As the daughter of a former cop, Alex Smith recalls that whenever someone referred to her father as a police officer when she was growing up, he corrected them and said “No, I’m a peace officer.”
“I know what it’s like to kiss my dad goodbye and know that I might not see him,” Smith says. “I know what it’s like to see my dad on TV in a shootout.”
But after her husband, Jason Maccani was fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in Skid Row during a mental health crisis when he approached officers while holding a white plastic fork last February, Smith began rethinking everything she grew up believing about police officers.
“The same institution that he was murdered by is the same institution that he was married into,” she said. “If this is something that can happen to a cop's daughter, this can happen to anyone.”
A week later, Smith went from planning her future with her husband, to planning a funeral.