Black and white

The conflicting responses to Johnnie Cochran's arrival in Providence show that justice and healing mean different things to different people

by Ian Donnis

Even before Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. uttered a cadenced word during an April 26 news conference at a Providence church, news of his arrival had caused predictable fissures. The flashy Los Angeles litigator is in town to represent Leisa Young, the mother of black police sergeant Cornel Young Jr., in a wrongful-death and civil-rights lawsuit brought against the city for the January shooting of her son; some say he will sow division just as a grand jury has cleared two white officers of criminal responsibility in the death. Certainly, the timing wasn't appreciated by Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., who says Cochran and the $20 million claim came as Providence was beginning to "heal" from the pain of the tragedy. "If anything, he'll inflame things," Cianci says. "We're not going to let him divide this community."

The fact, however, is that Providence -- like virtually every city in America -- was divided long before Cochran came to town. Although Rhode Island's capital has become a symbol of urban rejuvenation, which is celebrated subliminally in NBC's Friday-night soap Providence, long-standing concerns about racial inequities and police-community relations were ignored until Young's death galvanized a storm of grassroots activism. As Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, put it: "There was polarization before the shooting, but it was quiet polarization. Now we have loud polarization."

The filing of a civil suit was always a strong possibility if the grand jury cleared officers Carlos Saraiva and Michael Solitro III, who shot and killed Young after mistaking him for an armed suspect when he interceded in a late-night fight while off duty. For those, like Young's mother, who still have unanswered questions about the slain officer's death -- such as why Young's colleagues didn't recognize him, and whether he identified himself as a police officer (the police say he didn't) -- Cochran now represents the best hope for an open and independent review of an event that remains clouded by racially charged doubts.

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The death of Young -- the 29-year-old son of Major Cornel Young, the highest-ranking minority officer in the Providence Police Department -- was a tragedy that transcended race in Rhode Island. It mobilized a multiracial coalition of clergy, activists, and community groups that has influenced the state's political agenda. Last month, Governor Lincoln Almond created a commission -- seen as credible by minority leaders -- that will examine race and police-community relations. US Representative Patrick Kennedy has also taken an active interest in the situation (albeit not without infuriating the Providence police union by saying that Young was "gunned down").

But because the grand-jury process is closed and confidential, the details of Young's death remain unknown beyond a small group of people. The indelible image of Cochran, of course, comes from his role in remaking the O.J. Simpson murder trial as a referendum on race. But although Cochran is justifiably known for courtroom theatrics and, in some instances, shameless race-card playing, this consummate trial lawyer, and the subpoena power that comes with a lawsuit, will bring welcome public exposure to circumstances that have remained shrouded in secrecy.

This wouldn't still be an issue if Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse had appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Cornel Young Jr.'s death -- as Leisa Young, her former husband (who isn't part of the civil claim), and scores of supporters had asked. Whitehouse, a possible Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2002, steadfastly rejected this request, contending that local investigators and prosecutors were best qualified to handle the case.

Although Whitehouse's integrity remains unquestioned, Rhode Island's history of political chicanery, the insular nature of the state's law-enforcement community, and the inclusion of six Providence police officers on the nine-member investigative panel inspired a lack of confidence among those who have a backlog of grievances about the police department (including charges of excessive force and civil-rights violations). That's why Cochran, addressing a packed crowd of reporters and congregants during the news conference at Providence's Allen AME Church, pledged to "get justice" and triumphantly said, "We represent the outside probe you were looking for."

Bill Fischer, Whitehouse's chief of staff, is correct to note that Rhode Islanders have to take responsibility for resolving concerns about racial profiling, troubled police-community relations, and the like. But it's precisely because these concerns were dismissed for so long that some people -- particularly those who are most affected by racism -- are pleased by Cochran's involvement.

"I don't think anyone has taken organizations like the civil-rights organizations seriously," Montiero says. "The NAACP has a massive boycott in South Carolina over the Confederate flag, and they're still negotiating after a 15-year fight. If Johnnie Cochran goes in there and sues them, guess what? It won't be a 15-year fight."

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Asked during the news conference how he knew that Young's death was anything other than a terrible accident, Cochran simply said he anticipated making a very thorough investigation -- "let the chips fall where they may." But when pressed, Cochran said he believed that "if [Young] were white, he'd be alive."

Maybe this isn't a surprise coming from the man who, according to New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin's account of the Simpson trial, The Run of His Life, "seized on the Simpson case as the paradigmatic civil-rights issue of the day," and whose Los Angeles law firm in the early '90s "worked with great zeal to exploit the city's racial climate for profit."

And maybe it isn't a surprise coming from a lawyer who began taking the infamous LA police to task for misconduct and civil-rights infractions in the '60s, ultimately exacting more than $40 million in damages in little more than a decade, long before anyone heard of Mark Fuhrman or the ongoing corruption scandal that's expected to cost taxpayers more than $200 million in lawsuits.

Regardless, Cochran's "if he were white" quote spoke to the central question surrounding Young's death. From the start, the late officer's colleagues dismissed the possibility that race was a factor. So did Cianci, although he later backed away from this view. But others asked whether Saraiva and Solitro were quicker to shoot because they saw a black man holding a gun. It's a question that will linger uncomfortably until the details of Young's death become public.

It's possible that, as police have maintained, it was a simply a tragic mistake. The off-duty officer was getting a take-out sandwich at the Fidas diner shortly before 2 a.m. on Friday, January 28, when a fight erupted and moved outside. One participant pulled a gun, and Young rushed outside with his service pistol drawn. Saraiva and Solitro shot him six times when, the police have said, he didn't comply with commands to drop his weapon.

"This was not a racial situation," says lawyer Joseph F. Penza Jr., who represents Saraiva. "The officers were confronted with a man with a gun in his hand coming out of the restaurant. The gun became the focal point, not the man's skin color." Once the facts are aired, he says, "I don't think anyone will question the reasonableness of the officers' actions that night."

But it's also possible that Cochran was right: that Saraiva (who was in the same police-academy class as Young) and Solitro (a rookie who'd been on the streets for a week) were faster to shoot because Young was black. As Peter Neufeld, one of Cochran's partners, has pointed out, the victim is almost always black when a police officer mistakes an off-duty or undercover colleague for a criminal. (A Boston Globe article detailed 12 instances since 1992, in the largest US cities, in which undercover or off-duty officers were shot by other cops after being mistaken for criminals; 10 of the victims were black.)

Leisa Young, who has remained the picture of dignity since losing her only child, says her main goal in hiring Cochran is simple: "I need to know what happened." Such a step is necessary, she says, for her own healing and for efforts to prevent similar tragedies. The $20 million civil claim also cites as an objective systemic change in the Providence Police Department, whose chief, Colonel Urbano Prignano Jr., has remained unwilling to embrace even the widely accepted idea of community policing.

At the same time, in explaining her decision to hire Cochran, Leisa Young remains keenly aware of the implied charge that she is disrupting the communal healing process.

"What's the going fee that's acceptable for your child?" she asked during the April 26 news conference, battling to hold back tears. "Insult on top of injury is what I'm hearing. Is it so wrong of me to just ask what happened?" And then, picking up on the antagonism that some have for Cochran -- and a subtext that healing for some may just be a euphemistic call for others to roll over -- she added, "If I have to be a bad guy today, I'm officially a bad guy today."

Regardless of the circumstances of Cornel Young Jr.'s death, it's impossible to dismiss the influence of racism in the criminal-justice system. A national US Justice Department study, reported on the front page of the New York Times on the same day that Cochran held his Providence news conference, found that black and Hispanic youths are treated far more harshly than white teenagers for comparable crimes in every aspect of the juvenile-justice system.

And when it comes to race in America, serious change doesn't occur unless there's a crisis, and often not even then. As Julian Bond, the '60s civil-rights veteran who chairs the national NAACP, told me before visiting Rhode Island in February, "As a people, as a nation, we do not like to talk about racial discrimination, because the implications are too awful. Every white American -- whether or not their ancestors owned slaves, no matter when their forebears arrived here -- is a beneficiary of discrimination against racial minorities, to a lesser or greater degree. We cannot acknowledge that, because to do so poses a real threat to the status . . . that white Americans have in society."

When it comes to the concerns raised by Cornel Young Jr.'s death, Johnnie Cochran might be a flawed agent of change. But he's an agent of change nonetheless.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.