Targeting Another Generation of Black Men

Gary King Sr. tries to avoid idle moments. When he’s not working as a drywaller, he keeps himself busy refurbishing his tidy, single-family house on Congress Avenue in Oakland, California. Sometimes he drums for hours, his hands a blur as they beat out a rhythm. If he is still for too long, the memories of his eldest son’s death come flooding back.
“It’s like it was yesterday,” he said. “It’ll always be yesterday for me.”

His son, Gary King Jr., was killed on Sep. 20, 2007, by Sgt. Patrick Gonzales of the Oakland Police Department. Gonzales, who allegedly stopped King Jr. because he looked like a suspect in a month-old homicide, stunned him with a Taser and then shot him twice in the back. Gonzales says he felt a gun on the youth and fired because he feared for his life.

Since 2003, Oakland has paid an average of $2,403,877 every year to settle lawsuits against the police.
Witnesses and relatives are not sure whether King Jr. was armed. Police say they recovered a revolver of unspecified caliber and make from the scene. However, no one claims the victim pulled a gun, and witnesses say the 20-year-old was fleeing when Gonzales fired.

In May 2008, the King family filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Oakland, claiming Sgt. Gonzales used deadly force unlawfully. The trial is set for this September.

The King case is one of three wrongful-death suits against the Oakland Police Department currently in court. The families of Andrew Moppin, 20, and Mack “Jody” Woodfox III, 27—both killed by rookie officer Hector Jimenez in separate incidents in 2008—have also filed federal civil rights suits. Both men were reportedly unarmed at the time of their death. An Internal Affairs investigation cleared Sgt. Gonzales of all wrongdoing in King Jr.’s death, and Jimenez was also cleared in Moppin’s death. The Woodfox case was still under review as this issue of ColorLines went to print.

In 2008, nine people were shot by Oakland police, with six fatalities. In 2007, there were 12 police shootings and five deaths.

Other law enforcement agencies in Oakland have also killed young men of color. This last New Year’s Day, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant in the Fruitvale station. Grant was unarmed. His family has filed a $25 million claim with BART.

These shootings and subsequent lawsuits have raised more questions about the department’s training and oversight and further exacerbated long-standing tensions with communities of color. Historically, the violence by
Oakland police served as an impetus in the rise of the Black Panther Party, whose 1966 platform included a demand for “an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people.” Although the police force today is significantly more multi-racial than in those years, residents say officers continue to misue their power.

Oakland police have been under the supervision of a federal judge since 2003, when a settlement was reached in the “Rough Riders” lawsuit in which a group of officers was accused of assaulting suspects, planting evidence and falsifying reports. A team of independent monitors created by the Negotiated Settlement Agreement is supervising an overhaul of departmental policies. Attorneys for all three families mentioned previously say that in the absence of effective, independent oversight, litigation is the only means to compel the department to change its policies.

“The most effective check on the Oakland police has been civil rights lawsuits,” said attorney Michael Haddad of Haddad & Sherwin, who represents the King family.

Indeed, litigation filed after Oakland police officers attacked antiwar protestors at a 2003 rally outside the Port of Oakland led to a new crowd control policy with stricter regulations on the use of non-lethal force. In 2008, a federal judge struck down a departmental policy authorizing officers to conduct strip searches in public.

“Whenever you have to go to the courts to fix your police department, that’s a problem,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York Police Department officer and professor of criminology at the City University of New York-John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Since 2003, Oakland has paid an average of $2,403,877 every year to settle suits against the police.