“A murder charge and an arrest is a good start — it’s more than we are used to seeing,” S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who is representing Ms. Jefferson’s family, said on Monday night. But like many others, he said he was waiting to see how the case was prosecuted.

“Fort Worth has a culture that has allowed this to happen,” he said. “There still needs to be a reckoning.”

In interviews on Monday, community members recited prior episodes with authorities from memory: In 2009, a man with a history of mental illness died after he was Tasered by the Fort Worth police, which his family had called for help. In 2016, a mother called the police to report that a neighbor had choked her young son for littering, but the mother herself ended up getting arrested. In the video-recorded encounter, the mother, Jacqueline Craig, was forced to the ground and placed in handcuffs; her teenage daughters were also detained .

Community activists also cited the seven police shootings since early summer, six of them fatal, including the killing of a man who the police thought was carrying a rifle but was actually pointing a flashlight at officers after barricading himself inside a house.

“We’re beyond anger,” said the Rev. Kyev Tatum, a pastor at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth. “It’s trauma now. It’s unaddressed, toxic stress.”