In the annals of police encounters with Black people gone very wrong and caught on video, the one that happened last month in the Canoga Park neighborhood of Los Angeles was a rarity. Rare because it generated not controversy, but near-universal sympathy: The victim, shot to death by an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department in the hallway just outside the apartment where he lived, was immediately mourned by neighbors and people online far beyond L.A.
The overwhelming consensus was that he was innocent, that he didn’t deserve it, that the cop clearly overreacted. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Police Chief Jim McDonnell promptly expressed regret about the tragedy and promised swift investigations. A GoFundMe campaign for the victim has raised about $250,000 to cover the funeral expenses and start a justice fund.
The incident was also unusual because the shooting victim wasn’t a person, but a dog, a shaggy 2-year-old poodle/golden retriever/St. Bernard mix named Jameson. His owner, 45-year-old Marie Marseille, is Black. In bodycam video that went viral, it was the image of a distraught Marseille trying to comfort her dying dog in the hallway outside her apartment that galvanized so much public sympathy so quickly
You don’t have to be a dog owner like me to be moved by the loss. It was made worse by the fact the cops were there not to confront Marseille but to ensure she was OK.
According to news and police reports, here’s what happened: A neighbor had called the police to do a welfare check after hearing screams coming from Marseille’s apartment; it turns out that Marseille, a native New Yorker and diehard Knicks fan, was loudly celebrating her team overcoming the odds and winning the NBA championship. Jameson, dressed in a Knicks jersey, was celebrating with her. What should have been a high point for both of them turned into utter heartbreak. (The neighbor has since expressed deep regret about making that call. Although state law requires police to disclose the names of officers involved in shootings, the LAPD has yet to identify the officer who shot Jameson, citing threats against his life.)
I admit, to see such an outpouring of sympathy and support for a Black person in these very anti-Black times is encouraging, not least because Marseille is a Black victim of police brutality — indirectly, but a victim nonetheless. Though even indisputable victimhood doesn’t guarantee universal support, as we’ve seen. Six years ago, the agonizing death of George Floyd recorded on cell phone video prompted an immediate public outpouring of sympathy for a Black victim of police brutality, sympathy that mushroomed into a national movement against racism.
It didn’t last. The conservative MAGA-driven backlash that followed brought us to the anti-Blackness we’re experiencing now, a moment that has gone far beyond antipathy for George Floyd and has sought to destroy historic Black gains in civil rights, like the prohibition of workplace discrimination and the Voting Rights Act. The very notion that Black lives matter, once a rallying cry for empathy and equality, has become taboo, almost criminalized.
I’ve heard some Black folks grumble that Marseille has garnered so much sympathy only because of her dog. Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that she fully deserves the sympathy: She lost a loved one, unjustly. Although humanizing a Black person via a dog or something else is never an automatic, especially in a police encounter.
Had Marseille herself been shot four times after approaching the police and deemed aggressive, as Jameson was, the fatal outcome would have been tragic, but probably not galvanizing. As a country, we’ve seen far too many Black people killed by police for minor to nonexistent offenses — waving a toy gun, resisting arrest, saying they can’t breathe, raising questions — to be surprised or, unfortunately, to get too exercised about a fatal shooting.
What broke through the banality this time was the footage of Marseille grieving in real time over the demise of her dog and close companion, who only moments before had been sharing in the joy of victory. Her humanity in that excruciating moment was irrefutable, while the cop’s was highly questionable — a flip of the usual script.
Though more often than not, the script stays the same. I’m a veteran dog owner, a passionate collector of rescues for the last 20 years. On my daily dog walks through neighborhoods in and around L.A., I like to believe that I’m given the benefit of the doubt by residents and law enforcement who might be inclined to see me as threatening or not belonging. Really, I always think, what could be more mundane than walking a dog? It’s an assumption that’s fallen apart repeatedly.
In one neighborhood a few years back, a white cop stopped me to inform me I was breaking a state law by walking multiple dogs (I checked; there is no such law); a couple of months after, a police cruiser parked in the middle of the street for several minutes to surveil me and my pack. Late last year, a white homeowner stood on her lawn and said I had no right to park my car in front of her house, and insisted I leave. It didn’t matter that I indeed had the right, nor that two of the dogs I had just unloaded were seniors with disabilities who would have trouble getting back into the car.
Each time I felt harassed — and angry at the lack of empathy, for me and the dogs. But I kept my cool and we stayed safe, and together. This is what matters most in a police encounter (or an encounter with a hostile white person) if you’re Black, that you walk away unapprehended and unharmed, and that anyone you care about walks away unharmed, too.
That didn’t happen for Marseille. While the support she’s gotten is of some comfort, and though she might get some accountability through a civil rights lawsuit that was filed against the city, the violent death of Jameson will haunt her forever. An unimaginable loss at an unimaginable time, when there is increasingly little for Black people to celebrate. Yet one thing history has repeatedly shown us is that victories, even the small ones, always seem to come at a cost.
