In a deadly three-year period, the nation has witnessed four high-profile killings of young Black Americans by white police officers or quasi-cops.
On New Year’s Day in 2009, unarmed Oscar Grant, 22, was shot in the back in Oakland, Calif., while lying on the platform in a railway station. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, said he thought he had his Taser in his hand rather than his gun.
Almost two years ago today, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed during a police raid on the house where she lived in Detroit.
The police claimed the shooting was the result of a confrontation between the officer, Joseph Weekley, and the girl’s grandmother. Stanley-Jones was sleeping on a couch under a window that was shattered by a stun grenade the police threw just before they entered the home.
About a month ago, Ramarley Graham, 18, was killed in his grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx by officer Richard Haste, who pursued him without a warrant into the home, claiming he was armed. Graham was shot in the chest while allegedly flushing a bag of marijuana down the toilet. No weapon was found.
Eight days after Graham’s funeral services, Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot and killed in Sanford, Fla., by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed that he pursued Martin because he looked suspicious with a hood covering his head, and that he shot him after an altercation between them. Zimmerman outweighed Martin by more than 100 pounds and was armed with 9 mm handgun; Martin had only a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea.
Each of these tragedies aroused their various communities, and the righteous indignation has been cumulative, perhaps reaching a boiling point of outrage with the senseless slaying of Martin.
On Sunday, hundreds of protesters in Miami, many of whom participated in a similar demonstration of Saturday in Sanford, marched wearing hoodies behind such civil rights activists as the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Joining them were a number of celebrities, including former basketball stars Isiah Thomas and Alonzo Mourning and entertainers Betty Wright and Chaka Khan.
While the crowd echoed Sharpton and Jackson’s demands, it was Martin’s father, Tracy, who received the most sustained applause and response.
He promised them that he would never “stop fighting for my Trayvon and for your Trayvon.”
During his brief remarks, Mourning said, “Each and every one of us feels the pain of this family, simply because Trayvon Martin could have been one of all of us.” His son, Trey, was standing nearby.
It seems each day there are new developments in the case that is slated to go to a grand jury in two weeks, after the state’s prosecutor failed to bring charges against Zimmerman, who hasn’t been arrested.
The grand jury will have to decide if Zimmerman was acting in self-defense and there was probable cause for his action or if Martin was the victim of racial profiling.
During a recent appearance on Hugh Hamilton’s “TalkBack!” on WBAI-FM, Attorney Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild and professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, explained a few of the legal ramifications of the case.
“First of all,” Cohn began, after Hamilton summarized of the case, “the Stand Your Ground law is really irrelevant in the Trayvon Martin case. Even if the events are the way Zimmerman said they were, which is that he was acting in self-defense, the test that would apply is right out of the Florida statutes. It requires that in order to use deadly force–and not have a duty to retreat–the person must reasonably believe that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.”
Obviously, Zimmerman claims he “reasonably believed” he was facing great bodily harm, Cohn continued. “But that belief has to be objectively reasonable under the circumstances. And given witnesses’ statements about what they heard, the 911 call, Trayvon’s girlfriend’s cell call, it looks there is a very strong case to be made that Zimmerman’s use of deadly force was not reasonable. In this case, his claim of self-defense would fail.
“What this means is that you and I are not in a position to decide whether he was acting in self-defense or not,” Cohn added. “That’s why we have a jury system. That’s why, when there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed…the police make an arrest. The person goes to a jury trial–the jury decides whether Zimmerman acted in self-defense or not.”
Cohn noted that Zimmerman’s father is a local judge, which may have some bearing on why he hasn’t been arrested.
Right after the shooting, Zimmerman was taken into custody. A recent video showed him handcuffed and entering a precinct in Seminole County; there appear to be no signs of the alleged scuffle he had with Martin.
However, according to several media reports, on closer examination, the video shows a police officer inspecting the back of Zimmerman’s head, where there does appear to be a wound. If true, it would corroborate an earlier police report that Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and the back of his head.
There was some dispute, as well, about the voice heard during the incident, in which Zimmerman’s family claims his voice is screaming for help. Two experts differed on this conclusion after analyzing the 911 calls made during those fatal moments, and they believe it is Martin’s voice.
At the rally on Sunday, Sharpton asked participants to donate to defray the travel and legal expenses the Martin family will incur. “This is not a fit, this is a movement,” he asserted, countering those accusations of his detractors.
Sharpton also threatened to call for sanctions against the city of Sanford, which was met with strong reaction from the business community and the local branch of the NAACP.
He warned that if Zimmerman is not arrested, he will “move to the next level” and call for an escalation in peaceful disobedience and economic sanctions, though no details were offered on what kind of sanctions.
“We hope that the citizens of Sanford will govern themselves accordingly,” said Turner Clayton, chapter president of the NAACP. “We are not calling for any sanctions against any business or anyone else.”
Earlier, the New Black Panther Party had offered a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman, also a source of some concern from local leaders.
The murders of Grant, Stanley-Jones, Graham and now Martin have aroused communities around the nation. Much like the Occupy movement, there is hope that the more recent outrage will not dissipate to be merely ignited again with the next senseless loss of a young Black child or teenager.
