In the summer of 2012, Shantel Davis was shot and killed at the hands of the New York Police Department in her own neighborhood, but her killers were never charged for their crimes. Now over a decade later, Davis’s sister, Natasha Duncan, is working to push Community Board 17 in Flatbush to move forward with a street renaming campaign in honor of her sister — but their efforts have been stonewalled by a longstanding campaign by the NYPD and its allies to attack Davis’s character and absolve the officer who killed her.
On the afternoon of Davis’s killing, local news had already begun circulating a false narrative. Reports described a “37-year-old woman” involved in a high-speed police chase, displaying a photo of a woman face-down, bleeding on the street. Officer Phil Atkins, nicknamed “Bad Boy Atkins” and known for his repeated use of excessive force, had dragged her out of the vehicle and shot her in the chest.
For hours, Davis’s family did not realize the woman in the photo — surrounded by a crowd of community members — was their 23-year-old loved one. It wasn’t until the next day when the morgue allowed them to see her body.
The media lost no time in assassinating her character, just days later calling her a “thug,” “witchy woman,” and accusing her of driving a stolen vehicle. The NYPD also illegally leaked sealed information about her arrest history to news outlets. This often happens: victims are scrutinized for their alleged history of criminal activity in an attempt to justify police violence—as in the cases of George Floyd and Eric Garner. And yet we see police indiscriminately dealing death across the country, regardless of innocence: we remember Breonna Taylor who was sleeping soundly in her room, and 16-year-old Kimani Gray, killed by cops in Flatbush who accused him of pulling a gun which no one except the police seemed to have seen. In the first three months of 2025, more than 250 people have been killed by police in the United States — an increase since last year.
“People will be like, ‘Oh, I heard her parents were in prison,’ but we have the same parents,” Duncan said. “That doesn’t mean she had to be killed. They Google her story and see the mugshot, and that’s all she is [to them].”
But Duncan remembers a far different picture of her sister. As a young aunt, Davis was a close mentor to her sister’s children: “She was the best aunt to my kids,” said Duncan, recalling how her sister never forgot their birthdays and organized neighborhood basketball tournaments to mentor them. “Every time [my son and I] had a disagreement, he would run to Shantel. I’d get a call from her saying, ‘He’s with me, I got him.’” She also remembers her passion for cooking for her family. “[My sisters] would battle out on Thanksgiving over who would make the best macaroni,” she says. Duncan laughed and whispered as she admitted, “Shantel definitely did.”
For over a decade, Duncan has been fighting to correct the dehumanizing narrative around Shantel Davis’s life and death. But after years of demanding justice for her sister, she is clear on why her sister’s case isn’t amplified and why the community board continues to waver on the street naming campaign—her sister’s story isn’t “cut and dry.”
A system of brutality
Davis’s story is a tragic piece in a larger system that relies on brutally policing poor and working-class people. In Flatbush, police are a constant presence: people sitting on their stoops may suddenly be interrogated, or have run-ins for minor offenses like jumping turnstiles. The police even illegally pay young high schoolers to stand in a lineup.
“It’s the culture of the neighborhood,” said Duncan. “If you hang outside, you’ll run into the police because that’s how they treat the kids here.”
Under this system, every working-class person is in the police force’s sights. And so the quest for the “perfect police victim” proves to be an impossible one — because there should be no victims. Duncan asserts that regardless of what the media says, nothing justified the police’s actions when they saw pulling the trigger as the only solution that day.
At the time of the killing, “Bad Boy” Atkins had already cost the city over $200,000 in settlements for four of his cases, including illegal arrests, excessive force and falsification of evidence.
This same system continues to fail Shantel Davis. Since beginning to organize and demand justice for her sister, Duncan has watched three District Attorneys come and go: one was exposed for corruption, another campaigned with the support of families of police brutality victims and abandoned them after getting elected; another continues to ignore the needs of the community
“These DAs have to work with police officers every day,” she says. “They can’t say they’re a neutral party— those two things don’t go together. It’s a big circle of everyone working with somebody, and the families of police brutality victims are left by themselves.”
Continuing to uplift Shantel Davis and build community
Duncan continues to work relentlessly to honor her sister by building up her community, raising up her sister’s story and supporting the youth of East Flatbush. “She wanted to do so much,” said Duncan, “and it was snatched away from her so fast.”
As an educator, Duncan’s priority has been to help youth advocate by organizing events such as school supply drives and an annual basketball tournament called Hoops for Justice, echoing the tournaments her sister would lead to mentor young neighbors. Duncan explained, “We need to keep speaking to the younger people . . . We need to show them how to advocate more for what they see as unjust—they don’t have to accept it.”
Despite all obstacles, Natasha Duncan and her community are continuing to push forward in their work to honor the life of Shantel Davis and others with similar stories. The street naming campaign is their next goal, but they hope to transform a system that cuts lives short through needless violence and refuses to protect the working people who make life possible. They are asking for community members to keep an eye out for updates on social media as they continue to apply pressure on Community Board 17, to show up when the next meeting is called and to keep amplifying Shantel Davis’s story. The next Hoops for Justice will be August 2, and Duncan says that the police know not to come around.
Feature image: Natasha Duncan, sister of Shantel Davis, demands justice. Photo used courtesy of Natasha Duncan.
