Mehserle Verdict Reinforces Jim Crow Rules of Engagement With Police

Justice was not served. This was the prevailing sentiment for many around the Bay Area as word of the Johannes Mehserle involuntary manslaughter verdict began to spread yesterday. From the outset, the trial of former BART cop Johannes Mehserle for the shooting death of 22-year-old black male Oscar Grant promised to have implications that reached far beyond the courtroom. For African-Americans and many other communities of color, this was just another grim chapter in the long and acrimonious relationship with law enforcement.

Debates about whether Mehserle acted with malice (the legal threshold for manslaughter) or whether the punishment fits the crime, will rage on for years. The most troubling by-product of the verdict for me as an African-American is that it reinforces a narrative I was taught as a child.

As a pre-teen I was taught to fear the police much in the same way one would fear a dangerous animal. "Don't give them a reason to shoot you" was a common refrain. To insure I didn't meet this fate I was instructed to be extremely compliant and docile when approached by the police whether I was in the wrong or not. These rules for engagement with police were taken straight from the code of conduct black people used to survive the Jim Crow south, where white on black violence routinely went unpunished. I wanted to disregard these dire warnings as parental paranoia, but unfortunately high profile cases of brutality (Rodney King and Amado Dialo to name a few) and my personal experiences with police only corroborated my parent’s warnings.

The trial of Johannes Mehserle dangled the unprecedented possibility of police accountability for the shooting death of black man. And when it was it all said and done Mehserle was held accountable, but only to the lightest form of accountability possible. The lesson I and many other black people will glean from the verdict is that juries will always give police the benefit of the doubt when it comes to use of lethal force against black males.

The most depressing aspect of the verdict for me is that I will have to pass on these segregation era survival tactics to my own children. I want my children to know their rights and not fear public servants who are supposed protect them. But until the legal system demonstrates that it will hold police accountable to a higher standard when lethal force is used against African-Americans, I have no choice but warn my children and pray the never meet the wrong cop at the wrong time.