Crime

John Burris Discusses “Race and Criminal Justice”

Published

12 years ago

January 15, 2014

Well-known Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, who has gained a national reputation for representing, victims of police abuse, spoke recently to local students and educators about the persistent and systemic injustices that young Black men face nationwide at the hands of police and the criminal justice system.

“It’s a very difficult world that young African American men and people of color are facing, and the criminal justice system has had an extraordinarily negative impact,” said Burris, speaking Jan. 14 on “Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin: The Intersection of Race and Criminal Justice,” as part of a speaker series presented by the Oakland Unified School District.

Explaining a little of his own background, Burris talked about how he was deeply affected by the national news in 1955 when Mississippi sheriffs were found innocent of killing 14-year-old Emmett Till.

“I was a young boy at the time,” he said. “It was traumatizing. I felt then, it could have happened to me.”

Later, as a young lawyer, he began to work directly with the police, as a special prosecutor, mainly prosecuting gangs “I got to see how police were treating young men, and that kind of benchmarked my whole life,” he said.

“My major life work has been as a civil right lawyer, (dealing with) police brutality and police misconduct,” said Burris. “I’ve also spent a great deal of time looking at police departments in terms of reform.”

In major cases where race and the media are involved, he said, there is always a question whether there the criminal justice system will render a just verdict.

“The system itself doesn’t always render the kind of justice that is consistent with fairness” in the eyes of the “African American community and people of good will,” he said.

He cited case after case where young African American and Latino men were killed by police or vigilantes, and the perpetrator was found not guilty. One of the most recent was the case of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in 2012 in Sanford, Florida.

“ A young man was killed who was not doing anything wrong. There was a sense of outrage by the African American community and all people of good will, and there was the bias of the criminal justice system, which did not reach a just conclusion.”

“It was a tragic outcome, but it was not inconsistent with the activity you see in the criminal justice system,” he said. “There is an inherent racial bias you see in the criminal justice system.”

“There is implicit bias in incarceration rates,” he said. “All throughout the system, Black individuals are treated more harshly: arrests, bail, charges and disparate sentencing.”

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Oakland Post: Week of December 24 – 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 24 – 30, 2025

Published

6 days ago

December 25, 2025

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Alameda County

Oakland Council Expands Citywide Security Cameras Despite Major Opposition

In a 7-1 vote in favor of the contract, with only District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife voting no, the Council agreed to maintain its existing network of 291 cameras and add 40 new “pan-tilt-zoom cameras.”

Published

1 week ago

December 21, 2025

Oakland Post

At the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Flock Safety introduces new public safety technology – Amplified Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve law enforcement investigations. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

The Oakland City Council this week approved a $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety for a mass surveillance network of hundreds of security cameras to track vehicles in the city.

In recent weeks hundreds of local residents have spoken against the camera system, raising concerns that data will be shared with immigration authorities and other federal agencies at a time when mass surveillance is growing across the country with little regard for individual rights.

The Flock network, supported by the Oakland Police Department, has the backing of residents and councilmembers who see it as an important tool to protect public safety.

“This system makes the Department more efficient as it allows for information related to disruptive/violent criminal activities to be captured … and allows for precise and focused enforcement,” OPD wrote in its proposal to City Council.

According to OPD, police made 232 arrests using data from Flock cameras between July 2024 and November of this year.

Based on the data, police say they recovered 68 guns, and utilizing the countywide system, they have found 1,100 stolen vehicles.

However, Flock’s cameras cast a wide net. The company’s cameras in Oakland last month captured license plate numbers and other information from about 1.4 million vehicles.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Council meeting, Fife was critical of her colleagues for signing a contract with a company that has been in the national spotlight for sharing data with federal agencies.

Flock’s cameras – which are automated license plate readers – have been used in tracking people who have had abortions, monitoring protesters, and aiding in deportation roundups.

“I don’t know how we get up and have several press conferences talking about how we are supportive of a sanctuary city status but then use a vendor that has been shown to have a direct relationship with (the U.S.) Border Control,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Several councilmembers who voted in favor of the contract said they supported the deal as long as some safeguards were written into the Council’s resolution.

“We’re not aiming for perfection,” said District 1 Councilmember Zac Unger. “This is not Orwellian facial recognition technology — that’s prohibited in Oakland. The road forward here is to add as many amendments as we can.”

Amendments passed by the Council prohibit OPD from sharing camera data with any other agencies for the purpose of “criminalizing reproductive or gender affirming healthcare” or for federal immigration enforcement. California state law also prohibits the sharing of license plate reader data with the federal government, and because Oakland’s sanctuary city status, OPD is not allowed to cooperate with immigration authorities.

A former member of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission has sued OPD, alleging that it has violated its own rules around data sharing.

So far, OPD has shared Flock data with 50 other law enforcement agencies.