Riverchase Galleria shooting leads to discussion of broader issues

The police shooting at the Riverchase Galleria on Thanksgiving night ignited a firestorm of public opinion that led to protests in the streets, at shopping centers and public officials’ homes.

But it also opened the door for public discussion about issues some people say have been neglected for far too long.

Numerous leaders involved in the protests have said their outrage is about much more than a single shooting death at the mall, as tragic as that is by itself.

The shooting of 21-year-old Emantic “E.J.” Bradford Jr., they say, is another instance of black men across the country being killed by police unjustifiably because of their race. And they say it’s another example of racial profiling and harassment that black people experience routinely by a mostly-white Hoover Police Department.

Leaders and others in the Hoover community say people shouldn’t rush to judgment about the shooting at the mall without knowing all the facts and should let state authorities do a thorough investigation.

Several Hoover residents, black and white, say they’re not naïve enough to think that racism is completely absent in their city, but the picture being painted about Hoover and its police department, by people mostly from outside the city, is not the Hoover they know and love.

City leaders say they are intent on finding out the truth of what happened on Thanksgiving night and plan to seize on the tragic incident at the mall as an opportunity for reflection and growth as individuals and as a community.

---

PROFILING PROBLEM?

Some people protesting Bradford’s shooting say he was killed and automatically thought to be the gunman in the initial mall shooting because he was black. They question whether the Hoover police officer who shot Bradford would have been so quick to fatally shoot him if he had been white.

Iva Williams III — a 48-year-old Birmingham man who is a protester and key adviser for leaders in the Birmingham Justice League, which is heading up the protests — said police frequently are able to apprehend white shooters without killing the suspect.

“We’re wondering how everyone else makes it out alive,” Williams said. “I don’t understand it myself. All is know is we don’t make it out alive. White people do.”

While he doesn’t live in Hoover, his second wife moved to Hoover with his three sons and two of them are still in Hoover schools, he said. “Even though I don’t live in Hoover, part of my soul does,” Williams said. “I think I have a right to fight for a better Hoover because of them.”

Several people told the Hoover City Council on Dec. 3 that the Hoover Police Department is known for treating minorities differently.

“Even though Birmingham is considered the cradle of civil rights, very often in this area, our rights our violated,” said Shirley Ferrill of Fairfield. “Hoover has a horrible reputation. Maybe you all didn’t know that until now, but your police department truly has the name of profiling non-white people.”

The Rev. Sharon Hearns of Adamsville said she knows policing is a tough job but law enforcement officers in the United States, and especially the South, have a problem with racial profiling.

“I don’t think we should have hotshot cops on the police force with Code Blue keeping them protected when they are there to do their own bid,” Hearns said. 

Williams said black people are sometimes intimidated when they come to Hoover. “We’re asked questions about who we are and where we’re going that other people aren’t asked,” he said. “We’re arrested at higher rates for the same transgressions. … We are furious, and we’re scared. You’re looking at a terrified race of people.”

---

TRANSPARENCY 

Adding to public angst about the shooting is the absence of information about what actually took place between the police officer and Bradford.

The Rev. Lawrence Jackson of Birmingham said police are quick to release videotapes about other crimes, “but when a young black brother gets killed in a mall, we can’t release the tapes.” 

Jackson believes the reason the tape isn’t being released is because the man who did the shooting was white.

“I want us to do the right thing, not the white thing for a change,” he said. “All we’re asking for is the truth be told to us. Release those tapes so we can see for ourselves. … If what was on those tapes was in your favor, it would have been released by now.”

Hal Taylor, secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, has said it’s imperative for the integrity of any criminal investigation conducted by ALEA’s State Bureau of Investigation that information be kept confidential until the investigation is officially closed and a report is sent to prosecutors.

Eric Guster, a prominent black attorney in Birmingham, concurred, saying premature release of video could taint the investigation because it could affect witnesses’ testimony or lead to intimidation of witnesses seen in the video.

As a gesture of good faith, ALEA did show segments of video to Bradford’s family and attorneys representing the family Nov. 30, under a promise of confidentiality.

Protesters also say they are upset because they fear white people in positions of authority are taking over the investigation to find ways to clear the police officer.

Danny Carr was elected in November as Jefferson County’s first black district attorney, due in large part to votes from black residents, only to have Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall — who is white — take over the investigation, Williams and Carlos Chaverst Jr., president of the Birmingham Justice League, said.

Marshall, however, said Carr acknowledged having personal relationships with some of the people protesting the Hoover police shooting and that “a fair-minded, objective observer could conclude that a conflict [of interest] exists.”

Marshall said he recognizes that decisions made in this case will be scrutinized at significant levels. 

“I believe strongly in the team we have assembled — that they will seek justice in this case,” he said.

---

FINANCIAL BOYCOTT 

Williams said protesters are calling for a financial boycott of Hoover, especially the Riverchase Galleria, for multiple reasons.

The reason they want to boycott the Galleria is because management chose to reopen the mall just eight hours after Bradford was killed, he said. That wasn’t enough time for authorities to conduct a thorough crime scene investigation for such a large facility, Williams said. And, indeed, a gun reportedly was found in the Santa’s Village area after the mall reopened on Black Friday.

Even though investigators released the mall as a crime scene, Williams said mall managers should have kept it closed longer out of respect for Bradford’s family.

“They put profit over decency,” he said. “They went on like business as usual.”

Chaverst said the economic boycott also is designed to make Hoover hurt like Bradford’s family was hurt. Protesters want Hoover to feel the pain until justice is served, Chaverst said.

But there are other underlying issues fueling the boycott as well. Chaverst and Williams both have cited how Hoover was founded during a period of “white flight” from Birmingham.

As white residents left, businesses followed them, which pulled a lot of financial resources from Birmingham and left downtown neighborhoods to decay, Williams said. Even some of the best and brightest people in the black community moved to places like Hoover, further draining Birmingham, he said.

Williams thinks it’s unfair that he has to drive from South Titusville to Homewood to get fresh fruits and vegetables and to Hoover to get clothes. And to get treated unfairly when he comes to Hoover just adds fuel to the fire, he said.

After protesters disrupted a Dec. 3 Hoover City Council meeting with chanting and Chaverst loudly confronted Mayor Frank Brocato, Rev. Mike McClure, a black Hoover resident and pastor of Rock City Church in Birmingham, said he hoped people don’t see the protesters as a bunch of wild, young people.

“It’s coming from a place of pain,” McClure said. “These young people are hurting. … When they look at E.J., they see their brothers. When they look at E.J., they see their fathers. When they look at E.J., they see their cousins. They see their husbands. They see themselves.”

---

CITY OFFICIALS RESPOND 

Hoover City Administrator Allan Rice said he doesn’t know that there’s ever been a protest in Hoover prior to these, certainly nothing to this extent.

City officials believe that different people have different motivations for being involved in the protests.

There are some who are genuinely on a quest for truth and justice, Rice said, though “we all may have our own definition of what constitutes justice.” Understanding those rationales will inform the way the city reacts to the protests.

“We understand there are people who don’t see any other way to have their voices heard” or who feel marginalized, but at the same time, “not everybody who is out there protesting has a noble goal,” he said.

City officials are committed to allowing people to express themselves in accordance with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but when people step outside of those constitutional protections and begin to impact other people’s rights, the police department will intervene, Rice said.

For example, police are not going to allow the destruction of property or activities that put public safety at risk, such as injury to another person or impeding a roadway, he said.

There were a couple instances where security guards at the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa reported being injured as they tried to block protesters from getting into the building or accessing floors above the lobby level. But as of mid-December, protesters were not violently attacking people or destroying property, Rice said. 

Some Hoover residents have criticized police for not making on-site arrests of everyone who participated in the blocking of U.S. 31 and later an on-ramp from Interstate 459 North to Interstate 65 North, but Rice said police instead opted to seek disorderly conduct charges after the fact for some of the participants.

If they had started making arrests on-site, some protesters might have run into traffic on other parts of the interstate and created a safety risk for themselves or others, Rice said. 

Private property owners, such as the owners of the Riverchase Galleria, can decide what types of protest activity they will or will not allow on their property. The manager of the Galleria on several occasions allowed protesters to march through the mall, chanting and carrying signs, but later decided not to allow that inside anymore, and police have tried to enforce that decision.

---

RACIAL ISSUES

Derrick Murphy, who in 2016 was the first black person elected to the Hoover City Council, said a week after the Galleria shooting occurred that he was troubled by the racist and hateful speech he had heard since then.

Murphy said everyone needs to examine themselves and be willing to talk about racial issues.

The last U.S. census estimate in July 2017 showed that about 73 percent of Hoover residents were white, while 18 percent were black, 5 percent were Asian and 2 percent were a combination of two or more races. Also, 6 percent were Hispanic.

Rice said Hoover officials can’t say there’s not a single racist in the city, but they reject the notion that there is a deep, systemic racial division in Hoover.

“We don’t see it. If somebody can show that to us, we’re willing to learn,” he said. “We are willing to ask the hard questions, but as we sit here today, we see a very diverse community that works well together, lives well together and plays well together.”

Also, city officials are not ready to accept claims that the Hoover Police Department engages in racial profiling, Rice said.

“We do not have a documented pattern of complaints based on racial disparity and how we police the city. It just doesn’t exist,” Rice said. “We don’t see it, but maybe we need an outside set of eyes to come in and work through and compare our statistics to other like communities.”

City leaders are having conversations about getting an external analysis, he said. They believe some of those claims are based on emotion around the current situation.

“However, we’re not ready to just reject it out of hand,” Rice said. “It is a time for asking and answering questions. … We don’t believe we have a policing problem, but if we do, let’s find out.”

---

#HOOVERSTRONG

Many Hoover residents have rallied around police officers, saying they have shown tremendous restraint as protesters got in their face and taunted them.

Mary Lou Kunka, owner of the Lou Lou’s women’s apparel and accessory shop in the Patton Creek shopping center, created #hooverstrong T-shirts to encourage people to shop in Hoover and show support for police. The shirts cost $20, and $15 from every purchase goes to buy coffee and food gift cards for police, she said. She loses a little money on every sale, but it’s worth it, she said. 

As of Dec. 26, she had sold more than 700 T-shirts and raised more than $10,000, she said. She never anticipated such a strong outpouring from the community, she said. She and others plan to form a foundation and continue the effort into 2019, she said.

Some of that money also is helping Hoover restaurants and snack shops that were hurt by the slower traffic attributed to the shootings and protesters. She has been able to purchase gift cards from some of those businesses, she said.

Rice said the African-American residents of Hoover that he knows have been supportive of the Police Department and have not shown much support for the protests.

Cherinita Reese, who moved to Hoover from Forestdale seven years ago and was recently appointed as the first black member of the Hoover Library Board, said her family’s experience in Hoover has been very positive, and the same is true for a number of African-American families she knows.

“Our law enforcement actively tries to engage and respond positively to the community it serves,” she said. “Just about every morning when I check my surveillance videos, there is a Hoover police officer patrolling the area, trying to keep our streets safe.”

However, she has heard in several circles that people didn’t want to visit Hoover because they thought they might get pulled over, she said.

“It’s an issue that our law enforcement may want to consider strategically addressing,” she said. “It would be naïve to think that racism does not exist, even in a police force, since we still have generational prejudices (i.e. passed down from generation to generation), reactionary prejudices (i.e. you hate me; I hate you) and mindsets fed by negative media and our environments, especially in cities that are still newly integrated. Think about it. We are only really decades out of Jim Crow laws.”

That’s why it’s important that people are trained on the culture the organization desires and are held accountable for aligning to that culture, Reese said.

---

OCCASIONAL BIAS

Reese said she has observed occasional cultural bias due to a lack of knowledge — not just in Hoover, but in many places. There are instances where people don’t realize how their actions and/or words can be insensitive to other cultures, but that can be rectified through diversity training, exposure to other cultures and a sincere desire to understand others’ perspectives, she said.

“I do not believe that racism is the prevalent culture in Hoover,” Reese said. “I meet more people who share the same value system with me regardless of color. They want good schools, safe communities, and genuinely pursue brotherly kindness regardless of race. That is the Hoover that I know.”

Reese said tension is created because minority communities often have anger and distrust toward the justice system and other institutions, while primarily Caucasian or diverse, affluent communities often have great trust and respect for law enforcement and institutions.

People’s personal experiences shape how they view and react to others, Reese said.

Also, the divisiveness between municipalities has helped fuel the response to the shootings at the mall, she said. There are groups of both sides that want segregation, she said, and people who want to make their own town better than another, to the detriment of the other.

Hoover Councilman Casey Middlebrooks said that, as a father, he can understand how hard this ordeal has been on the Bradford family, especially having to deal with the things they don’t know about what happened that night.

He wants justice for Bradford, he said, as well as for the 18-year-old Birmingham man and 12-year-old girl who were shot, the 20-year-old Bessemer man charged with attempted murder in the first shooting and the police officer who shot Bradford.

“Everybody deserves justice in this,” Middlebrooks said. “We have to let the investigation play out. Once we understand what happened, that will help our community take another step forward and figure out how to heal from this and how to grow from this to be stronger.”

Hoover is rich in diversity, and that makes the city stronger and attracts new residents, he said. 

“I disagree with those that say we need to be colorblind,” Middlebrooks said. “We need to recognize and celebrate and appreciate our diversity, and that will make us stronger as a community. Hoover is a great city. We’re a very diverse city, and we’ve got some great businesses owned by people of all colors and backgrounds. I support them all.”

---

NEXT STEPS

To move forward from this tragedy, it can’t just be a time of self-reflection — the city has to do a better job of reaching out to minority leaders in the community, Middlebrooks said.

He said the current administration has demonstrated that commitment, and city leaders must continue with that.

Rice said everyone needs to be patient and allow the state to conduct a thorough investigation so prosecutors, whoever they may be, can make an informed decision based on the law.

“We have no idea which way it’s going to go,” Rice said. Because the city is under investigation, there are a lot of pieces of the puzzle to which city officials are not privy, he said.

Meanwhile, police have tried to manage the protests to prevent injuries, destruction of property and hazards to public safety, he said. The Police Department is also conducting an internal investigation to see if proper protocols were followed for use of force and examining its practices for sharing information with the public.

Rice said the Police Department highly regrets incorrect statements made the night of the Galleria shootings that indicated the man shot by police was the gunman in the initial shooting. However, Rice said it’s important to note that the police department did not initially release Bradford’s name and never released his photo. Those revelations came through people who knew him on social media, Rice said.

Police can’t conclude their internal investigation until they get certain information back from ALEA, he said.

City officials also have been pulling together a group of residents made up of multiple races and backgrounds to serve as a roundtable group that will formulate a plan for moving forward in race relations, Rice said.

They’re trying to include not just people that city officials already know, but others who are being recommended by people in minority communities, he said. They are starting with people who live and work in Hoover and may at some point expand to people outside the city, he said.

“We are part of a metro area. Hoover’s not an island. We don’t want to be an island,” Rice said.

“In America, I think we’ll always be talking about race. I think we’ll always be working on better race relations,” Rice said. “Maybe one day we will arrive, but we’re not there yet.”

Protest leaders on Dec. 18 called at least a temporary halt to protests in Hoover, saying city officials were showing “good faith” to address concerns.

But that halt was short-lived. By Dec. 22, two more protesters were arrested at the Galleria. One was charged with trespassing after draping banners over the railing in the food court, saying "E.J. was murdered here" and "#hooverwrong" and then refusing to leave when directed by police. Another man with her was charged with disorderly conduct.

Then the next day, Chaverst came to the mall and was informed he has been banned from the Galleria property for a year due to a previous disturbance in which he was involved there. He was escorted out by police.

Williams said that, despite the good faith shown by city leaders to address some of the protesters' concerns, the wound that has occurred to the black community is deep.

“It’s going to require more than a Band-Aid,” he said. “It’s going to require some really big minds to come up with some uncomfortable questions so we can come to some real conclusions and solutions.”