Opinion

‘Failure to Supervise’ Goes All the Way to the Top

Published

10 years ago

January 12, 2016

By Erica Garner, Huffington Post

My father, Eric Garner, was killed by New York Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo a year and a half ago, but last week marks the department’s first official charge of wrongdoing in his case.

The charge was not made against Pantaleo, the officer who placed my father in a fatal — and illegal — chokehold, but against Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, one of two supervising officers at the scene.

We know Sgt. Adonis wasn’t even assigned on patrol during the incident. According to Ed Mullins, head of the sergeants’ union, she “responded at her own initiative.”

She wasn’t the borough or zone commander. Yet Sgt. Adonis, stripped of her gun and badge, is now being charged on four counts of “failure to supervise.”

Though I never find myself agreeing with Mullins, a pathetic imitation of Pat Lynch, we share this opinion: The charges against Adonis are ridiculous.

Adonis, who was promoted to sergeant two weeks before my dad’s death, wasn’t part of the team that piled on his back. In the video that captured the incident, we all see Adonis creep away.

What we didn’t see? She went to the ambulance stationed on the corner of Bay Street. According to witnesses at the scene, Adonis spoke to an EMT and made an additional call for assistance — I guess no one else planned on saving my father’s life that day.

So why is Sgt. Adonis the only one facing charges? One guess: like my father, Sgt. Adonis is black.

We know black police officers can feel like outsiders within the force. We know that black officers in Chicago are punished more than twice as often as white ones.

Sgt. Adonis witnessed an incident of anti-black police brutality, one that would inspire protests around the world, and had to hold her composure among her white colleagues. I can only imagine what was going through her mind.

The manager of Bay Beauty Supply heard Sgt. Adonis say to the other officers, “Let up, you got him already.” Maybe she knew her day was coming. Maybe it was just a matter of time.

If Sgt. Adonis can be charged with failure to supervise, then I expect the other sergeant at the scene to be charged as well.

Charge the zone commander. Charge the borough commander. Charge the Police Commissioner. Charge the Mayor. Our entire political system justifies the murder of black citizens, and the “failure to supervise” goes all the way to the top.

Look at Freddie Gray’s case. Look at Sandra Bland’s. Instead of transparency and accountability, we get wrist slaps and scapegoating — and make no mistake, the charges against Sgt. Adonis are no more than this.

We can’t be satisfied with these meaningless actions. If we want true accountability for racist state violence, we’ll need to raise our voices and call out these moves for what they really are: failure to protect, failure to serve and failure to lead.

After a grand jury failed to indict the officers responsible for 12-year-old Tamir Rice’s death, his mother, Samaria Rice, laid the matter out plain and simple:

“Due to the corrupt system, I have a dead child.”

We need leaders willing to call out the corruption of our criminal justice system and clean it top-to-bottom. This year, as candidates run for local and national offices, we’ll hear them claim black lives matter. They’ll promise change. They’ll do their best to win over black and brown voters longing for justice. Then, once elected, they’ll turn their backs on us and uphold the same corrupt status quo.

Not me.

If I run for congress, I guarantee full transparency and accountability. It’s time to step up and become the leaders we’ve been waiting for. It’s time we stopped demanding justice from others and started creating it for ourselves. For Freddie Gray. For Sandra Bland. For Tamir Rice. For Eric Garner. Who’s with me?

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Op-Ed: Michigan Poisons Poor to Save a Few Bucks

Don't Miss

Op-Ed: Three Strikes Rehabilitation and Reform Act of 2016

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

Published

1 week ago

June 20, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of June 10 – 16, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 10 – 16, 2026

Published

3 weeks ago

June 12, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 weeks ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.