Fort Worth attorney will walk 200 miles to deliver police reform ideas to Gov. Abbott
Before her death in April, Fort Worth attorney Leon Reed and his mother used to talk about America.
“She loved America,” Reed said. “And I think she loved more, what America was meant to be.”
His mother grew up in southern Mississippi during hard times, “times that I wouldn’t have wanted to live in quite frankly,” said Reed, who has practiced criminal law for 16 years.
His mother’s dream for America is part of the reason he intends to walk the 200 miles to Austin to deliver a thumb drive to Gov. Greg Abbott filled with Fort Worth police operational data that could help reform the state’s criminal justice system. He will also deliver a letter to Abbott containing his personal information and information about his police reform ideas, Reed said.
“I wanted America to be what she believed it could be,” Reed said.
The walk frightens him, Reed said. It is an unknown and there are risks.
A former U.S. Marine Corps serviceman, Reed will make his walk in August. While he has read of slaves and prisoners of war who have made longer walks in pursuit of freedom, Reed said those stories are far removed from his life experience.
These are the stories he used for motivation, Reed said. Slaves or prisoners of war forced to march long distances by their captors under the worst of conditions did not possess the technology that he will be using during his walk.
“I don’t think it will be easy. I don’t think it will be a simple endeavor,” Reed said. “I didn’t realize until a friend said it — ‘You will be walking the distance of a marathon a day for eight consecutive days.”’
Reed said he will leave Fort Worth on Sunday morning and expects to arrive in Austin at the end of eight, or maybe nine or 10 days. He said he has not really trained for this. He is also not sure that the governor will meet with him, because he is not exactly sure when he will get there. But Reed promises he is coming.
Reed said he has arranged to rent a recreational vehicle that he hopes to outfit with equipment to help him recuperate between hikes. The RV, or safety vehicle, will be stocked with food and water and provide a space to rest.
Reed hopes to pass by a mural in honor of Atatiana Jefferson — a Black woman fatally shot by a Fort Worth police officer — Sunday at Evans and Allen avenues and perform some sort of ceremony. All the details have not been worked out.
“I want to put it on the map,” Reed said.
Still, why?
Reed said he has struggled during numerous protests that he has attended over the years, thinking that perhaps he could do more.
He calls his walk an act of civic sacrifice — a step that he is taking on faith in an attempt to draw attention to what is going on in our communities.
“I’ve been tracking police-related data in Fort Worth since 2002, and the numbers have continuously shown that people of color, and particularly African-Americans, are stopped, searched, and arrested in far greater percentages than their respective populations,” said Reed, a Fort Worth native. “Minorities are still being unfairly treated by the police, and this isn’t about a few bad cops – this is about a system that needs a complete overhaul to fundamentally change what police encounters should look like.”
It is Reed’s hope that he will have conversations with people during his walk, and that people will want to walk part of the way with him, and perhaps along the way he will touch one heart.
If one heart is touched, maybe that will be the contribution to the reform effort that Reed needs to make.
You can follow Reed’s walk on his Facebook page.
