It’s been nearly a decade since Debbie Bush’s nephew, Marquise Jones, a 23-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by an off-duty San Antonio police officer on Feb. 28, 2014.
For the family, it’s still a fresh wound.
“Even to this day, I don’t think I’ve really mourned Marquise,” Bush told the San Antonio Report earlier this month. “The day he was killed, that was the day my feet hit the ground. … It’s a constant fight. It’s an every-day fight.”
Bush and her family organized a rally on the evening of Jones’ death, which occurred outside a fast-food restaurant following a fender bender. They called for the arrest of SAPD Officer Robert Encina, who said Jones was armed, but an internal investigation found the shooting justified and a grand jury voted not to indict him. The family filed — and lost — a federal wrongful death civil lawsuit. They’ve joined countless protests and rallies for other victims of police violence in the years since.
She used to be unable to speak to police or district attorneys without becoming enraged, she said. “I’m more calm now. All I’m about right now is creating change.”
Jones’ family has established the Marquise Jones Foundation, which aims to support families whose loved ones have been killed by law enforcement. That could include covering funeral and burial costs, family therapy and legal expenses, Bush said.
“When Marquise got killed, [we had enough] money to bury him — we didn’t have to set up a GoFundMe page,” she said, adding that grieving families shouldn’t have to do that.
Beyond monetary support, the foundation wants to create an advocacy network for victims’ families to connect and lean on.
There are local, state and national crime victim assistance programs and funds, but if no crime is found to have occurred in a killing by police officers?, families like Jones’ often don’t qualify.
“We want to be able to have therapists come in and talk to the family members and have a healing group,” Bush said. “Whenever there’s a police shooting or killing, nobody realizes the [other families of previous victims] relive what they’ve been through. There will never be healing. Any time the wound gets a scab, it gets yanked off.”
Ananda Tomas, founder and executive director of police reform nonprofit ACT 4 SA, helped Bush file the paperwork to establish the foundation and will continue to help it apply for grants to fund its work.
Similar foundations and funds in other cities — such as Arizona-based Poder in Action and the Oscar Grant Foundation in California — have created scholarships, youth services and resource guides for victims of police violence, including a “what to know” guide for the first 72 hours after losing a loved one to police violence.
“There’s a huge healing justice component that I think the Marquise Jones Foundation can fill,” Tomas said, referring to practices that address and respond to generational trauma. “And it should be led by those who are directly impacted by police violence.”
So far, the foundation has collected about $2,000 through word of mouth and plate sales via Cash App ($mjonesfoundation), Bush said, adding that she plans to ramp up fundraising next year.
“Debbie is one of the strongest women I know,” Tomas said. “It’s literally been almost a decade and she’s still fighting and still getting involved.”
‘Not anti-police’
The friends and families of 17 people who were killed in Bexar County by police gathered last month for the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. The Marquise Jones Foundation and ACT 4 SA organized the memorial and protest.
Bush brought the same passion to her speech that she brought nearly 10 years ago, clearly dismayed that more names have been added to the list of people who have died at the hands of police.
“Now I’m angry just standing here listening to these family members and my sister bawl their eyes out because they lost their loved one to this city,” Bush told the crowd.
While she’s still very much an activist, she hopes the foundation can foster dialogue between the community, law enforcement and the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office.
She’s willing to put aside her own conflict with those institutions to move toward change, Bush said. “It’s not about me. It’s about the community. And unless I put my feelings aside, nothing is going to get solved.
“I’m anti-police brutality, but I’m not anti-police.”
She also hopes the foundation can elevate the stories of those who have died.
She thinks the portrayal by police and media of shootings by law enforcement often highlight the criminal records and drug use of those who were killed, leading people to believe “this person deserved what they got.”
Jones’ mother, Cheryl Jones, doesn’t want to talk to reporters anymore, Bush said.
Her nephew’s autopsy showed the presence of alcohol and cocaine, Bush said, but he was also a father who was passionate about music, made his whole family laugh and was considering joining the military.
“So much bad was said about Marquise,” Bush said. “I wanted to create something that was good, because Marquise was a loving person.”
‘This happened right here’
Encina, the officer who shot Jones, didn’t have a perfect past either, she pointed out. He was suspended for 45 days in 2010 for starting a fight with Black patrons of a restaurant while off-duty working security.
Jones was shot in the back by Encina, who was again working security at a restaurant. At the time, Encina said he feared for his life because Jones was carrying a gun as he ran from the scene of a fender-bender near the restaurant drive-thru. A gun was found near Jones. Encina later admitted in court during the wrongful death lawsuit that Jones did not point a gun at him. Bush contends that the gun found near Jones’ body after he was shot was not his.
“To our knowledge, there exists no evidence of any tampering or deliberate withholding of information by any officer within the chain of custody of the handgun involved in the shooting of Mr. Jones,” city officials wrote in a 2017 memo regarding the case.
Because Encina was off duty, there was no body camera video to review.
“There was nothing showing what happened to Marquise,” she said.
Unlike the case of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis.
“I was so livid” when so many people took to the street in San Antonio for Floyd, but not for her nephew, Bush said, “because you’re fighting for someone in a whole ‘nother state, a whole ‘nother city. … This happened right here.”
The momentum from that civil uprising in 2020 did lead to a review of Jones’ case by District Attorney Joe Gonzales’ newly created Civil Rights Division. That review was closed in early 2021, and the DA’s office declined to present a case against Encina to a grand jury again.
Nationally, shootings by police are resulting in more criminal charges being brought, but prosecutions are still relatively rare. In 2021, 21 U.S. police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter stemming from an on-duty shooting, the highest in a single year, according to a database at Bowling Green State University. That’s up from 16 officers in 2020 and 12 in 2019.
Bush was heartened by the swift arrest of the three officers who shot and killed a woman experiencing a mental health crisis earlier this year.
She said she’ll continue fighting on Jones’ behalf “until my last breath. Now I stand in grievance with other families. I will advocate for them.”
