She struggled to support her three young daughters. When the department was scrutinized by activists in the late 1970s and early 1980s for its use of sometimes deadly chokeholds, Gates relied on racist pseudoscience to suggest the problem wasn't the tactic, but the biological makeup of the people on which it was used. “Her blood is on you, my children’s tears are on you.”, Your vote is your voice! As a graduate of Harvard Law School, President Obama should know this. The LAPD “Shooting Review Board” ruled the case to be within policy. As a prelude to her now-infamous calls for Trump's impeachment, she repeatedly called for Gates' resignation. Love was born in Louisiana and came to LA with her family amid a wave of black migration from the South; Waters' family migrated from St. Louis. Under Gates, the department’s “pioneering” forays into militarization were institutionalized, as use of battering rams, SWAT teams and riot gear became the norm for police departments across the nation. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Most of the bullets hit Love’s legs and lower body, but a fatal shot went through her chest. Love then left her house to take out a few money orders from a nearby store, including the minimum $22.09 payment for the gas bill. A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all. [6] Black Angelenos' confidence in the LAPD declined precipitously in 1979 due in part to this case, according to Allen John Scott's book The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century.

Her criticism of Gates is the same in tone and substance as her biting retorts about Trump or any member of his administration these days.

He was driving drunk and did not want to go back to prison. "Shooting of Eula Love"? But the complete tape, showing King rushing at Powell, was shown only once, during live TV coverage of the trial. Harlins, who weighed 152 pounds, hit Du the face, knocking her to the floor. Although Love was wielding a knife, she was retreating from Hopson and O’Callaghan when they opened fire on her. But news stories, and eventually history books, recorded that Eulia Love was killed by police in a “dispute over a $22.09 gas bill.” The shovel and the carving knife disappeared from memory, as surely as Stalin’s rivals disappeared from the picture. Each time he did as he was told and placed his hands behind him to be handcuffed, the blows stopped. Waters stood stoically and her voice was measured. Crime and Social Justice (the journal’s original title) merged with Issues in Criminology in 1976. If I hit a man with a shovel, I would be arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. [4], "On January 3, 1979, two officers fatally shot Eula Love, an African-American woman, in a confrontation that received widespread publicity. Chaptagai 17:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC) Unfortunately, the commission was not backed by any legal law enforcement and so the exoneration stood. Three were acquitted, but the jury “hung” on Powell, who was to be retried. "This statement at the least is irresponsible, insensitive and certainly has no medical basis to substantiate it. Simultaneously, they opened fire, striking Love eight times. Like Love’s carving knife, King’s charging the officer, and Harlin’s punches to the grandmother’s face, Zimmerman’s broken nose and lacerated scalp will disappear down the memory hole. The Los Angeles Times sent a team of reporters to Love's hometown in Louisiana to unearth a fuller picture of her early life there. They tased him twice, to no effect. [5], The killing generated widespread coverage in the local news media,[6] and sparked public outrage, which led the Los Angeles Police Commission to conduct its own investigation of the shooting. For the Nov 3 election: States are making it easier for citizens to vote absentee by mail this year due to the coronavirus. Love collapsed, dead. How do you “stand your ground” when you are lying on it? If we don’t know what actually happened, how can we know how to react appropriately? Eula Mae Love is buried in Moses Cemetery, in her home state, Louisiana. On Jan. 12, 1984, nearly five years to the day of Love's deadly confrontation with police, the Sentinel reported that her family had won a $900,000 settlement from the city of Los Angeles and the Southern California Gas Company; the money was to be paid out periodically over the course of several years. Meanwhile, the gas company serviceman had reported the incident to his supervisor. Ms. Harlins put a bottle of juice into her backpack and approached the counter, presumably to pay for it. The climate in Los Angeles is hardly such that lack of heat can be dangerous.

“Eulia Love was shot over an unpaid gas bill.” In both the Jones and Love cases, none of these factors apparently informed the police’s decision to use deadly force. Both women had made the wide boulevards and one-story stucco houses of South Los Angeles their home. www.stolinsky.com, © Copyright Stolinsky 2020. It's at the sunset of her time in elected office that her star is shining brightest. If he does not, he must have fallen asleep in class. Born on August 8, 1939, in Louisiana, Love, who was 39 years old at the time of her death, was a widow. Waters was already displaying the cutting qualities that would endear her to a constituency that appreciated brutal honesty. Because Hopson and O’Callaghan emerged from the police vehicle with their guns drawn, escalation of Love’s already agitated emotional state was virtually a foregone conclusion.

Not much had changed leading up to Love's death.
In the final moments of the confrontation, Love allegedly hurled the knife at the officers. "Let's protect and serve the citizens of Los Angeles by collectively calling for the replacement of Chief Gates by whatever means necessary, and concurrently seek someone who can work with the community and within LAPD in our quest to combat crime in Los Angeles and improve police-community relations," Waters wrote. O'Callaghan. She fights.". Now, her stage is bigger than ever. For Waters and her South Los Angeles constituents, Love's death was a tipping point. Although Waters is a relentless fighter, she doesn't always win the battle. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. If I had not happened to be off work that day, I would never have seen the full tape. He was six-feet-three-inches tall and “buffed” from his time in the prison exercise yard. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. The man then left. institution. In his testimony to the Police Commission, Redel Jones’ husband Marcus Vaughn spoke eloquently about how she was a caring mother and compassionate individual who always sought to help others. [7] The report led to "significant reforms in the Department's procedures on use of force. She died on the scene. But recently, the Los Angeles Times again claimed that King was beaten while handcuffed. Even well-informed people were unaware there was more to the tape.
Ultimately, Gates didn't resign then. Access supplemental materials and multimedia. Her murder, and the community response thereafter, is hauntingly similar to that of Eulia Love, a 39 year-old African American woman who was murdered at her South Los Angeles home by LAPD officers on January 3, 1979.

After Redel Jones was murdered she lay in a morgue for two weeks without her family being notified, Vaughn told the Police Commission. She died at the hands of two Los Angeles Police Department officers, Lloyd O’Callaghan (white) and Edward Hopson (black). ", "How sensitive can one be to the needs of the black community by stating such things as, 'Black people are more susceptible to injury from police chokeholds than normal people'?"