Speaker 1: That's right, y'all. Welcome to another edition of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: I'my host Ramsy's job.
Speaker 2: Call me Q Ward, and that just so happens to
Speaker 2: be my name.
Speaker 1: And today's show is a very special show. Now I
Speaker 1: say that quite a bit, But the reason I have
Speaker 1: Q with me today is because we're going to tell
Speaker 1: a story, and we're going to talk about policing from
Speaker 1: the vantage point and how it affects black men. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is one where we both can speak from a
Speaker 1: personal experience and paint a picture. A lot of folks
Speaker 1: that have, you know, followed the show and have commented
Speaker 1: on YouTube or sent messages to our Twitter or anything
Speaker 1: like that. There's a lot of folks who don't really understand,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to the defund the police call
Speaker 1: that stems from the movement that's taking place in the
Speaker 1: streets right now on behalf of Black Lives Matter and
Speaker 1: lots of other groups. They don't understand where that comes from,
Speaker 1: and they can't really see the optics. And so it
Speaker 1: just so happens to be the case that Q and
Speaker 1: I recently went through an experience where I think we're
Speaker 1: able to illustrate exactly why we feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of times policing is unfair to black people and in
Speaker 1: our case, black men specifically. Now, before we get to
Speaker 1: that story, I do want to paint a picture. A
Speaker 1: lot of folks know that I'm a DJ, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, you know, I'm a DJ, longtime radio personality,
Speaker 1: television magazines primarily based in Phoenix, Arizona, and q ward
Speaker 1: is all of those things as well. So those of
Speaker 1: you that listen to the show every week, you know me,
Speaker 1: but maybe you don't know Q. So run down your
Speaker 1: resume a little bit for folks who maybe this is
Speaker 1: the first time meeting you.
Speaker 2: Oh, resume all of it. I don't know. It's pretty expansive, man, Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: we got time or diverse if you will. You know,
Speaker 2: my adult life kind of started in sports and entertainment
Speaker 2: college football, working with and representing professional athletes, got into racing,
Speaker 2: then got into sponsorship, gotten alcohol and spirits. That's how
Speaker 2: we cross paths. Introduced the world to a product called
Speaker 2: Hennessy Black that transitioned me into a bit more of
Speaker 2: a domesticated life, traveled the world a little bit. I
Speaker 2: spent two and a half years in the road managing
Speaker 2: comedy tours, road managing, and around two thousand and eleven
Speaker 2: got into Djane and that's kind of been my vehicle
Speaker 2: ever since. We've done a lot, you know, since crossing
Speaker 2: paths and since you know, getting my first set of techniques.
Speaker 2: But Djane became the vehicle for everything I did after that,
Speaker 2: and then we got into nonprofit sector. Shouts to the
Speaker 2: Change Society, shouts to hashtag Lunchbag, our champion initiative. That's
Speaker 2: you know, a worldwide project now. And yeah, outside of fatherhood, man,
Speaker 2: that's it. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple more things that I think are noteworthy.
Speaker 1: One of them is that you're bona fide radio personality
Speaker 1: as well. Word I know that because we've had radio
Speaker 1: shows together all the other things that you've done in Phoenix.
Speaker 1: And also you are more than just a DJ. I
Speaker 1: know lots of DJs, but you're perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: more recognizable DJs in Phoenix. Certainly, I would say probably
Speaker 1: on the West coast of the United States in terms
Speaker 1: of notoriety, in terms of your reach, in terms of
Speaker 1: the caliber of gigs that you perform. But you know,
Speaker 1: since you're primarily based in Phoenix, you know, certainly a
Speaker 1: big name in old town Scottsdale, which, if you're not
Speaker 1: from Arizona, is the place where DJs are really celebrated
Speaker 1: and elevated to the next level. So the reason I
Speaker 1: wanted to establish that is because it helps to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of background on the two men that
Speaker 1: will be telling this story that will illustrate how sometimes
Speaker 1: policing can really feel unfair to people who are decent folks,
Speaker 1: you know, or maybe they're not decent folks, but they're
Speaker 1: black folks, you know, and they don't get there the
Speaker 1: same consideration as other people do. And it's textbook discrimination,
Speaker 1: it's textbook prejudices, textbook racial profiling.
Speaker 2: And when policing citizens, their decency is not something that
Speaker 2: should be called into, you know, judgment on the spot
Speaker 2: by someone who clearly has no idea whether you're a
Speaker 2: decent person or not. So it's you know, the subjects
Speaker 2: of this conversation are decent folks, but in that context
Speaker 2: it absolutely should not matter. Absolutely, and the outcomes that
Speaker 2: are that are now you know, on your social media
Speaker 2: timeline it seems once a week. Those things should not
Speaker 2: be judgment rendered on somebody you considered to be not
Speaker 2: decent that those things should have nothing to do with
Speaker 2: those outcomes.
Speaker 1: So obviously we have a friendship. We've worked together in
Speaker 1: several professional capacities over the years. I want you to
Speaker 1: start this story off by painting the background picture of
Speaker 1: where Now this is not as I mentioned, we both
Speaker 1: are primarily based in Phoenix, Arizona, but you know this
Speaker 1: story does not take place in Phoenix, Arizona. This does
Speaker 1: not speak to anybody based on their race. This does
Speaker 1: not speak to anything based on region. It speaks on policing,
Speaker 1: and we're able to give you a verifiable example of
Speaker 1: exactly what happens in our typical interactions with the police.
Speaker 1: So sorry, paint that picture for us. What's the background?
Speaker 2: It's a It's an interesting picture to attempt to paint
Speaker 2: because almost because it doesn't even require the specific setting
Speaker 2: that we were in, Like the setting that we were
Speaker 2: in gives it some very very textured nuance if we
Speaker 2: were making a picture, if we were making a movie,
Speaker 2: rather the setting that we were in would be perfect
Speaker 2: to illustrate this.
Speaker 1: But that's what that for an audience. That's exactly why
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: But to be clear, because I don't even I don't
Speaker 2: want it to feel so specific to where we were.
Speaker 2: I don't want to feel like it only happens there,
Speaker 2: or or of course it happened you were there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But so this was July, now, you know, and I
Speaker 2: don't know that that matters, but it's been a few months,
Speaker 2: so we got to experience it be really really boiled
Speaker 2: over with emotion, come down from that emotion, and experience
Speaker 2: a whole lot of different stuff personally and kind of
Speaker 2: via watching other people's stories play out in some really
Speaker 2: tragic ways via social media. And it's kind of hard
Speaker 2: to be socially or emotionally tapped into all of these
Speaker 2: people and all of these stories because you feel it
Speaker 2: all over again, and it's a lot to carry and
Speaker 2: to take so personally every time, like it makes you
Speaker 2: want to check out because I can't keep mourning every
Speaker 2: week another person having a similar experience with a far
Speaker 2: more tragic outcome rather but Ramses and I flew to
Speaker 2: Florida just to drive back home. And I say that
Speaker 2: in that way to make you, as the listeners, say,
Speaker 2: why on earth would they do that? For a very
Speaker 2: very specific reason. Ramses owns a car dealership. He and
Speaker 2: a friend of ours bought a car for me the
Speaker 2: week before this happened, and for reasons that you know,
Speaker 2: don't even really matter much for what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: I was not able to ever take ownership of the car,
Speaker 2: but I had already developed a very very specific liking
Speaker 2: to this very very specific car, and it was a gift.
Speaker 2: So we flew to go pick up this car because
Speaker 2: it was the only other one I could find in
Speaker 2: the country, and then drive it back to Phoenix. However,
Speaker 2: flying to Florida to drive a car back to Arizona
Speaker 2: requires that you make a trek across the good old
Speaker 2: Boy the southern United States exactly. And if you've been
Speaker 2: paying attention at all via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, CNNMSNBC, or
Speaker 2: Fox News, you know that the temperature in our country
Speaker 2: right now is very very high, and the division is
Speaker 2: circa nineteen thirty, nineteen forty, nineteen fifty, nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Now, let me explain this to anyone that's listening to
Speaker 1: this right now. It feels that way right now, especially
Speaker 1: to other folks who do not live this is not
Speaker 1: their lived experience, but it feels that way to us,
Speaker 1: and by us, I mean black males. I would assume
Speaker 1: that black females feel the same way. But I'm learning
Speaker 1: not to speak, you know, beyond my own realm of
Speaker 1: expertise and my own experience, and so but I can
Speaker 1: say that my experience is a black experience. It always
Speaker 1: feels like the nineteen thirties or the nineteen sixties, or
Speaker 1: very close to it all the time when it comes
Speaker 1: to the police. There are other things that happen in
Speaker 1: society that you know, we all can get behind. We
Speaker 1: can see growth, we can see you know. Obviously, when
Speaker 1: Obama was elected president, that was a huge deal for everyone.
Speaker 1: We felt so proud and we felt like, Okay, the
Speaker 1: world is becoming a kinder place, you know, and more
Speaker 1: progressive exactly exactly. But when the police get behind you,
Speaker 1: it's a very scary thing. It's almost as though, if
Speaker 1: the police get behind you, you're guilty until you can
Speaker 1: figure out a way to prove yourself innocent. And I
Speaker 1: want you to remember that I said that, because you'll
Speaker 1: see that way of thinking manifested in my behavior as
Speaker 1: this story continues. So, okay, so we get the car
Speaker 1: in Florida. What happens next, if I.
Speaker 2: May, before moving on, guilty until you can survive this interaction,
Speaker 2: very good. It's not even about having been proved innocent.
Speaker 2: You're not in a position in most cases to prove
Speaker 2: your innocence, so you're almost behaving as if you did
Speaker 2: something and you don't want to be harmed during this
Speaker 2: inter If I can just survive this interaction, I'll be okay.
Speaker 3: And that i'm then we can and then we can
Speaker 3: figure out whether or not I actually did something. Sure
Speaker 3: exactly so I didn't even I didn't want you to
Speaker 3: move on from that, because when you said it, I
Speaker 3: was like, man, you start to inventory. Okay, I didn't
Speaker 3: run the light, I wasn't speeding, I used my blinker,
Speaker 3: my tags aren't expired.
Speaker 2: I didn't skip school, I did my homework. I want
Speaker 2: that church, I pay my taxes.
Speaker 1: Why am I going to get beat up or die?
Speaker 2: What is about to happen right now? When you should
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, I know I didn't do anything, so
Speaker 2: I'm fine.
Speaker 1: That that's amazing that if somebody can have the police
Speaker 1: behind them and just have a quick thought like that.
Speaker 2: To me, it's like you have colleagues that can I
Speaker 2: have one of the closest people to me in this world,
Speaker 2: not named Ramses. That's his experience. That should be everyone's experience,
Speaker 2: but that's his experience. I didn't do anything, so this
Speaker 2: is going to be okay. At worst, I was driving
Speaker 2: too fast. I'll get a ticket, I'll go home, I'll
Speaker 2: pay it. What's the problem. No, that is not.
Speaker 1: That never happened our experience. Can you step out of
Speaker 1: the vehicles anyway? Let me let me not because I
Speaker 1: could tell these stories all day. I just I want
Speaker 1: to tell this one story. This is very specific.
Speaker 2: It's important because when we have this kind We've had
Speaker 2: this conversation before with some personal friends who were terrified,
Speaker 2: but we never said this part. So I'm gonna say
Speaker 2: it now. Okay, we get the car in Florida. We
Speaker 2: have to drive through Georgia. Now, except my mother, my grandmother,
Speaker 2: and her parents are from Georgia. So I'm hype because
Speaker 2: I'm about to show one of my best friends where
Speaker 2: my family started in this country, like my mom's very
Speaker 2: small hometown in Georgia, making Georgia Bibb County. I'm about
Speaker 2: to take one of my best friends there and he
Speaker 2: can see the restaurant that my grandmother and her sisters
Speaker 2: started in nineteen fifty nine that's still there. Like I'm hype,
Speaker 2: I'm proud, I can't wait. But I also remember I'm
Speaker 2: in Georgia. Most people think Atlanta, Atlanta Atlanta. Georgia is
Speaker 2: a completely different place from Atlanta, to be very very
Speaker 2: very clear.
Speaker 1: And I want to say this too. I love I
Speaker 1: always say I love Georgia because it's a beautiful place.
Speaker 1: Alabama's beautiful, all those places are beautiful. Louisiana or Mississippi
Speaker 1: was gorgeous, you know what. We got to see a bit.
Speaker 1: And I know that we do have listeners in all
Speaker 1: those states, you know, And so I do want to say,
Speaker 1: at least for the folks in Georgia, I absolutely love
Speaker 1: that place. Atlanta's is sort of where I fell in love,
Speaker 1: but Georgia, I found beauty in all of it. But
Speaker 1: that place has some Confederate flags, like more than Alabama.
Speaker 1: But like I was like, oh wee, these people were just.
Speaker 2: Serious, very very big Confederate flag.
Speaker 1: About that action.
Speaker 2: But there was a sense of nostalgia and joy and
Speaker 2: happiness about the fact that I was about to that
Speaker 2: we were about to drive through Georgia because I was
Speaker 2: very very excited to actually be able to take someone
Speaker 2: to where I grew up. I don't get to There's
Speaker 2: not a lot I don't. I don't have ten friends
Speaker 2: that I've been able to take to make it because
Speaker 2: it's just not a destination like that. It's a you know,
Speaker 2: an hour and a half roughly from Atlanta to Macon
Speaker 2: and an hour and a half out of the way.
Speaker 2: If you went to Atlanta for something, you're not trying
Speaker 2: to drive to make it on one of those days.
Speaker 2: So very, very excited about the experience of being able
Speaker 2: to take Ramses to make and take him to see
Speaker 2: where my family's from, to see our restaurant, and then
Speaker 2: to Atlanta, where a lot of my family still lives now.
Speaker 2: Uh And Atlanta is an experience if you if you're
Speaker 2: of our elk and you haven't been there, should definitely go.
Speaker 2: You should definitely go. Well, we got a lot of
Speaker 2: road ahead of us, you know, we stopped, get something
Speaker 2: to eat, we spend some time with family, and then
Speaker 2: we're preparing now because Atlanta was our kind of sight
Speaker 2: seeing city. The rest of these states were just about
Speaker 2: to drive through them, but Georgia very specifically, like I said,
Speaker 2: that's why I got the state of Georgia tattooed on
Speaker 2: my arm. I wanted to spend some time there, visit
Speaker 2: with family and kind of show my brother where I
Speaker 2: was from.
Speaker 1: Listen, let me say this one last thing about Georgia.
Speaker 1: I grew up in California, lived my life on the
Speaker 1: West Coast. Matter of fact, you know what, if you're
Speaker 1: just tuning in Pacific Cipher, I'm you host ramses Jah.
Speaker 2: My name is Quentin, but they called me q Ward.
Speaker 1: And we're telling a story about a police incident that
Speaker 1: happened to both of us that illustrates how police treat
Speaker 1: black folks unfairly. We're stereotyped, we are. There's certainly prejudice
Speaker 1: built into the practices of police departments, and and I
Speaker 1: think it gives a little bit more credibility to this
Speaker 1: call to defund the police. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: one last thing I want to say about Georgia. Since
Speaker 1: I have this platform, I'm able to do it. Growing
Speaker 1: up on the West Coast, I saw lots of black
Speaker 1: folks that were that did well for themselves. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I got to Georgia where I saw a
Speaker 1: neighborhood where every house was a mansion, every driveway had
Speaker 1: a Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Or a Mercedes whatever, Porsche or Maserati, and.
Speaker 1: One percent of the people, one percent of the people
Speaker 1: were black. It was amazing powerful. So all right, so
Speaker 1: we get to the end of Georgia. Next up is Alabama,
Speaker 1: and Alabama is where we saw a lot of very
Speaker 1: openly racist advertisements. I saw a lot of Confederate flags
Speaker 1: in Georgia, but a lot of openly racist advertisements, advertisements
Speaker 1: for radio stations that were very demeaning and insulting to
Speaker 1: anything that was not white.
Speaker 2: You know, we heard the most overtly racist radio show
Speaker 2: we've ever.
Speaker 1: Heard, and that was when we got into Mississippi.
Speaker 2: And I immediately reached to turn the channel and Rams
Speaker 2: It's just like, wait, we need to understand, we need
Speaker 2: to understand where we are.
Speaker 1: And I want to say this, I wanted to plug in.
Speaker 1: If you listen to this show, you recognize that I
Speaker 1: have this philosophy that compels me to try to find brotherhood,
Speaker 1: tries to find friendship, tries to find common ground, tries
Speaker 1: to find some way of bridging the gap, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to go to that side. Listen to what
Speaker 1: they're saying so that you know how to challenge. If
Speaker 1: I just write these people off by saying that they're
Speaker 1: wrong and give up on them, then I haven't created
Speaker 1: an ally, i haven't created a cheerleader. I've just left
Speaker 1: myself a potential enemy that I'll have tount encounter at
Speaker 1: some point in the future who may be even more powerful.
Speaker 1: And so for me personally, my choice to lead with
Speaker 1: love also compels me to educate myself about, you know,
Speaker 1: what other folks are doing. So I'm not listening to
Speaker 1: these racist radio stations in these weird backwater parts of
Speaker 1: the country just for you know, the fun of it.
Speaker 1: I'm really trying to understand how could you possibly make
Speaker 1: a case for you know, whatever it is that you're doing.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, there's lots of systems and institutions
Speaker 1: in place, and obviously the political climate of the country,
Speaker 1: a lot of these talk shows are talking about black
Speaker 1: and white issues. So let me jump in right here,
Speaker 1: please please. So we're driving through and we know where
Speaker 1: we are, and of course, as Q stated, as important
Speaker 1: as that is, the experience that we're about to have
Speaker 1: is very much a universal one in this country. But
Speaker 1: it was important for us to paint this picture just
Speaker 1: so you understand where we are in terms of our energy,
Speaker 1: where we are in terms of how we feel, because
Speaker 1: we're happy, but we're nervous is not the right word,
Speaker 1: but alert aware, you know. And you know there's this
Speaker 1: sort of philosophy in black communities where if you keep
Speaker 1: your head down, stay out of trouble, then people won't
Speaker 1: bother you.
Speaker 2: The lies we tell ourselves.
Speaker 1: Right, and so we sort of naturally had this, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's keep our head down, let's keep it pushing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to take a picture when we first got
Speaker 1: to Mississippi, and Q was not about that action.
Speaker 2: I got the picture, we got the picture, but he
Speaker 2: was ready to leave me, like you want us to do? What?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Man?
Speaker 2: So after midnight in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Hey man, I needed that. I was never going to
Speaker 1: go back. So let's get to it.
Speaker 2: Q is driving the car where we listened to two
Speaker 2: rams were.
Speaker 1: Listening to the Outcast loud, having having a big old.
Speaker 2: Time, all of them, all the casts. Yeah, but them lax.
Speaker 1: If you know anything about outcasts, that'll make sense to you.
Speaker 1: But so we're driving, I'm on my phone playing a game,
Speaker 1: and we're just having, you know, conversation as you do
Speaker 1: on a road trip like that, we're enjoying ourselves. And
Speaker 1: that's that cars on cruise control, I'm sure, And yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just grooving along. And so we do most of
Speaker 1: our driving in Arizona. You'll anyone who's done any driving
Speaker 1: is aware that on a lot of roads in this
Speaker 1: country there is a groove sort of punctured into the asphalt,
Speaker 1: and it's it's designed to wake you up if you
Speaker 1: veer off the road. Right in Arizona, that groove lies
Speaker 1: two feet beyond the actual painted line. And so if
Speaker 1: for some it let's say you switch a lane or
Speaker 1: you cross over anything like that, you cut cut off
Speaker 1: the freeway a little too early, you're just gonna cut
Speaker 1: over a little bit of paint spine. You know, no
Speaker 1: one makes a big deal out of that out here.
Speaker 1: I certainly haven't encountered that as an issue. In Mississippi,
Speaker 1: that groove is etched into the actual paint line, and
Speaker 1: we have no way of knowing this, And.
Speaker 2: So the paint runs through the middle of it, so
Speaker 2: part of it is actually in the lane of traffic.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's very easy to trigger that loud noise.
Speaker 1: So I need to make sure that this picture is
Speaker 1: painted accurately. It's midnight, one in the morning in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: on a back road on our way to Louisiana. The
Speaker 1: trees are among the tallest I've seen in my life.
Speaker 1: There is no moon shining, there are no stars shining.
Speaker 1: It is pitch black.
Speaker 2: Correction, we're on the highway still, but for the level
Speaker 2: of dark, it may as well be in a back road.
Speaker 2: There are no lights. Yeah, it felt like that pitch black.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we noticed that before anything started happening. And
Speaker 1: then as Q's driving, I hear a little bit of
Speaker 1: a noise. I well, just that quick. It wasn't half
Speaker 1: a second, I.
Speaker 2: Say out loud at that moment. That was weird because
Speaker 2: I know I didn't swerve off the road.
Speaker 1: And I confirm that because I'm like, well, where did
Speaker 1: that come from? Yeah? I look, the etching is in
Speaker 1: the paint, it's not beyond it. So that was that.
Speaker 1: We keep driving. But for those of you that know,
Speaker 1: if you're outside of a car and you hear that noise,
Speaker 1: it's very loud outside the car. In the car, it's
Speaker 1: enough to wake you up. So outside of the car,
Speaker 1: it's extremely loud. You know, cars are insulated from those
Speaker 1: those types of noises, So you know we're going on
Speaker 1: mind in our business. After another minute or so, the.
Speaker 2: Blues into another big Boy verse.
Speaker 1: The U we see the police lights turn on like
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree behind us. So I'm gonna take you
Speaker 1: through this. There is a gripping, paralytics sort of fear
Speaker 1: that will take over your body when that happens.
Speaker 2: Especially if it's one or two o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: and it's pitch black in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely, when you're alone and it's just you
Speaker 1: and the police we see. The thing is, I know
Speaker 1: that the police can say and do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be right in order to be believed,
Speaker 1: you know. They they they a lot of times, as
Speaker 1: we've seen, are are given to fear and and so
Speaker 1: you don't have to do anything wrong in order to
Speaker 1: lose your life, to get beat up and them justify it,
Speaker 1: to be put in jail and them justify it. They
Speaker 1: can trump up the charges and have you locked away
Speaker 1: for nothing. Just okay. I happen to spend a half
Speaker 1: a second running over a line that I didn't know
Speaker 1: was there, you know, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: and it happens all the time. And if you don't
Speaker 1: know that Google is free but.
Speaker 2: You never experienced it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you gotta you got a solid run with
Speaker 1: respect to the police out here. So good for you.
Speaker 1: But so yeah, we we naturally have to pull over.
Speaker 1: Both of us are terrified, but also we know that
Speaker 1: we haven't done anything. Or when in the world do
Speaker 1: they pull themself before the cruise control is on? And
Speaker 1: you know, we both know how to play the game.
Speaker 1: My first experience with the police was the LAPD and
Speaker 1: this was before the Rodney King riots and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. The police out there were always known
Speaker 1: to be the bad guys. It's such a funny thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of folks grow up and they think
Speaker 1: that the police are the good guys. And they very
Speaker 1: well may be. I'm not trying to say, but for me,
Speaker 1: the way that I grew up is you definitely want
Speaker 1: to steer clear of the police if they see you,
Speaker 1: keep your head down, keep it pushing, don't You don't
Speaker 1: want no interaction with them people because they don't like you.
Speaker 1: They will hurt you, harm you. All these and I
Speaker 1: saw those things happen. I saw the police smash a
Speaker 1: man's head into a car sitting on the ground and
Speaker 1: dent the door in. That happened when I was probably
Speaker 1: like five years old. He was sitting there and they
Speaker 1: did that. So I had everything. There was no confirmation
Speaker 1: bias here. There's an actual lived experience. So police get
Speaker 1: behind us. License and registration. Q takes out what paper
Speaker 1: work he could put together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so bought this car thirty hours ago. I have
Speaker 2: to go through this folder that the dealership gave me
Speaker 2: with every document concerning this vehicle from ever to try
Speaker 2: to find the proper paperwork to give to the officer.
Speaker 2: So I ask for his permission to sift through this,
Speaker 2: you know, Manila envelope of documents, trying to find the
Speaker 2: right paperwork. I don't want them to think there's anything
Speaker 2: fishy going on. I just actually have to find this
Speaker 2: because I've never had to present this document before.
Speaker 1: As you were, so normally that's enough. Given the paperwork,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. You know, there's a little bit of a swerve,
Speaker 1: goes back to the car, comes back and gives back
Speaker 1: the paperwork and asks can you step out of the
Speaker 1: vehicle now? Let me say something.
Speaker 2: Before Normally normally say before you say before you say
Speaker 2: before you say, before you say, do you know why
Speaker 2: we pulled you over? Was the question that the guy
Speaker 2: asked when he first walked up to the car. And
Speaker 2: because I know I was not speeding, I say that
Speaker 2: to him. No, sir, I don't know because I wasn't speeding.
Speaker 2: The car was on cruise control. This is when he
Speaker 2: says back to us that he heard the noise from
Speaker 2: the grooves outside of the lane. So the sequence is
Speaker 2: important here. Important to bring that up because the why matters.
Speaker 2: And I also bring this up because when having this
Speaker 2: conversation with just Ramses and I, Ramses brought this up
Speaker 2: to me, and in the moment I never thought about it.
Speaker 2: Why when hearing that noise would an officer pull you over?
Speaker 2: Maybe because it was the middle of the night, they
Speaker 2: thought you may have had something to drink our sobriety
Speaker 2: was never mentioned, nor was it tested.
Speaker 1: It was it never even came into question. And that's
Speaker 1: the point I was trying to make some You said that, yes,
Speaker 1: so I'm glad. I'm glad you said it that way.
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna get that. But at
Speaker 1: least the officers talking to to Q on this side
Speaker 1: of the car could very well ascertain from his speech,
Speaker 1: from his mannerism's eye contact, et cetera, that this person
Speaker 1: was not a person who was inebriated in the least.
Speaker 1: Any reasonable thinking person could tell that. Certainly, any police
Speaker 1: officer who was trained to identify a person who is
Speaker 1: inebriated versus a person who is sober would be able
Speaker 1: to identify that at the at that point when you've
Speaker 1: identified yourself, there's no outstanding warrants, when you've given all
Speaker 1: the information on the car, when the car is clearly
Speaker 1: not stolen, and you say I'm not from here. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that I'm on my way out of town.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, ten minutes from the border. There's nothing
Speaker 1: else to talk about here. So the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna jump ahead, but we're gonna go back, the fact
Speaker 1: that they brought dogs out was not only was it
Speaker 1: an insulting and scary and unnecessary, it was extremely unfair.
Speaker 1: And it speaks to this idea that black folks gotta
Speaker 1: be up to something, and I.
Speaker 2: Want to say this now, have to be up to something.
Speaker 1: I want to say this now and I'll say it
Speaker 1: again later. But if we were sixty year old white
Speaker 1: couple forty year old. Yeah, doesn't just having a cruise.
Speaker 1: Same things happen and same exact story. I highly doubt
Speaker 1: that they would have asked anybody to step out of
Speaker 1: the car. But if they did, highly doubt they would
Speaker 1: have brought the dogs. But I'll get to the dogs
Speaker 1: in a second. Okay, you're just tuning in the civic cipher.
Speaker 1: I'm ramses Josh.
Speaker 2: They called me q Ward and that just so happens
Speaker 2: to be my actual name.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and we are telling a story about getting pulled over.
Speaker 1: That speaks to why this call to defund the police exists. Now,
Speaker 1: I do want to say this, for a police officer
Speaker 1: sitting on the side of the road hidden, that does
Speaker 1: not prevent crime. Now, my charge with the police, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of folks charged with policing and
Speaker 1: the police departments across this country, is that they prevent
Speaker 1: crime or otherwise cause crime to be less significant or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I don't believe that hiding in the shadows, waiting
Speaker 1: for somebody to make a little bit of noise, pulling
Speaker 1: them out of the car, keeping them on the side
Speaker 1: of the road, scared in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: You know where they bring dogs out is preventing any crime.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't true in our case. So the fact
Speaker 1: that the police department had extra money to pay people
Speaker 1: to sit hidden on the side of the road almost
Speaker 1: to entrap some passers by for no reason. There was
Speaker 1: no harm committed. There was no harm by us, making
Speaker 1: that half of the less than half of the second
Speaker 1: worth of noise in the middle of nowhere, you know.
Speaker 1: But so far in the story, they've come and I
Speaker 1: know that they've ascertained whether or not we were inebriated.
Speaker 1: They verified that the vehicle checks out. That should be
Speaker 1: the end of the story. But I would charge anybody
Speaker 1: listening to this that because we were black, that is
Speaker 1: the reason why the situation went further. And so they
Speaker 1: asked you to step out of the car. Immediately, I
Speaker 1: pulled my phone out because now I need to record
Speaker 1: what's happening, because this is the point where situations turn
Speaker 1: from very scary to near death. And this isn't just
Speaker 1: something that I've seen on the phone, as I stated,
Speaker 1: I've seen this happen in real life, you know, the
Speaker 1: only time I've ever seen someone lose their life. The
Speaker 1: police were involved, and I'm from Compton as in Compton, California,
Speaker 1: and I'm born in eighty two, so I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, but only time I ever saw a
Speaker 1: life snuffed out was by the police in my thirty
Speaker 1: eight years. So Qwo steps out of the car I'm filming,
Speaker 1: and I can't really film out the back window because
Speaker 1: those lights in the police car behind you, those lights
Speaker 1: are so bright. But I can film sort of the
Speaker 1: shadows just in case something happens, you know, I'll know,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever's going on. But then I realize, you
Speaker 1: know what, if something happens to Q, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: happen to me too. So I switch over to Facebook
Speaker 1: Live because if something happens to me, I can't upload
Speaker 1: a six minute long video. I'm not gonna have time
Speaker 1: while i'm whatever, enduring whatever if they take my phone
Speaker 1: from me and claim it as evidence and I can't
Speaker 1: call anyone or whatever. There's a little tricks that police do,
Speaker 1: but so so far in the story, we have extra
Speaker 1: police sitting there, not preventing crime, not even being visible
Speaker 1: to actually prevent crime. They're waiting to entrap someone who
Speaker 1: is either speeding or makes a little noise on the
Speaker 1: road to check them for sobriety, and neither of those
Speaker 1: things are true. Shouldn't have been escalated. But here we
Speaker 1: are queues out the car. I'm terrified, and the officer
Speaker 1: later comes back to get me. But before I tell
Speaker 1: what happens to me, I want you to say what
Speaker 1: the officer talk to you about.
Speaker 2: We roll the windows down. When the officer approaches the car,
Speaker 2: initially ramses, just let you guys know that we can't
Speaker 2: see anything. The brightest spotlights that Mississippi taxpayers dollars can
Speaker 2: buy are attached to this massive SUV that's behind ours.
Speaker 2: But we can hear, and that's important because we're in Mississippi,
Speaker 2: and I want you to at least try to imagine
Speaker 2: what the state trooper in Mississippi sounds like at three
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: whatever it was in the pitch black in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Not that accent.
Speaker 2: Okay. So our attorney heard this story and immediately you
Speaker 2: do not have to step out of the car, and
Speaker 2: she's breaking down all of our rights and all of
Speaker 2: the proper steps and everything that should have happened.
Speaker 1: We love you, Amy.
Speaker 2: The problem is in that setting, none of that matters
Speaker 2: if I get killed. It doesn't matter that this officer
Speaker 2: was wrong, because he'll say he was right, and so
Speaker 2: will his partner. You guys will put me on a
Speaker 2: T shirt. I will have a hashtag, and a lot
Speaker 2: of people that care about me will be very angry.
Speaker 2: The officers will be given paid leave and at worst
Speaker 2: reassigned to another agency. So I can't try to be
Speaker 2: a dignified man and stand on principle and tell him
Speaker 2: that no, I'm not getting out of the car because
Speaker 2: he has no right, Because I don't want to become
Speaker 2: this guy's enemy at all. I don't want to make
Speaker 2: him think we're on a different team. I don't want
Speaker 2: him to think that I'm angry or that I present
Speaker 2: any threat of danger to him. The problem is, no
Speaker 2: matter how nice and polite and respectful and compliant I am,
Speaker 2: when I open this door and get out of this car,
Speaker 2: things can get very very bad for me instantly. And
Speaker 2: aside from putting the car and drive and driving it
Speaker 2: really fast until I'm somewhere that I think is safe,
Speaker 2: which in this instance would not exist, there's nothing I
Speaker 2: can do but what he says and hope for the
Speaker 2: best that nothing happens. So I want you to understand
Speaker 2: when we say we're scared, it's not like scary movie scared.
Speaker 1: It's okay, my heart's beaten too fast. It scared. I
Speaker 1: want to say this, man, because there's sometimes So I
Speaker 1: got bit by a dog when I was little. I
Speaker 1: grew up with a phobia of dogs. Whenever I would
Speaker 1: encounter a loose dog, I would feel my heart beating
Speaker 1: in my throat. I couldn't come up with words, I
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe right, and that sort of thing. It's the
Speaker 1: same sort of panic response that I have when the
Speaker 1: police are with me, because my brain turns it into
Speaker 1: a life and death experience, almost like a phobia. Like
Speaker 1: people would tell me all the time, don't be scared
Speaker 1: of the dog. Dog doesn't bite. No, No, I can't.
Speaker 1: It's not that easy for me because I've experienced trauma.
Speaker 2: Right, and dogs and dogs bite. Yeah, exactly, your dog too,
Speaker 2: miss Yeah, your dog bites too.
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing. You can't. It's not like
Speaker 1: you can turn that off. You know, you're just there,
Speaker 1: and when police expect you to act reasonable and you
Speaker 1: have some sort of panic taking place, you know you
Speaker 1: can't breathe. Are they're hurting you or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and you react the way that your body is reacting,
Speaker 1: and they consider that a threat, or they say that
Speaker 1: you're assaulting whatever it is that they want to do
Speaker 1: to twist the story. You see how they can twist
Speaker 1: the optics and change the story and use that against you.
Speaker 1: Now Q's out of the car. He's back talking to
Speaker 1: the two police officers, because there's a second one back there.
Speaker 1: Now the officer comes to my window. Now, now I've
Speaker 1: done nothing. I've said nothing, even if Q was drinking
Speaker 1: dirty whatever and has nothing to do with me. I
Speaker 1: was a passenger in the car. There's nothing going on here, right,
Speaker 1: he asked from my ID, took it, walk back to
Speaker 1: the car. I'm still filming. Comes back to the car
Speaker 1: and asks me to get out of the car. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to say this again. If I was the
Speaker 1: sixty two year old spouse of a white corporate executive
Speaker 1: driving the same vehicle, given the same set of circumstances,
Speaker 1: what I've been pulled out of the car, I think
Speaker 1: that everyone would agree. The answer to that is absolutely not.
Speaker 1: There's no reason for me to be out of the car.
Speaker 1: But because I look like me, and because Q looks
Speaker 1: like Q, because we're driving a Porsche in the middle
Speaker 1: of it doesn't matter where we are. You know, the
Speaker 1: police are trying to investigate. They're looking for something even
Speaker 1: though it's not there. And the thing about that, I
Speaker 1: would challenge anybody if you look through someone's phone anything, like,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for something, you're gonna find it even
Speaker 1: if it's not there. Fortunately for us, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: the story has a happy ending and there's nothing to find
Speaker 1: a brand new car, you know whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's this conversation that exists how black folks are overly policed.
Speaker 1: Right in other words, if you put ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the police officers in black neighborhoods and ten percent of
Speaker 1: the police officers and white neighborhoods, you know, studies show
Speaker 1: that black and white folks used marijuana approximately the same rates.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Obviously, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual dollars that have been stolen from people,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's only one champion there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a person who might rob a liquor store, a
Speaker 1: rob a bank, get a couple hundred bucks, but the
Speaker 1: actual crimes you know that that take. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to debate that. The thing is, if
Speaker 1: you put all the police in this neighborhood, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if the rates are exactly the same. The police
Speaker 1: are going to find more people, and if those people
Speaker 1: get longer sentences than what you end up with is
Speaker 1: this narrative in this country that we have now, which is, well,
Speaker 1: black people fill up all the jails. Black people are
Speaker 1: the ones always getting arrested. Black people are the ones
Speaker 1: on cops. And the truth is there are systems in
Speaker 1: place doing that. You know, there's a lot of systems.
Speaker 1: You know, drugs and a lot of communities is really
Speaker 1: a form of it. It's like a part of the
Speaker 1: economy there. You know, it's not necessarily you know, just
Speaker 1: a health issue. It's a part of the economy. And
Speaker 1: that was done deliberately by the government. Again, Google is free.
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up. This isn't something that I
Speaker 1: think would sound cool on this radio show. But my
Speaker 1: phone dies right as I'm supposed to step out of
Speaker 1: the car. So everybody that's watching on Facebook Live that
Speaker 1: sees the lights flashing behind us, that that cares and
Speaker 1: loves me, and Q and knows what we're going through.
Speaker 1: Everyone that sees that is aware. You know, while I can.
Speaker 1: I want to shout out Sindbad. I want to shout
Speaker 1: out Hannah and Alyssa. I want to shout out Tessa.
Speaker 1: I want to shout out Carly. I want to shout
Speaker 1: out everybody that was there that made phone calls, that
Speaker 1: did everything like that. But my phone dies. I have
Speaker 1: to get out of the car now and walk back
Speaker 1: to the car, to the police car. He says, stand
Speaker 1: right here and look in this direction. I did not move.
Speaker 1: I didn't speak unless spoken to. I did not move. Now.
Speaker 1: I want to say this to any of our white
Speaker 1: allies listening to the show. You might feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: well I'm standing out of the car. Might put my
Speaker 1: hands on my hips, might check my phone, might do
Speaker 1: you know whatever, have a friendly back and forth. That
Speaker 1: fear your heart beating in your throat doesn't allow you
Speaker 1: to do that. You'd sit there, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: a different experience, like the way I see some white
Speaker 1: folks interact with the police. It's like seeing a like
Speaker 1: superpowers or something, and it's just not true with me. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some people that reach their breaking point Jacob Blake,
Speaker 1: you know, was he was apparently doing some stuff, trying
Speaker 1: to break up a fight with two other folks or
Speaker 1: whatever the story is, doesn't matter. He's walking away from
Speaker 1: the police. You know, there is a breaking point for
Speaker 1: any creature endowed with consciousness where it's like, I'm just
Speaker 1: not going to be bullied. But in this instance, I'm
Speaker 1: doing like cute, I'm playing along. So now I'm outside
Speaker 1: of the CARQ was outside of the car. We're up
Speaker 1: against this SUV and this man who's already searched the
Speaker 1: vehicle with his flashlight already asked if he could search
Speaker 1: the vehicle, and we gave him permission.
Speaker 2: And of course I gave him permission, right because once
Speaker 2: again I can't flex my constitutional rights. Of course, he's
Speaker 2: supposed to have legitimate probable cause. Of course he should
Speaker 2: be required to present some type of warrant. But what
Speaker 2: am I gonna do on the side of the highway
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night in Mississippi. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess you can search the car if that means that
Speaker 2: I can get back in that car and drive away
Speaker 2: after you don't find anything.
Speaker 1: Sir, exactly. And I want to say this that also
Speaker 1: could have should have been enough, because he did search
Speaker 1: that car real quick. If you're just tuning in the
Speaker 1: civic scipher, I'm your host, Rams' joh. They called me
Speaker 1: q Ward and we're telling a story about when we
Speaker 1: got pulled over in Mississippi that I believe speaks to
Speaker 1: a lot of experiences that black folks endure when interacting
Speaker 1: with police. Were speaking on black men, because that might
Speaker 1: be a little different night. That's one thing that I
Speaker 1: can speak on. This happened to me obviously several times
Speaker 1: about my life. This just happens to be the most
Speaker 1: recent experience, and it happened to take place in Mississippi. Now,
Speaker 1: you have to bear in mind that we initially got
Speaker 1: pulled over for less than a half of a second
Speaker 1: of the road noise, that is the etching into the
Speaker 1: side of the asphalt that's meant to wake up the driver.
Speaker 1: And again in Mississippi, that etching is on the paint,
Speaker 1: whereas in Arizona, where we're from and do most of
Speaker 1: our driving, it's about one two feet outside of that line.
Speaker 1: That's the reason we got pulled over. At best, a
Speaker 1: police officer would pull us over and say to us
Speaker 1: license and registration and ascertain as to whether or not
Speaker 1: the driver was inebriated. If the driver was clearly inebriated,
Speaker 1: or they wanted to, you know, you issue a test
Speaker 1: or something like that, then this would have been just
Speaker 1: find normal routine thing. But it was not.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: We're both standing outside of the car after giving them
Speaker 1: permission to search the vehicle, and then they bring a
Speaker 1: dog to smell the car. Now, if they brought the
Speaker 1: dog and if there were drugs in the car or
Speaker 1: something like that, even that would be enough, right, But
Speaker 1: they come back. It's a brand new car. We just
Speaker 1: got it. They come back and say the dog has
Speaker 1: indicated the presence of drugs, so now he has to
Speaker 1: get the gloves on. We're standing on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, terrified, in a state where we don't know anybody.
Speaker 1: It's dark, like the darkest has ever been. Those trees
Speaker 1: are so big that the light doesn't make its way
Speaker 1: to the ground. It's two in the morning.
Speaker 2: There's no street lights.
Speaker 1: It's it's us and the police and that's it. And
Speaker 1: they have a dog out there. So now there's all
Speaker 1: these police lights, all these you know, and they have
Speaker 1: a dogs in the car. This guy puts on these
Speaker 1: blue gloves and goes through this Porsche to try to
Speaker 1: find the drugs that were Remember a little bit of
Speaker 1: road noise, some.
Speaker 2: People can see us, rams and I'm smiling. I'm furious, right,
Speaker 2: it's like smile to keep from screaming and cursing and hyperventilating, right,
Speaker 2: like laugh to not cry kind of thing. It's not
Speaker 2: a joke. It's not funny, you know. Thank God we're
Speaker 2: telling this story. So it worked out right. But there's
Speaker 2: two points that we haven't touched on that matter, and
Speaker 2: I want rams Us to speak to this point because
Speaker 2: of his experience in this situation, being very very specific
Speaker 2: to the differences between two things, officer of the law
Speaker 2: and human being. When I step out of this car
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night in Mississippi after hearing
Speaker 2: that action, there is a chance that I am about
Speaker 2: to die. I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not being irrational.
Speaker 2: I'm not exaggerating the fact that I'm being asked out
Speaker 2: of the car having done nothing means that this officer's
Speaker 2: looking for a reason. I admittedly exhale when I got
Speaker 2: out of the car. Because both the state trooper and
Speaker 2: the sheriff, we're.
Speaker 1: Black, put a pin in that because we'll come back
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: And for a moment, I no longer felt like I
Speaker 2: was going to die.
Speaker 1: Now, when I get out of the car is when
Speaker 1: I'm able to determine the same thing that it was terrified.
Speaker 1: But when I got back to the police car, I
Speaker 1: recognized that the sheriff, the person who was already at
Speaker 1: the suv, the police suv, was a human being who
Speaker 1: happened to be a police officer. I want you to
Speaker 1: remember that he was a man. He was a human
Speaker 1: just like me, just like you, and he happened to
Speaker 1: be a police officer. The man who initially asked me
Speaker 1: to get out of the car initially asked you to
Speaker 1: get out of the car. The state trooper was a
Speaker 1: police officer first and a human being second. In other words,
Speaker 1: the institution that employed him has taken precedence over his
Speaker 1: reason his ability to reason and make sense of the situation.
Speaker 1: In other words, he didn't prioritize. Okay, let me investigate
Speaker 1: why this singular infraction, if you will, took place, and
Speaker 1: this car made a little bit of noise on the
Speaker 1: side of the road while driving, and determine, oh, there's
Speaker 1: no problem there these fine people can go on about
Speaker 1: their business. The police officer, the institution that employs him,
Speaker 1: that has taken it's it's sort of like the Stanford experiments.
Speaker 1: You understand, there's there's this this way that your job,
Speaker 1: especially if it comes with an iota of tenuous power,
Speaker 1: will compel you to treat people like they're beneath you
Speaker 1: and to subjugate them, treat them unfairly, bully them, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And he very much had that energy black as he was.
Speaker 1: So I'm not speaking to white officers, and you haven't
Speaker 1: heard me say that in this this episode. What I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to is policing. And when people say there are
Speaker 1: some good cops, I will I will offer that that narrative,
Speaker 1: this experience for fodder, because there was a huge being
Speaker 1: there who happened to be a police officer. But the
Speaker 1: other gentleman who was the state trooper, was a police
Speaker 1: officer first and very much guided by the principles that
Speaker 1: we fight so hard to dismantle, those principles that are
Speaker 1: built into that system that treat black folks unfairly. That
Speaker 1: person is the reason I stood absolutely still. That's the
Speaker 1: person that got the dog, that's the person that put
Speaker 1: those gloves on and went through that car. That's the
Speaker 1: person that told us that the dog indicated that there
Speaker 1: were drugs in the car. That dog can smell one
Speaker 1: part per million or whatever. And obviously, and you know,
Speaker 1: let me, let let me let me rather, you want
Speaker 1: to get something in the human knows needs to smell
Speaker 1: one million trillion fractions the fifth of a particle of
Speaker 1: something in order for it to register with our senses.
Speaker 2: This dog only needs to smell one trillion.
Speaker 1: Really, that's the best you could do.
Speaker 2: You can't. So there's something there, you know what he
Speaker 2: told them. I didn't find anything. The dog didn't find anything,
Speaker 2: but he smells something. What he tell us, and it's
Speaker 2: probably listen to this, y'all. You were parked somewhere and
Speaker 2: someone brushed up against the car, possibly with marijuana.
Speaker 1: In their pock pocket. That's what he told us that
Speaker 1: the dog smelled. Now, mind you, we'm driving for twelve hours,
Speaker 1: sixty five seventy miles an hour, and the dog smelled
Speaker 1: that one particle per trillion or whatever. And he said that, like,
Speaker 1: obviously that's nonsense, but he said that to justify.
Speaker 2: And the last time we parked was three States ago.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to tell you brushed up against more actual
Speaker 1: tree than that, just trying to you know, check out
Speaker 1: where our surroundings. Anyway, this story speaks to the experience
Speaker 1: of black folks. You know. Now, let's say, just to
Speaker 1: piggyback off my example earlier, it's it's well documented, it's
Speaker 1: been well researched. You can look it up yourself if
Speaker 1: you don't believe me. But marijuana, for instance, is used
Speaker 1: roughly the same by black folks and white folks as
Speaker 1: a percentage. You know, black folks and white folks get
Speaker 1: pulled over the same amount as a percentage, then you
Speaker 1: should see the same percentage of folks being convicted of,
Speaker 1: you know, those sorts of crimes. But because by and large,
Speaker 1: uh maybe not pulled over. But let's say searched, pulled
Speaker 1: out of their car or whatever. If you only do
Speaker 1: that to black folks, and you don't do that to
Speaker 1: white folks. Again, if we're you know, sixty five year
Speaker 1: olds on a business trip or going golfing or something
Speaker 1: like that, they're not pulling us out of the car.
Speaker 1: Sixty five year old white corporate privileged corporate executives, you know,
Speaker 1: and our decadent capitalists, pig sort of mobile in our portie.
Speaker 1: They're not bothering us. You know, these systems were built
Speaker 1: by those people to favor them. They're meant to subjugate us,
Speaker 1: to treat us very unfairly, and to criminalize us at
Speaker 1: every single turn, and even execute us if they feel
Speaker 1: inclined to do so, and do that without any sort
Speaker 1: of repercussions, or to.
Speaker 2: Put plainly, if they feel like it, yeah, simple, I
Speaker 2: don't even want to say it with the level of
Speaker 2: intelligence that you did. If they feel so inclined, No,
Speaker 2: if they just felt like it that day. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: were a little scared, you know, gon'y're not They're not
Speaker 2: scared at all. I don't want to give them that.
Speaker 2: They're not afraid.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to be afraid of the tuche.
Speaker 2: We're clearly standing outside of the car.
Speaker 1: We don't they both have Yeah, y'all have guns.
Speaker 2: We got guns and adult so you're not scared.
Speaker 1: So listen. I really wanted to do this show. I
Speaker 1: really wanted to explain to you know, not too long
Speaker 1: on the show, we had Janelle Wood and a lot
Speaker 1: of people think of police officers as individuals, and I
Speaker 1: understand why, because police officers are people, but the institution
Speaker 1: that they work for is a racist. It's it's roots
Speaker 1: turn racism. Patrol. The word patrol comes from slave patrols,
Speaker 1: and for those who don't know that, again, google is.
Speaker 1: And the way that police and the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: has treated black folks is very much built into the
Speaker 1: systems that we're trying to dismantle. So a police officer,
Speaker 1: an individual can be my brother. Sure, I believe that
Speaker 1: all men are leaders and all women are my sisters,
Speaker 1: you know, in the figurative sport sense of the word.
Speaker 1: But the systems that they represent can are absolutely the enemy.
Speaker 1: In this story and in most all black folks stories
Speaker 1: that sound like this, it's just it just illustrates how
Speaker 1: there's two different worlds when it comes to policing, just
Speaker 1: like there's two different worlds when it comes to politics.
Speaker 1: There's two different worlds when it comes to economics and
Speaker 1: jobs and hiring practices and on and on and on
Speaker 1: and on. These you know, these are the same stories
Speaker 1: that I'll say it now my ancestors were telling, and
Speaker 1: it's no different. The difference now is that we can
Speaker 1: we have a little bit more on the way of
Speaker 1: a voice because of the various platforms that we're able
Speaker 1: to use, and obviously with civic cipher, we're trying to
Speaker 1: share that so that we can empower those allies of
Speaker 1: our causes, of black and brown causes, because I understand
Speaker 1: that our brown brothers and sisters also have to deal
Speaker 1: with largely the same issues of you know, discrimination and subjugation,
Speaker 1: and you know, we feel like with a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a voice, maybe we can perhaps move the
Speaker 1: needle with a call like defund the police, which maybe
Speaker 1: is not the most eloquent way of laying out your argument,
Speaker 1: but certainly does speak directly to.
Speaker 2: We didn't do a focus group for that one, probably.
Speaker 1: But it does again speak directly to, you know, a
Speaker 1: way of reallocating resources to where you're not just paying
Speaker 1: people to sit on the side of the road to
Speaker 1: pull over people and make a little bit of noise
Speaker 1: and terrorize them for an hour and a half to
Speaker 1: bring a dog out and then try to explain or
Speaker 1: explain it away when you wouldn't have done that if
Speaker 1: those were some white folks that you pulled over. It
Speaker 1: just seems like a waste of resources, and those resources
Speaker 1: could have been invested into the community that actually in
Speaker 1: a way that would have actually prevented crime. Now again,
Speaker 1: I could tell so many stories like these. The only
Speaker 1: time in my life a gun was ever pointed at
Speaker 1: me was by a police officer. I've never been arrested.
Speaker 1: Only time I've been in handcuffs. Police have ripped the
Speaker 1: flesh off of my arms by handling me with handcuffs.
Speaker 1: I've never been arrested. I've never done anything wrong to
Speaker 1: warrant that. A lot of times they're bullies, a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're wrong, and so forth. But we'll save
Speaker 1: that for another episode.
Speaker 2: And in most cases, as long as you allow them
Speaker 2: to rob you of your dignity and humiliate you, you'll
Speaker 2: be fine. Yeah, it's what we're led to believe because
Speaker 2: even then, yes, sir, no, sir, I'm sorry, sir. They
Speaker 2: have proven and we've seen the live video evidence twenty
Speaker 2: times since George Floyd. Even when if you just comply,
Speaker 2: if you just allow them to violate your rights, then
Speaker 2: you should be okay.
Speaker 1: But again, we'll talk about that more on another episode,
Speaker 1: and I very much look forward to it. If you
Speaker 1: will please come back hang out with me. I very
Speaker 1: much enjoyed it. Let's do it. But that's going to
Speaker 1: do it for us today. Once again, I'm ramses Jah.
Speaker 2: They called me q Ward and it just so happens
Speaker 2: to be my name.
Speaker 1: If you have any questions, any topics you want us
Speaker 1: to talk about, if you want to donate to the show,
Speaker 1: the show is supported by listeners. If you're liking what
Speaker 1: you're hearing, if you're liking what you're doing, you can
Speaker 1: donate through the website civiccipher dot com. Again, that's civiccipher
Speaker 1: dot com. And you can check us out on all
Speaker 1: social media at Civic Cipher and until next week at
Speaker 1: the same time on the same channel, Peace Peace