Lesson Learned From The Walker Verdict
By Raj Jayadev

Despite the punch in the gut that the Walker verdict was, we still have options ahead of us for holding law enforcement accountable. The struggle for justice does not end when the gavel drops. And in some ways, the Justice for Rudy movement is freer now to act than when the case was within the confines of the courts. Due to Walker's freedom, the campaign for police accountability has more people and more reason to fight than it did before. And there are extremely revealing new lessons that were learned along the way so far that can guide the effort all across the state. Here are a few:

•  It is possible for the community to influence the court system – One of the single most vital reasons why the Walker case got as far as it did was from the pressure on the district attorney from the family to prosecute the case, and to get an open grand jury.   This was only the third open grand jury in Santa Clara County history, and it allowed the public and the media to get the real story, rather then a processed version, and a packed courtroom lets the judge, prosecutor, and jury know that this is a community issue. Even if one is suspect of the court system, direct testimony is vital to piecing together the honest story.

•  Organizing efforts around police accountability is no longer limited to the ethnicity of the victim – Part of the macabre reality of the growing number of victims of police shootings is that the killed are from increasingly different ethnic backgrounds.   The significance of this was evident in the different way San Jose embraced the Cardenas struggle versus the Cau Tran death.   The Tran killing was viewed mainly as a Vietnamese issue, and that is who was at the rallies, court dates, and vigils. By the time Rudy Cardenas was killed, Latino, Black, Vietnamese, and white community members had a stake in the fight, and represented. Their turn out stopped the Justice for Rudy struggle from being pegged only as a “Latino” issue, and allowed the movement to build from the Bay Area's diversity, rather than be fractured by it.

•  Officers are less accountable in their actions then even the most cynical of us realize – Michael Walker was a Bureau of Narcotics Agent, which is supervised by the Department of Justice. Yet, he is also part of the Central Coast Gang Investigators Association, an independent, completely unsupervised, association where officers who do “gang suppression” exchange tactics, information, and develop strategy.   Even after his indictment by the grand jury, Walker was still organizing CCGIA conferences and trainings to officers, who pay the association and receive the required Peace Officer Standards and Training (P.O.S.T) training hours required of them. No one monitors this association, and the public is not allowed to attend trainings. Shooting someone in the back may be against BNE training, but is it okay by CCGIA standards? And who's training do officers actually follow out on the streets? Several CCGIA members wore shirts with there insignia to the Walker trial and one of them refused to change shirts when asked by the prosecutor.

•  Never underestimate the implicit political protections that are afforded an officer – Although Walker had a private attorney named Craig Brown, all of the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement agents involved in the shooting were represented by the Attorney General's office, due to the pending civil suit against Walker.   Lawyers from the Attorney General's office took up the first row of the court during the Walker trial. They would pass Walker's attorney notes during examinations, be the ones preparing defense witnesses during recesses, helped finance “expert” witnesses, and seemed to have a heavy hand in the entire orchestration of Walker's defense. At one point, from the audience area, they even objected, and another time tried to approach the bench much to the judges surprise.

•  Law enforcement will turn on itself when turf is involved -- It was apparent by the grand jury that the usual “circle the wagons” approach by law enforcement would not be happening in the case.   San Jose police testified against Walker, in what seemed to be an issue of turf.   Walker conducted a high-speed chase and shot and killed a man, all without being in coordination with SJPD.   They responded by not supporting Walker, and even offered condemning testimony both in the grand jury and the trial. The generic, “they always protect their own,” vision of the cops was exposed as penetrable by this case

•  You never know you are in a moment of historic implications while it is happening – A common concern throughout the trial was why our side did not pack the courtroom, or even the court building for that matter. It was only towards the end of the trial that people started to realize the enormous implications of a guilty verdict. Not so much in the making of history, but in the shaping of destiny.   People were even more invested in the trial once their surfaced an understanding that the conviction of Michael Walker may keep more guns in their holsters, more District Attorney's ready to prosecute, more juries ready to hold officers at the same standards as civilians in a courtroom.

We are still in the historic moment. How we respond from this point on is perhaps as important as the verdict delivered in the courtroom.

Related stories:

Walker is Every Cop in San Jose
By Elizabeth Gonzalez

Will There Ever be Justice?
By David Madrid

GHAZAL* FOR SAN JOSE
by Christopher Patrick Nelson

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