By Ali Winston/OAKLAND

Gary King Sr. tries to avoid idle moments. When he’s not working as a drywaller, he keeps himself busy refurbishing his tidy single-family house on Congress Avenue. Sometimes he drums for hours, his hands a blur as they beat out a rhythm. If he is still for too long, the memories of his eldest son’s death come flooding back.

“It’s like it was yesterday,” he said. “It’ll always be yesterday for me.”

Around 3:30 PM on September 20th, 2007, Gary King Jr., 20, was killed during an altercation with Sgt. Patrick Gonzalez of the Oakland Police Department at 53rd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

A memorial to Gary King Jr. on the corner of 53rd Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard (photo/Ali Winston)

Gonzalez, who stopped King because he looked like a suspect in a month-old homicide, repeatedly Tasered and then shot King twice in the back after Gonzalez says he felt a gun on King. Gonzalez says he fired only because he feared for his life.

Witnesses and relatives are not sure whether King Jr. was armed. Police say they recovered a revolver of unspecified caliber and make from the scene. But the witnesses did not see King Jr. pull a gun, and they said the 20-year-old was running away when Gonzalez fired the fatal shots.

In May, the King family filed a wrongful death suit in U.S. District Court for unspecified damages against the city of Oakland, alleging that Sgt. Gonzalez unlawfully used deadly force. The trial is set for September 2009.

The Kings’ case is one of three wrongful-death suits against the Oakland Police Department currently in court. The families of Andrew Moppin, 20, and Mack “Jody” Woodfox III, 27, both killed by rookie officer Hector Jiminez in separate incidents earlier this year, have filed separate $10 million civil rights suits in Federal Court. Both men were reportedly unarmed, according to press accounts.

An Internal Affairs investigation cleared Sgt. Gonzalez of all wrongdoing in King Jr’s death, and Jiminez was cleared in the shooting of Moppin. The Woodfox case incident is under review.

These officer-involved shootings and subsequent lawsuits has raised questions about the department’s training and oversight and damaged its strained relationship with minority communities. Oakland police have been under the supervision of a federal judge since 2003, after a settlement was reached in the “Rough Riders” lawsuit, in which a group of officers were accused of assaulting suspects, planting evidence and falsifying reports. A team of independent monitors created by the Negotiated Settlement Agreement is supervising an overhaul of departmental policies, from training procedures to internal affairs investigations.

Attorneys for all three families say that in the absence of effective, independent oversight, litigation is the only means to compel the department to change its policies.

“The most effective check on the Oakland Police has been civil rights lawsuits,” said attorney Michael Haddad of Haddad & Sherwin, who represents the King family.

“Whenever you have to go to the courts to fix your police department, that’s a problem,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York Police Department officer and professor of criminology at the City University of New York-John Jay.

Litigation filed after Oakland police officers attacked antiwar protestors [see video of the incident] at a 2003 rally outside the Port of Oakland led to a new crowd control policy with stricter regulations on the use of non-lethal force. Earlier this year, Haddad’s firm also succeeded in getting a federal judge to strike down an departmental policy that allowed officers to conduct strip searches in public. The strip searches have been pilloried by members of Oakland’s African-American and Latino communities.

Oakland taxpayers foot the bill for police misconduct. According to the city attorney’s annual report, Oakland has paid an average of $2,403,877 per year since 2003 to settle suits against the police department, including $1,452,915 per year for alleged use of force claims.

Although the department has worked hard to change its internal culture and improve its fractious relationship with Oakland’s black and Latino communities, the killings of King, Moppin and Woodfox are a marked step backwards. Before an Oct. 21 City Council meeting, several citizens voiced their frustration with the department over a widening narcotics warrant scandal and officer-involved shootings.

“I want to have some kind of trust in the police, but right now I have none,” said Robyn Woodfox, Mack Woodfox’s aunt.

James B. Chanin and John Burris, who both brought the Riders suit against Oakland Police, currently represent the Moppin and Woodfox families. Chanin, who handled his first suit against the department in 1979, is troubled by the cases. “This is a very disappointing development,” he said. “We’re worried about it.”

Gary King Jr.

As his father tells it, Gary King Jr. was a typical middle-class American boy, crazy about sports and close to his three siblings. Born to a black father and a white mother, King Jr. grew up in West Berkeley. He attended Longfellow Middle School and Berkeley High School before the family moved to North Oakland in 2002.  King Jr. excelled at baseball, basketball and Tai Kwon Doe.  Although he did not graduate high school, Gary Jr. was working towards a G.E.D. and selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

King Jr. also was planning to start a family; Ashante Simpson, his longtime girlfriend, had learned she was pregnant, to Gary’s delight.

King Sr., who was raised with his three brothers by a community activist and single mother in Watts’ Nickerson Gardens housing project in Los Angeles, reared his children as a disciplinarian. He admonished Gary Jr. and his brother Jamayah to act respectfully towards police.

No matter how secure his home life was, once Gary Jr. stepped out of the house, he was in a different world with different rules. Shortly before his death, he was robbed twice at gunpoint by other neighborhood youths. Though Gary Sr. was unaware of the incidents at the time, he did notice a change in his son’s demeanor. Gary Jr. also complained to his father about problems with local boys, “Dad, the kids are crazy around here,” he told Gary Sr.

Although he had no criminal record, Gary King Jr. had repeated run-ins with Oakland police. His father recounted two incidents where Gary Jr. was stopped by police officers. One night, Gary Jr. and his brother Jamayah were stopped and detained by officers down the block from their house on 53rd and Market. The police said they were looking for a group of armed black young men, and Gary and Jamayah were released only after King Sr. said he confronted the officers. On another occasion that Gary Jr. tearfully recounted to his father, he was handcuffed by an officer while standing at a bus stop with his girlfriend.

To his father, these precarious circumstances are instrumental in explaining how Gary Jr. died. “Kids like Gary get the worst on both ends, because they’re not involved in gangs and they’re not financially deprived, but they still walk around with their low jeans,” he said. “Gary lost his life on the way he looked, period.”

The Shooting

On Sept. 20th, 2007, Gary King Jr. and three friends were at his family’s house, playing video games. Around 3 PM, they went out to a liquor store on 53rd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for snacks and soda.

Gonzalez, who witnesses say was driving southbound on MLK, spotted the four youths as they exited the store, and he swerved across both lanes of traffic into the parking lot.

Gonzalez approached King Jr., and the two exchanged words. Although the subject of the conversation remains unclear, the confrontation quickly turned violent. Witnesses claim Gonzalez grabbed King Jr.’s dreadlocks, pulled him into a headlock and punched him repeatedly.

Oakland police contend that Gonzalez felt a gun on King Jr. during the struggle.

Gary’s companions and witnesses have stated that he did not swing at Gonzalez, and he was trying to get away. Sgt. Gonzalez also Tasered King Jr. repeatedly while holding the youth close to him, a detail confirmed by the police and witnesses.

King Jr. broke free of Gonzalez and staggered across MLK, yelling for help. Witnesses say his shirt had been torn off, and his pants had fallen below his waist. Gonzalez pulled his service weapon and fired twice, hitting Gary Jr. twice in the back. After Gary Jr. dropped to the sidewalk, Gonzalez cuffed his hands together. Witnesses say Gary Jr.’s hands were empty.  Gonzalez said later that during the scuffle the youth had reached for his waist as if to draw a gun, and he fired because he feared for his life.

Furthermore, Gary Sr. doubts that his son would have survived the incident even if Gonzalez hadn’t shot him. When he first saw King Jr.’s body at the Alameda County Coroner, he was shocked at the number and severity of the Taser burns. “His body was just ripped to shreds, torn to pieces by that Taser,” Gary Sr. said. “To me, it was torture and murder. Simple as that.”

Gary King Sr. is still struggling with the loss of his son (photo/Ali Winston)

Since 2001, more than 320 Americans have died after being shocked by police Tasers, according to Amnesty International. “None of the studies to date illustrate the full effects of Tasers on the human body,” said Mona Cadena, deputy director for Amensty International West. The organization is calling for a moratorium on Taser usage until the device’s effects have been fully documented.

Gary King Jr.’s death still resonates in Oakland neighborhoods. On Congress Avenue, where his father currently lives, some neighbors have adorned their cars with photos of Gary Jr.

Gonzalez, the Oakland Police Department, and the city attorney declined to comment for this article because of pending litigation. In court documents, the city attorney confirms that Gonzalez shot Gary King Jr. twice, but that he acted according to department regulations and cleared him of all allegations of wrongdoing.

Gonzalez also was cleared by Internal Affairs of any wrongdoing in the King shooting and is back on duty.

Training & Oversight

In light of the Gonzalez shooting and the Jiminez incidents, the matters of effective police oversight and departmental leadership gain importance, according to Prof. Eugene O’Donnell of CUNY-John Jay.

“The culture of the department is out of control – micromanaging isn’t going to work,” said O’Donnell, referring to the detailed reforms of the Negotiated Settlement Agreement that directs Oakland’s police reforms. O’Donnell views many of the NSA reforms as shifting responsibility for departmental conduct down to officers on the street, while Oakland’s mayor and city council have “abdicated all responsibility” for the department’s crime-fighting methods.

Oakland Police are far from fulfilling the requirements of their Department of Justice-negotiated consent decree. At a September hearing in front of Federal Judge Thelton Henderson, the independent monitoring team noted that OPD is in fully compliance with 13 out of 50 criteria required by the NSA.

Henderson also expressed concern that officers involved in the Field Training Officer program had been cited in prior civil rights lawsuits. The department maintains that officers who have been named in lawsuits are not necessarily guilty of the allegations. At a time when approximately half of OPD’s patrol personnel have been on the force fewer than three years, Henderson said, proper training is critical.

Oakland Police stand by the FTO program, which they say rigorously vets potential candidates. “We believe the FTO program represents cutting-edge police practice,” said Capt. Anthony Rachal at the September hearing. Rachal added he would hold Oakland’s FTO program as a “national model” and asserted that candidates were strictly vetted.

Officer-involved shootings are common in high-crime cities like Oakland, and fatalities are a fact of life. In 2007, 12 people were shot by police officers in Oakland, five fatally. So far in 2008, nine people have been shot by officers, with six fatalities. In St. Louis, Missouri, which has a comparable population (353,000 to Oakland’s 397,000) and crime rate to Oakland (Oakland had 191.8 crimes rate per 10,000 residents, while St. Louis had 219.8 crimes per 10,000 residents) there were 15 officer-involved shootings in 2007 with 6 fatalities, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. In 2008 to date, St. Louis has seen seven officer-involved shootings with one fatality.

The NSA compliments existing oversight operations within and independent of the police department. Oakland has an independent police review commission, the Citizens’ Police Review Board, which reviews complaints filed against officers by citizens and recommends discipline for sustained cases. The final decision on disciplinary action falls to the chief of police. The Internal Affairs Division simultaneously investigates complaints.

IAD statistics reveal 1,161 complaints against police department employees in 2007. 1,087 complaints had been filed with IAD as of late September. IAD expects around 1,400 complaints to be filed in 2008, according to division chief Capt. Ed Poulson.

Approximately 10% of all allegations of wrongdoing are sustained, or found credible, by Internal Affairs. In 2007, 117 cases were substantiated (with 164 findings, because individual cases can have multiple allegations). In 2008, 65 cases have resulted in at least one sustained finding in 2008 (95 total allegations were sustained).

If allegations are sustained, discipline is determined by the police chief. Punishment ranges from written reprimands or counseling and training to termination. In 2007, 10 officers were terminated, 1 demoted, 18 suspended, 27 issued written reprimands, and 58 given counseling and training.

In 2008, 4 officers were terminated, none demoted, 4 suspended, 9 issued written reprimands, and 39 given counseling and training.

Although independent oversight is simultaneously conducted by the Civilian Police Review Board, the civilian agency receives far fewer complaints than IAD. In 2007, 82 complaints were filed by 88 people, according to the CPRB’s annual report. 75 complaints were resolved – only 6 were sustained.

All civilian review proceedings for law enforcement officers in the state of California have been closed to the public since 2006. A state supreme court ruling, Copley Press v. San Diego, denied public access to administrative appeal hearings concerning demotions and terminations of peace officers. State legislators such as Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) have attempted to overturn the ruling without success.

“The Copley decision eviscerated a lot of what the CPRB was able to do,” said Michael Haddad, adding that the CPRB is understaffed and suffers a high turnover rate. “It’s pretty feeble.” Because the public is barred from participating in CPRB hearings, the concept of transparent, independent oversight is undermined from the start.

Community Reaction

The recent shootings have exacerbated longstanding tensions between the police and local residents, according to community activists. Young people of color have a particularly antagonistic relationship with Oakland Police.

In the midst of a budget crisis, the department is one of the few city agencies that is still hiring, and paying well. At first glance, a base salary of more than $70,000 per year for rookie officers would appeal to residents of a city with an unemployment rate at 10.4% in September. Yet young Oaklanders are reluctant to join the police, a reticence that stems from a history of abuse and mistrust. Of the new class of academy recruits set to take the streets in November, only 18% are from Oakland – although that figure is double the 9% from the previous academy class.

In addition to a readily apparent antagonism towards the police by minority youth, Oakland has a large ex-convict population whose criminal records rule out any employment by law enforcement agencies. Oakland currently has 3,000 parolees who are being actively supervised in the Region 2 Parole area, according to the Adult Parole division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The Oakland Police has a tense relationship with minority youth (photo/Ali Winston)

OPD officers are not required to live in Oakland proper. Oaklanders have pushed for a residency requirement for peace officers since the 1960s, when the Black Panther Party and similar groups promoted the idea to improve the community-police relationship.

“Why aren’t our young people wanting to become OPD officers? The starting salary is $70,000 – we’ve got kids who are flipping burgers for a living.” asked Rashidah Granage, executive director of PUEBLO-People United. “They don’t want anything to do with it.”

The community-police relationship in many Oakland neighborhoods is one of “automatic hostility,” said Bay Area Police Watch Director Kijani Tafari.

“There are presumptions about the people in the area that cause officers, black and white, to act towards residents in a certain way,” Tafari said.

Aftermath

After an initial flurry of protests and press coverage, Gary King Jr.’s story has faded into the background of Oakland’s ever-present street violence. For the Kings, however, the pain is all too fresh. Gary Sr. says his other children are struggling to cope: As he tells it, Jamayah has become an introvert, daughter Noele has turned to alcohol, and his oldest daughter, Noreen, has become obsessively protective with her young son. Gary Sr.’s younger brother, Cedric, was about to graduate from the Los Angeles Police Department’s academy, but quit after Gary Jr.’s death.

Gary Sr.’s marriage also faltered after his son’s death – he and his wife, Noreen, separated in the past year and moved out of the house on 53rd and Market.

At home, Gary Sr. studies for his contractor licensing exam, drums, and paints over graffiti on the BART pillars adjacent to Gary Jr’s mural. When he comes home, he often catches himself saying hello to Gary Jr. and speaking to his deceased son in the present tense. Drumming helps purge the bad thoughts, the pain, the anger.

The past year’s turmoil has upended Gary King Sr.’s life. He takes life a day at a time, trying to cope with his demons and not let the chasm Gary Jr.’s passing left swallow him whole.

“I’m getting to know myself all over again.”

Last 5 posts by Ali Winston

• Scenes from the Registrar - November 4th, 2008
• Measure NN falls short of required votes - November 2nd, 2008
• Calif. voters to decide on crime measures - November 2nd, 2008
• Narc cops lied to judge, suit claims - October 30th, 2008
• City Council gets earful on police shooting - October 22nd, 2008