Investigations that only hide the truth

IN THE earliest hours of March 1, Los Angeles police roused Charley "Africa" Robinet from the Skid Row tent he called home. A scuffle ensued, and in the end, Robinet--homeless and recently released from a mental health facility--was shot and killed.

The story's details were soaked in metaphor. A police force whose racist behavior has sparked thousands of complaints and a historic 1992 rebellion killed a man known as Africa in an area whose name is synonymous with hard times.

Perhaps fearing the backlash that could erupt over the police murdering an unarmed person in broad daylight and on video, the LAPD and its network of supporters went on the offensive. Details of Africa's involvement in a bank robbery fifteen years ago were dragged out, along with his mug shot and theories about his identity. The police union issued a statement defending the shooting.

USA Today reported that Africa was "a homeless convicted bank robber who was wanted by federal authorities for violating probation." Other news outlets ran similar descriptions, citing "unidentified law enforcement officials not authorized to speak publicly."

While cops off the record were feeding reporters material to smear a dead man, LAPD chief Charlie Beck piously urged the public not to "rush to judgment" about the cops who killed Robinet. Beck then followed that statement by unveiling the police version of the story, in which a deranged criminal "forcibly grabbed one of the officer's holstered pistols, resulting in an officer-involved shooting."

All of this Beck based on his viewing of footage from body cameras worn by two of the cops--footage that Beck refused to release to the public.

Across the board, the message was loud, clear and eerily like a tune out of the TV show South Park: Blame Africa. In a well-coordinated display of organization, the administration and union of the LAPD pumped out information forming the story for the public, while no one to come to Africa's defense.

For its part, most members of the media--confusing "official" with "true"--decided to forego their own independent investigations in favor of simply repeating what they were told by police sources--including just about every available stereotype associated with being Black and homeless (another population disproportionately harassed by police) in America.

The aftermath of Africa's killing in Los Angeles is not unique. It is the same process of cover-up and justification that takes shape within hours of police killings across the country.

There are systemic hurdles to justice at every stage of the criminal justice system, from police patrols to prison conditions. This is true just as much in the court of public opinion, where the state and media join together to protect the narrative of police, a narrative that is necessary to sustain a militarized force in an ostensibly democratic country.

Local governments and their police departments have a prepared apparatus for the dissemination of information, and they use that to resist outside interference, manipulate public perception and withhold information from the families of victims.

RECENTLY, THE country has been gripped by the killing of Walter Scott, a 50 year-old Black man who was pulled over in North Charleston, South Carolina, by Officer Michael Slager on the morning of April 4. Scott tried to run away from Slager, and that is when the officer fired eight rounds at the unarmed man's back.

For more than 48 hours, Slager told his story, and the police department and media dutifully backed him up. The police claimed Slager attempted to subdue Scott with his Taser. This failed, and a struggle began for the weapon. Fearing for his life, "the officer then resorted to his service weapon," according to a local press account.

This story--along with the detail that police attempted to revive Scott with CPR--would not only have survived, but become the reality had a video not emerged showing the devastating truth.

Walter Scott was unarmed and running away when he was shot. Not only had the Taser not been struggled over, but the video appears to show Slager planting the Taser near Scott's body after the shooting. And far from struggling to save Scott's life, the officer handcuffed Scott and left him lie face down to die.

Danette Chavis is an activist in New York City and founder of the National Action against Police Brutality petition campaign. In 2004, she lost her son Gregory at the hands of the NYPD. In the years since she has witnessed many police cover ups, as she explained:

I realized early on police are not killing on their own. They are aided and abetted by the departments themselves who not only provide them time to formulate an excuse for the murder, but refuse to answer any questions to the family concerning why their loved one was murdered. They escape accountability by advising, "We're investigating," and then go silent for weeks and months with no explanation to the family for the shooting. And when at last they respond, it is simply to say, "We've found no wrongdoing."

The frustration expressed by Chavis is the inevitable result of entering a process in which one side has complete control over all pertinent evidence and information, as well as over the means of sharing that information--or keeping it hidden.

The result of most internal investigations is unsurprising. This problem, Chavis says, is one of accountability: "The problem is systemic, profitable and keeps people elected in their position. So who in government will bring about change?"

SOME MIGHT hope that the media would use its resources to fight for the truth. But as several recent reports point out, that is far from what happens.

Media Matters recently published a study showing that the four major network news stations in New York City over-reported Black suspects as the perpetrators of crime by 25 percent--and correspondingly under-represented white suspects. As Color of Change concluded about the study:

When media makers get the proportions so egregiously wrong, it reinforces a culture in which the benefit of the doubt is not distributed evenly--we see a hostile society for some, and a privileged society for others. Media-driven biases limit the empathy people feel for Black folks, and adversely influence the behavior of employers conducting job interviews, juries and judges evaluating guilt and sentencing, and countless other discriminatory encounters with doctors, teachers, landlords, lawmakers, prosecutors and everyday people on the street. The news is no exception.

The family of Shantel Davis, a young woman killed in Brooklyn in 2012 by police, experienced firsthand what Davis' sister Natasha Duncan calls "inhumane media attention". "They tried to justify it and make themselves look innocent before consulting us," says Duncan. Police went to houses of witnesses in the neighborhood before contacting the family. Additionally, the family was not allowed to see Davis in the hospital until six hours later, when they were informed she had already died.

Chavis says this is common:

People don't realize that when police say they are investigating, what they are really doing is formulating a "justification" for the murder. They rarely accept any eyewitness account--even if they've interviewed eyewitnesses. The interview is not to get to the heart of the problem but to ascertain how many people saw what occurred. They want to be sure nobody can refute the story they intend to tell.

In Davis' case, the media attention around the case focused on her past. Her family points out that Shantel had never been convicted of any crime previously, and several associates said she was working on her GED to turn her life around, none of which prevented the media from painting her as a career criminal.

WHILE SHANTEL Davis's criminal record somehow morphed into a justification of her death, news reports failed to cover the criminal past of the police officer who had killed her.

Officer Phillip Atkins was known in Davis' East Flatbush neighborhood as "Bad Boy." At the time that he killed Davis, Atkins had been sued seven times for offenses ranging from unreasonable force to fabricating evidence. The city had already paid out over $130,000 to his victims.

But an NYPD spokesman chalked this up to New York being a "litigious town" while the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association attributed these charges to "drug dealers...interested in one thing, and that's making money."

This double standard repeated itself in the wake of Cleveland police officer Tim Loehmann's killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Loehmann had previously been found by another police department to "show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions," yet the local police union chief said it was the 12-year-old boy who was "menacing" and a city investigation found that Rice "directly and proximately caused" his own death.

As a result of the damage control and cover-up coming from the police and media, the family and friends of those killed by the cops suffer doubly.

During the smear campaign after Shantel Davis's death, "we couldn't even find a picture of the cop who killed [Shantel], but the news had her mug shot," Duncan said. "That's why our family hit the streets so hard, to change the perception. You can't even grieve properly because you have to fight so hard."

Three years later, Duncan says, "We haven't heard anything. We don't even know whether they are still investigating."

It's clear that this is not a coincidence but a pattern, one that demolishes the fairy tale that police exist to protect us. "People think that racism is dead, but it's in the system," said Duncan. "People think that system is broken. It's not. It's designed that way."