Justice

"You go down there looking for justice and that's what you find, just us!"

Richard Pryor on the court system.

The justice system is inexplicably tied to the history of black people in the United States. The Greek goddess Themis, the symbol of justice, wears a blindfold, and carries a sword in one hand a scale in the other. It is arguable that justice is hardly blind or balanced. The sword may be the only true symbol of justice because very often justice is used as a weapon and black people have been on the wrong end of it too many times.

Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back, killing him, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last week and not guilty of murder. Has justice been served? Well, as always, it depends on who you ask. Grant's family doesn't think so and neither does Mehserle's defense team.

I remember very well the night of the incident. I was home on New Year's Eve watching all the ceremonies and celebrations when news reports on tv and on the internet started humming about someone being shot and killed by police at the Fruitvale BART station. From the very beginning the so called legitimate media outlets were spinning the story of police dealing with a riot like situation and the shooting being justified. It wasn't until the videos appeared that it became clear that this was no ordinary police shooting. An officer had shot someone in the back at point blank range and there was no "riot", just a lot of angry and shocked citizens who witnessed what they considered to be police brutality that culminated in the shooting of an unarmed man.

Once the videos appeared the media began to shift the focus to Oscar Grant and his background, specifically his criminal background. The media was also the first to introduce the idea that Mersherle may have mistaken his gun for a taser as this was not information that came from Mehserle. He didn't speak to anyone or make any statements for over a week, yet in the immediate hours after the shooting Grant's criminal background and the mistaken-gun-for-a-taser was the story the media was running with. It seems to me the media was taking the position that Oscar Grant was dangerous, but because he was unarmed the shooting had to be a mistake or an accident.

A line in the sand was being drawn. In the public commenting sections of the internet Mehserle was getting a lot of support from people who saw Grant not as a victim but as a thug who got what he deserved. He had a criminal record and he was allegedly resisting arrest, even though the many videos show the police in complete control of the situation. The flip side was the public outrage brought on by the videos showing Mehserle shooting Grant in the back. There are clearly those who see the police as the good guys and those who see them as the bad guys but they represent the extremes. For most people it's situational or it's based on personal experience. Black people for sure have a specific view given our history with law enforcement.

I have experienced hostile police behavior directed at me just because I am black. In my early adult years I was stopped often by the police for "DWB", driving while black even though I have a spotless record and have never committed a crime. When I was stopped it wasn't for suspicion of a crime, it was just a "phishing" expedition. They would run my plates and my license to see if any warrants came up. Usually I would be sitting on the curb in the flood of patrol car headlights where I was clearly visible to anyone driving by, looking like I was being arrested for committing a crime, but in the end I was always let go because they had nothing on me. That still didn't stop officers from getting up in my face and calling me names and trying to get me to do something I would regret. If I was stopped in a "nice" neighborhood the police's first question was always, "what are you doing here?" I remember running out of gas in Glendale, California late one night. I was 17 and wearing my letterman's jacket, walking and carrying a 5 gallon gas tank. The police stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I hesitated, looked at the gas tank and then looked at them and said what I thought was completely obvious, I had run out of gas. They asked me where I ran out of gas and what I was doing in Glendale. I told them the truth, I had been at a party celebrating our football team winning a playoff game. They took a closer look at my jacket and saw it was from St. Francis, a nearly all white, football worshipping, catholic school. They let me go. When I asked for a ride to the nearest gas station they just ignored me and drove off. Some years later I was leaving a club with my friend Joey Kraut, who is white, and we were pulled over by the cops as soon as we left the parking lot. We were in Joey's 1965 powder blue VW van and he was driving but when we were pulled over I was the one who was harassed. It was the classic good cop/bad cop routine. The one cop asking Joey for his license and registration was being very polite but the other cop came to the passenger side and started busting my balls ordering me in a drill sergeant voice to put my hands on the dashboard and then ordering me out of the vehicle. There I was again sitting on the curb with the headlights shining on me. Lucky for me Joey's father was a sergeant with LAPD. Joey handed them his father's card. The one officer went back to his car and got on the radio. A few minutes later he came back and apologized and said we were free to go. Never at any time did the officers say why they stopped us. Joey felt bad for me and he was more pissed off than I was. I think it was the first time he had seen this type of harassment.

That is not uncommon when my friends who are white witness blatant racism against me. They get angrier than I do and it is only because for them it is a reality they don't live with and rarely encounter so they are not used to it, but for me, it is a reality that is constant. One could even say it is a rite of passage for any young black man in America, to be harassed by law enforcement. I joke with my friends and tell them that I started riding bicycles because I was tired of being stopped and questioned by the gestapo. Of course that is not the reason but it has been a nice by product. Until they actually see it happen, many white people just don't get it and some feel that a black person's suspicion of law enforcement is just paranoia. Sometimes it is just paranoia but most of the time it's just how law enforcement sees black people. We are seen as a threat and in their minds it is their job to neutralize the threat.

I don't know Johannes Mehserle but like many white police officers I would bet money that he lives in a community that has very few black people and that a majority of his experience with black people was through his job as a police officer. I would bet money he has never had a black friend. These are all huge assumptions that I am making and I could be totally wrong but I am going out on a limb here to say I think many law enforcement people have negative opinions about black people and I think it affects the way they do their jobs. I think it goes back decades to when a large part of the police's job was to enforce segregation laws and to keep black people confined to their place designated by segregation, whether it be actual laws on the books or local custom. It was once the domain of the police to keep black people confined to their side of the tracks but that domain was not undisputed. During the period of lynchings mobs would overrun police stations to get at black suspects and would threaten the lives of any police officer who tried to stop them. Some were killed but most would step aside and let it happen. It was endemic that the evolution of law enforcement would be shaped by this. The public's message was you (the police) keep the black people in line or we, the lynching public will.

Of course this is all made possible by our court system. Where the police are tools, the court is the weapon. It is a system that can be wielded and manipulated. There was a time when white people could blatantly commit assault and murder against black people without fear of prosecution or arrest. The case of Emmitt Till and the Birmingham church bombings are classic examples. When these atrocities occurred everyone in the communities knew who did it but the local law enforcement and the courts wouldn't even bother trying to prosecute because they knew all white juries would not convict a white person for killing a black person, even if it was a child. It was only through the petitioning of the federal government that this changed, thus invoking the battle between the federal govt. and state's rights. It is almost ironic that the greatest victories for black people in the United States has been through the court system. Plessy v Ferguson was the first attempt to topple legal segregation back in 1896 and although it did not end segregation it did introduce the concept of "separate but equal" which at the time was considered progress. Over 50 years later the victory would be won in the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education case which ended legal segregation with constitutional amendments. Neither case was an accident. They were both organized and planned to bring cases to court that would end segregation and bring equality, at least on paper, to black people.

Here we are in 2010 with what could be called Grant v Mehserle. It is the kind of case for the greater community to use a gauge as to where we stand now, the verdict and public reaction acting as barometers measuring our progress, or lack of, in relationships between black and white people, and black people and institutions. Back in the 90's we had the Rodney King beating caught on video. The video is key as it is the "witness" that is needed to move the non believers. The Civil Rights movement became a real movement in 1961 when the Freedom Riders were attacked in Alabama, their busses lit on fire by mobs with the backing of local law enforcement. The intent was not to scare but to kill. It made the front page of newspapers worldwide and the international press saw it for what it was, straight up terrorism. How could the United States be the leader of the free world if they let this happen within their own borders? What moral high ground was there to stand on when citizens exercising their rights are violently attempted to be murdered under the authority of law enforcement? The international press "bore witness" and it changed forever the course of the Civil Rights movement and the United States. In the Oscar Grant case cell phone videos provided "witness". Without the video I am completely convinced that Mehserle would not only be free, he probably would have never gone to trial. Rodney King had video of his beating and the officers still walked and people wonder why there was rioting.

So what happened that night at the Fruitvale BART station? Oscar Grant and a few others were taking off the train by BART officers because of a report of fighting. Not for assault, but for fighting. The officers had sufficient number to handle the situation and though there were some local and agitated onlookers nobody was making any attempts to interfere with the BART officers. Grant was on his stomach with Mehserle on his back and another officer with his foot on Grant's neck. Grant was unarmed. Mehserle rose up, pulled his firearm, aimed, and shot Grant in the back, causing his death. In his trial Mehserle claims he was attempting to use a taser on Grant. My question is, if he meant to taze Grant why did he draw his gun instead? Why didn't he draw the taser? He is a trained law enforcement officer. From the moment he drew his gun he had opportunity to realize he was holding a gun and not a tazer. Why did Mehserle draw his gun? Who knows? Only he knows. The fact is he drew his gun and killed Oscar Grant. Do we need to know why? No, because it won't bring back Oscar Grant. Should Mehserle be held accountable? Yes he should because homicide is a crime. He killed someone. Those are the facts. What he meant to do, that is a debate that can never be solved. In the court of law can we be allowed to walk if we didn't mean to do what we did? Or do we prosecute people for what they actually do?

Mehserle put on a badge and carried a gun and it was his responsibility to act within certain guidelines for the use of his weapon. He did not. Drawing the gun by mistake is one thing but drawing it, aiming it, and pulling the trigger is a conscious act not a mistake. Only Mehserle knows what was going on in his head at the time but what we all know is he drew his weapon and shot and killed Oscar Grant, that is a fact. The court system operates on facts and those are the only facts in this case. He was in control of himself in a rational state when he pulled the gun and shot Oscar Grant. He had other choices available to him but pulling his gun and shooting it was the choice he made, now he has to pay the price for that. He has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The jury didn't buy the taser defense. Should they have? I wasn't a juror at the trial but in my following of the shooting from the day it happened through the trial I never heard any satisfactory explanation of why he drew the gun and not the taser. I'm not buying that he thought the gun was a taser. He's a trained professional. If Mehserle was found not guilty it would give rise to a new defense precedent in court, the "I meant to" defense. In my opinion, in the court of law, what we mean to do is outweighed by what we actually do. Trials are for what actually happens and in this case one man shot another unarmed man in the back, that is what actually happened. Oscar Grant may have had a criminal record but as far as we know he never hurt anybody. He didn't commit violent crimes. Nobody has come forward during this media saturated trial to say that Oscar Grant had raped, robbed, assaulted, libeled, or slandered them. His offenses were most likely drug related. He did not cause the shooting. He had never taken a life. Johannes Mesherle, on the other hand, has taken a life. He has killed another human being.

Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Mehserle. It was a homicide the jury felt was unjustified but at the same time they were not certain if he intended to kill Grant, that is a big maybe, just as the taser vs gun is a maybe. When we remove the maybes and look at the facts Oscar Grant lies dead, shot in the back by Johannes Mehserle. Whether you think the guilty verdict was just or unjust, that is a window into your own soul. Look deep, look hard.