Tomorrow, December 2nd, 2013 Manuel Ramos, ex Fullerton, CA police officer, will go on trial for the murder of Kelly Thomas, a homeless, mentally ill man beaten to death on July 5th, 2011.
It will be the first time in the history of Orange County that an on-duty police officer is being tried for murder. It will be one of the extremely rare times it has occurred in all of California's history. Oscar Grant's killer, Johannes Meserle, was brought up on second degree murder charges, but was convicted only of involuntary manslaughter. Craig Peyer, in a much different type of assault, was convicted of murder in 1988 for the death of Cara Knott in 1986. I know of no other such prosecutions despite the large number of officer-involved shooting deaths that have occurred in California in the last couple of decades.
Thomas' and Grant's cases are related in one key fact: both have stark, uncompromising video that shows exactly what happened and which stirred the public to react.
The myriad other cases that involved police shootings? They also are related in one key fact: none of them have video that shows what happened, or if there is video, it is very blurry, too far away and/or impossible to use to determine what is going on. (Or, as in the case of Ernest Duenez Jr., the video, which shows what most people consider a cold-blooded murder, was withheld from the family and the public until after the decision not to prosecute was made)
On this basis you might think that forensic evidence plays no part in decisions by District Attorneys to prosecute police shootings, and you would be correct. When it comes to police violence, unless there is damning video to the contrary AND massive community outrage, all it takes is for the officer involved to state that he or she feels his or her life was in danger. Case closed.
If all murders in the state of California were prosecuted on the basis of whether or not their was damning video showing the execution, well, suffice to say California would not have a prison overcrowding problem.
The families of the victims of police violence recognize this - as best they can in dealing with such a hard and cruel fact. Jerlaynn Blueford, mother of young Alan Blueford - executed by OPD Office Miguel Masso on May 6th, 2012 - said it well. On October 22nd, 2013 She spoke from her head and her heart in Sacramento, CA where over fifty families of victims of police violence from all over the state and their supporters gathered in solidarity and protest. Listen.
They Don't Care About My Tears. They Don't Care About Your Tears.
In a tragic coincidence, a few hours after Jeralynn spoke those raging, truthful words, Andy Lopez of nearby Santa Rosa, CA was gunned down by yet another law enforcement officer in yet another execution-style killing.
Read the agony in Sujey Lopez, Andy's mother, as she writes to law enforcement agents responsible for Andy's death on Thanksgiving Day.
May the happiness you feel on this special day remain in the memory of every one of you for the rest of your lives.
May this day of thanksgiving be an unforgettable one for all of you, never forgetting my misery and the suffering of my family.
Instead of doing their job, the police abuse their power, cruelly killing people as they did with my son Andy Lopez Cruz, an innocent boy who loved this country and was willing to fight for it. The patriotism my son had for this country did him no good.
You killed him, you servants of the law, in the worst way, not even an animal kills in this way, they usually take time to smell their prey before eating it, but you didn't even give my son time to face you. You murdered him like it was nothing, killed like a bird or raccoon on the side of the road.
Do you not wonder how the family is, how we suffer? Do we sleep? Do we eat ? Do we cry?
Go on and enjoy your dinner while I cry and my children and their father suffer the grief and pain of not having his brother and son. Remember, that you have left much more than an empty chair in this room, and that we no longer can eat, while you meet with all your family members, taking for granted that they are all there with you.
Go on, laugh, drink, while I comfort myself by hugging my son 's ashes, which is what you murderers have left me, on this day of happy thanks given.
They don't and won't care unless they have to care. Nothing will change unless there is a force strong enough to demand change. The strongest movements that I know of against police violence to date - the Oscar Grant protests that resulted in Meserle's indictment and the national outrage over Trayvon Martin's death - haven't been able to effect significant change: police are still killing Bay Area young men with impunity and Stand Your Ground laws remain on the books, stonger than ever.
What change can there be?
It is insane to expect District Attorneys to prosecute police. They depend on the police to arrest criminals, gather evidence against them, and lie on the witness stand to put them away. This work allows District Attorneys to get re-elected. Likewise, the police depend on the District Attorney. Aside from harrassment arrests of protesters to intimidate a crowd and get them off the street there wouldn't be much point in a policeperson arresting someone if they couldn't rely on a District Attorney to prosecute.
UC Irvine law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky said
District attorneys are so loath to investigate and charge the police they work with every day. It's naïve to think that the district attorney is going to be that external oversight for the police."
Furthermore, investigations bya District Attorney's office, when they are done at all, are done by people who were "in the club," maintain string ties to the law enforcement community and who can be expected to give every benefit of the doubt - multiplied by 1000 - to their police colleagues.
A partial solution?
Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York Police Department lieutenant who teaches criminology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY, believes a permanent independent entity would combat many of the conflicts of interest that arise when police and prosecutors are called on to suss out and punish wrongdoing amongst their own. "There are so many issues of accountability with district attorney's offices that a special prosecutor would be better equipped to deal with," O'Donnell said.
...
Professor Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, a national expert on police accountability... believes California's size and large law enforcement community warrants a permanent special prosecutor to handle investigations when police departments and DAs fail to do so. "A special unit in the state Attorney General's office is absolutely called for," Walker said.
After the speeches on October 22nd, those of us present marched to California Attorney General Kamala Harris' office and demanded that she open investigations into the police deaths of the dozens of people killed by police over the years.
Listen as Dan Siegel, noted civil rights attorney and member of the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition, reads a demand letter at the entrance to Kamala Harris' offices that day.
Another aid is to insist that police wear video cameras, have them on when they interact with the public, and punish them if they do not. (Miguel Masso, who killed Alan Blueford, turned his lapel camera off when he started to chase Alan; he has never been disciplined.) Knowing one is on camera will often - but not always - prevent officers from losing control.
Reform will not come easy. It took more than a decade to get a Federal Judge to rule against the abuses of Stop & Frisk in New York City. In California, the fight against the death penalty and indefinite solitary confinement has been going on for decades, both still far from resolved in the sense of banishing those practices. Police forces furiously resist requirements to wear lapel cameras, even though (or perhaps because) they have been shown to reduce citizen complaints.
Making enough people realize that unless police are accountable, investigated in an unbiased way and prosecuted, they become all-powerful in their street kingdoms, able to harass, beat and kill at will, may likewise take decades.
But it is a fight that must be undertaken for the families of the future Kelly Thomases (left), Alan Bluefords, Oscar Grants, Ernest Duenez's and more who will otherwise suffer just as these families are suffering - grieving for their dead loved ones without any prospect of justice.