New Arrests, New Charges: Oakland Community Criminalized for Response to Unsatisfying Verdict

In a two week period in early September, 7 people were killed by police in Washington. Two of those stories especially stand out.

On August 30th, a Seattle cop unleashed 4 shots aimed at John T. Williams. Williams was an indigenous an indigenous totem carver who sold his work at Pike Place Market. He was holding his 3 inch knife and a piece of wood when he was killed. Contrary to the officer’s statement that Williams was lunging at him, witnesses have come forward saying that the victim was not acting aggressive or advancing toward the officer at all.

Only about a week later on September 7th, Nikkolas W. Lookabill was killed by three police officers in Vancouver, Washington. Lookabill was a veteran specialist with the Army National Guard, and had recently returned from a 12 month tour in Iraq in 2009. Reportedly, Lookabill had also recently gone through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment, along with his entire Army unit. Lookabill was holding a handgun, and this seems to be the reason police felt threatened to the point of shooting him somewhere between 6 and 12 times, ending the young man’s life.

One would hope to think that the saddest part of to these stories is that someone’s life was ended. Unfortunately, put in the context of patterns of police brutality, these people were not an exception to the use of violence by police. There are a wide range of issues that connect these abuses, from systemic racism that allows cops to target people and communities of color to the strong connection between veterans dealing with PTSD and interacting with the law (whether as a profession or being arrested or attacked by officers for doing things which could have been seen as very normal during their military service).

Moreover, it is important to recognize abuses of power and authority by law enforcement agents as a regular part of our communities. Both the Evergreen Police Department, and the Olympia Police Department have faced accusations of targeting people and communities of color. The Evergreen cops easily have the capability to take someone’s lives—they didn’t always have guns—and last year they tried to get funding for more advanced weaponry.

While the story below is about Oscar Grant, a victim of police violence in Oakland, California, patterns suggest that it is not unique. Washington’s officers seem to be following similar patterns, and whether in the form of murder or prejudicial targeting of marginalized communities, there is a clear potential for that violence to occur in any of our communities.

Early on New Year’s morning of 2009, a group of young men were pulled off of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train car by a group of police officers responding to a call about a fight. Moments later, Oscar Grant, one of the young men, found himself lying face down on the BART platform with a cop’s knee in his neck. As Grant struggled to breathe under the weight of the 250+ pound officer, he managed to yell out that he was a father.

Without warning, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle stood up, grabbed his firearm, aimed down, and shot Grant point blank. Mehserle’s next action was to handcuff the wounded 22 year old father before calling for any kind of medical assistance. All this was recorded by the cell phones and cameras of numerous BART passengers. Oscar Grant was killed that morning, but the Oakland community will never forget his name.

About a year and a half later on July 8th, for the first time in California’s history an officer was tried for murder. And a completely non-Black LA jury found that Mehserle killed Grant with “criminal negligence”, giving him the charge of involuntary manslaughter. Mehserle’s sentencing will occur in November, but from what I understand at the time of this writing the verdict could mean that Oscar Grant’s killer will serve anywhere from as little as two to fourteen years in jail.

The Oakland community was unsatisfied with the jury’s decision, and immediately following the verdict announcement, the community took to the streets in a showing of passion and rage. As a result of that eveing’s action, new arrests are being made and new charges being brought by the city of Oaklnad. The most recent charges include: Unlawful Assembly, Remaining at the Scene of a Riot, and Rioting. Five people have remained in jail since the July 8th protests, including one who received no charges for over 30 days.

Soon after the protests, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) issued a press release explaining that some of the people arrested were taking “advantage of a chaotic situation by looting Oakland businesses.” While to some extent this appears true, Rachel Lederman of the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild made it very clear that it was the police forces themselves who made the situation chaotic. In a statement, Lederman said that “The aggressive use of police formations, baton beatings and indiscriminate arrests were unnecessary and violated people’s constitutional right to protest. To make things even worse, OPD violated state law by jailing people for long periods of time who had been arrested for very minor offenses.”

In response to the the verdict that day, the community held a powerful and peaceful rally at the downtown corner of 14th Street and Broadway. The city forced organizers to shut down the stage and sound system at 8 pm. A small portion of the thousand-strong crowd chose to leave while most stayed, standing in the streets and discussing, chanting or shouting their frustrations with and hopes for justice.

Less than five minutes later, the OPD announced, “We are declaring this an unlawful assembly.”

Without a permit, those who came to speak out in anger against police brutality and support for the family of Oscar Grant were immediately criminalized. Until that point, the afternoon’s events had been remarkably peaceful. A newly criminalized peaceful protester spoke out over a megaphone, explaining the irony of the police’s approach. “They’ve been talking for weeks [about] how we are going to be allowed to be out here and express our feelings. Well, here we are, and these are our feelings, and they’re going to beat us down and arrest us for doing that.”

A few moments later, the speaker’s fears turned real. Dan Siegel, a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild, described his account of the first gruesome police provocation of the evening. “We’re down at 12th street and all of a sudden the cops start pushing to clear the street… There are some people moving kind of slow, and then they start shoving them, and they shoved her [a nearby legal observer] with a club, they shoved a couple guys, they knocked them down, they took a couple guys down there and arrested them for no absolute reason at all.” From this legal witness, the police action was no joke. Siegel continued, “It’s like they provoked this whole scene. You know, the demonstration is calm. People are demonstrating, they’re speaking out. Some people are just having a good time; but the cops just provoked us by trying to clear this block off.”

After a night of chaotic clashes which left windows broken, dumpsters ablaze and protesters in jail, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums expressed a completely different perception of the police-community interaction that night. A City of Oakland press release from Friday morning explained that Dellums “lauded the efforts of the Oakland Police Department for showing great restraint and respect for people’s civil rights.” At best, what the press release speaks to is a version of events which offered a strong expectation for unrest and violence.

Dellums’ approach, however, juxtaposed with Siegel’s testimony of police provocation in only the first moments after the gathering was declared illegal, shows a great deal of disconnect between the experiences of officials and those in the streets. Clearly, according to Siegel, restraint and respect for civil rights was far from his legal observation. My own experience in the streets that night also suggest that Dellums was far off, leaving community members as well as store fronts unsafe.

Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, after the announcement of the verdict, spoke clearly about the need for jus tice in the face of an unjust system of accountability. “My son was murdered; and the law has not held the officer accountable the way that he should have been held accountable.” Johnson added that she still strives for justice for her son, but the formal justice system as we know it will not support an appropriate level of accountability. “The system will fail us and let us down.”

Lack of organization on all parts after the 8 pm criminalization of the gathering left community members without a place to vent their frustration and anger. On the path toward justice for Oscar Grant, those feelings need to be recognized, respected and coherently organized.

The day after the verdict, a community member shared with me her disappointment in the verdict along with her disappointment with the community reaction to it. “I was mad. Mad about the verdict. Mad about people tearing up my city. Mad about the powerlessness I feel toward it all. Mad about a lot of things I can’t really express… Right or wrong, I guess I just wish there had been a better avenue for venting our collective disappointment.”

Just before he learned there was a verdict, Jack Bryson, the father of Jackie and Nigel Bryson who were on the Fruitvale BART platform with Oscar Grant when he was killed, spoke with me about his understanding of justice for Oscar Grant. Standing outside the LA courthouse, he explained that any version of a guilty verdict (involuntary/voluntary manslaughter or second degree murder) would prove that most police witnesses lied under oath.

For Bryson, the first simple step toward justice is to charge each and every one of them with perjury. Bryson especially focused on the charge for Tony Pirone, the BART cop who was holding Grant down when he was killed and who had yelled the phrase “bitch ass nigger” twice just moments before the shot was fired.

Also as part of that conversation, JR Valrey of Block Report Radio spoke about the need for Mehserle’s formal imprisonment as a first step toward justice. He explained that even while incarceration in this country is faulted, from disproportionate racial representations to the private profiting off nearly unpaid labor, those who enforce that system should be accountable to it. If that system of policing and incarceration puts people away for murder, the exact same needs to be done with Mehserle.

That is, as a first stepping stone. But justice is a much larger struggle—much larger than Oscar Grant, much larger than Oakland, and probably much larger than we can imagine.

As the Oakland community grapples with frustration, anger and a longing for justice for Oscar Grant, our experience reflects one struggle in a much larger context of police brutality and a broken justice system.

In a conversation with Anita Johnson, a producer of Pacifica Radio’s Hard Knock Radio, she emphasized a reminder of that context. “We need to make sure that justice is secured, and I don’t want to leave this conversation without saying that we can talk about what happened at Footlocker and the vandalism that took place, [but] the larger issue is justice and that police terrorism should not be allowed.”

However controversial Oakland’s response to the Mehserle verdict might be, Johnson was adamant about the positive parts of Thursday night’s events. She continued, “Maybe we can be a model, an example, if everyone works together collectively—different parts of the city, different economic, social backgrounds—coming together to really stand up for justice and speak out loudly and really be present in the moment.” What she spoke about is Oakland’s legacy of uniting for justice despite our differences. Johnson continued, “I want to challenge the system. We can do that collectively… We can make a difference, but we have to come together, so I’m hoping that this will be an example for [others].”

The Oakland 100 Support Committee is calling for support from the community to help in the defense of the people who were arrested during the verdict protests. A list of court dates and locations as well as a way to donate to support court and lawyer fees are available on their website http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com

Jesse Strauss is an Evergreen Alumni who lives and writes in Oakland, CA.