Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Rams's job.
Speaker 2: He is Rams this job, I am q War.
Speaker 3: Indeed, when we form volt Trump, when we come together.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Yes I do.
Speaker 4: At twelve fifteen, I don't even know what time may
Speaker 4: knock it down, break it down as Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: That is the truth. That a great show and story
Speaker 1: for you. Be sure to stick around. We are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about police reform. We talked about that
Speaker 1: quite a bit. We're going to be asking the question today, however,
Speaker 1: how do you reform this? I've been paying attention to
Speaker 1: some stuff on social media. A lot of things been
Speaker 1: taking place, a lot of things we haven't even been
Speaker 1: able to touch.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to delve into this topic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think that there's some people on east
Speaker 4: side of it that think there's nothing wrong with it,
Speaker 4: and others that think it can't be reformed.
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to let you loose on that
Speaker 1: because that's exactly why we need to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, stick around. Some of the stories I have
Speaker 1: been able to cover on the Black Information Network Daily podcast.
Speaker 4: For the Black Information Network as a daily podcast, I'm
Speaker 4: a subscriber.
Speaker 3: By the way, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: On Ballpack podcast platform that means multiple and YouTube. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: So when you see that light count go up, no,
Speaker 4: your brother is on there.
Speaker 3: I love that clicking the thumbs up.
Speaker 1: But some of these stories we cannot cover. However, we
Speaker 1: are going to cover to today. We just can't cover
Speaker 1: every single story but the two that we've chosen to
Speaker 1: cover today that help us question what police reform could
Speaker 1: look like should look like, we think you'll be interested
Speaker 1: in a little Later in the show, we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the Florida Department of Education's decision to
Speaker 1: decline including ap African American studies and their reasoning and
Speaker 1: how utterly insulting that is. But first and foremost, like
Speaker 1: we always do with this time, let's talk about something happy,
Speaker 1: something that makes us smile. We like to call it
Speaker 1: abny excellence Q we shall. So today's any Excellence is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Hip Hop Weekly Media and we
Speaker 1: are going to shout out the one and only Anthony T. Browder.
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with him on.
Speaker 4: But I was going to ask you, where did you
Speaker 4: have that conversation never mind, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course,
Speaker 4: of course it was on the Black Information Network Daily
Speaker 4: podcast again A long conversation, a four part interview with
Speaker 4: this man.
Speaker 1: But he is a man with a life well lived,
Speaker 1: a man who's definitely inspired me. The conversation goes, he's
Speaker 1: an Egyptologist. For those who don't know. In fact, I'll
Speaker 1: read a bit about him. He's an author, publisher, cultural historian, artist,
Speaker 1: and educational consultant. Graduate of Howard University's College of Fine
Speaker 1: Arts and has lectured extensively around the world. He is
Speaker 1: the founder and director of IKG Cultural Resources and has
Speaker 1: devoted thirty years to researching ancient Egyptian history, science, philosophy,
Speaker 1: and culture. And he's been to Egypt fifty four times,
Speaker 1: I think it's higher than that, since nineteen eighty. And
Speaker 1: he is the first African American to fund, coordinate, fund,
Speaker 1: and coordinate an archaeological dig in Egypt. And he just
Speaker 1: has tons of insight into the roots of civilization, advanced civilization,
Speaker 1: and of course those roots being African roots, things that
Speaker 1: we would not otherwise know about. You think of the Greeks,
Speaker 1: you think of the Romans, but no civilizations that predated
Speaker 1: those by thousands of years. We're in Africa. Our conversation,
Speaker 1: we talk about the roots of all the Abrahamic religions
Speaker 1: and how those come from Africa. And I am a
Speaker 1: person who grew up in a Christian household as his Q.
Speaker 1: So not trying to changing body's belief system. But the
Speaker 1: facts are the facts, and just a wonderful conversation. I
Speaker 1: employed to check it out once again on the Black
Speaker 1: Information Network Daily podcast and again, Excellence, Anthony T. Browner,
Speaker 1: you are him and we just appreciate you giving back
Speaker 1: to us so that we can do our job. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: moving on, all right, how do you reform this? This
Speaker 1: is a question that was posed by Kassim Rashid. He
Speaker 1: is a person on Instagram who is a potent speaker
Speaker 1: and a very informed individual. I believe he might be
Speaker 1: of Middle Eastern descent something like that, and he is
Speaker 1: a person who's very passionate about the way people are treated.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't profess to know his religious background, but he
Speaker 1: is a brother to my people and so far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, and a brother to all people. And
Speaker 1: so I need you to understand that when he poses
Speaker 1: this question, it really caused me to think, how do
Speaker 1: you reform this? And so his standard practice is his
Speaker 1: modus operandi is to tell a story on Instagram. He's
Speaker 1: got the video and everything like that. So he's filming
Speaker 1: himself and he's, you know, recalling a story that has
Speaker 1: taken place in the media. An individual was going about
Speaker 1: their business, they had an interaction with the police, they
Speaker 1: ended up dead or beat up or whatever, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And he exposes the many ways that police abuse their power.
Speaker 1: He exposes the many ways that human beings suffer at
Speaker 1: the hands of police, and often enough explains why it's
Speaker 1: unnecessary for there to be human citizen suffering, you know,
Speaker 1: the people that are supposed to protect and ser often
Speaker 1: hurting the citizens. And he points out things that are
Speaker 1: certainly necessary, and then ask the question, how do you
Speaker 1: reform this? And I think a lot of times his
Speaker 1: point is, or rather what he's trying to suggest, is
Speaker 1: that we need to really rethink it, not continue to
Speaker 1: revise it. We can't train these things away. This isn't
Speaker 1: this isn't an isolated incident or a few bad apples.
Speaker 1: There's so many bad apples. Granted, there's so many more
Speaker 1: police officers that I'm sure do you find work. But
Speaker 1: there is a system that disproportionately affects certain groups in
Speaker 1: this country and a system overall that is broken. And
Speaker 1: it's really, if we're being honest, elites, wealthier white people
Speaker 1: in this country who are able to live comfortably under
Speaker 1: the current system because it almost never affects them in
Speaker 1: a negative way. And so reform, in his opinion, based
Speaker 1: on the videos that he makes, is something that is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best way to go about dealing with this.
Speaker 1: Hence the question, how do you reform this? So we're
Speaker 1: adopting that and we are opening the floor to discussion.
Speaker 1: We would love for people to come to the table,
Speaker 1: to this round glass table that we have in the
Speaker 1: studio here for Civic Cipher and share with us ideas
Speaker 1: on how we reform this, Ideas that have not been implemented,
Speaker 1: Ideas that have not had their time, their day in
Speaker 1: the sun, to be thoroughly tested and fleshed out. How
Speaker 1: is it that in twenty twenty three, in late January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, the things that we were pushing back
Speaker 1: against in the sixties with the civil rights movement and
Speaker 1: in the seventies with the Panthers, and in the eighties
Speaker 1: when we were you know, getting behind Jesse Jackson and
Speaker 1: was run for president, and we were trying to push back,
Speaker 1: you know, as a community against the scourge of crack,
Speaker 1: and you know, these these myths and these these these
Speaker 1: lies and rumors about how we treated our our families
Speaker 1: and that we abandoned our families as black men, or
Speaker 1: that we were all gang bangers and all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, and then on and on until now, you know,
Speaker 1: with the Trayvon Martin's birthing, the Black Lives Matter movement,
Speaker 1: all the way up to twenty twenty, with George Floyd
Speaker 1: and Breonna Taylor, all the way up to now, these
Speaker 1: things are still happening, and every single step of the
Speaker 1: way there's always been reformed. There's always been oversight, there's
Speaker 1: always all these things. We've already had these conversations, We've
Speaker 1: already tried these things, and they've been again. They've had
Speaker 1: their time in the sun for years. So now when
Speaker 1: we tell these stories, our question is how do we
Speaker 1: reform this? And I think that the idea here is
Speaker 1: not to like radicalize anyone or anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: of course, we have our own beliefs. We do our
Speaker 1: best not to try to impose them, but to just
Speaker 1: highlight them, you know, shed light on our beliefs. We
Speaker 1: do believe the system is broken. We do believe that
Speaker 1: police reform is kind of a tall order, it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and that we need to rethink what it means to
Speaker 1: be safe in a community, what that means and how
Speaker 1: that looks. And does that mean that the police departments
Speaker 1: need tanks or does that mean that we need to
Speaker 1: invest that tank money into programs that again, prevent the
Speaker 1: necessity of crime in the first place. If people have
Speaker 1: enough money, then they're not stealing. If people have children
Speaker 1: have after school programs or you know, programs to keep
Speaker 1: them engaged and you know, to help them excel in school,
Speaker 1: aren't they less likely to be caught up in juvenile
Speaker 1: delinquency and so forth? These things that make sense, but
Speaker 1: they never make it past these talking points where folks
Speaker 1: who do choose to humor us by engaging in this
Speaker 1: conversation say the same thing, We need police reform. Now
Speaker 1: let's get to the first story. Sorry, thank you for
Speaker 1: letting me paint that picture. But yeah, first things first,
Speaker 1: this comes from our very own bionnews dot com. An
Speaker 1: Ohio police sergeant has been placed on administrative leave after
Speaker 1: he was caught on video punching a black woman following
Speaker 1: a dispute over cheese at a local McDonald's. The incident
Speaker 1: unfolded on Monday, which would have been January sixteenth at
Speaker 1: the time, when Butler Township, Ohio police officers responded to
Speaker 1: a report of a woman yelling at employees over an
Speaker 1: order mistake at the fast food chain. She's mad a
Speaker 1: thirty cent piece of cheese. A McDonald's employee called nine
Speaker 1: one one dispatchers, per records obtained by Kiro seven News,
Speaker 1: which is also the source of this content. Hero body
Speaker 1: camera footage shows the woman, identified as Latinka Hancock, waiting
Speaker 1: in her car when Sergeant Todd Stanley and Officer Tim
Speaker 1: Zelders arrived at the scene. When Stanley directed her to
Speaker 1: fill out a notice for trespassing, she refused. In the footage,
Speaker 1: Hancock can be seen speaking with police before the encounter
Speaker 1: became physical, as officers said she resisted arrest. Zeller's was
Speaker 1: caught on body camera footage pointing his taser at Hancock,
Speaker 1: and Stanley punched the woman in the face three times
Speaker 1: before pressing her against a police cruiser and putting her
Speaker 1: handcuffs on bystander. Video also captured the violent arrest, sparking
Speaker 1: outrage among the community. Okay, so this is what is
Speaker 1: in the news. This is what was written down. Now
Speaker 1: we've seen the video. Unfortunately, and for those of you
Speaker 1: who have not seen the video, it is a woman
Speaker 1: talking to police, saying her piece, and she obviously felt
Speaker 1: like she was right. And when the officer presented the
Speaker 1: you know, the paperwork. Notice how it says a confrontation
Speaker 1: or what is it? The encounter became physical, as officers said,
Speaker 1: she resisted arresting, and that comes from uh the what
Speaker 1: is k i R O seven news and then was
Speaker 1: reported by b I in news. But this is the
Speaker 1: way police often describe incidents. And then they released the
Speaker 1: report to news news stations like kr R O seven
Speaker 1: News and then they just copy paste. So the encounter
Speaker 1: became physical implies that both parties were at fault. But
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you that there was only one
Speaker 1: individual that made the encounter physical. Granted she didn't want
Speaker 1: to sign the paperwork, that's fine. There are many people,
Speaker 1: often white, they get pulled over and they say, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sign that ticket. I did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: You're gonna take that ticket and shut whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: you get it right, I'm not picking on anybody. These
Speaker 1: are things that I've seen in my own life. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you understand this, right. This woman is no different.
Speaker 1: She feels like obviously it's not about thirty cents, It's
Speaker 1: about the principle.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Maybe she feels like she paid and she was not.
Speaker 3: I mean, even if it was about thirty cent, that's
Speaker 3: her money. If the thing that I bought costs thirty cent,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna need.
Speaker 1: That right exactly. But you know, the officer became very
Speaker 1: upset with this woman and punched her in the face
Speaker 1: three times. The woman did not punch him. None of
Speaker 1: these things happened. And then because of the bystander video,
Speaker 1: the officer can't say some of the other things that
Speaker 1: they often do say, which is some of.
Speaker 3: The things they probably did say in their report.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, perhaps, yeah, but you know, I remember the
Speaker 1: it wasn't Filando Castile. It was the death right before
Speaker 1: his where there was an I forget his name. This
Speaker 1: wasn't in New York. I want to say it was
Speaker 1: summer south of New York. But there was a gentleman,
Speaker 1: black gentleman who was at a gas station and uh,
Speaker 1: I think he might have been I couldn't tell you. You know,
Speaker 1: these stories are quite commonplace, sadly, but he was I
Speaker 1: think he was handcuffed on the ground and the officers
Speaker 1: were like punching and kicking him when he was handcuffed.
Speaker 1: And because of the angle of the video, the officers
Speaker 1: came out with the story saying, oh, well, the guy's
Speaker 1: hands behind his back as he was handcuffed, the guy
Speaker 1: grabbed my genitalia and then that gave me license to
Speaker 1: like beat them up, right, which, of course, if you
Speaker 1: watch the video you don't believe that's true. But because
Speaker 1: that's out of view, you kind of have to take
Speaker 1: the officer's word for it because this guy's dead.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So in this instance, because there's a bystander video, it's
Speaker 1: not just their bodycam video, you can see that this woman,
Speaker 1: again Latinka Hancock, did nothing to provoke anything physical. It
Speaker 1: was just the officer who probably was well there was her.
Speaker 4: Not doing what he said when he said it, because
Speaker 4: he said it, thank you, c right, Like, how dare you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: He's god right, Yeah, it's typically a problem you're not
Speaker 4: doing what I said to do. Yeah, right, as we've seen,
Speaker 4: I thought that was compelling justification.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, and you know, people often say things like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just he's you know, he's on administrative
Speaker 1: leave paid. I'm sure you know, and you'll get transfer
Speaker 1: whatever because of whatever. But I would like to posit
Speaker 1: that perhaps he harbors anti black sentiments. And my basis
Speaker 1: for that is I think that you'll agree that it
Speaker 1: would be hard to imagine that same officer punching here
Speaker 1: she goes, you're ready, cute, I'm going to say it,
Speaker 1: twenty six year old blonde haired, white woman. Sure, I know.
Speaker 1: But you know, for our listeners where they can't really
Speaker 1: you know, seeing this, it's so commonplace. You know, if
Speaker 1: we're going to compare apples to apples, we need to
Speaker 1: kind of change the image in our listener's mind. So
Speaker 1: it's a slow process, and I appreciate you giving me
Speaker 1: the floor so that I can do that, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine this guy doing that too. Again,
Speaker 1: the twenty six year old blonde haired, you know, white
Speaker 1: woman right punching her in a phase three times. And
Speaker 1: if that did happen, you can imagine the outrage, right,
Speaker 1: But these things don't tend to happen, right. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say that the police have never abused their
Speaker 1: authority with that type of person, but it's not prevalent
Speaker 1: to the degree that this is. And so this is
Speaker 1: why this is my basis for saying that this is
Speaker 1: perhaps anti black sentiment. And again, because this country has
Speaker 1: given police power that is really beyond measure. Stand with
Speaker 1: the police no matter what. It's kind of hard for
Speaker 1: us to now think of reform as the way that
Speaker 1: we deal with this. Right. That was an absolute, outright
Speaker 1: abuse of power. Right, And we've seen this before. We've
Speaker 1: seen this with the Rodney King verdict and how people
Speaker 1: react to that. You know, We've seen what happens here.
Speaker 1: And there will no longer be that stunning silence, not
Speaker 1: as long as they give us microphones, you know. So
Speaker 1: I asked the question, how do you reform this? Moving on?
Speaker 1: This one is one that Q sent over and this
Speaker 1: also comes from Kroro seven dot com. Five officers in
Speaker 1: Memphis were fired following an investigation into the arrest and
Speaker 1: death of a man. All Right, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: this and then I want you to take a Q.
Speaker 1: In a news release, Memphis Police Department said on Friday,
Speaker 1: following the death of Tyree Nichols and a review of
Speaker 1: their circumstances surrounding the incident, the department desired to fire
Speaker 1: five sorry. The department decided to fire five of its officers.
Speaker 1: Memphis Police Department said that it was determined that the
Speaker 1: officers had violated multiple policies that the department has, which
Speaker 1: include excessive use of forest, duty to intervene, and duty
Speaker 1: to render aid. Memphis Police Department said officers were fired
Speaker 1: earlier in the day on Friday. They were identified as
Speaker 1: to Darius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmett Martin the third, Desmond
Speaker 1: Mills Junior, and Justin Smith. Smith and Martin were hired
Speaker 1: in March twenty eighteen. Mills was hired in March twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Bean and Haley were both hired in August twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: According to the AP, all five officers were involved in
Speaker 1: the arrest of Nichols twenty nine on January seventh. All
Speaker 1: five officers who were fired and Nichols were all black.
Speaker 1: The Memphis Police Department said, according to the AP, Nichols
Speaker 1: was pulled over by officers for reckless driving, police said.
Speaker 1: According to WHBQ, officers claimed that Nichols ran, leading to
Speaker 1: multiple confrontations between the officers and Nichols. He was eventually
Speaker 1: arrested and officers showed use of force. Following the confrontations,
Speaker 1: Nichols reportedly complained of shortness of breath. Memphis Police Department said.
Speaker 1: According to WHBQ, Nichols was taken to the hospital where
Speaker 1: he died on January tenth. So quote, the Memphis Police
Speaker 1: Department is committed to protecting and def the rights of
Speaker 1: every citizen in our city. The egregious nature of this
Speaker 1: incident is not a reflection of the good work that
Speaker 1: our officers perform with integrity every day. That quote comes
Speaker 1: from Memphis Police Department Chief Serlin C. J. Davis. And
Speaker 1: then a civil rights investigation has been reportedly opened by
Speaker 1: the United States Justice Department. According to the AP, the
Speaker 1: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is reportedly looking into the force
Speaker 1: that was used during the arrest. WHBQ reported that any
Speaker 1: criminal charges may or may not come as a result
Speaker 1: of the incident between the officers and Nichols, and those
Speaker 1: would be announced later on. No further information has been released,
Speaker 1: and Q, let's get your two.
Speaker 3: Cents, may or may not.
Speaker 2: You know, our country and its institutions have done probably
Speaker 2: the most masterful job in history of convincing its subjects,
Speaker 2: its citizens people to fully emotionally invest in its institutions
Speaker 2: like the military, like the police, and those institutions like
Speaker 2: even it's government, beyond reproach, beyond criticism, beyond being held
Speaker 2: to even the reasonable minimum accountability standards. Right, So, you
Speaker 2: and I have had conversations long before civic slipher existed,
Speaker 2: but just in general about the types of things that
Speaker 2: would cause people on the right, or people that are racist,
Speaker 2: or people who are not racist but just don't have
Speaker 2: the same everyday encounters and struggles that we have. And
Speaker 2: we used to say things like, man, if it ever
Speaker 2: came to their door, it would change their minds. But
Speaker 2: with the mass shootings like that we've witnessed, not even
Speaker 2: that's true, even when the victims are young white children,
Speaker 2: people still won't stand up against the gun lobby.
Speaker 3: That's not even the government. The government so bent on
Speaker 3: maintaining things that they have been taught are righteous, that
Speaker 3: even with evidence to the contrary, they won't change their minds, right,
Speaker 3: So it's hard to think about reform rams just because
Speaker 3: people often don't look to change things, but they don't
Speaker 3: see anything wrong with them. And I remember, you know,
Speaker 3: back during during our former president's time in office, they
Speaker 3: interviewed this woman, and it's just about the type of
Speaker 3: things that he said and the thing that he said
Speaker 3: during his election, which there's no president I don't think
Speaker 3: ever in history that could have had something like that
Speaker 3: come out and then gone on to win the presidency
Speaker 3: when he said about just grabbing women by their private parts.
Speaker 3: And they asked this lady at a rally who was
Speaker 3: a very very prominent supporter. She had every piece of
Speaker 3: paraphernalia that was ever made on and she had her
Speaker 3: two young daughters with her, and she'd rather rob her
Speaker 3: daughters of their dignity than denounce her candidate than denounce
Speaker 3: her president when asked about those things that he said
Speaker 3: in a way that he viewed women, and she then
Speaker 3: turned to her daughters and kind of suggested to them that,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes that's okay. And I was just blown away,
Speaker 3: like the zealot like beliefs that a lot of people
Speaker 3: in this country have cannot be changed by logic or
Speaker 3: evidence or numbers or anything. So it'd be hard to
Speaker 3: get wholesale buy in for any type of reform because
Speaker 3: when people said defund the police, a lot of people
Speaker 3: lost their mind.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't even that, Like, why would you.
Speaker 3: Say such a thing? And I think I said to you,
Speaker 3: not jokingly, that being phrased that way is all the runway.
Speaker 3: They need a lot of it. They can take that
Speaker 3: phrase and make it sound so much worse than it
Speaker 3: actually is, you know what I'm saying. So let me
Speaker 3: add this to that too. So our issue on the
Speaker 3: show oftentimes is with policing the institution, not with white
Speaker 3: police officers, and I think this story illustrates that. Again,
Speaker 3: all of these people involved were black, and black people
Speaker 3: can be white supremacists too, you know. You know, black
Speaker 3: people own slaves. We've seen what happened with you know,
Speaker 3: Kanye West.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. This is the thing. Black
Speaker 1: people can buy into this narrative too, and police officers
Speaker 1: certainly are no exceptions. So it's a system that oppresses
Speaker 1: black and brown people.
Speaker 4: Police officers more so indoctrinated in the system that has
Speaker 4: existed long before they did