October 26, 2004

Out for Justice

By Cheo Tyehimba

In 1993 Anthony "Van" Jones was arrested after the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of cops in the Rodney King beating. He wasn't looting, setting fires, or brandishing a weapon. "I was arrested simply for being a police observer," says Jones, who had just graduated from Yale Law School and was working with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco. "That's when I realized something was very wrong with the crimminal justice system." He also realized that young African American men were often victims of wrongful arrest and illegal abuse by the police.

To tackle the problem, Jones, now 36, founded Bay Area PoliceWatch in 1996, the state's first and only police-misconduct lawyer-referral service. The San Francisco organization was renamed the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in honor of the civil rights activist. "We challenge the police when they kill somebody," says Jones.

“There is a pile of African American dead bodies in San Francisco and Oakland because people have been killed under very vicious circumstances.” His organization made headlines in 1997 when its efforts resulted in the firing of a rogue San Francisco cop. Then in 2003 they helped derail Alameda County (Oakland) from building a “super jail” for youth, which was to be one of the largest (per capita) juvenile halls in the country.

To keep an eye on local cops, the center uses computer software to track problem officers, precincts and practices, and makes the information available to lawyers, watchdog groups and the media.

According to the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice, African-American youth represent 26% of juvenile arrests and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons. In California, a state with the nation’s largest youth prison population, incarceration rates for African Americans are so high that many consider the criminal justice system to be the new Jim Crow in America. “There’s been a massive increase in police presence in our communities but there’s been no increase in police oversight,” says Jones. “The young people and their parents who are impacted by over-incarceration have very little voice in public policy.”

These days Jones says dismantling the nation’s largest and most costly youth prison system is his primary focus. “The California Youth Authority should be replaced. It’s a big prison model that takes little people and gets them ready to go to prison.” In a state that has built more than 21 prisons and only one four-year university in the last 25 years, Jones is crystal clear about his organization’s direction. “The most important thing that we think we can do is take the biggest incarcerator of black children in the country and turn it into the biggest rehabilitater of black children. That’s our job.”

Posted at October 26, 2004 10:07 PM

Comments

Descrimination in the south is just as alive as it was before the civil right's movement. The Klan organizations are still holding their meeting. The prison system population in the south is 90% black men. The prison system secutiry guards consists of mostly white males.

I live a small town in the south, Jonesboro Arksnaas. About 5 years ago, my son was arrested convicted by a all white jurors of first degree murder. I feel that he is not guiltiy of the crime along with he did not get a fair trial, He was married to a white woman, thereby it was said among the community that he would be made an example of what happened to a black man who is with a white women. This man's was receiving therapy due to the wrongful arrest, and being acused of something he was not guilty of. His therapist wrote a letter to the court stating that he was not able to stand trial due to not being mentally incompetent at the time but that was to non effect. The attorney's who represented him taken ill and asked that the trial be postoned to later date. The defense attorney taken sick with a brain problems and was getting test for this along with taking medication that kept him to out of it to represent my son. This scienero was all presented to the court by the defense attorney to be relived or post poned the trial, but nothing was done, the trial went on and he recieved a forty year conviction.

Posted by: Brenda Ross at January 27, 2006 06:14 PM