Life and controversial death of Najee Seabrooks is subject of new documentary. Watch now
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Watch the new NorthJersey.com documentary film "When Najee Seabrooks called for help" in the video player above, or on our YouTube channel.
Police reform. Police defunding.
Police being defended from the defunders. It's all part of the national discussion around Black Lives Matter — a lot of which turns on relations between the cops and the community.
But discussing it is one thing. Seeing it play out in real time is another. That's what filmmaker and photographer Michael Karas of The Record and NorthJersey.com shows us in his 19-minute documentary "When Najee Seabrooks called for help: The life and legacy of the man his neighborhood called a hero."
"I felt it was this completely tragic thing that happened, and I wanted to put this fuller picture out there," said Karas, who has worked for The Record since 2006.
Cry for help
You'll remember the case. It involved a Paterson community volunteer, Najee Seabrooks, well known and liked in the 4th Ward, who was shot by police when they responded to a call about an individual having a mental heath crisis.
He was asking for help. What the police did, and didn't do, on March 3 of this year led to consequences that went beyond Passaic County: to demonstrations, investigations, ultimately to a state takeover of the Paterson Police Department.
Who should respond?
There has been much discussion around the idea that mental health specialists — not cops — should respond to certain kinds of 911 calls. Police, critics say, are not trained to respond to a mental health emergency.
Here is the textbook case, caught on film. Karas, in his documentary, uses actual police bodycam footage and 911 dispatcher recordings to show not deliberate brutality, but what many consider a degree of insensitivity in the entire chain of response.
"Can I have two cop cars on Mill Street?" Seabrooks is heard saying to the dispatcher. "I need help bad."
"You have to tell me what's happened, what's going on," says a police dispatcher blandly.
"I received a lot of death threats, there are some people waiting for me when I walk out."
Guns trained
Seabrooks, as it transpired, may have been having some kind of episode. But not based on nothing.
He had been shot once before, in 2021. And one of the ways that Seabrooks, a former college basketball star, did community outreach was by joining the Paterson Healing Collective — a violence intervention group. This was a man clearly haunted by gun violence, and committed to stopping it.
"It's an emergency," he says from behind his locked bedroom door, while two officers have their guns trained on it (as seen in the bodycam footage).
"People are trying to kill me," he says. "I need an escort right now."
"Where are you trying to go?" asks one of the cops.
Only who's to say they are cops? Seabrooks, in his paranoid state, can't be sure. "Where are the cops?" he says.
"We are the cops," say the cops.
"Yeah, whatever," Seabrooks says.
Out of time
The standoff lasts five hours. It's understandable that the police would be frustrated. "How can we make this end nice and peaceful?" one of them asks. "We want you to be OK, and we want your daughter and everybody to be happy. But we can't do this all day, you know what I'm saying?"
That's exactly what a trained mental health professional would not have said, according to one expert.
"There were a lot of contradictions," said Jean Semelfort Jr., a psychotherapist interviewed in the documentary.
"If you're telling someone they're safe, you don't have riot shields and guns pointed at the door," Semelfort said. "If you're telling someone we want to get you home, we want to get you the appropriate care, one of the things you don't do is you don't add a timeline. You don't tell someone, 'We can't be here all day.'"
Eventually Seabrooks emerged from the room, holding a knife. Police shot him dead.
Najee Seabrooks case full coverage: From the Paterson police shooting, to Platkin takeover
High profile
The fact that Seabrooks had such a high profile in his community — that he had been actively working to make his city a better place — made his death all the more infuriating. The vigils, demonstrations and press conferences that followed are woven into the documentary. So are tearful vignettes of his mother and co-workers.
But the 31-year-old's local fame also gave filmmaker Karas the opportunity to tell a unique story.
As it happens, he'd started following Seabrooks' career as a community leader several years' before his tragic death.
"I had these interviews with him, I had this footage of him being an advocate and a very positive person," Karas said. "It seemed like I kind of had a chance to tell a version of the story of what happened to him, with perhaps some other insights."
More than a statistic
Originally, Karas and photographer Amy Newman of The Record had done the interviews for a planned documentary about the Paterson Healing Collective. Seabrooks was just one of several people they profiled.
But after his death — ironically, from the very gun violence he had worked to stop — the footage of him took on new significance. Rather than being a statistic, a grim example of a larger trend, Seabrooks could emerge in the film as a person.
In the documentary, he's seen coaching basketball, recalling his block parties for the kids, and talking about his work to stop gun violence with the Healing Collective. For him, it was all about saving the children.
Which was more, sadly, than he could do for himself.
"We want to just make a good neighborhood, positive vibes, everybody looking out for one another," Seabrooks said.
Where to watch
Watch the documentary in the video player at the top of this story. For best viewing experience, cast it from your mobile device to a smart TV. You can find more documentaries by NorthJersey.com here.
About the filmmaker, Michael Karas
Michael Karas is a visual journalist at NorthJersey.com. He has produced award-winning videos and photographs documenting challenging topics and engaging personalities, including a docuseries about young athletes playing for their futures during COVID, and the experiences of former inmates adapting to post-pandemic life.
More documentaries from Michael Karas
Targeting Retaliation: Stopping the chain reaction of gun violence in Paterson
Released from prison, but nowhere to go
Life after prison: How formerly incarcerated people in NJ step up to help the newly released
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson's Najee Seabrooks subject of documentary
