Jonathan Ferrell, Surviellience and American Consciousness
Football star Jonathan Ferrell of Flordia A&M University was shot and killed by Officer Randall Kerrick of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police in Charlotte, North Carolina on Saturday, September 14, 2013.
After dropping off a friend at 2:30AM after an event, Ferrell was driving home when he was in a catastrophic accident. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief, Rodney Monroe, told CNN that the accident was “pretty serious.” Subsequently, authorities believe Ferrell’s sole path of escaping the mangled vehicle was climbing out of the back window. After Ferrell forced his way out of remnants of his car, he ran to the nearest house for assistance, owned by Sarah McCartney. Believing that it was her husband knocking on the door, McCartney opened it. When she closed the door, she called 911, and told the dispatcher, “I need help. There’s a guy breaking in my front door.”
Believing that police had come to assist him, the injured Ferrell, according to police reports, “advanced” towards them. According to the police department, one officer deployed an “unsuccessful” Taser. Following the failed Taser, twelve shots were fired solely from Officer Randall Kerrick’s weapon. Ten of those twelve shots pierced Jonathan’s flesh and claimed his life.
Immediately following the event, Officer Randall Kerrick’s defense attorney, Michael Green, said that “[Kerrick’s] actions were justified on the night in question.” However, in a statement released by the police later that same night, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that the “shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive;” citing that “Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.” Kerrick has since been placed on paid leave and charged with voluntary manslaughter with a $50,000 bond. The charge of voluntary manslaughter is when a murderer had no prior intent to kill and acted under the “heat of passion;” it is also referred to as non-negligent manslaughter.
The Ferrell family’s attorney, Chris Chestnut, noted that he believed the reason for the extreme diligence with which Ferrell’s murder has been handled is because of the recent events surrounding Trayvon Martin.
Until mass outcries throughout social media, nationwide rallies and the mainstream media that covered both the social media outcries and nationwide rallies, George Zimmerman was not arrested. He was arrested six weeks after the murder. On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was ultimately found not-guilty in the murder of Trayvon Murtin. The day before the verdict, the film Fruitvale Station was released. The film recounts the murder of Oscar Grant who, like Ferrell, was “unsuccessfully” Tased before he was shot and murdered by, in Grant’s case, a BART police officer. Gary Younge, Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute, noted the following in regard to these eerie intersections:
"The Zimmerman verdict came down the opening weekend of Fruitvale Station; a film about Oscar Grant’s shooting at the hands of Oakland police. Six weeks earlier, Darius Simmons, 13, was shot dead in front of his mother by a 75-year-old neighbor who accused him of burgling his home. Two months after Zimmerman’s verdict, Jonathan Ferrell was shot dead by police after seeking help following a car crash. When he knocked on a stranger’s door asking for help, the homeowner didn’t call the ambulance, but hit the panic button.
There are only so many isolated incidents you can talk about before you have to start talking about a trend. We don’t need to pontificate about what kind of person Zimmerman is because we know what kind of country America is. Racial profiling—and its lethal consequences—may or may not be “his way” but it’s the American way."
Fruitvale Station, which made approximately $13 million and is expected to be a 2014 Oscar nominee, may have an impact on the continued vigilance with which Ferrel’s case is being followed. The Dream Defenders, a Florida based youth organization which seeks an end to police brutality and systematic racism, noted in regard to Ferrel that “we’ve lost another one of our brothers to racial profiling and senseless police violence.” The organization is working towards the passing of Trayvon’s Law in Florida. The principles of the proposed law, as detailed on the NAACP’s website, are to: (1) end racial profiling; (2) repeal stand your ground type laws; (3) creating law enforcement accountability through effective police oversight; (4) improving training and best practices for community watch group; and (5) mandating law enforcement data collection on homicide cases involving people of color.
In discussion Ferrell’s murder, intersections of other slain black men and boys as well as forces that worked to kill them have been made clear. The common forces being First, Sarah McCartney, she represents the fear of black men that is used to justify their murder. Second, Randall Kerrick represents excessive force used by police against people of color. Finally, the media’s growing impact on the surveillance of police brutality.
In the aforementioned 911 call between Sarah McCartney and a dispatcher, McCartney is heard frantically telling the dispatcher that the severely injured Ferrell who was still in need of medical attention, “kicked in the door,” but she “finally got that door shut.” Police Chief, Rodney Monroe, noted in regard to Sarah McCartney’s claim that Jonathan Ferrell was “banging on the door viciously,” that he did not believe that the unarmed Ferrell made threats or tried to rob McCartney.
Melissa McEwen, founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, said the following in regard to the way officers responded to McCartney’s claims:
“I'm not inclined to defend [Sarah McCartney] or search for explanations. What happened, for whatever reason, is that she communicated a fear to police, who clearly treated that as fact. And that transaction is racist. Over and over, I write about police failing utterly to take women at their word when they have been actually, really assaulted. Over and over, in comments here and in other spaces, women share their stories of being disbelieved by police, of being turned away from making a police report after being assaulted. Over and over, we all hear stories of women who have been killed by partners after police failed to take seriously multiple reports of domestic abuse.
But suddenly, when a woman makes a call about a black man who is at her door, her word is gold. Her fear of attack is translated immediately into an actual threat of attack.”
McCartney’s statement makes clear that the portrayal of black men as hyper-sexual, rapacious beasts in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation has become a part of the American psyche; fear of black men is cultural. The persons taught to fear black men the most, also introduced by anti-miscegenation messages within Griffith’s film, are white women. Zillah Eisenstein, Professor of Politics and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Ithaca College, noted that “Racialized gender in the form of the dangerous black boy/man is a form of white privileged terrorism. With new laws like “stand your ground” and with the anarchy of guns and gun laws the verdict in this trial endorses a terror filled society, most especially for Black people and people of color other than white. Let us begin a real war on terror: begin real gun control, dump stand your ground law, and re-structure white privilege.”
According to a detailed, 130-page report issued by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in April of 2013, the organization illuminated that every 28 hours an African-American man or woman is murdered by police, security guards or vigilantes. The aforementioned film, Fruitvale Station, which details the murder of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer, as well as the Zimmerman trial in the murder of Trayvon Martin were two publicized situations that have pushed this fatal trend into the forefront of American consciousness. Given citizens’ cell-phone surveillance of officers and the amount of attention and criticism these events garner from being widely spread across and beyond the country by way of Tumblr, the idealized “community watch group” mentioned within Trayvon’s Law is materializing.
In the murder of Oscar Grant, Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, having cited that he “accidentally” reached for his gun rather than his Taser. In the murder of Darius Simmons, who was briefly mentioned above in the quote by Gary Younge, Simmons’ murderer, John Henry Spooner, was sentenced to life in prison having damned himself by the video evidence of the murder on his own home security camera. Oddly, in the trail of George Zimmerman in which there was no video evidence, Zimmerman was acquitted. Should the dash-cam recording of the murder of Ferrell be released, which the family is asking for, what impact do you think that will have on the subsequent trying of Randal Kerrick?
Charlotte police kill ex-FAMU player who may have been running to them for help. (2013, September 16). Retrieved October 10, 2013, from CNN Justice: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/justice/north-carolina-police-shooting/index.html
McEwan, M. (2013, September 16). Skakesville. Retrieved October 10, 2013, from Shakesville: http://www.shakesville.com/2013/09/failure-to-serve-and-protect.html
Movement, M. X. (2013, April). Operation Ghetto Storm. Retrieved October 2013, from Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdf
NAACP. (203). TRAYVON'S LAW SUMMARY. Retrieved October 10, 2013, from NAACP.ORG: http://www.naacp.org/pages/trayvons-law-summary
Younge, G. (2013, September 18). George Zimmerman's Way Is the American Way. Retrieved October 10, 2013, from The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/176230/george-zimmermans-way-american-way
