The Awkward Aroma of Authoritarian Reach

Bad timing? Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert

It's not always easy to discern the specific ways in which the decidedly-authoritarian approach to oversight of local American law enforcement under Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions is impacting the U.S. justice system on the community level.

But there've been some pretty eye-opening examples lately.

For example, a lot of national media attention has been devoted to the questionable fatal shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by two Sacramento police officers back on March 18th.

Far less national media attention has been focused on Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert receiving a $10,000 donation from the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA) for her re-election campaign just two days after Clark was shot eight times in the back while he was in the backyard of his grandmother's home - holding his cell phone.

As the top prosecutor in Sacramento, Schubert's office is responsible for determining if the shooting warrants the filing of criminal charges against the two SPD officers.

And as Darrell Smith reported for the Sacramento Bee on April 6th, she also received another $3,000 donation to her re-election campaign from the Sacramento County Alliance of Law Enforcement on March 23 - less than seven days after Stephon Clark was shot.

That's not to cast suspicion on all 7,000 members of the CSLEA, as their Website clearly shows, their thousands of members are committed to the safety of Californians in a wide variety of ways.

Teri Cox, communications dir. for the
CA Statewide Law Enforcement Assoc.

But writing a $10,000 check for the DA responsible for determining whether a questionable shooting of an unarmed citizen warrants criminal charges, two days after the shooting?

It raises legitimate questions about the ability of local prosecutors to fairly investigate police officers accused of serious misconduct resulting in the death or bodily injury of civilians.

In no way am I suggesting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions directly influenced two Sacramento police unions to make large campaign donations to a DA handing a police brutality case.

But the optics make it look sketchy.

Particularly given the reluctance of local prosecutors to file criminal charges against police officers even in cases of flagrant use of unnecessary deadly force against unarmed people who hadn't actually committed a crime.

Teri Cox, the director of communications and public affairs for the CSLEA tried to explain the timing of the $10,000 campaign donation as mere coincidence. As she told the Sacramento Bee:

"There was no timing involved. We've been for (Schubert) from the very beginning, it's unfortunate that the check had to happen at that time."

And maybe that's true, but it does call into question the objectivity of a DA who could arguably be seen as being in ethical and professional conflict by accepting large campaign donations from two police unions within days of two SPD officers shooting an innocent man in his own backyard.

Is that an example of authoritarianism?

The Oxford dictionary defines authoritarian as: favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority.

The new American authoritarianism?

Not only was the United States founded on the principle of questioning authority, but placing a system of clearly-defined checks and balances on the three major branches of the federal government lies at the very heart of the U.S. Constitution.

By extension, that principle applies to local government in my humble view.

But what happens when you have an attorney general like Jeff Sessions?

A man whose personal cultural and racial bias places him on the fringe of the American mainstream.

Someone who clearly runs the Department of Justice as if the concept of justice is based not on the Constitution, but on an adherence to the narrow, hyper-conservative ideology favored by the erratic POTUS?

What happens when individual representatives of federal law enforcement branches begin to police people based not on criminal acts or violations of laws, but rather on what they think and write?

Like the Department of Homeland Security seeking bids for an outside contractor to compile a massive database of hundreds of thousands of "media influencers" (including journalists and bloggers) so the federal agency can supposedly monitor the content.

Is that for actual "homeland security"?

Or is it simply a means to try and validate Trump's loony paranoia about what he calls "fake news"?

Civil rights activist and journalist Shaun King

Did you read the recent story about how activist and journalist Shaun King and his family were subjected to harassment by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after they landed at JFK airport?

As he wrote on his Twitter feed, ICE agents called him and his family out of line at JFK after they returned from a recent trip to Egypt.

He was questioned about his leadership role with the Black Lives Matter movement and asked about his activities in Egypt.

In recent years King has emerged as a leading voice on unjustified police brutality against people of color and the systematic racial bias of the American justice system.

He's covered everything from stories about racially-biased policing by the NYPD, to Bronx courts railroading young men of color into jails and he's become a leading social media presence advocating for justice and policing reforms.

If you've never read any of his stuff before, check out his recent story back in January in the Intercept about police officers in Cartersville, Georgia arresting 70 people ranging in age from 15 to 31, mostly African-Americans (including veterans, college students, and at least one pregnant woman) because they found less than an ounce of weed at a party.

(And yeah, Georgia cops really arrested 70 people and hauled them all to jail for a bag of weed - click the link above)

He's begun using his influence and reach on social media to encourage broader political activism, becoming a co-founder of a political action committee called Real Justice PAC to bring national attention (and money) to smaller local political races for offices like district attorneys that have massive influence over mass incarceration in an effort to address America's broken justice system.

Shaun King represents one of the emerging grassroots leaders in the fight against the flagrant authoritarianism trumpeted by the current presidential administration.

Small wonder he and his family were stopped in JFK airport and questioned by ICE, even though he's an American fighting for the values enshrined in the Constitution.

It's not always easy to discern the specific ways in which the decidedly-authoritarian approach to oversight of local American law enforcement under Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions is impacting the U.S. justice system on the community level.

But you can certainly smell the aroma these days.

A Reasonable and Justified Manner? A Profoundly Bigoted Lens

Stephon Clark, 22, another unarmed American citizen
shot and killed by police

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's announcement on Tuesday, that his office will step in to oversee the investigation into the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by two Sacramento Police Department officers last Sunday night, does address some concerns expressed by outraged community members about the ability of SPD to conduct an impartial investigation into its own officers.

But it's hard to say how much comfort that's going to bring Clark's family members considering he was shot multiple times for holding a cell phone.

As more detailed information about this incident begins to trickle out, a familiar narrative from the Sacramento Police Department is already beginning to unfold - the now familiar claim that the two officers who fired 20 shots at Clark (including shots fired when he fell to his hands and knees) did so because they feared for their lives.

The two officers were reportedly called to the scene in response to someone reportedly breaking the windows of cars in the neighborhood, when they confronted Stephon Clark in the backyard of the home where he lived, they claim he advanced or moved towards them with something in his hand.

Seconds later an officer yelled "Gun!" and the two officers fired 20 shots; the object in Clark's hands turned out to be a cellphone.

He was shot about 60 seconds after the SPD officers on the ground first encountered him - adding to the already-suspicious fatal shooting is the fact that one of the officers can be heard telling another to mute the sound on his body camera immediately after the shooting, right before the audio cuts out.

The arc of this investigation is obviously going to take a long time, especially given the growing media attention, mounting public outrage, and the involvement of the state attorney's office.

But one of the things that troubles me about this shooting is that the officers themselves claim that they were sent to the scene in response to reports of a man breaking car windows.

21-year-old Isaiah Malailua 

Now that's clearly a crime warranting a quick police response, but is that the kind of situation that calls for discharging a weapon?

The violent response of the two Sacramento PD officers to a black man holding his cellphone in his own backyard is remarkably different from the Chicago PD's response to an armed white man arrested in Chicago's Union Station on Friday.

According to an article by Chicago Tribune reporter William Lee, a California man named Isaiah Malailua (pictured left) was arrested at an Amtrak ticket counter wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a 9mm handgun.


Authorities quickly apprehended him after police K-9 dogs detected the odor of explosive residue on a duffel bag that belonged to Malailua that was found in another part of the station.

Now obviously I'm not suggesting that Chicago authorities should have just yelled "Gun!" and started firing in the middle of a crowded train station - they did the right thing, they located him, surrounded him and took him into custody.

The point I'm making here is that the officers who arrested Malailua in Chicago knew he was potentially dangerous because a Greyhound bus ticket with his name on it was found inside the duffel bag with the explosive residue on it that was detected by the K-9 - they also found police SWAT gear inside the bag that he'd apparently stolen from the NYPD.

So they knew who he was, and when they found him at the ticket counter he had a handgun on him and was wearing a bullet-proof vest - that's got "potential mass shooter" written all over it.

Considering recent events and the fact that Malailua was inside a crowded major urban transit hub, authorities on the scene could have been justified in shooting him, but they didn't.

What role did Malailua's skin being white have to do with how the Chicago authorities treated him?

Stephon Clark's brother Stevante leads a protest chant
during a City Council meeting Tuesday night

Contrast his arrest with the Sacramento PD's response to reports of someone breaking car windows in a neighborhood last Sunday night - where they shot and killed Stephon Clark about a minute after encountering him.

In Sacramento, the SPD had no idea who Stephon Clark was - they saw his skin color and flipped the fuck out.

Now if I was a cop, and I'm not, a report of a suspect breaking car windows on the street could sound like garden variety juvenile vandalism.

Or worse, maybe someone under the influence of heroin, crystal meth or crack desperately looking for a quick score to sell something to get high.

It's hardly the modus operandi of a professional car thief, so someone breaking car windows sounds either desperate or stupid - it makes a lot of noise, attracts a lot of attention in a neighborhood after 9pm at night, and it increases the chances of getting busted by the cops.

Does that sound like a situation where you go in with a gun drawn ready to fire shots at the first person you see?

Or does it sound like the kind of situation where it's better to ascertain who it is and what's going on?

Granted it was dark out, but responding SPD officers had a police helicopter hovering overhead that had guided them to the general location, and based on the audio that was released, the SPD officers didn't identify themselves as police officers when they encountered Stephon Clark.

If you haven't already seen it, take a look at this body cam footage when the two SPF officer come upon Clark in his grandmother's backyard - it's not bloody or anything, you can't see the actual shooting.

No charges: Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni
and Howie Lake, II

The officer's first words at 9 seconds into the video sound like "Show me your hands! Gun!" 

He's out of breath and says the words so fast it's hard to hear what he's saying - plus the police helicopter is hovering overhead.

About 6 seconds later the officer yells, "Show me your hands-Gun-Gun-Gun!" and both officers just start firing shots.

It's the initial contact that's troubling.

In some ways it reminds me of the initial contact that Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni and  Howie Lake, II demonstrated when they first encountered 37-year-old Alton Sterling in front of the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the early morning hours of July 5, 2016.

The two officers were responding to an anonymous caller alleging a man was waving a gun around in front of the store, they pulled up, approached Sterling (who was known to sell CD's outside the store), interrupted a conversation he was having with two women and told him to put his hands on a car.

Not having done anything illegal and not knowing what the officers wanted with them, Sterling protested and tried to pull away - at which point one of the officers pointed their loaded gun at Sterling and said:

"Bitch, I'm gonna kill you." 90 seconds later Alton Sterling was shot dead at point blank range while on the ground pinned on his back by both officers - Salamoni fired six shots from his weapon.

There was no, "Police officer, we need to speak with you." or "Show me your hands!" or "Freeze! Police officer!"

Alton Sterling seconds before
being shot by Salamoni

They literally pulled up, pointed a loaded handgun at his head and said, "Bitch, I'm gonna kill you."  - and they did.

The last time I blogged about Salamoni and Lake back on May 5, 2017 was just after the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions announced they would not pursue criminal charges against either man.

As you likely heard, on Tuesday Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the state would not be filing criminal charges against either Salamoni or Lake.

This despite the store owner Abdullah Muflahi saying that Sterling was not waving a gun or threatening anyone, and never brandished a gun or threatened the two officers with it at any point.

Muflahi, who witnessed the shooting, says Sterling had no idea why the two policemen were even there when they threw him on the hood of a parked car and tasered him before wrestling him to the ground.

In an April 15, 2012 op-ed in the New York Times published two months after the violent racist psychopath George Zimmerman stalked, attacked then shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, journalist and author Brent Staples observed:

"Young black men know that in far too many settings they will be seen not as individuals, but as the 'other', and given no benefit of the doubt....Society's message to black boys - 'we fear you and view you as dangerous' -  is constantly reinforced. " 

In his lengthy statement to the press on Tuesday, after stating that probable clause (rather than an actual crime), the presence of drugs in his system and resisting an arrest for something which he was never informed, were all contributing factors in Alton Sterling being shot and killed, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry concluded "that both officers acted in a reasonable and justified manner in the shooting death of Mr. Sterling."

Writer Brent Staples

The question now facing the Sacramento City Council, the California State Attorney's Office and the Sacramento Police Department is one which members of the community who protested during a City Council meeting on Tuesday night have already raised:

Were the two Sacramento PD officers who fired 20 shots at Stephon Clark while he was in the backyard of his own home acting in a "reasonable and justified manner"?

The answer, which must come from a court of law, will obviously take time to articulate and materialize.

But it should be viewed in the context of the words of Brent Staples from his op-ed written in the wake of Trayvon Martin:

"Very few Americans make a conscious decision to subscribe to racist views. But the toxic connotations that the culture has associated with blackness have been embedded in thought, language, and social convention for hundreds of years. This makes it easy for people to see the world through a profoundly bigoted lens without being aware that they are doing so."

It's that lens that lies at the heart of the death of Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark, Trayvon Martin and so many other men of color in this country.

Tried, convicted, sentenced and executed in a span of minutes - far from any court of law, denied the right to legal counsel guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and brutally silenced before having the chance to testify on their own behalf.

And as the cases of Alton Sterling and Trayvon Martin both demonstrated, found complicit in their own deaths and cruelly forced into the unfathomable role of being silent witnesses for their own prosecution by a judicial system that views plaintiffs and defendants through "a profoundly bigoted lens."

There's nothing remotely reasonable or justified about that.