'George Floyd happens every day': activists seek justice for police killings the media forgot

In 2016, 28-year-old Alex Nieto was killed by San Francisco police while he ate a burrito on a hilltop park. A year later in northern California, 21-year-old Angel Ramos was shot and killed by Vallejo police during a large fight. In 2019, 23-year-old Miles Hall was shot and killed by Walnut Creek police during a mental health crisis.

These are just a few of the names of people who died at the hands of Californian police officers who did not garner international attention and demonstrations. As large protests following the killing of George Floyd continue across the US, organizers and activists in northern California are hoping that the renewed focus on police accountability can be leveraged to address longstanding issues.

“Anytime we step out in somebody’s name, we’re stepping in everybody’s name,” said Cat Brooks, an organizer with Oakland’s Anti Police Terror Project (APTP). “Black people and brown people are very clear that George Floyd happens every day.”

APTP recently organized demonstrations such as a car caravan and “Fuck your Curfew” protest that have drawn thousands to downtown Oakland, known as a hub of radical activism and protest. Longtime organizers hope that this round of rallies will lead to the reforms they’ve been fighting for for over a decade.

“Right now, there’s a window of opportunity for changes to take place from this very tragic event,” said Cephus “Uncle Bobby” X Johnson, founder of the Love not Blood Campaign, an organization that supports families who have lost members to police violence.

“The only way we are going to change this whole thing is to get rid of the way police agencies operate and create a new system,” Johnson continued.

Johnson began organizing after his nephew Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Johannes Mehserle, a Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) police officer, on New Year’s Day 2009. Grant’s killing remains one of the few cases in which an officer was convicted of killing someone while on duty. Still, Mehserle’s two year prison sentence sparked large protests similar to those currently taking over city streets across the country.

Since Grant’s killing, about a thousand people per year – disproportionately black and Latino people – have been killed by the police in the US, according to Mapping Police Violence. California organizers have pushed for and achieved changes to use of force policies and access to police misconduct records. Still, they say, not enough has been done to stop the killings of black and brown people.

In California, fatal police shootings happen at a rate higher than any other state with a population of 8 million or more, according to a Cal Matters analysis. In the San Francisco Bay Area, at least seven people have been shot by regional law enforcement since early April, including 33-year-old Steven Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in a Walmart in San Leandro, a city that borders Oakland, on 18 April. Most recently, 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa who was shot and killed in Vallejo on 2 June.

‘We need a complete transformation’

Since Floyd’s death, police departments and unions across the country have released statements to denounce the killing and other acts of police brutality. Before that, strategies to improve police-community relations, like Coffee with a Cop, were a part of new initiatives police undertook after the Black Lives Matter movement put a spotlight on widespread police brutality. Still, racial disparities in enforcement and killings persist, spending on departments has risen, and some say that these gestures by officers are not substitutes for the structural changes that many are seeking.

“The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) signed on to this and they’re all still standing behind the officers who killed Mario Woods,” said Lizzie Buchen, director of the ACLU of California’s Criminal Justice Project in reference to the 2016 shooting death of 26-year-old Woods by SFPD. None of the officers were charged in his death.

“It just rings so hollow when they condemn an act like what we saw in Minneapolis,” she continued. “Progress means police having a smaller role in government and shifting resources from police into community-based initiatives that actually would support community wellbeing.”

Related: 'She should be with us': Louisville protesters remember Breonna Taylor

“That era of reform is a failed approach. We need complete transformation,” echoed Jose Bernal, a longtime Bay Area organizer and activist. “Defunding the police means the difference between life and death.”

As pressure to remove police from school campuses and private organizations mounts and police budgets are cut, advocates are calling for Americans to continue to apply pressure on their local officials – especially once the news cycle moves on.

“It’s hard to gauge how long public attention will be on police violence, particularly against black people,” said James Burch, policy director for APTP.

“Organizers were very cognizant of that fact and are trying to leverage the pressure that has been created by the people of Minnesota to secure a real change at whatever level possible.”