By Sikivu Hutchinson
In 1979, they handcuffed Eulia Love while she was dying
on her front lawn. In 2015, they handcuffed
Redel
Jones and let her die on a public street as a throwaway woman with no rights
a white man was bound to respect.
On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators
from Black Lives Matter, the Youth Justice Coalition and other organizations packed
the Los Angeles Police Commission meeting to protest
the officer-involved killing of Jones, a young African American woman murdered
in cold blood last year after allegedly advancing on officers with a knife in a
Baldwin Hills alley. According to the LAPD,
the confrontation with Jones occurred after a suspect “who fit her description”
committed a robbery. Eliciting
widespread outrage, the Commission egregiously ruled that the killing of Jones
was “within
policy” because officers were in “fear of their lives”. Contradicting the police’s grotesque default
narrative of the violent black predator, one eyewitness to the killing stated
that Jones was moving away from the officers.
The Commission did not disclose why it was necessary to use deadly force
to subdue a woman wielding a knife.
Jones’ murder last spring marked the flowering of the
#Sayhername campaign, the national call for justice in resistance to the terrorist
victimization of black women under state violence. Her murder, and the community response
thereafter, is hauntingly similar to that of Eulia Love, a 39 year-old African
American woman who was murdered at her South Los Angeles home by LAPD officers on
January 3, 1979. Love was alleged to
have rushed the officers with a knife during a dispute precipitated by an
earlier confrontation she’d had with a utility worker. The officers who killed
her fired approximately twelve rapid fire shots at a range of eight and twelve
feet. Her murder elicited mass community
protests and was initially ruled to be within policy by the LAPD’s “Shooting Review
Board”. This determination was later
challenged by the Police Commission, which concluded that Love’s shooting
“failed to meet departmental standards”.
In the aftermath of the killings, the notorious Chief
Daryl Gates claimed
that the white officer who shot Love was “just as much a victim of this tragedy
as (she was).” Gates, the nemesis of the African American community, was a
sneering law and order fascist who presided over a police department nationally
renowned as the standard for state sanctioned racial terrorism and suppression.
Under Gates, the department’s “pioneering” forays into militarization were
institutionalized, as use of battering rams, SWAT teams and riot gear became
the norm for police departments across the nation.
Love’s murder represented a
turning point in the deep history of black LAPD murder victims. Weeks after her
death, her killing initially generated little
more than an obscure paragraph in the L.A.
Times. But in order to fully honor
and SayHerName it’s important to acknowledge her wholeness. Before she was killed, she was a mother of
three daughters and a recent widow struggling to survive on a limited income.
She lived in a single family home in a neighborhood abutting what is now the
105 freeway; one that had weathered the turbulence of the 1965 Watts Rebellion
and the downward economic spiral of South Los Angeles. Her anxiety over paying an overdue gas bill
was almost certainly exacerbated by these factors, and the appearance of a male
Gas Company representative in her backyard to shut off service. According to an Assault with a Deadly Weapon
(ADW) report filed by the representative, Love hit him with a shovel to keep
him from shutting off her service. The rep then called the police, who drew
their guns shortly after arriving, tragically, while Love’s young daughters
were in the house.
In the case of white assailants,
it’s standard for law enforcement to use extensive de-escalation techniques—including
negotiating with suspects, bargaining for time, retreating, using tasers and
other non-lethal strategies. As
evidenced in mass shootings like those in Aurora, Colorado, Charleston, South
Carolina and the 2015 Colorado Springs abortion
clinic shooting (as well as with the recent Oregon National Wildlife Refuge
standoff
involving domestic terrorist Ammon Bundy), it’s pro forma for even the most
violent white assailants to be captured alive despite brandishing military
style weapons.
The 1980 Police Commission report
on the Love case concluded that LAPD officers Edward Hopson (who was black) and
Lloyd O’Callaghan (who was white) talked to Love for a scant two-three minutes
(rather than the seven minutes erroneously reported by the LAPD Shooting
Review). Contrary to the Shooting Review report, the Police Commission
concluded that the officers had not been prompted to use deadly force due to concern
for the wellbeing of Love’s daughters; nor had they come to arrest Love for the
alleged assault of the Gas Company worker.
Rather, they perceived Love as an a priori threat, one that was disproportionate
to the situation.
Departmental policy stated that
“officers should not draw their weapons based on a mere feeling of apprehension”. Although Love was wielding a knife, she was
retreating from Hopson and O’Callaghan when they opened fire on her. The report further states that techniques for
disarming an individual with a knife include kicks and baton hits. Moreover, “In
choosing a technique, the relative size of an individual and his or her mental
state” are also primary considerations.
In both the Jones and Love cases, none of these factors apparently informed
the police’s decision to use deadly force.
Because Hopson and O’Callaghan emerged from the police vehicle with
their guns drawn, escalation of Love’s already agitated emotional state was
virtually a foregone conclusion. In the
final moments of the confrontation, Love allegedly hurled the knife at the
officers. However, “By advancing on Ms. Love
as she attempted to retreat, they put themselves in a situation of increased
danger”. Use of deadly force became a
self-fulfilling prophecy which robbed Love of her live and shattered those of her
young children.
In his testimony to the Police
Commission, Redel Jones’ husband Marcus
Vaughn spoke eloquently about how she was a caring mother and compassionate
woman who always sought to help others.
While “crazy” armed white women elicit sympathy, psychoanalysis and humanizing
back stories (ala the white Texas woman who recently shot
and killed her two daughters after years of police service calls to their
home with no arrests), the narrative of the psycho black woman with a weapon is
always a cut and dried case of criminality.
After Hopson and O’Callaghan pumped
twelve bullets into Eulia Love’s body they rolled her over and handcuffed her on
the grass of her own front yard.
After Redel Jones was murdered she lay
in a morgue for two weeks without her family being notified, Vaughn told the
Police Commission.
“Her blood is on you, my children’s
tears are on you.”
