By David Tarrant and Jennifer Emily
Dallas Morning News
Editors Note: This Story was originally published 7:55 PM on May 6, 2017 in the Dallas Morning News.
Their names have become embedded in the national consciousness: Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling.
All were black, and all were killed in controversial police shootings, many caught on video.
This past week, a new name was added to the list: Jordan Edwards.
A week has passed since Roy Oliver, a Balch Springs police officer, shot his rifle through the window of a car and killed 15-year-old Jordan. The Mesquite High School student had just left a party where police had been called and was a passenger in the front seat. Oliver, 37, was fired Tuesday and arrested on a murder charge Friday night.
In a time of intense focus, and growing protest, over the killings of black men and boys by police, Jordan’s case stands out — both for the subdued response in the streets and for the swiftness with which authorities acted against one of their own.
The two may be connected. For some, the charge against Oliver raises at least the possibility that society is shifting, with a greater skepticism toward police actions in minority communities. But for others, the case is an aberration, a set of circumstances so outrageous, so obvious, that the actions taken were the only course available.
Sara Mokuria, co-chair of Mothers Against Police Brutality, said that arresting one officer doesn’t erase 40 years of police brutality.
“It was the right move,” she said. “It’s hard to say it’s a step in the right direction because a step in the right direction is a young teenage boy, a black boy, being able to go to a party without being shot and killed by a police officer.”
Other community leaders and activists say the results thus far in this case probably reflect a sympathetic and beloved victim, combined with video of the shooting and the powerful glare of national media attention that suddenly focused on a small town southeast of Dallas.
John Wiley Price, the veteran Dallas County commissioner, said one case does not make a trend. When Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber was presented with video evidence that contradicted Oliver’s version of events, he had no choice but to fire him, said Price, who attended Jordan’s funeral Saturday.
“The chief had so much compelling evidence that he had to make an administrative call at that moment,” he said.
African-American religious leaders are also taking a wait-and-see approach.
“We’re hopeful this represents a new beginning in the criminal justice system,” said the Rev. Frederick Haynes, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church. “But our history lets us know that until there’s a conviction, and until there are consequences that prevent it from happening in the future, we can’t rest until we get a sense that this won’t happen again.”
For too long, there’s been a pattern of police “concocting false narratives that they were threatened” to justify shooting unarmed minorities, Haynes said. He would like to see perjury charges brought against officers in such cases.
When there are consequences to police shooting unarmed minorities, “that sends the signal that maybe things are starting to change,” he said.
Longtime Dallas community activist John Fullinwider said the troubling circumstances involved in the shooting, “and the kid being such a universally admired young man,” helped raise the profile of this case beyond that of many other local police shootings.
“You add in a small-town police force with the national media, and they didn’t want to become the Ferguson of Texas,” he said.
On Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old who got into an altercation with an officer, kicked off days of violent protests and clashes with police.
Brown’s case was complex. There were conflicting accounts of what happened between Brown and Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed him. It took four months for a grand jury to decide that the evidence did not warrant charges against Wilson. In the intervening months, anger built in Ferguson and exploded in the streets when the decision came down.
In Dallas, support for the officer who killed Jordan shifted in a matter of days to Oliver being fired and then charged with murder. Perhaps because of that, and because of Jordan’s family’s request that the community not protest, the streets of Dallas have been quiet.
“We kept the pressure muted because the family said they didn’t want a protest but a prayer vigil,” said Fullinwider, who co-founded Mothers Against Police Brutality.
‘A disease and epidemic’
Still, you don’t have to look far in Dallas to see the exasperation.
Chris Scott, a Dallas County resident who was wrongly convicted and then exonerated of murder, said he often wonders why cops and prosecutors skate even when they send the wrong person to jail, especially when evidence was hidden. Scott now seeks criminal justice reforms and searches for others who might be wrongly imprisoned.
“Damn it, it’s been a disease and epidemic, and we’ve got to have a cure. It’s going to be another four or five months and another black man or black woman is going to be killed,” he said. “These killings have to stop. A baby, man. He was a baby.”
Scott, a black man who believes his race contributed to his false conviction, said Oliver’s arrest should temper any possibility that violence could break out.
But he said that could change if a grand jury does not indict Oliver for murder or he is convicted of a lesser crime — or acquitted.
“If they feel like justice wasn’t served, then we might have trouble in Dallas,” Scott said. He said protests, especially violent ones, won’t create the change he and others seek.
“It’s not going to be done with us protesting or rioting. It’s going to be done by going to the Legislature and by going to the district attorney,” he said.
Scott talks to police cadets to prepare them to go into communities where people may be different than the officers.
Those who want change should demand better officer training, more body cameras and regulations for using them, he said. And there should be more regulations about what cops can and can’t do when using force, and charges if officers make false statements or reports, Scott added.
Even after his wrongful conviction and fatal shootings like Jordan’s around the country, Scott said he still respects cops. Most are doing their job to “protect and serve” the community, he believes.
History of peaceful protests
Dallas has always had a muted approach to protesting police brutality, going back decades. It’s not that there wasn’t anger. There just wasn’t violence. Protesters and police cooperated enough to keep the peace.
Even last year’s July 7 march was peaceful — with police and protesters joining together — until a gunman who wasn’t part of the protest murdered five officers in downtown Dallas. He was later killed by a remote-controlled police robot armed with explosives.
Of all the police shootings in Dallas history, the one that sparked the most outrage was the killing not of a black youth, but of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez.
On July 24, 1973, officers questioned Santos and his brother, David, about stolen money from a soda machine. During the interrogation, Officer Darrell Cain held a .357 Magnum to Santos’ left ear and pulled the trigger. The officer was sentenced to five years in prison for murder with malice and was released after he served half that time.
Dallas justice and injustice
Justice for minorities in Dallas has a long, questionable history, especially for black men convicted by all-white juries. An infamous memo once directed prosecutors, using nearly every slur imaginable, to pick only white Protestant men. Prosecutors under late, long-serving District Attorney Henry Wade had a reputation for seeking convictions at all costs.
In recent years, justice has changed in Dallas County. In 2007, voters selected the state’s first elected black district attorney, Craig Watkins, whose great-grandfather was executed for murder in Texas. Watkins, who served until 2015, became nationally famed for working to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. At the same time, he sent more inmates to death row than any other district attorney in the state while in office.
In 2001, a change in state law allowed post-conviction DNA testing, and Dallas County saw a wave of wrongly convicted men go free. Numerous wrongful convictions were exposed before Watkins took office, but they gained in number when he placed an emphasis on exoneration. Today, more than 30 men have been freed.
The current DA, Faith Johnson, was appointed in January after Republican Susan Hawk resigned to focus on her mental health.
Scott and Mokuria said they will be watching to see if Oliver’s arrest is political theater for next year’s district attorney election or a true prosecution with prosecutors seeking a life sentence.
He said Johnson, who is black, needs to make an example out of Oliver and pursue a life sentence for him. A harsh sentence, Scott said, would deliver a message to the nation and its police officers.
“We are not prosecuting the uniform. We’re prosecuting the person in the uniform who committed a crime,” he said. “Take the man out of the uniform.”
A pastor’s prayer
The shooting of Jordan was top of mind Saturday for the Rev. Richie Butler, senior pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church, as he worked on his Sunday sermon.
“People are definitely tired,’’ Butler said.
No matter what happens in the justice system, he said, leaders from all communities need to take action to ensure that such shootings don’t happen again.
That means working on policies to better train police officers and ensuring that the wrong people don’t become officers in the first place.
“The kid in the car — and it could have been any of the other kids in the car — didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of action.”
Change must come not just within police departments, but throughout communities too, Butler said.
“My prayer as a pastor is whether they are black, white or brown that every parent can see a child and think, ‘That could be my child.’ That’s when I’ll feel like there’s been some progress.”
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
