The Beginning of Justice

I remember living in Long Beach, CA in March 1991, when four Los Angeles white police officers brutally attacked an unarmed black man after apprehending him following a police chase. That police routinely used excessive force on black and brown people, regardless of why they were being stopped; sometimes being stopped for frivolous reasons is nothing new.

Remember, the first police forces were organized to capture runaway Africans who had been enslaved by wealthy white landowners in the South, well before the organization in Boston that history books falsely claim was the first police department. Many of the lynchings of black men in the South were given tacit approval and support by police, if not actual involvement in planning them. 

Indeed, it should be no surprise to discover how many police officers from different departments were part of the coup in January of this year,  the largest display of white supremacist muscle-flexing in decades. 

But that March in 1991, something was different. As four white cops brutally beat King, someone filmed it. George Holliday filmed the beating and sent it to local news station KTLA.

When I saw the coverage and the ensuing outrage felt around the world I felt a sort of vicious victoriousness. That’s it! I thought fiercely. Finally, there’s evidence! They’ll have to convict now. Even LAPD Chief Daryl Gates said his officers had used excessive force. 

I should have known better, and I would have known better if my skin were darker-hued. The defense had the trial moved to pre-dominantly Simi Valley, a city that was a gated community. There three officers were acquitted, and the charges dropped against the 4^th.

Living so close to where this brutal crime of injustice took place, I felt the rage and despair being channeled through protests, riots, and fiery demands for police reform. Buildings were burning, people were in the street. Martin Luther King’s words rang true: A riot is the language of the unheard.

Evidence, it appears, has nothing to do in convicting white police officers or self-appointed vigilantes 

In fact, according to an organization called Mapping PoliceViolence, in 2015 police killed 104 unarmed Black people. Of those, only 13 of those cases resulted in charges being filed. Four of those cases ended in a mistrial or dropped charges.

In four of the cases in which there were convictions, none of the sentences exceeded four years, and some served as little as three months or were allowed to serve their time in jail just on the weekends. 

Today, after 10 hours in deliberation, the jury delivered their decision: guilty on all three counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter; the most serious charge carries up to 40 years in prison. When I heard the news, I spontaneously burst into tears. 

I can’t even imagine how it feels to be someone from the BIPOC communities, how it feels for George Floyd’s family, for the families of all who have had loved ones murdered at the hands of the police who did not receive justice.

Thirty years after Rodney King was denied justice, despite concrete evidence of abuse, justice for George Floyd has, at least,  been initiated; it has not yet been served. Chauviin won’t be sentenced until June; he will remain in police custody until then. The severity of his sentence will be an indication of how seriously our country is willing to take such egegregious acts of violence on unarmed members of our communities.

Beyond this specific case, justice still waits to be served. Since the murder of George Floyd last May, Mapping Police Violence has cited 181 deaths ofAfrican Americans at the hands of police, including unarmed 20-year-old Daunte Wright shot and killed in Minneapolis while Chauvin’s trial was ongoing.  

There is cause to celebrate today’s verdict; over 400 hundred years after Africans were stolen from their homes and enslaved by white colonists, justice has been initiated. Yet the fact that there will be global celebrations for a single verdict tells us the problem remains; there is still so much more work to do.

There need to be sweeping police reforms across the nation, police oversight committees established to independently investigate incidences of police brutality; there needs to be a federal commission that addresses the cumulative crimes about the BIPOC communities and establishes ways to seek conciliation. For more information, I invite you to check out Truth and Conciliation, sign the pledge, decide to be a part of the solution rather than the problem.