J. Edgar Hoover did not let most FBI agents or local police know COINTELPRO even existed. At first, Kizenski and O’Connor were based in Washington; they soon relocated to the West Coast. As the FBI kept a closer eye on the Panthers, local leftists started to take notice of the Panthers, too. Muckraker Decca Mitford counted herself among their earliest fans. She later observed, “I admired the idea of the BPP since its origin. I felt such an organization was badly needed in Oakland, based upon my experiences and observations . . . during the 1950s and 1960s.”27
Melvin Newton recalls, “it was not unusual for a black person [even for a low level] misdemeanor arrest [to] receive a good beating before making it into the jail.” As a rare black clerk in the OPD, Morrie Turner came to the same conclusion — something needed to be done about police abuse. If you were a trigger-happy officer “you could shoot . . . prisoners or suspects, and the department would back you up, they were on your side.” But that was before Chief of Police Charles Gain took office in 1967 and implemented what changes he could to the culture he had inherited.
Chief Gain grew up in a working class neighborhood in Oakland in the 1930s and made strong friendships in the black community, including among local leaders of the NAACP. Gain empathized with their frustration. John Sutter, who served on the Oakland City Council in the early 1970s when Gain was chief, notes: “When Charles Gain became the chief of police in the late ’60s . . . he [had a] much more liberal inclination than most police chiefs and more so actually than our mayor and city manager. So he ran into conflict with his bosses. But he was . . . more concerned about community response to what the police [department] was doing. And, of course, that meant that . . . some people . . . thought that he was too soft on crime and others who were very supportive of him. . . .”
Among his first acts as chief, Gain issued an order making it punishable for officers to use racial slurs. His predecessor had prohibited use of derogatory language, but to little avail. Gain created a specific list of banished words so there would be no doubt as to what he meant. Gain also began to address the problem of racism in training and in policy statements. Turner considered Chief Gain a man ahead of his time who could not alter the culture singlehandedly. As Burris observed: “Those same officers were still there. Chief Gain was in the process of trying to control the department, but it already was steeped in a certain kind of culture . . . he could not change. . . .”
Morrie Turner, then in his mid-forties, lived two blocks from Panther headquarters and would frequently stop to talk with Bobby Seale to learn more about the Party. Seale won Turner over as a supporter sooner than many of his generation, though Turner totally opposed the use of guns. A veteran of World War II, Turner had almost lost his hand when a soldier accidentally discharged his weapon in the barracks. The bullet whizzed within inches of Turner and barely avoided crippling Turner’s chances for a future livelihood as a syndicated cartoonist.
Aside from carefully managing their confrontations with police and engineering media events, the Panthers built community support by lobbying for traffic signals at dangerous intersections and acting as crossing guards. The black middle class may have not wanted to associate publicly with the Panthers, but neither did they completely back away, in part because the Panthers were providing a free and desperately needed community service. As Belva Davis observed, “Better education, food for the kids that go to school and . . . not to have to go to school hungry. I mean, they were just fundamental rights and to deny that the things that they were asking for were needed would have been hypocritical.” Other black community leaders began taking a look at the Panthers’ 10-point program and came to a similar conclusion: the Panthers’ demands largely echoed their own wish list for fair treatment.
By August, the Panthers became sufficiently mainstream in the local black community to be asked to patrol a Juneteenth Day celebration in West Oakland’s DeFremery Park commemorating freedom from slavery. DeFremery was the largest park around, a favorite gathering place for the locals. Oakland police were officially asked not to monitor the August 1967 festival. Entertainers and speakers were all African-American, including San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown (later Speaker of the State Assembly and then Mayor of San Francisco) and State Senator Mervin Dymally (later Lieutenant Governor of California) as well as Berkeley’s new anti-war Council Member Ron Dellums, who would go on to a long career in Congress capped by serving as Mayor of Oakland. The police were affronted that the Panthers were the chosen event security, but acquiesced. It turned a new page in local police-community relations.
5. THE DEFENSE TEAM
THE ONLY CLIENTS OF MINE THAT GO TO SAN QUENTIN ARE THE ONES WHO LIE TO ME.
— SIGN ON CHARLES GARRY’S DESK
Everything about the Newton case would be unusual, starting with the first hearing. Charles Garry walked with determination as he made his way back to Huey Newton’s Highland Hospital room through the heavily-guarded corridor. At 58 and balding, he was still trim and muscular. Garry came smartly dressed as always in a fashionable suit and tie. Because of Newton’s condition, the court had ordered a special bedside hearing to announce the formal criminal charges. Lanky prosecutor Lowell Jensen was just 39, nearly twenty years Garry’s junior. Jensen had enough experience trying violent felonies that he took this case in stride. Yet the Newton trial would be Jensen’s first exposure to trying a case against Garry, whom Jensen knew mostly by reputation as a formidable criminal defense lawyer favored by radicals. By the time they met, Jensen was also already scheduled to try the Oakland Seven against Charles Garry, which was expected to take place shortly after the Newton trial ended.
They stood near the bed as the court reporter made the record. It did not take long for Municipal Court Judge Stafford Buckley to formally transfer Newton to county custody on charges of murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and kidnapping. This was too early for Newton to have to enter a plea, but it was the first step toward his possible execution — and it was over in minutes.
Following the arraignment, sheriff’s deputies took over guard duty from the Oakland police. Newton was now a county prisoner. Still fearing for Newton’s life, Garry asked Judge Buckley to order that Newton not be moved, a request the judge took under submission. Meanwhile, at a Catholic church not far away, the slain young policeman, John Frey, who had only served on the force for a year and a half, received the special treatment reserved for fallen heroes. His funeral included a twelve-man honor guard, a long procession of private cars and a squad of motorcycles, with over 150 colleagues participating. Officers’ wives showed up for the emotional funeral service as well, each acutely aware it could have been her own spouse’s funeral they were attending.
All the officers in attendance likely thought as Commander George Hart did: “There but for the grace of God.” It was the first policeman’s funeral Hart had attended since he joined the force in 1956. He would endure ten more during the remainder of his tenure in the OPD — each a gut-wrenching experience. “It rings real close to home.” Honorary pallbearers at Officer Frey’s funeral included Police Chief Charles Gain, County Sheriff Frank Madigan, the city manager, a Superior Court judge, a Municipal Court judge and Assemblyman Don Mulford from Piedmont, author of “the Panther bill.” The Oakland Tribune gave the funeral extensive coverage.
The situation looked grim for Newton. Garry later described the case as “the most complex, emotional, fascinating case I’ve ever tried . . . Huey was the kind of person I immediately felt a warmth and friendship with; his charisma and his openness and frankness just came right through, even while he was lying in a hospital bed with a tube through his nose.”1 Garry was married, with a mistress as well, but no children. This self-described streetfighter in the courtroom related to Huey as the son he never had.
Unlike Oaklanders who had been following the emergence of the combative Panther Party over the past year, when Charles Garry first agreed to represent Huey Newton, Garry knew virtually nothing about the Panther Party. After he obtained Newton’s rap sheet, he viewed Huey as a scrappy warrior like Garry