Sister of officer killed near protest testifies before Congress.
Federal law enforcement officer was killed May 30 near an anti-police protest in Oakland
The sister of Patrick Underwood, the federal law enforcement officer who was killed near an anti-police protest in Oakland, testified Wednesday before Congress, saying she hoped her brother’s death and his legacy will inspire Americans to stop giving in to “anger and hate” and learn to resolve conflicts “with kindness and love.”
“I want America to change. I want you as our representatives in Congress to make a change so that no one ever has to wake up to the phone call I received telling me that my brother was shot dead and murdered,” Angela Underwood Jacobs said about her 53-year-old brother, a Pinole resident, during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on police brutality and social injustice.
“America is in pain and she is crying. Can you hear her?” Underwood Jacobs said to the silenced hearing room. She referred to the “horrendously inhumane way” in which her brother died.
Underwood was fatally wounded May 30 while standing outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building as a protest over the police killing of George Floyd took place several blocks away. Underwood Jacobs said her brother was killed anonymously by “blind violence” and died, taking “his last breath on the cold, hard cement after being shot multiple times.”
Department of Homeland Security officials have called Underwood’s death an act of “domestic terrorism” and said he was targeted by an “assassin.”
“When someone targets a police officer or a police station with an intention to do harm and intimidate, that is an act of domestic terrorism,” said Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the day after Underwood was killed.
The FBI’s San Francisco office has not publicly identified a motive or made any arrests. But officials are trying to determine whether Underwood’s killing is connected with Saturday’s ambush of two sheriff’s deputies in the Santa Cruz mountains, in which one, Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, was killed. Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old active-duty Air Force staff sergeant, has been accused in the ambush.
Underwood Jacobs is a former city council member of the Southern California city of Lancaster. A Republican, she also ran for the 25th Congressional District seat in 2020 but withmross@bayareanewsgroup.com
drew before the March 3 primary. Reporters at the Wednesday’s said Republicans sought to highlight her testimony, even as she was one of 12 people invited to speak.
One of the 12 was Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, whose Memorial Day death at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked national protests and calls to end racial prejudice and reform police practices.
“I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain,” Philonise Floyd told the representatives.
In her eight-minute testimony, Underwood Jacobs decried the “cruel,” “reprehensible” and “criminal” way Floyd died.
“Police brutality of any kind must not be condoned,” Underwood Jacobs continued. But she said it also is “blatantly wrong to create an excuse out of discrimination and disparity, to loot and burn our communities, to kill our officers of the law.”
Underwood Jacobs furthermore rebuked calls among activists to defund police.
“It is also a ridiculous solution to proclaim that defunding police departments is a solution to police brutality and discrimination,” she said. “It gets us nowhere as a nation and removes the safety net of protection that every community deserves from its elected officials.”
Underwood Jacobs said she also hoped people would remember how her brother lived. She spoke about his infectious laugh, the corny jokes he told and the way “he would go out of his way to help family, friends and strangers.”
In interviews with this news organization, friends said “Pat” was a star baseball and basketball player at Pinole Valley High and “a real good guy.”
“How my brother died was wrong, and I’m praying we’ve learned something about how he lived,” Underwood Jacobs said. “When our mother fell to the ground and was dying, Patrick picked her lifeless body up as her spirit was leaving to place her upon her bed because that’s how she wanted to die. My question is who will pick up Patrick and carry his legacy?”