Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. This is your host. Rams'
Speaker 1: job is Rams' job.
Speaker 2: I am Qward. You are listening to Civic Cipher.
Speaker 3: That's the truth. And here we are back in the studio.
Speaker 3: Good to be back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We've had an interesting couple of weeks that I'm
Speaker 1: sure you may know something about.
Speaker 3: But you know what, at some point we will do
Speaker 3: a full recap.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moving pieces right now, and I
Speaker 1: know that everyone wants to know what it was like
Speaker 1: and everything. We see all the questions online. We appreciate
Speaker 1: that love and everyone's support. But you know, the story
Speaker 1: will be ready to be told when it's ready, and
Speaker 1: obviously we will be the ones to tell it.
Speaker 3: So stay tuned.
Speaker 1: But for now, we are going to revert to type,
Speaker 1: back to business as usual, so stick around.
Speaker 3: Had a lot in store for you today.
Speaker 1: We will be talking about a disturbing video that came
Speaker 1: our way about a black man was jumped by a
Speaker 1: group of police officers in a small prison cell.
Speaker 3: You may have seen the video.
Speaker 1: It's it's very disturbing, so we're gonna unpack that a bit.
Speaker 1: We're also going to talk about our current political client.
Speaker 1: You know, we had an interesting midterm election season with
Speaker 1: a lot more favorable outcomes in my opinion, but the
Speaker 1: fact remains that this country is very divided, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it feels like we are subscribing to two different realities
Speaker 1: and it's deeply troubling and deeply unsettling because you know,
Speaker 1: this is supposed to be the United States of America
Speaker 1: and it's never felt further from that in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: So those and much more in store for you to
Speaker 1: stick around for. But first and foremost, we're going to
Speaker 1: share some any excellence with you. How does that sound huge?
Speaker 2: Shall we?
Speaker 1: We shall so ebny excellence this week it is sponsored
Speaker 1: by Hip Hopic the Media. We will be talking about
Speaker 1: Capital B News. If you haven't heard about Capital B News,
Speaker 1: it is a media imprint that has just started up
Speaker 1: and it was started by two black women, and we
Speaker 1: celebrate black girl magic around here, so allow me to
Speaker 1: share a bit. Lauren Williams is a chief executive officer
Speaker 1: and co founder of Capital B or. Starting Capital B,
Speaker 1: she was the senior vice president and editor in chief
Speaker 1: at Box, where she oversaw all editorial and business operations.
Speaker 1: She also helped positions of executive editor and managing editor there.
Speaker 1: Prior to Box, she was an editor at Mother Jones
Speaker 1: and The Root, which is where we source a lot
Speaker 1: of our material. Her first journalism job was in local
Speaker 1: news at The Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia. And
Speaker 1: A Koto of Foriata is the co founder and chief
Speaker 1: audience officer of Capital B. She was previously managing editor
Speaker 1: at The Trace, where she was responsible for the award
Speaker 1: winning newsrooms, partnerships, special projects, and editorial operations. She previously
Speaker 1: held positions as senior editor at Essence Magazine and associate
Speaker 1: editor at The Root, and as a twenty fifteen John S.
Speaker 3: Knight Journalism Fellow. And these two women.
Speaker 1: Started Capital B because in the workplace, their former superiors
Speaker 1: were debating on how to speak to black issues but
Speaker 1: couldn't get passed whether or not to capitalize the B
Speaker 1: Wow right, powerful, Yeah, And so they're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: these folks don't really they're not speaking from our perspective.
Speaker 1: They're not prioritizing the things that you know, all these
Speaker 1: things you know your heart may be in the right
Speaker 1: place or maybe this is purely symbolic, but let's start
Speaker 1: our own thing. Let's tell our stories, which is what
Speaker 1: we've done here on Civic Cipher Q and myself, and
Speaker 1: so we salute that as often as we can. So
Speaker 1: shout out to Capital b News. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: them out. We're going to love them now and forever.
Speaker 2: Now and forever.
Speaker 3: So, Q, you want to talk about the video for
Speaker 3: our listeners.
Speaker 2: So I mean Ramsey said it, you know, back to form,
Speaker 2: back to type, back to unfortunately normal. And you guys
Speaker 2: who listen to our show, you guys have heard us
Speaker 2: say that we kind of share the emotional and mental
Speaker 2: burden of having to watch a lot of the videos
Speaker 2: that are submitted to us, a lot of the videos
Speaker 2: and stories that we come across, just because of the
Speaker 2: trauma associate with them, how difficult the subject matter is.
Speaker 1: By share, you mean you'll take one story to watch
Speaker 1: one video, and then I'll take the next one so
Speaker 1: that we don't become desensitized to trauma against black bodies.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we don't become overwhelmed emotionally. Please continue.
Speaker 2: However, with this video, we both had a chance to
Speaker 2: look at it, and a lot of outlets, media outlets, newspapers,
Speaker 2: magazines would start this story with what the gentlemen did wrong?
Speaker 2: To end up in the custody of the officers in
Speaker 2: the first place. We believed that it's done with intent
Speaker 2: to take away the empathy, the sympathy to dehumanize or
Speaker 2: to remove the normal human reaction of caring for each
Speaker 2: other or not wanting to see other people be harmed,
Speaker 2: in order to kind of take that away. These stories
Speaker 2: often start with them telling you how essentially deserving this
Speaker 2: person was of what came next. This person hadn't done
Speaker 2: such and such, they would not have been in jail
Speaker 2: or prison or in the custody of the police in
Speaker 2: the first place. So everything that happened from there, they
Speaker 2: kind of deserved it. Even if they don't say those words,
Speaker 2: it's implied just by leading the story off with that exactly.
Speaker 2: But what you will see in this video as a
Speaker 2: man who was already in custody. We'll try to provide
Speaker 2: a link so you guys can watch this video, because
Speaker 2: maybe I might say the wrong number, but again, I
Speaker 2: don't want us to argue over semantics. Five or six
Speaker 2: officers is what I'm picturing in my head, because I'm
Speaker 2: not looking at this video right now.
Speaker 3: He's recall it.
Speaker 2: I got everything here, So five or six officers have
Speaker 2: this man again, already in custody. It looks like attempting
Speaker 2: to handcuff or further subdue again, already in custody, five
Speaker 2: of them or six of them, one of him, and
Speaker 2: then not ten seconds into this video that attempt turned
Speaker 2: into one of them striking him, and then all of
Speaker 2: them striking him repeatedly, one or two of them trying
Speaker 2: to hold them, three or four of them continuing to
Speaker 2: strike him. And then, as a normal living being, what
Speaker 2: do him trying to defend and or protect himself, which,
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, causes them to go even harder
Speaker 2: with trying to harm him. And I'm sure in their head, yes,
Speaker 2: he hit back. So now we can really go in.
Speaker 2: And it's hard for me to watch any further than
Speaker 2: that because you only see videos like this when the
Speaker 2: person in custody looks like ramdis and I.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you something, que please. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we've done this enough with these videos. We've
Speaker 1: definitely done it, but I want to ask you something.
Speaker 1: All right, Pretend I don't know the answer. When you
Speaker 1: watch that video, how did that make you feel?
Speaker 2: There's multiple emotions?
Speaker 3: Please? Sure?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: The initial reaction is shocked even still when I see
Speaker 2: an officer wearing a badge punch a person not defending themselves,
Speaker 2: not protecting themselves or anyone else, a person who's already
Speaker 2: been apprehended, already subdued, already in jail, surrounded by again
Speaker 2: half a dozen officers. It still shocks me. And maybe
Speaker 2: after so many times, like you said, we should be
Speaker 2: numb to it or expected, but I still don't. It
Speaker 2: catches me off guard every time. And I've seen comments
Speaker 2: where people are like, well, hey, what do you expect.
Speaker 2: I expect the person to have some dignity even if
Speaker 2: they broke a law, because in this great country of ours,
Speaker 2: you are not supposed to get beat over the head
Speaker 2: for driving your car too fast. I don't know that
Speaker 2: that's why this man was in custody. I'm just saying,
Speaker 2: we don't have a legal system that says this person
Speaker 2: broke a law. You guys should beat him up.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, so let me jump in.
Speaker 1: I pulled the source material for this segment from the
Speaker 1: Black Information Network, where I also did an in depth
Speaker 1: analysis of this video. So please check out the Black
Speaker 1: Information Network Daily podcast hosted by Yours Truly if you
Speaker 1: want a little bit more in depth analysis of kind
Speaker 1: of the wise, but I'll kind of share them in brief,
Speaker 1: all right. An attorney is calling for a criminal investigation
Speaker 1: after a video emerged of officers beating his client, the forty
Speaker 1: one year old black man from North Carolina, in a
Speaker 1: cell at a Georgia corrections facility.
Speaker 3: I'm forty years old. Hellder you q forty one? Okay?
Speaker 1: Civil rights attorney Harry Daniels said in a news release
Speaker 1: that the footage shows his client, Jared Hobbs, being mercilessly beaten.
Speaker 1: I think that that's fair. That's an accurate description, mercilessly
Speaker 1: beaten by officers at the Camden County Detention Center back
Speaker 1: in September. So that's how many months? So it was in.
Speaker 3: November, you get it, all right?
Speaker 1: That was according to CNN, Hobbs was alone when five officers,
Speaker 1: four of whom appeared to be white, entered his cell.
Speaker 3: You know how big a cell is.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, a little tiny little box of the billion
Speaker 1: for six people. So five officers, four of whom appeared
Speaker 1: to be white, entered into a cell and began wrestling him,
Speaker 1: according to the video obtained by CNN. The video appears
Speaker 1: to show one officer grabbing Hops by the neck and
Speaker 1: others hitting him on the head. A second video released
Speaker 1: by attorneys shows officers pulling the forty one year old
Speaker 1: black man out of the cell and wrestling him on
Speaker 1: the ground, with at least one officer kicking Hops. All right, So,
Speaker 1: if that were the whole story, which it isn't, I'm
Speaker 1: going to share a little bit more that was the
Speaker 1: whole story story. You might think if you are not
Speaker 1: accustomed or not learned insofar as how black people are
Speaker 1: treated by the criminal justice system in this country, that
Speaker 1: might shock you a bit, right, But this is something
Speaker 1: that is often the outcome when trauma's experienced, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't result in death.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: There used to be a term in the early to
Speaker 1: mid nineties that we refer to as police brutality. And
Speaker 1: then after the militarization of the police, after Desert Storm
Speaker 1: and you know all the other things, all the equipment
Speaker 1: came back and police started getting tanks and helicopters and
Speaker 1: all kind of stuff, bigger guns, and you know, just
Speaker 1: more militarized police force. Police shootings started to take center
Speaker 1: state in the media, and police brutality, police violence kind
Speaker 1: of is a less sensationalized topic, right, But I think
Speaker 1: it's important to focus on stories where a person doesn't
Speaker 1: lose their life by a police shooting them. Because this
Speaker 1: man and his family even you know, and you could
Speaker 1: make the argument that his community, and I know that
Speaker 1: people like me and you that see that and have
Speaker 1: to watch and have to experience and then regurgitate it
Speaker 1: so that we can speak out against it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a ripple effect to that problem, not just for him.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's something about this is the human
Speaker 1: being in me talking. There's something about seeing a police
Speaker 1: shooting where it's like pop pop, person loses their life.
Speaker 1: It's awful, horrible, it's so sad. But because of how
Speaker 1: quickly it happens, you don't really think of the suffering.
Speaker 1: You just think think of you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an open, open and shut story. It's sad, it's tragic,
Speaker 1: and the life is over, heart stops beating, consciousness goes
Speaker 1: to whatever the next realm of existence is. Right, that
Speaker 1: transition is incredibly sad. We deal with that regularly here.
Speaker 1: But when you see the actual suffering and the pain
Speaker 1: inflicted over and over again by every punch and every kick.
Speaker 1: And you see this black person with their black body
Speaker 1: and their black hair just getting tossed around in a
Speaker 1: very tiny closet sized space by a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: You know, and when you see this person ultimately, you know, imagine,
Speaker 1: imagine if it just hear me out, please imagine if
Speaker 1: this is happening to you. Okay, your back is against
Speaker 1: three walls and then the only open wall there's five
Speaker 1: men attacking it. Right, And as you know we talk
Speaker 1: about this on the show, there is a panic response
Speaker 1: built into every creature on this planet with a nervous system.
Speaker 1: It's called fight or flight, right, So it means your
Speaker 1: your instincts will push you to either flee or to
Speaker 1: engage physically. Right, this is all you got every every Like,
Speaker 1: if you're a duck, that's what you got.
Speaker 3: If you have a nervous system, if you're a fish,
Speaker 3: that's what you got. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you see after him getting tossed around, punched, you know,
Speaker 1: beat up, that he tries to, you know, fight back,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't look like anything other than what it is.
Speaker 1: A person who looks like he's about to die and
Speaker 1: his flailing arms attempting at saving his own life. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, at that point in the video, we've seen it.
Speaker 1: At that point in the video, he's already been getting
Speaker 1: beat up on by that point, right. So for those
Speaker 1: people who look at these things and say, well, he
Speaker 1: shouldn't have hit back, there's nothing. There's nothing that you
Speaker 1: can say because he already was getting hit and didn't
Speaker 1: hit back, right.
Speaker 2: But not hitting back did not make the outcome better.
Speaker 2: It's not like they were like, Okay, he's not quote
Speaker 2: unquote resisting, he's not fighting back, so stop punching him.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 2: And then once he did, you can see them again
Speaker 2: kind of get excited.
Speaker 3: Because they're like, oh, now we're justified. Yeah, now we're justified.
Speaker 1: And you know how the story went right because they
Speaker 1: wrote that he like assaulted them. I'll get to the
Speaker 1: details in a second one. They wrote that he assaulted them. Wow,
Speaker 1: when we know that they just barged into the cell.
Speaker 1: So so let's get to that. Let's get to that.
Speaker 3: So first, why did he end up in there in
Speaker 3: the first place? Okay, and then.
Speaker 1: We'll go to why did the officers approach him in
Speaker 1: his cell?
Speaker 3: Okay? So I'm glad you brought up that.
Speaker 1: He was brought in or a suspended license, guessing he
Speaker 1: was pulled over for speeding. They found that he had
Speaker 1: a suspended license, and the other charge says that he
Speaker 1: had a drug possession okay, while you were speaking, and
Speaker 1: then they said something from like twenty fourteen that he
Speaker 1: was on probation.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, as you know, the media tries to paint this
Speaker 1: sort of strange picture of like long standing criminal behavior
Speaker 1: and charges, you know, trumped up charges, as you would say, Q,
Speaker 1: which is exceptionally unfair because you and I both know,
Speaker 1: and perhaps some of our listeners know about this infraction
Speaker 1: that is valid in this country, and it's called being
Speaker 1: black and nearby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay for.
Speaker 1: Those who are unfamiliar with the infraction of being black
Speaker 1: and nearby, it's exactly what it sounds like. If you
Speaker 1: were close enough, then melanated enough, you can get himmed
Speaker 1: up in some stuff and they have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We talk about this on the show quite a bit,
Speaker 1: but suffice it to say that you know, anything can happen.
Speaker 1: You can get arrested for something, placed in jail. You
Speaker 1: know your trials three four months out. You know you
Speaker 1: can't bond out. You can't bail out because you don't
Speaker 1: have the money to bail out. You might be innocent.
Speaker 1: These are stories that we talk about on the show.
Speaker 1: I'm just walking you through this. So you take a
Speaker 1: plea so you can leave. Say, if you plead guilty this,
Speaker 1: it'll be time serving your back on the street. Now
Speaker 1: you have a criminal record, even though you didn't do anything,
Speaker 1: just because you were poor and couldn't you know, pay
Speaker 1: for a lawyer.
Speaker 3: We were just too close to whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, Now that you have this criminal history and you
Speaker 1: have your own probation or whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you This is one example. This happens in many
Speaker 1: different variations. But now you have a criminal history. So
Speaker 1: from twenty fourteen your probation, you managed to make it,
Speaker 1: but almost nine years. It's almost a decade, right, And
Speaker 1: then you get pulled over for speeding. I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: admit this on the radio, but I got a speeding ticket. Now,
Speaker 1: I was driving a Corvette at the time, but I
Speaker 1: was going fifty one in the forty. That's not speeding
Speaker 1: to me, but it's speeding according to the law, right,
Speaker 1: So technically that's breaking the law. Right, So you get
Speaker 1: a speeding ticket.
Speaker 3: Any But this happens to everybody.
Speaker 1: You know how easy it is to get a suspended
Speaker 1: license and not even know about it. Okay, so a
Speaker 1: suspended license, you get pulled over for speeding, and then
Speaker 1: what's the elephant in the room. Possession of a drug.
Speaker 1: Now they don't say what this drug is. This could
Speaker 1: be a bottle of pills with someone else's name on it,
Speaker 1: that it was a my grandma's medicine, or it could
Speaker 1: be you know, something more serious and sinister, if that's
Speaker 1: where your brain goes. But the fact is that in
Speaker 1: this country, we've talked about this one. In this country,
Speaker 1: we treat drugs. Then this wasn't intent to distribute. This
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, trafficking drugs or anything like that. This
Speaker 1: was possession, right, you.
Speaker 3: Said it trumped up?
Speaker 2: What else can we add to it?
Speaker 1: Exactly so, And as you know, they will find substances
Speaker 1: in a car. This happened to us, will almost happen
Speaker 1: to us. They will find a substance in a car
Speaker 1: and it will register on their tester or their dog
Speaker 1: will tell them something. They will just claim it as
Speaker 1: a substance even if it doesn't exist, and then boom,
Speaker 1: you're in handcuffs and jail. This happened to us in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: or almost happened to us in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: No, it's happened to us. We didn't end up arrested.
Speaker 2: But the officer said, with the period not a question mark,
Speaker 2: the dog found something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And then they have testers that will test
Speaker 1: stuff for any number of things, and if it registers anything,
Speaker 1: you're under arrest.
Speaker 2: Right at some point of context, I just bought a
Speaker 2: new car. Neither of us have ever sold or tried
Speaker 2: or tried drugs, and we never drank alcohol. And the dog,
Speaker 2: I guess we're lying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is this is this is a real thing. Now.
Speaker 2: This was day one of the new car too, by
Speaker 2: the way, so it's not like we had friends in
Speaker 2: the car that may have had something. Nope, we picked
Speaker 2: it up and we're driving. That's why we're in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: We're driving back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were driving from Florida back to UH
Speaker 1: to the west coast and we got pulled over in
Speaker 1: Mississippi at night.
Speaker 3: It was pretty intense.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we've shared that story before, I'm sure we will again.
Speaker 1: So possession right now, what I was going to say
Speaker 1: is this country treats drugs like it's a criminal issue
Speaker 1: and not like it's a health issue.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, when you look like us there you go, right,
Speaker 2: stuff a pandemic or an epidemic when it's the opi
Speaker 2: order crisis and the people who are suffering the most
Speaker 2: at the hands of this drug don't look like Ramses
Speaker 2: and I you call it the war on drugs when
Speaker 2: you look like Ramson.
Speaker 1: I yeah, and just imagine why folks.
Speaker 3: Might take drugs.
Speaker 1: I share a little bit about this on the Black
Speaker 1: Information Network Daily podcasts. But in brief, there's a study
Speaker 1: that I'm familiar with about rats, Right, and they put
Speaker 1: rats in a cage, and they put a water bottle
Speaker 1: that had like some drugs in it, and then a
Speaker 1: regular water bottle, and the rats overwhelmingly drank from the.
Speaker 3: Water bottle that had the drugs in it. Right, But
Speaker 3: the rats were in a cage.
Speaker 1: When they took the rats out of the cage and
Speaker 1: put them in a different environment where they had like
Speaker 1: a wheel to run on, and they had a maze
Speaker 1: to play in, and they had other rats to play with,
Speaker 1: and they had you know, space to spread their legs
Speaker 1: and do rat stuff.
Speaker 3: They overwhelmingly just drank the water. They hardly ever touched
Speaker 3: the drug water. And so again a health issue, not
Speaker 3: a criminal issue. Those rats aren't criminals, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Or I mean, if you want to go apples to apples,
Speaker 1: then you have to say that the rats are criminals too,
Speaker 1: and then you sound stupid.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is.
Speaker 1: Why he ends up in jail. Okay, Now, why do
Speaker 1: the officers come to his cell?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: So according to five of them, according to the reports,
Speaker 1: when we set a health issue, according to reports, he
Speaker 1: was kicking the cell door and refusing to stop.
Speaker 3: Okay. Now to me, that means there is a mental
Speaker 3: health issue, right, And we've talked about this before too
Speaker 3: on the show. The intersection of you know, the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system and mental health issues is where we find
Speaker 3: a huge amount of problems with all of our communities.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter which color are.
Speaker 1: These people are not equipped to handle this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they have this bully mentality, this gang mentality, as
Speaker 1: we've seen in the video, and you end up with
Speaker 1: folks who are responding to a person who's perhaps having
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis, kicking a door, refusing to stop.
Speaker 3: Five officers show up. They beat this.
Speaker 1: Man on one video, drag him into the hallway and
Speaker 1: kick him a bunch of times on another video, and
Speaker 1: then drag them away. And then the worst part about
Speaker 1: this is that they've launched an investigation into themselves to
Speaker 1: see if there was any wrongdoing. Oh wow, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: So I think it's again important to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Not only was it very disturbing to watch, but I
Speaker 1: think that this shows exactly what the evil You know,
Speaker 1: there's no panic when a person is in prison. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have a gun, you know what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: And if you just don't enter the sale, there's literally
Speaker 1: no danger to anyone, to anyone, right. And they're of
Speaker 1: course trying to say that he assaulted them when the
Speaker 1: video one of the officers hurt his hand, I want
Speaker 1: to say, And the video shows the officers like swinging
Speaker 1: and missing and punching the wall all great, so they
Speaker 1: want to charge him for that. And then another one
Speaker 1: said that, you know, when he swung back, he like
Speaker 1: hit him on the side of the head. So and
Speaker 1: of course, you know, he's got to go through his
Speaker 1: lawyer to you know, see if there's any sort of
Speaker 1: restitution and they have to wait until they investigate themselves
Speaker 1: to determine whether or not there was any wrongdoing or
Speaker 1: if that shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2: And so I'm sure they won't even find calls to
Speaker 2: press charges against themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, for those that know, you already know.
Speaker 1: But for those that don't, this is a glimpse into
Speaker 1: what it can be like to be a black person
Speaker 1: interacting with the criminal justice system.