Stereotypes and Death in South L.A.

When the man on the phone told me his name, James Polidore, I thought it sounded familiar.

“I’m Oliver Beasley’s brother-in-law,” he explained.

Then I knew who he was. Oliver Beasley was the black Muslim who was shot to death last year in a South L.A. confrontation with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

Polidore said that at 3 p.m. on Jan. 23, the anniversary day, Beasley’s fellow members of the Nation of Islam would lay a wreath on the spot where he died. Although he had declined to talk to me a year ago, Polidore said the family now wanted to speak to a reporter. He invited me to the service and said we would talk afterward.

It’s uncertain what actually happened at 12:40 a.m. the day of Beasley’s death. The Sheriff’s Department says it was self-defense. Beasley’s family and the Nation of Islam call it murder.

The deputies, who are white, said a car driven by David Hartley, another black Muslim, sped past them on 106th Street, near Vermont Avenue. They ordered it to stop.

Hartley pulled into a driveway, next to an apartment house where several Nation of Islam followers lived, and got out of the car. About 10 Muslims came down the apartment stairs. One of them, deputies said, was Hartley.

Deputy David Dolson said Hartley and others beat and disarmed him. Dolson said he pulled another gun from a back pocket and fired four times, hitting Hartley. Then, Dolson said, he saw his partner, William Tackaberry, struggling with Beasley for possession of a gun. “Kill him, kill him, he’s got my gun,” shouted Tackaberry. Dolson shot Beasley in the head.

The Beasleys say there was no such struggle, that Oliver Beasley had been lying on the grass strip separating the sidewalk from the street when he was shot execution-style.

Hartley was charged with felony counts of beating and disarming a police officer and resisting arrest. But last December, the felony charges were dropped and Hartley pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault violations. He was released on unsupervised probation. “There is nothing in the defendant’s history to indicate he is criminalistically oriented,” said Probation Officer Yvonne Wilbert.

Before the service, a few African-American men and women stood near the grass where Beasley had been shot. Polidore introduced himself.

About a dozen members of the Nation of Islam emerged from their apartment about 3:15 p.m. Solemn in their neatly pressed suits, white shirts and bow ties, they came down the stairs, as they had the night of the killing, and assembled around a large wreath of red carnations placed on the grass.

Two dozen men, women and children formed a half-circle around the wreath. I joined them. A man conducted a brief service. “Those who are slain in the way of Allah,” he said, “they are not dead.”

Afterward, I talked with Polidore, along with Beasley’s brother, Brian, and a family friend, Mel Plummer.

“It was unbelievable that Oliver could die like that,” said Polidore. “You have brothers or sisters, Bill?,” Polidore asked me. “I’ve got a brother,” I said. “Well,” he said, “you know how it is in family gatherings, there’s always one person who might get in trouble. In our family the least likely person that you would expect to be in that type of situation was Oliver. Oliver would be the last person. That’s what made it so hard.”

The Beasleys are a middle-class family living in Gardena, far from 106th Street. Oliver was a family mainstay, a soft-spoken, level-headed man who had served four years in the Air Force after graduating from Gardena High School. Following his discharge, Beasley went to work for the Air Force Reserve at March Air Force Base. He’d been attracted to the Nation of Islam by the Muslims’ efforts to improve life in South L.A. “If this happened to him, it could happen to anyone,” said Polidore.

I had expected something different. I figured Oliver Beasley was another street thug who’d been cleaned up by the Muslims. That wasn’t the case. I had also expected the Nation of Islam people to treat me as an unwelcome white interloper. That hadn’t happened either.

I hadn’t given the family or the Muslims any sympathy before meeting them because I’d stereotyped them. We live apart in this multiethnic but still predominantly segregated county. We usually work apart too. Ethnic groups see each other on television, in sensational sound bites during times of trouble. That process drains humanity from people, turning them into cardboard caricatures. We’re unable to treat each other as human beings.

Maybe that’s what happened when the Muslims and the deputies faced each other in front of the apartment on West 106th Street the night Oliver Beasley died.