With the cooling off of summer heat focused on the death of Michael Brown by police misconduct in Ferguson, Missouri, a fall court case is transpiring in Oakland concerning the shooting to death by police officers of a young, mixed-race man in SF's Park Merced apartment complex eight years ago. Asa Sullivan was a member of my extended family who I never met, but whose death by unnecessary police armed fire brings the reality of how widespread are such matters and often more dangerously close to home than one realizes. I've come to know Asa's immediate family better since his death and to learn the story of his life's tragic end from one of his immediate survivors: his mother Kat Espinosa, the biological aunt of my adopted, now adult children.
Like many others who wind up dead by police gunfire, Asa was not a complete innocent, legally. In fact, he was either squatting, visiting squatters or involved somehow in the use or purchase of drugs, or companionship to those doing so, in the vacant apartment where police were called to investigate on 6/6/06. But like other young men killed in the act of either petty crime or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Asa still deserved to grow up and hopefully out of his youthful, mischievious behavior. Clearly 13 year old Santa Rosan Andy Lopez should have had an orange tip on his toy gun when police say they mistook it for the real thing and killed Andy on his way to the park, but death is a pretty extreme consequence for non-violent, youthful indiscretion.
I've been to the courtroom where Asa's mother's civil case against the SFPD is transpiring a couple of times these past weeks, to support Kat and to observe the questioning of witnesses in the case. It didn't take long to learn that Asa was a scared young man hiding from the police in an attic like crawl space above the apartment's bathroom, and that he was trying to avoid a parole violation related to a marijuana charge on his record. According to his mother, he'd been generally getting his life on a more constructive track since becoming a parent the year before. It was also clear that the police who arrived at the call of a neighbor concerned, not about violence but about 'activity' in what was supposed to be a vacant apartment, went way overboard every step along the way, from how they entered the premises (without a key they could easily have obtained from management), to shooting Asa as he tried to exit the attic/crawlspace unarmed and without belligerence.
The police officers involved in these cases always say they felt threatened. Though Asa had no weapon, he did have an eyeglass case in his hand or pocket, that police say they suspected was a possible gun.
As a therapist, I'm deeply concerned that more and more, police officers will feel threatened when in the presence of black youth, because they can reasonably suspect, based on past and pervasive police misconduct, that such youth are genuinely --and understandably--hostile to them. More and more such situations snowball, and the police escalate their violence in response to their perception of threat, based not on the behavior of the suspect, but rather on their collective guilt about all the horrific, unnecessary killings their colleagues have perpetrated.
On Facebook yesterday, I saw a video of a police officer shooting at a young man outside his car in a gas station, simply because the "accused" had turned back toward the car to look for his wallet when the cop asked him for his ID. It didn't sound like that act resulted in death, but the young man was hurt and the officer, while calling for an ambulance, was clearly not apologetic or remorseful. In face, he seemed annoyed at the victim for being in pain from his bullet wounds.
No amount of money that Kat might collect, should the jury (with not one African American among them!) agree that the police were unjustified to shoot at Asa 6 times, can replace the son she lost that day.
But a verdict in her favor (and she's in this with Asa's former partner and son), might help to send the message to all the police officers out there that it is encumbent upon them (and their superiors, their trainers) to learn how to deal with their feeling of fear and confusion, their guilt, their triggers, and to stop shooting prematurely, killing so many boys and young men, and making all our lives less safe as a result.
I wanted to write this to be a part of all the recordings, visual, auditory and in print, that will hopefully help spring us all to take action to encourage the police to live up to their mandate to protect and serve us all.
Like many others who wind up dead by police gunfire, Asa was not a complete innocent, legally. In fact, he was either squatting, visiting squatters or involved somehow in the use or purchase of drugs, or companionship to those doing so, in the vacant apartment where police were called to investigate on 6/6/06. But like other young men killed in the act of either petty crime or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Asa still deserved to grow up and hopefully out of his youthful, mischievious behavior. Clearly 13 year old Santa Rosan Andy Lopez should have had an orange tip on his toy gun when police say they mistook it for the real thing and killed Andy on his way to the park, but death is a pretty extreme consequence for non-violent, youthful indiscretion.
I've been to the courtroom where Asa's mother's civil case against the SFPD is transpiring a couple of times these past weeks, to support Kat and to observe the questioning of witnesses in the case. It didn't take long to learn that Asa was a scared young man hiding from the police in an attic like crawl space above the apartment's bathroom, and that he was trying to avoid a parole violation related to a marijuana charge on his record. According to his mother, he'd been generally getting his life on a more constructive track since becoming a parent the year before. It was also clear that the police who arrived at the call of a neighbor concerned, not about violence but about 'activity' in what was supposed to be a vacant apartment, went way overboard every step along the way, from how they entered the premises (without a key they could easily have obtained from management), to shooting Asa as he tried to exit the attic/crawlspace unarmed and without belligerence.
The police officers involved in these cases always say they felt threatened. Though Asa had no weapon, he did have an eyeglass case in his hand or pocket, that police say they suspected was a possible gun.
As a therapist, I'm deeply concerned that more and more, police officers will feel threatened when in the presence of black youth, because they can reasonably suspect, based on past and pervasive police misconduct, that such youth are genuinely --and understandably--hostile to them. More and more such situations snowball, and the police escalate their violence in response to their perception of threat, based not on the behavior of the suspect, but rather on their collective guilt about all the horrific, unnecessary killings their colleagues have perpetrated.
On Facebook yesterday, I saw a video of a police officer shooting at a young man outside his car in a gas station, simply because the "accused" had turned back toward the car to look for his wallet when the cop asked him for his ID. It didn't sound like that act resulted in death, but the young man was hurt and the officer, while calling for an ambulance, was clearly not apologetic or remorseful. In face, he seemed annoyed at the victim for being in pain from his bullet wounds.
No amount of money that Kat might collect, should the jury (with not one African American among them!) agree that the police were unjustified to shoot at Asa 6 times, can replace the son she lost that day.
But a verdict in her favor (and she's in this with Asa's former partner and son), might help to send the message to all the police officers out there that it is encumbent upon them (and their superiors, their trainers) to learn how to deal with their feeling of fear and confusion, their guilt, their triggers, and to stop shooting prematurely, killing so many boys and young men, and making all our lives less safe as a result.
I wanted to write this to be a part of all the recordings, visual, auditory and in print, that will hopefully help spring us all to take action to encourage the police to live up to their mandate to protect and serve us all.
