[blind-democracy] The KKK and Georgia Cops

From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 17 May 2020 21:32:29 -0400

The KKK and Georgia Cops

By Akela Lacy, The Intercept

17 May 20

hen the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced last week that it would be
probing the Glynn County Police Department's dismissal of the killing of
Ahmaud Arbery, some people breathed a sigh of relief. It was a welcome
development after the lynching of a 25-year-old black man, whose white
killers had been walking free for 74 days - even though the entire incident
was caught on tape.

But those familiar with the GBI responded with warranted skepticism. Sure,
it was a step in the right direction. But at that point, almost anything
would have been. Local police and elected officials for over two months had
found reasons not to arrest either of the men - Gregory and Travis McMichael
- who chased and killed Arbery while he was jogging. After all, one was
their former colleague. The other, his son.

Hinesville District Attorney Tom Durden, the third prosecutor to take on the
case, formally
<https://twitter.com/GBI_GA/status/1257852563971624961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7
Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwgxa.tv%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fda-openin
g-investigation-into-death-of-brunswick-man-shot-while-running> requested
the GBI's assistance on May 5. It was a critical moment: The disturbing
graphic video of Arbery's death had been broadcast on national television
and shared thousands of times, following revelations that the Glynn County
Police Department, where Gregory McMichael once worked, and local district
attorneys had gone to great lengths to
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6884019-Waycross-DA-Letter-on-Arber
y-Shooting-Jp.html> smear Arbery's name and protect his killers. The public
outcry that followed is the reason the McMichaels were arrested at all.

The GBI - which is generally revered throughout the state and is often
brought in to investigate police-involved shootings of current or former
officers, like Gregory McMichael, to get around conflicts of interest - has
repeatedly been accused of
<https://investigations.ajc.com/caroline-small-shooting/> mishandling such
investigations - in some cases intentionally. The agency has botched cases
in which the investigating officers appeared to be motivated by racism,
leading to wrongful convictions. The agency has also repeatedly failed to
hold accountable and break up powerful networks of officers who broke laws
in the course of their work - causing and covering up overwhelming violence.

In Georgia, where the
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/us/man-wore-kkk-hood-grocery-trnd/index.html

Klu Klux Klan once infiltrated every level of law enforcement, racism can

play a role in violent crimes and the way they are investigated. Arbery's
case is no different: There are clear parallels to the lynch mobs that
routinely chased, tortured, and murdered black Americans from the time of
slavery through the 1960s. Between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,000 black
people in the U.S. - including 589 people in Georgia - were
<https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/opinion-russell-name-should-not-halls-just
ice/rXec8GMYfFbj6z44k523lJ/> killed in lynchings. The KKK's stranglehold
over Georgia's law enforcement apparatus decades ago laid the groundwork for
a historically deadly relationship between the cops, white people, and black
people. The white supremacist underpinnings of U.S. law enforcement continue
to echo throughout the country, as shown by the multiple
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indianapolis-shooting-police-chief-comments/>
other police-involved
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/11/family-seeks-answers-fatal
-police-shooting-louisville-woman-her-apartment/> shootings and others
<https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/05/10/black-transgender-woman-nina-p
op.html> murders that have taken place since Arbery was killed - and are
being covered up and drowned out during the ongoing pandemic.

Some lawyers in the state are optimistic that the GBI's new director, former
Cobb County DA and Chief Magistrate Judge Vic Reynolds, will give the case
the attention it deserves. Still, a closer look at the agency's record
raises questions about whether it can be trusted to do so.

"There are communities that absolutely are skeptical about whether the GBI
or whether any law enforcement agency is going to adequately investigate its
law enforcement brethren," Jon Rapping, a professor and director of the
criminal justice certificate program at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School,
told The Intercept. "That suspicion undoubtedly is going to create a lot of
skepticism about whether the GBI is going to do justice in this case."

The KKK and Georgia Cops

The history of the GBI, established in 1937, is interwoven with the history
of the Ku Klux Klan, which was a terrorizing
<https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/opinion-russell-name-should-not-halls-just
ice/rXec8GMYfFbj6z44k523lJ/> force in Georgia in the mid-20th century. One
of the earliest directors of the GBI, who later served as an Atlanta police
officer, Sam Roper, was a local Klan leader when he took over the
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/White_Robes_and_Burning_Crosses/W_4-BA
AAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22atlanta+policeman+sam+roper,+to+lead+the%22&pg=PA9
5&printsec=frontcover> GBI after former Georgia Gov. Gene Talmadge won
another reelection in 1946. Roper, whose
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_FBI_and_the_KKK/YcOSCgAAQBAJ?hl=en
&gbpv=1&dq=%22sam+roper+back+on+the+atlanta+%22+kkk+gbi&pg=PA41&printsec=fro
ntcover> links to the agency have been all but wiped from public records,
later recruited Klan members into his police department, Frederick Allen
<https://books.google.com/books?id=-UgsxY0tm_8C&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=sam+rope
r+georgia+bureau+of+investigation&source=bl&ots=Z9l2_f-Dri&sig=ACfU3U1w8Zh_z
PgXA2UEJBeGIF9ySl1LTQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVga3b767pAhWUknIEHaAhCOAQ6AEwAn
oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=sam%20roper%20georgia%20bureau%20of%20investigation&f=f
alse> wrote in the 1996 book, "Atlanta Rising." Roper campaigned in support
of Talmadge's 1946 reelection and planned to install Klan members in "every
Georgia County and pay him $125 a month to 'assist' the local sheriff" after
Talmadge won, Allen wrote. Roper left the GBI shortly afterward and
<https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/08/28/issue.html> became
an
<https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/4018/>
Imperial Wizard of the KKK in
<https://books.google.com/books?id=W_4-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=sam+rope
r+gbi&source=bl&ots=8z_E38_mSZ&sig=ACfU3U2r6YU_SKWWoCDhmPP-2FF-Vpud3A&hl=en&
sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiux5WP0bPpAhVDhOAKHRx-AJEQ6AEwAXoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=sam%20r
oper%20succeeded&f=false> 1949.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/us/29kennedy.html> Stetson Kennedy, a
human rights activist famous for infiltrating the Klan in the 1940s,
<https://books.google.com/books?id=foytiryjiD8C&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=gene+tal
madge+sam+roper&source=bl&ots=cyxvLa5ATa&sig=ACfU3U3DMjzZAYkAyWTKNkvQyROvOr8
1fA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0hZWu8K7pAhVnlXIEHeU7DZgQ6AEwA3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage
&q=gene%20talmadge%20sam%20roper&f=false> wrote in his 1990 book that when
Klan leader David Duke asked him who was "running the Klan now," he told
Duke that it was the GBI's former director, Roper. "I know Roper all right!"
Duke said.

Over the years, including in one unsolved 1946
<https://www.ajc.com/news/moore-ford-exclusive-read-the-gbi-564-page-file-th
e-lynching/3BxbL19B4rGydKzpXTk9dM/> lynching case currently under plans for
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the GBI and other Georgia law enforcement
agencies have been accused of improperly handling investigations, including
those related to Klan-linked
<https://apnews.com/4d0b44773e76f396215bab8ee3f516d1> killings. In more
recent  <https://investigations.ajc.com/caroline-small-shooting/> history,
the agency has failed to hold police accountable for deadly violence - or
for detaining, arresting, and extrajudicially killing people, many of whom
were bystanders. (Just last year, the GBI investigated 84 cases of
officer-involved shootings, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
<https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/map-georgia-officer-involved-shootings-
under-gbi-investigation-2019/J9XwWmKrmeSDpt4O7tEsEK/> reported. The agency
does not track officers who were disciplined or charged in those cases.)

In
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/27/lessons-from-th
e-drug-raid-that-burned-a-georgia-toddler/> two recent cases that cost local
governments over $3 million in
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/23/jury-awards-mor
e-than-2-million-to-family-of-pastor-killed-by-narcotics-task-force/>
settlements, the GBI failed to adequately investigate a narcotics task force
that conducted a violent 2014
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/27/lessons-from-th
e-drug-raid-that-burned-a-georgia-toddler/> raid that put an infant in a
burn unit under a medically induced coma, and
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/05/30/drug-task-force
-that-burned-a-toddler-this-week-also-killed-an-innocent-pastor-in-2009/>
killed a reverend in 2009. In both cases, the GBI
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/27/lessons-from-th
e-drug-raid-that-burned-a-georgia-toddler/> cleared agents of wrongdoing,
even blaming the reverend for his own killing. In the case of  the 2014
raid, which the GBI at the time
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/27/lessons-from-th
e-drug-raid-that-burned-a-georgia-toddler/> denied that the local task force
had approved - the agency, a former district attorney, and a grand jury
failed to find "what the feds found - that this entire raid was based on a
series of lies,"
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/27/lessons-from-th
e-drug-raid-that-burned-a-georgia-toddler/> wrote Washington Post columnist
Radley Balko. In the case of the reverend, in which the GBI investigated and
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/23/jury-awards-mor
e-than-2-million-to-family-of-pastor-killed-by-narcotics-task-force/>
cleared agents of wrongdoing and said they followed appropriate procedures,
his family eventually won a $2.3 million
<https://www.ajc.com/news/jury-awards-widow-million-pastor-wrongful-death-su
it/rpn5WnROnnDtWyeBJ92kjI/> settlement against the
<https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/judge-oks-832k-in-legal-fees-in-preac
her-shooting-case/> officer who shot him. These cases left Balko with the
following
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/23/jury-awards-mor
e-than-2-million-to-family-of-pastor-killed-by-narcotics-task-force/>
conclusion: "The Georgia Bureau of Investigation probably shouldn't be
trusted to conduct unbiased, thorough investigations of other law
enforcement officers."

The GBI and Wrongful Convictions

The GBI has a mixed record in cases involving wrongful convictions,
sometimes failing to pursue obvious leads or otherwise mishandling an
investigation. In 1979, testimony from a GBI agent helped send
<https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/john-jerome-white/> John White to
prison for a rape, burglary, and robbery that he did not commit. Later, GBI
helped with White's exoneration; he was released in 2007 after serving more
than 20 years of a life sentence.

In the case of
<https://www.georgiainnocenceproject.org/cases/exonerees/kerry-robinson/>
Kerry Robinson, who was released in January on a wrongful conviction after
serving close to 18 years of a 20-year sentence, a GBI DNA analyst provided
"inaccurate and overstated testimony," according to the Georgia Innocence
Project.

Perhaps the most troubling of recent examples is the 1999 wrongful
indictment of Devonia Inman, whose case is the subject of a
<https://theintercept.com/podcasts/murderville/> podcast and
<https://theintercept.com/series/murderville/> a series of articles by The
Intercept's Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith. Inman has been in prison since
the day before his 23rd birthday for the murder of Donna Brown, even though
the GBI has
<https://www.ajc.com/news/local/judge-refuses-dismiss-man-claims-wrongful-co
nviction-murder/HxDDyIcrkmjBo8RwxzY39H/> matched DNA found at the scene of
the crime to another man. The person whose DNA the GBI identified went on to
kill at least two other people and is currently serving a federal life
sentence without parole.

Like with Arbery, the GBI's involvement in Inman's case was initially seen
as a step in the right direction. In the early 2000s, the GBI was ahead of
local police regarding access to new DNA technology and "routinely" took
over cases in South Georgia's rural towns, The Intercept
<https://theintercept.com/2018/12/06/murderville-georgia-who-killed-donna-br
own/> reported.

Inman's is "a story about racism, bad policing, and people who looked the
other way," Segura and Smith say in the "Murderville" podcast. Much of the
same can be said of Arbery's.

The Arbery Case

The GBI entered Arbery's case after Brunswick-area police dismissed it, and
one prosecutor deemed the killing "perfectly legal."

Having reviewed the tape, Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George
Barnhill the day after the killing
<https://www.ajc.com/news/district-attorneys-condemn-recused-prosecutor-ahma
ud-arbery-case/VWV86naEbd9eprgOCSWwRJ/> told the first prosecuting
attorney's office that he thought it was justified, AJC reported. The two
district attorneys, including Brunswick DA Jackie Johnson, recused
themselves from the case - McMichael had worked under Johnson's direction
with Barnhill's son to prosecute Arbery two years ago.

In a widely circulated
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6884019-Waycross-DA-Letter-on-Arber
y-Shooting-Jp.html> letter from April 1 to the Glynn County police captain,
Barnhill said he saw no grounds to arrest the McMichaels, that Arbery was
"aggressive" and capable of the crime, and that his family was "not
strangers to the local criminal justice system," using the deceased's mental
health and a previous conviction to paint that picture. Michael Mears, an
associate professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, said more
scrutiny should be put on both prosecutors, particularly Johnson, who has
protected violent police officers in other cases.

The attempts to smear Arbery continued after the video of his killing was
released. When one video showed Arbery at a home under construction in the
neighborhood, right-wing and even some mainstream outlets used it in an
attempt to support the McMichaels's claim that they believed Arbery was a
suspect in a string of burglaries. Those looking to justify his killing used
the opportunity to try to poke holes in the shooting video.

Georgia criminal defense attorneys are approaching the GBI's involvement in
the Arbery case with cautious optimism, drawing contrasts to its
controversial past and pointing to Vic Reynolds, the agency's new director,
who has  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FePqN1dmbwQ&feature=youtu.be> made
public assurances that the investigation, and the organization as a whole,
would operate professionally.

When asked why people should trust the GBI to hold its own accountable in
this case, and what the agency has done recently to combat suspicion given
its record in cases detailed above, Nelly Miles, a GBI spokesperson, pointed
to Reynolds's May 9 press
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FePqN1dmbwQ&feature=youtu.be> conference,
where he recounted how the agency moved swiftly to arrest the McMichaels and
said he understood concerns from the community and across the country as to
whether others would be charged. "I will tell you that this case is an
active, ongoing investigation," Reynolds said.

Another factor differentiating the Arbery case from GBI's usual docket, two
lawyers told The Intercept, is that the agency is tasked with holding
accountable the network of people who covered up and dismissed Arbery's
killing, not just those who actually carried it out.

"I think everyone was relieved to see the GBI get involved," said criminal
defense attorney Page Pate, "just because they didn't have direct
relationships with the potential suspects in the case."

The Long Road to Justice

Georgia's need to
<https://civilrights.org/2020/05/14/justice-department-must-investigate-ahma
ud-arberys-murder/> grapple with Arbery's killing comes against the backdrop
of a long and dark history violence against black people in Georgia -
including decades-old lynchings that remain unsolved.

A 1946 case involving a summer ambush and murder of two black couples, Mae
and George Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom, who were shot more than 60
times, their bodies further mutilated after being left at an unsecured crime
scene, is one example. No one was ever prosecuted for the
<https://morristowngreen.com/2020/03/31/morris-lawyer-striving-to-solve-1946
-lynching-vows-supreme-court-appeal/> lynching, which the GBI and FBI deemed
a cold case. An eyewitness who was 10 years old at the time
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOpPPxu649I> said a Georgia police officer
participated in the killing, and that he saw a police patrol car at the
bridge when it happened, the AJC reported in 2017. Investigators never
verified his claim - even as the FBI convened a 16-day grand jury and
conducted 2,790 interviews.

Journalist Anthony Pitch in 2016 wrote an exhaustive book on the case, "The
Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town,"
replete with examples of relationships between the 1946 grand jurors and
people who testified before them. (1946 was also the first year that black
people could vote in Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial primary.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/us/18land.html> Maceo Snipes was the
only black person to vote that day in his district, and the first ever in
Taylor County. The next day, men thought to be members of the Klu Klux Klan
<https://coldcases.emory.edu/maceo-snipes/> found him at his grandfather's
farmhouse and shot him. His shooter was acquitted on claims of self-defense,
and the federal investigation was closed in 2010.)

In March of this year, a federal court
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/us/Moores-ford-lynching-Georgia.html>
ruled that the records in the case must remain under seal. The attorney on
the case, who took it up at Pitch's request, is planning to appeal it to the
U.S. Supreme Court.

The legal system at the time made it fairly easy for lynchings to continue
unpunished. In 1938, eight years before the lynching that Pitch would later
describe as Georgia's last, the state's two Democratic senators successfully
tanked a federal anti-lynching
<https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/opinion-russell-name-should-not-halls-just
ice/rXec8GMYfFbj6z44k523lJ/> bill that, with 70 sponsors, had some
potential. Sen. Richard Russell, a former governor who had also stymied an
earlier version of the bill, said the proposal was a top priority of the
Communist agenda, lynching was on its way out, and that the law would
portray an image to the world that Southerners were "a clan of barbarians,"
Pitch wrote in his book.

More than 80 years later, even as public consciousness has grown around
state-sanctioned anti-black violence,
<https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senators-harris-booker-sc
ott-lead-unanimous-passage-of-federal-anti-lynching-legislation> Congress
continues to debate anti-lynching
<https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senators-harris-booker-sc
ott-lead-unanimous-passage-of-federal-anti-lynching-legislation> measures.
Largely symbolic, the bills would establish a new federal criminal civil
rights violation and subsequent penalties for lynching. One
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/488/actions?q=%7B%
22search%22:%5b%22Justice+for+Victims+of+Lynching+Act%22%5d%7D&r=1&s=1&KWICV
iew=false> passed the Senate on a voice vote early last year, and
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/35> another passed
the House in February.

Still, little has been done to hold perpetrators of racist violence
accountable. Even in highly publicized cases of killings of black people in
recent years, few people have been held responsible.

"I don't think what happened in the Arbery case is necessarily that unusual.
I think a light was shined on it, and it was exposed," said Rapping of John
Marshall. "And I think bringing the GBI in was an attempt to put a lid on a
pot that was bubbling over."

[blind-democracy] The KKK and Georgia Cops

Other related posts: