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A rare guilty verdict in a police shooting case cannot substitute for systemic reform
On Tuesday, Mohamed Noor, a former Minneapolis police officer, was found guilty of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, an unarmed woman, in July 2017. It is believed to be the first time a Minnesota police officer has been convicted of murder in an on-duty shooting. Noor is Somali American. That he was found guilty of murder in the killing of a white woman—against the backdrop of nonprosecutions or acquittals of white officers or of officers who have shot and killed Black men—makes questions about how race factored into the prosecutors’ and jury’s decisions inevitable. In Minneapolis, even among those who hoped for his conviction, many have questioned its significance in the broader fight for police accountability. [Amy Forliti / Associated Press]
The conviction comes two years after a jury acquitted Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile in 2016, of second-degree manslaughter. Castile, a Black man, was in his car with his girlfriend when Yanez, who is Latinx, shot him. Yanez is believed to have been the first Minnesota police officer prosecuted for an on-duty shooting, but he was not charged with murder as Noor was. [Mitch Smith / New York Times]
As the verdict against Noor was announced, the police shooting of Jamar Clark was on the minds of advocates for police accountability and reform in Minneapolis. Clark, a 24-year old Black man, was killed in 2015 by two white police officers. The Hennepin County district attorney’s office, the same office that brought charges against Noor, did not prosecute the officers. One member of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice4Jamar seemed to summarize the views of many when she told The Intercept: “There would have been no trial if Noor’s victim was African American or Native American, and I think the vast majority of people in our movement believe that. There also would have also been no conviction if it was a white police officer.” [Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept]
Noor’s fatal shooting of Damond and his conviction this week also brings to mind at least two other guilty verdicts in police shooting cases where the officer involved was not white. In both those cases, however, the victim was Black, making the verdicts more consistent with demands for an end to large-scale police violence against Black civilians, but still raising questions about the degree to which individual accountability is more easily won against non-white officers. (There is also, of course, the fundamental question about whether convictions and lengthy prison sentences from a system so shaped by racism and state violence can ever be the right mechanism for racial justice and accountability.)
The first case was the 2014 killing of Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black man, by NYPD officer Peter Liang. Liang, who is Chinese American, was found guilty of manslaughter in 2016, in a rare conviction in police shooting cases. In Asian American communities around the country, there was substantial, but far from monolithic, support for Liang, and supporters accused protesters of scapegoating him because of his race. Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept]
More recently, Nouman Raja, a Florida police officer, joined the thin ranks of officers found guilty after fatal shootings. Raja shot and killed 31-year old Corey Jones, a Black musician, in 2015. He was the first officer in Florida to be found guilty in an on-duty shooting in 30 years, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison last week. Raja’s family argued that his actions were not influenced by race, and in comments to the Palm Beach Post, his brother, a police officer as well, said that the “elephant in the room” was that Raja is “an American Muslim.” [Daphne Duret / Palm Beach Post]
In Minneapolis, after Officer Noor shot and killed Damond, Black Lives Matter and other local activists came together with her friends and family to call for accountability. From the beginning, local advocates for police reform have made two related points. First, that Noor’s prosecution in Damond’s killing was influenced by race and class. Second, that the point was not to seek leniency for Noor but to seek accountability for all officers and, more broadly, reform in police departments. [Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept]
During Noor’s trial, Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and former head of the Minneapolis NAACP told the Associated Press that the problem is the tendency of the public to rubber stamp police violence. While she and others wanted Noor to be held accountable, she emphasized that one guilty verdict should not be used to exonerate the system that produces violence. “I don’t want to see a Somali, black, Muslim officer be scapegoated when the rest of the system remains intact,”she said. [Amy Forliti / Associated Press]
And advocates in Minneapolis have already had some success. Racial justice organizations successfully pushed for the end of so-called “warrior-style” police trainings, which encourage police to believe they are always under threat of attack. Last month, the Minneapolis mayor announced that the city’s police force will no longer use the trainings, saying, in his State of the City address that, “fear-based, warrior-style trainings like ‘killology’ are in direct conflict with everything that our chief and I stand for in our police department. Fear-based trainings violate the values at the very heart of community policing.” [Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept]
Sundin of the Justice4Jamar coalition also spoke with The Intercept of the significance of the Minneapolis police chief being forced to resign after Damond’s death, something that had previously never happened following a fatal police shooting. She also noted the increased awareness of police brutality among city residents and a shift in media coverage of police shootings since 2015. In contrast with a few years ago, she told The Intercept that news outlets no longer “parrot the police’s story without looking into it first.” [Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept]
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