From O.J. Simpson to Dexter Reed, Black images become media fuel

O.J. Simpson died the day after the Dexter Reed video was released.

Simpson’s "trial of the century" that aired all over television 30 years ago and Reed's fatal shooting death in March by Chicago police, which was caught on cameras, may seem unrelated. But both represent the evolution and ubiquity of the public’s consumption of media involving race and criminal justice.

In all the years between these two events, Black bodies have been the subject of a grotesque series of snuff films, broadcast on the tiny TVs we carry around in our pockets. And Simpson’s death last month, at age 76, reminds us how he changed media consumption when he stood trial for the murder of his white ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman.

From Sandra Bland to George Floyd, from grainy police dashcam videos to shaky cellphone clips to high-definition cameras, we’ve borne witness to police brutality and killings. Over the last three decades, the quality of the videos has improved. The intensity of the encounters and the dread of viewing them has not.

Mass media can be a tool in asserting the value of Black lives. Ideally, videos provide accountability for brutality and killing, and vindication for the maligned victims. When a white Chicago cop shot and killed Black teenager Laquan McDonald in 2014, police brass insisted McDonald had lunged at officer Jason Van Dyke with a knife. A black-and-white dashcam video from a police squad car later proved that was a lie.

In 2014, a bystander videotaped New York police officers killing Eric Garner by putting him in a chokehold. In 2016, a Facebook Live video captured the fatal shooting of Philando Castile during a traffic stop by a Minnesota police officer.

This list goes on and on.

For Black people, getting pulled over by the police is a coming-of-age story as common as a first kiss. Black girls included. My parents gave me a 1984 brown Pontiac Bonneville in my junior year of high school. The car evoked a certain early 1990s aesthetic that screamed “stereotypical gangbanger.” More like typical profiling: The officer pulled me over and quickly let me go. I, in my 5-foot frame, got stopped for nothing.

It took an amateur cameraman to finally show the world what Black communities already knew and experienced. In 1991, Los Angeles police officers pulled over Rodney King, dragged him out of the car and gave him a brutal beatdown. Nothing like that had ever been recorded and widely distributed, and it marked a turning point in the public discourse regarding police brutality. Alas, a mostly white jury later acquitted the officers, sparking the 1992 L.A. riots.

The city was still smoldering a couple of years later when a Black former NFL player turned pop culture hero set off another tinderbox and exposed the racial fissures in America.

O.J. Simpson: A courtroom turned TV show

Black folk were rooting for Johnnie.

Attorney Johnnie Cochran, with his flashy suits and civil rights-style oration, represented Simpson, turning the courtroom into a stage worthy of an August Wilson play. "If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit," Cochran bellowed, not only to the jury but to the television cameras that brought the courtroom into homes, interrupting regularly scheduled daytime programming for months. The gloves supposedly used in the stabbing didn’t fit Simpson.

Facts in the case didn’t matter. Black folk were rooting for Johnnie. Simpson was a mere vessel for Cochran to expose the deep-seated racism in a broken Los Angeles Police Department. Cochran skillfully played to the mass media. The nation watched the bigoted white detective on the case invoke the Fifth Amendment about whether he planted the bloody glove found at the scene. By then, we had already learned Mark Fuhrman used the slur “n—r” with the ease of ordering a cocktail.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, a jury declared Simpson not guilty. Black people cheered. White people jeered. They spoke of a broken criminal justice system, causing side eyes and smirks from Black folks who regarded the acquittal as a larger symbol and not just a verdict in a single case.

Simpson — “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.” — certainly didn’t mirror the racial politics of athletes like Jim Brown or Muhammad Ali. With fame, Simpson inched further away from his roots and ingratiated himself into the white gaze while living in his exclusive Brentwood estate.

But he realized who supported him, so Simpson embarked on what I viewed as a Black redemption tour. That led him to Howard University in 1996 where I worked on the school newspaper and interviewed him as students enthusiastically swarmed him on the Yard, snapping photos and asking for photographs.

I was plucky. I asked if he had a newfound sense of Blackness. He said no. I was silly. Back then I also thought Simpson was a proxy for Black men in the criminal justice system. The race card was no doubt played in his case, but Simpson didn’t deal the hand.

Dexter Reed: A death in high-definition

The videos dropped in my inbox on a weekday April morning. Chicago journalists were anticipating them. The city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability had released videos and materials related to the fatal officer-involved shooting of Dexter Reed, 26, that happened just a month ago. Members of the Chicago Police Department’s tactical unit claimed they pulled Reed over on the West Side for not wearing a seat belt.

The news release and descriptions of the material didn’t prepare me.

A series of bodycam videos shows officers getting into their vehicle with the normalcy of entering an Uber. Then, when they approach Reed behind the wheel of his SUV, yelling and cursing are heard as they point their guns toward him and loudly demand Reed get out of his car. Reed didn’t comply with the commands and raised his window. An exchange of gunfire ensued. COPA says Reed shot an officer first. The videos are unclear on that point.

But in 41 seconds, officers fired 96 times, including after Reed lay dead on the ground. The investigation is ongoing, and Reed’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against police. Questions remain — namely, why did a specialized tactical unit in plainclothes engage Reed in a traffic stop? Civil rights advocates allege these "pretextual" traffic stops for minor offenses are used by officers as an excuse to pull drivers over.

I watched the series of videos with my hands over my eyes, holding my breath like I was a kid watching a Freddy Krueger flick. I teared up, watching gun violence in real time. This was not an abstract statistic. A life was lost. What struck me was the high quality of the videos. They were in color, crisp and unambiguous.

A high-definition horror movie.

Natalie Y. Moore is the Race, Class & Communities editor at WBEZ.

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