@thebirthingtree When will #DanielShaver’s story finally be heard? When will cops be held accountable? Why do they get lifetime pensions for killing citizens?
♬ original sound - Laney Sweet
newsweek | "Can someone please help explain to me how is it possible in the United States of America that these police officers keep getting away with murder?" Sweet said. "My husband Daniel Shaver was shot and killed five years ago while crying on the ground pleading for his life saying, 'Please don't shoot me.' He was compliant. He was unarmed. He didn't even have shoes on."
In another video, Sweet referred to the spate of police killings in the U.S., such as the death of George Floyd.
"People, it's time to wake up," she said. "Even when you comply and you try and you beg for your life and you say 'please don't shoot me' and you tell them that you can't breathe and you cry and you plead and you beg... they don't care.
"Because some cops are just out looking to kill people and they get away with it. And it keeps happening. And it's going to keep happening until people wake up and demand change."
In her videos, Sweet also spoke about how Brailsford, the officer who fatally shot Shaver, would get a pension for the rest of his life, while she and her children are struggling financially.
According to reports, Brailsford signed an agreement in 2018 to be rehired by the Mesa Police Department temporarily so he could apply for accidental disability pension and medical retirement due to a PTSD diagnosis. The PTSD stemmed from the shooting of Shaver and the resulting prosecution, an attorney for the officer told ABC15 in 2018.
"He was charged with second-degree murder, acquitted and then reinstated so he could get PTSD benefits for claiming disability for murdering my husband," she said in one video. "He's collecting a pension for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, my daughters and I are losing our housing and don't know where we're going to move next month and we don't have a working vehicle. Tell me how this is justice."
Sweet, who lives in Durango, Colorado, explained on a GoFundMe page to raise funds to support her family that she and her children will have nowhere to live from the end of May. That page has so far collected more than $75,000 in donations.
In a post on the page earlier this month, she said the city of Mesa is "interested" in settling the lawsuit and a mediation has been ordered.
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