The agreement would close out a federal lawsuit motorist Clarence Walker Crawford filed against the San Antonio bedroom community. Credit: Wikimedia

The four children of Melissa Perez — the 46-year-old woman shot and killed by a trio of San Antonio police officers last month during a mental health crisis — have sued the city and the officers involved.

SAPD’s “formal and informal” policies and the policymakers’ past failures to hold cops accountable have created a culture in which officers “engage in excessive, unreasonable and unconstitutional use of force,” according to the family’s petition, filed in federal court in San Antonio.

“SAPD has a culture that is rampant throughout the department such that uniformed officers regularly do not call on the mental health team to respond when a person is experiencing a mental health crisis,” the plaintiffs maintain in the filing.

SAPD officials were unavailable for comment on the suit, but San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia said the department has well-established training and policies in place to shield citizens from overreach.

“The officers involved in this incident didn’t follow proper training, policies and procedures,” Segovia said in a statement emailed to the Current. “We will seek a speedy resolution through the judicial system.”

The lawsuit cites five other SAPD shootings in which the victim was suffering a mental health crisis, alleging that officers mishandled the situation in each. Of the five incidents mentioned in the lawsuit, four were fatal.

Perez’s children are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against the city and the three officers involved in the shooting.

Perez died on June 23, after police went to Southwest San Antonio apartment complex to respond to an early-morning call about a woman cutting wires to the building’s fire alarm. Perez, who has schizophrenia, told authorities she severed the wires because the FBI was eavesdropping on her. She then went back to her apartment and refused to come outside.

Three officers — Sgt. Alfred Flores and officers Eleazar Alejandro and Nathaniel Villalobos — opened fire from outside Perez’s apartment after the woman threw a glass candlestick in their direction from behind a closed sliding glass door, the Express-News reports based on body-cam footage.

Less than 24 hours after the incident, SAPD arrested Flores, Alejandro, and Villalobos, who were charged with murder.

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This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 11, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...