“They said, ‘I’m sorry to inform you, but your son was in an altercation with two special police officers and he passed,’” Beverly said, sitting on her plush living room couch in Anacostia, a neighborhood in the southeast part of Washington, D.C. She had no idea what they meant at the time, and asked if Alonzo was stabbed or shot.

“They said, ‘No Ms. Smith. All we know is that he was in an altercation with two special police officers and he passed. But we want you to know, Ms. Smith, that we (MPD) didn’t have anything to do with it.’”

 

Special police officers like the two that killed Alonzo are not quite full police officers, however they’re more than security guards. They are a private police force, empowered to make arrests and carry guns. But because they work for private contractors and not public agencies, their actions are often shrouded in mystery.

Ten months after that conversation with the officers on her doorstep, Beverly has started to piece together a fragmented picture of https://thinkprogress.org/who-killed-alonzo-smith-5d5c128dd60