SAN FRANCISCO — Once again an amateur's videotape is spoiling the “lawful” deeds of cops in Los Angeles county. In 1991 it was Rodney King. Today it is a teenager. Unbeknownst to the cops, these videotapes exposed the men in blue doing their job: beating up innocent non-white civilians.

Fortunately for the public, the tapes were shown on national and international television.

Yet what will come of the new concern? Will the cops actually be convicted and the victim vindicated? Or will the King drama be revisited, where a pro-police jury in white Simi Valley acquits those indicted and vilifies the victim and the black community as dangerous?

King eventually won a civil settlement when the white establishment feared more far-reaching developments if nothing was done to appease the public outrage after the cop acquittals. But 10 years later, racist cop attitudes and police violence is still a reality.

On July 6, in the predominantly African-American community of Inglewood, sheriff deputies and Inglewood cops brutalised a 16-year-old teenager. Donovan Jackson was pummelled and choked into unconsciousness for allegedly resisting arrest after his father was pulled over at a petrol station with an expired automobile registration tag.

After peacefully obeying the cops' instruction to be patted down, Jackson was handcuffed and picked up like a rag doll and thrown down on top of the cop car.

Jackson told a grand jury that he cooperated with the cops. The police said he resisted arrest. Two cops were indicted by the grand jury for felony assault and falsifying a report and face prison terms up to three years.

The response to the violence was immediate condemnation in Inglewood and nationally. The city elite condemned the cops' actions. US Attorney General John Ashcroft initiated a federal probe and sent his top civil rights attorney to investigate.

The concern was not for the youthful victim, but what could happen if no action was taken. After the LA cops were acquitted in 1992, riots occurred.

Inglewood, however, is a majority black suburb of Los Angeles. The local mayor, city administrator, city attorney and police chief are black. In fact, the city's elite is black.

Inglewood reflects some of the changes in black communities across the country. There are the haves and have-nots. The latter seeking stability, the end of “black on black” crime and an end to gang violence.

The Jackson attack, while no “accident”, is seen by some as a “rogue” action by cops (their colour being irrelevant) who have a history of violence. Most Inglewood residents hope for better times even though they have experienced racism.

Moreover, since September 11 African Americans, particularly middle-class blacks, are more patriotic and don't want things to get out of hand. They want prosecution of the wrong-doers just as whites and Latinos do.

An article by Steve Lopez in the July 12 Los Angeles Times reported on these mixed sentiments. Headlined, “Activists silent on beating”, Lopez quotes one community activist, Najee Ali, head of Project Islamic Hope, who explains: “We're in a crisis in black leadership in Los Angeles. They're more concerned with making money, and a lot of the time, our so-called black leaders are poverty pimps.”

The black activist and journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, also from LA, said liberal organisations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League and black professional groups only speak out when fire is lit under them by activists like Ali. Hutchinson told Lopez that the government only acts when there are cameras rolling. It's why protests are necessary.

“The reluctance of federal prosecutors to go after cops who overuse force”, Hutchinson wrote in a July 14 commentary, “perpetuates the dangerous cycle of racial confrontation and deepens the cynicism of blacks and Latinos toward the criminal justice system”.

Both observations by Ali and Hutchinson are valid. But why? Ten years ago, US blacks were united in demanding far-reaching change. Today there is a narrower focus: deal with the “rogue” cops.

The change reflects more than a further decline of traditional civil rights groups and their limited aims. It reflects the “progress” made by black people in being more integrated into US society. The suburbs are no longer all white, and many more blacks are well-off. There is “black flight” from inner-city areas and calls to deal with social outcasts and resentment even if it sounds similar to what racist whites are demanding.

It is not an accident, furthermore, that a black man, Ward Connerly, led the campaign to end affirmative action in California and has a new initiative on the 2003 ballot to eliminate the collection of data based on race. The Bush White House's top two foreign policy officials are blacks — Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell. They are not tokens but real players.

The crisis of leadership reflects in a very general sense the class division among African Americans. The black middle class, although it continues to produce some rebels and occasionally takes some progressive political stands, has in certain respects more in common with middle-class whites than with working-class African Americans. However, this is only a short-term perspective.

The only truism is that cops don't ask you for a job resume or your net worth before beating you up. The role of the police — of all colours — is to enforce the laws protecting property and the powerful.

People of colour are more likely than whites to be stopped due to racial profiling and general racist attitudes. As one Inglewood resident put it, “Let's be frank: anytime a city is heavily populated with minorities, people get the subliminal message that it's a bad place to be”.

A July 27 Los Angeles Times editorial echoed the same point: “Cops and others, who have rallied to [indicted cop] Morse's defense, use Inglewood's high crime rate to argue that the public doesn't understand the dangers officers are up against. But that raises the second question Inglewood needs to ask itself: How are Inglewood cops trained to approach a scene so that things won't escalate, to differentiate between a scary 16-year-old crip [gang member] and a scared teenager who may be slow to process their commands?”

Violence, racism and cops go together because that's the social function of the police under capitalism. Amateur video recordings simply capture what is typical and shows why defenders of civil rights and civil justice must remain vigilant.

From Green Left Weekly, August 21, 2002.
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