Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic ciche per I'm your host, rams' jah,
Speaker 1: he is jah, I am q Ward. You are listening
Speaker 1: to Civic Sciphon. Yes, indeed, got a lot in store
Speaker 1: for you today. Be sure to stick around for it all.
Speaker 1: Because we are reverting to type. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to talk about with respect to police violence
Speaker 1: and injustice per usual. As I mentioned reverting to type,
Speaker 1: We're gonna share a story about a black man in uniform,
Speaker 1: an officer, military officer, who was engaged by the police
Speaker 1: in pepper spray and so forth and so on, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk you through what that experience is like
Speaker 1: for black people and why we fight so hard on
Speaker 1: that battle front. We're also gonna take a look at
Speaker 1: the origins of the protect and serve model that is
Speaker 1: associated with police departments around the country and really find
Speaker 1: out what that means and who that means, what it
Speaker 1: means too. We're also going to take some time to
Speaker 1: discuss the repercussions that are in place for police officers
Speaker 1: who violate overstep. All these sorts of things plenty to
Speaker 1: stick around for, but it's not all heavy stuff. We
Speaker 1: will be taking a moment to talk about the recently
Speaker 1: past Bill Russell, who of course is a famous NBA
Speaker 1: athlete but also a civil rights activist, and we feel
Speaker 1: like story deserves to be told, so Q was going
Speaker 1: to share more with that when we get to the
Speaker 1: way Black History Fact. We're also going to talk about
Speaker 1: for our becoming a better ally segment, ways that you
Speaker 1: can support black businesses because this month is Black Business Month,
Speaker 1: So again, a lot to stick around for and we're
Speaker 1: going to need you to help us peel back these layers.
Speaker 1: But first, let's do like we always do and start
Speaker 1: off on a positive note, shall we? That we shall?
Speaker 1: So it might not sound so positive, but Michelle Nichols
Speaker 1: recently passed away. She's a beloved actor, singer, and dancer
Speaker 1: whose career spanned six decades. She passed away recently at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty nine, and she will be best
Speaker 1: remembered for her trailblazing role as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on
Speaker 1: the original Star Trek TV series, which aired from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six to sixty nine. Her performance as Uhura a
Speaker 1: communications officer, and she was the fourth highest ranking member
Speaker 1: of the USS enterprise, and that was a landmark moment
Speaker 1: for representation in pop culture, marking one of the first
Speaker 1: times in American history that a black woman appeared on
Speaker 1: television in a leading role. I'm gonna stop right here
Speaker 1: for a second because and real quick shout out to
Speaker 1: a hip hop with the media for sponsoring this segment
Speaker 1: for us today. And the story comes from blavity prior
Speaker 1: to her being on Star Trek, which I'm a big
Speaker 1: tricky I think I mentioned that one time on the
Speaker 1: show before. Hate me if you will, but I love
Speaker 1: Star Trek always have. It's a perfect world, and that's
Speaker 1: what I imagine that we all can aspire to that anyway.
Speaker 1: Prior to her being in that position on television, black
Speaker 1: women were oftentimes maids, secondary characters, you know, they weren't
Speaker 1: part of a primary cast on television. She actually is
Speaker 1: credited with William Shatner for sharing the first interracial kiss
Speaker 1: on television. So I know that we're just kind of
Speaker 1: trying to give her her credit, but imagine what it
Speaker 1: took for her to what she had to go through
Speaker 1: in order to accomplish these things, and what she had
Speaker 1: to suffer through as a result of accomplishing them. So
Speaker 1: we wanted to take a moment to highlight the ebony
Speaker 1: excellence that is the entire story of the life of
Speaker 1: Michelle Nichols. This is the place where we get to
Speaker 1: do it. And I'm not just a trekky. I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of black girl men and she exemplifies that. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about police again. I mean, it's a bit.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of our lives. I know, I
Speaker 1: know it's common motif around here, but it's a big
Speaker 1: part of our lives. And you know, there's some people
Speaker 1: that think that, you know, maybe we make a mountain
Speaker 1: out of a mole hill. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the amount of black people that exist versus the
Speaker 1: amount of black people that are engaged by the police,
Speaker 1: you might think that we're imagining a problem and you're wrong.
Speaker 1: But if you were right, let's have a thought experiment. Okay, now, Q,
Speaker 1: I want you to answer this question best you can
Speaker 1: for our listeners. What does it feel like to see
Speaker 1: police as a black person.
Speaker 2: The setting matters, but oftentimes terrifying, especially if behind the
Speaker 2: will of a car. Moreover, on a dark highway in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: That's it, but it could be just as terrifying on
Speaker 2: university right here, in Arizona. Sure, you have to process
Speaker 2: so many things. Right, It's never benign. I'll say that
Speaker 2: it's never a benign interaction.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's never. Oh they're the cops.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's an exercise, And Okay, how can I make
Speaker 2: this interaction as a little between me and this officer
Speaker 2: as possible? Is there a possibility that I can avoid
Speaker 2: the interaction altogether? And if the lights just so happened
Speaker 2: to come on behind you, Now there's a whole different
Speaker 2: set of things that you have to process in order
Speaker 2: to ensure that you make it home, or that you
Speaker 2: survive and come out the other side of that interaction,
Speaker 2: you know, at least physically unscathed. I want to add
Speaker 2: something to that before we get into the story that
Speaker 2: sort of prompted these questions. I'm going to share something
Speaker 2: that I'm going to be very vulnerable, very honest with you.
Speaker 2: I was three years old. I was with my father
Speaker 2: and we were visiting one of my father's friends. This woman,
Speaker 2: her name was Melody. She had a dog. The dog's
Speaker 2: name was Josh. I remember this at three years old
Speaker 2: because of the trauma associated with this man. My father
Speaker 2: and Melody were having a conversation in the other room,
Speaker 2: and I was in the living room with Josh sitting
Speaker 2: in front of the fireplace. So as you do, I
Speaker 2: went and sat with Josh and I began to pet him.
Speaker 2: It's what you do with a dog. I was not aggressive.
Speaker 2: I wasn't you know.
Speaker 1: That's never been my nature in petting Josh. He turned
Speaker 1: and he bit my three year old arm. And three
Speaker 1: ye old's arms are very little, right, and then when
Speaker 1: he let go, I had this deep socket, a puncture
Speaker 1: into my arm, and I remember it was a deep,
Speaker 1: dark puncture, and then blood started to come out of
Speaker 1: my arm. And I'm three, so I get to cry.
Speaker 1: I was screaming, and my dad came and took care
Speaker 1: of it. I'll I'll spare you all the details, but
Speaker 1: he took care of me, and he took care of
Speaker 1: the situation. That very much shaped the way that I
Speaker 1: felt about dogs for the rest of my life. The people, I.
Speaker 2: Wish our listeners knew you better, so they knew how
Speaker 2: deep and how real that trauma and that that experience
Speaker 2: has actually not it's not in a way that's.
Speaker 1: It's not to be made light. It had a real effect.
Speaker 2: I wish people could could experience how you interact with
Speaker 2: and you know, even your availability to the prospect of
Speaker 2: a dog in your space, even if it's me, And
Speaker 2: if you listen to this show enough, you at least
Speaker 2: know how he feels about me. Doesn't matter. Q's dog
Speaker 2: is not welcomed either now.
Speaker 1: That trauma, it has been a huge source of embarrassment
Speaker 1: for me. Once you get to be we'll call it
Speaker 1: maybe thirteen fourteen. You have an adultish sized body and
Speaker 1: you no longer should be concerned about a Chihuahua or
Speaker 1: a shitzu or one of those tiny dogs. And my
Speaker 1: brain will not let me let that go. And I
Speaker 1: wish I could. I wish I like it. It's you know,
Speaker 1: imagine going to a party with your friends and there's
Speaker 1: a dog there and you're like, you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: go home. And everybody's always scared of the I'm not
Speaker 1: scared of that. I just don't want to be around it.
Speaker 1: I they don't speak English, I don't know what they're thinking.
Speaker 1: They plottin on me, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: your brain won't let you go. It's like you're a
Speaker 1: prisoner of this, you know. And fear is different. I know, fear.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, but it's for most people
Speaker 1: that's the only word that they'll understand. So I'll let
Speaker 1: you have it. Fear. I fought against that word for
Speaker 1: many years because I know that physically I could. I
Speaker 1: need it to. It was me. If it came down
Speaker 1: to life and death being a dog, I know I'd
Speaker 1: be okay. So that's not fear. It's more concern because
Speaker 1: people love their dogs and I don't. So here I am,
Speaker 1: I'm thirty nine years old. I'm a grown man, real grown.
Speaker 1: When I see a dog, I know it's there, it's
Speaker 1: still with me. It doesn't look me right. I'm well
Speaker 1: aware and I'm not running away from a dog, you know,
Speaker 1: none of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: But I'm not comfortable if it's a dog there. Well,
Speaker 2: you have to understand that. Josh taught you that you
Speaker 2: need to be aware. Dogs are capable of doing when
Speaker 2: you're doing nothing wrong. Okay, thank you for that. Que
Speaker 2: So watch this. One time when I was little. I've
Speaker 2: shared this on the show before. One time when I
Speaker 2: was little, I was in Compton, California, and I saw
Speaker 2: the police pull up a car at a stoplight.
Speaker 1: The car did not proceed through the intercession. The police
Speaker 1: were right behind me. He was at a red light.
Speaker 1: We were in the car next to him. The police
Speaker 1: took the man out of his car and they banged
Speaker 1: his head into the door of the car, and the
Speaker 1: door of the car dident it in. It was a
Speaker 1: black man. The police banged his head into the side
Speaker 1: of the car and he was just screaming and they
Speaker 1: were just hurting him. And you know, the car we
Speaker 1: were in, the woman that was driving, she just sped off.
Speaker 1: I don't remember her name. I was very little at
Speaker 1: the time, but I remember seeing that man's head get
Speaker 1: pushed into the door of the car and the dentt
Speaker 1: And this was in the eighties, so they want no
Speaker 1: plastic doors. It was an eighties car, you know, like
Speaker 1: box Chevy type cars. So that coupled with every other
Speaker 1: traumatic event that you know to be true of the
Speaker 1: LAPD very much shape of my view of police now.
Speaker 1: When I see police officers, it's very similar. I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid of the police in the same way I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid of a dog. I get it. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen the rhythms, and I've seen enough dogs that didn't
Speaker 1: bite me that didn't. They weren't concerned to know that
Speaker 1: not all dogs are that way. But I've seen and
Speaker 1: the trauma, and I will one thing that we cannot
Speaker 1: divorce from our narrative is that black people are very
Speaker 1: much a traumatized people in this country, especially by the police,
Speaker 1: especially by the police. Right the time you hear black
Speaker 1: mothers wailing or whatever, it's oftentimes nine out of ten,
Speaker 1: I guess at the hands of the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: doing something unfair, what they believe to be unfair. I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to try to paint
Speaker 1: a picture that is not entirely accurate. But then again
Speaker 1: that's not possible. So anyway, so when I see police officers,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the same physical response to seeing
Speaker 1: a dog, like a loose dog with no chain and
Speaker 1: he's just walking down the street, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're over there. Hopefully he don't come over here, because
Speaker 1: we come over here. I'm going to be afraid, right
Speaker 1: for leaning going with that fear thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do if you're Ramses and you see
Speaker 1: a dog and that dog starts running at you, you
Speaker 1: stand there because if you're Ramses, let me be the
Speaker 1: one to tell you you don't stand there. I am
Speaker 1: outro like the end of your CD. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, And my only other option is to fight,
Speaker 1: because in that moment, that paralytic fear, that that fear,
Speaker 1: that gripping fear, it overwhelms reason, logic, whatever, right. So
Speaker 1: this is why I always try to leave a little
Speaker 1: bit of we'll call it grace, a little bit of
Speaker 1: space in the narrative for people that run from the police,
Speaker 1: because if you are traumatized by the police, there is
Speaker 1: a limbic reaction. I mean, I've experienced when it comes
Speaker 1: to you know, something very somilar like I'm out. I
Speaker 1: don't want to die today.
Speaker 2: But even if you're not traumatized, like you don't have
Speaker 2: to have gotten bit by a dog to run away
Speaker 2: from a dog that's running toward you. You were saying teeth.
Speaker 2: They have teeth and claw and they're barking and they're
Speaker 2: aggressive and they're growling and running towards you. And I
Speaker 2: just have to let you listener know, I don't care
Speaker 2: what dog you have. They don't stand a chance. They're
Speaker 2: not catching me. Ever, like I'll run into your dog,
Speaker 2: can't anymore I know this from experience. I ran out
Speaker 2: of a town before with my cousins. Dogs started chasing us.
Speaker 2: We started running. I don't know how long this will,
Speaker 2: but I was still running, and neither was the dog
Speaker 2: or my cousins, just me.
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I think I ran off of an army base, like
Speaker 2: I didn't know where I was anymore. When I stopped running,
Speaker 2: somebody had to come find me. Your dog's not catching me,
Speaker 2: fam all of you, right, and the same with the police.
Speaker 2: You don't have to have had the bad experience. There's
Speaker 2: someone with a gun coming after you, and you're afraid,
Speaker 2: so you run. That is a very very natural response,
Speaker 2: thank you. It's not at Men have to be based
Speaker 2: in trauma, and then you throw the trauma on top
Speaker 2: of it and it's like, okay, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: People? Of course they ran. Yeah. And that's the point
Speaker 1: I'm making, is that that that trauma trigger overwhelms reason
Speaker 1: one of the time. I know that from experience, because
Speaker 1: it could be the tiniest, most insignificant dog, provided that
Speaker 1: dog is postured in a certain way looking at me,
Speaker 1: if there's a growl, if there's anything, it's immediately fight
Speaker 1: or flight. Right, So I want you to know this
Speaker 1: because we're going to share a little bit of a
Speaker 1: story and then we're going to ask some more questions.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this, so this is a current news
Speaker 1: story that you know, Maggie be Known wanted us to
Speaker 1: discuss today. Maggie Beino and our producer. All right. Another
Speaker 1: cop leaves court with no charges after assaulting a black
Speaker 1: person who happened to be an army lieutenant. This comes
Speaker 1: from the Associated Press, so I'll read it. No charges
Speaker 1: for officer who pepper sprayed army lieutenant in Norfolk, Virginia.
Speaker 1: A former police officer in Virginia should not be criminally charged,
Speaker 1: but should be investigated for potential civil rights violations after
Speaker 1: he pepper sprayed, struck, and handcuffed a black US Army
Speaker 1: lieutenant during a twenty twenty traffic stop. A special prosecutor
Speaker 1: prosecutor has determined the prosecutor's findings are the latest fallout
Speaker 1: from a confrontation involving two involving two police officers and
Speaker 1: a uniformed military officer that drew outrage and national attention
Speaker 1: to the small town of Windsor, southeast of Richmond. The
Speaker 1: man who was pulled over karn Nazario was never charged.
Speaker 1: Video of the December twenty twenty traffic stop surfaced in
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty one after Nzario sued in federal court
Speaker 1: alleging that his constitutional rights were violated. You remember we
Speaker 1: talked about this story would happened? Right? I do?
Speaker 2: And the language in the article is so interesting. A
Speaker 2: police officer in Virginia should not be criminally charged. It's
Speaker 2: such an interesting way to word that, like will not.
Speaker 2: I get it that judge did not decide that this
Speaker 2: person would be charged. Should not is a really really
Speaker 2: colorfully lenient way to frame that, like he shouldn't be
Speaker 2: And then it goes on to say that he struck
Speaker 2: and pepper sprayed the officer, Like wow.
Speaker 1: And the officer was never criminally charged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm glad you guys don't think that the
Speaker 2: officer should be charged.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that's from the ap that might
Speaker 1: be from the court. Okay, So let's talk about this
Speaker 1: for a second. If I remember correctly from the first
Speaker 1: time we talked about this, the officer, the military officer,
Speaker 1: Coron Nazario, he had just purchased a new SUV and
Speaker 1: he had the paper tag in the window when you
Speaker 1: buy a new vehicle. Right, So, when you have the
Speaker 1: paper tag on a new car, if it has tenanted windows,
Speaker 1: like most subs do, it might be difficult to see that,
Speaker 1: especially at night. Right, the police try to pull him over,
Speaker 1: he's like in the sticks in you know, Virginia somewhere,
Speaker 1: and he's like, Nahpam, I'm not about to get pulled
Speaker 1: over on the side of the road. Right. So he
Speaker 1: continues to drive and pulls over at a place where
Speaker 1: he feels safe. This is a gas station, Maggie, is
Speaker 1: that right? Okay, that's right. So he pulls over to
Speaker 1: gas station because there's light there and he feels like
Speaker 1: that gives him the best possible chance of having a
Speaker 1: positive outcome. While interacting with the police. They can see everything.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be afraid of anything. There's lights here,
Speaker 1: you don't have to, you know, approach with the same
Speaker 1: sort of paranoia that you do, you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, which I totally understand. What happens is the
Speaker 1: police feel like, even though he's not speeding away, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that being a part of that story, the
Speaker 1: police feel like, since he didn't pull over immediately that
Speaker 1: they need to engage and be overly aggressive. This is
Speaker 1: something that happened to me. I got pulled over by
Speaker 1: the airport one time, and I was on the freeway
Speaker 1: and I couldn't pull all the way over because it
Speaker 1: would have taken me to another freeway, which I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known how to drive. So I had to wait
Speaker 1: until the ramp was done and then pull over. And
Speaker 1: the police were so angry. They pulled me out of
Speaker 1: the car. They thought I was on drugs. I was like,
Speaker 1: I've never done a drug. I've never drank alcohol. They
Speaker 1: didn't believe anything I had to say. They're like, is
Speaker 1: that exactly what a meth head would say? Really? Okay,
Speaker 1: anyway back to Coronasario. So he's at this now illuminated
Speaker 1: gas station and you know the rest of the story.
Speaker 1: He's struck, pepper, sprayed, handcuffed, all these things, and then
Speaker 1: they found out, oh, he does have a license plate.
Speaker 1: Oops are bad? Okay, all right, I'll finish reading this
Speaker 1: just so we can get back to it. So the
Speaker 1: images sparked outrage and served as a grim reminder to
Speaker 1: many black Americans that a military uniform doesn't necessarily protect
Speaker 1: against mistreatment by police. Neither does a suit a business suit,
Speaker 1: Neither does a tuxi none of that stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Neither does in some cases a police uniform. As we
Speaker 2: saw an officer in the news recently for choking a
Speaker 2: fellow office a fellow officer.
Speaker 1: Now there's there's something here, you know, people that don't
Speaker 1: understand the reality of our interactions with the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: And obviously the forward facing component is the police. People
Speaker 1: that don't understand, well, why didn't you run? If you
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to hide, he wouldn't have run. You know,
Speaker 1: this sort of narrative that is very harmful because it
Speaker 1: doesn't it assumes a lot. And as we've established in
Speaker 1: this conversation just you know on this episode that there's
Speaker 1: a lot that you that that assumption doesn't take into account.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even take into account the traumas, the triggers,
Speaker 1: you know, or really indeed the reality of the situation,
Speaker 1: because you can't out, you can, you know, be Unfortunately
Speaker 1: he didn't get shot and die. He had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to sue. Obviously there's no justice there, but at least
Speaker 1: he brought some attention to it, and that allows us
Speaker 1: to tell these stories. This is not the only person
Speaker 1: that this sort of thing happens too. You know, once
Speaker 1: upon a time, as I mentioned, I literally saw with
Speaker 1: my own eyes police pull a man out of his
Speaker 1: car and they handcuffed him. He was sitting on the
Speaker 1: side in the middle of the street, and they took
Speaker 1: his head and they banged it into the door and
Speaker 1: the left a big dan. Now, he wasn't running anywhere,
Speaker 1: he was sitting on the ground, he wasn't fighting anybody
Speaker 1: because his hands are behind his back, handcuffed, and they
Speaker 1: still took his head and smashed it into the car.
Speaker 1: So that sort of thing doesn't make you feel like,
Speaker 1: you know what, police are our friends. Now, I do
Speaker 1: want to say this because I have to police oftentimes.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to be fair. I go on walks,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm trying to keep my heart healthy as
Speaker 1: I enter into this next phase of my life and
Speaker 1: I see police where I walk. It's a nice neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you know, there's police on patrol and I see them,
Speaker 1: and you know, my impulses to just keep my head
Speaker 1: down my business. But some of these officers will go
Speaker 1: out of their way to try to be kind and
Speaker 1: in those moments, I do see the human being and
Speaker 1: I do acknowledge that. So there is there's a room
Speaker 1: for nuance on both sides, and we do need to
Speaker 1: have important conversations. But before we finish this segment, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention at least that that model that
Speaker 1: we're all used to reading on the side of police cars,
Speaker 1: to Protect and Serve, it's just a model. In fact,
Speaker 1: i'll read from the official site for the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Police Department. In February of nineteen fifty five, LAPD, through
Speaker 1: their internally produced Beat magazine, held a contest for a
Speaker 1: motto for the Police Academy. The conditions of the contest
Speaker 1: stated that quote the model should be one that, in
Speaker 1: a few words, would express some or all of the
Speaker 1: ideals to which the Los Angeles Police Service is dedicated.
Speaker 1: It's possible that the winning model might someday be adopted
Speaker 1: as the official model of the department. The winning entry
Speaker 1: was the model to Protect and Serve, submitted by Officer
Speaker 1: Joseph S. Durobec. To Protect and Serve became the official motto.
Speaker 1: The reason I want to suggest that to you is
Speaker 1: because that is not an oath, That is not a
Speaker 1: commitment to the community. It is something that you might think,
Speaker 1: you know is associated with policing, but even the idea
Speaker 1: of protecting people is not something that we get to
Speaker 1: hold police accountable to.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's essentially good marketing, Like a crowdsourced focus
Speaker 2: group said, we should say this because it sounds good.
Speaker 1: Cool, let's do that. So let's talk more about that
Speaker 1: when we come back, because the second part of the
Speaker 1: show deals with that precisely. And now