JUSTICE OR INJUSTICE - A mural depicting shooting victim Oscar Grant in an Oakland, CA underpass. Was the verdict racist, too lienient, or just a mess?
A few months ago, a white police officer in a transit station in Oakland, CA killed a young African American named Oscar Grant. The case became something of a local cause célèbre, causing the trial to be moved to Los Angles. The SoCal jury returned an involuntary manslaughter verdict yesterday, while later in the evening the streets back in Oakland were the scene of skirmishes between police and rioters enraged at what they believed was a racist verdict.
Even before the trial began, Oscar’s grieving family, and many others in Oakland, said that nothing short of a murder verdict would bring justice. Some were shouting for a murder conviction within hours of the killing and threatening violence if they didn’t get it.
Unfortunately, the case wasn’t clear-cut. Although the incident had been captured by several cell phones and witnessed by hundreds of people, it was impossible to tell conclusively why the officer shot Oscar. Oscar’s friends and family said it was a blatant example of a cop shooting a defenseless young black man in the back. After all, it’s happened many times before.
The cop’s defense team argued it was a horrific mistake of the cop confusing his Taser with his service weapon. After all, mistakes happen in the heat of a takedown. Both sides had excellent points, but by the time the jury reached a verdict, it was clear the whole affair had become less about the guilt or innocence of this cop and this victim and more about the horrible difficulty America has in dealing with its racism.
There’s little doubt there are race problems in this country, anyone who argues otherwise is, well, Rush Limbaugh. But, it’s equally true that every conflict between a minority person and a white person isn’t automatically racism. Sometimes people do bad things to each other or someone makes a tragic mistake. That doesn’t excuse their actions, but it doesn’t automatically make the actions racist either.
JUSTICE SERVED? - Racial tensions run high in Oakland, but did they reasonably apply to this case?
In this case, there are some valid reasons for believing it really was an accident. The cop had no clear racial motive to speak of. He didn’t have a track record of racism and it’s doubtful even the most virulent racist would choose to kill someone in full view of hundreds of people.
But then, there were troubling things about the cop’s story too. He couldn’t explain how he mistook his Taser for a pistol, even though the Taser and pistol required different release mechanisms, were substantially different in weight, and he did so after training designed to avoid the very thing that happened. True or not, the cop came off sounding like a man who couldn’t be trusted to do anything, including tell a plausible story.
The civil rights division of the DoJ is reviewing the case and there may be more deliberation, including a possible overturning of the verdict, to come. This is as it should be. This is how the system is supposed to work. A jury makes their best decision based on what they know. The judge apportions punishment as the law and situation dictates, and the DoJ checks everything out to make sure everyone has done their homework and gotten a chance to present it to the court. There’s nothing in there about everyone getting a verdict they want.
Oscar’s family, and many of the protesters at the riot, spoke of “the system” letting Oscar down. However, the system isn’t the problem in this case. The problem is that America’s racial tension makes it difficult to trust our system, regardless of what it does. And in doing so, makes the system weak and ensures undue biases effect the outcome. People will often come to different conclusions based on their own perceptions. It doesn’t really matter what a person’s perception is, it only matters what they do with that perception.
Clearly, there’s a dangerous perception gap between Americans of different colors.
- Oscar Grant Supporters Loot Oakland (flystylelife.com)
- Oakland riots sparked by Oscar Grant verdict (abclocal.go.com)
- Theres No Justice, Just Us! Oakland Cop Gets Away with the Murder of Oscar Grant (fireandflames.blogsport.de)
- Oscar Grant, a Victim of American Fear (alternet.org)
- For Oscar Grant, Justice Demands More Than a Verdict (race.change.org)
- Oakland cops make arrests at verdict protest (msnbc.msn.com)
Poobah,
thanks for the additional information. I can see from what you describe how things would get out of hand.
As for the racism aspect. I’ve been reading sites such as Stuff White People do which make the argument, at least how I take it, that the racism is internalized resulting in an instinctive over reaction by the police towards black men. So despite this officer having no previous race issues, the police culture would see any black male as a greater threat than anyone else. I have to admit that I have serious issues with this argument. It appears to be a gross over generalization, yet a strong point in its favor is the statistic they claim that there is a greater incidence of black police officers getting shot by white officers.
Regardless, its a truly tragic event for all. And perhaps focus should be made toward addressing police arrest procedure.
As I understand it, the suspect wasn’t fully contained (but ion the processes of being contained) in the seconds before the shot and the cop said he saw the suspect trying to reach into his pocket so he went for his Taser.
When you see some of the film, it’s plain things were moving really fast and it isn’t clear on a second by second basis what is happening so it’s hard to tell exactly what people were doing and seeing to nail down a solid timeline. Add in the pressure and it isn’t hard to understand why the cop might be telling the truth.
I’m not sure anyone will ever know for sure. Having said that, I’m not sure it was racist, but then I wasn’t on the jury and didn’t see what they saw.
What I’ve yet to hear explained is why did the officer feel it was necessary to pull out his taser. The video footage appears to show that the victim was subdued by a second officer, so why did he feel he needed to pull a weapon? Until he can answer this, there is going to be a lot of speculation as to his motive for the shooting.
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