Critical Evaluation: The Nigga Treatment Rides Again

2008-04-28
By DeAngelo Starnes

Since the time they came to these shores, African Americans have been labeled and characterized as “niggas” in order to dehumanize, devalue, and destroy their history, their person, their potential, their souls.  Admittedly, there are many times they voluntarily submit to niggerization, but that’s the subject of another column. 

The soul of Sean Bell received a second dose of nigga treatment when the officers who killed him were acquitted of any wrongdoing this past Friday.  In addition to Bell being killed, two of his friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, were wounded in the early morning hours of November 25, 2006.  Detectives Marc Cooper, Gescard Isnora, and Michael Oliver faced various counts of reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, with Isnora and Oliver facing the more serious charges of first and second degree manslaughter along with first and second degree assault, which are felonies.  The charge of first degree manslaughter required a showing that Detectives Isnora and Oliver killed Sean Bell while trying to injure Guzman.  The second degree manslaughter charge meant their actions recklessly killed Bell.  The assault charges are similar to the manslaughter charges except the actions resulted in injury as opposed to death.  The reckless endangerment charges stemmed from the officers discharging their weapons while others were in the street and causing property damage to a nearby home and a Port Authority train station.

The presiding judge, Justice Arthur Cooperman, ruled “The [prosecution] people [did] not prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that each defendant was not justified in shooting and acquitted them.  In so doing, Justice Cooperman made a statement bereft of any piercing findings that justified acquittal of reckless conduct.  At the beginning of his statement, he claimed that his focus was on the state of mind of the detectives not the victims.  However, his ruling turned on the criminal records and inconsistent statements of the victims who testified – Benefield and Guzman.

His ruling gave more weight to the credibility of these two witnesses than the following undisputed facts.  Detective Oliver fired 31 shots, which included reloading his weapon with Isnora firing 11 shots and Cooper four.  None of the victims shot at the officers; none of the victims had any weapons to shoot back at the officers.  One of Oliver’s many shots passed through a nearby house.  One of Cooper’s bullets passed through a Port Authority train station.  The train station was half a block away and is elevated forty to fifty feet above ground.  The bullet shattered a glass door and almost hit a waiting passenger in the head.  Two other shots damaged a fence nearby. 

Case presentation in a courtroom is full of hair-splitting and fact-spinning.  In a criminal proceeding, case presentation is anything but straight-forward.  It’s an exercise designed to distract from a common sense recount of what happened in order to undermine the heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Juries full of lay people are more prone to falling prey to the distraction.  But a judge, who has sat through countless proceedings and most likely participated in similar activity as a lawyer prior to taking the bench, should be able to see through the smoke and get to the underlying facts.

Which makes this judge’s findings baffling.  You have fifty shots fired and landing in various places within a one block radius.  The only people firing shots were police officers, and they were firing shots in helter-skelter fashion.  No civilian was shooting or even brandishing a weapon.  Given no return fire, the only justification would be to disable Bell’s car, which had slammed into a police minivan.  So then why was it necessary to reload and continue firing a weapon at the individuals inside the car? 

The judge twice implied the officers’ actions were, quote, “careless and incompetent.”  Well, how does the careless and incompetent use of a gun not equal recklessness in the context of trying to effect an arrest?  As a police officer trained in the use of deadly force, you can’t be careless when using a gun while people are in the street with residences nearby; if you are incompetent, you shouldn’t even draw it.  To be one or both while using deadly force is reckless behavior. 

This case stunk from the beginning.  Five officers were involved in the shooting, but only three were indicted.  You would think they all contributed to a situation where a young man was killed with two others seriously wounded.  And then the detective who fired the most shots, Oliver – who was the only white officer indicted, had a lavish dinner after his indictment was announced.  Did he know the fix was in?

There were serious questions as to whether the cops even announced they were police officers before they started shooting.  If Bell and his companions were leaving the scene where they may have been threatened by an individual in the club, why wouldn’t they drive their car in a manner keeping with trying to escape the scene?

To justify any shooting resulting in death, a police officer always says he believed his life was in danger.  In these kinds of cases where the victim is Black, the color of skin is enough to lead to the cop’s acquittal.  Indeed, a Black victim of a cop shooting always leads to the kind of intellectual dishonesty evident in Justice Cooperman’s decision.  Because that’s how much our society values the life a young Black man. 

The same day Justice Cooperman issued an “abortion of justice,” Brotha Wesley Snipes had the book thrown at him.  He was sentenced to three years in prison for not filing taxes between 1999 and 2001, the maximum sentence for those misdemeanors.  And this occurred after the brotha came into court, apologized, and dropped five million dollars on the Government for his transgressions. So where’s the justice for a guy with no prior convictions making amends? 

The judge and the prosecution wanted to make an example out of tax protestors, they said.  You make an example out of someone who remains defiant to the end.  You make an example out of someone who is a repeat offender.  But you forgive and forget when the person corrects the mistake, especially when he’s dropping five mil on you.  Where was the book-throwing at various CEOs bilking their employees out of their retirement funds and jobs?  Where was the book-throwing at other celebrities who had just as large, if not bigger, tax bills than Wesley (read Willie Nelson and the 17 million he owed the government).  But when you’re getting the nigga treatment, there is no benefit of the doubt.

Which leads me to Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  The brotha was exercising his free speech about legitimate issues from the pulpit.  And what did that get him?  Vilified and demonized in the media -- all in the name of trying to tear down Barack Obama.  He’s been called a “kook,” “fanatic,” and “racist.” 

It’s interesting that many people didn’t smell a rat when snippets of his comments went into heavy rotation on television and the Internet.  What’s more interesting is the uproar those comments created.  Geraldine Ferraro’s comments about Barack leading the race for the nomination because he’s Black haven’t received nearly the notoriety.  Hillary Clinton hasn’t had to apologize for them.  Ferraro hasn’t been disgraced to the extent Wright has, even though her comments are directly racist and outrageous with the design of devaluing Barack as a candidate.  But there is no focus on her or her comments.

And you would think that those who found it necessary to bludgeon Reverend Wright for his sermons would take the time to find out more about the man.  And maybe there has been that effort with the problem being that there is no dirt there.  So all that’s left is to decontextualize his statements and blow them up into hate speech when they are anything but that.  The distortion of his comments and anti-intellectual treatment he’s received is the very essence of nigga treatment given his service in the military and public service he and his church have provided to the citizens of South Side Chicago. 

Kudos to Bill Moyers for providing Mr. Wright an opportunity to explain his statements and background on his PBS television program the same day we saw two high profile cases of nigga treatment.  It was the best thing I saw in the media in light of the verdicts in the Sean Bell and Wesley Snipes cases.

DeAngelo Starnes is an attorney and cultural critic based in Denver.  He covered the final season of the Wire for EbonyJet.com. Critical Evaluation is his new regular column.