If after Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, and Darius Simmons, you thought that you could be sickened by racist violence but no longer shocked, you need to know the story of Jonathan Ferrell. This past weekend, as the country remembered the fiftieth anniversary of the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham that took the lives of four little girls, another murder draped in racism took place, and the details, even in these jaded times, are shocking.
Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former football player at Florida A&M University crashed his car in Charlotte, North Carolina. The wreck was so awful that Ferrell, according to police reports, had to climb out of his back window. He somehow stumbled in the middle of the night to the closest home and pounded on the door—“banging on the door viciously,” in the bizarre phrasing of Charlotte police chief Rodney Monroe—and begged for help. According to police reports, the person inside didn’t call an ambulance but hit her alarm panic button, indicating to police that a home invasion was in progress. As the Charlotte PD approached, Ferrell continued to “attempt to gain the attention of the homeowner.” When they arrived, Ferrell “charged” toward them. One of the three officers tasered Ferrell. When that did not stop his “advance”, 27-year-old Officer Randall Kerrick opened fire, hitting Jonathan Ferrell ten times – initial media reports said three times – killing him at the scene.
Officer Kerrick was the only policeman to take out his gun and fire, which raises questions about their description of Ferrell as “charging” towards them after being tasered. According to The Charlotte Observer, police actually said initially that Kerrick’s actions were “appropriate and lawful.” Yet the brazenness of the shooting, the absence of any evidence Ferrell was under the influence of anything other than a possible concussion, and the fact that there was really no way to spin this, meant that Kerrick was quickly arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter. According to North Carolina law, “voluntary manslaughter” means that Kerrick acted with “imperfect self-defense.” The police statement said that “the evidence revealed that Mr. Ferrell did advance on Officer Kerrick and the investigation showed that the subsequent shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive. Our investigation has shown that Officer Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.”
Jonathan Ferrell was a member of Florida A&M’s 2010 championship team. He was going to turn 25 in October and was engaged to be married. He was called “the shepherd” for the way he looked after those around him. His mother Georgia and twin brother Willie Ferrell, who also played on Florida A&M team, spoke to CNN this morning, their shocked sadness on full display. His college coach, Earl Holmes, was “stunned”, saying, “I was saddened when they told me. They told me he was murdered. I said, ‘What? Murder? That doesn’t sound like him. Not the Jonathan I remembered.’ The Jonathan I remembered was a soft-spoken kid, quiet and to himself…. A lot of times bad things happen to good people.”
But they don’t just “happen.” One of the reasons there was so much media and mainstream outrage around the murder of Trayvon Martin was because he wasn’t killed at the hands of police. When the police kill an unarmed black or brown male, the media, the political establishment, and even many mainstream civil rights organizations are inclined to give them a major benefit of the doubt. One can ask the families of Ramarley Graham or Sean Bell if that sounds about right. Being stopped by police for DWB (Driving While Black) is outrage enough. Being killed by police for SHWB (Seeking Help While Black) demands a response (Zirin 1-3).
Occasionally breaking down in tears, the North Carolina cop charged with killing unarmed former Florida A&M University football player Jonathan Ferrell testified Thursday that he opened fire because he feared the young man was going to take away his gun.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the Sept. 14, 2013, killing of Ferrell, who had wrecked his car, gone to a nearby house and banged on the door, apparently for help.
… Ferrell was struck by 10 of 12 shots fired by Kerrick, whose attorneys argue that he was acting in self-defense. …
Kerrick testified that he left the home to back up Officer Thornell Little, who went to check on "grunting and screaming" noises that they had heard coming from the road.
Little had his Taser drawn, but the suspect continued to advance, Kerrick said, according to NBC station WCNC of Charlotte. Kerrick said he pulled his gun to back up Little because the Taser didn't stop Ferrell.
Kerrick testified that he feared Ferrell might harm him and Little. As Ferrell began approaching, Kerrick backed up and yelled commands for him to stop and to get on the ground.
But "he wouldn't stop," Kerrick said. "He kept trying to get my gun."
Little also took the stand, testifying Thursday morning that Ferrell was erratic and that both officers felt under threat when Ferrell began running toward them. He said Ferrell yelled twice at the cops to shoot him.
Ferrell then charged at Kerrick at "full speed, like a bull rush, like a bum-rush type of run," Little said. Then "I saw a muzzle flash from Officer Kerrick's weapon," he said (Johnson 1-2).
In North Carolina in 2015, police officer Randall Kerrick went on trial for voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man named Jonathan Ferrell. The case hinged on a dashcam video, which depicted the moments leading up to the shooting. …
…
From her podcast, Embedded, our co-host Kelly McEvers has the story ...
KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Like many police shootings these days, a lot of what we know about this case comes from a [dash cam] video. ...
MCEVERS: And here's what we know. A white woman has called 911 and said a black man is trying to break into her house. The dispatcher says the suspect has tried to kick in the woman's door.
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. …
MCEVERS: The officer pulls up near the woman's house. His headlights shine on a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. His name is Jonathan Ferrell. He used to play college football. On the night of this video, he was out late with friends and crashed his car in the woods.
In the video, at first, you see Jonathan Ferrell walking. Then you see both his hands go to his waist like he might be pulling up his pants. Then you see a red dot on his chest. We later learn it's from another officer's Taser. Then Jonathan Ferrell starts to run and runs right off camera, so now all that's left is audio. You hear a third officer, Randall Wes Kerrick, who is white, tell Jonathan Ferrell to stop...
RANDALL KERRICK: Get on the ground. Get on the ground.
MCEVERS: ...And then hear this.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
MCEVERS: Twelve gunshots - 10 of them hit Jonathan Ferrell.
MCEVERS: Officers handcuff him, tell him not to move.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Don't move. Don't move.
MCEVERS: And then he dies.
MCEVERS: The video ultimately leads investigators to agree this shooting was not justified, mainly because Jonathan Ferrell was unarmed. Officer Wes Kerrick is charged with voluntary manslaughter, and the case goes to trial nearly two years later. The prosecution says Jonathan Ferrell got in a car wreck that night and was looking for help at the door of the woman who later called 911. And when he saw that Taser beam on his chest, he was trying to run away from the cops. The defense says he was trying to break into the woman's house and that when he saw those Taser beams, he was charging at the cops. After 11 days, the jury goes to deliberate.
BRUCE RAFFE: We were six to six at one point.
MCEVERS: Bruce Raffe was the foreman of the jury. He says they watched the video several times at the trial and again in deliberations.
RAFFE: We all saw the same thing, but there were six opinions one way. There were six another. And we were sitting in that jury deliberation room. It was no bigger than this living room. It's hot. We're arguing. It's going nowhere. And so the more it went on - this went on for days.
MCEVERS: Raffe, who is white, says he knew from the very beginning of the trial he would vote to acquit Officer West Kerrick because here's what he thought about Jonathan Ferrell when he saw that video.
RAFFE: A young man, distraught, disheveled, confused, angry, if you will, making a very aggressive move towards these police officers after disobeying commands. He had many choices in this video, and it was clear from the very first time I viewed it. Stop. Sit down. Put your hands up. Do any of those things, other than what you chose to do, which was to charge Officer Kerrick.
MCEVERS: So Raffe convinces two more jurors to side with him. That means eight jurors - most of them white - want to acquit Officer Wes Kerrick. And four jurors - most of them people of color - say they want to convict Kerrick. Bruce Raffe says his decision was not about race. He says if his own son did what Jonathan Ferrell did, he would expect him to be shot, too. Moses Wilson, who is black, was on the other side. He says it was unfair the defense tried to put Jonathan Ferrell on trial.
MOSES WILSON: This is an old trick from defense attorneys. He wasn't supposed to be here. He might have had a few drinks where he was. The police responded to what he caused. This was early in the morning. This was far from where he lived. This was this, this was that, which caused me at the end to write on the board - just what did he do to deserve to be shot so many times? And the defense for Kerrick could not come up with anything that he had done.
MCEVERS: Moses Wilson says he thinks some people voted the way they did because of their racial biases.
WILSON: That is the deepest and the darkest of reasons, and it will haunt whoever did it for the rest of their lives. That's the truth (Mcevers 1-3).
…
Wilson pointed to the three elements of voluntary manslaughter ..., including whether Kerrick exceeded matching the threat to him by something far more excessive than what was needed to end the threat.
“That’s where we had our problems,” he said.
He said the entire incident amounted to “a night of mistakes” on both sides, but he said the most egregious was that Kerrick didn’t do what he was supposed to do as a police officer.
“You are not the judge. You are not the jury,” he said. “You’re the person who comes to investigate and decide whether a person should be arrested and sent elsewhere” (Associated 2).
MCEVERS: I want to know what it felt like to be sitting in that jury room, so sure of your version of what happened when the person next to you thinks exactly the opposite thing.
…
MCEVERS: So I asked Bruce Raffe about this.
RAFFE: I'm wondering what they're not seeing, what they didn't hear. Why aren't they siding with me on this decision? And I feel very confident that the decision I was making and the decisions that I was formulating to know that Officer Kerrick was not guilty - I had a hard time understanding why others didn't.
MCEVERS: So after three days of trying, the jury deadlocks 8-4.
…
MCEVERS: But the prosecution decides not to retry the case. Officer Kerrick later settles with the city for back pay, and as part of that settlement, he resigns from the police department. What we still wanted to know is this - how can people see the same thing and think so differently? And what does that mean will happen in other cases like these? So we put these questions to a lawyer named Charles Monnett. He represented Jonathan Ferrell's family in a civil case against the city of Charlotte.
CHARLES MONNETT: Confirmation bias is what that's called. People see what they want to see. And they take their previous beliefs, and they use the film to confirm whatever they are. Almost no one can see those videos from a neutral perspective.
… the city settled Monnett's case and paid the Ferrell family $2.25 million (Mcevers 3-4).
Every year since 2013, when a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer fatally shot Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed Black man, people have gathered to make sure his name is not forgotten.
Monday, the seventh anniversary of his death, was no different. People knelt in Marshall Park as the sun set, writing Ferrell’s name in chalk on the pavement.
Some in the crowd of 50 people may not have known the 24-year-old’s story before the event, said Kass Ottley, leader of Seeking Justice CLT. The nonprofit advocacy group hosted Monday’s event.
But that’s why Ottley continues to hold vigils every year.
“If they don’t remember what happened to Jonathan Ferrell, it’s going to happen again,” Ottley told The Observer in an interview. “I’m just worried every day there is going to be another Jonathan.”
…
Local NAACP leader Corine Mack described Ferrell as “a son, a brother, a cousin, a student and a rising football star.” She encouraged those in the crowd to keep pushing for change.
“He was a dark-skinned, well-built Black man whose skin became his only criminality,” Mack said. “We can’t stop. We can’t give up. No matter how much they hurt us, it’s our responsibility to stand at this point in time so our children and their children will get justice.”
Ottley … questioned whether anything has changed in Charlotte since his death. She also drew comparisons between his death and George Floyd’s, who died at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.
“We watched them criminalize him,” Ottley said. “Until we unite and really get together and start holding our public officials accountable and start holding the police department accountable and showing up, nothing’s going to change” (Bose 1-2).
Works cited:
Associated Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. “’What Did Jonathan Ferrell Do?': Juror Says Defense Put Victim on Trial.” The Guardian, August 23, 2015. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/23/jonathan-ferrell-mistrial-north-carolina-police
Bose, Devna. “A CMPD Officer Killed Jonathan Ferrell in 2013. Charlotte Hasn’t Forgotten.” The Charlotte Observer, September 14, 2020. Net. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article245725895.html
Johnson, Alex. “Officer in Jonathan Ferrell Killing: 'He Kept Trying to Get My Gun'. NBC News, August 13, 2015. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-jonathan-ferrell-killing-he-kept-trying-get-my-gun-n409491
Mcevers, Kelly. “Charlotte Police Shooting Underlines Divide over Video Evidence.” NPR, March 9, 2017. Net. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519499989/charlotte-police-shooting-underlines-divide-over-video-evidence
Zirin, Dave. “Jonathan Ferrell, Former Football Player, Killed by Police after Seeking Help Following Car Wreck.” The Nation, September 16, 2013. Net. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/jonathan-ferrell-former-football-player-killed-police-after-seeking-help-following-car-w/
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