No riot. None dead. That could have been the headline for the day after the verdict in the trial of police officer Jeremy Morse at the airport courthouse in Los Angeles last week.
Morse was the officer who, in the course of an arrest in Inglewood last year, slammed a handcuffed black teenager, Donovan Jackson, face first on to the boot of a police car. Had not a bystander with a video camera captured the incident on film, nothing more would have been heard of it.
But the film, which showed Jackson being hoisted up from a prone position by his handcuffs and smashed down like a piece of airport baggage, was shown across the country.
It reminded many people of the Rodney King case in 1991, when a black man was beaten by white officers and the incident was caught on camera. The white officers in that case were acquitted by an all-white jury, and the outrage sparked by that verdict led to the 1992 riots in LA in which 55 people died.
Much has changed in the past decade in both LA and the United States and there were a number of key differences in this case.
In 1991 the chief of the LA police backed his officers. This time, the chief of police in Inglewood acted swiftly and sacked Morse. He also gave evidence against his own officer in court. The jury were clearly more thoughtful, only declaring that they were hopelessly split, with seven for a conviction and five against, after three days of deliberation: a hung jury and a possible retrial.
But there were some similarities: Morse was defended by one of the lawyers who defended the King officers and the jury, with only one African-American, did not reflect the population of Inglewood, which is about 50% black.
In Inglewood there was a prayer vigil that evening to call for calm in the wake of the verdict. Many were angered that, with such clear evidence, there were no convictions. At the rally were the leaders of local churches, mosques and unions, the mayor, the chief of police and Mitchell Crooks, who shot the fateful video. Also there was Dick Gregory, the comedian and veteran civil rights activist.
Gregory compared the peaceful, if angry, response in Inglewood to the recent behaviour of the country’s president. President George W Bush, he told the crowd, had employed 200 troops in a four-hour firefight to kill Saddam Hussein’s sons and a 14-year-old boy, rather than try to carry out arrests and submit people for trial. In contrast, he said, the people of Inglewood had responded to their anger at the verdict peacefully and had eschewed the notion that violence is an acceptable tactic.
Gregory’s presence was a reminder of the old civil rights movement and the example set by its leaders, many of whom, like Martin Luther King, were churchmen.
The point Gregory was making was that the country is now being set an example by its president that violence is an acceptable political response. If you cannot be bothered to wait for resolution, use force. The death of a 14-year-old in the attack that killed the Hussein brothers has barely been noted. Were 200 US troops surrounding a building unable to bring out three men and a boy? asked Gregory.
Bush and his administration have made much of their Christian faith yet they practise a buffet-style Christianity, picking and choosing the parts of the Bible (anything with the word ”smite” in it) that they fancy and ignoring the parts they don’t, like boring old ”Thou shalt not kill” and references to rich men and eyes of needles.
In Inglewood, the Christians and Muslims who gathered and prayed and who walked the streets that night counselling peace acted as an example of faith in action rather than in the empty words of politicians for whom religion is now more a cosmetic campaign accessory than a moral code.
”No riot, none dead” may not attract much international attention, but it was a reminder of another side of the US that is too often ignored. — Â