Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Ramsy's Jah. The name is Ward Quentin J but my
Speaker 1: friends called me Q. Yes indeed, And of course we
Speaker 1: are back to talk more about the goings on in
Speaker 1: the world of melanated peoples in this country. And we've
Speaker 1: got a lot to talk about, unfortunately, but before we
Speaker 1: get to recent videos, before we get to processing you know,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the world of political activism and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, we had some some comments via our Instagram
Speaker 1: page and I thought it was worth, you know, us
Speaker 1: talking about them. For those that we don't already, please
Speaker 1: follow our Instagram and our Facebook just search Civic Cipher
Speaker 1: and keep up with us during the week, and of
Speaker 1: course interact with us because we need to know your thoughts.
Speaker 1: This is all of our show. We're just the ones
Speaker 1: giving a voice to it. But the hope, of course
Speaker 1: is that it will benefit not only us in our future,
Speaker 1: but you as well. And it doesn't matter what color
Speaker 1: you are, what your faith is, or any of that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. We're all trying to create a better
Speaker 1: world for each other. But I digress. One such thing
Speaker 1: that came up this week is someone wanted to know
Speaker 1: where the outrage is when the police take aggressive action
Speaker 1: or otherwise shoot, slash kill someone who's white in the
Speaker 1: same manner that they do black folks. One to know
Speaker 1: where's the reaction, Where are the people? Why is it
Speaker 1: that no one's coming to the defense of someone just
Speaker 1: because he's white and he's subject to the same system.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was a fair question, because obviously
Speaker 1: we don't want the show to constantly frame our position
Speaker 1: as though we are the only ones underneath the foot
Speaker 1: of a corrupt criminal justice system, although we do acknowledge
Speaker 1: that oftentimes we're the ones who get the worst of it.
Speaker 1: So again, I thought that it was important to address
Speaker 1: that question and you know, provide some at least from
Speaker 1: where we sit, some context for how that looks and
Speaker 1: how that feels relative to seeing it happened to a
Speaker 1: black person, and you know, provide some context. And so
Speaker 1: I'll go first. I would love to hear your thoughts
Speaker 1: on it. So obviously, there's a long storied relationship with
Speaker 1: the police and black people in this country. You know,
Speaker 1: policing was literally born out or rather patrolling was literally
Speaker 1: born out of slave patrols in this country. And so
Speaker 1: it's almost a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately, that police need black bodies.
Speaker 1: And I know that's a weird way of looking at it,
Speaker 1: but you could make an argument if you so chose.
Speaker 1: But I believe that the result of you know, politicians
Speaker 1: peddling fear for decades has resulted in a policing culture
Speaker 1: that has created an army of bullies, an army of
Speaker 1: people who have unlimited fiscal resources, zero accountability, and oftentimes
Speaker 1: are able to vent their frustrations in the line of duty.
Speaker 1: I read a statistic many times, and I don't know
Speaker 1: because I didn't conduct the research myself, but I've come
Speaker 1: across a statistic that I believe would be I believe
Speaker 1: it to be true. So again, take this with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt. I don't want to misrepresent any police
Speaker 1: officers or anything like that. I don't want to have
Speaker 1: fair conversations. But my understanding is that there is an
Speaker 1: unusually large amount of police officers who are also wife beaters.
Speaker 1: You know, these are people who abuse their wives at home,
Speaker 1: which to me suggests that these violent, aggressive behaviors are
Speaker 1: kind of part and parcel with the gig or otherwise,
Speaker 1: people that are prone to those violent outbursts tend to
Speaker 1: find themselves in that line of work. They seek out
Speaker 1: that line of work, right, And so if that's true,
Speaker 1: and I believe it to be true, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue. If that's true, then what you end up
Speaker 1: with is again an army of violent, overly violent folks
Speaker 1: mostly who I mean. And I understand some folks want
Speaker 1: to do good, they want to be the good guys,
Speaker 1: they want to be the heroes and so forth. But
Speaker 1: if these statistics are are any indication of who the
Speaker 1: people are that actually man the lines, you have violent
Speaker 1: people again with who are able to operate with impunity,
Speaker 1: who have a culture of protecting themselves and you know,
Speaker 1: burying their sins and are able to kind of get
Speaker 1: their aggression out when they work. They just jump people
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, if your show, if you
Speaker 1: show up somewhere and you got three of your guys
Speaker 1: with you, you know you're going to be able to
Speaker 1: do whatever it is that you want. Someone's talking back
Speaker 1: to you and you don't like it, instead of you know,
Speaker 1: arguing your way through it or just kind of understanding
Speaker 1: that you're a public servant and sometimes the public is
Speaker 1: not as nice. Now you have three or four of
Speaker 1: your guys with that you're able to kind of get
Speaker 1: off a couple of punches and kicks and stop resisting
Speaker 1: to people that aren't resisting and so forth. And we
Speaker 1: know that to be true. That's standard procedure. You're on
Speaker 1: the ground with four people on you, and then they
Speaker 1: yell stop resisting when you literally can't stop trying to
Speaker 1: stop yourself from being harmed, right, stop it? And uh so,
Speaker 1: so how does this relate to the ah, how how
Speaker 1: people deal with you know, black bodies versus white bodies? Right?
Speaker 1: My thoughts are that because we have such a long
Speaker 1: standing beef, if you will, with police and policing and
Speaker 1: how it's been done, we are as a as a
Speaker 1: people just more tired of it. We are the people,
Speaker 1: We as a people have more resources dedicated to it.
Speaker 1: We as a people understand that the numbers overwhelmingly favor
Speaker 1: black and brown bodies being abused by police relative to
Speaker 1: to white folks. And and I think that once we
Speaker 1: take a step back from that, we can all agree
Speaker 1: that policing as an institution and as a culture is predatory.
Speaker 1: It's overfunded, there's no accountability, as I stated, and it's
Speaker 1: doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It was designed
Speaker 1: to address unfounded fears in the general population. And if
Speaker 1: these fears don't really exist, and you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of bullies with unlimited resources and impunity, then you end
Speaker 1: up with folks who might abuse a white guy or
Speaker 1: two here and there. And another part of this is
Speaker 1: that a lot of times, I think the statistic is
Speaker 1: that some like sixty percent of police officers are white
Speaker 1: men something like that. It's a huge number. And there's
Speaker 1: a smaller percentage that are female, white women, and I
Speaker 1: think white women are ten percent something like that, and
Speaker 1: then the other twenty five percent of police are others,
Speaker 1: including black officers. Again I believe that to be true.
Speaker 1: I don't have the stats in front of me, but
Speaker 1: if that's not accurate, it's somewhere around that number. And
Speaker 1: so for us, a lot of times, the police, like
Speaker 1: if you close your eyes and imagine a police officer,
Speaker 1: the platonic ideal police officer, what the image that pops
Speaker 1: in your head is a white man? You know, I
Speaker 1: would guess right, you're not in your head, but white
Speaker 1: man with the hat shirt, the badge and the little mustache.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe or maybe not, depends on if he's younger. Younger, oh,
Speaker 1: fresh out of the academy, there's no facial hair. He's
Speaker 1: the most eager to show how down he is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's worked his whole life. But I do want to
Speaker 1: say this that any unjust harm on any human being is,
Speaker 1: at least for us, something that we wouldn't stand for.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't want to see anybody get hurt.
Speaker 1: We certainly don't want to see anybody lose their life
Speaker 1: at the hands of the police. And because it's less
Speaker 1: common in those with respect to white males, which is
Speaker 1: what the question is about, it doesn't happen with any regularity,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes, I believe the thing that really makes all
Speaker 1: the difference is that I still feel like that white
Speaker 1: man who's being abused and take advantage of it by
Speaker 1: the police, if he or his father, or his family
Speaker 1: or whatever wanted to seek justice, that they would at
Speaker 1: least be heard, they would have their day to plead
Speaker 1: their case, and they would be given a fair trial,
Speaker 1: you know. And if you swap that out with a
Speaker 1: black person, I think that our expectation has for the
Speaker 1: most part, man, I think you mentioned a couple weeks
Speaker 1: ago that out of fifteen thousand police shootings of black
Speaker 1: men in this country, two of them resulted in actual
Speaker 1: convictions seven seven and fifteen thousand, that was the number. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: but that shows how there needs to be some change
Speaker 1: with respect to police officers and black men. I think
Speaker 1: that our assumption is often or maybe maybe it's not
Speaker 1: an assumption, because I don't think our thoughts even go there,
Speaker 1: at least mine don't. But I think that the understanding
Speaker 1: is that black folks do not get a fair shot
Speaker 1: at justice if the police mishandle mismanage, whatever the cases,
Speaker 1: they abuse their power. And so those are my thoughts
Speaker 1: on why there's a different reaction when the victim is
Speaker 1: black versus when the victim is white. There's a lot
Speaker 1: with regards to this topic and the question that's being posed, sots.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the very, very easy and explainable numbers.
Speaker 1: A black man is one hundred and fifty percent more
Speaker 1: likely to be killed by police in his lifetime than
Speaker 1: any other person in the United States. And this data
Speaker 1: is from the National Academy of Sciences of the United
Speaker 1: States of America, not the Black Panther Party. Just so
Speaker 1: we're clear that we're not inventing this data or skewing
Speaker 1: it in favor of the argument being made that we're
Speaker 1: I see those stats in front of me that were
Speaker 1: more likely to be killed by police. So that's the
Speaker 1: first reason why there's not as much outrage, because it's
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty percent more likely to happen to us.
Speaker 1: Another issue that some might argue I won't, but some might,
Speaker 1: is that white men being killed by police are not
Speaker 1: being killed because they're white. And I think there is
Speaker 1: irrefutable evidence that in a lot of these cases, black
Speaker 1: men are being killed because their skin is the crime.
Speaker 1: Being black is what they're guilty of. It's why they
Speaker 1: were pulled over in the first place. They didn't just
Speaker 1: break the law. They were not brandishing a weapon. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're sitting in their own homes and officers get to
Speaker 1: enter their homes and kill them and still not go
Speaker 1: to prison for the rest of their lives. There's a
Speaker 1: bit of Stockholm syndrome with regards to non black, specifically
Speaker 1: white people in this country that are poor, that are
Speaker 1: victims of injustice, that are not treated fairly. That's not
Speaker 1: because they're white, which I bring up again because that's very,
Speaker 1: very important. But the system in place has done a
Speaker 1: remarkable job of marketing itself to most of the people
Speaker 1: that it oppresses, because we are still what fourteen fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the population, and that would be me being generous.
Speaker 1: There's a very large group of white Americans that live
Speaker 1: below at or very close to the poverty line, that
Speaker 1: vote and carry out the civil duties of completely different
Speaker 1: people than who they are. The only thing they have
Speaker 1: in common is their lack of melanin exactly, So, when
Speaker 1: you can convince more than half of the population who
Speaker 1: you oppress, who you try to keep uneducated and poor
Speaker 1: so that the richest and most successful of you can
Speaker 1: continue to thrive, when you've convinced them that we're all
Speaker 1: on the same team and they will fight to uphold
Speaker 1: your best interest, then you won't have those same people
Speaker 1: taking to the streets in protest of the rights and
Speaker 1: privileges and liberties that they're not being afforded. I think
Speaker 1: that's why there's such a huge amount of folks that
Speaker 1: shout things like blue lives matter, all lives matter, or
Speaker 1: that you know, I saw this is funny because this happened.
Speaker 1: My hand to God, this happened to day. I was
Speaker 1: driving and I saw what looked like a beat up
Speaker 1: old police car. It was weird because normally police cars
Speaker 1: are keeping them pretty nice, pretty new. They got a
Speaker 1: you know, but it was a two door GMC jimmy
Speaker 1: with the yellow lights on the top of the car,
Speaker 1: not a red and a blue one, but they were yellow.
Speaker 1: But it had like a sticker around the car. The
Speaker 1: car had been in an accident, so the front of
Speaker 1: it was kind of crumpled into the passenger compartment. The
Speaker 1: stickers didn't go together, but they were blue like like
Speaker 1: it was like someone had almost like someone painted on
Speaker 1: to a police car, but they put the stickers on it.
Speaker 1: And the stickers were crooked. The letters were crooked, but
Speaker 1: it said neighborhood Patrol and something like that. And then
Speaker 1: there were two guys in this truck. This truck was
Speaker 1: who had son And there was two guys in the truck,
Speaker 1: and one of them had the American flag as a
Speaker 1: COVID mask on his face, and the other one had
Speaker 1: that flag with the blue line, which is an abomination
Speaker 1: and an affront to the actual American flag, and so
Speaker 1: is the other one. By the way, if you know
Speaker 1: anything about flag code. You're not supposed to wear the
Speaker 1: flag on anything, and you're not supposed to change the
Speaker 1: colors of the flag. So anybody talks about disrespecting the flag,
Speaker 1: he needs to read the actual flag code. And don't
Speaker 1: come at me without anything about that except those people
Speaker 1: don't care about so let me finish respecting the flag.
Speaker 1: So these people who are clearly not officers, were for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes, impersonating officers. Clearly these guys have
Speaker 1: none of the massive police budget. Because that car, it
Speaker 1: looked like it had been in an accident. And and
Speaker 1: dig this. Those GMC jimmies they stopped making those in
Speaker 1: the nineties. The car is so old, you know, it's
Speaker 1: leaning on the everlasting arms. Man. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that thing is still moving. But and these guys are
Speaker 1: just in their windows down. That means no AC And
Speaker 1: if you don't know, we live in Arizona and it
Speaker 1: is warm outside right now. So these guys are just
Speaker 1: out cruising around trying to fight crime alongside the cops.
Speaker 1: I guess that they really dressed that vehicle up to
Speaker 1: look like it was a police car. This wasn't a
Speaker 1: private security company. There was two dudes in their car.
Speaker 1: So you're absolutely right. This system has marketed itself to
Speaker 1: people who, in my estimation, those guys had no money
Speaker 1: and really perhaps they didn't really have anything exciting to
Speaker 1: live for other than America America, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: something that really surprises me, is that a lot of
Speaker 1: times people's whole identity is being American, which sometimes as
Speaker 1: a stand in for being white in America and the
Speaker 1: cot and see other folks take that same approach, the
Speaker 1: colloquialism that you just used, America positions itself as an
Speaker 1: adversary to black people. Yeah, so again, you have an
Speaker 1: entire group of people that votes and performs several civic
Speaker 1: duties and direct conflict of their own best interest because
Speaker 1: at least they're not black. And you know who's that
Speaker 1: politician where you would be better off if not for
Speaker 1: these people, you poor white sir. It would be better
Speaker 1: off if not for all of the Mexicans that snuck
Speaker 1: into the country and stole your jobs, if not for
Speaker 1: all the criminal black people who are driving through a
Speaker 1: neighborhood they don't belong in because they're black. You talk
Speaker 1: about those fears that shouldn't exist, but they do because
Speaker 1: those seed a completely unfounded, but those seeds have been
Speaker 1: as deeply planted as possible. Sure, and take it to
Speaker 1: our cinema and our pop culture. You know, the movies
Speaker 1: that we love that grows very high, that take you
Speaker 1: on a tour of our neighborhoods, show us as murderous
Speaker 1: gangster thugs. Not to mention our own music, but that
Speaker 1: brings me to the next thing. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about music. So music, the music, the music, So listen.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to our voices, you're listening to a
Speaker 1: radio station that plays black music. You may or may
Speaker 1: not know the name I'm about to mention, but there's
Speaker 1: a rapper from Chicago's name is g Herbo pretty good,
Speaker 1: and I caught a clip of him sitting down with
Speaker 1: Charlemagne and he was talking and he tells a bit
Speaker 1: of a story. I'll try to be brief, but the
Speaker 1: way the story goes is he says, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen seventeen growing up in Chicago, there were
Speaker 1: people who wanted to kill me because of who my
Speaker 1: older brother was. They could hurt my older brother if
Speaker 1: they could kill me. And I knew that because I
Speaker 1: would see him and then I'd be able to get
Speaker 1: away from them or whatever. And this is the result
Speaker 1: of living in these environments, which we've talked about how
Speaker 1: these environments developed. This is not like if you go
Speaker 1: to Africa. It's not like that black people don't just
Speaker 1: it was ghettos. Yeah, this is government intervention and the
Speaker 1: strategic deployment of drugs to disrupt black and brown can unities.
Speaker 1: This is all researchable, so you end up with these
Speaker 1: environments we'll call them ghettos. You know. Gi Herbo is
Speaker 1: from one such place in Chicago, and he's telling a
Speaker 1: story about how he has to go to school and
Speaker 1: come home and he says, you know, in his interviews,
Speaker 1: like you know, I love my mom. I'm not a
Speaker 1: horrible person. I wouldn't Why would I ever want to
Speaker 1: hurt anybody? You know, It's just like I'm a normal
Speaker 1: human being. I'm a normal creature on the planet, same
Speaker 1: as any any other creature on the planet. I'm not
Speaker 1: here to just just you know, why would I do that?
Speaker 1: But yeah, carried a gun for a good part of
Speaker 1: my life because I knew that there were people that
Speaker 1: could hurt me. It's just a function of the culture
Speaker 1: and the environment you know that you live in when
Speaker 1: there's a lot in the way of scarcity, and you know,
Speaker 1: folks are over limited resources and so forth and so on.
Speaker 1: The story tells its the story rights itself and other
Speaker 1: countries across the world, of all peoples of all colors.
Speaker 1: But such his story is, you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: So he says, yeah, I had to carry a gun
Speaker 1: with me to school every day. And you know what
Speaker 1: happens if the police pull up and they harass you.
Speaker 1: They don't want to hear none of that stuff, because
Speaker 1: as soon as they find out that you have a gun,
Speaker 1: that's the end of your life. But at least if
Speaker 1: you have a gun, like you know for a fact,
Speaker 1: you got to go to school that day, you don't
Speaker 1: know if you're going to run into the police. Right.
Speaker 1: So he's telling this story and you realize that it's
Speaker 1: just a trap which is so funny because a lot
Speaker 1: of the music that we enjoy and hip hop, we
Speaker 1: call it trap music, you know, especially if you like
Speaker 1: really like real trap music. But you begin to see
Speaker 1: how the music does it just glorify these sorts of
Speaker 1: things for the sake of glorifying it. It's an accurate
Speaker 1: reflection of society. Now, I'll grant that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a degree of you know, machismo, and you know, I
Speaker 1: want to get all the girls, I want all the money,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, which is common for any young
Speaker 1: man in any culture around the world and in any industry. Sure,
Speaker 1: but hip hop just kind of gets a bad rap.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also because in this country, especially,
Speaker 1: we're taught to be afraid of black people. Now, well,
Speaker 1: that said, hopefully that does answer that question and you know,
Speaker 1: address at least a little bit about the hip hop.
Speaker 1: But fortunately, so far on the show, we were able
Speaker 1: to discuss a question that came to us via our
Speaker 1: social media at Civic Cipher. If you're on Instagram, where
Speaker 1: a person asks, where is the outrage when you know
Speaker 1: police these white victims? And so we're able to talk
Speaker 1: about that. We spend a little bit of time talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, hip hop and what it's like to just
Speaker 1: grow up in an impoverished community. And I want to
Speaker 1: say something before we move on. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how I forgot to say this already, where's the outrage?
Speaker 1: We've been screaming defund the police for a little bit now,
Speaker 1: except almost one hundred percent of the pushback and let
Speaker 1: me just take that down the eighties so I can
Speaker 1: be generous comes from the subjects of that question. Where's
Speaker 1: all the outrage when all of these awful things happen
Speaker 1: to people that aren't black? The cry has never been
Speaker 1: defund police in black neighborhoods. Yeah, we're trying to change
Speaker 1: the whole system. It's very clear that the entire everyone
Speaker 1: in infrastructure, it's rotten. Everyone benefits from that. So so
Speaker 1: the injustice that we're looking to snuff out would benefit
Speaker 1: all victims of that injustice, not just black people. I
Speaker 1: like that. So during the week. During the past week,
Speaker 1: we were able to share some content on social media,
Speaker 1: some videos, and you listening to our voices may have
Speaker 1: seen some of the videos, you may not have seen them.
Speaker 1: A lot of these videos come from Sean King because
Speaker 1: a lot of the high profile videos make their way
Speaker 1: to his page. So if you like check out Sean King,
Speaker 1: you can just google this guy. DL Hughgley is another
Speaker 1: one that we both follow, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of folks will send videos to them. Sometimes folks will
Speaker 1: send videos to us, even though we're not on that
Speaker 1: level with millions of followers, but I implore you to,
Speaker 1: you know, go back and research these videos. If you
Speaker 1: can't find them on our page, because sometimes they get deleted,
Speaker 1: they might still be hosted on those pages. But there's
Speaker 1: something that I really wanted to talk about. There was
Speaker 1: a video that I saw, and y'all know, I'll be
Speaker 1: crying all the time. It comes with the job. He's
Speaker 1: emotional like Carl Thomas, you know, but it's because I mean,
Speaker 1: you imagine having to see what Q and I have
Speaker 1: to see every week. And we've shared this before. We
Speaker 1: take turns watching the videos so that we don't get
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with it. You know, there's so much discussion about
Speaker 1: mental health and making sure that we're pacing ourselves and
Speaker 1: you know, not allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed with death
Speaker 1: and with violence. You know, I'm a happy person. I
Speaker 1: love love, I love happiness, I love being happy, and
Speaker 1: it just so happens to be the case that we
Speaker 1: found ourselves in this position where we have to deal
Speaker 1: with these things. We have to watch these incidents, we
Speaker 1: have to feel them, the full weight of them, so
Speaker 1: that we can provide I had context to rally the
Speaker 1: troops in a manner of speaking to decide what's the
Speaker 1: right path forward, to call on the right folks to
Speaker 1: come and give them a platform so that they can
Speaker 1: share their expertise with us, because neither of us are
Speaker 1: professional civil rights activists. But I guess we kind of well,
Speaker 1: maybe we weren't. Yeah, I guess we kind of absolutely
Speaker 1: are now. So this is but I've been very honest
Speaker 1: that I'm learning my way through this. I'm not any
Speaker 1: bigger or any smaller than anyone else. I'm just a
Speaker 1: human being with a feeling, beating heart. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's that person that watches these videos and feels and
Speaker 1: in that way, I think we all are professionals at
Speaker 1: civil rights. Sure, all of us that are have any
Speaker 1: sense of empathy, any sense of love, any sense of
Speaker 1: wanting things to be okay for everybody. It doesn't require,
Speaker 1: you know, a doctrine of any sort. You know, just
Speaker 1: have a beating herd and just be a human being.
Speaker 1: You know, you should want for things to at minimum
Speaker 1: be okay. That's for everybody. That's I'm glad you said that.
Speaker 1: That's why this first video that caused me to be
Speaker 1: so emotional is worth discussing now. For those that haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, I'll kind of paint the picture a little bit.
Speaker 1: There's a woman elderly, she's probably knocking on seventy years old,
Speaker 1: gray hair, black, brown skinned woman. For those that don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure most of you do know, But for those
Speaker 1: who don't know, that's a very precious creature around here
Speaker 1: culturally for us, an old black woman. And think about
Speaker 1: that when I say that, that is the kindest person.
Speaker 1: That is the person that will share with you. That
Speaker 1: person calls you baby, because that person calls everyone baby.
Speaker 1: And you don't call someone baby unless you intend to
Speaker 1: treat them like they are your baby. They're your child.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Like, if I got to
Speaker 1: heaven at the end of my life and God looked
Speaker 1: me in the face and I saw God and God
Speaker 1: was an old black woman, I'd be like, yep, checks out,
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. So it's this woman who is
Speaker 1: driving down the highway. She's in a SUV, high up suv.
Speaker 1: I wanna say it was like a Toyota Sequoia. If
Speaker 1: you're familiar with vehicles but not a mid size of
Speaker 1: full size, think of expedition or a navigate or something
Speaker 1: that size. Big truck. And where the video picks up
Speaker 1: is the police go to this to the door of
Speaker 1: the vehicle. She's already pulled off on the side of
Speaker 1: the highway. Why why she's there, and they yank her
Speaker 1: out of the car. Now you can see that hair,
Speaker 1: that hair turns white, you know, and you can see
Speaker 1: she's she's she's got like big Mama energy, Grandmama energy.
Speaker 1: I hope that I'm painting the picture for you. I
Speaker 1: realize that a lot of people that listen to our
Speaker 1: voices and listen to the show every week might not
Speaker 1: know or be able to make a connection with that
Speaker 1: big Mama energy or that Grandmama energy. But I hope
Speaker 1: that that you kind of know what I'm saying. This
Speaker 1: is what you get from this woman the whole time.
Speaker 1: Yankor out of the car and throw her on the ground. Right,
Speaker 1: that's policing. Policing are doing. Police are doing exactly what
Speaker 1: they're supposed to do. In this video, that system works great.
Speaker 1: There's been a frame and talk to you. They were
Speaker 1: doing exactly because at any point in time you could say, well,
Speaker 1: why did you handcuff this woman? She clearly poses a
Speaker 1: zero threat to all of these younger men around her.
Speaker 1: She's alone, she has no pressure, her purses in the car.
Speaker 1: They're asking her to get her person. She's handcuffed and
Speaker 1: she's complaining and crying because she says that she got
Speaker 1: in a car crash and her shoulder. She messed up
Speaker 1: her shoulder. She says, I was on the way to
Speaker 1: the funeral. Why did you pull me over? I've done
Speaker 1: nothing wrong, And they say, we've been following you for
Speaker 1: ten miles with the lights on. You didn't pull over,
Speaker 1: And she's like, I didn't know you were following me.
Speaker 1: Why would I think you were following me. I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong, you know. But there's this violent reaction
Speaker 1: by the police. And again when there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: them together, they get real bold. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: how dare you not comply? Is the energy they have
Speaker 1: once they get to her. Dig this, dig this. It's
Speaker 1: like gangsters. Right. So I'm from Compton, Okay, but you
Speaker 1: know this too. I'm sure everybody knows this story. Even
Speaker 1: if you're listening and you didn't grow up around a
Speaker 1: bunch of gang bangers, you know this story. When it's
Speaker 1: one person, they don't really talk that loud. They might
Speaker 1: try to get something off. You know, you know, if
Speaker 1: you got you're confronting this one person. You know, they
Speaker 1: size you up, but they recognize where they are in
Speaker 1: the space that they hold. But when that one person
Speaker 1: is back by three four other people, you notice that
Speaker 1: person gets a lot louder, right, They a lot more aggressive,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot more to say, and they're
Speaker 1: moving around a little bit more embolden. There you go,
Speaker 1: And this is what you see with the police. They're
Speaker 1: all standing around this elderly woman who's on the side
Speaker 1: of the road, just wailing. And you don't see any empathy.
Speaker 1: You don't see public servants. What you see is a
Speaker 1: bunch of bullies. And that's why I speak so much
Speaker 1: to the culture of policing, because I think that they
Speaker 1: believe in theory what they did is the right thing.
Speaker 1: They was it a speeding, but whatever it was, I
Speaker 1: think it was speeding. They said she was speeding. Kidn't
Speaker 1: have been crazy speeding because she's a million years old
Speaker 1: doing fifty six and a fifty more than likely, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But when she gets pulled over,
Speaker 1: you know, these guys all got to show up and
Speaker 1: show out and to see that happening, and to know
Speaker 1: that it would not happen if this was any other
Speaker 1: type of person. Man, what seems to be the problem.
Speaker 1: Why did you have us follow you for so long?
Speaker 1: This is the video had to have been from the South,
Speaker 1: because I do remember that accent. I apologize I couldn't
Speaker 1: get the information of the state order. But these guys
Speaker 1: were talking like those good old country boys. If this
Speaker 1: had been an older white woman or older white man
Speaker 1: or something, I just can't see them behaving the same way,
Speaker 1: you know, especially once you've determined there is no threat.
Speaker 1: Every single police officer in the world would say standard practice,
Speaker 1: or they would say it's for our protection, or they
Speaker 1: would say anything that is their standard argument when it
Speaker 1: comes to that sort of stuff. But I think that
Speaker 1: the video that I saw speaks more to the culture
Speaker 1: of policing. And you mentioned defunding the police earlier, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep talking about it until it happens,
Speaker 1: because that's what I do. I talk and usually things happen.
Speaker 1: So here's hoping. But that further illustrates that defund call
Speaker 1: because one of the ideas when it comes to defunding
Speaker 1: the polices, well, traffic enforcement should not fall under policing.
Speaker 1: Traffic enforcement is not you're not dealing with criminals, but
Speaker 1: what you have are officers who show up with murder
Speaker 1: weapons and treat people like their criminals as opposed to
Speaker 1: people who may have touched the the what's that lane
Speaker 1: called the noise lane I'm referring to For those that
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm referring to a story that Q and
Speaker 1: I have told a couple times on the show where
Speaker 1: we were in a car together and we ended up
Speaker 1: getting pulled over in Mississippi because we drifted for about
Speaker 1: a second or less. Well, here's the thing, we didn't drift.
Speaker 1: The rumbo strips some people call them, but it's just
Speaker 1: perforated concrete that vibrates when you drive a tire over it.
Speaker 1: And it's just say to a person, Hey, if you've
Speaker 1: dozed off, wake up, or if you've drifted out of
Speaker 1: your lane, get back in it. Yeah, except in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: that's not on the side of the road. It's in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah. So it's on the white line, not
Speaker 1: outside of the white line like it is where we
Speaker 1: live in Arizona. Yeah. So, anyway, what we ended up
Speaker 1: with on that night, in brief just to tell the
Speaker 1: story is we ended up stuck on the side of
Speaker 1: the road for forty five minutes while these people called
Speaker 1: sir dogs to check our car for drugs for a
Speaker 1: traffic violation. Of course we had no drugs. We're driving
Speaker 1: a brand new Porsche, you know, and we're two younger
Speaker 1: presenting black mails. And so they have all the license
Speaker 1: in the world to do whatever it is that they
Speaker 1: want because they're bording on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: And so again one of the calls is to have
Speaker 1: traffic enforcement be its separate arm of policing where you
Speaker 1: don't need weapons, you don't, you just enforce traffic rules. Right.
Speaker 1: But the latitude that these murderous police have with their
Speaker 1: murder weapons when it comes to stopping someone for a
Speaker 1: traffic violation is it's just they can do whatever they
Speaker 1: want and then they have it, what's that qualified immunity,
Speaker 1: And it's set up for them to escalate as well. Right,
Speaker 1: because they pull you over for speeding, Just write me
Speaker 1: a ticket for speeding and then give it to me.
Speaker 1: That's it, and then leave. But they accept I want
Speaker 1: to make sure you're not a criminal. Do you have
Speaker 1: any drugs in the car? Do you have it you mind,
Speaker 1: step in out of the car. How about you put
Speaker 1: your hands on vehicles for my protection? Okay, if you
Speaker 1: don't want to consent to a search, what we're going
Speaker 1: to do is get a dog out here, and if
Speaker 1: for some reason they want I've seen, well, my belief
Speaker 1: is that I've seen police abuse this power when I
Speaker 1: was very young. You know, I saw it. Together. You
Speaker 1: don't even have to use your imagination from that law. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know I was talking about when I was young.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've seen it absolutely since. It's happened to
Speaker 1: me since then. But I you know, anyway, and they'll
Speaker 1: they'll make a criminal out of you if they so choose.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, if they have a modicum of something
Speaker 1: to go on, then it makes their job a lot
Speaker 1: easier to make a criminal out of you. But if
Speaker 1: they choose to make a criminal out of you, they'll
Speaker 1: just say you're resisting arrest. They'll just say whatever and
Speaker 1: make up stuff which couldn't have happened unless you've already
Speaker 1: tried to detain me. So how is resisting arrested in charge? Sir? Listen,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it happens. We both know that
Speaker 1: it happens, happened in my family. It's happened to me.
Speaker 1: What was I being arrested for? So again with this,
Speaker 1: with this call for defunding the police, I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure that part of the strategy is to separate.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a common complaint among police officers. You know,
Speaker 1: we do too much. How are we supposed to do
Speaker 1: all of these things? How are we supposed to you know,
Speaker 1: if we're responding to every single type of call from
Speaker 1: ladies that helped me their cat get out of a tree,
Speaker 1: to you know, someone's actively robbing a bank and you
Speaker 1: know there's an active shooter in the mall and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. You know, those are two different things,
Speaker 1: but the same person shows up. It's you know, and
Speaker 1: these people don't engage. They don't take this job to
Speaker 1: get cats out of trees. You know, I don't think,
Speaker 1: but there could be a department that have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a swat team? That's a training video. You should
Speaker 1: have to be good enough to be on a swat
Speaker 1: team to carry the murder weapon that you spoke about.
Speaker 1: I like that that works for me, right, So everyone
Speaker 1: that carries a gun should be swat and swats should
Speaker 1: be called when there's imminent danger. Hey, there's someone here
Speaker 1: trying to kill people, or like you said, robbing a bank,
Speaker 1: or they're beating someone up really bad. Can the people
Speaker 1: who stop criminals come? Yeah, Traffic and wellness, chetal and
Speaker 1: mental health things should be someone like a psychiatrist or
Speaker 1: a psychologist. And at best, at best, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to make an argument that they need protection, there are
Speaker 1: non lethal options, which they absolutely could abuse, So we
Speaker 1: don't want that idea used. A non lethal option. People
Speaker 1: are still not dead, and if there's cash, there's cameras,
Speaker 1: and here's this. If I'm not dead, you might be
Speaker 1: held accountable. Boom, talk to h Q, say that Q,
Speaker 1: because we cannot pretend that these some of these deaths
Speaker 1: don't happen for that exact reason. So only one person
Speaker 1: has a side of the story to tell. So now
Speaker 1: we're starting to see that defund the police is not
Speaker 1: so scary as even though it sounds scary, It is
Speaker 1: really more a call to reallocate these resources, these fiscal resources.
Speaker 1: Let's create departments that prevent crime from happening in the
Speaker 1: first place, that deal with social inequities and so forth.
Speaker 1: But also let's really rethink what policing means because a
Speaker 1: commuter and the example that I was given earlier in
Speaker 1: the show about the white man who lost his life
Speaker 1: because the police were trigger happy, that was a function
Speaker 1: of the track fix stop. Man did nothing wrong. He
Speaker 1: was a little bit argumentative with the police because he
Speaker 1: didn't feel like you should have been pulled over and detained.
Speaker 1: And that's his right. You know, just because the police
Speaker 1: are talking to you doesn't mean that you should have
Speaker 1: to sacrifice your dignity. Lack folks often do because we
Speaker 1: want to live. But it's you and I always do it, yeah,
Speaker 1: always on time. Yeah, But but I you know, I
Speaker 1: do understand that. You know, questioning an officer, and an
Speaker 1: officer doesn't want to give you an answer, you double
Speaker 1: down on the question, like, wait a minute, you got
Speaker 1: to tell me why I'm here. Otherwise I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is bogus or fugezy or what. Imagine the
Speaker 1: people you paid to protect you. I don't have to
Speaker 1: imagine this bullying. You really don't have to imagine that. No,
Speaker 1: I'm saying imagine it because in that position, we can't
Speaker 1: view it that way. Of course, not we can't. You're
Speaker 1: thinking this person that I pay to protect me is
Speaker 1: out of line and stand your ground and no. But
Speaker 1: for those who have greater imaginations than myself and have
Speaker 1: never had the displeasure of the type of interactions with
Speaker 1: law enforcement that we have, Imagine the people that you
Speaker 1: literally pay to protect you harassing, beating, killing and killing
Speaker 1: you and being upset with you for being upset with them.
Speaker 1: And then there's now nobility of course. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the world that we live in. But we're talking
Speaker 1: about it. And I think that that gives power to this,
Speaker 1: to this conversation, to this narrative, and to the thrust
Speaker 1: of this campaign. Speaking of wellness checks, and you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about there being different types of calls. Like
Speaker 1: nine one one will take a call and send it
Speaker 1: to upon a paramedic, send it to a police officer.
Speaker 1: There can be a whole other division. There can be
Speaker 1: Donald Trump invented the Space Force. There can be a
Speaker 1: division of people that respond and do wellness checks or
Speaker 1: traffic enforcement or whatever. That actually happened. That's just a
Speaker 1: real time, but it shows you that it's possible. These
Speaker 1: people we want all of us. I'm going to conclude
Speaker 1: myself in there we've all developed a very narrow view
Speaker 1: of what policing looks like and what public safety looks like.
Speaker 1: But if we expand it just a bit, and we
Speaker 1: recognize that it is possible to expand it just a bit,
Speaker 1: then we can address some of these things. And one
Speaker 1: such thing was another video that we saw. My understand
Speaker 1: you sent me this video cue. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: you don't really see much in the video. It's dark,
Speaker 1: but you do hear the audio. An officer pulls up,
Speaker 1: gets out, weapon clearly drawn right based on what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing and what I'm seeing in terms of his arms
Speaker 1: being outstretched, and the video lasts a minute or less.
Speaker 1: I believe it was a matter of seconds, so I
Speaker 1: couldn't have been a minute, but you know, who knows. Anyway,
Speaker 1: officer gets out screaming immediately, put your hands up, put
Speaker 1: your hands up, you know. And then he says, uh,
Speaker 1: don't put the gun to your head. And then he's
Speaker 1: like screaming like, don't walk toward me, don't walk toward me,
Speaker 1: and then bang bang bang bang bang, and then he
Speaker 1: starts getting on radio. Shots fired, suspect down, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: this that and the third funny how suspects down something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, I invite you to watch a
Speaker 1: video it's either on Sean Kings or doo Hubs. People.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that that's the term they use, even
Speaker 1: if you're not actually suspected of anything. So tell me
Speaker 1: what you know about this video and why you sent
Speaker 1: it to me. I sent it to you because I
Speaker 1: couldn't watch another one. I couldn't. That was that was
Speaker 1: video six, video six of the week or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I heard I didn't even get to the gunshot.
Speaker 1: I heard what you heard how it starts. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: from that tone, I knew the direction that it was going.
Speaker 1: It was being escalated that way, almost with intent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounded like that stop resisting stuff. Yeah. The idea
Speaker 1: that I'm going to murder you so you don't murder
Speaker 1: you was ridiculous. Wasn't a gun by the way, people,
Speaker 1: But even if that's what you thought it was, why
Speaker 1: are you murdering the man holding the gun to his
Speaker 1: own head to protect you? Or because now that you
Speaker 1: think you see anything in his hand, what did he
Speaker 1: happen to murder him? And justify it? This strange technology
Speaker 1: called the cell phone that guy had a cell phone
Speaker 1: in his hand, and the officer said, and I guess
Speaker 1: that's how you can pretend that he has a gun
Speaker 1: to his head because he has the phone. Here. For
Speaker 1: those of you that can't see me, just imagine holding
Speaker 1: your phone to your ear, and imagine, while holding that
Speaker 1: phone to your ear, being told by a person with
Speaker 1: a gun pointed at you and screaming at you to
Speaker 1: put the gun down. There's a moment where you understand
Speaker 1: I'm about to die. I know I don't have a gun,
Speaker 1: and so does this officer most likely. But now that
Speaker 1: he's said out loud, just like the officer who yelled
Speaker 1: out taser after already having pulled out an aim a pistol,
Speaker 1: now that he's yelling out gun, he's going to give
Speaker 1: himself some deniability, some cause, and some justification for murdering me.
Speaker 1: And with the exception of collapsing on the ground, which
Speaker 1: might be a sudden movement which might also cause him
Speaker 1: to shoot me. There's no version of this where I survive,
Speaker 1: because this officer determined before he got out of his
Speaker 1: car how this was going to play out. Well, that's
Speaker 1: very sad to know that it was a phone, but
Speaker 1: I want to say something. I do understand the desire
Speaker 1: to have someone in that moment with you when the
Speaker 1: police pull up, because you know, to add to the
Speaker 1: story that we told earlier about us being in Mississippi
Speaker 1: with the lane lines or whatever. First thing I did
Speaker 1: was put my phone on the dashboard and turn on
Speaker 1: Facebook Live so that I wouldn't be alone, because once
Speaker 1: they took you out of the car, they asked you
Speaker 1: to step out of the vehicle and walk back to
Speaker 1: the police car. So I'm like, Okay, whatever's happening in
Speaker 1: the cues about to happen to me. So I do
Speaker 1: get that, and I understand that, and that's just an
Speaker 1: unfortunate part of how we need to interact with the police.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like a catch twenty two because
Speaker 1: we need someone else to witness what we're going through
Speaker 1: or what we're about to go through, and the police
Speaker 1: are insistent that we do exactly what they say or
Speaker 1: else they're terrified they're going to execute us. And so
Speaker 1: I guess this is the world that we live in,
Speaker 1: and it's very sad, but real quick and if you're
Speaker 1: just tuning in to civic side from your host, Rams's
Speaker 1: job they call me q Ward. Okay, you were going
Speaker 1: to say something, was that we were speaking about the
Speaker 1: idea or the need to have someone with us or
Speaker 1: hopefully someone around when we interact with law enforcement. Sure.
Speaker 1: And the really interesting thing that I've noticed over the
Speaker 1: last year, and I say that period of time very
Speaker 1: specifically because of the very heightened sense of accountability and
Speaker 1: the increase and people scrutinizing and paying attention to law
Speaker 1: enforcement since George Floyd was murdered. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people paying attention and when the most eyes are
Speaker 1: on them and camera phones in their own body cams,
Speaker 1: not only has it not slowed down or ceased, but
Speaker 1: I'm seeing more of these videos than I ever have
Speaker 1: at any point in my life. It's almost like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna challenge us. Let us show you
Speaker 1: how we really get down. And they're so used to
Speaker 1: operating with impunity, they're so bold about it that they'll murder,
Speaker 1: what are you on video? And then say blue lives man?
Speaker 1: Then say blue Lives Matter? Are you going to say
Speaker 1: that already? Man? I could read your thoughts. For those
Speaker 1: who don't know, we're talking about the video of what's
Speaker 1: her name? She was fourteen. I think her name was
Speaker 1: Mackayah yeah, McKay Bryant. Yeah, so yeah. Shout out to
Speaker 1: our producer, DJ Swirrel was feeding us the info we need.
Speaker 1: And one more thing I wanted to talk about. There
Speaker 1: was another video that we saw. You might have sent
Speaker 1: it to me, or maybe Swirrel sent it to me,
Speaker 1: but it was a video of an officer engaging with
Speaker 1: what turned out to be a teenager with autism, an
Speaker 1: autistic teenager. Unfortunately I sent you that too, And you know,
Speaker 1: that reminds me of there's so many names. I really
Speaker 1: need to do better. I'm terrible with names in real life.
Speaker 1: But there's a young man in Colorado and the police
Speaker 1: choked him in the cold, and he was a kind man.
Speaker 1: I need to find his name. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: his name before the show's over. But the story kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of his interaction with the police where
Speaker 1: the officer shows up and in the video, at least,
Speaker 1: the officer shows up asks the kid to sit down
Speaker 1: or something like that, and the kid reluctantly complies. But
Speaker 1: you know, as you can imagine, this kid is pretty confused,
Speaker 1: and you know, the officer's position is the officer does
Speaker 1: not know that this person is autistic, right, doesn't know
Speaker 1: this person this teenager's level of comprehension. So the officer
Speaker 1: has to do what the officer has to do. And again,
Speaker 1: and I think that speaks to the culture of policing.
Speaker 1: If you're going to be a police officer because you
Speaker 1: get protected first, then I think that you're coming to
Speaker 1: the table with a degree of fear that doesn't lend
Speaker 1: itself to you performing your job the way that it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be performed. You're supposed to be a public servant.
Speaker 1: If you come into every situation like, well, I'm scared
Speaker 1: of what might happen to me, then you're going to
Speaker 1: end up causing more harm to society than good. What
Speaker 1: if that's why you signed up? And so this is
Speaker 1: this is why we need to restructure it, you know.
Speaker 1: And while I got it. His name is Elijah McClain
Speaker 1: as the young man from Colorado who lost his life
Speaker 1: because the police choked him in the in the cold
Speaker 1: last year. And I don't know if it was autism,
Speaker 1: but there was something about him, something like that that
Speaker 1: where he wasn't he was a very special young man.
Speaker 1: That's the best way I can describe him anyway. So
Speaker 1: this teenager from last week again had a similar interaction
Speaker 1: with the police where the officer said something scared the kid.
Speaker 1: The kid gets up to try to run away, which
Speaker 1: again is a natural human impulse if you fear for
Speaker 1: your life, I don't care if it's a lion, I
Speaker 1: don't care if it's a police officer. I don't care
Speaker 1: if it's a bug. I've seen human beings run away
Speaker 1: from bugs, you understand. So a police officer with a
Speaker 1: murder weapon will scare you enough to run away. It's
Speaker 1: the only thing that you know how to do. You
Speaker 1: either fight or you flight. It's an innate thing that's
Speaker 1: built into us. If you get someone scared enough, their
Speaker 1: heart starts pumping adrenaline and they need to figure out
Speaker 1: how to survive. It's limbic. You cannot change that. It
Speaker 1: is built into every single creature that is endowed with
Speaker 1: consciousness self preservation. And so this child responded accordingly and
Speaker 1: tries to run away. The officer catches him and then
Speaker 1: starts punching him. And when you recognize that this is
Speaker 1: an adult police officer punching a teenager with autism in
Speaker 1: the face, you have on full display in front of
Speaker 1: the whole world the culture of policing. And I already
Speaker 1: know what the officer would say, say something about suspect
Speaker 1: was non compliant, suspect was resisting life, I need, you know,
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things. And then you end up
Speaker 1: with another police officer admitting to his own cowardice. But
Speaker 1: the result is still the same, that he's not held accountable,
Speaker 1: there's no charges filed, and this child is beaten and forever,
Speaker 1: you know, changed as a result of that. I heard
Speaker 1: a story the other day about someone who went through
Speaker 1: a similar interaction with the police, and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never called the police in my life, never called
Speaker 1: the police in my life. I've needed the police, I've
Speaker 1: needed some sort of service. But I know the last
Speaker 1: time I interacted with the police that they it's like
Speaker 1: a phobia. Okay, I'll tell you something real quick that
Speaker 1: I understand. I'll take it's not even accurate when it's justified,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, thank you. But I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 1: So I live in America, right, people love dogs. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves dogs. You know, does not love dogs. Ramses not
Speaker 1: love dogs, does not love dogs, not even a little bit.
Speaker 1: I have grown even if they belong to me Nope,
Speaker 1: or his sister Nope. But I've grown to tolerate dogs, right.
Speaker 1: But that's because I worked really hard at it. The
Speaker 1: reason that Ramses doesn't love dogs is not because I
Speaker 1: wish harm on dogs, because I think the dogs are
Speaker 1: terrible creatures or whatever. I got bit by a dog
Speaker 1: when I was three years old. I had a three
Speaker 1: year old arm, baby sized arm. Dog bit into my arm.
Speaker 1: I have a tattoo of a heart over this car
Speaker 1: sunk his teeth into my arm and then took his
Speaker 1: tooth out of my arm. And I saw a deep
Speaker 1: purple socket on my arm from a dog that I
Speaker 1: knew that I was petting at the time. I wasn't
Speaker 1: petting it hard. I'm not that person. I don't have
Speaker 1: that energy. Was just hanging out with the dog bit
Speaker 1: my arm. Plug a deep purple socket into my baby
Speaker 1: fat arm, you know, nice and squishy arm man, and
Speaker 1: I looked at it and I thought, man, that's pretty cold.
Speaker 1: That's foul. So then I started wailing. My dad comes
Speaker 1: out and makes a big scene out of it, takes
Speaker 1: me and gets me all bandaged up, and the rest
Speaker 1: is history. But the next eleven years, until I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: I was absolutely terrified of every dog. I could be
Speaker 1: around cats, I could be around mountain lions, wouldn't make
Speaker 1: a difference, you know. But if you had a dog,
Speaker 1: it could be a chill, It could be the smallest,
Speaker 1: it could be a baby. I want nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it, because it was just now a part of
Speaker 1: it at that point, right, and I just and it
Speaker 1: was embarrassing, and it was all this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So I understood when this man was telling me a
Speaker 1: story about the police, you know, uh, traumatizing him in
Speaker 1: that way. And so I can relate. And maybe you
Speaker 1: got a story or two you can relate to as well.
Speaker 1: But that's all the time that we have for Civic
Speaker 1: Cipher this week. Once again, I'm your host rams this job.
Speaker 1: They called me q Ward and that just so happens
Speaker 1: to be my name. Indeed, Please hit the website civiccipher
Speaker 1: dot com for all your questions, submit any topics you
Speaker 1: want us to discuss. Of course you can donate. Your
Speaker 1: donations are appreciated and help the show grow. And again
Speaker 1: be sure to follow all our social media at Civic
Speaker 1: Cipher And until next week y'all peace, peace,