronger, especially our relationships with some people we didn’t know before Sept. 29. There’s some people who now talk every day. His death has created friendships, bonds that I don’t think will ever be broken. His death has definitely put more love in the air within the community.”
Standing in Power organized regular protests at city hall and Decatur Mayor Bowling’s home. Decatur City Council meetings were packed with people wearing “I am Steve Perkins” shirts and buttons.
Nicholas Perkins said the attention helps and hurts.
“To know that people are standing behind you and praying for you and singing your brother’s name and constantly wearing memorabilia with his name on it and bracelets and standing up for his legacy at city council meetings, it was a very positive feeling to know that our family is not alone and that we we have people pushing for us,” he said. “But it’s twofold. It hurts because you constantly see your brother’s name and the hashtag, and it’s not for a good reason. It’s because he’s gone, and it’s because he was taken from us so violently by people who were supposed to protect us.”
Hearings and lawsuits
Nicholas Perkins said he has not had time to grieve his brother’s death.
Nicholas is grieving his brother while staying engaged in the advocates’ actions and legal cases surrounding his brother’s death, like a murder trial and former officers’ appeal hearings.
In early January, a grand jury indicted former DPD officer Mac Bailey Marquette on a charge of murder in Steve Perkins’ death. Other officers were in Steve Perkins’ front yard when he was killed but have not been charged.
Marquette’s attorneys, Elizabeth Ann Young and Brett Bloomston, declined to comment.
Prior to Marquette’s indictment, Bowling fired three officers and suspended another in December for their roles in Steve Perkins’ death. The city has not said which officers were punished.
The fired police officers are scheduled to have appeal hearings with the Decatur Personnel Board in January.
The murder trial was initially scheduled to begin on Nov. 18 in Morgan County but was pushed to April 7.
Marquette has been released on bail while awaiting trial, which Nicholas Perkins strongly disagrees with.
“My family missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and his birthday, which was Jan. 4, (and) Father’s Day,” he said. “Now we’re coming up on a year, and we don’t have Steve and because you have a gun and a badge, you got to go home.”
In December 2023, Steve Perkins’ widow, Catrela Perkins, sued the officers; the city of Decatur and several other entities who she alleged had attempted to repossess Perkins’ truck, leading to the police response.
“We believe that Steve’s death wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t the responsibility of one single bad actor, but it was the result of bad policies and practices that exist in the city,” said Lee Merritt, an attorney representing Catrela Perkins. “It was from the leadership and down who murdered Steve Perkins, and we made a claim for that in our lawsuit.”
A federal judge dismissed nearly all the named defendants from the lawsuit in August.
Merritt said he plans to bring what is known as a Monell claim, in which a city may be held accountable for a police officer’s actions if the officer was found to violate a constitutional right due to an official policy or custom of the municipality.
The legal filings allege that Decatur police officers are supposed to use de-escalation techniques when engaging with people but that they are rewarded for more invasive techniques. The lawsuit asserts that this custom encourages police officers “to escalate officers’ use of force during citizen interactions.”
“A further effect of this policy, procedure, or custom was to promote the use of excessive and unconstitutional force against citizens during arrests and other citizen interactions,” the lawsuit says.
Policy changes
The Decatur City Council passed a vehicle repossession ordinance in May 2024. Tow truck operators must now notify the Decatur Police Department 30 minutes before a planned vehicle repossession. Advocates initially wanted to ban nighttime tows to prevent botched tows under the cover of darkness, like with Steve Perkins. Lige and Nicholas Perkins said they settled for what was passed.
Advocates were encouraged by a contract for an outside review of DPD procedures, approved in July. The council contracted a Huntsville-based threat assessment company, Green Research and Technology, LLC, to assess the Decatur Police Department, review body camera footage and police reports, develop policy and procedure recommendations and more. The review is set to be completed in January.
Lige wants to see the council create a community-led public safety advisory board after the review is completed to act as another oversight body for the DPD.
“They had an old civilian review board, but it was appointed by the previous chief of police, but now with (Decatur Police Chief) Todd Pinion, we don’t want him to appoint a board,” Lige said. “We have qualified, experienced citizens who have been in law enforcement or in another form of government, who can come in and actually sit on a board and hold the police department accountable.”
Lige said Steve Perkins’ death led to broader engagement with local affairs. Many people started protesting, she said, because they cared about Steve, and they were afraid for their own safety. During the past year, they attended countless protests, city council meetings and more. They became more aware of what was happening in the community and became an engaged and educated electorate.
“The community is more aware of what has been going on in the city, in their district,” Lige said. “They’re more involved in learning about the leadership of this city because of what happened to Steve. … Now people are going to city council meetings, and they’re looking over the budgets, and they’re looking over how things are affecting where they live within the city.”
This article originally appeared in the Alabama Reflector, an independent, nonprofit news outlet. It appears on FOX54.com under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
