Convictions of violent cops who kill Black people prove elusive; Dallas is becoming an exception

DALLAS - Two bailiffs stood before a massive Texas flag, clutching their duty belts, as the judge glimpsed over at the cop charged with killing 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, a Black high school student. The courtroom went silent.

"We the jury," the judge said, reading the verdict in the murder case of Roy Oliver, a police officer in a suburb east of Dallas, "unanimously find the defendant guilty of murder."

In that moment, those last three words - "guilty of murder" - stunned Charmaine Edwards, Jordan's mother. And when she thinks back to the 2018 conviction of the officer who fired his rifle into a car of unarmed Black teenagers and killed her child the year before, she can hardly believe the outcome - one that