Eleanor Bumpers was a black grandmother in her sixties when she fell $98 behind in her rent in October 1984. A gang of police showed up to evict her from her Bronx apartment. Bumpers, who according to some accounts was mentally disturbed, was brandishing a kitchen knife, but the police could not manage to disarm a 300 pound, arthritic, elderly grandmother. She was shot to death by officer Stephen Sullivan. Despite the public outcry and criticism from the black community, the press, and Amnesty International, Sullivan was acquitted of an obvious case of police brutality.