San Jose Police Bias Against Roma Man Echoes the Racism Black and Brown Communities Face

Written by Xavier España & Zach Kirk

Editor's Note: To commemorate the 5th year of the RJA, and the recently third finding of a Racial Justice Act violation in Santa Clara County, we rewind back to the first violation in Summer 2024: an open-and-shut case of a biased police officer using slurs and elevating a misdemeanor charge into a charge that threatens decades by bars. Even though the three remedies applied by Santa Clara County so far have been almost ineffective, we remain committed to using the RJA as a tool for freedom and to use it as a spotlight to show the contradictions and endemic racial biases of the criminal legal system.

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Image by: Adrian Avila

It’s been nearly a year since Mr. Mariam Mandache took the stand and raised his right hand, resulting in the first finding of a Racial Justice Act violation in Santa Clara County since the California legislature passed the landmark bill in 2020. In the entire year since, Santa Clara County judges have only found one other violation despite dozens of motions by dedicated defense attorneys.

For a group of Silicon Valley De-Bug organizers, many steeped in intergenerational pain and poverty that the system brings certain Santa Clara County residents, Mr. Mandache’s first words were shocking: “In 1385, the first time the Roma people appear in the written record was in the sale of a number of families to a local lord.”

A reverent silence entered the courtroom.

For us, the stories of Black and Brown youth are all too common. But through B, the individual facing charges, and Mr. Mandache, an expert in Roma history and current discrimination they face - the commonality of persecution due to ethnicity and race was clear and familiar.

Silicon De-Bug staff attended the hearing, involving B raising the bias by SJPD Sergeant Carter who constantly used ethnic slurs and stereotypes against Roma people when investigating B, a Roma man. The Racial Justice Act allows for someone to challenge their arrest, prosecution, or sentence in court if they can show that police, prosecutors, or other court actors exhibited bias or animus based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. One of the ways a defense team can argue that a Racial Justice Act violation has occurred is by bringing on an expert to testify who has reviewed the case and can identify where bias was displayed. Mr. Mandache was selected as the expert for this case. Mr. Mandache is an esteemed lawyer in Europe, winning landmark cases exposing the systemic bias against Roma that pervades European society.

The historical through-lines of chattel slavery black communities and the current system targeting of Black males slap one in the face any time one enters the court with whole galleries filled with Black and Brown men. For the first time, ignorant of the struggle of the Roma before this case, the interconnectedness of oppression and common experiences in the discriminatory practices deployed to target vulnerable communities, Roma or otherwise, was unmistakable. For, as Mr. Mandache poignantly noted, it was not average private citizens that enslaved Roma families, whole Roma families “were owned by the State, the Church and noblemen.”  

Mr. Mandache continued, pointing out that 3 Roma men were enslaved by Christopher Columbus on his journeys to America. Just as recent historical scholarship has sought to show ties between the first enslaved African to arrive in Virginia in 1619 and black communities’ oppression today, the submerged history of the Roma in America began in chains and progressed necessarily from that point. As Mandache indicated, the Roma likely moved from India towards Europe, and are treated as outsiders, despite a 1000-year history in Europe.

Until 1856, the Roma were enslaved in Europe, subject to the same racialized stereotypes of sneakiness and inherent criminality that fueled pogroms against Jewish communities across Europe for centuries. The outbreak of WWII and rise of fascism saw an escalation of lethal discrimination. The exact numbers will never be known, but according to Mandache, 50-75% of Roma in Europe were exterminated by the Nazi Germany in a few short years, alongside Jews, Poles, and Communists.

Anti-Roma Bias in Santa Clara County

According to Sgt. Carter, the officer whose use of slurs and consistent disrespect of Roma culture, the discrimination against Sgt. Carter, herself, proved that if it came from Europe, it was being advanced and formalized in America. In fact, Santa Clara County is one of the flashpoints for reproducing fascist racialized beliefs about the Roma people and their supposed inherent criminal character through one of DA’s Office investigators Greg Ovanessian. 

(Stay tuned for that investigation!)

Mr. Mandache noted two main vectors for the perpetuation of racialized beliefs about Roma communities are projected in two ways: through social media and through law enforcement training, which specifically pathologize Roma people and their disposition towards certain crimes. Much like the targeting of street organizations, law enforcement emphasize family ties alone as evidence of organized criminal activity.

Mr. Mandache laid out the most common stereotypes against Roma people and presented how Sgt. Carter, almost unthinkably, managed to run the gamut of all possible stereotypes, deploying numerous beliefs about Roma formed from Europe’s enslavement, and the Nazi’s subsequent extermination of a majority of the community within living memory. Specifically, Sgt. Carter violated the RJA through portraying Roma as liars, Roma as culturally backwards, and refusing to refer to Roma in any other way besides using the slur “g*psy.”

To us, Mr. Mandache is a shining example of a Peoples’ Historian, having devoted his whole life to the uplift and edification of his people against forces who would claim they are subhuman. But to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, Mr. Mandache was just “generalizing,” during his thousand-year recounting of the Roma people’s resilience against state and mob violence. To properly be certified as an expert, the DA claimed that Mr. Mandache was lacking psychology degree and thus, was not able to explain the type of bias in the current case because he could not occupy the mind of Sgt. Carter. As B’s attorney, Defender Alvarez, explained and the judge later agreed, the exhibition of bias is the gravamen of the RJA. To require analysis of internal thoughts for a finding of an RJA violation is to read the Racial Justice Act in such a way as to intend to make it useless.

Roma Stereotypes Mirror Those Against Black Women

In response to a Roma woman talking about the discrimination she has personally faced for being Roma, Sgt. Carter recounted a supposed story about a Roma woman asking for money outside a local Costco, countering with the belief that the stereotype was true to some degree. From a human and legal perspective, it is troubling that Sgt. Carter’s response to a complaint of systemic racism was confirming that she personally shared that same strain of racial animus. She claimed that she saw the woman with a baby “begging” for money. Sgt. Carter stated, with completely no evidence, that the baby did not belong to the woman and that a “man in a brand-new BMW” would arrive and take all the money from the woman, presumably constituting a scheme which preyed on the goodwill of well-off community members. In her bumbling testimony, Sgt. Carter refused or could not explain how she came to knowledge of the story, yet this experience seemed to govern her entire interaction with this young Roma woman.

The similarity of the racial stereotype of secretly rich Roma beggars to the black “Welfare Queen” deployed against black communities was undeniable to us sitting in court. Both stories seek to drain sympathy from two communities whose history in America, literally, begins in chains and evolves into complex criminal legal system stacked against their favor.

President Reagan referred to the “woman from Chicago” and then-Senator Biden told of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous,” both portraying black mothers as the undeserving, sneaky poor as an accepted idea in the political mainstream. Pouncing on the racial energy kicked up by both sides, President Clinton’s bipartisan, 1-2 punch of slashing welfare programs and pouring money into growing the carceral state, like Nixon’s War on Drugs, destroyed families and neighborhoods in the Bay Area and around the nation.

As Mandache noted, the still-pervasive belief that Roma are liars, in this case about their class status, was the central argument for the extermination of the Roma and the Jewish people only decades ago by the Nazis. Implicit bias works in such a way that the use of “Roma BMW story,” which so closely mirrors the false “Welfare Queen” stereotype, can activate latent, subconscious anti-black talking points justifying the poverty of the undeserving poor.

Not only was Sgt. Carter convinced of the untrustworthiness of Roma people, she exhibited that bias repeatedly to the young Roma woman, all the while referring to Roma by a slur over 23 times The young Roma woman told Sgt. Carter her age, which she refused to believe, stating:

 “But honestly, she doesn't really look 18. She looks like maybe 14, 15 maybe. But then again, she's a G*PSY. I don't know.”

Sgt. Carter assumed that the young woman was committing a crime when, in reality, she was being truthful about her age. Sgt. Carter went back and forth with dispatch, who suggested that Sgt. Carter might have the wrong spelling of the name. Sgt. Carter disagreed with her own dispatcher, clinging to the belief that the young woman was lying about her age because of her background as Roma. The sergeant stated, “When you, you have that G*psy or Romanian, like you don’t know because they always use different names.”

Sgt. Carter is expressing a biased belief that Roma “always” lie. Her distrustful attitude toward a young Roma woman typifies racial animus. While the RJA also covers implicit bias and explicit bias, Sgt. Carter is a flagrant violator of the RJA because she admits a bias based on “her experience” and conducts herself as a Sergeant perfectly in line with that bias. If a Sergeant. in charge of numerous other officers is comfortable parroting ethnically-biased lies, presumably, this bias must be accepted at every lower level of SJPD.

On the stand, Sgt. Carter did not do herself any favors, melting in her chair under the reasonable questions by Deputy Defender Alvarez on her racist beliefs about Roma. When Sgt. Carter repeatedly said that she was concerned about the age of the young woman, Defender Alvarez asked: “Why do you keep talking about her ethnicity?”

Sgt. Carter stopped and slapped her hands over her eyes, presumably in embarrassment, letting out a long sigh. She held her hands there, justifying her bias as owing to the “tense” situation and her trying to keep control of rookie officers. Sgt. Carter never explained why it is natural for her to say slurs in a stressful situation, just that: “We say a lot of things that don’t sound nice” to protect police officers under her management. In a shocking admission to Defender Alvarez, Sgt. Carter fell apart, admitting her bias. Sgt. Carter stated, “Talking as a police officer, I guess you can say that is my bias” and that “My experience usually dealing with g*psies has been a negative one.”

However, Sgt. Carter expects us to believe that her negative experiences and negative beliefs toward Roma are just her “experience with them, not how I treat them.”

In our review of over 40 active and closed RJA cases, we have NEVER seen any person admit bias and thus, a violation of the RJA on the witness stand.  From this moment on, we understood that any decision that did not involve a finding of an RJA violation with a significant remedy was a misapplication of a law we fought so hard in the legislature to pass. 

Slurs Used from Night of Arrest to Testimony on the Stand

Sgt. Carter took issue with her perception that the Roma’s community “will not call the police.”  Ironically, the behavior of the State toward pathologizing and criminalizing Roma and Roma family networks in Europe and America justifies this suspicion. In fact, she could not help but express her disdain for Roma culture, stating smugly that “Of course, no one called [the police].”  Further, she condemned Roma parenting, claiming “parents don’t call police it is so sad.” Simply based on stereotypes of Roma, Sgt. Carter had constructed a reality where a young Roma woman, who was in apparent need, was simply a liar, and her family network was complicit, all without evidentiary backing.

Sgt. Carter’s cultural condemnation of the Roma continued, this time, she claimed under the auspices of motivating the young Roma woman into a different life. She counseled the young woman against marriage and towards “real school,” denigrating the home school that the young woman had completed. Citing her positive experience with Jesuit education, Sgt. Carter highlighted how she “was trying to mentor” the young Roma woman “out of the goodness of [her] heart.” The foisting of Western education, specifically Jesuit education that Sgt. Carter espoused, was the force and the justification which drove first genocide of the California Natives into the missions for a similarly framed “civilizing” purpose.  Of course, California Natives were forced into the Mission system and dispossessed from their land unwillingly with bayonets digging into their backs.

Mr. Mandache noted that the prevalence of younger marriage within the Roma culture was a group survival strategy, owing to the European slavemasters widespread rape of young Roma girls. There are a number of religious communities welcome within the American mainstream where marriage occurs earlier for economic, social, and cultural reasons.

Throughout the entirety of her testimony, Sgt. Carter did not refer to Roma people by the correct name, even once. She continued to use the slur “g*psy” when referring to Roma people on the stand, not just in her past racist comments. Once, she referred to the “Roma” as “Romanian,” showing that despite being under the microscope for use of slurs for the previous 6 months, Sgt. Carter didn’t care to educate herself in intervening time.

Even that cold night of the arrest in November, Sgt. Carter mentioned on her body worn camera that using that slur was “probably not politically correct,” and she could not “think of the other word [she was] supposed to use.”  As Mr. Mandache posited, this ignorance was no one’s fault besides Sgt. Carter’s. Over the 7 hours of the investigation, Sgt. Carter used the slur “g*psy” 23 times and multiple times in front of the young Roma woman. As Mr. Mandache posited, this ignorance was no one’s fault besides Sgt. Carter’s. Sgt. Carter’s body worn camera showed that she was constantly using her smartphone during her biased investigation. Mr. Mandache noted Sgt. Carter refused to use Google to correct her admitted cultural incompetence, happy to repeat a slur she admitted was not proper.  

Sgt. Carter’s statement that, “that is my experience with them, not how I treat them” shows a linguistic reliance on the otherizing “they.” From her use of slurs and pronouns, Sgt. Carter views Roma people as an otherized group, not part of the community Sgt. Carter is a part of. She is not able to disassociate her racist belief that Roma “always” lie even in the seemingly sympathetic situation of a young Roma woman seeking assistance.  In an unthinkable pollution of the ongoing investigation, Mr. Mandache noted that Sgt. Carter talked to a random Chick-fil-a employee, giving her unsolicited opinions on Roma and presumably, telling confidential information to a bystander about an alleged victim.

While on one hand framing her words as innocuous, Sgt. Carter somewhat concedes the word is a slur. She claims that the young Roma woman used the word first. As Defender Alvarez noted, no matter how many times Sgt. Carter claimed otherwise, the body worn camera was clear: the young Roma woman only used that word after Sgt. Carter used it numerous times.

After delaying testimony due to her tardiness, Sgt. Carter unraveled on her last day on the stand, unable to take Defender Alvarez’s persistent questions on her bias against toward Roma. In an odd moment, Sgt. Carter tried to commiserate with the court reporter saying, “I think I think you’re twisting it to suggest I am a racist and I am not.” Presumably, Sgt. Carter was unsatisfied with her testimony, asking Judge Williams “Can I say something?”  Judge Williams smiled and said no.

The Decision

After hours of testimony from experts and hours of legal argument from the Defender Alvarez and the DA’s Office, Judge Williams was ready with his decision. Contrary to Sgt. Carter’s admission about “my bias” against Roma and her conscious holding of that anti-Roma bias, Judge Williams found that Sgt. Carter was simply biased, not holding racial animus.  Either way, Sgt. Carter’s despicable slurs about Roma and her admission of an anti-Roma bias during patrol prevail as the FIRST finding of an RJA violation by a Santa Clara Superior Court, after over 20 motions.

In Judge Williams words, “Sergeant Carter made it quite clear during her testimony that it is a conscious bias that was exhibited during her interaction with [B] and the complaining party”

While the finding of the violation is, itself, a milestone, without equitable remedies that result in dismissal or downgrading of the charges, the RJA is just a tool to point out racism in proceedings and then, to do little about the factual finding of racial bias. Unfortunately for B, Judge Williams refused to grant a remedy requisite to the harm by solely striking aggravators.

In the case of a trial, striking aggravators ensures that B avoids the upper term if convicted.  However, the upper term is highly unlikely given that the DA admitted that the complaining witness did not want charges to be brought against B, at all. Sgt. Carter had elevated an alleged domestic dispute to a sinister, Roma-based trafficking claim, utilizing her admitted “bias” to entangle B into a case where he faces decades prison time, all because this initial assumption.

This foray into the RJA, while massive in its unique finding of a violation based on Sgt. Carter’s admitted bias, has done little to help B and has taken about 6 months of RJA litigation for a remedy that amounts to nothing. When the masses of the people rose against the system in 2020 and when De-Bug families walked the halls of the Legislature explaining the necessity of AB 256, we imagined a law that could point out bias and remedy its effect on the person in chains.

Plain and simple, judges must have more courage to follow the legislative mandate of the RJA to meet unacceptable racial bias with robust, curative action. If not, what we imagined as a first step to address racism will prove to be a dead-end of hopes and dreams for wronged community members and a total abandonment of the Racial Justice Act’s purpose by defiant judges, either unwilling or unable to deal with their own complicity in a racist system that destroys our communities.