First published April 28, 2021.
In April 2021, Deon Joseph, a veteran Los Angeles police officer known for his long service on Skid Row, published an open letter to LeBron James. He wrote it after James posted, and then deleted, a tweet aimed at the Columbus, Ohio, officer who had shot 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant. Joseph's message was not an attack. He criticised the tweet sharply, but his central request was simple: sit down with a police officer, privately, and talk.
The exchange became one of the more widely shared moments in a tense spring for American policing. Below is the background to the tweet, what Joseph's letter said, who he is, and what investigators and a grand jury later concluded about the shooting itself.
The shooting and the deleted tweet
On 20 April 2021, Columbus police were called to a disturbance at a foster home on the city's south-east side. Seconds after arriving, Officer Nicholas Reardon fired four shots at Ma'Khia Bryant, a Black 16-year-old who lived at the home, as she swung a knife at a young woman in the driveway. Bryant died of her wounds. The shooting happened on the same day a Minneapolis jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, a verdict James had greeted with a one-word post calling for accountability.
The next day, 21 April, James tweeted a photo of Reardon with the caption "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY" and an hourglass emoji. Critics read the post as a threat that put a named officer in danger. Amid a fierce backlash, James deleted it. In follow-up posts, as ESPN reported, he said he had removed it because people were using it to stir up more hate, that his anger was about the whole system rather than one officer, and that he still wanted accountability.
What Deon Joseph's letter said
Joseph opened by promising there would be no insults. He praised James's charity work, especially for children, called him a family man, and mentioned that his own family had supported the Los Angeles Lakers for decades. Then he turned to the tweet.
In his view, the post was irresponsible. He argued that the Ohio officer had made a split-second decision to stop what looked like a deadly attack on another girl, a decision Joseph believed any officer would wish never to face, especially with someone so young. He also rejected James's explanation for deleting the tweet, saying it should have come with an apology.
The heart of the letter was an attempt to find common ground. Joseph wrote: "You are tired of Black folks dying? So am I." He said he, too, opposes racism and police brutality, but asked James not to judge the hundreds of thousands of American officers, people of every background, faith and family role, by the worst cases. He suggested that a real, honest conversation with a police officer might change James's view, and said he would respect him even if it did not.
The invitation was deliberately low-key: "No cameras. No fanfare. Just two men who care talking." Joseph admitted it was a long shot and closed by encouraging James, if not with him, to talk with some officer before passing judgement. No public reply from James to the letter was reported.
Who is Deon Joseph?
Joseph was not a random voice in the debate. By 2014, NPR reported, he had spent 17 years patrolling Skid Row, the downtown Los Angeles district with one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the United States, and served there as senior lead officer.
He grew up in South Los Angeles, where, he has said, he was raised to distrust police. His parents fostered more than 40 children. On Skid Row he became known for a community-policing approach that treats arrest as a last resort and tries to connect people with housing and mental health care. He has been openly critical of local leaders for neglecting the area, and staff at local shelters have described him as an officer who earned unusual trust among residents.
Video: a profile of Officer Deon Joseph, "Behind the Badge", published by the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
That background helps explain the tone of the letter. It reads less like a defence of one officer and more like a plea from someone who has spent a career in a poor, mostly Black and Latino neighbourhood, and who believes police and communities need each other.
What investigators later found
The shooting was investigated independently by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the case was handled by special prosecutors because the Franklin County prosecutor's office had a potential conflict of interest: it advises the county children's services agency responsible for Bryant's foster placement.
In March 2022, a Franklin County grand jury declined to indict Reardon. Under Ohio law, as under US constitutional standards, an officer may use deadly force when there is an immediate threat of death or serious injury to another person. Body-camera footage released by Columbus police shortly after the shooting showed Bryant lunging at another girl with a knife as Reardon fired. Bryant's family and supporters questioned whether other options could have been used, and the city said it would review whether its policies had been followed.
Why the exchange still resonates
The episode captured a recurring problem in public arguments about policing. A celebrity's short post can reach millions of people within minutes and put an individual's safety at risk, while the facts of the incident take months to establish. At the same time, the anger behind the post was real, rooted in a long list of deaths at the hands of police that many Americans felt had gone unanswered.
Joseph's letter did not resolve any of that, and it was never meant to. Its value lay in the method it proposed: talk before you judge, and listen to the other side even if you end up disagreeing. Whatever readers think of James, the officer in Columbus or the wider debate, that is advice that works well beyond policing.
For anyone following a fast-moving story like this one, a few habits help: wait for body-camera footage and official findings before drawing firm conclusions, separate what a public figure posted from what happened at the scene, and remember that the officer, the young person who died and the people around them are all real.
Sources: ESPN; NPR; WOSU; Joseph's letter was widely shared online, including by I Heart Intelligence.
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