Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host Rams' job.
Speaker 2: Go by the name of Q Ward on Mondays, Wednesdays
Speaker 2: and Fridays if you carry to one, and then you
Speaker 2: come back on Saturday, depending on if my mom has
Speaker 2: church the next day. Never mind, I'll explain it to
Speaker 2: you guys. We'll just call me Q today.
Speaker 1: Qu all right, que. Anyway, we back up in you
Speaker 1: one more again. We are going to talk more about
Speaker 1: some things going on. Some of them are a little disturbing,
Speaker 1: I'll admit this week we got some stuff that we
Speaker 1: gotta process. But yeah, some things that have to do
Speaker 1: with race relations in this country. I'm ever the optimist
Speaker 1: and so we'll get through it. But Q is here
Speaker 1: to keep us grounded and brooded in reality, and so
Speaker 1: we'll have that perspective as well. Be sure to stick
Speaker 1: around because we will be discussing the Minneapolis police officer
Speaker 1: that shot a near lock and the lack of charges
Speaker 1: being brought fourth in that instance. We're also going to
Speaker 1: spend some time talking about a clerk, I believe a
Speaker 1: front desk clerk in Florida who called the police. Police
Speaker 1: showed up. The clerk called the police on a guest
Speaker 1: staying there. Clerk was black, guest was not black, called
Speaker 1: the police on the guests please show up and arrest
Speaker 1: the clerk. It was the strangest story, but we're going
Speaker 1: to get into that. We also have our way Black
Speaker 1: history fact. We're going to be discussing the Harlem hell Fighters.
Speaker 1: Those guys are awesome. I've been reading about them, so
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about that. And a whole lot more
Speaker 1: coming your way, like we always do each and every
Speaker 1: week on Civic Cipher. But first and foremost, with your permission,
Speaker 1: Q Woard, I would like to discuss some ebony excellence.
Speaker 1: How does that say?
Speaker 2: Shall we we shall?
Speaker 1: So this week we're talking about Chicago's Bogan Computer Technical
Speaker 1: High School senior Stephen Thomas. Shout out to our baby boy,
Speaker 1: Stephen Thomas. He has been awarded over one million dollars
Speaker 1: in scholarships and offered admission to more than thirty universities.
Speaker 1: The Chicago, Illinois seventeen year old will be graduating with
Speaker 1: a four point four to seven GPA this summer, and
Speaker 1: on top of being a straight A student, it's part
Speaker 1: of multiple extra curriculars in and out of the classroom.
Speaker 1: This of course comes from the Atlanta Black Star. So
Speaker 1: we always like to take a moment and shout out
Speaker 1: something good going out, and today we're dedicating it to him.
Speaker 1: Share a little bit more with you here. Thomas comes
Speaker 1: from a seven sibling home raised by a single mother.
Speaker 1: He says he'd like to use his story to provide
Speaker 1: inspiration to others like him who faced hardship but want
Speaker 1: to continue in pursuing their goal. This comes from him quote,
Speaker 1: when I'm recognized, I won't just be won't just have
Speaker 1: been another black teen on the news for something bad
Speaker 1: like gang violence? Are me getting wrongfully shot? I want
Speaker 1: people to look at me and be like, Wow, he's
Speaker 1: really out there doing something that we really thought we
Speaker 1: couldn't do just because of how we looked. And quote
Speaker 1: his mother, Erica, is an educator herself and Thomas's first teacher. Quote,
Speaker 1: no matter what life presents you, you just go for it.
Speaker 1: You write your own story. We know there are narratives
Speaker 1: out here but about our black boys, but it is
Speaker 1: our responsibility to change that narrative. She said. We do
Speaker 1: all types of Ebony excellence, and we talk about Chicago
Speaker 1: a lot. We have to defend Chicago a lot. On
Speaker 1: this show. Well, this ebony excellence and this student in
Speaker 1: Chicago is well deserving and it certainly does help frame
Speaker 1: the other side of the conversation the right way. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a million dollars in scholarships accepted to thirty universities, of course,
Speaker 1: a straight a student, and he's making national headlines. So
Speaker 1: once again, shout out to you, Stephen Thomas. Keep going,
Speaker 1: baby boy and making us all proud.
Speaker 2: You don't really have to. We don't really have to
Speaker 2: defend Chicago rams. We just point out obvious holes in
Speaker 2: false narratives and straw man arguments that you know, people
Speaker 2: like to make about black on black crime and things
Speaker 2: like that that don't exist.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: It is. I love I love that you said that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just know how to say it better than me. Man,
Speaker 1: I need to talk away less. Just let you do this, man.
Speaker 1: You got yeah right, all right? So I got to
Speaker 1: share some some strenuous information. This comes from the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: The Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot a mere lock
Speaker 1: during a pre dawn no knock raid in February will
Speaker 1: not face charges and the killing prosecutors announced in a statement.
Speaker 1: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepenn County Attorney Mike Freeman,
Speaker 1: who jointly reviewed the case, said there was quote insufficient
Speaker 1: admissible evidence to file criminal charges end quote. I know
Speaker 1: you want to get in right there, Cube, but let
Speaker 1: me finish. They said they could not prove beyond a
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt that officer, we're not going to say this
Speaker 1: name who fatally shot Locke violated the state's use of
Speaker 1: deadly for statute. Prosecutors also said they could find no
Speaker 1: criminal wrongdoing in the decision making that led to Lock's
Speaker 1: fatal shooting, but strongly criticized the use of a no
Speaker 1: knock warrant. Well, at least there's something there. You know,
Speaker 1: you stabbed me in the heart and then don't spit
Speaker 1: on me. I appreciate that don't spitting on me part. Okay,
Speaker 1: before I get to the comments from his family, I
Speaker 1: want to just revisit this for a second. So we
Speaker 1: talked about this when it happened. We talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show. Officers burst into a house. It was
Speaker 1: an no knock raid. Ten seconds later, a mere Laka
Speaker 1: is dead. He was sleeping on the couch. It wasn't
Speaker 1: his apartment. He was sleeping on the couch, he woke
Speaker 1: up and grabbed his gun, and you know, the video
Speaker 1: shows he was raising the gun, but he was also
Speaker 1: rising up out of being asleep, right, and the video
Speaker 1: cuts off. At least that's the video that I saw.
Speaker 1: And as he was like getting up out of the
Speaker 1: bed and of course had his gun in his hand,
Speaker 1: the assumption is the following frame is when he was
Speaker 1: shot and lost his life. I do want to revisit
Speaker 1: this because I think that this is important. What we
Speaker 1: see is a police kick in the door, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to us. Just imagine if you are a gun
Speaker 1: on I'm not a gun person. I say it all
Speaker 1: the time on the show. I'm not a gun person,
Speaker 1: but maybe you are. So imagine you're a gun person, right,
Speaker 1: and someone kicks in the door of your house. Right,
Speaker 1: let's even say that they say that they're the police, right,
Speaker 1: But you don't know for sure. This could be a
Speaker 1: robber just saying that they're the police trying to get
Speaker 1: you to cooperate. You don't know, you know, And if
Speaker 1: you grew up in a rough neighborhood and you're kind
Speaker 1: of paranoid, maybe you're a little edgy, right, you know,
Speaker 1: So let's have that be a part of the narrator,
Speaker 1: because maybe you do trust someone just says, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: the police, do whatever I say. But in a lot
Speaker 1: of neighborhoods that I've been to, and certainly the neighborhood
Speaker 1: I come from, the police are also the bad guys
Speaker 1: in a lot of those stories. So it could be
Speaker 1: the police. That could not be the police, And even
Speaker 1: if it is the police, doesn't necessarily mean that everything's
Speaker 1: going to be okay. So this is your reality, right,
Speaker 1: someone kicks in the door of your house and you're
Speaker 1: startled awake from your sleep, right, and you're a gun
Speaker 1: owner in this imaginary scenario, so you grab your gun.
Speaker 1: That's how you protect yourself. That's how you defend yourself
Speaker 1: from whatever's coming your way. If you're startled, it could
Speaker 1: be a bear, could be a person, it could be
Speaker 1: whatever you know, and before you're able to make sense
Speaker 1: of what's happening, you're dead. All right. Now, Let's not
Speaker 1: imagine it to you. Let's imagine you have a child
Speaker 1: and that happens to your child, or if you're not
Speaker 1: old enough to have children, let's imagine it's your parent,
Speaker 1: your father, your mother, to imagine it's anybody that exists
Speaker 1: in your world. Before they have a chance to even
Speaker 1: process what's happening, they're afraid someone's yelling, screaming. A bunch
Speaker 1: of people are running into the house, and they do
Speaker 1: the only thing that they believe they can do to
Speaker 1: protect themselves from whatever these noises are, and before they
Speaker 1: even get a chance to process it, they're dead. That's
Speaker 1: what happened here. Now we know that that was established
Speaker 1: on the show. We made it a point Q and
Speaker 1: I to say, how.
Speaker 3: Unfair is it for you, the people who are supposed
Speaker 3: to protect us, to just throw your hands up and say, well,
Speaker 3: that's unfortunate, it's collateral damage, and move on with your life,
Speaker 3: not even heeding the responsibility of the situation, not even
Speaker 3: acknowledging the fact that you've forever altered the course of
Speaker 3: not just this person's life, but this community's life, the
Speaker 3: lives of the people in the community. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not just one person.
Speaker 1: I mean, a cousin lost their cousin, and a sister
Speaker 1: lost her brother, a brother might have lost his brother,
Speaker 1: a mother of course lost her son. Will read about
Speaker 1: that in a second, you know, And that's just family
Speaker 1: members not to mention, friends, coworkers, whatever, whatever. The story
Speaker 1: is here and no one's held accountable. All right, Cue,
Speaker 1: I want you to jump in right here, because the
Speaker 1: last time we talked about this, you had a lot
Speaker 1: to say about a lack of police use accountability and
Speaker 1: how no one seems to care about that, especially when
Speaker 1: the person is black.
Speaker 2: You've heard the words existent existential threat before. I'd argue,
Speaker 2: over the last two years, the entire world has been
Speaker 2: dealing with an existential threat in this pandemic. That sounds
Speaker 2: like a very dramatic way to describe it, except a
Speaker 2: million people have died. So what else would we call it?
Speaker 2: Except those lives by most stretches of American awareness seem
Speaker 2: very cheap. M Like, people just seem very okay with
Speaker 2: the idea that, in a very very preventable way, we
Speaker 2: lost a million people. Yeah, life in and of itself
Speaker 2: has seemed to become cheap, especially to the haves in
Speaker 2: this have versus have not world that we live in,
Speaker 2: this have versus have not country that we live in. Now,
Speaker 2: understanding that not in all societies, all countries, all city, states, provinces.
Speaker 2: Is it the haves versus the have nots? Right. In
Speaker 2: some places, those two separate groups of people exist in
Speaker 2: a way that is not adversarial. However, in the capitalist
Speaker 2: society that we live in, it is very much adversarial.
Speaker 2: In order for us to remain the haves, you have
Speaker 2: to remain the have nots. We speak about the idea
Speaker 2: that they just throw their hands up and say, oh, man,
Speaker 2: are bad after murdering someone who, even if he was
Speaker 2: the target of the warrant, was not ordered to be executed.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming, but this young man not even a person
Speaker 2: of interest in this no knock surprise, scare you to
Speaker 2: death style raid that happened. Now, you mentioned you know
Speaker 2: someone being a gun person, and gun person sounds like
Speaker 2: gun advocates. Gun you know a person that's going to
Speaker 2: march down the street and and you know, protest our
Speaker 2: Second Amendment.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You later said gun owner, which I like a lot
Speaker 2: more because I fit into that category. I think I've
Speaker 2: said on the show multiple times. If the gun government
Speaker 2: had everybody give us their guns law tomorrow, I'm first
Speaker 2: I'll show everybody how to get there. Y'all't even have
Speaker 2: to use y'all GPS. A little black and white car
Speaker 2: with the phive beta Sigma license played on the back
Speaker 2: of it, and I'll show y'all where to go to
Speaker 2: turn the guns in. The idea for me has not
Speaker 2: always been that that was a way to protect my family.
Speaker 2: But I came home to a man sitting on my
Speaker 2: porch claiming my house. So when you have a pregnant
Speaker 2: woman and a baby and there's a man sitting on
Speaker 2: your porch who may or may not have a gun,
Speaker 2: telling you that your house is his, it puts some
Speaker 2: things in perspective for you, especially at a time in
Speaker 2: our country where people that look like us, and more specifically,
Speaker 2: my children had to become literal targets. A man became
Speaker 2: the president on the back of the idea that he
Speaker 2: would keep people that look like my children out of
Speaker 2: this country. So when put in a position where hey, sir,
Speaker 2: and this was by a law enforcement officer, just the
Speaker 2: heads up, you might be the only person in this
Speaker 2: community that doesn't have a gun, not telling you you
Speaker 2: need to get one, just telling you that something to
Speaker 2: think about. That was a very sobering moment for me,
Speaker 2: especially as this pandemic followed, this new movement of hyper zenophobia,
Speaker 2: hyper racism, hyper bigotry. Then we had a pandemic where
Speaker 2: you couldn't find toilet paper or water at the store.
Speaker 2: All of these factors coming into play once again, this
Speaker 2: have versus have nots thin to be viewed as the
Speaker 2: have who doesn't have a gun surrounded by have nots
Speaker 2: that do. It changes the way you think about things
Speaker 2: a little bit. But once again, it does not make
Speaker 2: me a gun person, just a gun owner.
Speaker 1: Well, it's necessary, I think, and it's it gives a
Speaker 1: voice to this scenario. It's it's, you know, for better
Speaker 1: or worse. There is a second Amendment right, you know
Speaker 1: in this country, and people have the right to exercise that.
Speaker 2: Do they give to them?
Speaker 1: Sega? Do they? Though we'll say it's not equally afforded socially,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Right, because given the scenario that you mentioned, right, you
Speaker 2: said you know that a person would be on edge.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be on edge to be asleep
Speaker 2: and someone's your door down screaming. I don't care what
Speaker 2: they're screaming. You should not be expected to comprehend and
Speaker 2: process and be in right mind awaken out of your
Speaker 2: sleep by men kicking your door in bearing.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's that's that's exactly where I was going with,
Speaker 4: you're a terrified human being, whether you're on edge or not.
Speaker 4: Even if you're a sound of mine and a happy
Speaker 4: home with a happy family, and you know all as well,
Speaker 4: that scenario should be terrifying.
Speaker 1: You know, watch this. On my other show That I Do,
Speaker 1: I did an episode where I talked about no knock warrants,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're talking about here. That's what happened
Speaker 1: with the mere lock. The police used a no knock warrant.
Speaker 1: Basically they kicked in the door and then announced their presence.
Speaker 1: There was another one where they went to the wrong
Speaker 1: house and in that situation, of course everything bad that
Speaker 1: could possibly go wrong went wrong with that and it
Speaker 1: was in the wrong house. But the fact that there's
Speaker 1: no accountability in situations like that, like you can just
Speaker 1: can just make mistakes and everybody's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the price we pray pay as a society. It's
Speaker 1: just collateral damage. And that's the part that feels sort
Speaker 1: of unfair. You know, I think you hit the nail
Speaker 1: on the head when you said that the price of
Speaker 1: life is cheap because these things don't seem to change.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that a mere lock was not even a
Speaker 1: person of interest. He wasn't named in the warrant. They
Speaker 1: didn't even know he's going to be there. He just
Speaker 1: happened to be there. The second, the Second Amendment legally
Speaker 1: affords him the right to bear arms same as any
Speaker 1: other citizen of this.
Speaker 2: Country, except if the police kick your door in to
Speaker 2: murder you. Yeah, now, you sam this, You're not allowed
Speaker 2: to bear arms to the fact that you have a
Speaker 2: gun as a justification for murdering you for no reason.
Speaker 1: And there's the right is there? What kind of right
Speaker 1: is that? Yeah? Absolutely, now, But now you said something
Speaker 1: a while ago. You said that.
Speaker 3: In the.
Speaker 1: When the police end up taking the life of a person,
Speaker 1: it's very different than when a regular person does. You know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned like manslaughter. You know, if I accidentally do
Speaker 1: something and it causes someone to lose their life, I
Speaker 1: still have to bear the responsibility. It might not be
Speaker 1: a murder charge. There was no intention there, but there
Speaker 1: was a loss of life. Someone has to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Someone has to repay that debt to society. Someone has
Speaker 1: to be held accountable, whatever the case is. You said
Speaker 1: this to me, you that was a brilliant point you
Speaker 1: made in this case, and in lots of police cases,
Speaker 1: the police can just make mistakes with no accountability. I
Speaker 1: do want to read this, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: get back to police accountability. But let me breathe some
Speaker 1: life into this. So quote a mere Lock's life matter
Speaker 1: end quote. Ellison and Freeman said in a statement. Quote
Speaker 1: he should be alive today and his death is a strategy.
Speaker 1: End quote. Lock a twenty two old black man, of course,
Speaker 1: shot and killed as the swat team executed a warrant
Speaker 1: related to a homicide investigation in neighboring Saint Paul. He
Speaker 1: was shot in the face, chest, and shoulder. Shepherd a
Speaker 1: Gray's round to the wrist. Usually when people are shot
Speaker 1: in the wrists because they're trying to like protect themselves
Speaker 1: or like put their hands up or something. It was
Speaker 1: later pronounced dead at the hospitals. Not clear from the
Speaker 1: initial video if his gun was pointed at officers or
Speaker 1: whether anyone ordered him to drop it before he was shot.
Speaker 1: The incident lasted less than ten seconds. Okay, I wanted
Speaker 1: to finish that just so there was said again that
Speaker 1: comes from the Washington Post. Now, this is the same
Speaker 1: sort of tactic that ended the life of Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 1: We've talked about her on the show too. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's another her big name. We shouted that name alongside
Speaker 1: George Floyd when we were protesting in twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: no knock warrant where she didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with anything, she wasn't involved in anything whatever. And then
Speaker 1: now she's dead. Her mother had to bury her, and
Speaker 1: then everybody's looking at all. The police at least are
Speaker 1: looking around like, well, shoot, I mean, you know it
Speaker 1: ain't our fault, you know, And then all the other
Speaker 1: police in the country are like, yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes sense, sure, sad, but you know, it's cost of
Speaker 1: doing business. And we're here to say that cost is
Speaker 1: too high. That's too high a price, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean some things you just can't make mistakes on. If
Speaker 1: you get a weapon, if you get a tool case,
Speaker 1: only purpose is to end to life. You don't get
Speaker 1: to make mistakes. You got to be very sure about that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no room for ambiguity. And if you're
Speaker 1: afraid that someone's going to take your life, perhaps that's
Speaker 1: the wrong job for you. You know, I'll say it again
Speaker 1: now this is the part that I think you'll flip
Speaker 1: out on que. I don't like to just have bad news.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the show every week, you know,
Speaker 1: I try to bring some levity or some positivity or
Speaker 1: silver lining to just about everything when I can. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, well, you know, sometimes there
Speaker 1: are charges brought forth and then sometimes people are actually convicted,
Speaker 1: you know, and so you know, we're getting there, We're
Speaker 1: moving in the right direction. That's really what I wanted
Speaker 1: to say. I'm honest, my hand to god. My friend
Speaker 1: Margaret was with me when we were putting the show together,
Speaker 1: and she was kind of giving us some feedback on
Speaker 1: some topics that we needed to talk about this week,
Speaker 1: and we collectively discovered in researching the amount of police
Speaker 1: officers that were actually convicted of crimes, we found that
Speaker 1: there were four right who were convicted of you know,
Speaker 1: like killing a person. And I wanted to use Derek Shovin,
Speaker 1: the person who knelt on the neck of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: and what other other names I could find, But the
Speaker 1: only other name that I could find where a black
Speaker 1: person was involved since twenty twenty was Kim Potter, right.
Speaker 1: And Kim Potter, if you remember, is the woman who
Speaker 1: killed Dante Wright. She yelled out taser, taser, taser, and
Speaker 1: then shot her gun and it killed Dante Wright. He
Speaker 1: was trying to like escape from a traffic stop, which
Speaker 1: again isn't a crime. No one that says that to
Speaker 1: me will get any more of an audience from me.
Speaker 1: Everything runs when it's scared. Deer run when there's cats
Speaker 1: run when they're scared. Anything with a nervous system will
Speaker 1: run when it's scared or fight. Those are two things
Speaker 1: that are any creature created by our same creator, whoever
Speaker 1: you believe that creator to be, has endowed us all
Speaker 1: with that same operating system. So that is not a crime, right.
Speaker 1: That is a higher function is it is a limbic function,
Speaker 1: more than your thinking brain, That is your lizard brain.
Speaker 1: I need to survive, however you feel what survival is,
Speaker 1: It's up to you. But that people do that, and
Speaker 1: so do other creatures on this planet. But I want
Speaker 1: to say this. I found four names since twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Guess how many I found overall, going back to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. That's as far back as it goes. Guess
Speaker 1: how many names I found too? Help me out? How
Speaker 1: many names do you think I found?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to be exponentially more than that. Right,
Speaker 2: if you're using the same math this amount of time,
Speaker 2: by this many people, it ain't gonna be that number.
Speaker 1: Thirty eight entries. And admittedly I was on Wikipedia. I
Speaker 1: don't ever claim that Wikipedia is the strongest, you know,
Speaker 1: most thorough source, but you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: it gives us a guidepost, a guideline of what we're
Speaker 1: really looking at. Thirty eight entries on the Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: going all the way back to nineteen sixty five of
Speaker 1: US law enforcement officers convicted for an on duty killing
Speaker 1: in the United States. A lot of those were white victims,
Speaker 1: white people that lost their lives. Not a lot of
Speaker 1: them were black. And that's our reality, and that's why
Speaker 1: we had to talk about this today. And I know
Speaker 1: we got like thirty seconds left, so cute your final
Speaker 1: thoughts before we move on.
Speaker 2: Be them black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander. They were people,
Speaker 2: Their lives didn't mean nothing. And for a much larger
Speaker 2: number than thirty eight was killed murdered. I don't care
Speaker 2: what the conviction was called. These people's lives cease to
Speaker 2: exist at the hands of the people paid to protect them,
Speaker 2: and when those mistakes are made far too often, they
Speaker 2: get to throw up their hand and just say our bag.
Speaker 2: And that is the sentence. This mistake happens with impunity.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll leave you with this in qualified immunity. Stick
Speaker 1: around your radios. We're coming back with more cipy cipher
Speaker 1: right after this