‘On the side of the oppressed’: Hall aims to be first new Plymouth DA in 21 years

BROCKTON — The cop called a Cape Verdean businessman a dehumanizing racial slur as he arrested him on a bogus warrant at a Liberty Street catering company.

Brockton civil rights lawyer Rahsaan Hall represented Jose Semedo in the federal case that came out of that Nov. 20, 2007 incident between Semedo and Brockton Police Sgt. Lon Elliott. Hall said the case was an important milestone on the road that has him running as a Democrat to unseat longtime Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz, a Republican.

“[Elliott] wrongfully arrested my client, a dark-skinned Cape Verdean man, because he owed somebody some money and this officer was acting as an enforcer on that person’s behalf and arrested him at his job and made racially inflammatory remarks to him, called him an ‘African jungle bunny’ and said, ‘You people are ruining my city’ and made ape-like gestures when walking behind him while he was handcuffed,” Hall said.

“Seeing that experience, seeing what happened to him — and not to say that the behavior of that Brockton Police sergeant was indicative of the entire department — but those people exist within law enforcement.”

The sergeant lost his badge and the city settled the case for $35,000 in 2013.

“Those are the types of experiences that make me all the more committed to ensuring that this system operates in a way that doesn’t do more harm,” Hall said in a recent interview at his Belmont Street campaign headquarters.

Hall was a staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in Boston when he began representing Semedo. A Democrat, Hall has a varied legal background. He prosecuted crimes as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County for eight years. And for more than six years he directed the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

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Formative encounters with police

Hall’s parents didn’t force him into becoming a lawyer.

“The only requirement was that I do well in school and that I take my education seriously,” said Hall, who grew up primarily in Denver but spent summers with his father, David. His father was, among other accomplishments, the second Black professor at Northeastern Law School and later provost.

“There was a foundation that was laid from my parents very early on about having care and concern for the community that I was a part of,” Hall said. “My father was actively engaged in Black liberation.”

Hall majored in political science at Ohio State University. He recalls one incident that brought home for him the difference skin color can make in policing. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest Black fraternity. In 1993, Columbus Police raided a party the fraternity was having at a hotel. Hall said the event was over capacity, but that the police response was out of proportion. Columbus PD arrived in riot gear: “hats, bats and shields,” as Hall put it.

“It was just a very aggressive approach to dealing with a group of Black college students who were having a party in a ballroom,” Hall said.

Another formative incident came in high school, when police forced a friend out of her car, slamming her to the ground for not getting out of the vehicle quickly enough.”Seeing that just really left a deep impression in my mind about the level of violence in the way laws are enforced,” Hall said. “Those personal experiences that I had and witnessed mirrored, to a certain degree, the imagery that I would watch as a child in [the civil rights documentary] ‘Eyes on the Prize.'”

Now, having been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, Hall has this to say about police:

“I appreciate the risk to life and limb that they subject themselves to every day when they go out in the field,” Hall said. “I know, given the cases that I prosecuted, the types of individuals that they deal with and the threats that they face. I also know the people who are not a threat, who are not dangerous and are not violent, and have been treated as if they were.”

From corporate law to civil rights work

Hall didn’t always aim to become a civil rights lawyer. In his first year at Northeastern law school, Hall saw himself making bank in corporate law, like the Tom Cruise character in The Firm, a legal thriller based on the John Grisham novel.

“This guy graduates top of his class at Harvard Law and gets this job at this major corporate law firm and is making money helping rich people stay rich. I said, ‘Okay. Yeah. I think I can do that’.”

Exposure to mentors from other areas of law eventually led him to the focus on criminal justice.

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Hall’s Christian faith also influences his approach to justice.

“My faith walk is one that’s personal to me but informs the way that I show up in the world,” Hall said.

An ordained minister with a master’s in theology, Hall is sometimes called in to preach at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cambridge, which was his father’s church as well.

“What draws me into my faith is this notion that God, wherever we look in scripture, is showing up on the side of the oppressed,” Hall said.

If Hall is to have the chance to put his approach to crime and justice into practice, voters will have to buy in to his vision, giving Plymouth County its first new district attorney since 2001.

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This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: ‘On the side of the oppressed’: Hall aims to be first new Plymouth DA in 21 years