Ben Crump: "We can't just win in the courtroom, we need to change hearts and minds first." Photo / AP
Floyd's killing in May sparked a global protest movement. Josh Glancy talks to the civil rights lawyer fighting for justice on his behalf.
When Ben Crump describes himself as "black America's attorney-general", he really means it. In one blockbuster case after another the Florida lawyer has become the face of the African-American struggle against police brutality and extrajudicial killings. In 2020, a year unlike any other, that role put him at the very centre of American life.
When the 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back during a police encounter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Crump took to the airwaves on his behalf. When Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was shot dead by police raiding her Kentucky apartment in March, Crump represented her family. Responding to a gunshot fired by her boyfriend, the officers shot Taylor six times while entering her home as part of a drugs investigation. They were not indicted for murder or manslaughter, but Crump won a payout for her family of US$12 million ($16.5 million) from the city of Louisville.
And when the killing of George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis sparked a new civil rights movement and a painful examination of America's soul, there was Crump at the centre of it all, representing the Floyd family. As the old line from John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath goes: "Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there."
Crump, 51, isn't subtle and he isn't modest. His genial nature and cuddly appearance belie a pugnacity and ferocious desire for racial justice that he says has been driving him "since I was nine years old".
He believes that changing the media narrative around the black experience in America is the key to obtaining justice for his community, and that he's the man to do it —which is why he has become a staple on cable news, has a Netflix series in development and recently published a book, Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People.
"The camera finds who it is supposed to find, I don't know why," he says, speaking from his diploma-covered office in Tallahassee, Florida. "I'm very honest about what I'm using the media for. We can't just win in the courtroom, we need to change narratives — hearts and minds — first. If we win in the court of public opinion, then we might just prevail in the court of law."
With a very Crumpian flourish, he recalls some advice that the singer and activist Harry Belafonte once gave him: "What good is it having influence if you don't use it when it matters most?"
Based on recent events, Crump appears to be winning this battle for public opinion. He has become so successful that he has begun cherry-picking his cases, choosing only those he believes will "shock the conscience of the nation". But even by his own standards the Floyd case has generated "tremendous pressure" and quite astonishing publicity.
It was May 25 of last year when Floyd died with the Minnesota policeman Derek Chauvin's knee on his neck. The video, with Floyd's plaintive and familiar cry, "I can't breathe", horrified the world, sparking mass protests across America and far beyond.
"George Floyd had such a galvanising effect because of the emotion we all felt watching this man literally being tortured to death by the very people who were supposed to defend and protect him," Crump says. "The big challenge is how to transform the pain we felt into a sense of power, to transform the protest into policy, to make systematic reform in the criminal justice system … to keep people energised."
Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder; the three other officers involved, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J Alexander Kueng, are charged with aiding and abetting this crime. The trial is due to take place in March and the world will be watching.
What would a conviction represent? "It would be huge," Crump says. "It would affirm there is equal justice under the law. More importantly, it would show that America actually believes that all men are created equal."
Crump's profile has risen alongside — and in conjunction with — the Black Lives Matter movement. Until 2012 he was little known outside his Florida-based personal injury and wrongful death practice. Then he was hired to represent the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old shot and killed by a neighbourhood watch captain, George Zimmerman. Martin had been walking back to the house where he was staying in Sanford, Florida, when Zimmerman confronted him, believing he was acting suspiciously. An altercation between the two resulted in Zimmerman killing Martin.
Crump is not a criminal lawyer and represents families in their civil cases, as well as becoming their media point man and campaign chief. The Trayvon Martin case had all the ingredients of a classic Crump campaign: protest, controversy, media glare, furious demands for racial justice and hints of a backlash.
Zimmerman was acquitted of Martin's murder in a criminal court, but Crump was successful in his wrongful death suit on behalf of the Martin family. Now, eight years later, Zimmerman is suing Crump for defamation, complaining that he is implicated in "genocide" by Crump's book, which was published after his acquittal.
In the aftermath of the Martin case, Crump became the go-to advocate for families with a relative shot by police. He represented the family of 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose unarmed death at the hands of police, during a confrontation over a theft, sparked the Ferguson riots in 2014. He also represented families who suffered as a result of the contaminated water crisis in Flint, Michigan, many of whom are black.
In each case Crump has brought his trademark fiery polemicism to bear, inspired by his hero Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court. "We deserve a better America, a more just America, where George Floyd gets an opportunity to take a breath, where Breonna Taylor gets an opportunity to sleep in peace," Crump says.
He is excited by the election of Joe Biden and, in particular, the vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, a personal friend who recently texted his daughter Brooklyn on her eighth birthday. But he will also demand change from his allies in the White House.
"They must deliver for the black community, the way we delivered for them in this election. We didn't go ahead and sacrifice and stand in long lines for us to be marginalised and taken for granted."
For all his passion, Crump is more conservative than some younger Black Lives Matter activists. He worried over the summer about looting and the destruction of property undermining the movement. "All the families I had the honour to represent all said we don't want people looting and rioting," he says. "We understand righteous anger, but you don't want to distract from the message."
He is also critical of the "defund the police" slogan that caught the headlines over the summer, which has proven politically damaging to the left. "How you label a thing matters," he says. "There are ways we can say it that doesn't cause people to be so offended, like 'reimagining policing in America'. Inviting people to be part of the solution. Let's give ourselves a chance to achieve progress, versus everyone drawing a line in the sand."
Crump has plenty of critics. Kentucky's Republican attorney-general, Daniel Cameron, an African-American, clashed with him over the Taylor case, telling Fox News that Crump "creates a narrative, cherry-picks facts to … prove that narrative, creates chaos in a community, misrepresents the facts … leaves with his money, then asks the community to pick up the pieces".
Crump is having none of it. "Daniel Cameron has Breonna Taylor's blood on his hands," he says. "I stand and speak truth to power for a marginalised minority community who don't have a voice. He seeks to be the voice for the oppressors, who continue to try to engage in the legalised genocide of coloured people." Ultimately, he says, drawing on a long list of the deceased, his work has one goal: "To prove that Breonna Taylor's life mattered. That Trayvon Martin's life mattered. That Alton Sterling's life mattered. That Ahmaud Arbery's life mattered. That Tamir Rice's life mattered. That Terence Crutcher's life mattered. That Michael Brown's life mattered. That George Floyd's life mattered. The list goes on. People can call it what they want — I am focused on a greater mission."
Written by: Josh Glancy
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