Colin Kaepernick unveils program to offer second autopsies in ‘police-related’ deaths

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced his nonprofit organization plans to offer free secondary autopsies to the family members of people whose deaths were “police-related.”

In a statement, Know Your Rights Camp said the services offered through its Autopsy Initiative will include “the completion of a second autopsy, disclosure of preliminary findings, and issuance of the final autopsy report.”

Police-related deaths occur when individuals who are harmed by police officers die as a result, the organization said. Those can include deaths that occur in police custody or deaths that happen during “arrest, pursuit, booking, transport, or incarceration,” the statement said.

“The Initiative is aware that losing a family member due to police-related death is a tragic and heartbreaking experience,” the organization said on its website. “The Initiative seeks to be a resource to victims’ family members by providing confidence in the forensic procedures and comfort in knowing the pathologists will conduct the autopsy with neutrality.”

The program, Kaepernick told The Associated Press, is intended to eliminate concerns about whether the first autopsy conducted on a person is reliable or whether evidence may have been manipulated during the investigation of their death. The second autopsy is also intended to reduce the risk that bias or prejudice of a coroner or medical examiner could affect the way someone’s death is understood to have happened.

“We know that the prison industrial complex, which includes police and policing, strives to protect and serve its interests at all costs,” Kaepernick told The Associated Press. “The Autopsy Initiative is one important step toward ensuring that family members have access to accurate and forensically verifiable information about the cause of death of their loved one in their time of need.”

Kaepernick, a former player for the San Francisco 49ers, first garnered national attention for taking a knee while teammates and fans stood for the national anthem during a preseason game in 2016, McClatchy News reported. Although the 49ers split with Kaepernick in 2017, he remained vocal about racial injustice in the years following. He launched Know Your Rights Camp in 2016 “as a response to the killing of Black people at the hands of law enforcement,” according to a video on the organization’s YouTube page.

This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 10:44 AM with the headline "Colin Kaepernick unveils program to offer second autopsies in ‘police-related’ deaths."