0:02

This is the Black Information Network Daily Podcast,

0:05

and I'm your host, ramses Jah. And

0:07

sometimes the amount of stories that make their way to us

0:10

means that we simply can't cover everything that comes

0:12

our way. But from time to time, a story

0:14

just stays with me and Bill compelled to share

0:16

it with you and give you my thoughts.

0:19

And now one more thing.

0:25

Now, whenever I have to talk about police

0:27

shooting, there's always a group of

0:29

people who come to the table

0:31

with that if then the police

0:33

at all cost energy, they

0:36

should have complied, the

0:38

police, feared for their lives, on

0:40

and on and on, and often enough

0:43

they'll blame the victim the tragedy

0:46

and will not scrutinize the police whatsoever.

0:49

Well, I got something for those people today. It

0:51

comes from TMZ Florida Deputy

0:54

mistakes acorn falling or

0:56

shots fired overreaction caught

0:58

on BODYCM in shut and acorn

1:01

fell on top of a police car and

1:03

an officer jumps over, pulls

1:06

out his gun and empties in an entire clip on

1:08

his own car while there's a

1:10

handcuffed black man in the backseat. So

1:17

we're gonna break this down. We gotta break it down all

1:19

the way. I'm talking mc

1:22

hammer break it down. So

1:24

we're gonna discuss what

1:26

police are afraid of, We're

1:28

gonna discuss why they are afraid,

1:31

and we're going to discuss who suffers

1:34

because of police fear. And

1:37

then, because it's not all doom and gloom,

1:39

we're going to ponder three potential

1:42

solutions for this problem

1:45

that we find ourselves brushing

1:48

up against so regularly. So

1:51

I'll share again from Timzy, a Florida

1:53

sheriff. Sheriff's deputy is looking more

1:55

like a cartoonish cop from Reno nine

1:57

one one on bodycam footage of him mistaken

1:59

and acorn hitting his patrol car for

2:02

bullets, prompting him to open

2:04

fire on the vehicle. The

2:06

video, which was just released, shows

2:09

Okaloosa County Deputy Jesse Hernandez

2:12

on the job detaining a guy

2:14

back in November for allegedly

2:16

sending threatening texts.

2:20

Okay, he was allegedly sending

2:22

threatening texts. Hernandez

2:25

and his partner cuffed the man and put him

2:27

in the back of their patrol car. Problem

2:30

solved. All seemed to be

2:33

going well until Hernandez appeared to

2:35

hear what he perceived as a shot being

2:37

fired, which catapulted him

2:39

into a frantic drop and roll as

2:41

he drew his weapon and started firing

2:44

multiple shots at his car. Hernandez

2:48

seems to unload his entire clip.

2:50

And remember, twenty two year old Marquise

2:53

Jackson was helplessly sitting inside

2:55

the patrol car, unarmed and

2:57

completely restrained. Yet Hernandez

3:00

clearly thought Jackson had shot at him from

3:02

inside the car. Amid

3:05

the panic, his partner, who didn't hear anything

3:07

like a gunshot, seemed confused as

3:09

to why he was freaking out, and also

3:11

started shooting at their car.

3:17

Now I've seen the video, this

3:21

officer was clearly

3:24

afraid. I won't take that from him.

3:27

He kept saying that he was hit, that

3:30

he was hit in his vest. He

3:32

was hiding behind the other vehicles.

3:37

You know, sometimes we talk about, okay, this is

3:39

racist behavior, and other times we talk

3:41

about, okay, these police are afraid. Neither

3:44

one of these has

3:46

a place in policing.

3:51

But today we're not talking about racism.

3:53

We're talking about fear. As

3:55

I mentioned, we're going to break it down, So let's start.

3:58

What are they afraid

4:00

of? Well, this

4:04

is interesting in that it shows

4:06

exactly how scared

4:09

the police are We

4:12

know, of course, that police are scared of wallets,

4:15

keys, cell phones, toys,

4:19

literally nothing walking

4:22

toward them, running away

4:24

from them, children,

4:28

elderly people, folks

4:30

who call them in a crisis,

4:34

Folks who didn't call them are just nearby,

4:38

and now acorns too.

4:45

And it's so strange

4:48

to hear constantly our

4:50

brave men and women who

4:53

put it all on the line, who

4:56

protect us, our first responders, the

4:59

thin blue line.

5:04

How can they be brave when

5:07

they are so given to fear. But

5:12

if that was the whole story, I don't know that that would

5:14

be enough. I have lived

5:18

so much of my life

5:22

where I've been able to experience

5:26

so many good things, But

5:29

it wasn't always that way. I

5:32

spent my youth in

5:35

considered privation, and

5:41

in my

5:44

youth in Compton,

5:46

California, we were

5:49

very much afraid of the police. But we were also

5:51

afraid of gangs. We were afraid of lots

5:53

of things. So I know that fear

5:57

is part and parcel to the human experience.

5:59

I was not a big fan of dogs

6:01

for a long time. It's still not, if

6:03

I'm being honest. So

6:06

a person just being afraid isn't

6:08

the whole story. Let's talk about

6:10

why a person might be

6:12

afraid, specifically police.

6:17

Now I'm going to share

6:19

something with you because I believe

6:21

it matters in this moment. It

6:23

may not be your truth, but I really do want

6:25

you to think about this. Once upon a time I

6:29

was with a business partner of mine,

6:33

and this would have been

6:36

let's call it about four years ago now,

6:42

and there was some goings on at

6:45

the time. People were panicking.

6:47

There was just a lot of confusion in the air. And

6:52

you know, my business partner is a family man,

6:55

and he was worried about his capacity

6:58

to protect his family, his children, his wife, et

7:00

cetera. And

7:02

he was thinking about getting a gun, and

7:07

he and I had a conversation about it. He

7:10

told me that he ultimately decided

7:13

not to get a gun, and

7:16

his reason was because he said, guns

7:19

bring about gun energy.

7:24

And I thought about that because

7:28

a lot of times when

7:31

people get shot, they also

7:33

have a gun. A

7:35

lot of times when people shoot, they're

7:37

shooting at people who also have a gun. It's

7:40

not across the board how it works,

7:43

but it's frequent enough

7:45

for him to have noticed that. And

7:49

so his position was, although

7:51

I could see the security that this could provide,

7:54

I'm not willing to take

7:56

on the additional energy

8:00

that it brings to the equation element

8:02

that it brings to the equation guns

8:06

bring about gun the energy And

8:09

so how does this factor into the police.

8:12

Well, having a gun on

8:14

your person makes you judge,

8:16

jury and executioner

8:19

in a split second. And

8:23

when it comes to black folks and brown

8:25

folks often enough, when it comes to

8:27

us, we've seen

8:30

how bad they are at the

8:32

first two judge and jury,

8:34

and we've seen how good they are at being the executioner.

8:40

When the police are scared, people

8:43

die because

8:45

they have a gun on them, and

8:47

they're justified. And indeed they are trained

8:50

to respond to tense

8:52

situations. Right.

8:55

But again, to a man with a

8:57

hammer, the world is a nail,

8:59

all the world to kneil or something

9:01

like that. You get what I mean. So,

9:05

in a tense situation, someone like me with

9:07

no gun, I might be inclined to hide

9:10

or run away or something like that. Everybody

9:13

lives if

9:17

you have a gun on your person. If

9:19

you get afraid of again, keys,

9:22

toys, literally nothing with

9:26

someone walking towards you, someone walking away,

9:30

and you're taught, hey, I got to pull out the gun, take

9:33

it off, safety and fire in one motion, people

9:36

will lose their lives, and

9:39

you got to get that right. If people's lives

9:41

are on the line. The only reason we haven't changed

9:43

it is because it disproportionately affects black people.

9:46

And we've been saying this country does not care

9:48

about black people, and

9:52

the non black people and the non brown

9:54

people they can paint

9:56

as the bad guys. Doesn't

9:59

have happen as frequently, so not

10:03

nearly as much to see here. You

10:06

know, the worst part about it is the police are not held accountable.

10:10

I mean, you could probably cite a couple of instances,

10:13

but I've actually reviewed this data. Overwhelmingly,

10:17

the police go

10:20

back to work, keep

10:23

the job, not even a slap

10:25

on the wrist. Sometimes you get a slap on the risk. And

10:27

of course, very infrequently you'll get a conviction

10:30

for criminal negligence and

10:33

murder, you know, a homicide, but it's

10:37

very rare, especially when the

10:40

victim was black. And

10:43

this isn't just again

10:45

police shootings. We

10:47

could talk about police

10:50

violence, police

10:53

brutality, police misconduct,

10:55

et cetera. They're

10:57

not held accountable, and

11:01

of course they got each other's back. They covered up nice

11:03

and neat, so a lot of it. We don't even

11:05

understand. We don't even get

11:07

to understand, we don't see it. They'll cover their body, cams

11:10

up, they'll lie for each other, they'll you

11:12

know, And it's the rare instances where

11:14

they miss they miss something,

11:17

or they make a mistake, or someone

11:19

else was recording or whatever, those rare instances

11:22

when they get outed that we actually find

11:24

out that they were lying. And it leaves

11:26

us to wonder how often they

11:28

have concealed the truth from us, the

11:31

honorable brave men and women

11:33

in uniform, the first responders. Yeah,

11:35

okay,

11:39

so let's move on to the last

11:41

point. Who suffers because of

11:43

police fear? So

11:46

we have to ask ourselves what

11:49

makes police scared? What

11:53

makes Karen scared? Well,

11:56

Karen's are pretty brave, scared

11:59

of too much. But if they

12:01

choose to play

12:04

the victim, then

12:09

they certainly can convince us that they're scared

12:11

of black men. And

12:14

you know, police often enough, we

12:17

as a population give them that I

12:19

feared from my life. You were

12:21

afraid of the person running away from you. That's

12:25

why you shot him in the back, because you were afraid.

12:28

You didn't notice that he was afraid and running

12:30

away from you, Like the

12:32

logic, the common sense logic doesn't

12:35

add up. We

12:37

will give the police

12:41

every possible shred

12:46

of the optics

12:49

that support their position. So,

12:57

yes, black men suffer,

13:00

Black women suffer, Black children suffer,

13:03

Black neighborhoods suffer. But

13:07

I think that the community

13:10

at large, the population at large, suffers as

13:12

well. You

13:15

know, as we mentioned, the police were just unloading

13:17

clips on a car, and

13:20

those bullets have to land somewhere. They

13:22

don't hit that car, They're going

13:24

to hit somebody's front door down the street, They're going

13:26

to hit you know, there's

13:29

the potential to hit

13:32

other people. And

13:37

indeed, this behavior and

13:40

this framework of policing does

13:42

affect non black and non brown

13:44

people too. It affects

13:46

white folks plenty. Granted

13:50

it's not as prominent, but white people

13:52

suffer because of this. But

13:59

the construct certainly works to

14:02

uphold a system of white supremacy.

14:06

And there

14:09

are not enough white voices in the

14:11

chorus to change anything.

14:15

But make no mistake, the population

14:18

at large suffers as a result of this type

14:20

of police aggressive aggression

14:23

and police response and

14:26

indeed police training. So

14:30

who else suffers? Well, the police's reputation suffers.

14:34

I'm sure you know, police have

14:36

certainly these days, certainly

14:38

post George Floyd, a reputation

14:41

of being sugar happy

14:43

murderers instead of friendly

14:45

neighborhood police officers. And it's not just George

14:47

Floyd. You got to remember, the

14:50

Black Lives Matter movement started in twenty

14:52

twelve with Trayvon Martin. So

14:57

going all the way up, we were why

15:01

all of these police killing and even

15:03

before Trayvon. Treyvon was just when Black

15:06

Lives Matter started, because they were saying,

15:08

look, enough is enough. We're seeing

15:11

this happen over and over and over again. Obama

15:14

was the president, we'd see these police killings, We'd see

15:16

these these instances

15:18

of police brutality. And after years

15:20

of that, then Black

15:22

Lives Matter started with Trayvon Martin,

15:25

and then we saw war years and

15:28

we saw George Floyd. And

15:32

make no mistake, this is going all the way back to

15:34

civil rights and even before, as you

15:36

can probably imagine slave

15:38

patrols. Hopefully that rings a bell. Black

15:43

people have never had a good relationship with the police. Were

15:45

talking about the whole, you

15:47

know, the the overall

15:50

relationship. Certainly there's individuals who could

15:52

sing the praises of the police, but

15:55

as a community now at least have been very

15:57

unkind and unfair to us.

16:01

So the police's

16:03

reputation suffers, which I'd imagine makes

16:05

their job harder to do. And

16:08

all the copaganda in the world is

16:11

not going to fix the real life

16:13

things that we are seeing on social media. I

16:15

saw this video of this police

16:18

officer jump

16:20

and roll, pull out his gun and unload

16:22

a clip on his own police card because he heard

16:24

an acorn hit the hood.

16:28

Cannot convince me with enough copaganda

16:30

that I didn't see. That cannot

16:32

convince me that the police are brave and noble

16:35

and honorable. When I've seen the instances

16:38

of police corruption, I've seen police lying, police

16:40

cover ups. I've seen it. Now,

16:45

I feel like I should share

16:47

more of the story, so

16:50

I'll go back to TMZ. Miraculously, both

16:53

of the officers missed jackson

16:56

backseat, but Hernandez's body

16:58

cam shows the complete overreaction,

17:02

which was the finding of the Sheriff's office investigation.

17:05

Localoosa's officials determined

17:07

his use of deadly force wasn't reasonable

17:10

and his partner got a pass since she

17:12

only fired based on his actions, which

17:15

again, what was she shooting at?

17:22

What? Remember? I said it could affect the

17:24

community to what

17:28

she's just shooting in the general direction that

17:30

he's shooting in and bullets

17:33

in lives. She's

17:35

just dumping a clip because

17:38

he's dumping a clip. And

17:42

this is how this works. As you know, this is why we get

17:44

these numbers of oh nearly one hundred shots

17:46

fired at the suspects, because all of them are

17:48

all afraid, and they're all shooting in the same general

17:51

direction. One person

17:53

could have seen one thing in their

17:55

imagination. Perhaps

18:03

let me finish officer and ends resigned

18:05

and he was not criminally charged. So

18:08

let's move on to the solution. I don't want to be long

18:10

winded here, some

18:13

proposed solutions for you to ponder. I know you won't

18:16

love all three of them like I do, but maybe

18:18

one of them might take root,

18:20

and maybe you'll take this into your community

18:23

or to your elected officials.

18:25

Just bear it in mind, you know, for when the

18:27

conversation comes up and you can influence someone

18:30

else who may take this action. But number

18:33

one is, we have

18:35

patrol cops travel in pairs,

18:38

and we keep two guns in the trunk, and

18:41

we keep one officer as often as possible

18:44

in or around the car as

18:46

backup. And

18:53

this eliminates this

18:56

strange phenomenon

18:59

that we're dealing with. And

19:01

as a proof of concept, check out a place called New

19:03

Zealand. You know, they have guns there and

19:06

they keep the guns in the trunk of the car because they

19:08

don't live their lives as though they're going to have to

19:10

kill someone every single

19:12

moment that they are on the job.

19:17

Indeed, it is a very small part of the job

19:19

that they have to be prepared for sure,

19:22

but they don't live their whole

19:24

life like I might have to kill someone in the

19:26

next ten seconds. Let me make sure I have my

19:28

gun with me. Keep

19:30

it in the back of the car, like you keep a jack from

19:32

when you have a flat tire. If

19:36

I need it, I'll go get it. And

19:39

of course there's the argument, well what if it's too late,

19:41

what if they got the drop on you? What? You know what I mean, that's

19:45

a part of the risk of the job. Okay,

19:50

And remember what I said about guns bringing about

19:52

gun energy. If you know the

19:54

consequences of what of taking

19:57

the life of an officer in many

19:59

places, they'll give you electric chair for that. You

20:01

know the consequences, and you have a gun,

20:04

you may not kill. The officer may

20:07

show, hey, I have a gun and I'm leaving, and

20:09

if you're going to try to engage me, first you have to go back

20:12

to your car, and then you have to chase me. But

20:16

unless we're willing to give this a chance,

20:20

we are forcing ourselves

20:22

to live with this reality, with these

20:25

police overreactions and indeed

20:27

these deaths, because ultimately

20:30

these deaths are on us. Sure they're on the police,

20:32

but make no mistake,

20:34

we control more than

20:36

we give ourselves credit for. They

20:39

have to listen. We are the population that

20:41

they serve. But

20:43

let's say you don't like that one. I love it, but

20:46

let's say you don't like it. It's been

20:48

discussed that police should have insurance

20:51

like doctors have insurance, and

20:54

if the officers are ultimately unensurable,

20:57

then they cannot be employed. So

21:02

officer, it's a job.

21:04

Take out an insurance policy, and

21:07

if there's any police misconduct

21:09

or anything like that, their premiums

21:11

go higher, and either they will

21:14

not be able to afford them, or they will be uninsurable

21:16

and therefore unemployable. In that way,

21:19

we have a system in place that keeps

21:21

taxpayers from having to pay for lawsuits

21:25

because every time the police have to settle a lawsuit,

21:27

which there is a lawsuit potentially pending

21:29

for this very scenario we're

21:31

discussing today over an acorn, We're

21:34

going to have to pay for that. If

21:37

this young man needs therapy whatever,

21:40

we're paying for that, not the officers. But

21:43

if we adopt a system where officers

21:45

need to carry insurance, then the officers

21:49

insurance will pay

21:51

for the lawsuits, not the taxpayers. And

21:54

if the officer ultimately becomes uninsurable,

21:57

we don't have to worry about transfers. We don't have to worry

21:59

about these bad apples corrupting,

22:02

you know, police forces,

22:05

and then moving and corrupting other police

22:07

forces. So I'm going to think about Finally,

22:12

this is one that I'm a big fan of. If

22:15

you listen to the show long enough, you certainly know that defunding

22:18

the police better

22:20

said reallocating of police resources

22:23

to actually impact crime rates.

22:28

There's this popular narrative that police need

22:30

better training, and

22:32

there's less popular less

22:35

popularized study results

22:41

that show that police training doesn't

22:43

work makes

22:45

a small impact for

22:48

a couple of weeks maybe, and

22:50

then the officers go back to

22:52

doing what they were doing all along. Police

22:56

training doesn't work. Daycare

22:59

program work. Funnily

23:01

enough, there's a direct correlation

23:05

between daycare programs,

23:07

access to free daycare, and crime

23:10

rates. If

23:12

you want to impact crime rates, don't

23:14

put the money into more police training, because

23:17

it's been statistically proven that it doesn't

23:19

work. I've discussed that on this show.

23:21

I've dicussed that on Civic Cipher. There's

23:23

data. You don't even have to take my word for it. Just look

23:25

it up. Does police training work?

23:28

Simple Google search, scroll

23:30

down far enough and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about

23:33

data Scholarly, I

23:35

forget the name of the university at the moment,

23:38

but I know that there

23:40

was one prestigious university that did

23:43

their own thorough study of that. And

23:45

then, as I mentioned, daycare programs

23:47

other programs. When you eliminate

23:50

poverty, you

23:52

eliminate barriers to economic

23:56

prosperity, you eliminate

23:59

you know, or you erode crime

24:02

rates. So statistically speaking,

24:04

defunding the police will have a

24:07

more profound impact on

24:11

crime rates than increase

24:14

police training, hiring more police, on

24:16

and on. It doesn't do

24:19

anything for anybody wealth

24:21

shape's outcomes. So

24:26

feel free to disagree with me. I know you

24:28

will as

24:31

always, you can hit me using the red microphone

24:33

talkback feature on iHeartRadio app, or you can hit me

24:35

at Ramsy's job. Let's talk about it an antil we

24:37

Do piece.

24:39

This has been a production of the Black Information Network.

24:41

Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson. Have

24:44

some thoughts you'd like to share? Use the red microphone

24:46

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24:48

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24:52

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