right now at this defining moment in america, with so much on the line, from abc news "my america, your america, our america." this is "turning point." tonight, a call for help. walter wallace jr. father. husband. gunned down during a mental health crisis by police who were called to the scene. >> put the knife down now! >> a black person with a weapon is going to get no grace, no mercy. >> his death the latest rallying cry. >> say his name! >> walter wallace! >> tonight we confront the police commissioner. >> can you understand their emotion? >> i'm a parent. i couldn't imagine what it would

be like to lose a child. >> and the family's call for justice. the one weapon they say all officers need to have. >> if tasers had around, he would very likely be alive. >> this "turning point" special," a call for help," will be right back. past. they release a lot of scent at first but after a while, you barely know they're working. new febreze fade defy plug works differently. it's the first plug-in with built-in technology to digitally control how much scent is released to smell 1st day fresh for 50 days. it even tells you when it's ready to be refilled. upgrade to febreze fade defy plug.

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60-second encounter with police in philadelphia. tonight, for the first time, intimate conversations with his family. and we go in depth with the police commissioner on how this shooting revealed so many flaws in our system. how we handle race, mental health, and mepolicing. we warn you, some of the images you are about to see are disturbing and graphic. ♪ here comes the bride ♪ >> all rise, please. i here now pronounce you husband and wife. you may kiss your wife, congratulations. >> reporter: dominique and walter wallace jr.'s wedding day last october sealed a love story years in the making. >> and you were pregnant at the time, how far along were you? >> any day now. >> reporter: mr. and mrs. wallace were already parenting four kids together. >> what did you think your future was going to look like? >> still being with our kids as

a whole family. >> happily ever after? >> yeah. >> reporter: less than a month after wedded bliss, walter wallace jr. was shot by police while in the midst of a mental health crisis. >> put the knife down now! >> reporter: walter's family had called 911 for help. officers encountering walter holding a knife. that's his mother frantically trying to protect her son. >> ma'am, back off! put the knife down! >> reporter: killed less than 60 seconds after police arrive. [ shots fired ] [ screaming ] >> when they took his life, my life was tooken too. >> say his name! >> walter wallace! >> reporter: walter's death became a rallying cry. >> think about how a call for help ends up as part of a death sequence, is chilling. >> reporter: tonight we examine the intersection of policing and mental health with the wallace family telling their full story

for the first time. >> they murdered him. >> reporter: and the philadelphia police commissioner on what went wrong. >> put the knife down! >> reporter: in those 60 seconds. and what, if anything, can be done to fix the system. >> i have absolutely no issue withholding officers accountable and holding myself accountable. >> west philly is where you find generations of black working-class, working poor people. there's a long history of tension and violence between philadelphia police and the black community. >> reporter: west philadelphia is where 27-year-old walter wallace jr. grew up. his dad, walter sr., a proud sanitation worker. his mom, kathy, hands full with walter and three was he? > a normal son, he was a pain in my behind a lot of times. i'm going to keep it real, know what i mean? >> kathy, when you close your eyes, what memories of him come to mind?

>> he sang rap. ♪ you got yours i got mine ♪ >> reporter: walter struggled with mental illness as early as 6 years old, eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. >> he was on lithium? >> yes, adderall. >> 12, 13 different types of medicine. >> you'd been through the wringer? >> yeah. >> reporter: walter's emotions they say sometimes led him to act out in violence ways. he'd faced trouble with the law, serving time in jail in 2017. his father says he was a devoted dad who after a series of odd jobs found steady work during the pandemic as a door dash driver. walter's dream was to make it big with his music. ♪ we bros trying to get things right y'all ♪ >> reporter: ironically calling out policing and george floyd's death in his song "black heartache." >> a hard pill to swallow, you know what i mean?

thinking about my kids burying me, and i have to bury my kid. it's like -- like the devil's riding over your back. >> reporter: it was a day brimming with hope for dominique and walter. >> i was supposed to give birth that day. >> that was your due date? >> yeah. >> reporter: walter had gone to his parents' house after his car had gone missing days earlier, a devastating blow. >> he had gone around looking for his car, because that's where his income came from. >> becaus he's a door dash driver, so he's lost his livelihood. >> yeah. >> reporter: when dominique and walter reported his car missing, she says the police laughed at them. walter's family says he was triggered into a mental health crisis. >> police, how may i help you? >> my brother, they called the cops earlier and the cops aren't doing nothing. >> any weapons involved? >> no, but he on probation, he

got a case for being violent, he got a whole record. >> we'll help them out, stay on line for medics, okay? >> we was arguing, not fighting. >> i was trying to chase them and i fell. >> philadelphia police 074. >> my mom, my mom need help. >> why were you chasing him? >> sometime he acts real crazy at times, so i wanted to act up. >> he was on leave for psychiatric help. >> reporter: his wife had been called to the house to help calm walter home. >> i'm telling him, we need to go home, i don't want to deal with the police, you don't want to deal with the police. >> reporter: they had reason to worry. reports have shown people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter. >> officers use caution responding, this is an ongoing domestic issue. >> what's going on? >> he came outside. he had the knife in his hand.

>> put the knife down now! put the knife down now! >> reporter: after arriving, within 15 seconds, you can clearly hear his wife shouting more than once, "he's mental." what were you trying to communicate to the officers? >> he needs help. in that moment, it just is like, y'all adding fuel to the fire. >> back off, back off, back off! >> i grab him. but he swung me out of the way. >> reporter: not only were police body cams capturing the incident, neighbors were recording. >> put the knife down! >> did they spend a lot of time talking to him? >> no. >> didn't say nothing. [ shots ] >> then like, whoa! when they shot him, he was going down, they still was opening up on him, you know what i mean? >> and he just fell. >> that was it. nufterhey arredaltede.

two officers fired 14 rounds, 10 bullets striking walt walter. >> they had it set in their mind to crucify my son. that's exactly what they did. you're supposed to come and help. help didn't come like the help we needed. [ screaming ] >> you killed my son! you killed my son! >> stop, stop, back up -- >> you killed my son! >> stop! >> what the hell y'all just do? my body going through shock. i'm shaking. >> reporter: robert gonzales has spent his career studying these interactions, helping change training techniques at the nypd after eric garner's death. >> he doesn't appear to be lunging at anyone. he doesn't lunge at the police officers. he's walking around, clearly he's agitated. both officers are yelling at him to put down the knife.

>> reporter: gonzales says the problem with walter's case began at the 911 call. >> the systems the 911 dispatcher that the suspect has a record. was it a criminal record? was it a medical record? it was the 911 dispatcher, in my opinion, who failed to ask the right questions so that the police officers can be armed on how to deal with this particular situation. >> put the knife down! put the knife down! >> reporter: in addition to being ill informed, the officers were ill equipped. in philadelphia most officers are not issued less-lethal forms of force like a taser. gonzales says the only option they could use to disarm him at that point was their gun. >> i believe when he failed to comply, after maybe the sixth or seventh attempt, they realized he was never going to drop the knife. then you need to use deadly physical force. in my opinion, this was a just fight shooting. me personally, i probably wouldn't have discharged my firearm. if the officers had continued to maintain the zone of safety, if they would have requested

additional backup, where someone who responded might have had a taser, and then perhaps that would have saved a life in this situation. >> there are many things that made walter wallace more vulnerable to the type of violence he experienced. being black does this. being male does this. struggling with mental illness does this. living in a neighborhood that is considered high crime or high risk does this. >> reporter: for the wallace family, the pain is present in many ways. >> i cry every night. i cry every night without my son. >> i regret myself. i should have jumped in front of him, took the bullets, know what i mean? i froze. >> that moment haunts you? >> haunt me the rest of my life. when we come back, tough questions for philadelphia's police commissioner. >> when y video, what went wrong that day? >> and we go inside a heated

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>> for every george floyd, there are literal dozens ofr: for eac, a family left behind, fighting for change. eric garner's family battling to ban police chokeholds. breonna taylor's mom rallying against no-knock warrants. for walter wallace's family, it's about tasers and changing how police respond to mental health. shortly after the shooting, the family enlists the help of attorney shaka johnson, a former philadelphia police officer himself. >> when you hear "mental health challenge," you wonder why deadly force, when dealing with someone who is having a crisis. >> this narrative, that oh, he has a criminal record, he was armed and dangerous. >> right. >> what do you make of that description? >> when it is someone killed at the hands of police, we engage in victim blaming almost immediately. we don't go into that level of

inquiry as it relates to the officers. >> reporter: the wallace family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the two officers, sean mazzerato and thomas munz. the officers' attorney said in a statement both sides are discussing a mutually satisfactory resolution, but they could still face criminal charges. both officers have been placed on restrictive duty pending investigations by internal affairs and the district attorney. >> when you look at that video what went wrong? >> i'm not in a position to say what went wrong. i think there was an assumption that we knew that he was experiencing some form of crisis. when we responded. we didn't. >> i'm here to listen. >> reporter: after walter was killed, the philadelphia police commissioner, danielle outlaw, met with walter's family. >> put the knife down now! >> reporter: nine days later, they released the body-worn camera video of the fatal shooting, a first in the department's history. >> put the knife down! >> it didn't do us any good to hold on to that information,

because it appeared as though we were trying to hide something, and we weren't. >> reporter: outlaw has built her career on reform. on this day, she showed us their new crisis intervention training, something the officers in the walter wallace case didn't receive. >> so you introduce stress so that you can take what you learned in the classroom into the real world? >> yeah. >> reporter: in this scenario police respond to a domestic dispute. >> my husband is acting a little off. >> anyone else in the bedroom? >> no, just him. >> who are you guys? get out of my house! go! >> reporter: the man has a knife. >> get out of here! >> reporter: the police draw their weapons but try to talk to him. >> get out of here! >> just want to help you, man. >> they got all the information they need, they communicated over the radio. what that does is communicate as much information as they possibly can to allow additional backup to arrive. >> let me get a supervisor and co-responder out to this location, please.

>> philadelphia police department. >> reporter: in addition to stepping up implicit bias training -- >> black, asian, hispanic? >> reporter: outlaw changed 911 dispatcher training. adding questions to reveal mental health episodes. >> there's no cookie-cutter response. the best outcome is that everyone walks away safe. if someone's in crisis, they get the services that they need. that is ultimately not a police matter. >> reporter: the wallace family says training alone isn't the answer. officers need to have the right tools. >> if tasers had been around, if those officers had been taser trained and certified, he would very likely be alive. >> reporter: the justice department recommended six years ago that all philadelphia officers be equipped with less-lethal options like tasers. >> walter wallace's family was very adamant that they requested that all officers be given tasers. and there's a real sense that they've been let down.

>> well, i have made the request. it costs approximately $14 million over a period of five years to get everyone in patrol, at least, outfitted with tasers. all budgets are approved by the city council, and the budget has not yet been ultimately approved. >> reporter: outlaw says that reform is costly. but the family believes inaction costs even more. >> justice needs to be served and them cops need to be locked up for what they did to him. >> you think the officers should be investigated, if not charged? >> charged, that's right. do it. >> walter wallace's family, his father, his mother, told me point blank, we think that the officers should be behind bars. >> that's a comment and a question for the district attorney. >> can you understand their emotion on that? >> they're entitled to that emotion. i'm a parent. i couldn't imagine what it would

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batteries and first aid kit are a good start ♪ just two days after watching her husband die, dominique gave birth to their daughter, ashauna, a name walter had chosen. >> i saw a marriage certificate, then i saw a death certificate, then i saw a birth certificate. >> the first time i can talk about it without even crying. >> doing everything you can to hold it back. >> i got to be strong for my kids. but who will be strong for me? i can't do it. >> long live walter wallace!

carry on as her husband would - have wanted, her community. >> a lot of people i don't even know just been here for me since october 26th. this is just a day of gratitude by everybody. >> and that's "nightline" for tonight. you can watch all of our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here, same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.