Of Provocation and Dubious Justice : Law: The case of truck driver Reginald Denny is another example of dual justice for African-Americans.

Monday’s outbursts at Florence and Normandie call into question whether any real progress has occurred in Los Angeles since May and demonstrates that the real issue for healing is justice.

What many African-Americans want to know is what will happen to the young men accused of beating truck driver Reginald O. Denny while the police officers accused of beating blacks go unpunished. Damian Williams, Anthony Brown, Gary Williams and Antoine Miller are charged in the incident. Some of the difference in the two cases center on the race of the victims and suspects.

According to residents in the Normandie and Florence area, LAPD officers drove onto 71st Street, where most of those accused in the Denny beating live, on the day of the rebellion. Without provocation, the residents say, officers began taunting black men on the street about the outcome of the Rodney King beating trial. After several verbal exchanges, the officers attempted to arrest a 16-year-old boy, Shondell Brown, who, police claim, threw a rock at their car. The boy’s mother was attacked when she complained that the officers had no reason to arrest her son. Residents say that the police beat and abused several people on the block, then left. Earlier that day, the four officers accused of beating King had been acquitted by a nearly all-white jury in Simi Valley. The community where Denny was attacked was now primed for violence by unnecessary and abusive police behavior.

Only now is evidence surfacing that Williams and the other defendants were improperly advised of their Miranda rights and that they spoke with police after being led to believe they would be released.

In addition, Dennis Palmeri, a member of the defense team, testified in court last month that the attorneys working the case referred to the defendants as n------ and animals. He said that it was agreed to “let them fry.”

The defendants have had an uphill battle trying to receive balanced news coverage. Some in the press have eagerly taken the word of the LAPD and the FBI that Williams and others accused in the attack on Denny were known gang members. There is no evidence to support this. And prosecutors have been forced to drop the gang allegation because their star witness, Officer Michael McMahan, is under administrative investigation by the LAPD. This does not eliminate the damage done by irresponsible reporting.

Much like the Rodney King beating trial, this case is a glaring example of dual justice for African-Americans as victims and suspects. The officers accused of beating King were only charged with assault and filing false police reports. None of them has spent a day in jail. The defendants in the Denny case have been locked away in maximum security for seven months. Their total bail is nearly $2 million. The bail for the Korean grocer who killed 14-year-old Latasha Harlins was only $250,000. When Williams’ mother, Georgiana, a nurse working two jobs, put up her home and all of her possessions to make her son’s $580,000 bail, prosecutors filed a motion requiring her to prove that the money did not come from drug proceeds.

The Denny beating case is fraught with dubious and unethical legal practices that are tolerated only when African-Americans and other minorities across this country are the accused. The government’s role is consistent with the tactics of the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in using any course available to breach the law and subvert the right of due process for suspects they target. The facts in the Denny case speak to the reality that the criminal-justice system moves very effectively to respond to threats of violence against whites. Yet black victims of violent crime rarely receive the support and interest that the Denny case has generated. Equally important, the underlying causes of the uprising remain unattended to. The Denny beating is a symptom of conditions of rage in the African-American community.

The persecution of the L.A. 4+stems from their disrespect for a system that does not include or protect them. The enormous property damage and physical violence during the Los Angeles rebellion cannot be resolved by excessively punishing these four young men. Peace will not come to Los Angeles without justice. The healing of Los Angeles will begin when all of us can trust our institutions to operate free of the same race and class biases that continue to divide this country.

COMING: Should the Denny case be plea-bargained?