Выбрать главу

The “high seas” have become “the urban jungle” full of “high risk” inhabitants or, as many of Sgt. Lashley’s colleagues would put it, “banana eating jungle bunnies” who require control no matter how severe are the measures used to accomplish this. This was the reasoning of the suburban jury that acquitted “The Riders,” a group of Oakland police who were accused of routinely beating and framing poor black drug dealers in West Oakland. They were acquitted by a suburban jury. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “in four months of heated deliberations, they hurled insults at each other and even discussed ‘Dirty Harry’—the rogue cop who believed the ends justify the means.” And sounding like the judge whose charge to the jury led to the acquittal of the slave-ship captain, the mostly white jury “got bogged down in a series of long — and often contentious — debates over the law and the ethical conflicts of front-line cops in tough neighborhoods.” The black juror, an alternate for a jury that except for an Asian American was white, was shocked.

“This blows me away,” said alternate No. 1, an Oakland resident. “I can’t believe this. They are so guilty. The evidence was overwhelming.”

She said that the jury could not empathize with the alleged victims or believe that police would abuse their authority.

“Most black people know that police can lie to make an arrest,” she said, fighting back tears. “But I think the people on this jury don’t believe it’s possible for police to lie. They just don’t get it.”

One of the policemen involved in the Riders case fled to Mexico and the city of Oakland had to pay ten million dollars to their victims, enough to have provided Oakland schools with much-needed equipment. Like the slave-captain’s judge, most whites believe that such is the state of the inner city that the laws governing police conduct that apply elsewhere don’t apply here. This attitude is supported by television cop shows, a format that has been adopted by both CNN and MSNBC. Notice the number of Hollywood movies in which the hero is a cop whose use of force is so excessive that he’s ordered to turn in his badge by a superior, who is usually played by a black actor.

After the three beers at the White House, Officer Crowley appeared at a triumphant news conference like he owned the place and was immediately adopted as a new media star by cable. Move over Mark Fuhrman and Lt. Col. North! Maybe they’ll make Crowley Sarah Palin’s running mate. Crowley, thanking white men with guns throughout the nation for their support, had humiliated a young black president, which is how it’s done in other countries where the civilian leader has to yield to the gun totters; the kind of governments that Obama criticized on his trip to Africa and Hillary Clinton is now accusing of corruption. Hillary Clinton!

The black professor has been carrying on like Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter for a number of years. He acted as the leader of a band of exceptional black people, a “dream team.” Then Skip Gates found out during his encounter with a lying policeman that it’s not a matter of class, it’s your black ass that gets you in trouble with the police. When Gates taught at Duke he got some racial profiling insurance by going to the police station and identifying himself as a Duke professor so that he wouldn’t be subjected to the kind of police treatment accorded those less fortunate blacks. He was further humiliated when, after the beer-fest meeting, he had to come up with a statement which, though very eloquent and fancy, was similar to Rodney King’s “Can’t we all get along?”

In his statement, Gates bonded with a man, who tried to justify his arrest with a false police report, which damaged both Gates’ and Lucia Whalen’s reputations. Gates called him a nice guy in The New York Times and said that the two might attend sports events together and have dinner. He even offered to get the officer’s kids into Harvard. Maybe the officer who killed a black man in Oakland the other night should send in her children’s application to Gates. Is Gates a candidate for the Stockholm Syndrome?

But Obama and Gates aren’t the only ones who are the targets of contempt from armed men. Such is the power that the white majority has granted the police that the California Corrections industry even turned Governor Schwarzenegger into a “girlie man.” After contract negotiations, they bragged that for every nickel offered by the state, they got a dime.

An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle shows how costly it is for those who choose revenge over rehabilitation: “For decades, the corrections budget has swallowed more and more of the state’s general fund, starving priorities like higher education. But the political ramifications of looking ‘soft on crime’ cowed legislators and governors alike. So we built prison after prison and stuffed them all to overcapacity.”

Now Arnold is going along with a plan to build a showcase state-of-the-art Death Row that will cost the taxpayers three hundred and fifty-six million dollars with a thirty-five million dollar cost overrun.

These California suburbanites are the people who gave us the Three Strikes Law after the tragic murder of a suburban white girl, Polly Klaas, a law that is one of the reasons for California becoming a failed state. As The Wall Street Journal put it, writing about white suburbanites, “those who have the least to fear from crime are driving the issue.” The Wall Street Journal attributed their fear to watching images of blacks on TV. Maybe CNN’s Black In America.

Three beers aren’t going to do it. The only result will be a reality show about the event that will accrue more profits to Gates, the intellectual entrepreneur, perhaps co-hosted by his new pal, Sgt. Crowley, cable’s latest matinee idol. Already they’ve gotten an invitation from Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance, to do a tag-team lecture. This is a road show that’s certain to entertain the media, one of whose best-selling products is the “racial divide.” I’ve heard through the grapevine that PBS is offering Gates millions of dollars to do a racial profiling special. Given PBS’s politics, maybe a musical comedy which would end with blacks and police locking arms in a chorus line singing the show’s hit song, We Both Over Reacted.

Racial profiling will continue and the attitude of most whites will continue to be: we don’t care what you do with blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans; just keep them out of our hair.

A better solution would be the one practiced by citizens of my North Oakland district, black, white, Asian and Hispanic. For over twenty years we’ve met with the police on a regular basis, without suds being consumed. Maybe some cake and potato chips. Sometimes we raise our voices at them, without being hauled out of Oakland’s Santa Fe School, where we meet, handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct. But recently, when the police cracked down on a criminal operation that endangered the lives of residents of my block, I led the applause.

One of those who didn’t share in our victory was Sgt. Daniel Sakai. He was trying to help us with our main problem: a recalcitrant absentee landlord (from a two-family household, Bill) who has put our neighbors’ lives in jeopardy by allowing her abandoned property to be used by criminals, criminals who engaged in a full-scale shootout on our block one morning. She refuses to even put up a No Trespassing sign.

Sgt. Sakai was white. Some of our neighbors went to City Hall and signed the book to mourn his death. He was among four policemen who were murdered during an incident when the mean-spirited fear-inspired policies of three strikes, traffic profiling and the National Rifle Association collided.