Standing up to Oakland police murders

THE POLICE murder of an unarmed African American man, and the subsequent lawsuit against the police by his family, are exposing the deep flaws in Oakland's recent police hiring spree.

Mack "Jody" Woodfox, a 27-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by police after a traffic stop in the early morning hours of July 25 in Fruitvale, a largely Latino and African American neighborhood of Oakland.

According to Lt. Ersie Joyner of the Oakland Police Homicide department, Woodfox was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving, when he jumped out and made a "furtive movement" that suggested he was reaching for his waistband. Officer Hector Jimenez then opened fire and shot an unarmed Woodfox dead as he tried to flee.

Not only was Woodfox found to be unarmed, but a preliminary autopsy revealed that he was shot "numerous times" in his back from approximately 25 feet away.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Shamika Steele, who was riding with Woodfox that night,

struggled to control her emotions as she described how her friend had his hands up when he got out of the car. The officer started shooting and Woodfox began running across Fruitvale to escape the gunfire. Woodfox was then hit and collapsed in the middle of the street. At the time he was shot, "he was not reaching for anything," Steele said.

John Burris, a leading civil rights attorney who is now representing Woodfox's family, argued:

Woodfox was unarmed, police had no indication a serious crime had been committed, and he possessed no immediate bodily danger to anybody. We have interviewed four witnesses to the shooting and all evidence clearly indicates the officer wrongfully, deliberately and egregiously killed him.

Shockingly, the police officer who killed Woodfox, Hector Jimenez, had shot and killed another man less than eight months previously, and been cleared of all wrongdoing in a case that is chillingly similar.

On December 31, 2007, Jimenez pulled over 20-year-old Andrew Moppin. Claiming that Moppin was "reaching for his waistband," Jimenez and another officer opened fire, killing Moppin. Moppin was found to be unarmed, yet as the San Francisco Chronicle reported "a department investigation determined that Jimenez 'acted within our policy,' Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said. After a separate review, Alameda County prosecutors 'did not find any criminal negligence in Officer Jimenez's actions,' he said."

THE OAKLAND police have shot and killed five people this year, already the same number as in all of 2007. Others killed this year include the unarmed 15-year-old José Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, whose family has since led a protest campaign to fight for justice.

This rise in killings by the police is largely a result of the influx of 70 new officers, hired by the Oakland City Council and Democratic Mayor Ron Dellums in an effort to clean up the long-corrupt Oakland Police Department's image and respond to a rising wave of murders this year. The number of inexperienced rookie cops on the streets now is staggering--more than half the officers on the streets in Oakland have less than three years' experience. The cop that shot Woodfox was himself a rookie cop, having graduated from the academy in February 2007.

Rather than spending millions hiring more inexperienced cops, what would make a real difference in tackling crime would be to hit it at its roots--poverty--by rebuilding Oakland's crumbling schools and providing decent-paying jobs that would give Black, Latino and poor Oakland residents a real opportunity.

The family of Jody Woodfox is not sitting quietly, however. Represented by Burris, they have filed a federal wrongful death suit and are seeking to open a civil rights investigation into the murder.

In 2003, Burris won a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 119 mostly African American plaintiffs against the Oakland police in the Oakland "Riders" case that dramatized the corruption on the police force and the victimization of Black Oaklanders. The Oakland "Riders" were a group of corrupt cops who, as described in the Washington Post, "were considered the best and the brightest, veterans whom rookie police officers tried to emulate. Their specialty: bringing in reputed drug dealers in record numbers from the crime-plagued streets of West Oakland."

Yet the methods these "war on drugs" star cops used included beatings, planting drugs and falsifying police reports preying on the victims of the system--those who, as John Burris argued, "are the most vulnerable. Who have prior convictions; who have served time in prison; who are on parole. Who are not generally believed to be victims in a case like this."

As a result of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs were awarded $11 million and 90 drug cases were dropped. Today Burris is arguing that "we need to see that there are consequences for police when they break the law, too. Serious consequences." Like the Riders case, the Woodfox suit promises to shed light on yet another example of how the system targets and scapegoats the most vulnerable, while leaving the massive inequalities and systematic racism that are the real causes of crime, and the heart of capitalism, unchallenged.

In standing up to the city and Oakland police, Burris and the Woodfox family are challenging the deep injustice at the center of urban America.
Owen Goodwin, Oakland, Calif.