Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
Speaker 1: mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Ramses Job.
Speaker 2: He is job.
Speaker 1: My name is Q.
Speaker 2: But Ramses's voice is awesome, dude, I just need to
Speaker 2: point that out. Well, it's velvety, smooth. Well, the feeling
Speaker 2: is mutual.
Speaker 1: Happy to share the stage with you, qboard and happy
Speaker 1: to share some time with you, our listener. We appreciate
Speaker 1: this investment of your time. We have a lot for
Speaker 1: you to stick around for, so please do. We are
Speaker 1: going to be discussing a recently released video from a
Speaker 1: California woman who lost her life at the hands of police.
Speaker 1: It's been circulating online, so you may have seen it.
Speaker 1: If not, we will explain everything to you. But along.
Speaker 1: The short of the story is that the woman called
Speaker 1: the police she could get some support to get a
Speaker 1: man out of her house. She got a knife from
Speaker 1: the kitchen I believe, to like protect herself and her
Speaker 1: daughter from what she thought was an abusive man. And
Speaker 1: then the police showed up and then they killed her
Speaker 1: in front of her daughter. And so we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that because whenever black women die, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a story, but we are going to do our
Speaker 1: best to bring the human element to it, so please
Speaker 1: stick around for that. We're also going to be spending
Speaker 1: some time talking about a letter that we received from
Speaker 1: a longtime listener of the show, Philip C. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Phillips C. He's a person that keeps us on
Speaker 1: our toes and he pointed out what he believed to
Speaker 1: be some holes in our conversation last week about empathy
Speaker 1: and human nature. And you know, we use the monopoly
Speaker 1: example to help illustrate some points, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking to some of those holes that he
Speaker 1: pointed out for us, but first and informed most like we
Speaker 1: always do at this time, let's discuss them. Any excellence,
Speaker 1: shall we? We shall qu Why don't you knock this
Speaker 1: onever a any excellence this week?
Speaker 2: Brought to us by Actively Black There is greatness in
Speaker 2: our DNA. This is from Black Business dot Com Sarah Bond.
Speaker 2: Sarah Bond, a former corporate vice president of Xbox, is
Speaker 2: now president of the Brand making history for Microsoft and
Speaker 2: the gaming industry. The graduate of Yale and Harvard Business
Speaker 2: School also held senior roles at T Mobile. Xbox, at
Speaker 2: division of Microsoft, generates about sixteen billion dollars every year
Speaker 2: in annual revenue, and Sarah has been pivotal in helping
Speaker 2: the company become and remain successful. In her former role
Speaker 2: as VP, she led the Xbox division dedicated to building
Speaker 2: and commercializing products and services for game creators and partners.
Speaker 2: She worked with thousands of developers partners to bring games
Speaker 2: players on console, PC, mobile, and the cloud, and was
Speaker 2: strumental in directing strategy, policy, mergers and acquisitions, and integration.
Speaker 2: Out and her new role as President of Xbox, Sarah
Speaker 2: will be in charge of all software and hardware platforms,
Speaker 2: which will include the redesign disc list excuse me, which
Speaker 2: will include the redesigned disc list, Xbox Series X to
Speaker 2: be released in twenty twenty four, and the next gen
Speaker 2: hybrid Xbox Console in twenty twenty eight. She will also
Speaker 2: oversee player and creator experiences, platform engineering, strategy, business planning,
Speaker 2: data and analytics, and business development. Sarah currently sits on
Speaker 2: the Board of Counselors at the USC School of Cinematic
Speaker 2: Arts and the Board of Directors at the Entertainment Software
Speaker 2: Association ZUARA, the leading subscription management platform and Chegg, a
Speaker 2: leading student first connected learning platform. To say that she's
Speaker 2: thriving in a space that wasn't built for her will
Speaker 2: be an understatement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's help them. People that came after Misgay don't
Speaker 1: come after her. Let's hold fingers crossed. All right? So,
Speaker 1: as mentioned, we are going to spend some time talking
Speaker 1: about this story from ABC News. Let me just get
Speaker 1: right into it. We'll start. So I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you a story that starts at the end and goes backwards.
Speaker 1: Just thought of that NAS song Rewind. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of story backwards. It starts at the ending, so that'll
Speaker 1: make sense. In just a second, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: from ABC News body camera footage released in police shooting
Speaker 1: a woman who called nine to one one for alleged
Speaker 1: domestic incident. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released body
Speaker 1: camera footage on Friday of a deputy involved shooting of
Speaker 1: a twenty seven year old woman after they entered her
Speaker 1: home responding to a domestic violence call that she made.
Speaker 1: Nanni Finlayson was allegedly shot and killed in her home.
Speaker 1: I don't like that word allegedly because I saw her
Speaker 1: get shot, allegedly shot and killed in her home in Lancaster, California,
Speaker 1: after an officer fired four shots at her on December fourth.
Speaker 1: The LASD said she called the police because she claimed
Speaker 1: that her boyfriend would not leave her alone. According to
Speaker 1: an LASD statement, In the nine one one call made
Speaker 1: by Finlayson for police to assist her, audio of which
Speaker 1: was released by LASD, Finlayson can be heard yelling for
Speaker 1: someone to get their hands off her. She told the
Speaker 1: dispatcher she needed assistance getting a man out of her home.
Speaker 1: Three deputies arrived on the scene. In the body camera footage,
Speaker 1: yelling could be heard coming from inside the apartment. After
Speaker 1: police tried to kick the door down, Finlayson answered the
Speaker 1: door and appeared to have a knife in one hand,
Speaker 1: according to the body camera footage. In the body camera video,
Speaker 1: Finlayson said, I'm going to stab him and Leysen then
Speaker 1: disappeared off camera as she left the doorway and went
Speaker 1: back into her home. At this point, deputies had their
Speaker 1: guns drawn. Deputies followed Findlayson into the home, where she
Speaker 1: proceeded to yell at who Hall says is her ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend to leave, and Layson's daughter could also be seen
Speaker 1: on camera saying he pushed me or he punched me.
Speaker 1: I think she said he pushed me. Finlayson then grabbed
Speaker 1: the alleged A strange boyfriend with one hand as the
Speaker 1: knife was in her other hand. Deputy Tie Shelton then
Speaker 1: fired at Findlayson four times, causing her to drop to
Speaker 1: the ground. No. No, the alleged ex boyfriend yelled at
Speaker 1: police after the shooting, Why did you shoot? Finlayson's daughter
Speaker 1: also witnessed the shooting. Yeah, so this video is up
Speaker 1: on our social media. It's at Civic Sipher. You're welcome
Speaker 1: to check that out. I there's a warning there. It
Speaker 1: says trigger warning. So you are going to witness a
Speaker 1: human being losing their life if you're sensitive to that
Speaker 1: type of content, like we both are here. Q hasn't
Speaker 1: seen this video yet, right.
Speaker 2: No, I saw a trigger warning, knew what was coming
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so we take turns. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this, But if you are sensitive to that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, then I don't blame you for not checking
Speaker 1: it out. We don't want anybody to be desensitized to
Speaker 1: what we consider to be anti black violence. We don't
Speaker 1: want that to become normal, and on this show we
Speaker 1: show a lot of anti black violence. We have to
Speaker 1: process that. And if you're one such individual who does
Speaker 1: that as well, we're not mad at you. But for
Speaker 1: everyone else, again, it's there to check out. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to explain it for those who may not.
Speaker 1: I've seen it. So what happens is, again we start
Speaker 1: coming to a door, so the body camera footage picks up,
Speaker 1: and then as the article mentions, there's yelling going on
Speaker 1: inside the house, as is typical with domestic disputes. My understanding,
Speaker 1: based on what I was in the video, is that
Speaker 1: Nannie wanted her boyfriend to leave, and he felt like
Speaker 1: he was going to stick around and plead his case
Speaker 1: of why he should be able to stay. If I
Speaker 1: was guessing, the pushing the daughter thing was probably the
Speaker 1: result of a physical altercation between the two of them.
Speaker 1: The man did not appear to be engaging in any
Speaker 1: sort of violent behavior. He was sitting down, he was,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. But of course this is where the
Speaker 1: video picks up. But you could very easily see that
Speaker 1: if a man was violent, pushing and punching kids and stuff,
Speaker 1: that he's not going to stick around for the police.
Speaker 1: I don't think, you know, the man seemed to be
Speaker 1: reasonably coherent, and so this is this is just deduction.
Speaker 1: But I feel like my powers of deduction do not
Speaker 1: come with life and death, you know, consequences, and the
Speaker 1: police is due and so if I'm able to deduce this,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that an officer would be able to
Speaker 1: deduce this as well, because the stakes are a lot higher.
Speaker 1: It should be able to respond to this. But this
Speaker 1: is why I'm telling you this way. Anyway, So the
Speaker 1: police start kicking in the door, and the officer whose
Speaker 1: camera were watching this is the man who ended up
Speaker 1: shooting this woman, he asked the officer in front. This
Speaker 1: is a female officer. He asked the female officer, Hey,
Speaker 1: let me have your taser. She takes the taser out
Speaker 1: and hands.
Speaker 2: It to him.
Speaker 1: As they're trying to kick open the door. The female
Speaker 1: officers trying to kick open the door. The body camera.
Speaker 1: The officer with the body camera that we're seeing that
Speaker 1: ends up shooting this woman. He's watching the female officer
Speaker 1: kick the door in the door doesn't get kicked in
Speaker 1: and Leani ends up opening the door.
Speaker 2: Question, do they attempt to knock on the door first,
Speaker 2: or do they go drive right into trying to take
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I don't remember, but for the sake
Speaker 1: of argument, will say that they knocked first, or they
Speaker 1: announced their presence or something. We'll we'll just say that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I don't remember this part. But anyway,
Speaker 1: she opens the door. Leanni opens the door, and she's
Speaker 1: holding a knife right and again immediately when I see this,
Speaker 1: my powers of deduction says, Okay, she called the police.
Speaker 1: She grabbed this knife to protect herself from a man
Speaker 1: with testosterone and strength. She's protecting herself and her daughter
Speaker 1: and her home perhaps from this man who will not leave.
Speaker 1: This is why she called the police in the first place.
Speaker 1: And she's agitated, and this is a tense situation, so
Speaker 1: she opens the door. She's like, yo, she's already mad.
Speaker 1: You know, imagine if somebody had pushed your daughter or
Speaker 1: armed your child or whatever. You know, it's a tense situation.
Speaker 1: You know. This is why officers in theory would come
Speaker 1: in and defeat situations, or they would have the experts
Speaker 1: on the scene. If that police budget was divested in,
Speaker 1: different areas were invested into that were more dedicated to
Speaker 1: dealing with, you know, diffusing situations. Who knows, man, But anyway,
Speaker 1: at this point, the officer drops the taser and pulls
Speaker 1: out his gun because obviously it's time for somebody to die.
Speaker 1: And then, based on what I see, which is what
Speaker 1: he saw, Nanni walks into the corner of the living
Speaker 1: room and then her boyfriend is on the other side
Speaker 1: of the living room, right, and she's trying to tell
Speaker 1: the officers what he did. He did this, he did that,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, And and she has the knife. Let's say,
Speaker 1: the knife's in her right hand. She's pointing at him
Speaker 1: with her left hand right and as she's agitated and
Speaker 1: explaining and shouting like this is what this man is
Speaker 1: done that the knife is not raised, it's lowered to
Speaker 1: her side, and she's pointing with her left hand. This
Speaker 1: is the way I remember it. Again, you're welcome to
Speaker 1: watch the video and draw your own conclusions. But she's
Speaker 1: kind of walking and motioning, and she's communicating not just
Speaker 1: with her words but with her body. And she takes
Speaker 1: a step toward him. Again, he's super far away. The
Speaker 1: knife's not raised, it's not a tack posture, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: But once she's like explaining, and you know, when you're
Speaker 1: walking and you're animated, just kind of making your point
Speaker 1: and she kind of like does a gesture and then
Speaker 1: immediately bam and she just falls. That was the end
Speaker 1: of her story. So what I saw was a woman
Speaker 1: calling the police for help and the police coming and
Speaker 1: killing her. She had done her best to protect herself
Speaker 1: up until that point. And those people are going to say, well,
Speaker 1: she had a knife. There's gonna be people who say, well,
Speaker 1: she should have. Oh, by the way, after he shot her,
Speaker 1: he said drop the weapon. You can hear him saying
Speaker 1: drop the weapon after she's already gone into the ground.
Speaker 1: So anyway, there are people say, well, she had a knife,
Speaker 1: what was the officer supposed to do? The officers there there,
Speaker 1: they have to protect him too, nobody should be harmed,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Right, And these are arguments that people who,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, just want to protect the police. These
Speaker 1: are arguments that these people will make. Okay, But any
Speaker 1: reasonable person would see that that response and say, well,
Speaker 1: these people clearly did not show up to diffuse anything. Well,
Speaker 1: at least this one officer did. They did not show
Speaker 1: up to diffuse anything.
Speaker 2: I mean from what you described. It sounded That's why
Speaker 2: I asked about them knocking on the door, Like even
Speaker 2: the article makes it seem like they arrived and then
Speaker 2: try to kick the door down.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so with that in mind, if they did
Speaker 1: not arrive there to diffuse anything, that wasn't the first step,
Speaker 1: that wasn't like hey, who wha hey, everybody calmed down.
Speaker 1: You didn't hear anything like that, certainly not from this officer.
Speaker 1: As soon as soon as he walked in the house,
Speaker 1: that taser was gone and a real gun was out. Now,
Speaker 1: remember she has a knife.
Speaker 3: Okay, you can respond to like a knife with a
Speaker 3: gun a lot quicker than what am I trying to say.
Speaker 1: You have time. It's not like she's pointing a gun
Speaker 1: at him and there's a split second. She has a knife, right,
Speaker 1: And these are things that again, she opened the door
Speaker 1: with a knife. Before they walked in the house, they
Speaker 1: knew that's what she had. There was no gun. She said,
Speaker 1: this is why I got the knif I'm going to
Speaker 1: stab him because he tried to push my daughter blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And sure that you could make the argument
Speaker 1: that that's a reasonable threat, but also you can make
Speaker 1: the argument that these officers are not trained to understand
Speaker 1: that an intense moment like that, when people say things
Speaker 1: out of frustration, out of anger, because they feel violated
Speaker 1: and they've called you to help them, that people might
Speaker 1: say things and these aren't, in and of themselves credible
Speaker 1: threats and they should not be tr treated as such. Right,
Speaker 1: and a person like me looking at this with a
Speaker 1: degree of grace, understanding that this is a tency. This
Speaker 1: is not a murderous woman doesn't walk around all the
Speaker 1: time with knives talking about it. She's gonna stab people.
Speaker 1: There's something that happened that needs to be diffused. But officers,
Speaker 1: remember we always say to a man with a hammer,
Speaker 1: all the world is a nail. Right now, all that
Speaker 1: being said, remember I said, I'm gonna tell the story
Speaker 1: that starts backwards. So even if a person wanted to
Speaker 1: make that argument, well, what was the officer supposed to do?
Speaker 1: On and on and on? Right, this is the same
Speaker 1: officer that killed another black man in twenty twenty, got
Speaker 1: his job back, kept it pushing everything's cool, and now
Speaker 1: he's taking another black life. All right, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read this story to you. This comes from the Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: I had to go back to June of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: to get this article. Beauties claim they killed the black
Speaker 1: man in his home when he tried to grab a gun.
Speaker 1: His family says otherwise. A Los Angeles man was fatally
Speaker 1: shot in his home by deputies Thursday morning in a
Speaker 1: tragic domestic dispute gone wrong. His family, however, insists the
Speaker 1: tragic incident could have been avoided if authorities didn't prematurely
Speaker 1: pull the trigger. Michael Blue Thomas, aged sixty two, was
Speaker 1: killed in his living room in the early hours on
Speaker 1: Thursday after Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies responded to
Speaker 1: a domestic dispute call, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: But while authorities claimed Thomas was shot after reaching for
Speaker 1: one of the deputy's guns, his fiancee and attorney insist
Speaker 1: the opposite, that he was turning away. Quote. They broke
Speaker 1: the front down and they grabbed mister Thomas immediately. Bradley Gage,
Speaker 1: the family's attorney, told The Daily Beast on Friday, as
Speaker 1: they were holding him, they hurt him by twisting his
Speaker 1: arm at that point because he was uncomfortable. Well, mister
Speaker 1: Thomas tried to move and one deputy just stepped back
Speaker 1: and shot him. He was murdered without justification. It was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent avoidable. Now, because we're journalists, we have
Speaker 1: to say the other half of the story. According to
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department, deputies responded to a domestic domestic violence
Speaker 1: in progress call. During the altercation, the suspect reached down
Speaker 1: and attempted to gain control of one of the deputy's firearms.
Speaker 1: It was at that time when a deputy involved shooting occurred.
Speaker 1: And now let's go back to the family. The claim
Speaker 1: that he reached for a gun is completely false, Gauge added,
Speaker 1: noting that the incident completely defies the Fourth Amendment quote.
Speaker 1: He was disabled, He had problems with his hands. Remember
Speaker 1: he's sixty two. He had problems with his hands. It
Speaker 1: would have been painful for him to try to grab
Speaker 1: a gun. Now. When the shooting was first reported, Kimberly
Speaker 1: also said that Thomas never tried to grab one of
Speaker 1: the deputy's guns. I heard Michael say, I have a
Speaker 1: right not to let you in the house. She said,
Speaker 1: it's already said. Thomas was taken to a local hospital,
Speaker 1: where he was pronounced dead. No deputies were injured. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I've been doing some talking to you. Give us
Speaker 1: insight into your mind.
Speaker 2: Forgive me if I'm if my voice is low, because
Speaker 2: it's just it's really hard to I have the necessary
Speaker 2: vocal inflection or vocal performance, if you will, when you're
Speaker 2: sick to your stomach about something literally sick to my
Speaker 2: stomach and having a hard time doing my job. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're black in this country and afraid or in danger,
Speaker 2: you have to actively ask yourself in that moment, is
Speaker 2: this thing that I'm afraid of or the situation that
Speaker 2: has put me in danger going to kill me? Because
Speaker 2: if not calling for help might and that is an
Speaker 2: impossible position to have to be in, right, and the
Speaker 2: fear is very very real. Ramaes and I off air
Speaker 2: often struggle with the idea of what we do here.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Is there going to be fatigue from our listeners hearing
Speaker 2: about us being the victims because people will say we're
Speaker 2: playing the victim card, or we're playing the race card,
Speaker 2: or as if we would choose to be in this
Speaker 2: position so that we could feel this way and talk
Speaker 2: to you guys about it. Every week. We wish we
Speaker 2: didn't have a new story like this all the time
Speaker 2: every week, and we have multiple We can't. We don't
Speaker 2: have enough time or enough show to talk about all
Speaker 2: of the incidents that are like this.
Speaker 1: Real quick, real quick, we're not talking. We have to
Speaker 1: push to next week just because we don't have time.
Speaker 1: The woman who the officer left her on the floor
Speaker 1: of the police car upside down. We can't talk about
Speaker 1: Cloudinge Gay, We can't talk about I mean, we have
Speaker 1: a whole inbox full of stories that we're not even
Speaker 1: getting to this week because we can't.
Speaker 2: But this woman was afraid. She made a decision to
Speaker 2: try to protect herself, but she called you for help,
Speaker 2: the idea that you show up and in this woman's
Speaker 2: story for what a lot of our detractors and the officers,
Speaker 2: perpetual defenders would call fear.
Speaker 1: In front of her daughter. So there's compound trauma that
Speaker 1: continues to affect.
Speaker 2: We are always on edge at best, afraid at worst.
Speaker 2: Every day the traffic light freeway, you see a law
Speaker 2: enforcement agency vehicle and it changes the way that you're
Speaker 2: It changes your heart rate, changes the way that you drive,
Speaker 2: It changes your body temperature constantly every day because a
Speaker 2: simple interaction with law enforcement when you look like us
Speaker 2: can render you deceased real quick.
Speaker 1: I want to jump in right here too. For people
Speaker 1: that feel like blaming this woman, this black woman, right,
Speaker 1: imagine the same scenario. You know what I'm gonna say, Q,
Speaker 1: But imagine the same scenario with let's call her a
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old, blond haired, blue eyed, white woman.
Speaker 1: Does she get shot and die?
Speaker 2: Especially the man who was in the apartment, it's the
Speaker 2: same description that's important to point out. To arrive and
Speaker 2: her black boyfriend has her wielding a knife to protect
Speaker 2: herself and her child. Do they kill her? And we
Speaker 2: pause as if it's a rhetorical question, but it's not.
Speaker 1: Because you don't know the actual outcome and you know
Speaker 1: the answer to and that's not a victim mentality. Nor
Speaker 1: do we lean into that. All of this stuff is
Speaker 1: we tell stories that data support. Data supports this narrative.
Speaker 1: It's not just these stories and us cherry picking things.
Speaker 1: So we're going to keep following this story and we'll
Speaker 1: let you know what we find.