Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Sandra Bland. Samuel DuBose.
Those are a few of the most recent names of African-Americans seared into the collective memory of much of America over the last few years, following their untimely deaths either while in police custody or whose suspicious deaths were not perceived as being investigated or adjudicated fairly by the criminal justice system.
A panel of legal experts at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago claimed these most recent examples along with the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon present a lurid new visibility to the ongoing challenges to the rule of law in much of the minority community.
The perception of a dual justice system gets reinforced with every perceived miscarriage of justice, said Daryl D. Parks, whose law firm represents the family of teenager Michael Brown, who was shot multiple times and killed by former Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson last August. The 18-year-old unarmed youth became engaged in a confrontation with the officer over his walking in the middle of the street with a friend, which turned in to a violent altercation.
“Black Americans are in a crisis of confidence with the Justice Department,” said Parks, a managing partner with the Tallahassee law firm of the Parks and Crump LLC. He said many feel that the “politics of color, class and race” are all leveled against them.
Parks was joined on the panel titled, “It’s Not Just Ferguson: Promoting the Rule of Law and Other Solutions at Home,” by Arthur L. Burnett, Sr., a retired Washington, D.C. Superior Court judge who is now the executive director of the National African American Drug Policy Coalition, Inc.; Melanca Clark, chief of staff at the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice; and Bernice B. Donald, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.
The most recent cases have been an impetus for extra scrutiny of policing policies and widespread sentiment among people of color that there is a double standard of justice in America, especially with its youth, panelists said.
Donald noted that in far too many instances police are now the disciplinary figure in inner city public schools. “Schoolyard infractions are now being catapulted in to the criminal justice system,” she said.
Donald said given the proliferation of security guards, metal detectors and zero tolerance policies in the often highly segregated and poor inner city schools that many have taken on the characteristics of prisons rather than educational institutions.
“It wasn’t all that long ago when punishment meant coming to school early and attending mandatory study hall,” she said.
But now with children as young as five and six years old being introduced to the criminal justice system, Donald and others on the panel feared that a negative relationship with the law sets in for the remainder of their lives. Such dynamics, they agreed, hardens the perception in minority communities that the rule of law does not apply to them when it comes to finding justice for their communities.
Burnett said he certainly understood and sympathized with the concerns about the over-policing of the African-American community and the feelings of being disrespected by police by so many young people. However, he said the smartest thing young people could do was to be compliant when encountering the police.
“Don’t be defiant and belligerent,” the retired judge said. “Go to lawyers to deal with the problems of abuse and to hold police accountable.”
Burnett said as hard as it may be to hear, nothing constructive can come out of an individual challenging the authority of a police officer. However, he added that it is also imperative for white police officers to “treat black people with the same respect they show white people.”
Parks’ firm previously represented the family of 17-year-old teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in 2012 by security guard George Zimmerman while walking to his father’s home from a store in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman, who confronted Martin and shot him during an altercation, was found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in 2013 by a predominantly white jury.
Parks said the issue is not black youth’s attitudes, but the failure of police departments to adequately train its officers to respect the public. Also problematic, he said, is the knee-jerk reactions from so many departments, unions and prosecutors to automatically back bad officers when their behavior has been challenged by a civilian.
He said for every death following an encounter with the police, there are hundreds of people who have been beat up, unlawfully detained and hurt by officers, but aren’t hurt enough to make for a successful case in court.
“One of the worst parts of fighting a law enforcement agency is that they pretty much have unlimited budgets and clients don’t have much money,” Parks said. “I feel read bad about people who don’t die, but have been humiliated, hurt and have to dismiss their case because they don’t meet the threshold.”
It’s Not Just Ferguson: Promoting the Rule of Law and Other Solutions at Home” was sponsored by the Judicial Division.
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