This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 11, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
A group of over a dozen lawmakers is demanding the “immediate” release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil after his likely illegal arrest and threat of deportation by the Trump administration this week.
The House members, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), raised alarm about the threat to free speech raised by Khalil’s detention, saying that his arrest violates immigration laws and effectively criminalizes protest.
“Mahmoud Khalil must be freed from DHS custody immediately. He is a political prisoner, wrongfully and unlawfully detained, who deserves to be at home in New York preparing for the birth of his first child,” the lawmakers wrote. “Universities throughout the country must protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression, and [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)] must immediately refrain from any further illegal arrests targeting constitutionally protected speech and activity.”
The arrest violated Khalil’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and due process, the lawmakers said.
The letter was signed by 14 Democrats in the House: Representatives André Carson (Indiana) Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Al Green (Texas), Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Jim McGovern (Massachusetts), Gwen Moore (Wisconsin), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Lateefah Simon (California), Delia Ramirez (Illinois), Nydia Velázquez (New York) and Nikema Williams (Georgia).
The case has been met with silence by other Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the state where the arrest happened and is a fervent Zionist. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also from New York, has also refused to denounce the arrest.
On Saturday night, DHS officers detained Khalil at his home in Columbia University student housing, citing his role in organizing pro-Palestine protests at the university last year. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him for his activism — which experts say is illegal and a major overstep of the administration’s power.
Federal agents seemingly covertly transported Khalil, who is Palestinian, to a private jail in Louisiana without telling his wife, who is eight months pregnant. On Monday night, a federal judge temporarily blocked the planned deportation of the activist, pending more legal action.
“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the lawmakers said. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”
“We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country,” they went on. “Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans.”
Khalil’s detention has been widely denounced by advocates for Palestinian rights and civil society organizations.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American. The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes,” said Ben Wizner, who heads the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “To be clear: The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”
The fingerprints of antebellum slavery can be found all over the modern prison system, from who is incarcerated to the methods used behind bars to repress prisoners. Like its antecedent system, mass incarceration also fulfills the function of boosting corporate profits to the tune of $80 billion a year. Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s efforts to combat prison profiteering across the country, and expose the corporations plundering incarcerated people and their communities to line the pockets of their shareholders.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
In the heart of downtown Baltimore lies the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, commonly called Diagnostic, which is a place where people convicted of a crime go to be classified to a particular prison based on their security level.
December the 5th, 2019, I was released from Reception Diagnostic Classification Center after serving 48 years. I was given $50, no identification, and no way of knowing how to get home. I’m not from Baltimore, I’m from Washington, D.C, and I heard my family member called me. I realized then that I had a way home. This is the state that most people are released from the Maryland system, and prison in general. No source of income, no identification, and no place to stay. So I had a few items, so I had to go get my stuff from my apartment. So they let everybody else look… Everybody came out the back, but they let them go “pew, pew, pew.” So most of them dudes wasn’t long term, they was familiar with the layout, right? Me, I know… I’m familiar with Green Mountain Madison, right? Me and another dude stand down here on the corner. I’m like, “Man…”, because I ain’t know my people. I ain’t know my people here was going to be, I ain’t know if they had got… Because they wouldn’t let me make no collect calls. Right? So every time, and I had money.
Speaker 2:
You’ve been released, and they…
Mansa Musa:
I had money on the books. I’m serious. They wouldn’t even let you make the call. So I kept on dialing, and it would go to a certain point, then it cut off, but my sister say, “Look, come on. Something going on. Let’s go down there.” This is what this show is about. This show is about giving a voice to the voiceless.
As we venture into the segments and the stories that we’ll be telling, we want people to take away from these stories, the human side of these stories. More than anything else, this is not about politics. This is about humanity. We’re trying to address the concerns of people, their families, their friends, and their loved ones that’s affected by the prison industrial complex, be it labor, be it medical, be it the food, be it being released with all identification and just a minimal amount of money to get home, and you don’t even live in the city that they released you from. Rattling the Bars will be covering a multitude of subject matters and a multitude of issues, and we ask that you stay tuned and tune in.
Welcome to this episode of Rattling the Bars. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk to Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises. Worth Rises is an organization whose mission is to complete abolishment of the prison industrial complex as it now exists, they have a strategy where they identify major corporations that are investing in or exploiting labor out of the prison industrial complex. You’ll be astonished at how many corporations have their tentacles in the prison industrial complex and the amount of money they’re sucking out of it in astronomical numbers, but first, we’ll go to this interview I had with Lonnell Sligh, who was on one of our previous episodes to talk about the impact the prison industrial complex is having on the communities at large.
We’re in East Baltimore at Latrobe Projects talking about how, in the shadow of the Maryland Penitentiary and Diagnostic, the housing projects are affected by the existence of these prisons. Many women walk out of their houses in Latrobe into the Maryland prison system, and why? Because of the devastation of the social conditions that exist in this particular community.
Now, my interview with Lonnell Sligh.
When I first got out, I never thought I’d be out and not be in the van. These vans right here, this is all our modes of transportation, three-piece shackle, and that’s how we’re being transported.
Lonnell Sligh:
What we said about the gloom and doom, one of the first things that I noticed when I got to MRDC was the projects and the kids playing outside of their area. Looking out and seeing the kids, and they looking up at this place. So I’m making a connection of that pipeline, because this all they see.
Mansa Musa:
Then when… That’s what he’s seen. What I seen when I came here, this building wasn’t right here. This was a parking lot. This building wasn’t right here. This was a lot. So the kids had a clean shot to the Maryland Penitentiary. So every kid that lived in these projects right here, this is what they seen. They see barbed wire on the Maryland Penitentiary. Then they seen another big building come up, there’s another prison. Then they seen this is a prison, and outside their front door, what they see when they come out their house is barbed wire and a wall.
Lonnell Sligh:
So it might be ill concealed to us, but for them and their mindset, this was a perfect, “Oh man, we got our clients and our…”, what’d you call it when you check in the hotel? Our patrons, you know what I mean, right here, because they got their industry, they got their pipeline, they got everything that they designed this to be.
Mansa Musa:
As you can see from my conversation with Lonnell Sligh, the prison industrial complex has a devastating impact on everyone. The men and women that’s in prison, the communities that they come from, the infrastructure they build on, the entire system has devastating consequences that should be recognized and addressed.
Some communities that they’re building, it’s the major source of their industry, like in Attica and Rikers, Hagerstown, Maryland, Louisiana, but some communities that they’re building, they’re building it for one reason only. To occupy the psyche of the community. So people walk out of their houses every day, this is all they see, and ultimately they find themselves in these spaces, but now you are going to see who’s behind this, the corporations that’s responsible for this exploitation.
I have the list right here. The Prison Industrial Corporation Database put out by Worth Rises. Super Ammo, Visa Outdoors, Warburg Pincus, 3M, T-Mobile, Tyson Foods, SS Corporation, Advanced Technology Groups, major corporations that are using prison labor to exploit it, profit, and profit alone, with no regard to human life.
Now my conversation with Bianca Tylek.
Yeah, we’re talking to Bianca Tylek from Worth Rises. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Bianca, and how you got in this space.
Bianca Tylek:
Sure. Thank you so much again, Mansa, for having me, and so great to meet you, and I’m glad that you’re home. My name is Bianca Tylek, as you noted. I am based in the New York area, and I’m the executive director and founder of Worth Rises. We are a non-profit criminal justice advocacy organization that works nationally to end the exploitation of people who are incarcerated and their loved ones and dismantle the prison industry.
I came to this where I founded the organization, it’s seven and a half years ago now, and we’ve been doing a tremendous amount of work all over the country towards our mission, and I come to this work through a few different sort of paths. I think most recently, I’m an attorney. Before that, I was on Wall Street, and so I actually worked in the investment banking and corporate sector, and then I think previously, what really makes me passionate about this issue is that I was myself an adjudicated youth and had others in my life who had experienced incarceration and were touched by this system, and all of those sorts of experiences collectively have brought me to this point.
Mansa Musa:
Worth Rises is dedicated to dismantling the prison industrial complex, it’s an abolition group, and as I listened to some of the things that you talked about, I thought about the war in Vietnam when the North first became known for their ferocious fighting where they had what they call a Tet offense, and the Tet offense was like when they had their initial salvo of repelling or resisting the United States and South Vietnam, and I thought when I heard some of the ways you was attacking this industry, that came to mind how systematic your group is in terms of dismantling, as you say, dismantling this group.
Bianca Tylek:
Yeah, I appreciate that so much. So I would say we have a three part strategy that we deploy at the organization, and it is narrative policy and corporate, and so each one of those tentacles is sort of a part of how we approach the industry, and specifically not so much guilting it as much as demanding and forcing it and pressuring it into better getting out or not exploiting our people in the same way, and so just to expand a little bit on each, our narrative work is really designed to help educate the populace, the American people and beyond on the harms that the prison industry is committing.
I think in particular, we know that the prison industry is an $80 billion industry, more than that these days, and a lot of people just simply do not know and are not familiar with it. Folks who have done time, like yourself, are familiar with, for example, the cost of phone calls in prison, but a lot of people walking the streets are not. They don’t know that phone calls are so expensive, they don’t know the cost of commissary, they don’t know that people pay medical co-pays, they don’t know that people are making pennies, if anything, an hour for work, and I think often, when we talk about these things, people are pretty surprised, because all of the modern media has people convinced that you go to prison, you get everything you need, and it’s some kind of luxurious, pushy place to be.
So a lot of our role is to simply… Through our narrative work, what we’re trying to do is get people to understand the reality of prisons and jails, both what the experiences are of people there, the exploitation that happens, and then importantly, at the hands of who, and that’s the industry, and so we do everything from published research to storytelling and beyond to help people really understand what the prison industry is.
So that’s sort of the narrative work, and that really builds the foundation, because we need informed people in order to be able to cultivate their outrage into action, and that leads us to our policy work. Our policy work is really designed to undermine the business model of the industry, and so we work to change legislation and regulations that would sort of hinder the ability of these companies to continue to exploit people in the exact same ways, and so for example, what that means is when it comes to prison telecom, where we know that one in three families with an incarcerated loved one is going into debt over the simple cost of calls and visits, and the large majority of those folks are women who are paying for these calls.
So what we have done in the last about five or so years is we have started a sort of movement to make communication free in prisons and jails. We passed the first piece of legislation in New York City in 2018 to do so, and since then, we’ve been able to pass legislation at the county, state and federal level to make communication entirely free, and today, over 300,000 people who are incarcerated have access to free phone calls, and so that changes the business model and revolutionizes the space entirely.
We also managed to pass game-changing regulations at the FCC to curb the exorbitant charging of phone calls in those places that still do charge for calls, and then finally, in our corporate side of the work, we sort of harness the work we do on the narrative side and the policy side to bring these corporations that are exploiting our communities to account, and really, in some cases, shut them down.
So we have companies that we’ve gone… We’ve had investors divest, we have removed their executives from the boards of cultural institutions like museums. We have blocked mergers and acquisitions. I mean, we’ve done all types of corporate strategies when it comes to those who are exploiting folks who are incarcerated and their loved ones, and we’re bringing some of them to their knees fully to bankruptcy, and so that is the kind of work that we do and really stress that it’s time that this system stopped responding to the profit motives of a few.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s throw in this examination because in California, they was trying to get a proclamation passed about the 13th Amendment, because the genesis of all this has come out of the legalization of slavery under the 13th Amendment. I think that a lot of what we see in concerns of us versus the interest of them comes out of the fact that they can, under… Anyone duly convicted of a crime can be utilized for slave labor, and in California, they voted against this proclamation. How do you see… Is this a correlation between the 13th Amendment prison industrial complex, and if it is and you recognize that, how do y’all look at that? Because this industry is always fluid, it’s continuing to grow, it’s got multiple tentacles, and it’s all designed around profit. So when it comes to profit and capitalism, profit is profit is profit. That’s their philosophy. So however they get it, whoever they get it from, but in this case, they got a cash cow. Talk about that.
Bianca Tylek:
So we actually run a national campaign called End the Exception campaign that is specifically about the 13th Amendment. So we’re very close to this particular part of the fight. So if you visit EndTheException.com, you’ll see that entire campaign, which is, like I said, a campaign to pass a new constitutional amendment that would end the exception in the 13th Amendment.
While we run the national campaign at the federal level, which has over 90 national partners, a lot of states are taking on similar causes, including the state of California, and so California was one of several states in the last five or six years that brought a state constitutional amendment through a ballot initiative. Eight others have won in the last five years. So I do think despite the fact, and I have thoughts about California, despite the fact that California lost, other states like Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon, Vermont have all passed, and so I remained hopeful that it’s something that we can do both at the state level, but also at the federal level.
I think unfortunately, California lost, I think for various reasons, both the moment in time in California. There was also Proposition 36, which was expanding sort of tough on crime policies, and I think Prop 6 got a little bit mixed up into that. The language of Prop 6 was really not particularly helpful, and I think some of the local efforts also needed to coalesce and have those things happen, maybe, and hopefully it would’ve passed. It lost by a relatively small margin, albeit it did lose.
So I think your question, though, about how do these things relate, I mean, I guess what I’d say which degree with you, which is that I think that exploitation in prisons and jails is absolutely rooted in antebellum slavery, right? I think that what the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment in large part did was certainly, obviously, free a lot of people, but it also transitioned slavery behind walls, where you can’t see it, and then our carceral system, because in the years that followed during reconstruction, the prison population went from being 99% white to being 99% black. Many of the practices of antebellum slavery were shifted into the carceral setting and became normalized in that setting and continue today.
I tell people all the time, when you think of solitary confinement, which, as you know, is often referred to as the hole or the box, those are terms that come from antebellum slavery. When enslaved people disobeyed, their enslavers, they would be put in what was called the hot box or a literal hole.
Mansa Musa:
A hole, exactly.
Bianca Tylek:
And held there in darkness, in solitary without food, separation affairs, things like that, and those are essentially punishments that we’ve just modernized, but don’t actually change the true function of them. They’re meant to break down people into obedience, and the same terminology is used and the same practices are used.
Consider another example. When people who are enslaved again would disobey their enslavers, they would often be separated from their families. Their children would be sold off or their spouse would be sent away. Well, similarly, when people who are incarcerated exhibit what the system would call disobedience, they can be denied visits and phone calls with their families, contact, right? All of these sort of penal sanctions that exist today were the same ones that existed then, just in a newer 2025 version, and so I’d say I think much of… And that’s not to obviously mention the most obvious aspect, which people in prison are forced to work and they’re forced to work often for essentially nothing, and then are expected to be grateful for crumbs when given 15 cents or 30 cents on the hour or something like that, and so I think it would be foolish for anyone to suggest that the system isn’t once that was adapted from antebellum slavery.
Mansa Musa:
As you can see from our conversation with Bianca Tylek, the extent to which the prison industrial complex and corporate America merge is beyond imagination.
She was once involved with the criminal justice system. This in and of itself helped her to focus on what she wanted to do. She worked on Wall Street, and while on Wall Street, she started seeing the impact that corporate America was having on the prison industrial complex, the profit margin. From this, she developed this strategy and this organization on how to attack it. As you can see, she’s very effective, as is her organization, in dismantling the prison industrial complex.
Recently, I had the pleasure and opportunity to speak to some young people at the University of Maryland College Park. The group is the Young Democrat Socialists of America. You’ll see from these clips how engaging these conversations were, and when they say we look to our future, remember, our movement started on the college campuses. The intelligent element of society started organizing. As they started organizing, they got the grassroots communities involved, and this is what we’re beginning to see once again.
Student:
So today we have a speaker event with Mansa Musa, AKA Charles Hopkins. He is a former Black Panther, political prisoner. He’s done a lot of activism after re-entering society. He spent nearly five decades in prison, and that kind of radicalized him in his experience, and you can learn a lot more about him today during this meeting.
Mansa Musa:
We’re about completely abolishing the prison system. What would that look like? We was having this conversation. What did that look like? You’re going to open the doors up and let everybody out? I’ve been in prison for their year. It’s some people that I’ve been around in prison. If I see him on the street today or tomorrow, I might go call the police on it, because I know that’s how their thinking is, but at the same token, in a civil society, we have an obligation to help people, and that’s what we should be doing.
People have been traumatized, and trauma becoming vulgar, everybody like, “Oh, trauma experience.” So trauma becoming vulgar, people have been traumatized and have not been treated for their trauma. So they dial down on it, and that become the norm. So we need to be in a society where we’re healing people, and that’s what I would say when it comes to the abolition. Yeah, we should abolish prisons as they exist now. They’re cruel, they’re.
You got the guards in Rikers Island talking about protesting and walk out, wild cat strike, because they saying that the elimination of solitary confinement is a threat to them. How is it a threat to you that you put me in a cell for three years on end, bringing my meal to me, and say that if you eliminate this right here, me as a worker is going to be threatened by that not existing? How is that? That don’t even make sense, but this is the attitude that you have when it comes to the prison industrial complex.
The prison industrial complex is very profitable. The prison industrial complex, it became like an industry in and of itself. Every aspect of it has been privatized. The telephone’s been privatized, the medical has been privatized, the clothing’s been privatized. So you got a private entity saying, “I’m going to make all the clothes for prisons.” You got another private entity saying, “I want the telephone contract for all the prisons.” You got another company saying, “I want to be responsible for making the bids, the metal,” and all that. Which leads me to Maryland Correction Enterprise.
Maryland Correction Enterprise is one of the entities that does this. There’s a private corporation that has preferential bidding rights on anything that’s being done in Maryland. I’m not going to say these chairs, but I’m going to say any of them tags is on your car, that’s Maryland, it’s Maryland Enterprise. I press tags. So I know that to be a fact. A lot of the desks in your classroom come from Maryland Correction Enterprise. So what they giving us? They gave us 90 cents a day, and you get a bonus. Now, you get the bonus based on how much you produce. So everybody… Now you trying to get, “Okay, I’m trying to get $90 a month. I just started.” So somebody’s been there for a while, might be getting $2 a day and some. We pressing tags till your elbows is on fire, because you’re trying to make as much money as you possibly can, you’re trying to produce as many tags as you possibly can to make money, but they’re getting millions of dollars from the labor.
Student:
In your previous podcast episode, you interviewed the state senator, and he mentioned the 13th amendment and the connection between prison labor and slavery. So what do you think are some of the connections between the prison abolition movement and the historical movement for the abolition of slavery?
Mansa Musa:
Right now, the 13th Amendment says that slavery is illegal except for involuntary servitude if you’re duly convicted of a crime. So if you’re duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave, and the difference between that and the abolition movement back in the historical was the justification. The justification for it now is you’ve been convicted of a crime. Back then, I just kidnapped and brought you here and made you work. So the disconnect was, this is a human, you’re taking people and turn them into chattel slaves, versus, “Oh, the reason why I can work you from sunup to sundown, you committed a crime,” but the reality is you put that in there so that you could have free labor. All that is is a Jim Crow law, black code. It’s the same. It’s the same in and of itself. It’s not no different.
You work me in a system… In some states, they don’t even pay you at all. South Carolina, they don’t even pay you, but they work you, and Louisiana, they still walk… They got police, they got the guards on horses with shotguns, and they out there in the fields.
In some places, in North Carolina and Alabama, they work you in some of the most inhumane conditions, like freezers. Women and men. Put you to work in a meat plant in the freezer and don’t give you the proper gear to be warm enough to do the work, and then if you complain, because they use coercion, say, “Okay, you don’t want to work? We’re going to take the job from you, transfer you to a prison, where now you’re going to have to fight your way out.” You are going to literally have to go in there and get a knife and defend yourself. So this is your choice. Go ahead and work in these inhumane conditions, or say no and go somewhere and be sent back to a maximum security prison where you have to fight your way out.
So now it’s no different. Only difference is it’s been legislated, it’s been legalized under the 13th Amendment, and in response to abolition, so we’ve been trying to change the 13th amendment. We had an attempt in California where they put a bill out to try to get it reversed, and the state went against it. The state was opposed to it. Why would I want to stop having free labor? The firefighters in California, they do the same work that the firefighters right beside them… They do the same work, the same identical work. They’re fighting fire, their lives in danger, they getting 90 cents a day, maybe $90 a month. They don’t have no 401k, they don’t have no retirement plan, and they’re being treated like everybody else. “Oh, go out there and fight the fire.”
So yeah, in terms of abolition, the abolition movement is to try to change the narrative and get the 13th Amendment taken off out of the state constitution, because a lot of states, they adopted it. They adopted it in their own state constitution, a version of the 13th Amendment, that says that except if you’ve been duly convicted for a crime, you can be treated as a slave. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. That’s basically the bottom line of it. That’s our reality.
So as we move forward, my message to y’all is don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t settle for nothing less. Whatever you thinking that you think should be done, do it. If you think that, but more importantly, in doing it, make sure it’s having an impact.
There you have it. Rattling the Bars. As you can see from these conversations, the seriousness that corporations have on the prison industrial complex, how they’re exploiting prison labor with impunity. We’ve seen this from the conversation we had with Bianca Tylek, who talked about her involvement with the criminal justice system, but more importantly, how she worked on Wall Street, how she developed this strategy of dismantling the prison industrial complex by going straight to the heart of the matter, corporate America. Her strategy, the organization’s strategy is to dismantle it one corporation at a time.
We’ve also seen it from our conversation with Lonnell Sligh, as we talked about the impact that these corporations have on the community, how most communities live in the shadow of major prisons, like in East Baltimore, the troll projects, where kids come out every day and see these buildings and ask their parents, “What is that?”, and their parents say, “Oh, that’s where you going to go if you keep doing what you’re doing,” or, “That’s where your uncle’s at,” or, “You don’t want to go there.” At any rate, it has no positive value to their psyche, but more importantly, we’ve seen how the youth are taking the stand to change and find this place in the struggle.
The exception clause and exception movement to abolish the 13th Amendment is constant, and on the rise. We have suffered some major setbacks, we’re trying to get legislation passed, but the fact that we have a consensus on, “This has to go,” because this is the reason why we find ourselves in this situation, where corporations have unlimited access to free prison labor with impunity. We ask that you give us your feedback on these episodes. More importantly, we ask that you tell us what you think. Do you think the exception clause should be passed? Do you think they should abolish the 13th Amendment, or do you think that corporations should be able to profit off of free prison labor? Do you think that communities should not be overshadowed by prisons? That our children should have the right to be in an environment that’s holistic? Or do you think that our youth that’s taking a stand against corporate America, fascism and imperialism should be given coverage? That institutions of higher learning should be held accountable for who they invest in? Tell us what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.
Police violence has shaken the US to its foundation multiple times in the past decade, but the problem has not been solved and only grows with each passing year. In the face of this, intrepid cop watchers across the country have stepped up to defend working people and communities. Why does the cop watching movement matter, and what can the rest of us learn from activists who have done this vital work for decades? On the sixth anniversary of the launch of Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis speak with a panel of cop watchers, including James Freeman, Tom Zebra, Otto The Watchdog, The Battousai and Laura SharkCW.
Pre-Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis Studio: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Today we are not only going to be celebrating the sixth anniversary of our show, but we will also be seeking to answer a fairly profound question about a form of activism that has as much to do with the evolution of our show as policing itself. And that is cop watching. That’s because during the last six years as we have produced hundreds of shows, many have featured the work and personalities of this uniquely American art form. So we thought as we celebrated this special anniversary, we should do so in tandem with the people who have shared their work with us, which is why over the next hour we’re going to try to answer several important questions. First, why does Cop watching matter? In fact, why does any sort of activism matter and what makes it matter? It’s a question that I think is not asked enough, an idea that we feel must be explored in light of all the challenges we are facing.
And we’ll be trying to address it by examining the work of one of the people who literally helped invent it. He’s a man who started watching cops when VHS tapes were the dominant technology, and he’s a person who’s impacted Steven and my life in ways that are hard to measure. And of course, to help us unpack all of these ideas, we’ll be joined by cop watchers who are legends in their own rights. James Freeman, out of the Watchdog and Laura Shark, and they will be with us later to discuss their work. And at the end of the show, we’ll be making a big announcement about something Steven and I have been working on for quite some time. So please make sure to stay tuned. But of course, all of this begins with this show, the police accountability part. I mean, when we started it six years ago, we had no idea where it would lead.
I mean, sure policing was front and center as an institution that needed serious reform. Examples of police brutality were everywhere. And in our own hometown, we had just experienced the uprising after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, which engulfed our city and led to even more recognition that law enforcement was basically broken. But really, if we’re honest, there was something else, not just immediate concerns that prompted us to launch this show. Instead, I think our impetus was about something deeper. Remember at the beginning of the show, we always made clear it’s not just about the bad behavior of individual cops. No, it was and is more than that. It was a way to examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And it was that system which allows rogue law enforcement to be pervasive, which has divined our work, prompted us to dig deeper and to explore the underlying imperative that we will interrogate further as we celebrate our anniversary. So Steven, can you talk a little bit about that idea and how the show came together?
Stephen Janis:
Well, every time we looked at policing, especially the worst parts of policing, or there’s some of the worst policing we’ve seen, it occurred in communities where there was an absolute underlying unfairness to the way the community was situated. And when I say that, I mean a community which was beset by poverty or a community that had unfair economic and unfair economic inequality. And so we said, why is bad policing always part of this equation? Well, it’s because policing in a sense, enforces the idea that unfairness is okay, that unfairness is actually a natural outcome of what we call late stage capitalism. So the idea was saying if we just look at a bad cop and take what they do and just show it on the screen and not really give some context, and we’re not doing our job as journalists. So the idea was to expand the palette and say, look, this is part of a system of unfairness. Please enforce that ideology that this is actually inevitable. And so we wanted to go beyond that. That’s why we look at the system.
Taya Graham:
Really well said, Steven. Thank
Stephen Janis:
You.
Taya Graham:
And just as he was saying, back in February, 2019, we just kind of launched the show. Just sort of did it. I mean, I wish I could say it was all planned out and we were sort of working in trial and error mode, but we weren’t winging it, but we just didn’t really know where it would lead. Maybe let’s watch a brief compilation of some moments from our first shows.
Stephen Janis:
The audience is small, we’ll be out of business pretty soon. So we got this idea that we need to focus on what we did best on what we knew best.
Taya Graham:
So one thing about Baltimore City is that policing is everywhere. You’re probably familiar with the death of Freddie Graham police custody in 2015, or you might know that my city is under consent decree for racist and unconstitutional policing.
Stephen Janis:
We had to pick what we knew and make it something special.
Taya Graham:
So when Steven said he wanted to do a show called the Police Accountability Report, I thought it really made sense.
Stephen Janis:
I think that came up at the same time I’d been teaching journalism at a local university and I was trying to teach the next generation of journalists to survive. I came up with this idea of subject matter expertise, like do a show or report on what you know the best. And to us, well that was policing.
Taya Graham:
And honestly, I think it was like a last ditch attempt to really make this work to find an audience for our reporting.
Stephen Janis:
So in January of 2019, we shot our first show. We just went ahead and did it.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report on the Real News Network. Honestly, I was just hoping we could break 10,000 views.
Stephen Janis:
I would’ve been perfectly happy with that. We’re talking about 10 years. These police officers were robbing people,
Taya Graham:
So we kept going and doing more shows. This is Taya Graham and Steven Janis for The Real News. Welcome to the Police Accountability Report.
Stephen Janis:
And it seems like T’S talent hosts a show and the topic was working, and we finally found a way to get a broader audience.
Taya Graham:
Oh my gosh, Steven, look how young you were. Look how young I was reporting on policing ages. You I think a
Stephen Janis:
Little bit. It was weird because we really did just kind of do it and we just sort of made up was going along. So it’s interesting to see that how the show has evolved themselves.
Taya Graham:
I know it really has. But as we were building the show, we started to hear about a community that we knew nothing about, a group that was in a way doing what we were doing, but let’s just say in a more different and more direct style. It was a slowly growing YouTube based movement that caught our attention. Thanks in part to our mod, Noli d Hi Noli D that we couldn’t ignore. Of course, I’m talking about Cop watchers, the people and personalities that go out and actively watch the police and then post their encounters on YouTube. Now, of course, cop watching existed long before YouTube. We all know the Black Panthers who watch police in African-American communities by taking notes and keeping track of the officers who were problematic. But along with the growth of YouTube, a new type of cop watching emerged. And that’s what Steven and I decided to report on the evolution of this form of digital activism that was different in many respects than what we were used to. And Steven, this version of Cop watching was uniquely formed by YouTube, wouldn’t you say?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean, the thing was you had a historic moment where for once an average working person could form an audience or have an audience. Remember before YouTube came along, and obviously the internet, most people who wanted to report the news or report what’s going on in their community needed an intense amount of capital. They needed a broadcast license or they needed a newspaper. But suddenly YouTube had created this alternative form of reaching an audience. It was kind of revolutionary. And I think that’s why Cop watching was so uniquely positioned and why it was so different, because YouTube gave a platform that didn’t exist before, a way of communicating to an audience, a way of forming an audience that didn’t exist before. So it was really revolutionary in a lot of ways.
Taya Graham:
I have to agree. And just to let people know, I will be trying to address some of the folks in the chat. I want you to know I see you, I saw you. Linda Orr. I see you. Lacey R. Hi, Lacey. R Hey, Lacey. So I just wanted to make sure to acknowledge some of the moderators and the supporters in our community are here, and Noli Dee helped introduce me to Cop watching. And I think we can honestly say that without Cop Watchers, this would be a very different show, very different. I mean, not that we couldn’t report on police, of course we could, but reporting on Cop Watchers and the personalities that drive it gave us access to a community that shaped how we thought about law enforcement by examining their work. It changed our perspective on how law enforcement had become more pervasive and powerful than even we could imagine.
And in a way, it gave us a sense of how much policing could affect not just the health of the community, but the entire psychology of it. Meaning the fact that there was a community of people who would literally go out and document police in communities across the country day in and day out for no other reason than it had to be done influenced how we thought about our show and what we needed to report again on the system, which is how and why the idea of making a show that we called Reverse Cops emerge. So let me explain. I’m sure most of you’re familiar with the show called Cops. It’s one of the longest running police reality series ever. The format is also pretty familiar, a bunch of photo follow cops as they arrest working class Americans for generally speaking petty crimes. The show, I believe, is meant to solidify the notion that only police can impose order and that the police are the moral arbiters of right versus wrong, and that working class folks are simply degenerates only worthy of arrest and jail cells. But Steven, I think our experience with Cop Watchers gave us some other ideas on how to, in a sense, reverse this narrative through journalism.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean because Cop Watchers and people like Tom Z were had gone out and sort of shifted the narrative, right? Gone out every night and reported from the community perspective, we sort of adopt that into our show where the person, the cops would make look bad. This guy who cops go and arrest for some dumb reason, not always the dumb reason, but a reason that is questionable, let’s put
Taya Graham:
It that way. Or at least maybe for a nuisance crime,
Stephen Janis:
Right? For a ance crime. We thought, okay, let’s reverse the perspective of the camera there. The way cop watchers are. Let’s turn the camera around. Let’s not tell it from the police going in and rushing after some guy and chasing him. Let’s do it the way Tom Zebra and Otto the Watchdog and James Freeman do, where they’re the ones holding the camera and telling the story from their perspective. So we ended up dedicating a huge amount of our show to the people who had been either brutalized, questionably, arrested, whatever. That actually became like the linchpin of our show, which is just as someone from the mainstream media, that’s not the way we report on police. We follow the police around and we follow their cues. So this whole community that created this kind of reverse cops, we just followed their cues and said, we’re going to give 15 minutes to the person who got arrested and let them tell their story, just the way police get to control the narrative. And it was really, again, sort of a revolution of narratology. We are actually looking from the different perspective that the cop watchers have adopted, and I think that’s why, how it influenced our show, what made our show kind of different in some ways.
Taya Graham:
Steven, I think that’s such an excellent point and something that I think you really teased out there is that not only did Cop Watchers show us to turn the perspective around, but they also showed us, you were talking about how you had to have money to be able to control the narrative and to sort of democratize the process.
Stephen Janis:
They absolutely democratize and absolutely took away the need to have other than a cell phone camera and the ability to edit and the ability to be creative, which is what’s really cool about it. There’s so much creativity. It kind of inspired me to say, play around with the show, have the swipes, all the things that we know are signature. Or the police accountability report came from just watching Cop Watchers and what they would do. And I’d be like, well, we can’t just be this blase report. We’ve got to have a little action in there.
Taya Graham:
Yeah, we have to add a little creativity. Absolutely.
So as we built the show, we dedicated a large part of it to the perspective that mainstream media ignores. We turned the camera around to give the people who’ve been negatively impacted by policing the opportunity to tell their stories in detail. And we made the show not about police, but about the community. And no other community played a bigger role in this evolution than of course cop watchers. And no other cop watcher embodies the spirit of that ethos better than the man we will be talking about tonight. And I am of course referring to the legendary og cop watcher, Tom Zebra. And like our show, his story and his life is intertwined with his work, and it is that work that’s transformed him and the community he lives in. But let me try to share part of his story so you can understand why that is so important.
It’s the story of a man who lived in Los Angeles in one of the city’s struggling neighborhoods who saw a problem. People have been cracking down on, excuse me, police have been cracking down on working people for years with aggressive car stops, arrests for minor infractions. Law enforcement had adopted more and more punitive tactics as a way to fight crime, but that’s not what happened, and that’s not really why they were doing it. And this man understood this implicitly. He knew that over policing was an instrument of poverty. He understood that it only made the lives of those struggling to afford housing and even put food on the table. Even worse, he comprehended the pain inflicted by a system that trapped people and stripped them of their ability to fight back. But what did he do? I mean, in a sense, he didn’t have the tools necessary in our money fueled system to fight back.
He wasn’t a powerful politician or billionaire. He wasn’t a celebrity. He was just a man, passionate man, but one seemingly without the power to protect the community he loved. So what did he do? Well, he picked up a camera, not a cell phone, but a camera back when video was recorded on VHS tapes when YouTube didn’t even exist when the internet was still in its infancy. And when his fight was essentially his own will and ingenuity against the entire Los Angeles law enforcement industrial complex. But against those odds, he decided to fight. And he did it despite a powerful institution more than willing to fight back despite the obvious imbalance of power of one man with a camera against a legion of guns and badges. And he did it for the myriad of reasons people in our flawed democratic republic decide to step forward. He did it because it had to be done. Let’s watch a little bit of his video from 2005.
Speaker 6:
Man, where you going? Why a hard T got a bike license? Have a bike license. The driver’s license. I told you to that I, yeah, it does. Your bike over here. Probation, parole. Why you being such an ass about it? What’s your problem tonight? I have no problem. Good. You have a bike license for your bike? No, I don’t see one on there. No, you need to register your bike and the city have a bike license. You riding the city. Where are you going? Okay, where are you coming from? Okay. You want to
Taya Graham:
Do a difficult No,
And of course that was the OG I was talking about at the beginning of the show, Tom Zebra. In that dramatic footage, you can see how one person with one camera lit a fire that burns bright to this day. You see someone who’s fighting against power in ways that would eventually be adopted by thousands of cop watchers and activists using the camera, not just as a mirror, but as a tool of dissent recording video that no one would perhaps ever see, but still recording. Anyway. Steven, can you talk a little bit about how Tom has helped shape contemporary cop watching?
Stephen Janis:
Well, the thing when I was watching that video and I was thinking about it, and we both hung out with him a little bit. He is tireless, right?
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Stephen Janis:
He’s like a one man mainstream media kind of org,
Taya Graham:
One man media machine,
Stephen Janis:
Right? Because the thing that was really interesting about Tom and talking to him, we interviewed him a lot. He goes out every night and he goes out every night and he just films. And sometimes when he films, something happens and he will confront police as what he sees as being wrong. And that to me is such a David and Goliath story of someone who goes out and is willing to every night, watch cops no matter what, and willing to push back. And that creates, I would say, an alternative mainstream media ecosystem. Not mainstream in the sense that it looks like mainstream media, but that counter power, that counterbalance that doesn’t always exist in a community to tell their own stories. And so he was out there like a storyteller looking at what’s happening, watching and observing and exposing police in ways that are more subtle. It’s not just about the really, really bad events, but the way they abuse their power. And when you watch these Zoe videos, you can see where are you going, where are you headed, what are you doing? Those are the things that create this psychology of power that makes policing so devastating for people living communities where that type of policing is allowed. And I think Tom did the work
And that really made a difference.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. That’s such an excellent point. And just to add to that idea, let’s run a clip about Tom Zebra. We produced for this yet to be announced project.
Stephen Janis:
Why were they focused on policing? What were they getting out of this and what was the real story?
Speaker 7:
It was like to protect myself from the police.
Stephen Janis:
Hello.
Speaker 8:
What’s going on
Stephen Janis:
Man?
Speaker 8:
Not much you doing here.
Speaker 7:
Doing know the tapes will just go in a box.
Speaker 8:
Good. How are you? Just your car?
Speaker 9:
Yes sir. Where are you coming from? Where do you
Speaker 8:
Live? I’m coming from getting dinner and I’m going home. Do you
Speaker 9:
Any guns or knives in the car?
Speaker 8:
No, sir.
Speaker 9:
You got valid driver’s license?
Speaker 8:
Yes,
Speaker 9:
Sir. Where is it at? It’s
Speaker 8:
In my center
Speaker 9:
Console. Don’t reach. You got any? You don’t have a gun or anything in
Speaker 8:
There? No, sir. There’s nothing illegal in here.
Speaker 9:
What’s going on with the camera? That’s the camera. Yeah, but what’s going on with that? Well, it’s sitting there
Taya Graham:
Recording. Mr, why don’t you pull me over? But this is only just part of the story, the beginning about the growth of a collection of YouTube activists that stood up for communities across the country, a movement that has actually achieved something tangible. People who connected on YouTube and other social media platforms to push back against power and actually made a difference. Activism that might’ve started with OGs like Tom Zebra, but has expanded to include hundreds if not thousands of channels and YouTubers working in big cities and small towns across the country. And so to talk about how this happened and what it means, and of course the work of Tom Zebra, we’re going to be joined by several guests who have been intimately involved in all of it. And to get this discussion started, we are happy to have Otto the Watchdog as our first guest. I mean, really, who else could it be? And just to let you guys know, if you see me looking down, that is because I’m looking to make sure to put some of your lovely comments on the screen. And I wanted to let you know, I think we finally have super chats and super stickers.
Now, I don’t know if you guys know this, but we don’t run any ads on our channels, and I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve never done a HelloFresh commercial, so we don’t take any corporate sponsors, but if you want to buy us a little super chat so we can say hi to James Freeman or a The Watchdog for you, we’d be happy to do that.
Stephen Janis:
And also, we should also tell people to try to subscribe to our newsletter. Go to the real news.com. You can subscribe because that way, even if you don’t have money to be able to support our journalism, you can also subscribe to the newsletter and keep in touch with what we’re doing. So we really would like people to do that as
Taya Graham:
Well. Yes, absolutely. You can hit and subscribe to the email and that would really help us as well. Now back to Otto, he’s probably one of the best, along with our other guest, James Freeman, at actually injecting comedy into the practice of Cop watching. He’s a style that is both unique and illuminating. You know what? Let’s watch a quick clip about Otto talking about how he came up with this.
Otto The Watchdog:
So I wanted to do something comical because I was becoming an angry person. I was sitting at my kitchen table, I was writing down slogans. I said, well,
Speaker 10:
He’s got stuff from there and in other counties that they’re going to try to put together and they’re going to try to get his ass organized crime.
Otto The Watchdog:
I said it out loud and I was like, hand stuff
Speaker 4:
That
Stephen Janis:
Awesome, Otto, that could have been a hit song if maybe Otto, if you’d had a few less swear words in it, I
Taya Graham:
Guess. But the thing is, I’m sure with the beeps, I am sure you all could probably figure out what was being talked about. Some of you who know the cop watching community, well might’ve recognized the other voices singing despite all the beeps. And that Otto is another important member of the cop watching community, Eric Brant, who was known for his extravagant actions to help protest treatment of the Denver homeless community. And like Tom Zebra, Eric Brat is an important part of the Secret project that we’ve been working on that we cannot wait to share with you. But perhaps it would be better to let the fellow singer speak for himself, which is why we are joined by Otto the Watchdog. Thank you so much for joining us.
Otto The Watchdog:
Hi. It is pleasure to be here. Thanks. It’s always nice to be here.
Taya Graham:
Well, we’re so glad to have you are so glad. And first, we just want to ask you a very simple question, or maybe actually it’s not a very simple question. What got you involved in COP watching? What prompted you to pick up a camera and start filming your encounters with police?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, those are two separate things. So what got me started looking towards police and being upset in general was license plate lights. A lot of my friends were being pulled over and they were being pressured to allow a search of their vehicle over license plate lights. And when one of my friends was roughed up and one of those traffic stops, I decided that something had to be done. And the inspiration to film it came from people like Tom Zebra and James Freeman. Freeman was in my local area at the time, and I saw those guys and I thought that it was a great idea. And then I found out that there was actually a lot of people doing this, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to get run over and falsely accused of some pretty terrible stuff. And I wasn’t expecting that it was going to go bad, but it did quickly. So
Stephen Janis:
When you say it went bad quickly, can you just explain a little bit what you mean by that? It went bad quickly. Are you talking about the potatoes or something like
Otto The Watchdog:
That? Oh, no. So yeah, the potatoes, the first time I went out with the camera, I was only out for 15 minutes before I had my first police contact. And that was when I was like, oh, this is probably going to be a little bit more of a thing than I thought it was. Then I took a break for a while and I really went out and looked and made sure that what I was doing was going to be legal. And if it wasn’t for people posting on YouTube, their encounters, I never seen it. And like Tom Zebra, he was doing it before when VHS was out and he said that he put all those tapes in a box and nobody would ever know unless a major production company put it together and then distributed those videos.
Stephen Janis:
Right, which is what we’re trying to do. Not really, but we did use some excerpts from them. But Kate, go ahead.
Taya Graham:
Oh, I do have to ask though. I mean, we’ve discussed and highlighted some of your more humorous approaches to watching cops. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know it might seem strange to people who see police brutality or police overreach and says, that’s not a funny topic, but you managed somehow to bring humor into it. Can you kind of explain how you did it and why you did?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, I did it because I brought humor into it because it is so dark. It is not a funny topic. And it was something that I felt passionate about and I think that everybody should know, mainly because my family was very supportive of law enforcement. I have several members of my family who are law enforcement, and we get along fine, just for the record, everybody’s fine. Thanksgiving can get a little bit, sometimes we have to change the topic of conversation,
But I believe that they were good people and they think that they were doing good work and doing good things. And since I’ve been more active in this topic genre specifically, we’ve come to the conclusion that they might’ve not been breaking the law and violating, violating people’s rights, but they were violating people’s rights. You mentioned the long running show cops. Well, that was very popular when I was a kid. We watched it all the time, and I watched it for a long, long time, and I loved that show. It was always entertaining. There was always something going on. Now here I am many years later, I go back and watch that show and shows like it, and basically every single encounter is a violation. Every single one of those is like, oh, well, why are they doing that? Why are they immediately pulling somebody out and putting ’em in handcuffs? What’s the purpose of that? And they’re beating people up. They’re very violent. But that was because that’s the content that got them the most views and interesting. Nothing’s really changed about that. I guess there’s still the thing that gets them the most views is when they’re the most violent.
Stephen Janis:
That’s really interesting because now there shows live pd and there just seems to be this fascination with other people’s misery. But that’s really interesting. And so at some point you kind of said, I’ve seen enough actual encounters with cops that I know that kind of propaganda the cops is promulgating or whatever. I know that’s actually false. I mean, is that what someday it just clicked for you? Or is it because after you went out a couple of times you kind of felt like, wow, this is all wrong?
Otto The Watchdog:
Oh no. It was a slow progression and then a sudden snap. I was watching these things because I wanted to know what I was illegally required to do at traffic stops
Laura Shark:
And
Otto The Watchdog:
Things of that sort. I didn’t really have any run-ins with the law, but when I was not quite an adult yet, there was an incident where law enforcement, there was a fight in the park and the law enforcement showed up and somebody pointed at me and I was arrested. I was not involved in it,
But nevertheless, I went to jail and I was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And that case was dismissed because I wasn’t the guy, but I had to call into a bondsman every Wednesday with the threat that I could be arrested if I didn’t. And that went on for a while. So that was my first, oh, maybe these guys aren’t all superheroes. And then again, one of my friends was pulled over for their license plate lights being too dim, not being bright enough, and she’s a minority. And when the police officer pulled up to the window, said, get out, and she asked one question and he opened the door and yanked her out and then roughed her up a little bit. And I just had enough. I just had enough. And that’s when I put my boots on for the first time and actively what I love about cop watching. Thank you for asking Steven. What I love most about Cop watching is that protesting in general is a reactive response to a situation that has occurred. Cop watching is a proactive protest, or No,
Stephen Janis:
You’re right.
Otto The Watchdog:
I’m using protests loosely there. Cop watching is proactive. We can go out and actively look for these.
Stephen Janis:
That is such a great way to put it.
Otto The Watchdog:
I love
Stephen Janis:
That. Cop watcher is always smarter than me because I wrote this whole script, but Otto said it in a way. Otto, sorry, I should be looking at you. But you said that, and that is so right. You guys go out there sometimes when there’s nothing going on, right? I mean, you’re just, you’re out there and you’re just watching
Taya Graham:
Or listening to a scanner, right?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. I mean, that’s such a different form of protest. You’re right. We have protests now against this administration or that, but Cop watchers just out there active. That’s pretty interesting.
Taya Graham:
I just want to mention this, since we did have Eric Brat singing earlier, we’re going to talk a little bit more about him later as we share our big project, but you connected with him and others that helped create this community that we covered. How did you connect with people like Eric Brat or Monkey 83 or Joe Kool or any of the other folks that we were fortunate to meet?
Otto The Watchdog:
That was definitely a 100% direct response from James Freeman being in my local area at the time, that I needed somebody to be local. And he just happened to respond to my email. And we’ve been good friends ever since. And I mean, he might disagree, but I can’t count James Freeman among my friends. I would invite him over for dinner. That’s wonderful. Eric. I had seen some of his videos and this man looks absolutely nuts, and I love it. I love it because he is so far out there that if he can get away with what he’s doing, then what I’m doing must be fine. And he was kicking ass and he would be arrested. And then before you know it, the cases are dismissed. And he did file a lot of lawsuits and he won quite a few, a lot of lawsuits, and he won a lot of his cases.
Taya Graham:
It was actually impressive. I think some of his lawsuits, he won the right for body cameras and
Stephen Janis:
Englewood,
Taya Graham:
Colorado.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. First a training,
Taya Graham:
First Amendment training,
Stephen Janis:
He $35,000 tattoo that
Taya Graham:
That’s right.
Stephen Janis:
He got arrested for a tattoo.
Taya Graham:
I think he was arrested on nearly 200 times and won over 80% of his cases. I mean, that’s a pretty impressive track record.
Otto The Watchdog:
It’s a staggering track record. It really is.
Taya Graham:
I am glad you mentioned Eric again, because I know he must have shaped to some extent how you do cop watching and how the community came together. I mean, how would you describe Eric’s role, just out of curiosity?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, the cop watching and protesting are two separate things that I do both. I do both of them, but they are sometimes intertwined, but they are different. Cop watching is usually a little bit more somber. You’re just trying to document the thing. And then sometimes I would just get the calling and have to sing a song. And the song was inspired by Eric, his signs, and then I just wanted to make it into a rhyme. And then it just evolved into a song and it sounded really good. It was easy to sing, and I could do it loudly, and that was the key. And Eric and I, we could harmonize together and just pop it off. We had a unique chemistry that allowed such a thing like that. And as far as the protesting, Eric definitely shaped the protesting. He absolutely shaped what I was, everything from the sign and then his clothes. I liked that he would wear bright green clothes and everything about him screamed protestor. And then for him to be arrested, it’s clear and obvious to everybody that he was arrested for what he was saying and what the sign that he was holding. And I appreciated that.
Stephen Janis:
Wow. Well, last question we wanted to ask you, just give a little bit about what do you think about Tom Zebra? Did Tom Zebra influence your work at all? Or how do you feel about his work and how it’s influenced cop watching?
Otto The Watchdog:
Yeah. So I saw Tom Zebra after I had gotten fully immersed in what was going on because he’s in California and I’m not.
So I was trying to find somebody in Texas because I knew that Texas and California law were different, different enough that you need to know what goes on in Texas, not California. Right? So when I finally found Tom, I was well into my activism. So he didn’t necessarily shape and drive me directly, but I guarantee you that he inspired somebody that I saw at some point, or the six degrees of separation. I know that Tom Zebra shaped me and encouraged me through his actions, even though I hadn’t heard his name until well after I had begun. And again, Tom Zebra goes out every single night.
Stephen Janis:
I know,
Otto The Watchdog:
Right? It’s amazing. And if he’s not posting a video every single day, it’s because nothing happened last night. And when a cop watcher is not posting a video, in my opinion, that’s a good thing. We should not have content.
Taya Graham:
That’s a good point.
Otto The Watchdog:
None of us should be anybody worth interviewing because our channels should have zero followers. We should have zero views. But that’s not the case. And it’s not the case because, well, police officers feel like they can do whatever they want to because they’ve been able to do whatever they want to. They’re told that they can do it. And until that changes, I think that this genre is going to continue to grow. And as it has dramatically. So in the last five years since specifically the Floyd protests
Stephen Janis:
Instead Armada, the show should be, this show would not exist without the bad behavior of individual cops, I guess, right?
Taya Graham:
In some way. I mean, I’ve said before I would be happy if I didn’t, if I could report on something else.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a profound statement. We should have no followers and no videos.
Taya Graham:
That’s a really profound statement. Just before we let you go, I believe it was Tyler Smith asked what happened to Otto’s arrest at the gas station where the cops solicited a complaint on the day he had court for custody. Did you have that resolved?
Otto The Watchdog:
It did. That case is resolved. It took a while, and I took a beating. So we resolve that case out of court for, I believe that settlement was $90,000. And I took that money and split it 50 50 and put it into savings accounts for my children because they’re the victims. And I am deeply bothered by the events that happened early in my channel because they continue to affect you every single day. It’s something that never goes away, and I never wanted that, never thought that that would be a thing. And I’m glad that it’s over and looking forward, all we can do is hope that justice will prevail.
Taya Graham:
Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing that. And we just want to tell you how much we appreciate hearing from you, and we’re going to drag you back on a live stream in the future. I’m sorry. And we’re just have to do it.
Stephen Janis:
And remember, we both are going use Invisit on our car.
Taya Graham:
That’s
Stephen Janis:
Right. Your sponsor.
Otto The Watchdog:
Oh yeah, invisit. It’s the only window film approved by Nala.
Stephen Janis:
Okay, well let’s not go there, but let’s say this. It’s completely transparent, so police can’t see it. Neither can you. It’s pretty awesome. Perfect
Taya Graham:
Tint to make sure you never get arrested for Windows again.
Stephen Janis:
Alright,
Taya Graham:
Otto,
Stephen Janis:
Thank you Otto, it
Taya Graham:
Great to have you as always. Awesome. And I did just want to make sure that people saw that we had some lovely comments here. People really appreciate you, Otto. Thank you.
Otto The Watchdog:
Hey, I appreciate you guys. I wouldn’t have made it through it if it wasn’t for my friends and fantastic supporters. I could not have gotten through that if it wasn’t for you guys.
Taya Graham:
Oh, Otto,
Otto The Watchdog:
Thank Attia. And Steven, thank you for doing what you do because when I was doing this, we didn’t have a lackluster that would focus on these channels. You guys also pioneered your own little branch here because before the police accountability report, we really didn’t have anybody that cared enough to bring our videos to a larger audience in a professional way. Because a lot of people who do this are motivated, dedicated, passionate, but we’re not video editors, audio producers, and we don’t have all the skills and material and resources to do what you guys do. So thank you. Thank you as well. You’re
Stephen Janis:
Welcome. It was our pleasure,
Taya Graham:
Otto. We appreciate that more than thanks for being know that was really kind of you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
That means a lot.
Taya Graham:
Especially because the Washington Post came in and said, oh, there is such a thing as Cop Watchers. I was like, thanks for noticing. Five years later,
Stephen Janis:
Right? Good
Taya Graham:
Job
Stephen Janis:
Five years after, but
Taya Graham:
At least finally, you guys are getting the recognition that you deserve.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re so happy about that. And I just did want to also make sure to say thank you to Michael Willis, who was kind enough to give us a donation. Very kind.
Stephen Janis:
Thank
Taya Graham:
You, Mike. And I thought that was really kind. Thank you. And I just want to make sure someone else said in response to our conversation about Eric, they could not stop Eric, so they put him away like they did. That was from DJ Plus. So I just wanted to let you all know I am taking a look at your comments, and I’m going to put them up whenever I can. You know, Stephen, that story about how Otto and Eric Brandt and Monkey 83 and Friends in Code and Chris Powers, how they got together is pretty incredible.
I mean, they all met on YouTube and they were all connected because of their support for Cop Watchers and each other, and they sort of built a community together. I mean, that’s an interesting story.
Stephen Janis:
Well, no, I think it’s interesting listening to Otto talk about how he connected with James Freeman, and you know how James Freeman connected with Eric and these guys are all working in different places.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. All
Stephen Janis:
Across the country. And organically created a network of people to bring these stories to people’s attention. And that’s not how YouTube is often advertised, is building communities and building actual physical activism. As Otto said, it was proactive. We said, here’s the problem. We’re going to go out every night and film that is so different from many things that, and I think we could all learn something from that activism.
Taya Graham:
And I have to say this, and this is a personal opinion, but I think it is very brave to go out on the streets armed with nothing but a camera.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
And trying to make sure that your community has justice. So I think that’s a very brave thing to do,
And that is one of the reasons why we did that documentary. But we’ll save some more of those details for a little bit later. Hope you stick around and hear more about it. But for now, we’re going to be joined by a person who has been one of the most visible, prolific, and creative members of the community. He is notorious for turning routine encounters with police into revealing examples of comedic role reversal that reveals much about the power that police have and how it affects us in unseen ways. Let’s watch a clip of one of his encounters.
Speaker 11:
But these people have been told that they’ve got it in their head, that they literally have a right. They have the authority to just arbitrarily control everyone around them.
Speaker 12:
Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you. I sir. Dude, can I see it? Please.
Speaker 11:
I was even disturbed by the fact that this cop let me do it. Most of the people in the comments are like, man, this is the nicest cop ever. No human should tolerate that from another human. It’s wrong.
Taya Graham:
And now we have to give a big welcome for James Freeman. James, thank you so much for joining us.
James Freeman:
Hey guys, thank you for having me on the show again. It’s always good to be here.
Taya Graham:
We love having you. So happy to have you. And so first off, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you about the legendary Tom Zebra. What did you think of his work? When did you first see it and has it influenced you at all?
James Freeman:
Honestly, I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but Tom Zebra influenced, he was one of the first. And when he was out there doing this stuff, I’ve said this before actually, I’ve compared Tom Zebra to a pioneer. Well, I have a lot of ancestors that crossed the plains over into the west, and we call ’em pioneers, right? And they blazed a trail. When they did it, it wasn’t easy. Basically when I came into the game, it was a lot easier than when Tom Zebra did it because Tom Zebra was basically Bush whacking it. He came up with the idea. He was the one who decided, alright, I’m going to go out and record these guys. When I started, I had people like Tom to help me understand what I legally could and couldn’t do. Tom, I don’t know who was his influence, but without people like Tom, I probably would’ve ended up in prison or in jail before I even really hit the ground. Got going.
Stephen Janis:
And what prompted you personally to start doing cop watching? Why did you decide that, Hey, I’m going to do this. I’m going to take this risk, the risk of getting arrested and go out and film police. What kind of motivated you to do that? How did it get started for you personally?
James Freeman:
Like Otto, it was a lot of things. I wouldn’t say it was necessarily just one thing.
I can tell you that the first video I ever shot though was when I was going through an inland border patrol checkpoint that I traveled through on a regular basis as me and my family were traveling between Arizona and Texas. And for those who don’t know what that is, you don’t cross a border or anything. But these federal police stop you and start asking interrogating questions. And it really doesn’t even have anything to do with stopping immigration or drug trade or anything like that, because all you have to do is they ask you, are you a US citizen? And if you can say the word yes, it’s like that’s the magic word. Yes. You’re no longer what they’re looking for. And I was realizing that this really wasn’t even about stopping crime or even immigration or drug traffic or anything. It was about conditioning people to obey and to understand who their master was. When master tells you to say yes, you say yes.
Speaker 7:
Wow. Wow. That’s
James Freeman:
Really
Speaker 7:
Powerful.
James Freeman:
So I shot that video and I really only shot the video to show it to four or five of my close friends and one of my friends, I couldn’t figure out a way to share it. I was trying to email it. I didn’t know anything about this technology stuff. I sucked at it. And one of my more technologically advanced friends said, Hey, best place to share a video is on YouTube, or even just with friends. So I uploaded it to YouTube. I didn’t even know how it worked. And so it was set to public, and two weeks later, a handful of other people who did this type of stuff regularly saw the video, shared it, and it had a half a million views within two weeks. And people were reaching out to me and saying,
Stephen Janis:
James,
James Freeman:
Do this again. Do it again. And I’m like, dude, what? That’s
Stephen Janis:
Incredible. That’s amazing. I mean, a half a million views, that’s not easy.
Taya Graham:
Wow. Wow. That’s amazing.
Stephen Janis:
That is amazing.
Taya Graham:
I have to ask you though, and I suppose this is somewhat of a serious question, but what is it like going out there holding a camera knowing that you might possibly be arrested, and how do you deal with that threat and how does it affect you?
James Freeman:
People talk in my comment sections. People are like, oh, James, you’re so brave. You never back down and you never get scared. That’s not true at all. Anybody who does this knows that the people we’re dealing with are armed terrorists. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter what laws or don’t law, or I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what laws or don’t know. These people don’t operate under Law and order. They’re terrorists. They’re armed people who are willing to do anything that they can get away with to you. And law legislation, none of it really plays a part. The only thing to me that really plays a part is that I think that they feel some duty to hold up the illusion that they’re some type of legitimate law enforcement or some type of legitimate entity. And so I try to play on that more than anything because I know they don’t actually care about the law, but sometimes they do care about public opinion because if people really understood, if people really knew what they were, they’d be completely abolished immediately. I’m not just talking about the people that you talked about earlier, poor lower class, financially. I mean, if everybody middle class upper, maybe upper class knows what they are, but I really think that if most people really knew what they were, they would say, whoa, we want a system of law and order, and this is not it. This is armed thugs ruling our streets.
Stephen Janis:
Now, is that why you did those? Because we showed some of the videos, the video where you’re asking an officer for ID and those sort of rural reversal kind of videos. Is that where you got that idea? Because to me, they’re so revealing about policing space saying, I can come up to any person at any time and demand almost with the threat of arrest. Is that why you did those kind of videos because of that?
James Freeman:
Yeah.
Yeah. And that was inspired by a book that I read, the Most Dangerous Superstition by Larkin Rose. And I was reading it, and he was basically comparing, most of us were told that government is by the people, for the people, and that we delegate power and authority to our government. Therefore, and the point that he makes is if that’s true, then I can only give to you or delegate to you what I have. And so a lot of people even mimic this, that government can only have the power or authority that we give to them. But when we talk about it hypothetically and say, what if I were to go up to a cop and do this, still usually just doesn’t quite click with people. It’s a hypothetical, but when you actually do it, all of a sudden it’s shocking. It’s like, wow, what an arrogant piece of crap. This guy is a total douche bag. And I did it recently just a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years, and the internet has gone crazy over it. People described me in the way that people like Tom Zebra have been describing cops for a long time, and it’s horrible the way that they were talking about me. I said, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.
Taya Graham:
Wow, that great. And those new videos are really amazing. I
Stephen Janis:
Would encourage everyone to go to James Freeman’s channel.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. And of course, all the watchdogs channels as well, watch or Tommy. But it’s amazing. And there’s a moment, one of the videos where, I know it sounds like a strange thing to say, but you snap on these gloves and it’s like somehow it gives you another level of authority. You already had the authority in your voice, but then when you snapped on the gloves, it was as if the person, the officer you were interacting with just handed over her authority to you. It was amazing. So when you folks have a chance, definitely go check out his channel. And I wanted to mention, since I was mentioning Otto as well, when did you find yourself really interacting with other YouTubers and other cop watchers?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, that’s good question.
Taya Graham:
I mean, I think you connected with Eric Brant fairly early on, but when did you find yourself interacting with other cop watchers and forming that community?
James Freeman:
Actually, Otto Otto was one of the first that I really connected with because he was local where I was at. So I mean, I had talked to a few others. Johnny five Oh was out in California. He flew out to visit me, but Otto was actually one of the first that I regularly connected with because it was important when we were doing this stuff to have somebody close by because there is a good chance that you’re going to get arrested, you’re going to go to jail, you’re going to need help from somebody else. The truth is, you really can’t do this stuff alone. You’ve got to have some type of support group. I mean, these cops are 900,000 strong across the whole country, and they’ve got legislators and judges and prosecutors and a whole team of people to terrorize you. And so just having a small handful of people, it was David Borin and Auto, the Watchdog that were my local people that I regularly worked with and connected with. And Otto really got the poopies end of the stick on what happened out there.
Taya Graham:
And also, I think David Bore was in the chat. So Hi, David Boron.
Stephen Janis:
Hey, David. I just want two more questions. One, Alice one then to you, what did you learn about YouTube using YouTube as a tool for publishing your videos and showing people what you were learning? How did YouTube influence your work? And I know it’s kind of a weird question, but I think YouTube is always left out of this conversation. And what did you learn about YouTube in the audience too? What kind of audience you have?
James Freeman:
Let’s see. What did I learn about YouTube?
Stephen Janis:
Well, what I mean is, I guess YouTube is a big feedback machine. You kind of learn things when you do videos certain ways, and
Taya Graham:
Some
Stephen Janis:
People like something.
Taya Graham:
I mean, and do you feel like in using YouTube, do you think the activism or the work that you’ve done would be even possible without YouTube? How important is YouTube to this whole idea, to this whole idea to the work that you do?
James Freeman:
Yeah, it’s essential. My wife asked me when I recorded at a border patrol checkpoint again, just last week, we were just traveling. We traveled an hour to go have dinner with family. And on the way back ended up going through a border patrol checkpoint. And I yelled at him and told him, you don’t have the right to do this and blah, blah. I got out of the car, I was belligerent, I was nuts on this one. And I get back in the car and my wife says, would you do this if you didn’t have a camera in your hand? I said, no, of course not.
Taya Graham:
I love the honesty.
James Freeman:
But the truth is that in the nineties when I was being bullied by cops, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t right for me to do what I do and wrong for them to do what they do. It was just that if you tried to assert your rights back then you were guaranteed to get that crap beat out of you and be thrown in jail and or prison. And so just like a cop wouldn’t do what he does without that badge and gun. And so you’re right, but also, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing here if cops weren’t doing something wrong. But you’re absolutely right though the camera, the ability to publish this and show it to the world, I really wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t show the world. I just end up beat up or dead. It wouldn’t help anyone if I wasn’t showing it to the world.
Stephen Janis:
That’s deep.
Taya Graham:
That’s incredible. But the thing is, you’ve also like Otto, you’ve incorporated humor into it, I mean, I thought what you said, because you had me read that book by Lobar, and I appreciate that, but you incorporated humor and there are these moments that seem really spontaneous. How did you decide to evolve that and why did you Yeah, it’d be funny. Yeah. How did in
Stephen Janis:
Situations sometimes didn’t seem like they were funny, but
Taya Graham:
Somehow you made them funny somehow might make them work. I don’t know how you managed to do that. Yeah.
Stephen Janis:
How do you do that? Or why did you do that?
Taya Graham:
Yeah. Better was the question. Why did you one day do that? I mean, would you see the absurdity of the situation? How did you get there?
James Freeman:
Yeah.
I think that it was both from a necessity, because I get kind of depressed watching too much of this stuff and being immersed in it too much. It’s really sad, and I am sure that you guys experience it too. Day after day after day, you see people’s lives being destroyed. You see people being terrorized, good working people. And so the comedy comes from some people have been offended by me making jokes out of really horrific stuff. But I don’t know, like Otto said, you got to do something to lighten it up. You’re either going to laugh or you’re going to cry once you really see what’s going on. So I try to laugh a little bit, and I think that it does help people. Making jokes and comedy of it, I think helps people to really truly see the absurdity of what government does, what cops do.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I think it was funny because the one that we used, the famous one where he asked the cop for his ID
Taya Graham:
And just the look
Stephen Janis:
On his face. But what’s interesting, he pauses for a second, and then you see something click in his head like, oh, this is kind of weird. Right?
Taya Graham:
Because initially he does sort of react to the authority in James’ voice, like, oh, and you see him processing, wait a second, wait a second. I’m the one who does
Stephen Janis:
This. Wait, the Exactly.
Taya Graham:
And that power reversal James, that is so powerful for people to see. It’s incredible. I don’t know. It spoke to me on a different level and it helped me interrogate for myself how much of other people’s authority, especially with law enforcement I have accepted and how I’ve had to do a lot of work to distance myself from that and find my own autonomy. And your work really highlights that. James or
Stephen Janis:
The better one, have you been drinking to, we should be showing these, but you can go to his, not the poor guy, but the cop looks at him like
Taya Graham:
Just confounded, just flabbergasted. We’re shortcircuiting his brain in that moment. Okay. Obviously I think we’re showing we’re James Freeman fans. I think we’re kind of embarrassing ourselves right now.
Stephen Janis:
But anyway, James, thank you so much for joining us.
Taya Graham:
Thank you so much. Because we are going to have to get to the super secret special person that we’ve been talking about this whole time. So we have to make sure to go forward and speak to the legendary Tom Zebra shortly. So James, we just wanted to thank you and before you go, if there is anything that you want to shout out into the world, please feel free to do so.
James Freeman:
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. And guys, congratulations on six years.
Stephen Janis:
Thank
Taya Graham:
You,
James Freeman:
Thank you, thank you for what you guys are doing. It’s always an honor to be able to come on your guys’ show. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you
Taya Graham:
James. Appreciate that’s really kind. We appreciate you so much. And next time we have you on the live stream, we’re locking you in for a full hour and you’re just going to have to sit with us. Just letting you know
Stephen Janis:
I’m
Taya Graham:
There. We’re locked in. Alright, wonderful.
Stephen Janis:
Cool.
Taya Graham:
Thank you James. Thank you so much. And so
We will be turning to the man we mentioned at the beginning of the show the OG cop watcher who started filming cops. And it sounds almost prehistoric to say this when people were just recording video on VHS tapes. And if you didn’t already know, his name is Tom Zebra and as we’ve explained it already and have discussed at length, his work was both pioneering and instrumental in building this community known as Cop Watchers. And just to give viewers just a little of how dedicated he is to his work and how he practically invented the current form of cop watching. We have a clip from 2012 we’re going to show, and then we’re going to have his legendary cop watcher partner, Laura Shark, come on and talk to us about it as well. So let’s take a look at this clip. Yep.
Speaker 8:
Officer, I hate to be the one to bring you the bad news. I’m going to try to break it to you gently. It’s against the law for you to ride that motor vehicle on the sidewalk here. Did you know that? Has anyone ever mentioned that to you before? Nope. None of your police didn’t tell you that in your police training.
Speaker 12:
Do you have a point?
Speaker 8:
I made it very clearly. It’s against the law for you to be on that sidewalk for me to make that left. Turn in the middle of the road and cut off that car. You’re mistaken Bacon. You need to get your motorcycle off that sidewalk. Why is that? You guys, you guys ride people on bicycle tickets every day for riding on the sidewalk, don’t you? Every day you guys write tickets to people on bicycles, don’t you? For riding on the sidewalk. And guess what? That’s not an enforceable law, but you’re on a motor vehicle. Let me ask you this, do you have an ID with you? I’m asking questions right now, not you. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. Let me explain something to you.
Speaker 12:
I’m asking the questions now. No, keep filming. Lemme see your id.
Speaker 8:
No, I don’t have id. You don’t need to have an ID to record. It’s the camera. It has nothing to do with recording. It has to do with
Speaker 12:
You making an illegal turn
Speaker 8:
Here. I didn’t make an illegal turn. I didn’t cut off a car. I beg to differ, bro. Keep begging to differ. Do you have an ID with you? I already told you. Told me what? I already told you. I don’t need an ID to record. You’re missing the point. You’re missing the point. The reason you just pulled around and questioned me is because I was questioning you is because you made an illegal turn. Came over here to question me wrong. Do you have a supervisor, Mr. Garver?
Speaker 12:
I’ve got plenty of supervisors.
Speaker 8:
Who’s the watch commander right now? I don’t know. Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you have ’em come out here? First of all, I don’t have No, no, no, not first of all, you do work for me. I’m a taxpayer and you do work for me. Why don’t you find out who’s the watch commander and you haven’t come out here right now?
Taya Graham:
That was pretty amazing, don’t you think?
Stephen Janis:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Taya Graham:
I mean incredible.
Stephen Janis:
I know because motorcycle cops, they have their own TV show, so Yeah,
Taya Graham:
They do. And I have a little,
Stephen Janis:
What do you
Taya Graham:
Have? Some have just some folks saying that they love Tom Zebra and Laura Shark. Thank you. Slushy 58. And then I have someone saying hello, just saying, hi Jeff. Thank you. Hi. Real news fam. Good to see you. And I thought there was something that was really powerful here that was written and this is Leonine. And they said, then they came for the socialist and I did not speak out. Then they came for the next trade unionist and I did not speak out. And then they came for me and there was no one left to notice. And I thought that was really powerful because something that James said that was really important to have community that you can get in trouble, you can need help with
Speaker 4:
Bail,
Taya Graham:
You can need legal advice. And so that’s why I think the fact that this became a community so important.
Speaker 4:
And
Taya Graham:
Also of course, I appreciate that I’m a union member myself. I’m a union steward. So shout out Leah Teen. Thank you for that.
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Okay, now we are going to go to Laura Shark and Tom Zebra. Are they here with us? Do we have Laura Shark to join us? Laura Shark?
Laura Shark:
Yes. Yes.
Taya Graham:
Do I hear her? Lovely boys. I think I do
Laura Shark:
Tom
Taya Graham:
Now. So Laura and Tom, we got you.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, finally together. Great
Taya Graham:
To see you.
Stephen Janis:
Great to see you guys. Great to see you.
Taya Graham:
So first, thank you both so much for being here. And then we have to ask Tom, this is your video. Maybe you can tell us a little bit why you felt it was so important to let this officer on his motorcycle know that sidewalks are not for motorcycles. You seemed very determined there.
Tom Zebra:
You cannot imagine the amount of abuse that not just myself, five years before this, before YouTube or anything else, I had gone through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is something that I’ve never really published, but the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals already ruled in my favor. I had already been through depositions with high power attorneys. I had already destroyed them and proved every single one of them was a liar. So when that video rolled around and you could still hear the fear of my voice despite 10 or more years of being proven and the police’s courts, the law, it’s not my court, it’s their court. I had beat them repeatedly. I knew the difference between right and wrong. And I knew even you hear Dusty Garber in that video, he tried to say, I don’t work for you. Whatever he was going to say, I don’t think he got all of those words out by that time. I already knew what they were going to say before they could say it. And it was like I was just on autopilot.
Taya Graham:
Wow.
Tom Zebra:
But that video, when I said mistaken bacon, I think that must’ve put me on the map because that’s what people just love that. And
Before we go any further, I just want to say thank you for having me on the show and Otto and James and Laura and all you guys, it is a pleasure to be here with you. The conversation, I don’t have the video playing like the audience, but all the conversation I’ve heard has just been inspiring. All these thoughts, comments. There’s no way the human mind would be able to remember all the thoughts I just had. So I’m just happy to be here and unfortunately my mind can’t keep up with all the brilliance you guys have already discussed.
Taya Graham:
Well Tom, you are part of the reason we’re here. You have inspired us and we are just so happy to have you and have all these people talk about how important you’ve been to the community. We should ask Laura, so we have to ask Laura, I mean, how did his work affect yours? And actually, actually even before I ask that, how did you guys meet? How did this connection
Stephen Janis:
Connect? We both cop watching. You just ran into each other? No,
Laura Shark:
No, no. Literally at a store. I was walking in and we both weren’t really paying attention and we almost ran into each other.
Taya Graham:
No, you’re kidding. That’s like a
Laura Shark:
Me too. And I had been shown a video, a friend of mine was like, look at this crazy guy on YouTube. And I remembered seeing it in passing and then so when we almost ran into each other, I was like, wait a minute, are you the guy from YouTube? And he was all, oh, and it kind of just kind of spiraled from there. He’s all messaged me or I think I made a comment on one of his next videos and then, I mean I really had no intention to be doing this as well, but it gets you. I went on a cop watch with them and I was terrified. I mean naturally I couldn’t do it by myself for the first couple of times and it was just kind of amazing how much I didn’t know at that point in my thirties it’s just like, how did I not know that this was happening? And then I kind of teamed up with Boxy just to be able to break the mold and not be afraid anymore. He was doing his own thing and then we met back, I guess he’d seen some of my videos and he started to take me seriously and I really appreciated that. And then we were kind of just did all that. It’s
Stephen Janis:
Interesting, I kind of think of you as a team, even though I don’t, you both have your separate channels.
Laura Shark:
Absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
Do you work as a team a lot or is it just my impression?
Laura Shark:
We cop watch a lot, but we butt heads even more. We dunno what’s up. We have no experience with that.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, we have no experience with that at all. We don’t know how to relate to that.
Laura Shark:
Yeah, we definitely have. I’ve come a long way because of him and I admit that sometimes I don’t want to. But no, he’s taught me a lot, him, Catman, Ricky, just the people that I’ve met through him too. I mean, you can’t stop learning. Every time I pop watch, there’s always something new and something else that I absorb into the situation. Something shocking, something simple. When we experience the Christopher Bailey incident, that was shocking for me. Even though it happens when you see something like that, it changes you
Stephen Janis:
Just so people know.
Laura Shark:
Friedman was saying that it will start to mess with you if you really don’t try to make a little bit of humor out of it. But that situation, there was nothing funny that
Stephen Janis:
We could. Just really quickly, so
Taya Graham:
Everyone knows who might not have seen it, Christopher Bailey,
Stephen Janis:
Who might not have seen it, it was a man who was beaten near to death by police
Taya Graham:
And or
Stephen Janis:
By sheriffs.
Taya Graham:
And your recording was instrumental, was absolutely instrumental.
Stephen Janis:
And your recording in a lie to a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Is that correct?
Laura Shark:
Yeah, it was almost a year to the day till we heard from the lawyer. I had almost had to accept that I would never know who he was, if he survived what his story was. But we kept on the story one way or another because of the deputies we would see day in and day out. So I kept posting about it and I also did a sent video to the, I think the, forget who it was, they were doing a whole thing. They were trying to Department of Justice, sorry? Oh yeah, department of Justice, department of Justice, because they were calling for any video of sheriff abusing that stuff. And I was like, oh, I had a couple. I had a lot. And that was the first on the list that I sent them and I think that’s who contacted the lawyer or something behind the scenes.
And then she contacted me and it was literally I had resorted the fact that I would never know and then boom. And yeah, we took part in that case from beginning to end and it was a weird experience. It taught me a lot and Chris couldn’t have been so undeserving of that. There are bad people in the world, I’ll admit. Police can serve a purpose. It’s just too much that we see is the abuse part, but this is so undeserving of it, the nicest man you’ve ever met. It broke my heart when we did a Zoom. We never met him in person, but we did do a zoom with him and the lawyer and he was so sweet. He actually said he was glad it to him being in his health and just being able to take that opposed to somebody that might be on drugs or just be kind of health wise. And I was like, what? He was an amazing man and he did not deserve that and I’m glad he was able to have his resolve.
Stephen Janis:
Tom, do you remember when you decided to pick up a camera? Do you remember that moment? I know when we interviewed before, you said it was to protect yourself. Do you remember that day? Oh, you do. Okay. Can you talk about that?
Tom Zebra:
I remember it was to protect me. No, I couldn’t tell you when At first I put a bunch of cameras in my car because they would pull, I had a Cadillac that I think the stereotype is they’d expect to find a black person driving it. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I just had a really shiny, beautiful car and I, there were certain agencies I couldn’t drive through without being pulled over. I mean, even though nobody would look at these videos, I couldn’t show them. Nobody cared to watch ’em. Not even my girlfriend friends, it didn’t matter. But
Stephen Janis:
No one wanted to watch it.
Tom Zebra:
Nobody gave a shit. There was no such thing as video sharing or whatever. It wasn’t like people’s phones probably. I don’t know if they had cameras or they didn’t, but they probably didn’t. So it wasn’t a thing where everyone just makes videos and whatnot.
Stephen Janis:
That’s so interesting. And you did it. I’ve got question, Steve. Yeah, no, no, I’m sorry. I’m thinking about that. I’m trying to understand. You’re making these videos and probably at that point you had no idea YouTube was going to and you just kept doing it.
Tom Zebra:
Go ahead. Well, I knew that they’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. Gosh, sorry. That’s okay. They’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. I wasn’t very smart, but I was wise enough to know because they had already started framing me, but they were framing me for little irrelevant things and the more they would frame me and make me have to go to court and all these stupid things just because they’re mad that they were wrong when they pulled me over, the more angry I got. Eventually I didn’t want to get out of the car and be searched again.
And so the camera thing, it was just like I said to protect me and it would confuse them and throw them off so it wouldn’t have matter if I had a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Once they seen the camera, they’d be like, what’s that for? I’m like, the video you showed just today, you hear the guy said, well, what’s that for? Well, it’s a device, it records audio and video. I guess you never heard of such a thing, right? It’s sitting there, it’s recording you. So act accordingly. And usually at that point they would just disappear so I could continue on with my a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Yeah. So it was to protect myself. Yeah. I mean neither of them or myself, none of us understood at that point that these videos would ever even have a purpose.
If I was smart enough to think, oh, one day there’ll be, and I told you this Steven the other night, when if I was smart enough to think ahead and realize one day I’ll be able to share these videos with the world, and if the police were smart enough to realize the same thing, we could have brought some police accountability around sooner, but unfortunately adopted. Yeah, exactly. If I would’ve been that smart, I would’ve been the inventor of YouTube. And unlike the inventor of YouTube who only published one video, he published the very first video, I think, and never to this day never published a second. I would’ve never stopped publishing videos and nobody would’ve been able to terminate my channel and take my videos down. So I think police accountability would’ve went much further. I was as smart. Unfortunately I’m not, and I wasn’t
Taya Graham:
Tom, I was sort of curious. We have our theories on why sometimes police are so aggressive in communities. Why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community? I mean, there’s one of the videos we showed. There’s a clip and I see you just sitting there and eating your chicken nuggies just looking as innocent as the day is long. And I’m like, why is this cop harassing him? And so I’m just curious, why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community and aggressive towards you?
Tom Zebra:
Okay, well, let me try to explain what I think is the reason it’s part of it. I can answer that question a hundred different ways depending on my mood. But this is according to the sheriff. I know you guys are well aware of their budget. All the money that’s spent a billion dollars goes towards what I would call unlawful traffic stops. They call it pretextual. Lemme try again. Pretextual traffic stops only half of 1% of these stops results and any contraband whatsoever, according to them, that’s their story. I don’t know if is the truth better or worse, but according to them, despite all these searches, they only find something illegal 0% of the time. Wow. They sure have a whole lot of motivation. Why would you search 200 cars and you’re only going to find something once.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, it’s a very inefficient way of police
Tom Zebra:
Make what you will that either they’re finding shit more often than they’re willing to admit and taking it home or their supervisor’s taking it home. Somebody’s taking it home because you’re not going to search 200 cars, find out a damn thing, and then next week you’re going to search 200 more cars. Why not just go have lunch
Stephen Janis:
Now, Laura, it seems like every cop knows Tom at least, and a lot of ’em know you was going out with Tom a little fraught. Everyone would see you with Tom Zebra and then the cops would be like, oh, it seems like they talk to you guys. They’ll use your names.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. It seems like they know you. Do they
Stephen Janis:
Respect you? Or they just saying, Hey, we know who you are. We’re going to retaliate. What’s that about?
Laura Shark:
I don’t know if it’s respect. I would say maybe they loathe us. They’re like, oh, great
Stephen Janis:
Here. I
Laura Shark:
Mean, yeah, they always recognize, Daniel’s got so much history with most of the police in our area. I mean, there are a lot, especially when we were doing sheriff, there’s just no way to get away from me on and around 2020, I was just put to the ground. I was just doing it almost every day. And yeah, they could not know me. But overall, just the surrounding cities, I appreciate the history that he has with them. I do feel like I’ve kind of paved my own path when it comes to it. We do kind of post in different kind of formats, but for the most part, yeah, I do appreciate when they do remember me, to be honest, like good. That’s what we’re dealing with now. Okay,
Stephen Janis:
That’s back. That also means your work’s having an impact. They wouldn’t recognize, you know who you are if they weren’t all watching your videos. So that is a good sign.
Taya Graham:
Oh no, I just wanted to mention, no, there’s Chuck Bronson is in the chat, actually have watched him. I’ve lurked during some of your videos while you’re driving around listening to the police scanner, Chuck. So hi, it’s great to see you. And Laura, I had put a comment on the screen that you’d mentioned that there are a lot of great women cop watchers, and I feel like they’re maybe not quite as well known. I was wondering if there are any cop, female cop watchers that you like in particular? Any names you’d want to shout out at
Laura Shark:
All? Oh, I love a lot of them. Yeah. And Jody of course.
Taya Graham:
Is that Jody Cat Media who you’re referring
Laura Shark:
To? Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Okay.
Laura Shark:
Hi, Jody Kat. She’s close friend. I met a lot of, I mean, I don’t want to just kind of throw out names like that mean, sure, I do do Miss Denise. We lost her and I’m
Speaker 4:
Sorry.
Laura Shark:
I do know that. I mean, so many flooding my mind right now and I don’t want to forget to say one.
Taya Graham:
Sure.
Laura Shark:
But I feel like I’ve been, it has blown my mind, the evolution of women cop watchers and it’s always so great to see when I see their posts, I’m like, and they’re doing way more than me, better than me, and I can’t express how much I appreciate their work.
Stephen Janis:
Tom, you heard what people said, James Freeman, all the watchdog about your work. I mean, how does that make you feel to know that people learn from you and how much they respect you and how much you’ve meant to their lives, and also just the fact that it’s all about YouTube connected you. How do you feel about that?
Tom Zebra:
I kind of feel like I’m not allowed to say bad words, but Tom f and Zebra, whatever, I know that’s my name, my moniker, but that’s just a persona. I’m Daniel, and I feel like the town zebra, that wasn’t really a choice that I made. Didn’t, it’s going to be tough to talk about this.
Speaker 4:
It’s okay.
Tom Zebra:
It wasn’t a conscious choice. I didn’t say, oh, I’m going to hold these police accountable. I felt like they didn’t give me any choice except to defend myself. And I feel like Otto, I can’t speak for him, but I feel like he might feel that same way, James. I don’t know if James had a bad experience or not, but just in general, it wasn’t something that I chose to do. It was something that they either I had to bend over and just spread my cheeks and take it and try to smile, or I had to turn around and stand up and it wasn’t easy. But I don’t deserve all the credit. Like I said, Tom Zebra, anybody could be the Tom Zebra in their town or the Jodi Cat or the Laura or the James or the Otto. But I’m not going to suggest anybody should. You got to be willing to probably take a beating and if you have kids, if you have a wife, if you have a mortgage, it’s going to be really difficult to accomplish anything because you can’t be going to jail and court. It’s going to be rough. You guys have all said so many brilliant things. I can’t remember all. I feel like I had a comment for everything and I’ve lost track of all of them.
Taya Graham:
No, but Tom, I think you brought up a really good point, and I think it shows the sort of self-sacrifice that I see and a lot of people in the community because like you said, if you’ve got a kid at home and let’s say you’re working two jobs, you literally can’t afford to go out and cop watching. So someone’s got to go out there and take the hit, so to speak.
Tom Zebra:
Look what happened to Eric Brandt. I mean, I can make a whole show I did. I spent weeks, if not months riding around. They put a bunch of laws in his name. That’s because he’s righteous. That’s because he’s the one telling the law what it is. It’s true if they named it after him. So how do a bunch of corrupt judges send him to prison when the same corrupt judges a year later are buried in their own corruption? If they were smart, they would’ve embraced Eric brand because instead of being embarrassed and all this by their own corruption, they could have avoided it. But they’re not smart because there’s no damn consequence for ’em. So they’ll never care. They laugh all the way to the bank. I’m sorry,
Stephen Janis:
Thomas. Okay, that’s perfect. I think you had a clip that you wanted to play.
Taya Graham:
There is a clip I do want to play. I just want, so actually I will play this clip. I have one more question for Laura before we lose, have our guest leave. Let’s play the clip, but let’s play this clip. This is very special. First, it’s a very special thank you to The Battousai who, because unfortunately because of a scheduling conflict, he couldn’t be here with us today, but he wanted to make sure to say hi to us.
Stephen Janis:
Let’s watch.
Taya Graham:
Let’s watch this.
The Battousai:
Hey Tom. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the live stream however, I wanted to make a quick video in my absence. I just wanted to say that you are one of four people who inspired me to record the police. Now, I did have the honor to meet you a few years ago back in California, and we did some cop watching together. I never forgot that moment. In fact, it was probably one of the biggest highlights of me recording police. Just wanted to wish you well and hope that you’re doing well, and hope to hear from you soon. Take care, buddy.
Taya Graham:
Wow. So we want to thank Philip of the infamous well-known Philip Turner of Turner V Driver. If anyone doesn’t know that case law, go look it up right now. It’s named after that young man who in his work has helped affirm and protect the right to record police as well as support your first amendment rights. So either one of you, Laura or Tom, I just wanted to know what you thought of, but two sides stopping in to say hi.
Laura Shark:
Yeah, no, he was great. We got to meet him and when he came out, I actually went to Texas before that and met up with him. Super sweet. Just the knowledge he has is amazing, and everything that he’s accomplished is makes me a little jealous, right? He’s so young. I know. Yeah. I mean, he is a great guy.
Tom Zebra:
If I could add, it was wonderful. We made a spoof video. We also made serious videos. He went through DY checkpoint with nothing, but I’m sorry, with his, instead of giving the license, he gave his carry concealed weapon id. I think something so outrageous that that’s kind of an outrageous thing to do. You don’t get my license. I’m not rolling the window down, but I do have a gun is basically how we went through that DUI checkpoint.
Speaker 7:
Wow.
Tom Zebra:
Obviously not my id. I would’ve never put him in that situation. But besides that, everybody here, you guys too. Happy anniversary. I’m going to shut up. If you don’t shut me up, I will talk forever. Thank you guys for having me and James Otto, everybody. Laura, even I told the one guy to put his name because I don’t remember it now. Is it Adam?
Taya Graham:
Did I
Tom Zebra:
Get it
Taya Graham:
Right? Yeah. Adam behind the scenes. Yeah. Adam, that’s Adam. Absolutely. Adam, thank you Adam. Adam’s
Tom Zebra:
Making friends.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome.
Tom Zebra:
I’m going to mute my microphone and just tell you guys, I love you and the viewers, everybody. I love all you guys, and I’m so happy to be back. I’m finally healthy again. I never stopped being on the street, but hopefully one of these days I’m going to start publishing again. And I look forward to seeing each and every one of you again. I’m going to mute.
Stephen Janis:
Okay.
Speaker 4:
Thank you. Thank you
Taya Graham:
So
Stephen Janis:
Much. And Laura, thank you too.
Taya Graham:
That’s
Laura Shark:
Beautiful. No problem. Yeah, thank you. And congratulations to you.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Thank you, Laura. We really
Laura Shark:
Appreciate it you guys so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated how much you’ve done for my channel, for our channels, I mean in publishing about some of our stories and things we’ve seen. So
Stephen Janis:
Is our pleasure, the
Speaker 16:
Community for the world, happy to do it.
Laura Shark:
Oh, I thought you were going to mute
Stephen Janis:
Tom. You
Taya Graham:
Said I love the interaction
Stephen Janis:
Between them. It seems familiar.
Taya Graham:
You know what, Laura, I really appreciate that. And we are just grateful that you were willing to trust us because we are journalists and the media has a certain reputation and some of it is well earned.
Speaker 4:
So
Taya Graham:
We really appreciate that you trusted us with your stories. Thank you. We do.
Stephen Janis:
And keep up the great work out there in la.
Taya Graham:
Yeah, keep up the great work you guys. We love you too.
Tom Zebra:
One more thing, guys. I told you I’m coming through town Baltimore, right? I’m putting them motor homes. It’s going to have the mistaken baking pig on the back on both sides. I’m going to stop in as many cities as I can, and when we get there, I want you guys to tell me and teach me all about the Gun Trace Task Force and the work that you guys have done in your community. Make sure you mute me so I can’t come back on, please.
Taya Graham:
That was wonderful. We would be delighted to take you on a tour of Baltimore. We can show you where the gun trace task force dealt drugs. We can show you, we can take you to the courthouse where Sergeant Ethan Newberg shot us both daggers
Speaker 4:
As
Taya Graham:
He read his statement to the courtroom if he was being convicted on how many counts was it
Stephen Janis:
32? It was nine counts of false arrest. It
Taya Graham:
Was
Stephen Janis:
A lot.
Taya Graham:
It was 32 counts overall, but nine counts were false
Stephen Janis:
Arrest. I don’t remember exactly.
Taya Graham:
It was, it
Stephen Janis:
Was significant.
Taya Graham:
It was a significant number of counts. So we would be absolutely delighted to,
Stephen Janis:
And thank you both for being here to take you on our
Taya Graham:
Tour through Baltimore. We appreciate you.
So we have to thank all the wonderful cop watchers who joined us today. All of them are special to us because they have helped guide us through this meaningful movement. But now, just for a moment, we’re just going to spend just a little bit of time talking about us and what it means to have reached our sixth anniversary. And with that, the announcement about something we’ve been working on for quite some time now. One of the aspects of the most overlooked aspects of copy watching Cop watching is unlike much of YouTube is that it’s not all talk. What I mean is that it is about action. Literally the people we spoke to, the others who do it all must decide to go out, get a camera, find and film police. And that’s what makes it so unique in the offerings of YouTube. It is a hands-on assertion against the policing of space, against the policing of movement and against the policing of behavior and all the other sorts of psychological aspects of policing that would be hidden or less obvious if not for the work of these folks on YouTube. And that’s one of the reasons Steven and I decided we needed to explore this collection of YouTubers in more detail, tell their stories in conjunction with ours. So Steven, do you just want to talk just a little bit about what that means?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I mean, we had encountered just today listening to the cop watchers that we had so many insights about things that you wouldn’t even expect beyond the realm of cop watching, about the psychology of how our government works, the psychology of how law enforcement works and the way it affects everyone’s life. And what we thought was very interesting to us, because we had to learn as journalists who adopt to YouTube and kind of become YouTubers. And through that, through the Cop watchers, we learned how to make that work on some level. And we wanted to tell that story, how our work evolved with their work. Wanted to tell through the prism of one particular cop watcher, which is Eric Brand and his story, and sort of uses a lens for which to view this whole movement, the movement, not just about cop watching, but about journalism, right? I mean you, like I said before, I started a newspaper and suddenly I found myself in our basement recording you and producing shows. And it was a journey for all of us. I mean, we kind of wanted to share how we learned from them and also look at some of the extremes and some of the questions that Eric raised as a cop watcher going to extremes that got him in a lot of trouble and celebrate this community. So we put together a film,
Taya Graham:
And it is a film that examines cop watchers, and it does so through the lens of Eric Brandt, but it’s not just about cop watching and cameras in YouTube. It’s about an aspect of YouTube that contravenes a lot of how we characterize it. Now we have to say Eric is considered very controversial. His tactics have been criticized and sometimes even condemned. And he has also been sentenced to 12 years in prison by Denver Judge for alleged telephone harassment of judges. And this story of how it unfolded and the consequences we cover in this film is just part of explaining why YouTube is not just a platform for videos, because we also covered the improbable community that emerged from the cop watchers who met on YouTube through Eric. And these connections are forged by activism which evolved into friendship, and I would say even into a family.
And the pushback from law enforcement that wreaked havoc on their lives is also explored as well, and the way they supported each other and how they endured the consequences of watching cops and how this collective fight forged real friendships and family that led to meaningful new achievements. But most importantly, as we told the story, one aspect of it seemed increasingly clear all of this, every single aspect of it was again, premised upon taking action, along with identifying the problem, policing these people decided to do something and do something specific, not just talk, not just speculate, not just debate, but act. And that was critical because through action things changed. People picked up cameras, watched police for hours on end and create videos. They were doing something specific about a specific problem. Now, by acting, things changed and by connecting their lives were transformed by using YouTube to come together in this, I don’t know, tactile sphere we call reality.
They changed it. I mean, as we mentioned earlier, I think we might have an issue with the Washington Post article. Even the Washington Post finally acknowledged in this article that cop watchers had changed police behavior. But enough of that kind of analysis onto the official announcement, Steven and I have filmed multiple documentaries, including the Friendliest Town, which is on policing on the eastern shore, about a Maryland police chief who was fired under very controversial circumstances and tax broke, which is a feature length investigation into the ways wealthy developers get even wealthier off the backs of my city’s taxpayers. And hopefully we might have a few links to those in the chat. We now have a new film that I’m excited to announce. It’s called I Am, but The Mirror, the Story of American Cop watching. It’s the story of the evolution of the YouTube version of Cop watching through not one, not two, but possibly three separate lenses. But let’s watch the trailer first and then maybe we can talk about it a little
Speaker 4:
Bit. Global. Globaltel Link has a collect call for you
Speaker 11:
From Eric.
Stephen Janis:
Our top story, a controversial Denver activist, is facing sentencing for threatening, not one, but three Denver judges.
Speaker 10:
Eric Brandt is an agitator. This is why I now advocate for the random shooting of judges. Judges have absolute
Otto The Watchdog:
Immunity, nothing that they do can they be held accountable for. I met Eric through YouTube. I really didn’t like the guy when I first saw his stuff. I thought that I’m going to watch his poor guy get his ass whipped on tv.
Speaker 16:
He’s going to say something, this cop’s going to flip the and whip his ass.
Speaker 10:
Here’s what he did in this case, he told Judge Rudolph’s staff, it is my thought that Judge Rudolph should be violently murdered. Who in the world thinks that that’s okay, Mr. Brandt, on each of these three counts, you’re sentenced to four years in the Department of Corrections. For those of you who do not know, a congregation of adult pigs is called a sounder.
Stephen Janis:
When TERs came to me with this idea of we’re going to cover these people called Cop Watchers, I was like, what? And I watched a couple videos and I was like, no.
Taya Graham:
So I finally come in, Stephen, to look at this video of a man who got arrested for filming the police.
Speaker 12:
Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you.
Speaker 16:
I’d say there’s about 800 people that have their own channels that are filming the police and either going live and doing it or posting in their videos later.
Speaker 17:
One of the things that, in talking about all that’s gone on is that without Eric Brand, none of this would’ve come to be.
Taya Graham:
Well, Steven, I’m sure you might have something to say since you’re the one who put together that trailer and also is the one playing the guitar and doing that music. So
Stephen Janis:
Do you want me to sing the theme song?
Taya Graham:
No, that would Maybe next time, maybe next time everyone, he can sing for you. But this time, maybe just give us a little bit about the layers of the film.
Stephen Janis:
Well, the layers, like I said, you have Eric’s, I guess, the evolution of Cop watching through the eyes of Eric and how Eric became sort of tested the extremes. And then you have the other layer of this community that was formed by YouTube of all things where people met online, but then ended up doing something active in the actual world and the tactile existence. And then you had the evolution of our journalism, as I said before, of how we learned become journalists on YouTube, and how we covered a movement that actually ended up changing the way we covered things. I mean, literally, it was like a mirror effect in some way where we adopted the way Cop watchers kind of adopted to YouTube. So all those things are told in the story,
Taya Graham:
And
Stephen Janis:
I thought it should all be put together in one place, what I like to do. And it had 1500 edits.
Taya Graham:
Yes,
Stephen Janis:
It was very,
Taya Graham:
This took a lot of work traveling out to Colorado, back and
Stephen Janis:
Forth.
Taya Graham:
And if you think cops cop watchers chasing cops or something, we were chasing the cop watchers around as they were chasing cops.
Stephen Janis:
So
Taya Graham:
We put a lot of heart and effort into it, and we really hope that you’re going to check it out when we do our launch.
But one of the reasons though, I really wanted to tell the story myself is to show how my evolution as a journalist was actually accelerated by reporting on the community of cop watchers that we feature in this documentary. And I wanted to share that I learned a lot from people I really didn’t even know and would’ve never have known at all if it hadn’t been for YouTube. And I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Baltimore City and that I understood police misconduct, of course, which is something I experienced personally, but I had seen it as an urban issue. Cop watchers and auditors and independent journalists and people who are literally this comment section right now, they reached out to me and they helped me understand that I should investigate rural communities. That those communities were also enduring pain and harassment and exploitation at the hands of police.
And this was critical to me understanding that the police industrial complex has a boot that steps on many necks, and we need broad consensus across racial lines across city versus country, right versus left. We’ve got to agree this needs to change because it’s hurting all of us. And that for me is what makes this whole story so critical that these social media platforms that normally just keep us isolated and divided can actually be used to accomplish real change, but only if we act together and only if we use the ability to communicate, to translate our ideas into practice. And it taught me a lot about what journalism can do. That by covering a grassroots movement with all the effort and energy that the mainstream media normally heaps on the elites, we could help connect the dots. We could be part of accelerating ideas and connecting the people to each other in a way that made the push for progress more tangible, not just theoretical.
So on this the six anniversary of the Police Accountability Report, I want to express more than anything gratitude. Gratitude to the people who openly share their stories with us, despite the threat of police retaliation to the guests on our show who talk to us about some of the worst moments in their lives, and the brave souls from small towns to big cities who are willing to push back simply because they know it’s right. I know I’ve been inspired by them. I have seen Stephen Bees inspired by them, and we both understand that independent journalism is wholly dependent upon people being willing to speak to us and share with us and trust us. So please let me say this as my final thought. Thank you, all of you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for watching. Thank you for caring, and thank you for being willing to push for knowledge, the truth, and hopefully seeing the best in all of us. Thank you all. I really appreciate you.
Taleb al-Majli effortlessly recites his detainee identification number from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he was held more than 20 years ago—the numbers forever etched into his memory.
“Every day I still think about what happened to me,” explains the 58-year-old, who says American soldiers tortured and humiliated him in the prison. He is sitting on the hard floor of a small, mostly unfurnished, apartment he rents in Baghdad. “It lives inside me and never leaves me alone. I cannot begin to heal until I get justice for what they did to me.”
The torture and abuse of detainees by United States soldiers in Abu Ghraib made headlines and was broadcast from newsrooms around the world when photographs were released in April 2004 showing a hooded man standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his fingers, along with men stripped naked, leashed like dogs, or forced into sexual positions while US soldiers gleefully posed beside them. Majli tells The Real News Network that he appears in one of these images, in which naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on top of each other in a disturbing human pyramid. Two American soldiers—Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner—are smiling and giving a thumbs up.
“The only thing I could think about at that moment was that I wish I had died before experiencing this,” Majli says, fiddling with his thumbs. “They stole my humanity from me. I still haven’t been able to process what happened to me there.”
Majli sitting on the floor of the apartment he rents in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.The other side of Majli’s prison identity card, showing an official Abu Ghraib entry stamp. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
For more than two decades, no one from Abu Ghraib—or other victims of torture during the US war on Iraq—ever received compensation from the United States government or its private military contractors. Majli is still among those who have not received redress for what he endured.
But, in November last year, something historic occurred in a Virginia courtroom. In 2008, three former Abu Ghraib detainees who were tortured at the facility sued Virginia-based CACI Premier Technology, Inc, which was contracted by the US military to provide interpretation services at Abu Ghraib. The federal lawsuit, Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc., alleged that CACI participated in a conspiracy to commit unlawful conduct, including torture and war crimes.
After 15 years of litigation, the jury agreed with the defendants, ordering CACI to pay $42 million to the former detainees—marking the first time victims of torture during times of war in the post-9/11 era have received compensation. The case is also the first lawsuit where victims of US torture and cruel treatment held a trial in a US courtroom.
Following this historic win, other former Abu Ghraib detainees hope this case can renew possibilities of getting redress for crimes they faced two decades ago. Rights groups propose that this could be a legal opening for other victims of US torture to come forward against private military and security contractors. Others, however, are doubtful the case could easily be reproduced by others.
‘No one will know about it’
During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, located 20 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. It held tens of thousands of political prisoners at one time. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Saddam’s toppling, it was transformed into a US military prison.
Majli was detained in October 2003, picked up off the streets while visiting his uncle in Iraq’s western Anbar province. “They were just arresting all the men,” recounts Majli, who was about 36 at this time. “They zip-tied my hands and put a hood over my head. I was innocent and they took me for no reason at all.”
View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
After a few days at the Habbaniyah Camp in Anbar and another unknown location, Majli was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where he remained for 16 months. He was never charged with a crime nor informed of the reasons he was being detained. According to a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, military intelligence officers from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq admitted that between 70% and 90% of Iraqis detained after the US invasion were actually arrested by mistake.
Majli tells TRNN he was kept in solitary confinement for nearly one month, which is prohibited under international law. “All I could think about was suicide,” he says, adding that he tried to use the ceiling light in his cell to electrocute himself. “The American guards told me that behind the [isolation] cell is a shredder that was used during Saddam, so if they wanted they could shred me up and throw my remains in the river and no one will ever know about it.”
Majli recounts being attacked by unmuzzled dogs, ordered to strip naked while soldiers threw freezing water on him during cold winter months, and beaten directly on his genitals with a stick. In addition to the human pyramid, the soldiers forced him into sexual positions with other male inmates while he was naked and blindfolded—although he is not certain whether soldiers took photos of it.
Majli says US soldiers also shot live ammunition at the prisoners. With his own eyes, he saw two inmates killed from this and their bodies removed from the prison in body bags. Majli also developed pneumonia after guards flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from getting rest.
“I never imagined that human beings were capable of such things,” Majli says, lifting his knuckles to his mouth and gnawing on the skin, a nervous tic he picked up in Abu Ghraib. “I felt so scared and nervous all the time in the prison that I started uncontrollably biting my knuckles. Even now, I still bite the skin on my knuckles and arms whenever I remember my time in prison. I can’t help it.”
Majli shows the scars on his knuckles and arms from chewing the skin any time he thinks of Abu Ghraib, a habit he picked up in the prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
When Majli was released in February 2005, his ordeal only continued. He was left penniless and psychologically distraught, suffering from nightmares and uncontrollable anger over what he endured.
According to Sarah Sanbar, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), owing to the sexual nature of the released photos former Abu Ghraib detainees face extreme stigma in Iraq’s conservative society. Therefore, many survivors of torture are too fearful to go public with their experiences. “A lot of people just don’t want to come forward,” explains Sanbar. “The people who do come forward face marginalization and stigmatization from within the community. Others are also harassed by contractors and soldiers for speaking out.”
“So we don’t actually know how many other victims of torture there are from Abu Ghraib,” she adds.
After Majli went public about his experiences in the prison, his wife filed for divorce and his children faced bullying in their schools, eventually dropping out. He is also forced to move each time his neighbors find out he was detained at Abu Ghraib. “This is the ninth house I have moved to in Baghdad,” Majli tells TRNN, nervously glancing towards the window.
Despite the US government’s attempts to portray the abuse at Abu Ghraib as an isolated incident, human rights experts assert that these abuses were indicative of a grim pattern of torture that characterized the Iraq war and the so-called War on Terror. The only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib was that it was photographed and shown to the world, Sanbar says. But widespread torture and mistreatment of detainees, which was sometimes more extreme than Abu Ghraib, have been documented in numerous US military-run locations throughout Iraq.
Suhail al-Shimari, Salah al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad al-Zubae, the three plaintiffs of the Virginia-based case, were subjected to weeks and months of serious mistreatment, humiliation, degradation, and denial of their humanity while at the “hard site” of Abu Ghraib, where the most severe acts of torture were carried out.
The plaintiffs described being sexually assaulted, electrically shocked, deprived of sleep, forced into stress positions—which resulted in one of the men vomiting black liquid—forced to wear women’s underwear, and threatened with dogs. Shimari was dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. None of the men, however, are in the notorious photos, in which Majli says he appears.
Unlike Majli and other victims of US torture, these three men got their day in court—and won.
‘Empire’s court’
US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war. Since the US is not party to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC), war crimes are investigated by the US military internally, a process which has continuously failed to provide redress for victims.
In what rights groups say is a rarity, 11 US military officials were convicted of crimes relating to the Abu Ghraib scandal from 2004 onwards—several of whom received prison sentences ranging from a few months to several years. But, “Abu Ghraib is a symptom of a much bigger cancer within the US government,” explains Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT).
“What took place in Abu Ghraib is not isolated, but part of the Bush administration’s War on Terror torture policy. There are innumerable other cases of torture where it was not photographed or caught on film and it never attracted media attention. And those victims were essentially forgotten and the perpetrators never punished.”
Owing to the immunity afforded to the US government, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf, decided to sue CACI in US courts through the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows for non-US citizens to bring civil actions before US federal courts in cases concerning violations of international law. Over the years, several Supreme Court decisions have greatly limited the reach of ATS.
While two of the plaintiffs testified from Iraq, Ejaili, a former Al Jazeera journalist who is now living in Sweden, traveled to the US to testify. “He basically entered the Empire’s court and stood firmly and demanded that they be heard,” explains Baher Azmy, the legal director of CCR. “And this jury agreed.”
CACI is appealing the decision and will likely try to take it all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to Azmy.
Human rights experts hope this case can pave the way for other victims of US torture to seek redress from private military and security contractors. “I hope we see more people filing under the ATS,” says Rizvi, from CVT. “I hope this creates a [legal] precedent and shines some light on those who have been waiting for justice for a long time.”
Majli tried to obtain compensation from the US government for years after his release, requesting assistance from the Iraqi Bar Association in Baghdad; however, they informed him that they did not deal with such cases. He also reached out to the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights, but other than providing him a letter confirming he was in their system as a former prisoner of Abu Ghraib, they were not able to help him.
Since then, he has been stuck, without any legal avenue in Iraq to seek redress from the US government for the abuses. “Myself and all the other Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib deserve financial compensation so we can heal and rebuild our lives,” Majli tells TRNN. The news of the historic legal win in November has given Majli a glimmer of hope, wondering if this could be a new avenue of getting justice for the abuses that continue to haunt him.
“This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But, according to experts, this court win would likely not be helpful to other victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. While ATS does not have a specific statute of limitations within the law itself, conventionally courts consider it to be 10 years. Therefore, a US court accepting cases from more than 20 years ago would be very unlikely.
According to Sanbar, from HRW, there are also limitations for other, more recent victims of torture to emulate this case. “The context in which a lot of this torture occurs is that you’re picked up off the street and sent to a detention facility,” Sanbar explains. “You don’t speak the language of your captors. You’re not able to recognize the different insignias or uniforms. And you don’t actually know in a lot of cases who is the one torturing you.”
CCR’s case was helped immensely by the fact that the US government conducted extensive investigations into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the reports of which were released to the public, and specifically identified CACI’s role in the torture and abuse. In other cases that did not attract the outrage that Abu Ghraib did, information is not shared publicly. “In future cases, it will be very easy for the government to deny access to information on the grounds of national security,” Sanbar says.
The US government has also long issued gag orders against detainees at Guatanamo Bay, which has become a symbol of torture, rendition, and indefinite detention without charge or trial. Most recently, it was revealed that part of the plea deal of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, includes a lifetime gag order on speaking about aspects of his torture by the CIA. Moreover, Congress has constitutionally divested the federal courts of jurisdiction over suits for damages by former Guantanamo detainees.
Despite these barriers, the court win is still extremely significant, not least because it sends a message to private security contractors that they can be held accountable for abuses they commit abroad. “This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But Sanbar emphasizes that this court win should not distract from the fact that the US government has an obligation under national and international law to provide redress and reparations for harm it has committed “both in terms of holding its own soldiers accountable and providing redress to victims.”
“There is currently no legal avenue for people who claim they were tortured or mistreated by US officials to have their cases heard or for them to apply for compensation,” she adds.
‘Heart can’t heal’
“My heart cannot heal without justice,” says 50-year-old Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed, who was detained by US soldiers in December 2005, nearly two years after the first photos from Abu Ghraib were released to the media, sending shockwaves throughout the world.
The public indignation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 did not deter US soldiers from abusing and humiliating Abed immediately upon his arrest, during which Abed, along with his brother and nephew, were beaten by the soldiers, including with the butt of their guns; they were also forced to strip down to their underwear.
They were transferred to a US-run military camp, where a party among soldiers was underway. “There was a DJ and the men and women were dancing together,” Abed recounts, anxiously shaking his leg up and down while seated on a chair at his home in Baghdad. “The soldier threw me on the ground and started dancing, kicking sand and dust into my face and mouth.”
According to Abed, the three men, who were still only in their underwear, were then forced to stand in front of freshly dug holes in the ground, resembling graves. “The translator working for the soldiers told us they will now execute us so we should say our last words.” They were forced to stand in front of the graves for about an hour, while celebratory music blared around them. Then soldiers beat them again, Abed says.
He was detained without charge or trial for a year and a half in Camp Bucca, once referred to as “Iraq’s Guantanamo Bay,” and Abu Ghraib, where he was held for two months. “For weeks in [Abu Ghraib], they were beating me constantly. On my hands, legs, and back, with their fists, feet, and their guns,” Abed tells TRNN.
Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed at his home in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Abed abruptly stops speaking as he chokes back a wave of tears. “Most of us don’t like to talk about our experiences because it’s too painful,” he says, slowly regaining his composure.
“I deserve compensation from those who abused me—not because I want money. Even if they paid me $1 million for each day I was unfairly detained, it would not be enough. But I want recognition for what happened to me.”
For years after his release, Abed says he lived in constant fear that US soldiers would come for him again. “If I even heard a noise outside—like a rustling of leaves—I would become terrified, worried it was the Americans,” he explains.
“The Americans just saw all Iraqis as terrorists. They made us feel like we were not human. Since I was a child, I heard about America and the Western world and how they respect human rights and democracy. But the truth is the opposite.”
Across Maryland’s prison system, incarcerated workers assemble furniture, sew clothing, and even manufacture cleaning chemicals. In spite of making the state more than $50 million annually in revenue, these workers are compensated below the minimum wage in a system akin to slavery. But how does the system of forced prison labor really work, and how do state laws keep this industry running? Rattling the Bars investigates how Maryland law requires government institutions to purchase prison-made products, and how legislators like State Senator Antonio Hayes are working to change that.
Producer: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling The Bars. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to State Senator Antonio Hayes from the 40th district of Baltimore City about a bill he sponsored around prison labor in Maryland. The bill was designed to regulate Maryland Correctional Enterprise, which is the prison industry in Maryland, around their preferential treatment they receive for contracts, be it furniture, tags, clothing, or any chemicals that’s used for cleaning. The purpose of the bill was to regulate how much money they were getting from free prison labor.
Antonio Hayes:
They bring in anywhere in a high $50 million a year in business that they’re generating. So they perform everything from furniture making to license plates, to, in some cases, even on the Eastern shore, they have inmates working on poultry farms and agriculture. So the variety of services that they offered have expanded dramatically since its inception.
So here’s the thing, it’s not just state universities. All state universities are using it. The General Assembly is using it. The Maryland Department of Labor is using it. The Maryland Department of Education is using it. Maryland State Police is using it. Maryland DHS is using it. If you are a state agency, you are required by state procurement law to purchase from MCE as long as they have the product. So that’s why they’re able to bring in that type of revenue. Like I said, if you look at their annual reports, it’s somewhere around $58 million a year.
Mansa Musa:
Later, you will hear a conversation I had with former prisoner Lonnell Sligh, who was sentenced in Maryland, but was sent out of state to Kansas. And while in Kansas, he worked in prison industry. I was surprised to hear how Kansas is treating this prison labor force versus how prisoners are being treated throughout the United States of America. But first, you’ll hear this conversation with Senator Antonio Hayes.
I want you to talk a little bit about why you felt the need to get in this particular space, because this is not a space that people get in. You hear stuff about prison, okay, the conditions in prison, the medical in prison, the lack of food, parole, probation. But very rarely do you hear someone say, “Well, let me look at the industry or the job that’s being provided to prisoners.” Why’d you look at this particular direction?
Antonio Hayes:
Yeah. So interesting enough, I’ve been supporting a gentleman back home in Baltimore that has an organization called Emage, E-M-A-G-E, Entrepreneurs Making And Growing Enterprises. So the brother had reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’m manufacturing clothing, but I hear the correctional system is teaching brothers and sisters behind the wall these skills. I’d like to connect with them. So when brothers and sisters return into the community, I’d like to hire them.” Muslim brother, real good, very active member of the community. So I said, “Excellent. Let me reach out to Corrections.”
So I found the organization, MCE-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Maryland Correctional Enterprises.
Antonio Hayes:
Maryland Correctional Enterprises. And I asked them to come out and do a site visit with me so we could build a pipeline of individuals returning back to West Baltimore, Baltimore City period, especially if they’re already learning these skills so they could get jobs. And I’ll never forget the CEO at the time responding to me, pretty much saying, “Look, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. How dare you invite us to come into the community?” So I was taken aback by the thought that they would clap back in such a way. But if you look at my legislative agenda, it’s really focused around economics. A lot of the things that I push is around economics.
When my mom showed me how to shoot dice in West Baltimore-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… one of the things she used to always say, “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Antonio Hayes:
So when I looked at this, like why MCE existed and the fact that they had a procurement law in the state, a preferred provider status, there’s three organizations that have a preferred provider status. It’s America Works, who hire individuals that have disabilities to have employment. Because if they didn’t do it, these individuals would probably be getting state resources from some other pot. But it takes people who have disabilities, so people who are somehow impaired. There’s another organization called Blind Industries.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Antonio Hayes:
They supply janitorial products to the state of Maryland, and these people are blind or visually impaired. And then you had MCE, which were people who were incarcerated for whatever reason. And it didn’t seem to really fit with the other two that were serving populations of individuals with disabilities. So then I began to research even more the existence and how much money they were generating. And I found out, here in the state of Maryland, they were generating revenue of upwards of fifty-something million dollars a year. Whereas, the individuals who are incarcerated, the individuals that were doing the work, were getting paid no more than a $1.16 a day. So that alarmed me, one, the fact that they had a monopoly, because they were eliminating opportunities for other individuals to participate in the economy. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Antonio Hayes:
So they had a monopoly over. And then two, they had an unfair advantage, because they were essentially paying wages that were subordinate to any other wage anyone could afford. So their overhead was so much cheaper, because they were taking advantage of the status of people who are incarcerated and paying them far less than anyone else could even think of competing against.
Mansa Musa:
And you know, it’s ironic, because as we’re sitting there, we’re talking, and we’re at this table, these chairs, all this furniture was made at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. But on back, I worked in the cash shop at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. And prior to becoming Maryland Correctional Enterprise, it was State Use-
Antonio Hayes:
State Use Industries, correct.
Mansa Musa:
… which is my next lead to my next question. So this particular, going back to your point, it’s three people, or it’s three organizations, three industries that get preferential treatment, but they created… In your research, did you find out that they created this entity solely to be able to get that preferential treatment procurement, or was it a bid more on who is going to get the third slot? Because the first two slots, I can understand, they [inaudible 00:07:45] the Maryland Penitentiary. Some guys had brought in. And they were networking with the Library of Congress to try to bring all the books in the Library of Congress into Braille. And they were getting minimum wage, and they were paying it to the social security. All that was being done in that entity.
But from your research, was this particular… Maryland Correctional Enterprise, was this created as an institution by the private sector for the sole reason to have access to the label?
Antonio Hayes:
Right. So what I found was, actually, the federal government at some point had made it against the law to transfer prison-made goods across state lines. So in order for the industry to… So also, there’s some tie to this. This has really evolved as a result of the abolition of the 13th Amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Antonio Hayes:
So when you had the abolition of slavery, and individuals… They lost a workforce that they would’ve had.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Antonio Hayes:
So there was a need to supplement that workforce, and the way they did that was through the, what is it called? The loophole in the constitution-
Mansa Musa:
The constitution, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… that said that slavery was illegal except for those who were being incarcerated-
Mansa Musa:
Convicted of a crime, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… due to convicted of a crime. But in Maryland and another state, I think they needed a way to create an artificial audience, because they didn’t necessarily have an audience to make the purchases in order to make it sustainable. So what they did was they put this preferred provider label on it through the state procurement so they could create an audience and customer base to support the work that they were doing.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And now I can see. I can see it now, because, like you say, it’s all about exploitation of labor on the 13th amendment, giving them the right to use convicted convicts. So they saw that loophole, they saw the opportunity.
Antonio Hayes:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
This is continuing black hole. They saw the opportunity. Okay. As we wrap up on this particular segment of this thing, you spoke on the economics, that’s your focus. And we know that, coming out of prison, a person having job, the likelihood of coming back to prison is slim to none. Because if you got an income… This is just my philosophy, and I’m a returning citizen, I came out of prison. Once I got an income, it allowed me to be able to get my own place. It allowed me to be able to create a savings. It allowed me to get my credit score.
In terms of, from your perspective, what would it look like if, and this is something that you might want to look at from your office level, as opposed to the opposition of them having that right, wouldn’t it be more feasible if they gave minimum wage? If the advocacy from policy would be, “Okay, you get this preferential treatment, but in order to get it, you have to provide minimum wage and you got to let them pay into their social security.” Is that something that you could see happening?
Antonio Hayes:
I think something that shows that isn’t as unbalanced as the current system is, is definitely where we want to be. Remember, a lot of the stuff that I do is around economics. I would’ve never looked at the criminal justice system or this system as something that I would want to focus on. I just wanted to make sure that individuals that were returning back to the communities that I grew up in, West Baltimore, had an opportunity to be successful. And this current system, the way it’s structured, it doesn’t give individuals an opportunity to transition back into the community, to have a greater chance of success. It’s literally setting them up for failure.
And my last visit to Jessa, I met three individuals, if you combine their sentences together, they had a hundred years. Some of them were life, some of them were never coming back to the community, ever. And I know to some degree, you need something for these individuals to do. But what I’m told anecdotally is the people that most likely will have these opportunities are people who have very long sentences. Because from a labor perspective, going back to the whole 13th Amendment thing, it’s more predictable that they will be around for a long time, as opposed to just the opposite, using this as a training opportunity. So when they reintegrate back into society, they will have a better chance of being successful and a productive member of society.
I think this current system, the way it’s working, even if you look at the suppliers, where are they getting the equipment from? We’re subsidizing MCE, and the supplies we’re getting from, from somewhere out of state. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Antonio Hayes:
We’re not even doing business. This wood is being procured from some out of state company. We’re not supporting Maryland jobs. So I think we need to just reevaluate and deconstruct piece by piece, how could we better get a better return on its investment, not just for the state, but also for the individuals who are producing these products that we enjoy?
Mansa Musa:
That was Senator Antonio Hayes, who, as you could see, sponsored a bill to try to get the labor force, prison labor force in Maryland regulated. We’ll keep you updated on the developments of that bill.
Now, my conversation with Lonnell Sligh. Lonnell Sligh told me about his experience in working with the prison industry in Kansas. He told me that the average prisoner in Kansas has saved up to $75,000 while working in prison industry. That it doesn’t matter how much time you’re serving, if you have a life sentence or not, most of the prisoners that’s working in the industry have long term. But because of them being able to work in the prison industry, they’re able to save money, to assist their families, pay taxes, buying to social security, and more importantly, live with some kind of dignity while they’re incarcerated.
Lonnell Sligh:
The blessing of me going to Kansas, I saw the other side of that slave industry that we called and we thought about for so many years. Now, going to Kansas, I saw an opportunity where they afforded guys to work a minimum wage job. And in that, guys were making living wages. I met guys that had 60, 70 or a hundred thousand dollars in their account.
Mansa Musa:
From working in the prison industry?
Lonnell Sligh:
From working in the prison industry. So when I saw that, that kind of changed my mindset. Because at first, I thought it was a joke. Because they asked me say, “Hey, Mr. Sligh, you want to work in the minimum wage shop? Because you’re doing a lot of good things.” And I said, “Man, get out of here.”
So going back to what I was saying, when I found out that it was true and I was afforded to get a job there, it changed my whole outlook on it. Because now, my wheels started turning on, how can we make this better?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
You know what I mean? How can we change the narrative?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Okay. In every regard, okay, how did you change the narrative? Because, okay, now, reality being reality, Kansas might be an anomaly, and by that, I mean that might be in and of itself something that they doing. But overall, when you look at the prison industry throughout the United States of America, and it’s massive, they don’t have that narrative. So what would you say? How would you address that? What would you say about the Kansas model and the need to adapt it to other states’ prison industries?
Lonnell Sligh:
Well, you know firsthand that when I first came back to Maryland, my whole mindset was bringing some of the things from Kansas back to Maryland and taking some of the things that was progressive and good for Kansas back to Kansas. Now, the prison industry, we are in process now trying to bring that to Maryland. And one of the things that I’m advocating for, and I’m sure, because in the process when I got the job and I saw how we can, it’s an opportunity to make some changes and make it better for the people that’s inside, I crafted a set of guidelines and things that I presented to the administration.
So one of the things was allowing people with long-term sentences to be afforded that opportunity. So when they gave it to me, and I showed them through example that… Because I was never supposed to get out of prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So I was never supposed to have that job. But the blessing in that, I showed them two sides of promise, and that was that now the companies that were coming in there had a long-term person that can be there that they can depend on, because they had a high turnover rate.
Then secondly, I crafted a thing as far as giving dudes the opportunity to learn financial literacy, things of that nature. Because one of the things that I know for sure, a lot of guys that’s getting those jobs, that was getting those jobs were leaving out of the prison with a lot of money, but they were just as ignorant as when they came in.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So if you got a hundred thousand dollars in your account and you don’t know how to pay bills or you don’t know any financial literacy, the first thing you’re going to do is go out and buy a Cadillac, a bunch of flashy clothes.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
So you’re going to end up broke or back in prison. So that’s one of the things that we are working to craft, bringing this to Maryland, having it upfront, having a criteria, a curriculum that’s designated the design for success. And one of the things that, like I said, in Kansas, the politicians, the prison industry, the corporate industry, if y’all want to help with this cause, you say you want to give people a second chance, what better way than bringing in private industry jobs, but making it something for the better, not as a slave camp?
Mansa Musa:
In terms of, how did you come out? And were you able to come out, after being in the industry, to be able to feel some sense of security financially? Or were you in need of getting support from family members to make sure that you had what you needed? Or were you able to save some money, bottom line?
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
Not going into how much.
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
But what did your savings allow you to do in terms of adjust, readjust back into society? That’s really what it’s all about. If you’re coming out and you can’t adjust in society with the money that you made out of the industry, if you don’t have no sense of security with the money that you’re making out of industry, then likely your chances of survival is slim to nothing.
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah. But I’m going to take it back even before, because remember, I was never supposed to get out of prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So having that job really took a burden off of my family.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Lonnell Sligh:
And it took a burden off of me, because now I didn’t have to reach out and ask for money, somebody to send me money to make commissary. So my whole strategy when I first got the job, because remember, I wasn’t ever thinking about getting out of prison, so my thing was helping my family, saving as much money as I can, building a bank account, like some of them guys that I knew had 60, 70, a hundred thousand dollars in their account.
So then I transitioned over to finding out that now I may have an opportunity to get out of prison. So that really changed the whole narrative and outlook that I had, because now I got in my mind that if I’m able to get out, not only can I afford to pay for a lawyer to help this cause, but now when I get out, I don’t have to come out in a desperate situation not knowing where I’m going to live at, not knowing if I can put a roof over my head or get a car.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right, right. So then in that regard, the model that Kansas had in terms of giving the minimum wage, allowing you to pay into your social security, and allowing you to save, in that model, it allowed for you to transition back in society. But more importantly, while you were incarcerated, it allowed for you to be able to feel a sense of self-sufficiency in terms of taking care of your family, or providing for your children, not having to rely on them to put money on your phone or put money in your books. So that Kansas model is really a model that you think that… Well, then let’s just ask this, why do you think that other states haven’t adapted this model?
Lonnell Sligh:
Because one of the things we know is that it’s an old mindset. It’s an old way of thinking, that’s not progressive. And it’s not beneficial for a lot of states to transition or to try to do something better. They don’t want to help us. They don’t want to help the incarcerated person or the person that’s serving their times, even though they say their Division of Corrections. And they need to change that name from the Division of Corrections, because they’re not helping correct anything.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
But Kansas most definitely afforded the opportunity for… But their mindset when this first started was in the seventies, so they were about making a dollar themselves.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So it evolved, and just like I said, it was still a hundred years behind the timing, by me being afforded to get in that space, it was a blessing because I was able to help bring a different light to it. But other states, just like I say, it’s about their bottom line and their control and old way of thinking. But my thing is, and what I’m advocating for is, is that you have to think outside the box. Because if you don’t think outside the box, then you’re going to get the same results, the same thing.
Mansa Musa:
Well, how do you address this part of the conversation? That long-term imprisonment people, that most people in those situations, those jobs after you spoke on this and have long-term, and so therefore, the benefits for them is not in comparison to the benefits of people that got short-term that can get the skill and get the money and come out. How do you… Can you have it both ways, or either/or?
Lonnell Sligh:
I think, for me, you can have it both ways. But one of the things that we mess up so much on in our way of thinking in society and in the department, we’re stuck on a certain way of thinking. So my thing is that, if you want to breed a successful person, no matter what kind of time you have… That’s my focus and my mindset, because I took a stance knowing I was never getting out of prison, but I took a stance that I was going to better myself and I was going to walk every day and do the things that I needed to make myself successful and act like I was getting out of prison tomorrow, even though I knew I was never getting out of prison. So for me, it was about me better than myself.
So having a minimum wage job or allowing a person to have a job that they can create wages, it makes a better person. It gives you a better product, whether you’re getting out or not. But you have to instill those things in people so that they can understand that it’s a different way. If not, you’re going to think that old way of thinking. Nothing is going to change.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. Two conversations about prison labor. The prison industry. I worked in MCE. I earned 90 cents a day, a dollar and something with bonuses, approximately $2.10. The bonuses came from how much labor we produced.
On the other hand, you had the conversation I had with Lonnell about Kansas. In Maryland, I didn’t pay taxes, I wasn’t allowed to pay into the social security. I didn’t pay medical, and I didn’t pay rent. In Kansas, a person is allowed to pay into social security. That means when he get released, he had his quarters to retire. Pay the medical. That means, if he is released, he’ll be able to afford medical. Pay taxes. That means that he’s also making a contribution to society in that form. But more importantly, they’re allowed to save money. And in saving money, they will become less of a burden on the state upon their release.
What would you prefer? A person that earns slave wages and don’t pay back into society, or a system where the person is paying into society in the form of taxes, social security, medical, and also becoming economically sufficient upon their release? Tell me what you think.
Speaker 4:
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Last June, months before her release date, Paula Drake remembers getting called to fight the Gorman Fire in Los Angeles County, California. She was part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Malibu Conservation Camp #13, which is jointly operated by CDCR and the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD).
When her crew arrived at the fire, she remembers, it covered about 500 acres, but by the next day, it had spread to 15,000 acres. Drake knew how to hike through the mountains with a 40-pound bag on her back and run a chainsaw through the rugged terrain — skills that made it possible to help contain the fire. Out of that experience, she felt pride and camaraderie with her crew.
Drake remembers “just feeling like you’re a part of something bigger and being able to give back to a community that has deemed us unredeemable, and being able to be like a productive member of society.” She returned home in November and is pursuing a career in firefighting.
“The experience there was absolutely amazing,” she said. “It was amazing enough to where I decided, coming home, that this is something that I would like to do with my life, and be able to grow in the firefighter industry, and hopefully make it a career.”
Incarcerated firefighters make up 30% of California’s firefighting crews, and those who participate in the program are able to live at one of the many conservation camps or fire stations outside of prison, where they are given training and work alongside the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL Fire) or the LACFD. Drake said that, while it is still a prison program, the fire camps allowed her to have more freedom.
Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“Society has deemed us these dangerous criminals that shouldn’t be allowed to have their freedom, yet, here we are running chainsaws and given these tools that are highly dangerous, so is it really even necessary for people like us to be somewhere where we’re stripped of our freedom?” Drake said. “I just think that people don’t realize what an impact it has on us and the community.”
While versions of the CDCR firefighting program have been around in California for over a century, they became the subject of headlines earlier this year when several fires broke out across California and over 1,100 incarcerated firefighters were deployed to fight the Eaton Fire, Hughes Fire, and Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County, which destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. These firefighters were out for days at a time, and had no contact with their families. However, many reported a sense of pride that they were helping the community.
Even though they put their lives at risk and do the same jobs as any other fire crew, those who are incarcerated get paid between five to ten dollars a day by CDCR, plus an extra dollar an hour by CAL Fire when they are deployed to an active fire. As she worked second saw—a position where she helped clear the terrain with a chainsaw—in the fire crew, Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“You’ve got paid crew members working right next to you, doing the same exact job, but getting paid a hell of a lot more, and we interact with these crews, we cut lines with them,” Drake said. “We’re putting ourselves at risk. The compensation doesn’t really match up with the job that we’re doing.
In many cases, incarcerated firefighters are saving lives. Eduardo Herrera, who was a firefighter while incarcerated, remembers being called to a traffic collision in Los Angeles County. He was assigned what the LACFD calls “landing zone coordination” to arrange for a helicopter to pick up victims. At that time, while awaiting transport, a victim went unconscious, so Herrera had to perform CPR. He later found out that the individual that he was performing CPR on was a deputy sheriff of 27 years on his way to work.
“I was an incarcerated municipal firefighter, so not only was I serving the community, I actually helped save lives of our law enforcement, which is a very unique situation,” Herrera said.
He remembers other police officers and military members thanking him for his work and shaking his hand.
Herrera described his experience as “something that most of the public are not aware of. I think that that’s just another story of the capacity of change and what we’re capable of doing in spite of our circumstances.”
During the two years he worked in this program, Herrera, who was released in 2020, resided at a fire station in Mule Creek. He remembers being deployed to residential structure fires, rescues, traffic collisions, medical calls, and vegetation and wildlife fires. He said that participating in the program reduced his sentence by just under three years.
Hererra said that he is glad that the public is becoming more aware of the important work of firefighters who are incarcerated—people who “have maybe made a mistake in their lives, but they’re no longer defined by that mistake and wanting to pay it forward and make a difference.” He said it is important the public know what change looks like and what it can be and what it can mean for their communities.
“I’m glad that now we’re having this dialogue, and the narrative is starting to be changed in regards to seeing the capacity that we have to serve the community,” Herrera said. “It gives people hope. I believe the public wants to hear stories of hope and redemption.”
Herrera is now a firefighter with CAL Fire in the Riverside unit. He said that while he was incarcerated, he did not make as much as he makes now.
“The discussion about pay is always going to be a discussion, because we definitely didn’t make what your normal firefighter that’s out here makes,” Herrera said. “At the end of the day, we’re the hard workers, we work two times harder, if not more, than anybody else, because we had more to prove, and there was a sense of pride that went with it.”
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Last month, Assembly Member Isaac Bryan introduced a bill, AB 247, which would ensure incarcerated firefighters are paid an hourly wage equal to the lowest nonincarcerated firefighter in the state for the time that they are actively fighting a fire.
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Sam Lewis, executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition—which helped write and introduce AB 247—said that incarcerated firefighters have returned to their fire camps and have been in good spirits about the job they did. He said that the ARC, who owns the Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp for incarcerated youth, provided more microwaves, an air conditioning unit, new boots, and sporting equipment for the youth who returned from fighting fires. Through donations, they were also able to give all of them hygiene packages that include new toothbrushes, lotion, deodorant, nice soap—things he said they might not normally be able to get while incarcerated.
In the time that passed since the fire, Lewis said six youth at the camp who were fighting the fires have been released and received a $2,500 scholarship as they transition out of incarceration into training to become full-fledged firefighters. Lewis said the work they are doing to save homes and lives is important, and that they should be paid the same as the lowest paid firefighters on any other crew.
“The fact that they get paid basically $10 is not equitable, it’s not fair,” Lewis said. “They’re putting their lives on the line too. Why wouldn’t they be paid for something that they’re providing that’s needed, desperately needing in the state of California? So it was a simple question of equity.”
Lewis said that people who are incarcerated often want to demonstrate that they’ve changed and be able to give back to their communities, and participating in the program has been a way for people to transform their lives.
“Sometimes people end up in jails or prisons with the belief that they don’t have value, and it’s clear that every human being has value once you find out what your purpose is,” Lewis said. “In many instances, people who have an opportunity to go to these fire camps find that their purpose is to be of service to their communities in this way, and so it’s a way of them being able to demonstrate their commitment to their communities, but also to find their pathway to redemption.”
As the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles prepare to square off in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, security has been unprecedented both in the wake of the deadly Bourbon Street attack on Jan. 1 and in preparation for Donald Trump’s planned attendance. As a result, police, secret service, and even the Department of Homeland Security are turning New Orleans into a garrison city. Residents and local activists are pointing out the inherent dangers of so many police swarming their streets, not to mention the political priorities on display as tremendous resources are mobilized to protect out-of-state fans in a city where most residents still feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina 20 years later. Edge of Sports speaks with frontline New Orleans activist Deon Haywood, executive director of Women with a Vision, about the impact of this and past Super Bowls on The Big Easy.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to a special Super Bowl edition of Edge of Sports tv, only here on the Real News Network. Look, given everything horrifying going on in the world, you might only be vaguely aware that the Super Bowl is coming up this Sunday pitting the Kansas City Chiefs again against the Philadelphia Eagles. Even if you are focused on the big game, you might not know that for the 11th time, the Super Bowl will be played in New Orleans, Louisiana. And this collision between the great city of New Orleans and the Super Bowl is what we are focusing on today. The immediate backdrop for this Super Bowl is of course, tragedy. In the early hours of New Year’s Day, a deliberate car attack on crowded Bourbon Street killed 14 people by someone who claimed an adherence to isis, but clearly was in the throes of some serious mental health crisis.
Because of that, the police and military presence in New Orleans is going to be according to the NFL, like none in history. The head of NFL Security is Kathy Lanier, the former chief of police in dc. So someone very familiar, let me tell you, with over-policing large events, now the goals of over-policing aren’t just about calming down wealthy tourists who can afford $10,000 Super Bowl tickets. It is also about isolating the most vulnerable residents of a city, building a moat of heavily armed bodies between halves and have nots. But that’s not all. 2025 is also the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the memories of the Louisiana Superdome, the sight of the game, of course, becoming a deadly hurricane shelter from hell, and when the ball is kicked off on Sunday, this should also not be far from people’s minds. And then there’s the state of Louisiana in the present day, a right wing political horror show where members of the state legislature are saying that they will crack down on human trafficking this week, which at mega events like the Super Bowl, is always code for attacking sex workers.
It’s all part of a broader racist and reactionary agenda that surrounds the big game. Look, if we care about the Super Bowl, then we should care about the people upon whose community this game will land. That is why I am honored this week to be speaking with Dionne Haywood for more than 30 years. Ms. Haywood has been a frontline fighter in New Orleans for the rights of those who need it the most. She was named executive director of the organization, women with a Vision after Hurricane Katrina, and utterly transformed it into an organization that has built and practiced solidarity as a way of life. I’m so honored to speak with her today. Let’s bring her on. Dion Haywood. Dionne Haywood, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Deon Haywood:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Zirin:
We mentioned in the introduction that this will be the 11th time New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:
Yes,
Dave Zirin:
In regular times. Regular times, and these are of course not regular times. What kind of strain is it on the most marginalized communities when the big game comes to town?
Deon Haywood:
So New Orleans is one of those cities, like many cities where the people, in some way we talk about the economic boom that the state or the city will have from people coming to town from whatever the event is. And we host large events, massive events all the time. But I think the strain is how do people get to work, how do they make it to take care of their everyday activities? Because it’s hard. It’s even difficult for me. It also puts a strain, this Super Bowl. I think the strain is basically because we just had such a tragic tragedy in the French Quarter, and so local people are still struggling with that moment, with that moment of violence, senseless violence as always, but it makes it more difficult for the people who live and work in the areas where people will be for the Super Bowl. It just makes it hard to navigate and hard for people to get around and hard to get hard for people to get what they need here.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, I’d love it if you could talk a little bit more about the aftermath of the January 1st Bourbon Street attack in the context of the Super Bowl, in the context of the mood in New Orleans and the whiplash feeling that must exist
Deon Haywood:
Of
Dave Zirin:
Having to play host in the context of mourning.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, so I think New Orleans is a party city. I often tell people the only reason that I can cope or what makes it easy to cope with so many really hard moments in the world in New Orleans in the US right now is because it’s like every day our head is on a swivel.
We do host a lot of events. We’re known for hosting large events, everything from Essence Fest to Mardi Gras every year. And so it’s not unusual. And normally when we fall right into it and we know what we need to do, we know how to set up, we even know how to direct people what to do and how to be safe and have fun. But what makes it difficult this time is coming off an event that in my opinion, really we didn’t do enough to take care of the people here. We didn’t do enough to make sure that people who worked in the quarter and witnessed what happened, that their mental health and care we’re taken care of. It’s kind of like business as usual. And because of the economy today, it just makes it harder because people have to go to work. They have to work if they want to survive, they have to be able to get their kids where they have to go, and they have to come home and function away from their jobs. New Orleans is a place where we feel deeply when something like this happens. And I have talked to many people, both my staff at Women with a Vision, but also just around the city about this moment. And most people feel like it happened so quickly and seemed like we just kind of glossed over it.
And I don’t think that was the intention all the time that we glossed over it, but it’s kind of like the next big thing is happening. So we got to move. So we had New Year’s Eve, we had the New Year’s Eve tragedy, and now we’re moving between Mardi Gras and Super Bowl, super Bowl and Mardi Gras, right?
Large events where so many people in surveillance and policing are going to be large. I do believe that New Orleans has always done a great job with large events, with crowd control. We do it because we do it all the time. Mardi Gras is huge. You’re talking about millions of people, not just tourists, but locals. Our police department normally does a really good job. But I think after witnessing what took place for New Years, it’s added more policing. It’s added surveillance without really addressing the issues. But this is what we always do, not just here in Louisiana, but I think in the US period, we do not address root causes. We are not good at addressing root causes of a situation and why we got here and who those people were. It’s just like more police. And as much as I understand the idea of security, police don’t keep us safe.
Dave Zirin:
I’m glad you said that, and I’d like to dig into that a little bit more because of course, new Orleans, the people of New Orleans are legendary for being able to figure out how to host these events. But this year there will be an unprecedented, according to the National Football League, military and police presence as well as police from out of town. I mean that level of policing. And you mentioned surveillance, which they also say will be unprecedented. How does that affect the lives of the people with whom you work?
Deon Haywood:
It’s difficult. So let me give you an example. At Women with Division, we have worked for all of our existence 35 years with street-based sex workers, dancers, anybody involved in sex work we’re normally a go-to for those people. But then we also have operated a robust harm reduction program where people are either functioning and working through their addiction or they may be homeless and just need support. It puts a strain on all of us who provides those types of services because how do those people get to us if they’re feeling the pressure of just moving around the city that they live in, regardless of how hard their lives may be, it just makes it even more difficult for them to navigate. Right? So I’ll give you an example. My office is located in Central City, new Orleans, historic neighborhood on a historic street. When I drive to work in the morning, I drive from my house all the way to my job without making a turn, without doing anything because it’s a straight shot. I haven’t been able to do that with all the preparation for Super Bowl because everything is blocked off, the streets are blocked off, and New Orleans is a very pedestrian city, which is why I find it interesting when people are saying, oh, let’s make the French Quarter pedestrian only. Majority of the French Quarter is pedestrian only.
Dave Zirin:
Exactly.
Deon Haywood:
So I feel like we are regurgitating these ideas of safety, these ideas of policing, but they really won’t keep us safe. And it just makes it difficult for not only the people here who live here, but tourists who come here. And most people have been to New Orleans quite a few times, so they kind of know where to go, know how to navigate. I’ve got questions for people and they say, well, I’ll be able to get to all the things I normally do in the city when I’m there. And my answer was, I don’t think you will. I think this year is going to be really different. So if you think about the location of the Superdome and you think about the neighborhoods around the Superdome outside of the central business district, which many people get to see from the TV side. But the other side of that is everyday people who are living their lives trying to get back and forth and live
Speaker 3:
And
Deon Haywood:
Navigate, and those people, they just, and all the preparation, were opening up a food truck park. It’s beautiful. That’s great, but where was that months ago or a year ago? And in doing so now we’ve gathered up all the unhoused people and taken them to a secured location so people don’t see them. That is how people are affected. And I’ll just quickly say this, I know you have other questions, but I can’t
Dave Zirin:
Wait to go. No, please. Without saying it, the attacks on the unhoused is so important to this conversation.
Deon Haywood:
It
Dave Zirin:
Is it, please, please continue, please.
Deon Haywood:
And we saw this, and again, it’s not just isolated here to New Orleans. We see this across the country globally, Paris, the Olympics, we saw them taking busloads of unhoused people out of the city. So people visiting don’t see them as if we don’t know that this is an issue globally. And so knowing that housing advocates here, many who I’m in partnership with, I know personally I know their work. Many of them were so upset in this moment that the governor of Louisiana had all of these people gathered up when many of these people are already working with housing groups
Speaker 3:
To
Deon Haywood:
Find housing, to get housing. There was a recent initiative where they were doing really well, and I don’t remember the dollar amount and I apologize, but to take millions of dollars and pay the Port of New Orleans to house unhoused people for a week when that amount of money would’ve housed them for three years. It just at a time where everybody’s talking about good government and making sense. We don’t have a good government right now. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. It’s facts.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Sorry, not sorry. As they say.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Zirin:
You mentioned sex work earlier and the work you do in that area and the work your organization has done
Speaker 3:
In
Dave Zirin:
Providing support for so many years, every time there’s a Super Bowl,
Speaker 3:
The
Dave Zirin:
Government likes to talk about, as they put it, the crackdown on human trafficking. They usually do some kind of photo in the process of the Super Bowl, but what really goes on in these quote crackdowns on human trafficking?
Deon Haywood:
So not my favorite time at all. Again, a waste of resources. We as a society don’t do well with our people.
Some of us do better, most of us do not. The fact that people think it’s okay to remove unhoused people so that people don’t see them, put your poor cousins in the back so nobody sees the poor side of the family. And then when you talk about sex work, we know that trafficking does happen. It does happen, but also we’ve allowed it to happen. And when I say we’ve allowed it to happen, it is because we are so good at figuring out how we are going to incarcerate people and throw them in jail. But yet, you won’t legalize sex work. And when I say legalize, I’m not just talking about, oh, make it legal across the country, but really making it what it is. It’s work, sex work is work People work people make the decision to be involved in sex work, to survive. It might be the best thing for them if we don’t need everybody to agree, we just should agree that criminalization is not the answer. And then you have, for women who dance, again, in economies where people are really struggling, arresting people over surveillance of people is not going to stop trafficking. But maybe if we have programs where we’re really in community and working with women who know what’s going on, that they would be a support and a help to the movement. But trafficking is going to continue to happen because now it’s black market, right? Anything that people can’t access, what happens? It becomes a part of the black market, something to hide still and sell,
But those conditions are created.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, that’s right. And you keep going back to that issue of root causes. I think that’s the discussion this country is so weak at having.
Deon Haywood:
Yes,
Dave Zirin:
Absolutely.
Deon Haywood:
Because we can’t heal, oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Dave Zirin:
No, I was just going to say also there are certain people from certain class backgrounds who don’t want to have discussions about maybe the roots of their own empires and their own funds.
Deon Haywood:
Yes, absolutely.
Dave Zirin:
So you do such terrific work on these issues. How does your state legislature either help you or undermine you in the process of trying to do this work?
Deon Haywood:
Right. So as I mentioned, women with the Vision has been around for 35 years, and in those 35 years, we have had great support from Congress people to people who are a part of who are Congress people for Louisiana, state representatives, local government. From the mayor to the city council. We have had support. It’s according to who’s in office at the time. And up until the election this year, we did feel supported by quite a few people. We actually sponsored a sex worker. Decrim Bill was sponsored by State Representative Mandy Landry, and she was with us a hundred percent and really spoke out about how people are targeted and how an arrest record wouldn’t help someone in this situation. And so we tried. It didn’t pass, but we tried, and it’s not the first time we’ve done it. We’ve done it before where we actually challenged Louisiana’s crime against Nature Law.
And at that time, state representative Charmaine Marshan sponsored that bill, and we actually won. We worked with the Center of Constitutional Rights attorney, bill Quigley and attorney Andrea Richie, and we won, ended up removing over 800 people from the sex offender registry who was charged with this. And not only did we win and remove people, we’re still removing people. So we know that the work can progress, but when we have conservative extremists, both state and federal levels, it makes it hard for us to get things done, to make our communities better, to help people find their feet, to find second chance. We just make it really difficult for them. And so hosting events like the Super Bowl, yes, I get the economic impact, but how does that filter to the people when we talk about public safety, sex workers aren’t making you unsafe, unhoused people aren’t making you unsafe. Maybe if public officials thought that, oh, lighting something as easy as lighting will change a situation, crime is less. Most of us has read stats around public safety. We did a thrive study here a few years back, and it really was about how people interact with police. And it turned out to be no, how people are keeping themselves safe. Because again, police come in for the reactionary part, their presence. They react after a crime, but they do not prevent crime because when someone sets their mind on doing a thing, which we saw for New Year’s, they’re going to do that thing, right?
Dave Zirin:
Right.
Deon Haywood:
It doesn’t matter if a barrier was up. He had been here multiple times, scouting the city and looking at things and recording it. That is addressed through mental health, making sure people are getting what they need and addressing again, the root causes of why people commit crimes like this and why they’re willing to go through with it.
Dave Zirin:
Now, 2025, that’s the year we are in. And it means, and I can’t believe this, we are going to be, I do believe the right word is commemorating the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina and the levies breaking now since the sight of the Super Bowl is the Louisiana Superdome.
Deon Haywood:
Right.
Dave Zirin:
I was wondering if you could perhaps share what it was like to see that space at the time being used as a shelter for thousands of residents. If you could take us back there, please.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah. It was probably the most, one of the most difficult times in my life as a person who is a native New Orleans, I was born and raised here, and a person who fights for Louisiana and the people of New Orleans in particular, it was one of the most painful images I think I’ve ever witnessed, especially because it was home and many people I knew was in the dome at the time, between the dome and the convention center, right. Major institutions of parties in Super Bowl and football games and basketball games and concerts. It was extremely painful. But yet again, I feel like we do better now. But in that moment, I don’t think people knew what to do because I think what people don’t remember is that Hurricane Katrina did not hit the city of New Orleans.
The levies broke in the city of New Orleans. When we’re talking about natural disasters versus manmade, this was both. This was both. And being manmade is the part that caused the destruction that we saw, the suffering that we saw. And so I’ve been in a dome multiple times since that time. It doesn’t change the reality of that painful day. I know people who still won’t enter the dome because it’s too traumatic for them. But it’s just the example of how we’re not prepared to care for our people, the US in most states, in the us. We just don’t do a good job at caring for our people. And that was that moment. And as a person who’s rolled out a many of hurricanes here in the city, nobody ever thinks they’re not going to come back. We would’ve been fine had the hurricane hit. We weren’t fine because the levees broke.
Dave Zirin:
You can’t say that enough.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, it makes it a game changer, right? It’s one thing to have food and shelter for people because rain, when a possible tornado is coming, it’s another thing to have people’s homes in entire communities wiped out because our levies were substandard and weren’t built correctly.
Dave Zirin:
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities, and when I’m there, it’s always a topic of conversation, how the city has changed over the last 20 years and how those changes have really landed on the backs of some of the most marginalized people in the city. I’m hoping you could speak to that particularly about black culture in the city and what the last 20 years has done to the soul of the city as
Deon Haywood:
Well. Growing up in New Orleans, the beauty of it is we had neighborhoods that I could walk around the corner and I’m going to my aunt, I could walk around the corner and I’m going to see my grandmother, right? New Orleans is a very, it’s a walkable city. Most people, if I say, oh, I’m from the third ward, or I live in the Ninth Ward, you probably got 50 family members that live there with you. That is no longer the case in New Orleans. Gentrification, the selling of New Orleans, the buying up from New Orleans, people from Chicago, California, New York, buying up property that they didn’t even see. And now we have a culture of Airbnbs.
They’re everywhere. A culture everywhere. And it’s also raised housing. I’ll give you an example. There was a bar called Mimi’s in the Bywater. Everybody. Mimi’s was truly a place where it didn’t matter who you are, who you were, who you love, who you like, your ethnicity. Everybody went to Mimi’s and everybody danced after Hurricane Katrina, they did reopen, but then all the people who moved here was upset because their playing music in the neighborhood. Are you kidding me? Trying to get local government to create ordinances, noise ordinance. So just the disruption of culture. It is not unusual for us to walk down the street and have young people playing their instruments on a porch, on a corner. It is the voice of New Orleans. It’s the sounds of New Orleans, and much of that has been taken away since Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 3:
Mimi
Deon Haywood:
Is no longer in existence because the people who bought up that area who are living in that area are renting it out, felt like it was too much noise. But you chose here.
Dave Zirin:
Exactly. I mean, complaining about music in New Orleans is complaining about pizza in New York City.
Deon Haywood:
It’s insane. It’s
Dave Zirin:
Insane. It’s ridiculous.
Deon Haywood:
It really is.
Dave Zirin:
I just have one last question for you, and you’ve been so generous with your time. I just would love for you to speak about your organization, women with a Vision, and particularly the book written with Laura McTigue, I believe I’m pronouncing her name correctly.
Deon Haywood:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
Ti Yes. And it’s called Fire Dreams, making Black Feminist Liberation in the South. Please, if you could speak about organization and book.
Deon Haywood:
So thank you for asking that question. I appreciate it. Women with A Vision, last year was our 35th year, our 35th anniversary, and Women with A Vision was started by eight black women who bought harm reduction to Louisiana. And it’s been steeped in harm reduction ever since. And for those people may not know what harm reduction is, it is simply a modality used to get you from today to the next day. Somebody may be struggling with addiction today, but tomorrow might be the day they want to change that. And that’s what harm reduction does. We meet the needs of community and meet them where they are. We are a reproductive justice organization, and we do a lot of anti criminalization work, a lot of reentry work, as well as all the other things, but all under the umbrella of reproductive justice.
Dave Zirin:
Got you.
Deon Haywood:
The book written by Laura MCT and the organization, Laura is a friend and board member of Women with a Vision. And in 2012, we had an arson attack in our offices in Mid-City, and it destroyed everything that we had, which was all our history. And so we were really trying to rebuild the history, and it turned into this beautiful offering to the world because the book really talks about how we got started, the fact that we ran underground syringe exchange program for 27 years Here in the state. In the state, but based here in New Orleans. And so we decided to write this book about how we organized and how we were able to do that. And we believe that it is critical in this moment. We just got picked up by eight K Press. The book exceeded expectations for last year. It was just launched, so March would be our one year of the book being out.
And it’s been a beautiful experience, and I love that so many universities in schools are using the book as a guide for how do we move in this moment where we might not be able to say all the things we would normally say, but I feel like myself and women with a vision, we’re up for the challenge because everything that we take for granted today, how we fight, how we use social media is sometimes the only way to communicate with people. We’re still boots on the ground. Yes, we do social media, but we are constantly, every day on a weekly basis, spending time in our community. And this book, our hope with this book is that you realize that you could do this too.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Deon Haywood:
That your voice is powerful, and we actually all have guides and our stories will take us where we need to go.
Dave Zirin:
I can’t imagine a more timely message for 2025. The book is called Fire Dreams, making Black Feminist Liberation in the South. It was such a thrill to speak with you. It’s such an important issue. It’s the story the football networks are not going to tell, and it’s so, so vital to be part of the tapestry of the big day that people know who this game is landing upon. Thank you so much.
Deon Haywood:
Thank you so much, David.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have this week for this special Super Bowl edition of Edge of Sports. Thank you so much to Dionne Haywood for joining us that was beyond memorable. Thank you so much to the whole team here at the Real News Network, Dave Hebden, Maximilian Alvarez, Kayla Rivera, and the whole team that makes this show happen. And please, please stay tuned to The Real News Network, like the YouTube page, get on the website not only to see back editions of Edge of Sports, and we are so proud of the work we have done at the collision of sports and politics, but also because this year we’ve got so much planned and we want you to be on the cusp of everything that we are going to do. We want you to be watching us in the months ahead because we’re going to have a new studio. We’re going to have a series of absolutely amazing Titanic, incendiary and important topics, and we’re going to show you how sports can be part of the resistance in the year ahead. For everybody watching, please stay frosty and be safe. We are out of here. Peace.
This story was originally published by In These Times on Jan. 30, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
“Tom Homan said Chicago is very organized,” Margarita Klein, director of member organizing for Arise Chicago, proclaimed gleefully in Spanish to a room of 80 people at an immigrant rights training, many of whom laughed and clapped in response.
Klein was calling back to a CNN appearance two days earlier by Trump’s handpicked border czar.
“Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult,” Homan told anchor Kaitlan Collins of the administration’s immigration sweeps. “For instance, Chicago … they’ve been educated on how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”
When Trump moved to make an example of Chicago, sending federal immigration authorities to the city on Sunday, Chicago’s immigrant rights community was braced for it. The city’s vast networks of workers’ centers, unions, and community organizations have spent months preparing, disbursing flyers and cards, and sending the message to residents: Don’t talk to ICE. The two-hour training at Arise Chicago’s offices yesterday night was the organization’s sixth in-house training that month, and just one of numerous actions taking place across the city to defend immigrant residents.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, how to handle ICE, and another to have the muscle memory, so that you follow the plan in a stressful situation. To that end, Jorge Mújica, strategic campaigns organizer, did some boisterous role playing, in which he banged on the door and marched into the room pretending to be ICE. “Where are you from?” he shouted as he pointed at attendees, many of whom laughed at his lively presentation. Moises Zavala, workplace justice campaigns organizer for Arise Chicago, advised attendees to go home and practice with their families: “After dinner, do role playing: ‘What’s your name, where are you from, what’s your address?” (The answer, as always, was: Don’t talk to ICE.)
Over the last week, the Trump administration has worked to turn its deportation agenda into a perverse Reality TV spectacle, inviting reporters to embed with ICE operations, instructing agents to be “camera-ready” and even livestreaming arrests. It has publicly touted an array of federal authorities that are participating in the sweeps, including the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Chicago, a sanctuary city where local laws restrict police collaboration with ICE, is a favorite Trump punching-bag, and the center of the media spectacle. Dr. Phil hosted an hours-long broadcast on his MeritTV network on Sunday dedicated to ICE operations in Chicago, repeating widely debunked talking points about the dangers posed by immigrants, and media outlets like Bloomberg embedded with immigration authorities during the raids.
The full impact of the federal immigration actions is not yet known. Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling said Tuesday that he believes approximately 100 people had been detained by federal officials, though he said he couldn’t give an exact figure. Immigrant rights groups in Chicago confirm that immigration authorities are in the city, but do not have a complete tally of detentions.
What is clear is that the PR push seems designed to incite fear.
But at the Arise Chicago office in the West Town neighborhood, the mood was not one of defeat; all of the people who spoke with In These Times and Workday Magazine wanted to underscore that their community is trying to fight fear with preparation and organization. “Obviously there is nervousness,” Klein said, as Arise Chicago members ambled into the office and greeted friends with smiles and hugs. “But we don’t see our community being paralyzed.”
Chicago’s sanctuary status means that no city agency, including the police department, is supposed to work with ICE to deport residents. The 2006 Welcoming City Ordinance enshrining these policies was recently upheld at City Hall following a large public mobilization to defend it, despite an effort by some alders to water down its sanctuary provisions.
Since taking office, Trump has unleashed a bevy of anti-immigrant actions nationwide, including indefinitely suspending refugee admissions, deploying troops to the border, cancelling asylum appointments and attempting to limit birthright citizenship rights, though the latter has been temporarily halted by a federal district court judge. Trump declared on Wednesday that he plans to cancel the student visas of Palestine solidarity demonstrators and use the Guantánamo Bay military prison to hold up to 30,000 deported migrants.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.”
Targeting sanctuary cities is key to the new administration’s strategy. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that “sanctuary jurisdictions” will be cut off from federal funds “to the maximum extent possible.” And his Justice Department is instructing its prosecutors to investigate and charge state and local officials for “failing to comply” with immigration actions. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.” Johnson is one of four mayors who has been called to testify before a congressional committee about their cities’ sanctuary status.
On January 25, four Chicago-based organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago is a bid to crush the sanctuary movement and violates activists’ First Amendment rights.
Antonio Gutierrez is an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “We urge other groups to potentially think about similar lawsuits in their own cities,” Gutierrez says.
“Don’t open the door, remain silent if you’re arrested, tell your children not to open the door, and don’t sign anything,” Zavala told the crowd, most of whom are members of Arise Chicago, which organizes primarily Polish and Latino immigrant workers in low-wage industries like food production, manufacturing, domestic labor and food service.
The same principles apply if ICE shows up to your workplace, he underscored, and employers should know that ICE can’t enter without a warrant signed by a judge — unless the employer or another authority lets them in.
Even if the worst happens, and ICE detains you, it is best to remain silent and speak to an immigration attorney, whose number you’ve hopefully memorized, the trainers explained. Klein drove this point home with some gallows humor. “I know that when we are afraid, sometimes when we are nervous, we start talking and babbling too much and start telling them about all sorts of things like how many pimples we have on our back,” she said, jabbing her finger at an imaginary blemish as the room laughed.
Arise Chicago isn’t the only worker organization mobilizing to defend immigrants.
The Chicago Teachers Union won sanctuary protections in its 2019 contract, which say that Chicago Public Schools are not supposed to ask about or document the immigration status of students or community members, and ICE can’t come into schools unless it provides credentials, a reason and a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge (an administrative warrant or ICE detainer is not sufficient). This commitment takes on new meaning after Trump announced that he will allow immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, as well as hospitals and churches.
The Raise the Floor Alliance, which was founded by eight Chicago-area worker centers, held a know-your-rights training for a 200-strong member assembly on January 18. “We got people together across organizations, across sectors,” says Raise the Floor Alliance Executive Director Sophia Zaman, for a conversation that linked workplace justice campaigns with plans to keep workplaces safe from ICE.
Like many organizers in the city, Zaman responds to Homan’s recent gripes about Chicago with pride. “That’s evidence of our really robust system, networks of support,” she says. “An informed community and an organized community is the safest community.”
If the mood at the Arise Chicago training was jovial, at times, it also was serious; trainers and attendees talked through issues that ranged from the wonky to the personal. ICE has the right to examine a workplace’s I-9 forms, Zavala explained, which have workers’ social security numbers, immigration status, and other personal information, and then use this information to compel employers to fire workers who lack authorization. However, some employers might lie about being audited, Zavala said, and use this to justify firing workers. “Do not engage in any conversation with your employer about ‘yes or no, I do or don’t have papers,’” he emphasized. “Immediately go to a worker center to ask how to handle the situation.”
During one of the more sober moments of the training, Klein announced an upcoming meeting to discuss how to talk to children about ICE without causing them stress or trauma.
There is no shortage of trauma to go around. However organized Chicago communities might be, they are also dealing with an intense crackdown from an administration that has Chicago in its crosshairs. If there is no way to guarantee safety, organizers hope that at least solidarity can provide a layer of protection. “In my country, we organized against a dictator,” Klein, whose parents were political refugees from Chile, told the room. “An organized people will never be defeated.”
This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine, a non-profit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised that, if elected, “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” Trump’s administration has wasted no time since re-entering the White House on Monday, and communities around the US are currently bracing for a wave of ICE raids. In plans that were publicly leaked ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the city of Chicago was identified as a key target for immigration raids, putting immigrant residents and their neighbors on high alert. To discuss the impending threat to Chicago and cities around the country, and how communities can fight back, The Real News speaks with Moises Zavala, Workplace Justice Campaigns Organizer for Arise Chicago, and Natascha Elena Uhlmann, a writer for Labor Notes and immigrant rights activist from Sonora, Mexico.
Studio: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: David Hebden Produced by: Stephen Janis and Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to a special emergency report created to help those who are immigrants or might be helping innocent people who happen to be immigrants in our country. And it’s no small matter. We’re tackling one of the most urgent human rights issues of our time, the weaponization of immigrant officers and law enforcement officers against working people, and it’s under the guise of law and order. This new administration has revived and expanded policies that threaten to tear families apart, destabilize communities, and target some of the most vulnerable people among us. And yet, amid the fear and uncertainty, there is resistance, resistance from those who refuse to let cruelty and chaos define our workplaces and our neighborhoods. Today we’ll be speaking with organizers and advocates and reporters who are pushing back creating sanctuary in unexpected places and proving that solidarity is our strongest shield. From teachers standing up for their immigrant students to unions rewriting the rules of what it means to protect workers, these are the people finding innovative, compassionate ways to challenge the unchecked power of ICE.
And leaked plans show that ICE will be heading into Chicago, and we will be directly speaking to the organizers on the ground, and we’ll try to get for you the most current updates on the situation. We’ll also explore how deportations are not just acts of cruelty, but tools of economic control throwing lives into disarray, creating fear, and reinforcing inequality. But for those who might think, “Well, this doesn’t affect my life,” we’ll also explain the economic disruption that will occur across the board for those of us understandably worried about the cost of groceries and other goods. And there is solid data that shows that when President Obama deported a record 3 million people, it did not equate to 3 million jobs for Americans or proportionately higher wages. In fact, in President Trump’s first term, he only deported 1.9 million people, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that Biden deported even more than both Trump and President Obama.
Although allegedly this was because more people entered the country during his tenure, it is interesting to note that both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in mass deportations, but the type of deportation policies that are currently being proposed can target people here legally under temporary protected status, children born in the U.S. to noncitizens, or people without criminal records who’ve been working here for decades who might’ve had trouble renewing a work visa or have been waiting years for the asylum process to be finalized. So, to get a better understanding of what our country is doing, let’s dive into the policies that make this possible and, more importantly, the people and movements fighting back. Because while this is a time of fear, it is also a time when we can show our humanity, our compassion, and our resourcefulness, and to demonstrate the power of collective action. I’m fortunate to be joined by senior investigative reporter Stephen Janis to help me break down this difficult topic.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely. Glad to be here.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
You’re welcome.
Taya Graham:
First, can you give me just a brief overview of what the Trump administration has been doing?
Stephen Janis:
I mean, it’s so complex and so expansive and sprawling, it’s difficult to connect all the dots, and we’ll be talking to our guests about this. But for example, he wants to revoke birthright citizenship for children who are born to people who are not here, I guess, legally, from his perspective. Another thing he wants to do is deputize, as we were saying before the show, all sorts of law enforcement agents to be able to deport people. So he’s ratcheting that up. He’s created a national emergency at the border, he has mobilized the military to the border, and he has issued an executive order to conduct emergency raids and to deport people kind of on the spot. I don’t know if it’s the mass deportation, but it’s sprawling. It’s like in every aspect…
Oh, and even more importantly and even more astounding, it used to be you can’t grab a person at a church or a school. We’re not going to have people storming in there with jackets. Well, guess what? That’s absolutely on the table now, that people can go into a school or a church or something and just snatch up people. It’s scary really, and it is an expansion of law enforcement I think that’s unprecedented in our recent history. But we’ve seen some of this before in the history of this country. But it is so sprawling and so expansive and so permeates every part of life, I think it’s going to change a lot for people who thought they might’ve been voting for Trump, and they’re going to see up front how cruel this can be.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. We want to get started as soon as possible. We are joined by two guests-
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
… to help us understand who is at risk and what we can do to help. First, we have Natascha Uhlmann, staff writer for Labor Notes and an organizer. Her reporting covers Unite Here, farm workers, immigrant workers, and Mexico’s growing independent labor movement. And she’s already active in cross-border solidarity. In fact, she’s the editor and translator of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s book, A New Hope for Mexico. Natascha is a member of Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, and she’s the author of Abolish ICE. Natascha, thank you so much for joining us.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taya Graham:
And next we have Moises Zavala. He is an accomplished union organizer with over 25 years of experience. He has developed strategic plans to organize workers for union membership. He trains junior organizers. He serves on the local 881 UFCW executive board, and he’s an organizer at Arise, a faith-based labor movement where he helps workers to learn their rights and how to enforce them, including through making collective demands and building workplace committees. Moises, thank you so much for being here. We really do appreciate it.
Moises Zavala:
Thank you for having me.
Taya Graham:
So let me turn to you first, Moises. Just tell me a little bit about your organization, Arise that you work for, because it’s a faith-based organization, but also tell us what your concerns are for the people who are at the risk of deportation. And I just want to mention, we heard there might be an update on some of the raids across the country, so if you want to step in and speak about that first, please feel free.
Moises Zavala:
Sure. First of all, Arise Chicago is a worker center, not for profit, and what we do here is we support workers that are non-union to organize and protect their rights, organized collectively to improve their working conditions. We have been very involved in creating a rapid response to the problem that we have now of these mass deportations. What we did to create this rapid response was to have our members and community be ready for this. How? By creating trainings with our members and in the community of what to expect and how to be ready for this. Because when a worker is detained by ICE or there is a raid, people get paralyzed because of fear, because of the shock, and it is very hard then to be able to fight that deportation and provide to an attorney what they need to defend these workers.
We have created an organizing toolbox for the community and for our members so they could be ready, such as what are the documents that they need to have with themselves at all times? What happens if there is a raid or they’re detained? Who is going to pick up their children? Who is going to take care of their last paycheck or be able to go into their bank accounts and be able to provide for the children or the family that’s left behind? If the children are sick, who is going to know what kind of medication the children have to take or what are the illnesses? So there’s a huge area of readiness that our members and community have been developing now in case the worst happens. If the worst does not happen, then our community is one step ahead.
Stephen Janis:
Aren’t they going to classify family members who are actually citizens as collaterals or something? Taya and I were hearing about as we were driving into work to do this show. Do you know anything about that and what that means for people who have families?
Moises Zavala:
All I could say is that from the looks of things, it sounds like ICE will pick up anybody that they run into. They have a list of names that they are looking for, but clearly that’s not going to stop from asking others, say, in a household or in a facility where people are working if they have documentation or not.
Stephen Janis:
Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Taya Graham:
No, I just thought it was really interesting because I believe Tom Homan had been saying that if people who we would say are at risk for deportation don’t voluntarily leave on their own, he was basically saying people are concerned that families will be separated. He said, “We’ll take the family with them.”
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, the whole family. They’re not going to separate. Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Right, and people were referring to families being deported as collateral-
Stephen Janis:
Right, I just said that.
Taya Graham:
… damage in the war. So that was really disturbing.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha, I want to ask you, your work is amazing on all this. We were reviewing it. And how historic is this? And we know the first couple raid has happened across the country, about 400 or 500 people. First, what do you know about this and how unprecedented is this effort by the Trump administration historically speaking?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely seeing an escalation. Some employers are already instituting non-mandated employment authorization checks. 100 custodial and kitchen workers at New York City’s Tin Building were fired after building management carried one of these out. They’re effectively called silent raids, and they’re every bit as damaging as the more visible raids that tend to get more publicity. So a lot of this stuff can happen sort of quietly too.
Stephen Janis:
What do you mean by silent raids, so people understand? I didn’t know exactly what that meant, so can you just give us a description of what a silent raid is?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, absolutely. So basically your employer can, in a way that it is not mandated to do, say, “I want to check that you’re authorized to work here,” even if you’ve been working here for a year, for 10 years. And it’s a way of clearing out if you are knowingly hiring undocumented workers. It’s every bit is damaging to get rid of them, but in a way that often just goes unnoticed because it’s not the sort of showy ICE bursting through the door, right?
Stephen Janis:
That’s really interesting. That’s horrifying too. And do you know anything about the raids that have occurred with 400 or 500 people in Illinois and Maryland and a couple other states, Utah? I mean, has anyone said anything to you about these?
Natascha Uhlmann:
So it’s really a rapidly developing situation, but I think a few things are clear. The first is that bosses are absolutely going to abuse this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and the second is that ICE and Border Patrol are going to throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks. And we’re going to need to do the same, right? Experiment with tactics, see what sticks, but always with an eye to building power in a strategic way.
Taya Graham:
Let me ask you, Moises, something. When you’re speaking to immigrants in your community, what are their fears and what are they trying to do to address them? I know you’re doing organizing, I know you’re trying to prepare people, but what are their fears at heart?
Moises Zavala:
The fear is the unknown. What’s going to happen? How is it going to happen? And we don’t have those answers, but what we do have is the ability to organize. And more than ever, we are sharing with our members that this is the time to organize with their coworkers, with their community, with their churches, the schools where the children go, to really solidify that network that we have and use it to organize support because this is not the first time that working families are attacked in this fashion. It’s happened before, and in the past, workers and communities organized very sophisticatedly to be able to win those types of oppressions, and we have to do the same thing. We have to continue that effort of unity, of organizing, and information so that people do not feel or do not have that fear that is going to paralyze them. We don’t have all the answers, but what we do know is that people want to live in peace and people can organize, and that is the avenue in which our members are taking to be able to have some stability in their lives at this moment.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha, one of the executive orders was getting rid of the birthright citizenship. How destructive do you think this will be? Do you think it will stick? Do you think the Trump administration will be able to make this stick? It really is contradicting the Constitution. But nevertheless, how destructive is this to families, and what are your concerns about that?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, absolutely. First, can I say, can I jump in on the fear question after this?
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
Oh, please do.
Stephen Janis:
You can jump in now. If you want to start with that, go ahead.
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah. On the topic of fear, I mean this is without question a scary moment, but it is really essential that we don’t do the right’s work for them. They want people to be afraid. They want to project way more strength than they have in hopes that people will self-deport or remove themselves from public life. I am seeing a lot of bad actors who are seizing on this moment to spread terror. I heard from one organizer that a photo circulating spreading panic of an ICE van was actually photoshopped. And I’ve also seen someone screencap a photo from an ICE raid in 2018 and post it and say it was this week. So a lot of organizers I talk to right now are saying, “Spread power, not panic.” If you’re sharing information about a raid, verify it first. It can be tempting to just want to get that info out there, and I certainly feel that urge, but it’s really important not to play into the right’s hands and not to spread fear and uncertainty.
Stephen Janis:
Do you have any sense of who is spreading this fear and why they would want to do that? Are they trying to exploit workers, or is there some motivation behind that? Just curious.
Natascha Uhlmann:
I mean, it’s all very developing, so I can’t-
Stephen Janis:
I know. Totally understand. It just struck me like, wow, what a horrible thing to do to people. What’s your motive there?
Natascha Uhlmann:
I think just abject cruelty. I mean, I certainly do think bosses are very much prepared to take advantage of this moment, no question, but I can go back to the birthright question now.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, sure. Of course. Of course. Absolutely.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Cool. Yeah, it’s absolutely heinous, and it’s just a complete mess because where do you draw the line? Right? Babies born today, a year ago, 10 years ago? And also he’s claimed that the U.S. is the only country that offers birthright is just actually factually wrong. Right? Canada, Mexico, for starters, our literal backyard, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, this is not an uncommon practice.
Stephen Janis:
Wow.
Taya Graham:
And just to make this clear, because one of the things that was mentioned in the inauguration speech was the idea that the people who are in this country that are immigrants are somehow criminals, and I don’t think anyone would argue that if someone is engaged in transporting narcotics or human trafficking, no matter what your status is, you’re committing a crime. But we’re hearing that there’s so many people like clergy and teachers and employers, they’re worried about protecting community members that are valued hard-working people and even children. I was hoping, and this is either for you, Moises, or for you, Natascha, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about the people at risk. Describe who they are, help put a face to it so people understand who you’re trying to protect.
Moises Zavala:
It’s everyday people. Everyday people are at risk. Students, restaurant workers, grocery workers, factory workers, everybody’s at risk because we don’t carry an ID that says I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m a permanent resident, I’m undocumented. Hey, if you look Mexican, we’re going to have to pull you over. Show me some papers. That’s the kind of world in which we live in right now. If it was that simple where, “Hey, here’s a list. These are people that you have to go and find,” that’s one thing, but that’s not what we’re hearing. So again, we’re living in a moment where we have to inform faster than before, broader than before, and really organize to be able to push back to be able to make sure that workers know what their rights are.
For example, if there is a raid or they get pulled over or they’re stopped on the street, what’s the first thing that we mentioned in our trainings? Remain silent. Remain silent. We have little cards that say, “I’m going to remain silent, and I want to speak to my attorney.” They look something like this where the work it can put in their pocket and show it to an ICE agent. So this is what we’re doing to be able to fight off this environment of fear. I mean, attacking a birthright citizenship, it’s just another way to create fear and to create anger and to try to point at people and wonder, hey, I wonder if he or she is a U.S. citizen. Well, let’s ask them. Right? I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but it sure as heck looks like it is. So we have to be ready for that. We have to push back.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha-
Natascha Uhlmann:
[inaudible 00:18:20].
Stephen Janis:
Oh, go ahead. You go ahead. Absolutely. I don’t need to ask a question.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Great. I think Moises makes some excellent points. Just to add to that, there’s often this sort of outrage of, “Well, they broke the law to come here. Why didn’t they come the right way? Why didn’t they get in line?” Well, first of all, for many people, there just simply is no line to get into. But secondly, often the people who say this are often the same people who say things like, “I would do anything for my child. I would kill for my child.” And I think it’s really important to tap into that shared humanity. People are coming here because they have hopes and aspirations, and they want to give their kids something that they didn’t have. And you cannot tell me as a parent, if you could not feed your kid, you wouldn’t cross some damn line for them. I think these are the conversations that we need to be having.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. I think-
Moises Zavala:
Another thing that I would add-
Stephen Janis:
Okay.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Sorry.
Moises Zavala:
Another thing that I would add when we talk about criminalizing undocumented workers is, well, what are we talking about? They just pardoned 1,500 criminals that attacked our capital.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, good point.
Moises Zavala:
And what is it? What are we talking about when we say criminals?
Stephen Janis:
Well, one of the things, and I wanted both of you, if you want to jump in on understanding, have they canceled the ability to ask or seek asylum, speaking of cruelty? I think that was in part of the executive orders. Is that playing out? Is that correct?
Moises Zavala:
I believe that’s what it was.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Yeah, because seeking a asylum is an important part of that process you were talking about for people trying to come here, right? If that goes away, what happens?
Moises Zavala:
People continue to see the United States as a place of hope, and people will continue, like Natascha mentioned, they will continue to walk the miles and miles for their children. I don’t think it’s fun to be walking through the desert or through a jungle. These are needs. But there are different ways to welcome people into this country, but the way this new administration is going about it, it’s simply just to create chaos and create fear.
Taya Graham:
I think you brought up such a good point that these people are doing what any American would say they would do for their family, which is I would do anything for my child. I think you brought up such a great point, both of you. And I hate to bring up something that stokes more fear, but there have already been instances of anti-immigrant violence. I mean, back in December, there were two teenagers in New York. They were asked by a group of men if they spoke English. When they said no, they didn’t speak English, they were both stabbed and one died. Of course, in Springfield, Ohio, after Haitians were falsely accused of being in the U.S. illegally and harming pets and spreading disease, there were marches by white supremacists, and there were 30 bomb threats in one week. So I have to ask you both, are there any concerns that there could be vigilante actions against the immigrant community?
Moises Zavala:
Look, it could very well be, but I think it’s also on all of us to play a role in making sure that this changes. It’s not just for immigrant rights organizations like ours to be fighting this off. We will. That’s what we do. But it’s also the participation of the rest of our communities to stand up and to fight against this kind of attacks on all of us.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, I would just add, I think a lot of this work will come down to talking to people who don’t agree with you, building bonds of trust and solidarity, and then you can have that conversation, right? It’s not the undocumented worker making five bucks an hour under the table who’s getting the better end of the deal, right? He didn’t choose that. The boss did. And if there wasn’t some arbitrary designation of immigration status, the boss couldn’t get away with paying him five bucks an hour. It is the vulnerability of immigration status itself that creates the conditions where a boss can undercut you. I just wanted to flag, we’ve got a great piece in Labor Notes called Worker Solidarity Is the Best Strategy to Defeat Rising Fascism, and it talks about exactly that. It is in the boss’s interest to have us at each other’s throats, keep us divided, see each other as a threat. I think it is going to take talking to people who don’t agree with us, not violent people like that, but I think it’s what it’s going to have to look like.
Stephen Janis:
One thing I want to note, I think what happened with the asylum process is now people have to remain in Mexico, I believe. Just a little correction there or kind of clarification. But yeah, I mean, as a reporter, is there any story that stands out to you or something that sort of shows the cruelty and the inhumanity of this or that has affected you in any way?
Natascha Uhlmann:
I think there’s so many, but unfortunately, they largely precede Trump, right? Even under Obama we had kids in deportation hearings, and I remember reading their feet couldn’t even touch the floor is how little they were. They didn’t know their last name is how little they were. So unfortunately, this is a bipartisan affair, and I think that it’s just a total abdication of leadership on behalf of the Dems, and that handed us Trump. If you’re going to condemn Trump’s rhetoric and fall all over yourselves to top it in the support for the Laken Riley Act… I don’t know. It’s not only morally reprehensible, but yeah, it’s a total abdication of leadership, and it’s just bad politics. You want to tell us come election time that Trump’s a fascist, that this is the most important election of our lives. But then if you’re going to fall right into place and advance his agenda, what is the political calculus? Right.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a great point.
Taya Graham:
I actually have a dozen more questions I want to ask, but I want to make sure that I ask the most important question, and this is for people who want to take action but maybe let’s say they aren’t directly involved in a union, what are some ways they can support immigrant workers and help create sanctuary workspaces or just safe spaces in their own communities? And I’ll go to you first Moises and then to you Natascha.
Moises Zavala:
A number of things that they can do. One is they can reach out to a church in their community, find out if their church is doing any work or is willing to do some work and take on some of the responsibilities to create that support base in the community. Talk to the schools. Obviously, contact a worker center like us. We’d be more than happy to share the work in supporting our community. So there’s a range of ways that they can support. They can contact their aldermen, their elected officials, find out what is it that they’re doing. If it’s obviously a state like in Illinois, what are they doing and how can they participate to strengthen the work that those elected officials are doing? So thank you for that question. That is what we need to be thinking about. How can we incorporate and encourage others to have a role in this support base for these workers?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, there’s a lot of good language you can include in your collective bargaining agreements. The Chicago Teachers Union has some good language about how you don’t let ICE through the door unless they got a signed warrant. But a teacher I spoke with for a recent story with Sarah Lazar, teacher’s name was Catherine Zamarrón, she made a really important point that good contract language is only useful if people know their contract. Someone’s going to have to be the person when ICE is at the door that says, “Hey, don’t open that door. We don’t have to let them in.” So this piece I referenced at Labor Notes and Workday, Sarah Lazar and I collected the best collective bargaining agreement language that we found with these sorts of protections, protections against retaliation against nonmandated audits, stuff you’re going to want in your contract. So you can find that on both the Labor Notes and Workday Magazine websites.
But in addition, I think worker centers and community groups also have a really important role to play. There’s all the work Arise is doing, which has been integral. Escucha Mi Voz Iowa faith-based community org has committed to having 6,000 one-on-one conversations with church members in the area. And interestingly, they likened it to how organizers build a union. Talking to people who don’t agree, it’s going to be a slow process of building trust, of being in dialogue. It’s going to be exceptionally frustrating, but you got to bring in people who don’t agree or we’re just going to be talking to each other.
And finally, I would just point to there are very practical things you can do in your community. I spoke with one organizer who turns out a crowd when a community member needs to go to an ICE check-in because ICE will generally not make detentions during public events as a safety precaution for their agents. So there’s a lot of stuff you can do. If you’re not in a union organized, reach out to the one of the incredible worker centers supporting these organizing efforts or to EWOC, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. But I think everyone has a role to play, and it’s going to take all of us.
Taya Graham:
Well, you know what? We’re going to make a point of putting in our YouTube description perhaps a link to that article that you wrote with Sarah Lazar. I think you might also have some tips. That would be great. I think the same with you, Moises. At the beginning, you held up what looked like a little pamphlet or handbook. Perhaps we could post a link to that as well so that people can see for themselves things that they can do if they want to help protect their fellow community members. I want to thank you both so much for joining us for this emergency livestream. We know we grabbed you last minute and we know you both have a lot of important work to do, so we want to thank you so much for your time. I feel like you want to add one thing, Moises?
Moises Zavala:
Yes, one thing, very important, despite the fear that is being thrown at us, I think that it is these moments that draw out the best in us to organize, to change, and to create power. And we just got to remember that because our communities have done that in the past, and we need to continue to do it today and teach it for the future.
Taya Graham:
I’m so glad that you ended us on such a positive note, to not give into fear, but that this is a time where we can join together to do something positive. Thank you both again for your time.
Stephen Janis:
Yes, thank you.
Taya Graham:
We really appreciate you.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Thank you so much.
Moises Zavala:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Take care. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Moises Zavala from Arise and Natascha Uhlmann of Labor Notes for discussing this human rights issue with us.
Stephen Janis:
And get her book Abolish Ice.
Taya Graham:
Yes, that’s right. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
A great book.
Taya Graham:
But most importantly, we want to thank you for not only working in your communities to provide protection, but teaching us how we can help. We appreciate your time and your work, and we want to thank you again for joining us. And we also want to thank everyone for watching and taking the time to listen and taking the time to care. Our immigrant neighbors aren’t our enemies. They’re our friends, our co-workers, and they’re even our family. Let’s keep sharing the things that make our country truly great, being open, being innovative, being welcoming, and being compassionate, and being a place where anyone who works hard at least has a chance at the American dream. Thank you so much for joining us.
Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas, are facing scrutiny following the release of body camera footage capturing a ticket issued to a local pizza delivery driver—who says that officers have pulled him over more than seven times in under a year. The driver, Christian Mobley, says police have destroyed his livelihood after he lost his job due to receiving so many tickets. Police Accountability Report investigates the case as an example of how police departments around the country employ dirty tactics to maximize city revenues through ticketing.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable to do so. We don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead we examine the system that makes bad policing possible and today we will achieve that goal by showing not one, not two, but multiple questionable stops by police of a pizza delivery man trying to simply make a living. It’s an ongoing pattern of writing tickets, pulling him over, and yes, even an arrest that we will investigate to reveal just how problematic the actions of these officers are. But first, before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at PAR@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @TayasBaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you.
And please like share and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out and it can even help our guests. And of course I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there and I’ve even started doing a r comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and what a terrific community we have. And we do have a Patreon accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars. So anything you can spare is truly appreciated. Alright, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now there is no doubt that times are tough for the working class in this country. Grueling jobs, underpaid work and insufficient benefits are not only commonplace but a veritable addendum to the American dream that for some has turned into a nightmare and that is why today we are telling the story of one man who personifies both the challenges and obstacles of making an honest living under extreme duress.
The man in question, Christian Mobley has been working as a pizza delivery person in Jonesboro, Arkansas for years. There he has been diligently delivering food, working late into the night to make ends meet. But soon he found along with the occupational hazards and inherent dangers of delivering food, another unexpected challenge he had to overcome to make ends meet the Jonesborough Arkansas Police Department. That’s because in spring of 2023, police began pulling him over for minor traffic violations, car stops that often became confrontational and ever more contentious as police turned traffic enforcement into something entirely divorced from public safety encounters with police that changed his life. Now Christian’s story begins, like I said, in June of 2023, Christian was driving to work to start his delivery shift when a Jonesboro officer Michael Starns pulled him over. Take a look.
Speaker 2:
What’s going on man? All right. My name is Officer Jonesboro Police Department. The reason I stopped is you got a brake light out, you’re passenger side brake light. Is there a reason you’re not wearing your seatbelt today, sir? Now I’m trying to get Walmart. You going Walmart, you’re going the wrong way. You got a driver’s license on you.
Taya Graham:
Now as you notice, the officer is already questioning Christian about circumstances that have nothing to do with his allegedly broken taillight. I’m not sure why he has to explain where he is going or even why. But the officer asks, let’s say provocative questions that heightened the tension of this stop. Just listen.
Speaker 2:
Okay, Mr. Moby, is there a reason you’re nervous? What’s wrong man?
Christian Mobley:
I mean you’re telling me from all the way who wouldn’t be nervous? You’re telling me all the way from back there. Well,
Speaker 2:
You have a brick light out man.
Christian Mobley:
You tell somebody that long, I mean you going to pull me over. You
Speaker 2:
Could have pulled me up. Well I thought you were going to turn to a residence back there. I wasn’t going to bother you because you were going to be at home, but I saw you driving. So I mean you need to know your brake lights out, don’t you, for your safety, right? Alright, I mean, right. And you’re not wearing your seatbelt. That’s not safe either, man. I’ll be right back with you, okay?
Taya Graham:
Now I won’t judge for you, but I think Christian looks annoyed rather than nervous and truly, if the officer was concerned about Christian safety, why were they focusing on his state of mind? But apparently Mr. Moby’s answer did not satisfy the Jonesboro Police Department because again, they escalated the encounter. Just look
Speaker 2:
Ly shaken.
Taya Graham:
Now before I play the next section of the video, I want you to notice how police often needlessly escalate a routine car stop. That is because since the initial contact, at least two other officers appear, including the one I’m showing you now on the screen, they approach Christian’s car from the back. So how would any rational person not be afraid? How could you not be fearful of a rapid and frankly questionable ratcheting up of police presence? Just take a look at what happens next.
Speaker 2:
Hey Ms. Mul, go ahead. Step back for me. Okay, so I’ll explain all that to you in a second. Just go back here. So this is a high drug traffic area. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to run around your vehicle and if it doesn’t hit, we’ll be out of here. Is there anything in your vehicle illegal? I’m just going Walmart. I’m a pickup driver. Walmart, I get it man. I get it man. That’s all I’m trying to prove, man. Trying to prove your exact man. Okay? Is anything on you illegal? Nothing. Mind we search you real, okay? Yes, or
Speaker 4:
I
Speaker 2:
Just want to spray though there’s nothing illegal in here at all.
Taya Graham:
So the overarching crime under investigation here is an allegedly broken taillight, although the cop never uses his body camera to record the evidence from that point, police construct a narrative that Mr. Mobley, because he’s driving in a so-called high drug crime area, should be subject to a drug sniffing dog to test his car.
Speaker 2:
She’s been letting it go. So dispatch let her go. Yeah, essentially. Hey dude, I appreciate your on your break. Fives going to give you a verbal warning, a citation.
Taya Graham:
So after the entire ordeal of being personally searched, then his car subject to a drug sniffing dog, Christian is given a citation. That’s right. All the assorted officers, including a drug canine unit deployed to battle a broken taillight. But for all the duress Krishna experienced with his stop, he was soon pulled over again in March of 2024. Let’s listen as an officer justified stopping him,
Speaker 5:
Adam nor zebra, 86 M NZ 86 M on Nettleton by the country club. Send me another unit over here. I’m not sure what he’s doing.
Taya Graham:
He’s over by the country club. I’m not sure what he’s doing. I mean that’s interesting. So driving by a country club is suddenly a crime. First he was driving in a high drug and crime area and that was justification to search his car and now he’s driving next to a country club. Apparently Jonesboro is just a bunch of no-go zones for delivery drivers. And like the previous stop, apparently one officer was not enough to corral Mr. Mobley. Shortly after he was pulled over, another cop showed up on the scene. Take a look.
Christian Mobley:
How was y’all harassing me? I just told you cops are always following me. That’s harassment. That’s not harassment. It is. There’s officers who drive every day, every you on it too. You want to harass me too.
Speaker 2:
I just came here because he asked for backup. Man,
Christian Mobley:
He’s clear. I’m always clear. I ain’t never committed no crimes. I’m always clear you ain’t never going to catch me with nothing but drugs or nothing. Listen
Speaker 4:
Dude, bring it down.
Taya Graham:
Just bring it down. Now the car stop then takes a troubling turn as the officer says something that seems very pointed and honestly a bit disturbing.
Speaker 2:
Where have I talked to you before? Your name sounds familiar.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, I got these cops always following me harassing. So if I don’t come home, you know where I’m at. They’re arresting me for no reason. We’re not arresting you for anything man.
Taya Graham:
But yet again, this car stop ends without charges. Not even a ticket. As the officer never fully articulates what Christian was apparently doing wrong other than driving adjacent to a country club. But this is not the last encounter in the series of stops that have pervaded Mr. Moby’s life. That’s because just months later he’s pulled over yet again this time just outside his workplace. See for yourself.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah. What’s up? What’s going on? Yeah, what’s going on? I’m working officer jp, I’m working right now. I know
Speaker 6:
Officer JP D. You reading that stuff because you didn’t use the turn signal?
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, I did use the turn signal. Yeah, I did you use it hundred. I used the turn signal. Yeah, I did. Your feet prior your into the parking. What? What’s your name?
Speaker 6:
Can you have a driver’s license insurance? What?
Christian Mobley:
What’s your name? Name and badge number?
Speaker 6:
Driver’s license, registration, insurance
Christian Mobley:
Name and badge number. Name and badge number driver license registration.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so I’m just going to have to be blunt for a moment. I understand enforcing the law is not easy and is often complicated. I understand officers have to do their jobs to make sure we obey certain rules of the road. But to pull a man working to make a living for not signaling quickly enough within 100 feet, I mean is that really worth anyone’s time? Let alone a police officers? I mean, how many times have we been told traffic stops are one of the most dangerous facets of policing? How many law enforcement officials have repeatedly claimed that they take a mortal risk simply by pulling over a driver to procure their license and registration? My point here is why if indeed this is so risky, why bother to pull over a man for a traffic infraction that is so minor and of such little consequence? Why take the risk if the alleged misdeed is so inconsequential? Well, Steven has been working on that question and we’ll discuss it later. But despite the questionable nature of the allegation, the jonesborough officer presses on and actually escalates the encounter. Just watch, Hey, I need driver to get
Speaker 6:
My driver’s license out of there. Driver’s license registration.
Christian Mobley:
I need to go in there and get my driver’s license out of there. Oh,
Speaker 6:
You not going inside.
Christian Mobley:
It’s inside.
Speaker 6:
Well you not going inside. I’ll take your name and date of birth. Matter of fact, step out for me.
Christian Mobley:
We have to lock our stuff up in the car up in the job then. All right, cool.
Speaker 6:
You still away? Do you have any weapons on you?
Christian Mobley:
No, I don’t have no, no weapons, nothing on me. Alright, cool. I’m working right now. As you can see Papa Johns, I’m working. What’s your name, date of birth?
Speaker 4:
Christian Mobley.
Speaker 6:
I did use the turn signal. I did. You didn’t. If you stop talking over me and let me explain.
Christian Mobley:
Okay.
Speaker 6:
You didn’t use the turn signal a hundred feet prior before making this right? Turn to this.
Christian Mobley:
I used the turn signal fully and you know
Speaker 6:
I did not a hundred feet prior. That’s what I’m saying.
Christian Mobley:
A hundred feet prior.
Speaker 6:
You trying to turn you giving the wrong information.
Christian Mobley:
Okay man. Okay. This is clearly harassment. Do you have any registration in? Yeah, I got everything you need in the car. Where is it? Can I get in the car? Of course, go ahead. Okay, registration insurance please. Okay, hold on, hold
Taya Graham:
On, hold on. Now as the stop continues, I want you to notice something as I run the video Again, these car stops are not being conducted by a single officer. No. This apparently serious offense of not signaling more than 100 feet before the turn has actually warranted. Not one, not two, but seemingly three cops at least. That’s three law enforcement officers for one pizza delivery man, who apparently made an ill time use of his turn signal. Take a look at how this increased police presence makes this stop even more tense.
Christian Mobley:
This is clearly me. I’m only going to ask you this one time, okay? Stay right there. Don’t move. You understand what I’m telling you? Yeah, I understand what you’re telling me fully. Officer, am I being same? Yes moment. Yes. I’m being the same at the moment. Yes. Where is it at? In the glove box. It’s in the glove box. My insurance and everything’s in the glove box. Officer, are you getting consent to go in there and get it? You said I’m be in the same, right? Yes sir. So if I’m, we
Speaker 2:
Have to have consent for you to go inside there, get your
Christian Mobley:
So if I deny, if I deny,
Speaker 2:
If you
Christian Mobley:
Deny it, we’ll recite you for not having proof of, okay, go on there and get it. Go on there and get it. Come get my keys out the car and get my driver’s license out the bunk
Speaker 5:
Because you’re supposed to have it while you’re driving. So we just won’t even worry about that. I’m going to be driving without a license.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, yeah. Come get my keys at the car. No, stay over there. Come get my keys out the car so you can get my drivers out the box.
Speaker 6:
Put you in a until we tell you to don’t throw with nothing. Okay? Thank you.
Christian Mobley:
Okay, let’s get this right. You’re not in patrol, you don’t need to tell him what to do. You don’t get I got you officer. I got you. What’s your name and badge number? D Thomas. 1, 5, 3, 3. Thank you. Thank you officer. Yeah, they harassing me. They harassing me. Get your hands out your pocket. Ain’t no weapons on me out of your pockets. My bad. I’m used to putting my hand in my pocket, man.
Taya Graham:
Okay, just wait a moment. I think I actually undercounted the number of cops at the scene this time. It looks like there are at least four officers who’ve joined this investigation. And guess what? More cops probably means more problems. And that’s exactly what happened as police decided to put Christian in handcuffs. Just look ice.
Christian Mobley:
Huh? Ice. What’s your bad number? What’s your bad number? Four, eight. Thank you. Who is that right there?
Speaker 2:
He’s not a part of this traffic stop
Christian Mobley:
Business, sir. Okay. Hey, hey, hey. They won’t let me get my license out the box. They won’t let, he’s my manager. He, yeah, they harassing me. What did I just say? They harassing me. Hey, put him back in there. Put him back in the truck going on. I’m being arrested. Being detained.
Taya Graham:
That’s right. They detained him. Although this looks like an arrest to me. And again, this entire ordeal did not lead to any actual charges. Just more mental anguish for Mr. Mobley. But it wasn’t over. Not hardly just 48 hours later, just two days after the stop we just watched Christian was pulled over again by the same officer
Speaker 6:
Jones, bur police department. I know the reason I stomped you is because you falling too close. No I wasn’t. Yes you were. No. You flashed me with your high beams. No I wasn’t. When I pulled over into this parking lot, you was so close. You almost rear-ended me. No. Okay. What was the purpose of you? You harassing me again. Odie. Can I have your driver’s license? Registration, insurance.
Christian Mobley:
What’s the traffic ion? Odie.
Speaker 6:
Driver’s license, registration, insurance. You
Christian Mobley:
Harassing me again? OIE,
Speaker 6:
Mr. Moley. Okay, driver’s license, registration, insurance. Do you know that’s bs
Taya Graham:
O. But this time the crime was apparently following too closely, but this time as well, the officer seems to have decided that he would employ the full extent of his police powers. Take a look.
Speaker 6:
Set up out. Step out. Step out. Here’s your drive license here. No step out. It’s too late. Here it is. Here it is. What you doing man? Step out. What are you doing? Turn around. What are you doing? Oie? Hands behind your back. What are you doing? Hands behind your back. What am I being arrested for? Odie. What am I being arrested for? Obstruction for what? 1 42. Dispatch. Oh damn, this is bullshit. 15 one time. You know this is bullshit, right? Turn around. I asked you three times to give me your information. I gave it to you. It’s in your hand. I’m only required to ask you once you gave it to me once I came over here and told you to step out the vehicle,
Christian Mobley:
You know what you’re doing. It’s bs man.
Speaker 6:
Let’s go
Taya Graham:
Obstruction. Well that’s interesting. Bear in mind obstruction is premised upon obstructing an investigation into a separate crime. And since the officer did not articulate what the underlying crime is, we have no idea how he is justifying the charge. A lack of full disclosure that is not addressed during a post-arrest discussion. Let’s watch
Speaker 6:
Mr. Mobley. Yeah, what’s a good phone number for you?
Christian Mobley:
What am I being arrested for?
Speaker 6:
Obstruction. I’m being arrested for obstruction. Yes sir. What’s a good phone number? How did I obstruct Odie? Are you going to tell me your phone number? Mr. Mobley? What’s the number for your citation? How did I Instruc? Odie. What’s your current address? You know my address Odie? It’s on the driver’s license. Okay, you mind telling it to me?
Christian Mobley:
It’s on the driver’s license.
Speaker 6:
Alright, well like I said, you going to jail tonight for obstruction? I asked you three times to provide me with your identification.
Christian Mobley:
I gave it to you
Speaker 6:
After the fact. I came over there And
Christian Mobley:
How was I obstructed though? Oie? How was I obstructed?
Taya Graham:
And so Christian is taken to jail without sufficient justification and truly without understanding what crime he’d committed. And as you’ll learn later, this had devastating consequences for him and his livelihood. But there is more to the story, so much more that we’re actually not showing all the video now. Instead there will be a part two of our investigation into the Jonesborough Police Department. And please feel free to reach out with your own stories of your interactions with the Jonesborough Police Department and we will be soon joined by Christian to tell us how this continuing series of police encounters has impacted his life and what he wants to happen as a result. But first we will be joined by my reporting partner, Steven Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the documents. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
Now first I know you sent a lengthy email to the Jonesboro Arkansas Police Department. What did you ask and how did they respond?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I was very specific. I was very concerned about the kind of probable cause for putting Mr. Moley through all these car stops and some of the searches. So I asked him very specifically, how do you designate a high crime area in the city? Is that like an official designation? What is the process you use? Secondly, I asked about country club is driving within the vicinity of a country club actually a crime. And how do you establish this? Basically I was looking for a criteria for how they decide when to pull someone over and what that means. Now you sent an email to it to the Jonesborough Police Department? We actually sat and talked to them on the phone. We actually spoke to a traffic sergeant there who said he would get back to us. I have not heard, but we’re going to keep following up and I just want to let people know we did our due diligence to get these people to respond. We let them know what the questions we had. We asked specific questions and we did not get a response. But they are certainly been put on notice about this.
Taya Graham:
So you have reviewed all the video in depth. Do you think the officers had probable cause to stop Christian?
Stephen Janis:
Well tell you. Certainly not because I have a lot of experience with being pulled over myself and living in a city that part of their crime enforcement was to pull random people over all the time. And these stops saying high crime area, that’s so subjective. Driving near a country club even more odd and I can’t even call it subjective, just kind of crazy. And then the stops occurred later when he was driving a hundred feet. I mean, how on earth is any person supposed to know? How is a cop supposed to know that? How do you know when someone’s not put a tour signal on a hundred feet before they turn? It’s just impossible. So to me these stops are highly questionable. I don’t think the law backs it up and I think the questions need to be asked.
Taya Graham:
Steven, can you give me some background on the Jonesboro Police? How large is the department and what their crime rates look like?
Stephen Janis:
Te there are a lot of different ways to look at crime statistics and we’ve seen some reports that say Jonesboro has somewhat of a high crime rate, although it’s not that much different from the rest of major cities in Arkansas. Some people have given them a B plus for certain types of crimes and a C for violent crimes. So there’s all over the board. Obviously they have some problem with crime, but I will say as a word of caution that pulling people over randomly does not reduce crime. They did that a lot in Baltimore and it didn’t work. And if that’s the department strategy and I really wish they would talk to us about this then I think they’re going in the wrong direction.
Taya Graham:
And now to give us a sense of how his ongoing encounters with police have affected his life and his livelihood and how his perception of law enforcement has changed. I’m joined by Christian Mobley. Christian, thank you so much for joining us.
Christian Mobley:
No problem.
Taya Graham:
Now first please walk me through what we’re seeing in this video. You’re working in food delivery, driving back from a stop, I assume. What happens when the officer pulls behind you? What did they say and why are they pulling you over
Christian Mobley:
That? I didn’t use the turn signal at a hundred feet before making the turn, but I used the turn signal.
Taya Graham:
So the officer initially says you’re not using your turn signal and then admits, well, you used the turn signal, you just didn’t use it within 100 feet of the turn. What were your thoughts when he said this and do you agree with his assessment?
Christian Mobley:
What you don’t see, what you don’t see is there’s another cop on the left side of me. He’s right on the left side of me and Odie is behind me. So it’s like they kind of got me boxed in. But yeah, it’s just harassment. They’d have, the police department is actually across the street from Papa John’s, so they sit over there all the time stalking me, trying to make their presence felt. It’s like they’re just trying to agitate me all the time and it’s just what they do
Taya Graham:
Now. This seems to be a simple traffic enforcement issue and really if you were guilty at all, there should have just been a warning. Why did it escalate? I mean, it seemed like there were four officers on the scene just for a turn signal infraction.
Christian Mobley:
Simply put, they don’t like me. They don’t like the fact that I stand up to them and they can’t bully me or intimidate me and I speak out against them. So they just got a problem with that. But like I said, I’m not really necessarily doing this for me. I know I’m not the only one in this town dealing with this kind of stuff. So this is more so for the other people that’s dealing with this and somebody needs to do something about it. I feel like I’m the one to do something about it.
Taya Graham:
Now you were trying to communicate with your manager or wanted for your coworkers, you tried to explain to the officers where your information was. Why do you think they were so adamant about stopping you from communicating with your manager?
Christian Mobley:
They knew that if he could get my driver’s license, they wouldn’t have, they probably wouldn’t be able to get me with that charge of failure to present driver’s license. But when I come into work, my driver’s license is always in my wallet and I lock my wallet up in my locker, so I forgot it that day. So that’s why my driver’s license wasn’t on me at the time.
Taya Graham:
So what surprised me was that they placed you in cuffs effectively for trying to speak. How did they treat you? I mean, did they put you in the back of the car? You can’t really see because the video goes dark for a little period of time.
Christian Mobley:
Well, they didn’t put me in the back of the car, they just cuffed me. They just took my phone, placed it on the hood of his patrol vehicle and that’s why the scream went dark. But I was in front of the vehicle handcuffed.
Taya Graham:
So this wasn’t the first time. Jonesboro police officers have followed you looking for traffic infractions. Can you tell me how many other times you’ve been pulled over this year and for what?
Christian Mobley:
I mean if I could off the top of my head, I could say at least five times. It’s like they would pull me over to try to find out where I live, try to get my, they would just issue me warnings, but they would pull me over. It’s like they just trying to find out who I am and where I live at so they can monitor me or something.
Taya Graham:
So I know you mentioned that after one of your traffic stops with Officer Sergeant James D. Stout on March 3rd this year, you said he followed you into a Walmart afterwards. Do you believe this is harassment?
Christian Mobley:
It is something they do. It’s like this little thing they do. It was after the encounter I was doing Walmart Spark and while I’m doing Walmart Spark, he drives by me and kind of nods at me. It’s something they do, they’ll drive by you and they’ll nod at you we’re watching you. It is just something they all do. It’s like a little gang thing that they do. And yeah, he drove past me. He nodded at me. He’s trying to intimidate, he’s trying to send me a message and they all do it.
Taya Graham:
They said they aren’t following you but pull you over because they thought you were break checking them. Can you please explain?
Christian Mobley:
No, I was just coming from Natural Grocers and they have this thing where they’ll always get behind me and start telling me and he was just doing the same thing and what you don’t see is him looking in his mirror. I can see him looking in his mirror, making a face trying to intimidate me. It’s what you don’t see in the video video. So I’m just slowing down to see what he’s on and then he turns his lights on and said, I’m trying to break check him. It’s what? It’s
Taya Graham:
So Officer Michael Starnes of the Jonesboro Police Department pulled you over June 27th this year allegedly for having a break light out. But then he started saying you look nervous. I mean, considering how often you’ve been pulled over this year, I would be nervous too. Do you think he was hoping to search your car and he was talking about smelling deodorizing spray in your car and talking about running a canine around your vehicle and that you’re in a very high crime area. I’m familiar with that sort of police procedure as a Baltimore city resident, do you think he was fishing for bigger crime than a traffic infraction?
Christian Mobley:
It wasn’t a high crime area, not at all. But yeah, I think he was just targeting me. But the very next day after that incident, I’m in Dollar General on East Johnson. He walks in my back is to him, he walks in the Dollar store and like I said, as I turned around, I seen him standing there. He gives me this nod. He’s trying to send me a message like We’re going to be watching you. Yeah, it’s what they do. It’s like they target people. It’s like a game to them.
Taya Graham:
So you were driving your mother’s car during that stop, which is nice looking car. And the also said you were in a high crime area. Do you think that you were being profiled, I mean there were at least four officers on the scene and a canine, so it seems like they were expecting you to be the catch they were fishing for. I mean, is Jonesboro a place where there’s lots of criminal activity?
Christian Mobley:
Not at all. I mean, nah. Mean even if you say you live in the hood in Jonesboro, it ain’t dangerous. Give me a break. Nah, it’s not a high crime at all.
Taya Graham:
So Christian, how much has this cost you personally? I would imagine it is stressful just getting into your car for work, considering how often you’ve been followed and ticketed and how much it costs in tickets and timing going to court. I mean, what has this cost you either financially or even emotionally or psychologically?
Christian Mobley:
I would just say I’m built for it. No, I’m not. And like I said, they’re not going to intimidate me. I’m not the one they’re going to intimidate. I’m going to stand up, I’m going to stand up against them. But I mean in the beginning it was kind of stressful. It was new to me, but it started to anger me and that’s when I decided, you know what? I’m going to stand up against this. I’m going to bring light to this situation because I can’t be the only one in Jonesborough, Arkansas dealing with this from these officers. One time it got the best of me where I made a mistake and thought someone was following me and I ended up getting arrested by Deputy Jordan drum. But that was in the beginning when it was new to me, but now I built a tolerance for it and I know how to deal with it and I know how to manipulate it and catch them in the process of trying to do it to me.
Taya Graham:
Christian, I hate to ask this, but do you have any sort of criminal history that could explain why these officers have chosen to keep such a close eye on you?
Christian Mobley:
No, the only thing that if you want to consider it is when Deputy Jordan drum from the Craighead County Sheriff’s Office, he arrested me. The only thing they charged me with was obstruction. That’s the only, I guess major thing you can say that’s on my record. Everything else is just traffic tickets.
Taya Graham:
By any chance, do you know why Officer Peyton Perkins was fired? I mean he was one of the officers that was involved in your interactions?
Christian Mobley:
I don’t know. I went in there, I went in there one day to get A-F-O-I-A video and yeah, Trevor, I was talking to Trevor, officer Trevor and I said, I was talking to him about Perkins and he said he got fired and I asked him why he wouldn’t disclose to me why he got fired. So I’m not really sure, but I’m happy he’s fired.
Taya Graham:
If you could speak to the Jonesboro Police Department right now, what would you say if you knew they were listening to you right this moment? What would you want to tell them?
Christian Mobley:
Personally? I just want to tell them they cowards, they’re cowards for you to do for them to try to put that type of, this is the type of stuff that can make people commit suicide. So for them, them to find some sort of satisfaction out of doing this type, this type of stuff, they’re cowards. That’s what I would tell them. They’re cowards and that’s all you’ll ever be.
Taya Graham:
Okay. I have a lot to say about what happened to Mr. Christian Mobley. Part of what I’m thinking about is directly related to the constant and I think obviously unnecessary police interactions we just witnessed, it seems based upon the video evidence that these traffic stops were the result of concerns other than just enforcing the law. One can only imagine the stress that Christian must have experienced when a drug sniffing dog was deployed to search his car or one can guess how he felt when a police officer told him he was pulled over because he was driving near a country club. All of these interactions with law enforcement hardly build a connection with the community. In fact, all of this police intervention for Noncrime only increases the distrust of institutions and not just policing. That has become endemic in this country. And I don’t think policing like what we just witnessed is simply the result of Officer overreach, but that’s not the only aspect of Christians’ ordeal that concerns me.
Something else bothers me about what we just watched that more than likely will get less attention than the stops themselves. An idea about law enforcement in this country that deserves to be discussed so that we understand what we’ve truly seen and to make it more comprehensible, I’m going to explain it as a story, a tale about people like Christian who work hard struggle, keep trying only to discover that the biggest obstacle to carving out a good life for himself is the government that’s supposed to serve him. The story starts almost 50 years ago before Christian was even born. That’s when the working people of this country had benefited from one of the most robust expansions of the middle class in history, high union membership and less income inequality meant that the American dream was alive and well and more importantly actually possible. But over the past 50 years everything changed.
Union membership fell, income inequality rose the road to the middle class was filled with potholes of neglect. As the wealth of the top 1% expanded to engulf the bottom 80, it seemed like the hope for a comfortable middle class life turned into an unattainable dream, a mirage of a long forgotten social contract that seemed to move further and further away the harder we reached for it. Now the reason I bring this up is because the excessive policing we just witnessed is part and parcel of the lack of opportunity for the middle class. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I’ve witnessed so many cases like this where police seem inexplicably drawn into conflicts with people whose biggest crime is being economically vulnerable. Now, it made me think about something I heard about one of the reasons America seemed so invested in the middle class 50 years ago, I don’t remember who it was, but their argument went like this.
The country’s political leadership concerned over the Cold War with Russia felt they had to prove that democracy could deliver for the people. The idea was that the best life prospects for the greatest number of people would lead to proof that a democratic society was an effective society. It would be proof that the whole system actually worked. So what happened? That’s a good question. Apparently after the end of the Cold War, our country’s elites decided to abandon the egalitarianism of making the greatest number of lives better without the so-called red scare. It seems like we all veered in the opposite direction, extracting the biggest gains for the smallest number of people. And I think along with that decision was the idea that in order to prevent such an imbalance system from collapsing the elites turn to an institution that could in some sense keep the declining middle class and working class in check by sowing chaos in their midst.
And that’s why we see so many questionable car stops and ordeal like Christians. That’s why police roll out drug sniffing dogs because you simply drive in an area they deemed well basically poor and off limits or while you’re stopped a second time for driving next to a country club, no need to worry if you’ve committed a crime. No need to think about if you’re a threat to public safety. The whole idea is containment to make you feel less capable of demanding your rights or of expecting a fair shake or of being treated fairly. The unnecessary scrutiny and inexplicable traffic stops is all a part of the same process to make you feel strange from the rights that are bestowed upon you by the Constitution. And to make this point even more salient, I want to share some news with you, a development to reinforce my argument that over-policing is a consequence of rampant inequality.
Just as we were finishing recording our show, Christian sent me an email and I want to read part of it to you. I just found out I lost my job because of this arrest. Christian wrote me not only that his car was impounded and he spent three days in jail and now he’s unemployed. So I ask you, what exactly did law enforcement accomplish here? What exactly was the goal, the purpose, the public interest that was served by causing a hardworking man to lose his job? I mean, I am at a loss to explain the underlying societal justification for a process that culminates in this type of economic loss that bolsters such unnecessary hardship, that conscripts humiliation to justify the deleterious effects of a society that are intrinsically unfair. Honestly, when I watch videos like these, I feel like all the mainstream media pundits who say discussing economic inequality is class warfare are right except the abuse runs downhill to those who can least afford it.
To people like Christian who were struggling but working hard and now must struggle even more just to overcome the government that he literally funds through his taxes, but only if the police department will allow him to work. One of the things that is most discouraging about Christians ordeal is like many cities we cover, Jonesboro spends more on policing than any other facet of city government. As Stephen pointed out, the city dedicates less the firefighting, sanitation, parks, recreation and fixing city streets than to law enforcement. Basically 37% of all the money their city collects goes to cops, cars, arrests, and jails. But how does city leaders justify this expenditure? What do they say to residents who might ask why they need to find countless numbers of officers to conduct countless numbers of questionable stops? How do they explain the dedication of communal resources to a process that seems so unnecessary?
And Jonesboro is not the exception throughout this country. We invest more in handcuffs than we do in housing, more on cages than in keeping our cities clean, more on traffic stops than healthy recreation. And that’s what’s really intriguing. The recent trend in crime calls into question the entire justification for this hard to fathom spending. As you may already know, there has been a historic drop in violent crime in many of the largest cities across the country in our city. Baltimore homicides reached a record low dropping by nearly 40% over the last year. But what’s also intriguing about this good news is that it occurred when the police department also had a record number of vacancies. And Baltimore is not alone. Departments across the country have raised concerns about a dearth of new police officers shortages that they simply can’t fill vacancies that have remained vacant.
So then how can we explain the historic drop in violence? If more police and increased spending on police will somehow deliver more public safety, then why do crime drop when fewer officers were on the streets? What exactly am I missing here when fewer cops translates into less crime? I think what we’ve considered and truly examined is that perhaps all the spending on policing has less to do with crime than police. Partisans would want us to believe that pumping tax dollars into shiny new SUVs for cops isn’t really about keeping us safe, but perhaps about keeping us in check, maybe just maybe cops have another purpose, an often unacknowledged role in the economic inequality that has engulfed people like Christian maybe along with traffic stops and minor crimes, they are the guardians of the border between extravagant wealth and soul crushing poverty. Maybe they are here not just to enforce the law but impose boundaries on the chaos that communal poverty creates.
I mean, just consider that roughly only 20% of property crimes and 40% of homicides are solved. I’m not saying it’s easy to catch a thief, but certainly that doesn’t seem to be the focus of police who have the time to constantly pull over the same man over and over and over again. And that’s why we take the time to report on cases like Christians. That’s why we produce a detailed show to scrutinize the actions of police that deserve the attention. And that’s why we tell the stories of people who end up on the wrong side of police overreach. That’s why we produce the show so that someone other than the cops holding handcuffs can tell their side of the story. I want to thank our guest, Christian Mobley for bravely coming forward, supplying us the video evidence and of course sharing his story. And we really hope that things are going to take a positive turn for you soon. Thank you so much for your time, Christian, and of course I have to thank Intrepid reporter Steven Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Steven
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And of course I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacy R for their support. Thank you and a very special thanks to accountability report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next live stream, especially Patreon associate producers, Lucita Garcia, David K, and John, er, and super friends, Eddie Clegg, Kenneth K Shane, B, pineapple girl, Chris R and matter of W Rights. But also I want to thank a very special supporter of the show, Scott Rushing. Scott was kind enough to share his family story with us. Unfortunately, this case is a tragic use of excessive force that result in the death of his unarmed son. Tyler rushing 34-year-old Tyler rushing was tasered attacked by police canine shot and killed on July 23rd, 2017 in Chico, California. But Scott has never given up on the hope that his family will receive justice for his son’s death and neither have we.
Scott, we appreciate you supporting our work and we hope you’ll join us soon to update us on your progress on reforming the excessive force policies and training practices of private security guards. Thank you for your support, Scott. And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately@therealnews.com, ensure your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. Or of course you can message me directly at tia’s baltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment, I do read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. If you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads, never take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
It is not uncommon for police to drive around with their lights flashing in Black and working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta. This is a tactic used to intimidate and make their presence known; for residents of these neighborhoods, it can feel like psychological warfare. US law enforcement learned this strategy from Israeli forces.
Thousands of law enforcement officials have traveled to Israel to learn new repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet, who inflict violence, crowd control, and surveillance onto Palestinians. Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.
These programs are facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program—the latter of which was started in 1996. US leaders sought Israel’s guidance to curb terrorism, and a ‘deadly exchange’ of worst practices between US and Israeli forces was born. Federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement executives including local police departments, the FBI, and ICE have traveled to Israel, while thousands of officials have attended conferences with Israeli experts in the US. An inaugural “US-Israel Security Conference” by JINSA occurred last month, where a former Israel Defense Forces commander was included as a guest speaker.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel.”
Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
“Within these programs, worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries,” said Rania Salem, an organizer with the US Palestinian Community Network. “US forces take whatever is working in Israel and they bring it here and inflict it on Black and Brown people.”
Police departments in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Atlanta, among others, have close ties with Israeli forces. Salem said that the increasing militarization of US police in recent decades is due in large part to the “funding and support of Israel’s brutal military occupation.” She said that in return for these trainings the state of Israel gets in good standing with the US for future support, and its forces learn new tactics in return—Salem said that Israel learned stop-and-frisk and racist traffic stop techniques from US law enforcement.
There is strong opposition. Palestinian solidarity, racial justice, and local organizations are calling for an end to this deadly exchange, saying that it perpetuates settler colonialism and violence against marginalized communities, and harms both people in the US and in Palestine. They say that investments should be made into the community, not policing.
“It essentially brings together all these violent systems that oppress our people here in the United States and oppress Palestinians and Palestine together,” Salem said. “Our communities need to come together to organize against these police exchange programs.”
The deadly exchange
After George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, advocates said that the knee-to-neck choke-hold used was “used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic cleansing and dispossession.” Members of the Minneapolis Police Department have been trained by Israeli officials.
Following that, when thousands of protestors took to the streets in the Black Lives Matter uprisings, police used racial profiling, tear gas, and other repressive crowd control techniques to quell the protestors. Salem said many of those practices were exported from the violence of Israeli forces.
“When police started using different kinds of weaponry against protesters, Palestinians were already very, very familiar with that kind of confrontation,” Salem said.
Between 2002 to 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief and deputy chief traveled to Israel for training multiple times. The deputy chief traveled as part of JINSA’s first cohort in their first law enforcement exchange program. During these trips, Israeli companies introduced the LAPD officials to facial recognition and drone technology manufactured in Israel. The police department also developed a “broken windows” approach, which “grows from the idea that constant policing of low-level disorder—through the targeting of Black and brown communities with constant police surveillance, harassment—will somehow deter serious criminal activity.”
After nearly 10 years of training with Israeli forces, the New York Police Department was exposed to have run a “demographics unit” that spied on Muslims and “treated basic acts of daily living as potential crimes,” which are techniques used by Israeli forces on Palestinians. In return, they adopted NYPD’s data collection method.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel,” said Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
Officials in Atlanta, Georgia, are pioneers in the police exchange program as well. The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program, housed at the University of Georgia, has been sending people to Israel every year for over 31 years. Hardge said that the trips are funded by private entities, Department of Justice grants, and taxpayer dollars.
Hardge also said that the GILEE program also trains with Israeli forces through annual conferences in Atlanta and hosts law enforcement from around the country at these events. The training, he said, includes workshops and seminars.
Musa Springer, also an organizer with Black Alliance for Peace, said that at least 43,000 people have participated in GILEE workshops, conferences, and events. They said it creates danger for Atlantans, as demonstrated in the police killings of Anthony Hill and several Black people in Atlanta.
“There is a sort of level of racial profiling that is sewn into the tactics and then those racial profiling, which also takes place here in the US, among us, becomes even stronger and more reinforced in the style of policing,” Springer said. “What we see is that Black residents, as well as activists and organizers who are mobilizing, are increasingly treated as terrorists.”
Out of Atlanta’s collaboration with Israeli forces comes their “Cop City” police training facility, which is based off Israel’s “Little Gaza,” a replica of the Gaza strip. At these facilities, police can battle test repressive techniques and surveillance. Hardge said that the Cop City and Little Gaza are meant “to give the occupying forces a realistic training ground in which they can actually implement their counterinsurgency tactics on the occupied population.”
“Anybody who goes there will be participating in the skills development of counterinsurgency, of how to better practice kettling, how to better practice shutting down or brutalizing peaceful protests,” Hardge said.
Surveillance and Technology Expansions
In addition to repressive tactics, advocates say that US and Israeli forces both make use of surveillance techniques and technology that is Israel-based, like Cellebrite, and predictive policing software, like the software provided by Palantir.
Lou Blumberg, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance and a representative of the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in New Orleans, said that, in 2014, the New Orleans Police Department took a trip to Tel Aviv which was funded by a government grant, the Jewish Federation, and other private entities. The goal was to learn about Cellebrite, a ‘universal forensics extraction device’ from an Israel-based technology company, in order to bring the surveillance back to the US. Cellebrite’s technology was tested on Palestinians before its usage became widespread.
“Because Israel is occupying the Palestinian people, it creates what author Antony Lowenstein calls the ‘Palestine Laboratory’ for Israel to experiment and then get all this data about these surveillance tools, and then be able to sell that … ‘Look how well these tools are working to criminalize these people, don’t you want that for your country?’” Blumberg said.
An organizer with New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports, an organization dedicated to ending all ties between New Orleans institutions and businesses and Israel, who wished to remain anonymous, said that a lot of the cameras the city of New Orleans has put up in the streets for surveillance use Israeli technology. She said that law enforcement can often use Briefcam, an Israeli video surveillance technology, now owned by the parent company Canon.
Hundreds of people in the US have been arrested due to facial recognition technology, some of them falsely identified. People of color, particularly Black people, are more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology.
The organizer said that Israeli technology companies are “taking this technology and exporting it for governments like the US government to perpetuate this form of apartheid that marginalized communities have been living under” and Israel “uses the same tactics abroad and over here in order to further their hegemony and their occupation of the people.”
“Cellebrite is used today to violate people’s right to due process, or these AI facial recognition technologies are used to attack and jail people, mostly disproportionately people of marginalized communities,” the organizer told TRNN. “These have been tried and tested methods in Palestine for the past decades, and Israel does it to expand its territory, to further occupy and oppress people to further the apartheid system that they are under.”
In addition to supplying local law enforcement with surveillance, the organizer said that Israeli companies sell Cellebrite “universal forensics extraction” hacking software and training to ICE, which gives them access to personal data. ICE officials have gone on multiple trips to Israel to swap “best practices” at checkpoints, prisons, settlements, and the airports in Israel.
The US Department of Homeland Security has also been contracting with Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems for technology that surveils the US-Mexico border in southern Arizona since 2014. The contract was extended by DHS in 2017 to further militarize the border using this technology.
Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance, said she sees parallels in the rhetoric Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli forces use for Palestinians and the language used in the US to talk about immigrants. In the past, President-elect Donald Trump and Netanyahu have praised each other’s border policies.
“They’re using this to target immigrant communities and to arrest, to detain and to separate families, and sometimes deportations,” Romero said.
The fight to stop the exchange
Activists are fighting for liberation in the US and Palestine. Some are already seeing victories. In 2020, Eye on Surveillance successfully advocated for a ban on facial recognition surveillance—provided in large part by Israeli companies—in New Orleans. While parts of the ban were reversed in 2022, the organization continues to hold monthly meetings to push back against surveillance and policing.
Additionally, they are looking to end economic ties between Israel and the city permanently and calling for the money to be redirected into the community. Renard Bridgewater, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance, said that “so many things could be funded with the money that is going towards Israel and their continued onslaught and overall abuse and slaughter of Palestinian people.”
Bridgewater said that rather than funding law enforcement trips to Israel, cities should be supporting their residents by providing equitable living wages, education, affordable housing, and resources to solve food insecurity. Eye on Surveillance is also part of the Break the Bonds Campaign in Louisiana, which aims to encourage state officials to divest from Israel. The state has over $40 million in bonds which the organization said “bolsters and supports Israel’s economy.”
Bridgewater said that people can fight against the police training exchanges and Israeli technology being used in the US by organizing. Eye on Surveillance, Black Alliance for Peace, and the US Palestinian Community Network are some of many organizations raising awareness about the issue.
“I think that small movements or small ripples certainly create larger movements and things of that nature,” Bridgewater said. “I think that any time you have the opportunity to be able to build with folks, no matter if it’s two or three, that can eventually lead to two or 3,000 but it has to start somewhere, and it can’t necessarily always be these very grandiose and large, expansive ideas.”
“It’s important to get together and organize, because as soon as we realize that our enemies are the same, the easier it is to realize who our allies are,” said the organizer with NOSHIP. “Once we organize and put these two and two together, then we know who put our effort against.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the nation’s capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. In a 70-minute speech on the National Mall, Trump falsely claimed that the election had been stolen: “We won this election,” he told the crowd, “and we won it by a landslide.” Trump also urged his supporters not to accept the results: “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” he said. “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said on stage shortly before the same crowd violently and un-peacefully descended on the Capitol building. Minutes later, at the end of his speech, Trump also warned his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The attempted insurrection played out on TV screens worldwide as rioters stormed the Capitol building, destroyed property, assaulted police, and stalked the halls of Congress hunting for elected officials. A large percentage of those who participated in the Capitol riot were eventually captured and placed in the notorious District of Columbia Jail, which is located just two miles from the Capitol. Unlike the countless predominantly poor and non-white detainees who have languished in the DC jail before them, the predominantly white and out-of-state MAGA rioters were immediately given preferential treatment.
“The DC Jail is even more segregated than the city it serves,” Andrew Beaujon wrote in The Washingtonian one year after the attempted insurrection.
Just 3 percent of the inmates, on average, are white; 87 percent are Black. What happens inside when you lock up dozens of overwhelmingly white men arrested as part of a radical-right insurrection? The jail’s overseers decided they didn’t want to find out. The Sixers—as they’re known to their faithful—were confined to a medium-security annex, away from other prisoners. The brass call the block C2B, or Charlie Two Bravo. Its 40 or so residents call it the Patriots’ Pod.
Nevertheless, it was the treatment of the “Sixers”—in particular, the delay of medical treatment for Proud Boy Christopher Worrell’s broken hand—not the decades of complaints by other inmates, that finally got people to care about the conditions inside the DC jail. Having become a cause célèbre for the MAGA right, the Sixers were even visited in November 2021 by DC Council members and members of Congress Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Jan. 6 rioters sent to the jail complained to the court about the unsanitary living conditions, poor food, inadequate medical services; the lack of safety, recreation, case management, library services, and visitations. “After Jan. 6 defendants’ lawyers raised allegations of poor conditions at the Department of Corrections (DOC) facility, including a lack of access to medical care,” Madeleine Carlisle writes in TIME, “an unannounced review of the jail by the US Marshals Service (USMS) concluded there was ‘evidence of systemic failure.’” The report submitted by USMS was a scathing indictment of the deplorable conditions inside the DC jail, including lack of water, inadequate quality of food, and “large amounts of standing human sewage.”
Following the report, USMS announced that it would be moving 400 detainees housed in the DC jail’s notorious Central Detention Facility (CDF) to the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Those housed in the less horrifying Central Treatment Facility (CTF), however, including the Jan. 6 rioters, were not moved. According to an official statement released by USMS on Nov. 2, 2021, “The US Marshal’s inspection of Central Treatment Facility did not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates from that facility at this time. Central Treatment Facility houses approximately 120 detainees in the custody of the US Marshals Service, including all the defendants in pre-trial custody related to alleged offenses stemming from events that took place on January 6 at the US Capitol.”
In exactly two weeks, on Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States of America. He has gone on record saying it would be a “great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages … a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly.” Will Trump and the MAGA right continue to care about the conditions inside the DC jail and the treatment of its inmates after the Sixers are hand-plucked from that cesspit and given their freedom back? Let’s just say I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that…
For those poor Black and Brown men and women who have been held inside the DC jail and who have complained about the inhumane conditions there—complaints that have continuously fallen on deaf ears—this is yet another glaring example of this country’s racist, classist hypocrisy. But it is also a chilling reminder that, for Trump and his MAGA supporters, the hypocrisy is the point: “Make America Great Again for us, not for them.”
Popular representations of the Black Panthers often focus on their armed self-defense activities, but medical services and health justice were a tremendous part of the party’s work. This legacy continues today as Black activists work to transform the medical industrial complex and its relationship to the prison system. Erica Woodland (he/him), co-author of Healing Justice Lineages, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss this history, his current activism, and the role of The Real News’s own beloved Eddie Conway in influencing his path.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Marshall Eddie Conway, former Black Panther and political prisoner, served approximately 44 years in captivity before he was released. While in prison, he and his wife, Dominque Conway, created a series of programs designed to raise prisoners’ consciousness. One program was Friend of a Friend. Friend of a Friend was a mentor program that taught prisoners critical thinking skills.
Throughout his imprisonment, Eddie Conway advocated for the liberation of all political prisoners and the abolishment of the prison-industrial complex. After his release in 2014, Eddie joined The Real News Network and started this very program, Rattling the Bars.
Recently I interviewed Baltimore native Erica Woodland, one of the many people influenced by Eddie Conway and Dominque Conway.
Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Erica.
Erica Woodland: Thank you for having me, Mansa. It’s good to see you.
Mansa Musa: All right, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and one of your latest projects.
Erica Woodland: Yeah, for sure. So I’m born, bred, and raised in Baltimore, East Baltimore, to be specific. And for the past 20 years, it’s been really an honor to be part of abolition work and liberatory harm reduction work, and work that’s really thinking about how to disrupt every single aspect of the way the criminal justice system disappears our communities.
And so I had the great pleasure of meeting Eddie Conway 20 years ago, and when we met, he immediately decided that I was going to be part [Musa laughs] of his liberation struggle — And you know Eddie, you can’t really tell him no. And also through organizing on behalf of his liberation and liberation of all political prisoners and being mentored by him and Dominque Conway, it really, as a young person, shaped the work that I’m doing now, which is primarily focused on Healing Justice.
And Healing Justice is a political and spiritual framework that helps to remind our people that, in addition to us liberating our minds and revolutionizing our consciousness, we have to also make sure that we’re taking care of people. So feeding people, making sure people have access to healthcare, making sure people have access to spaces for healing and collective grief.
And a lot of this work might sound familiar because it’s the work that the Black Panther Party was up to. But unfortunately in our movements now, a lot of that care and safety work has been forgotten, in part because the state has been extremely strategic and successful, in many ways, of co-opting our movements and then criminalizing our traditions.
So the project that I am spending a lot of my time with today is called Healing Justice Lineages. And so, it started off as an anthology, and I was able to contribute to this with my dear comrade Kara Page, who is one of the co-architects of this framework. But Healing Justice Lineages is an opportunity to tell the true lineage of this framework, which is actually having us think about what are the ways that historical and generational trauma are affecting our minds, our bodies, our spirits, our organizations, our revolutionary groups, and our ability to actually build power to get free, right?
Mansa Musa: Right.
Erica Woodland: So when you have communities that are highly traumatized, cut off from basic human needs, they’ve stolen our traditions — White people are selling our traditions back to us.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Erica Woodland: — And they’ve demonized our traditions. You have communities that are more easily surveilled and controlled and disappear.
And so the project has tried to map a lot of different voices and trying to bring up examples like, here are people who are doing liberation work, but also thinking about how do we feed people? How do we love up on people when they’ve experienced grief, loss, and violence?
But that project has led to a lot of other aspects, including a listening and cultural memory tour that we did in 2023. We went to seven cities across the country to actually lift up local work around healing justice and collective care and safety. And then we also did strategy sessions with organizers and practitioners in particular to say, what’s possible when you have health healing practitioners and organizers at the same table before we turn up on the state?
Mansa Musa: Right, right, right. And that’s a good observation, because me and Dominque talked about this oftentimes, about, as revolutionaries, we find ourselves in a space that we human, we made a decision to fight for our liberation, but in that, oftentimes, a lot of our emotions get wrapped up in that. And we look recognized that in the Black Panther Party — And our anniversary just passed — We recognized that, during that period, and which is a good observation on your part about the healing aspect of, is during that period they ain’t have no therapy. They ain’t have no, oh, this is trauma. They ain’t have no, oh, yeah, well, you an alcoholic, and it’s a result of the police wanting to kill you, or the police been locked you up seven times, and you been locked up, in the seven times you done spent a total of five years in and out of county jail. You ain’t have that then.
Now that particular aspect of the contradiction didn’t subsided, where the antagonism don’t exist because the formation is not in the same space. What do we do now? What do we do? But more importantly, the lessons learned and how do we pass it on? I think this is what you are telling us right now. That, OK, we need to be in this space right now because we ultimately going to have to turn it up.
Erica Woodland: Exactly.
Mansa Musa: And when we do turn it up, we want to be in a space where we don’t find ourselves so burned out that we become suicidal, even if it be in the form of substance use, it be in the form of spousal abuse, all the things that we oppose, if we don’t take and look at our mental health as it relates to our struggle. Talk about that.
Erica Woodland: Yeah. No, this is really important, and I also want to just name that I’m a therapist, but mostly my work is organizing therapists to understand their role as politicized. Because for me, the prison-industrial complex is actually deeply connected to the medical-industrial complex. And we saw that very clearly with Eddie’s experience at the end of his life. That you have social workers like me who are in positions where we’re actually facilitating the dissolution of families, where we are facilitating people experiencing psychiatric detention and psych hospitals.
And so, one of the things I want to bring attention to is I was able to interview Eddie for the book. And Eddie’s interview is a lot of people’s favorite, because what we know is that Eddie was willing to talk about things that a lot of other folks weren’t willing to talk about.
Mansa Musa: Right, right.
Erica Woodland: And so in this conversation… I’ve been talking to Eddie about trauma, probably our whole relationship, even if I didn’t use that language, because I want to understand what made it possible for him to survive those conditions and hold onto his humanity, when many, many people are out here and they have survived much less and they don’t have that same connection to their humanity.
So I’m always thinking about, where are the ways that we’re already knowing how to heal without an external person or professional? And what are the consequences of us not taking that work seriously? So therapy is one aspect, but we have traditions in Black community, the ways that we come together when we experience a loss, the way that we pour a little bit out for the homie that we lost to violence. That these are all things that are happening. But if we don’t understand trauma, then the state can exploit that.
And so in the interview, which is the chapter’s title, “Don’t Give Up and Don’t Make the Same Mistakes”, because one of the things I really appreciated about my relationship with Eddie is that he was very generous with his wisdom. He’s very generous about, here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t know, and here’s the things we did not think about because we didn’t have the language, we didn’t have the tools.
And the reality is when COINTELPRO came on the scene, it hadn’t existed before. It’s not like the Panthers had the knowledge, they didn’t have the playbook. They were writing the playbook down.
So one of the things that I’m committed to is documenting and preserving our political and spiritual traditions. Because disconnection from those traditions, that’s a tool of genocide. That’s essentially how the state continues to dominate and control our minds, first and foremost, and our radical imagination.
So that interview we got to talk about… You know, Eddie didn’t necessarily call his work healing justice, but I’m like, I wouldn’t even be talking about healing justice if it wasn’t for the Black Panther Party and their commitment to making sure our people were well. To making sure that we preserved our dignity and wholeness, and to say, there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s something wrong with these conditions, and we actually have to build power to change the conditions. We don’t heal just to heal. That’s cute, but I don’t want to heal, I don’t want to learn how to cope with this, I want to actually figure out how we change this, because it’s unacceptable.
Mansa Musa: And you know what I was thinking about what you were saying when you were saying how you title the chapter of Eddie and “Don’t Give Up”. Because me and him did a lot of time together, we was incarcerated together. And he was my mentor. And I used to always joke about him having gray hairs, and I would say 80% of them gray hairs in his head I put it in there myself, from him dealing with me.
But in terms of how you articulate his outlook, that’s just how it was. I recall when I hadn’t seen him for a while, we wound up in an institution together, now JCI, and he said, man, let’s go up to the library and talk. So we made a schedule, we would go to the library once a week and talk. And I didn’t think too much of it at the time. I hadn’t seen you in a while, so we just catching up. But as we talking, we’re talking about events. We’re talking about stuff that’s going on around the world. We’re talking about what I’ve been doing. We’re talking about what he’s doing.
And then it got to a point where he said, we was getting ready to bring friends of the friends in. It got to a point where he said like, yeah, well, we don’t have to come to the library no more, and we getting ready to do this with this group. And the reason why I had you come up here is because I wanted to see where your thinking was at. Because I didn’t come in contact with a lot of people in the system that started out a certain way, but as time went on, their thinking didn’t evolve. They regressed, and they abandoned any politics, they abandoned any instinct to survive, they just allowed themselves mentally to accept where they was at.
And he say, and he was telling me, he said, well, that ain’t you. And I was like, man, what you think? You the one that educated me. So I’m a product of this education in terms of, like you said, we didn’t say trauma, we didn’t say healing. If something went on. This is what we did.
And I think that, and I want you to speak on this, how you unpack that within the community. Because traditionally we always done that. And traditionally we don’t call it, we don’t give it no clinical definition. This is what we did. This is our nature, to be there for each other. What happened?
Erica Woodland: A lot of things happened [Musa laughs]. So this is a great way to bring in the medical-industrial complex, which includes, obviously, hospitals, health clinics, doctors, nurses. But it’s a broader system that includes pharmaceutical companies. And that’s basically a for-profit system that is trying to surveil, control us, and preserve the life of certain people, primarily white men of wealth, and to exterminate or extract labor from the rest of us.
So part of what happened is, you take people, even if you just think about the attempted genocide against Indigenous people on this land. They literally cut you off. They put you in a residential boarding school, cut you off from your language, cut you off… I mean, this happened to Black Americans, too. But I want to just make that connection because I think we forget. And all of these things we innately know how to do, they turn you against them. They tell you that is uncivilized. That’s not the way to do it.
Then you bring in somebody who’s deemed professional. So, I have what one of my comrades called colonial credentials. So I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I didn’t get that license to be an arm of the state, I got that to be able to disrupt and understand how the state is working through things like social work and therapy and the mental health system. So I’m a professional, so I get told I’m legitimate. You’re allowed to work with survivors, you’re allowed to do all this healing work.
Meanwhile, this work is happening not paid. People aren’t getting support in community all the time because the vast majority of marginalized people’s mental health support comes from their friends, it comes from their family members, comes from their homies. Most people don’t have access to therapy. And those therapeutic interventions weren’t designed for us. They were designed to control us.
So one of the things that I do in my work in my organization is we really disrupt that. So we organize mental health practitioners — And that includes people like me who are licensed, but it includes all the other people who are attending to the emotional and spiritual well-being, specifically in my work of queer and trans people of color. So we don’t prioritize my training over the actual lived experience, but you’re getting on-the-job training. Actually, nobody trains you at all. You’re self-taught. You’re taught by community.
But those relationships is what the state has tried to disrupt. So we wouldn’t need a whole… Nothing’s wrong with therapy. I think therapy is actually a great tool, but it’s not a cure-all. But we wouldn’t actually need therapists in the same way if our siblings and our family members who were behind these walls were home, if we had food, if the air we were breathing was not toxic. If we actually restored our ability to be in right relationship with the land and every other being that we have to be on this planet with, we wouldn’t have this kind of trauma.
It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t suffer. But what we’re seeing at this point, at this scale, especially with the genocides happening across the globe, is this is unnecessary, manufactured suffering. And if we don’t understand how it’s affecting not just the way we treat each other, but how are you going to strategize? How are you going to make a strategy that’s actually going to work when you are highly traumatized? And the ways that you’re attempting to heal, the state is saying, oh, you have a substance abuse problem? You’re getting locked up. Oh, you are hallucinating, for instance. We’re going to lock you up in a psychiatric facility and potentially give you forced treatment — Not potentially, give you forced treatment that then takes away your rights the same way that happens when you’re incarcerated.
So it’s a setup and it’s a scam, but I think there’s a growing conversation in the communities that I’m in of Black and Brown people who are like, we are going to figure out how these systems work, to tear them down, and to abolish them. And we’re also going to create alternatives because that’s what we need.
So that story you just told about Eddie sitting with you weekly, I was like, that was therapy.
Mansa Musa: Exactly.
Erica Woodland: That was you having human to human connection. That was also a vetting. I keep that. I’m like, we need to bring vetting back. I just had a conversation about that earlier. I’m like, we just out here trusting people that have not demonstrated that they’re trustworthy with the kind of liberation work that we’re talking about.
Mansa Musa: And that’s a good segue to talk about Eddie, but I wanted to unpack that a little bit more. Because right now you have trauma, and they starting to monetize trauma, saying trauma, resilience, and define it, [inaudible] and everybody and their mother coming around with an approach. But at the same token, it’s the same old story and the same old song. It’s just a different band playing it.
But speaking of Eddie, so let’s talk about the campaign to exonerate Eddie. And for the benefit of our viewers, this is one of the posters that was put out by some college students in conjunction with myself, Erica, and Dominque comrade, and some other comrade that’s advocating for Eddie to be exonerated. Speak on why do you think that Eddie’s been transitioned? Why is it important that, in your mind, or that our audience should want to know, that we should try to have Eddie exonerated? He’s gone, he was out, he lived his life, and he lived his life to his fullest, or what was left of it.
Erica Woodland: Right. This is a really good question and I think it ties into a lot of the archival work that I’ve been a part of over the past three years, that we have to hold on to the truth of Eddie’s life, Eddie’s work, and what the state did to Eddie. There has been no redress. Eddie’s name has not been cleared, and Eddie was innocent.
So one of the things that, it happens with a lot of revolutionaries, we’ve seen it many times, is the sanitization of their actual work. And there’s a way that we all then kind of forget. You could actually make this sound like some kind of happy story in the end. Oh look, this person, wrongfully convicted. Well, they got out [Musa laughs] in the end of their life, they were able to do this, that and the third. No, let’s go back to the fact that this person literally did almost 44 years for their political work, and they were targeted by the state. And that is happening now.
Mansa Musa: Exactly.
Erica Woodland: So to me, part of the campaign is about telling the truth. That is always, to me, a healing act. To tell the truth of what actually happened, to move with the knowing that this was a wrongdoing. And if we do not prioritize the exoneration of Eddie and all political prisoners, then when this… Political prisoners are being manufactured right now.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Erica Woodland: They’re being manufactured right now.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Erica Woodland: Young people are political prisoners right now. So this is part of a larger struggle to combat state repression. And I think spiritually it’s also really important to preserve Eddie’s legacy by telling the truth. And then it’s also really important to think about how that supports our generational healing, our healing as a community. Somebody who did nothing but sacrifice on our behalf, and we’re going to let the state continue to lie? We’re going to let the state continue to try to manipulate the story of what really happened.
Mansa Musa: When me and Dominque was having this conversation and we decided like, well, this is something that we want to look at. And we start organizing, got some of the supporters together and start talking about it. Everybody had the same perspective, just like you said, it is about we want to be able to say, like you say, tell the truth. And it’s important that we tell the truth about what happened to Geronimo Pratt, what happened to Fred Hampton, what happened to Malcolm. That because of their political views and their aspiration to be free, that they was targeted and set up and, in most cases, assassinated or died a death of a thousand cuts.
And they did the same thing with Eddie. And only for no reason other than the fact that he believed in his right to self-determination. He believed that he had a right to be treated as a human being. He had a right to our people being free.
Talk about where we at in terms of some of the things that we’re doing with the campaign, for the benefit of our viewers and listeners.
Erica Woodland: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re doing a couple of things. We currently have a petition and a website, which is at marshalleddieconway.com where you can get information about Eddie’s case and why exoneration is so important. But you can also sign the petition so that we can actually put some pressure on Gov. Wes Moore to move forward with this exoneration.
Part of what we’re also doing with the website and with some filmmakers is to help to document more of Eddie’s story, in particular how we build a case for exoneration and why that’s so important, I think, to Baltimore City in particular. The history, the legacy, the revolutionary lineage here, I only know about that because of Eddie. And so this is part of a larger effort to get Eddie’s story out so we can have redress and justice in this situation, as much justice as you can have with how much harm and violence the state has engaged in towards Eddie. But this campaign is really, really important.
And so, I know we’re also doing some things coming up in 2025 to help honor Eddie’s legacy around his birthday in April. So there’ll be more information about that. I’m sure you’ll get the word out, Mansa.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, most definitely.
Erica Woodland: But right now we need people to educate themselves and to sign the petition and get the word out.
Mansa Musa: And we was real strategic in making sure that all this information that’s coming out about Eddie is not being repackaged for the benefit of changing the narrative or minimizing his contribution. We was real mindful to make sure that the social media that have any representation of Eddie is authorized by us. To ensure that the truth — Because it’s all about the truth.
And in this case, it might sound cliché, but they say the truth will set you free. What we talking about, the freedom of the truth setting Eddie free in terms of him being recognized for the person that he was and the impact that he had on people that exists today. Whenever anybody come in contact with Eddie, even to this day, they make the observation that the impact that he had on them, how he was able to tap into their thinking, how he was able to get them to maximize on their potential.
And this is something that we want to make sure that people understand. That had he not been set up, had charges [not been] fabricated against him, no telling what he would have done. And he done a lot while he was incarcerated, while he was on the plantation. But no telling what he would’ve done.
And I want to go back to your point. Political prisoners, young people right now are being manufactured to be political prisoners. And as we move forward in this country, it is going to come a time where they going to be like 1984. Like your thoughts, literally going to be the law saying, if you think this way and then you going to be charged with being a terrorist or whatever.
But as we close out, Erica, tell people how they can get the book and where we at in terms of the exoneration.
Erica Woodland: Absolutely. So again, if you want more information about the exoneration campaign, that’s at marshalleddieconway.com. And then if you want any information about the Healing Justice Lineages project, we’re at healingjusticelineages.com. And we have a digital archive that we’re building out there so you can hear more voices about the work.
Mansa Musa: All right, and you got the last word on this subject matter. What you want to tell our viewers and our audience as you rattle the bars?
Erica Woodland: I appreciate the last word. I neglected to say, the work that we’re doing right now around Eddie’s legacy is also about getting ahead of and interrupting co-optation. And there’s a lot of co-optation that happens here in Baltimore City. It happens everywhere. But there’s a particular way that people like to manipulate the story of revolutionaries to actually fuel work that is deeply harmful to Black people. And so, I just wanted to end on that. That we actually need to be very clear about we’re protecting Eddie’s work and Eddie’s lineage because it deserves that much. And co-optation is a tool of the state. And even if our own people are doing it, it’s unacceptable.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The Real News round about. Erica, you rattled the bars today. And I’m reminded of what you just say. Dominque reminds us that she owns… She don’t own Eddie, but she’s not going to let nobody co-opt the narrative or taking change who he was. And this is something important that we must always be mindful of, that we should never let people continue to define us, tell us who we are, what we are, and what we’re doing, and then give us some money to accept that what you just said about me is acceptable because I’m getting paid. No. Our legacy, our image, our heritage is not for sale.
There you have it. And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only on Real News and Rattling the Bars that you get this kind of information. That we have a professional therapist. We don’t have a professional clinical therapist that’s certified by the state and recognize their state credential. We got somebody certified by the people and recognize their people credentials, which is way more important than any credentials that they can get, even though they do have the documentation that the state say they should have. But in terms of their application and practice, it’s all about the people.
Thank you, Erica. Continue to rattle the bars, and we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Because guess what? We really are the news.
President Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. Among these critics are opponents of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which President Biden played a personal role in architecting throughout his political career. Jason Ortiz, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Last Prisoner Project, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss Hunter Biden’s pardon and what it means for Biden’s legacy.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
President Biden recently gave his son, Hunter Biden, an unconditional pardon. Hunter was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges. He was due to be sentenced this month. In pardoning his son, the president stated that he believes in the justice system, but also believes that raw politics has affected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice.
His decision to pardon his son has created a Richter magnitude scale response from every sector of society. President Donald Trump and his treasonous cohorts, former prosecutors, convicted police, just to name a few.
Everyone has an opinion on this decision, but the voices that are missing are those who are enslaved in the prison industrial complex. The people sitting in prison on outdated marijuana charges, people who lost their freedom, because of racist three strike laws, or mandatory minimum sentence.
These are the real victims of the raw politics that President Biden spoke about. Here to help us unpack President Biden’s decision to pardon his son and the impact of that decision is Jason Ortiz from The Last Prisoner Project.
Jason, introduce yourself to the Rattling The Bars audience.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. My name is Jason Ortiz. I’m the director of strategic initiatives for The Last Prisoner Project, which is a nonprofit organization that helps folks that are currently incarcerated for cannabis crimes achieve their freedom, get reunited with their families, and become full members of society.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling The Bars, Jason.
Jason Ortiz:
Thank you. Welcome to have me. I’m really excited that you’re having me here today.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So, we recently recognized that President Biden used his authority to pardon his son Hunter Biden from the conviction that he got for tax evasion, gun violation, among other charges.
And in pardoning him, and this is what we want to hone in on this interview, in pardoning, he said that he believed in the justice system, and he believed that the American people when you tell them the truth, they will be fair.
But he also believed that the raw politics, the decision to indict his son, and the raw politics to convict his son is the reason why his son was convicted. Not that he was guilty of anything. That wasn’t the issue. He was guilty. It was just that the raw politics superseded his guilt, and, therefore, he should not have been found guilty, but for raw politics.
Okay. So, let’s look at this decision that President Biden made. Talk about … Because you recently was interviewed on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman, and in your response to this decision, you made the observation about President Biden being instrumental in creating an atmosphere where the prison industrial complex blew up to what we know it to be now.
Talk about that, and why you think that this decision should have a better impact than it is in terms of everybody coming out of the closet, war criminals, treasonous, convicted felons, in the sense of Donald Trump and his cohort. Talk about that.
Jason Ortiz:
When we heard that President Biden was going to use his pardon power to pardon his son for his various convictions, we were understanding of why a president and a father would want to help their sons avoid prison time. And so, we have seen this as an affirmation that the president and his administration understand that while some folks have committed crimes in the past, some of their sentences are egregious and politically motivated.
That is true for all of the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are currently serving decades, or life sentences in prison for cannabis crimes that are now legal for half the states across the country, and producing tax revenue.
We have thousands of cannabis businesses that are producing tax revenues for states and municipalities across the country as there are people currently incarcerated watching this all unfold, and President Biden, himself, was one of the chief architects of the 1994 crime bill-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… which enhanced all kinds of sentences, both for cannabis, other drugs, other crimes, and it was on the floor of the Senate at the time, he was a Senator at the time, making the argument that there were these big, bad drug dealers out there that were hurting all these folks, and so, we should lock them up forever. Right?
That was where the whole Corn Pop meme came from with Joe Biden, and he was very proud at the time to be a drug warrior, and push to lock up thousands, if not millions, of Black and brown people across the country while, at the same time, fully aware that under Nixon, when the War On Drugs was declared-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… the Controlled Substance Act was created, his office was very explicit that they wanted to disrupt Black and brown communities, and the anti-war community, and used the War On Drugs to have a reason to demonize and vilify folks on the evening news, to go into different organizations, and break up their leadership, and incarcerate folks, and much worse. There were plenty of political organizers in that time that were murdered by the State.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, this was the climate that Joe Biden gets brought up in as a House member, and then eventually a Senator, and then in the ’90s as a Senator, he becomes the architect of the crime bill.
So, all of the really long sentences we’re dealing now are in part due to that bill. And so, we have folks like Edwin Ruiz. Edwin is a resident of Texas, he has kids, and he was arrested in the ’90s for a trafficking charge, so, selling weed, moving weed from one person to another, and he got 40 years for that offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
40 years in the ’90s. Right? So, 1997. He served 27 years already of that term. And so, these are folks that are serving decades, and have already served decades for activity that’s legal in the District of Columbia where President Biden lives. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s a clear hypocrisy. They’re fully aware that the War On Drugs was always racially and politically motivated, and yet until this day, he refuses to use his pardon power, his presidential authority, to help undo that damage where he’s more than happy to do it for his son, and fully understand why parents across the country would not want their sons and daughters in prison either.
So, he still has the opportunity to make moves and use his pardon authority to commute the sentences. That’s specifically what we’re asking the president to do is commute the sentences of all the folks that are currently incarcerated to time served. So, that they would be let out.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And you know what? I like that observation in terms of, like, marijuana laws. As we’ll go into the political prisoner spectrum as well, but as a marijuana law, it is, like, ironic that you legalize marijuana that there’s nowhere in this country right now that a person cannot light a joint up. Literally, there’s nowhere in this country that a person cannot … You can go to a dispensary, and buy.
There’s nowhere in this country, there’s very few places where … It’s, like, maybe regulated, but you can have access to it, and then a person find themselves in prison for two decades, and with no hope of getting out under this law that this very president is responsible for it being, and then he turn around and say, oh, raw politics is the reason why his son … Okay, but the raw politics, the reality behind the raw politics is that you created this situation that these people find themselves in.
And I look at it like Leonard Peltier.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Peltier is innocent.
Jason Ortiz:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
He is innocent of every crime. Mumia Abu-Jamal, he’s innocent. You got political prisoners that’s innocent. You have the Treasury Committee came out and say in … When they did a study on the FBI’s practice, and the counterintelligence program, they noted that who had ratted them up, was setting people up, only because of their political views, and locking people up, and kill people, the raw politics behind it was that he was representing the corporate America, and the system that by any means was designed to destroy any political opposition.
But talk about the impact that this decision will have, if you can speak to this, the impact that President Biden’s decision to pardon his son will have overall.
Jason Ortiz:
Overall, it is highlighting the idea of using a presidential pardon to undo damage done by politically motivated sentencing. Right? So, the president has affirmed that sometimes the sentences people get are not there, because of they’re a threat to society, or safety for anyone, that it’s all about the politics behind it, and that is very true about the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are also politically motivated prisoners, and the folks like Mumia and Leonard Peltier are also politically motivated arrests and convictions.
And so, if he’s able to affirm that for his son, his administration has no excuse from applying that same logic to all the folks that are currently in prison, and using his presidential pardon authority to give them their freedom, and undo the damage that was done.
So, while I am frustrated that the president is choosing to only use his power in this way, it is creating a national conversation around what is the right use of the presidential pardon, and how else can he use it to help more people?
While we would like to see … I’m not opposed, I don’t feel like what he did to Hunter was wrong, it’s just incredibly hypocritical and frustrating-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… that he’s not using it for lots of other folks, who want to expand the use of the presidential authority. His predecessor Trump also has used it in all kinds of wild ways. Right? So, there is really no limit on what we can do with the presidential pardon. The president could pardon all of these folks tomorrow, if he wanted to.
And so, that means it’s a political decision by him, and his office to not do it so far. And that means on us, on the people. Right? We got to apply pressure, and we got to organize to push the government to do the right thing. They’ve already admitted that they can do it. They’ve already used the power the way they think makes sense. So, it’s on us to push and pressure them to use it in a way that we think makes sense.
Mansa Musa:
And I was listening to someone, [inaudible 00:10:32] talking heads on our network, and they started lining up, and taking the position that, “Okay. Everybody that was involved with trying to throw a coup, and was involved with the riot with President-Elect Trump, then president at that time, told them, “Go down to the Capitol and storm the Capitol, and reverse the democratic decision to elect Biden,” that they was saying, “Well, all of them should be pardoned,” that the police, the George Floyd, they should be pardoned, that everybody, former prosecutors that got caught with their hand in the till, they should be pardoned.
What you think about that? Do you think they should have the same right under this concept as those that was politically motivated, or do you think it should be a more objective approach to this whole process?
Jason Ortiz:
So, I’ll just say clearly, though, the presidential pardon is a political tool. Right? And so, there is no limit to it. So, whether they can, or can’t use it, they definitely can do that.
Now who should get a pardon? Right? Like, personally, I don’t think folks that committed a crime, and their sentence was just, it was fair what they were supposed to serve as far as time goes, that that is justification for a pardon. Right?
The president gets to use it as he sees fit, however, these folks did commit a crime, and I don’t know exactly, if I would say their sentences are unjust-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… for what they did, because what they did was a pretty serious offense. Right? Storming the Capitol, and trying to seize control of the government, you used the word treasonous earlier. Right? It’s about as close as we can get to treason as we’ve experienced in modern history.
And so, there are times when the sentence is fitting the crime. Right? And so, trying to overthrow the government, that’s a pretty serious offense. Right?
Now folks that have been participated in a lesser extent, or simply showed up to January 6, there’s always going to be a range of participation, and action, and folks should be held accountable to their specific actions.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, folks that did really egregious things in the Capitol should be punished for that. Right?
However, storming the Capitol is not a crime that is now decriminalized, and legal for millions of folks to participate in.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a very different-
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:12:51].
Jason Ortiz:
… situation.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? That we have said as a society, some people can make millions of dollars selling weed, and these other folks got punished for that crime a long time ago. Nobody is now decriminalizing storming the Capitol. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we’re saying society has changed since this happened. It was originally racist and politically motivated, but even on top of that, society has now said, “This is no longer a crime. We’re going to let folks operate cannabis businesses,” and that’s what I believe is the moral justification for using a pardon on cannabis prisoners, specifically. Right?
There are lots of other reasons to use a pardon. Right? Some folks are innocent of their crimes, and their original arrest and conviction was politically motivated. Right? That is where a presidential pardon can come in, in that times have shifted, the new administration that is elected is there to push for the people that support the political movements that got folks elected.
And so, that is another good justification for a pardon, because the person didn’t actually do the crime. The only reason they’re in there was politically motivated. So, it takes a political resolution to undo that process. Right? And so, I think that’s definitely what Leonard Peltier and Mumia fit into that category.
Then there’s folks that maybe did commit the crime, but the sentence is just way more than the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
For example, folks that are on death row.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? There are a number of folks on death row that should not be losing their life, because of the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that is another space where the president can commute their sentence to life in prison, or time served, depending on the situation, and those are the folks that I think also they are not innocent, necessarily, although, some of them very much are, but the punishment did not fit the crime to have a life sentence.
Like, to really put someone away for the rest of their life, it has to be a pretty egregious situation where they’re also a threat to society forever, and there’s very few situations I think that fit that mold, where someone should be in jail for 50, 75 years. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
But I do think death row and folks that are sentenced to death is particularly one that warrants presidential intervention, as we should just not be killing folks anymore using the State, and giving people death penalties, which sometimes people can get charges trumped-up, because of drug charges that add to different charges, and then they end up with life in sentence.
[inaudible 00:15:08] is someone that was operating in a cannabis operation, and got charged with trafficking, and is serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, honestly, I don’t care how many pounds somebody was selling, nothing justifies a life sentence.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Specifically, because he did way less than any cannabis company does on a monthly basis. Right? And so, the biggest difference I see between January 6th folks and our folks is the crimes that folks are currently incarcerated for are no longer crimes.
Mansa Musa:
And talk about-
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a huge difference.
Mansa Musa:
Why do you think that in regard to this country’s attitude about recognizing cannabis laws and recognizing that because of the social trend, and attitudes has changed, why you think they still holding fast to this draconian position of, “Lock them up, throw away the key. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. We’re not dealing with what type of crime, we’re dealing with it’s a crime, and, therefore, we saying a person that has been duly convicted should serve the time,” but at the same token, as you outlined, “I can leave from visiting somebody that got locked up for marijuana, and on my way out of town, go to a dispensary, and buy some marijuana”?
Why you think this country’s attitude is so entrenched on just holding people to that standard?
Jason Ortiz:
Well, I think the United States has been addicted to punitive punishment for a very long time. Like, there have been folks that have always used ostracizing certain communities and making them the problem, or demonizing them. Right?
We see it happen in many different communities over time. Immigrants are currently being demonized in a lot of ways, as folks want to lock them up, or deport them, but Black and brown folks, specifically, leftist organizers over the years have always been targeted, and using the legal system to not just disrupt those communities, but then profit off of those disruptions. Right?
There are private prisons, even public prisons. Right? There’s billions of dollars in the prison industrial complex that uses our people first to arrest them, but then also uses them for things like labor, where-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… prison. Right? Like, we actually saw California had a ballot measure-
Mansa Musa:
Yup.
Jason Ortiz:
… to end prison labor, and it lost.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, that was a pretty heartbreaking moment to hear that that ballot measure lost, and it is pretty clear that right now the way the United States is structured, we are a military superpower, we’re a prison industrial superpower. We use violence and coercive force as our number one tactic in a lot of different ways, and a lot of different situations.
And so, the longer that we are continuing with that addiction to punitive punishment and incarceration, the more damage we’re doing over time, and so, to undo that is a tremendous lift in the international collective consciousness.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
To shift people away from that addiction is tough. Right? And so, I think the drug policy movement has done a pretty good job in shifting public opinion of whether, or not people should be in jail moving forward, but what is really hard for, especially, white folks, or folks that have a significant amount of wealth is being able to address what happened in the past.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we haven’t been willing to do that part. We have gotten the public to say, “Okay. No more people going in prison,” and even that’s not really true, because we still arrest people and incarcerate people for selling weed. Right? We say that possession is okay. It’s perfectly okay if you buy from a dispensary, but if you buy it from your homey that you used to buy it from-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
… that’s still a crime.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And it’s a felony for the guy selling it to you still.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And out of the 24 states and DC that have had some, kind of, real adult use legislation, zero actually let everybody out of prison when they did it. Zero. Right?
So, there is this lack of historical understanding, and saying, “We’re going to address what happened in the past. We’re willing to move forward and act like it never happened, and not talk to anybody about it,” but we’re not going to actually address the very racist and politically motivated history of why it happened to begin with.
And so, that’s actually where the equity movement started to come out in the mid-2010s up until now where I was part of a different organization then, The Minority Cannabis Business Association, where we were working with different states to help people figure out how do Black and brown people get a piece of the legal pie?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And in that equity space, we had three main pushes. So, one was helping folks achieve freedom, and things like reentry support, expungements, reducing sentences-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and that was the criminal justice part of it. Then there was the community investment part, because the other part of the War On Drugs was that the police disrupted the economics of communities of color, and removing people that were breadwinners and fathers and parents and putting them in prison. So, there should be very targeted investment to undo that damage as well, which where the State invest in community investment. And then third was economic opportunity in the cannabis industry itself.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
We found a lot of ways that folks are willing to talk about how everybody can make money off of selling cannabis, but when it came to the criminal justice side, we had to really fight for all the advances in those spaces, but this equity movement, which was, essentially, the movement to help undo the damage down by the War On Drugs did spread across the country.
Now most of the states that have cannabis operation have some kind of equity program-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… where there are set aside licenses, community investment, expungement support, all those kind of things, but even now they’re under assault. Right? There’s all kinds of governments that want to move that money somewhere else-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and so, it’s been an internal struggle. Right? But that being said, we are making a lot of progress. Like, things are moving. So, for example, Wes Moore, Governor-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… Wes Moore-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… from Maryland.
Mansa Musa:
Where we at.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah. So, he pardoned 170,000 cannabis charges. I was there when he actually signed the paper. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we are seeing governors across the country pick up the mission to actually undo the damage done, and making some progress. That being said, that’s one governor out of 50 that has actually done anything real serious. And so, that’s an inspiration. We’re glad he did that. Right? Hopefully, he pushes on Biden for us to do more as well, but we still have a lot of work to do.
So, it’s a long-term standing addiction to punitive punishments. Right? That we’re going to shame and make examples out of people, but, at the same time, I do think we are cracking the dam of the War On Drugs-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and we will see it end in our lifetime, I do, and in your lifetime, and all of our lifetimes. Right? Like, we are winning the overall war, but it is something that has been built over 125 years, and ending that is not going to be an easy process, nor a quick one.
But I do see us growing, and winning the fights every day.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And as we conclude, tell our audience going forward what y’all be doing going forward, and how our audience can act with your project, or your former initiatives.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. So, actually, we have until January 20th to push President Biden to use his pardon authority to commute the sentences of the cannabis prisoners. And so, folks can go to www.CannabisClemency.org, and we have a countdown clock there where you can actually send a letter to the president, and between now and January 20th, that is the number one priority is we have the opportunity to get folks out of prison with this one person making one decision will actually have huge impact.
So, again, it’s www.cannabisclemency.org. You can go to www.LastPrisonerProject.org to see all the different campaigns we’re working on. If you’d like to write a letter to someone that’s currently incarcerated, we would love to have folks participating in our letter writing program.
And then I always say to wrap up, if you know anyone in prison for cannabis crimes, please let them know about us, and let us know how we can get in touch with them, because we do want to be in touch with folks that are on the inside, helping them get resources.
So, The Last Prisoner Project can provide legal support, funding in commissaries, and then also reentry funding when folks come out. So, that there’s actually a grant, and you can come out and get a car license, or a house, whatever you may need.
So, help us get our message to the folks that-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
… are on the inside, and we would love to help as many people as we can.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you, Jason. You definitely rattled the bars today.
Jason Ortiz:
There you go.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s an honor to be here with you, my man.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. No doubt about it. We recognize that raw politics, this is a politically motivated … That’s all it is, and we recognize now based on your education of our audience, and the marijuana laws, that the hypocrisy of this country is that they’re big on saying things … Like Stevie Wonder say, “We all amazed, but not amused at all the things you say you do, but if you really want to know something, you haven’t done nothing.”
And this is exactly what President Biden … This is your opportunity to cement your legacy, and in terms of, like, pardoning everyone that was convicted of this draconian marijuana law to pardon people that’s been convicted of a frame, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, politically motivated, because of their politics.
We ask that y’all continue to support Rattling The Bars, and The Real News, because it’s only from this platform that you get this kind of information that Jason Ortiz gave us from The Last Prisoner Project.
We recognize that a person can come out and smoke a joint around the corner, and buy some weed, but the same person sitting back in the cell in Denver, Colorado, or Florida somewhere that’s been convicted of having four pounds, or 10 pounds of marijuana is sitting back wondering, “Why am I still sitting here when it’s illegal to sell this throughout this country?”
So, we ask that you support this initiative to try to get the word out, and encourage President Biden to cement his legacy by being the architect of change, and not the architect of confusion and destruction.
Five incarcerated people in Alabama are fighting to push forward a lawsuit, Stanley v. Ivey, challenging the state’s power to punish prisoners who resist forced labor. Despite a state constitutional provision abolishing slavery that was passed in 2022 by referendum, Montgomery County Circuit Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, arguing Governor Kay Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm were protected by state sovereign immunity. Emily Early, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights‘ Southern Regional Office, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the lawsuit and the plaintiffs’ ongoing fight to have their case appealed.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution says that slavery is legal — And they use the term involuntary servitude — They say that anyone duly convicted of a crime can be enslaved and labor can be used for slavery purposes.
Now, the question becomes what happens when a state take that clause and say it no longer should be used? And the state that’s being talked about was one of the crown jewels in slavery, the state of Alabama.
Recently in the state of Alabama, prisoners filed a suit challenging utilization of forced labor and for the abolishment of slavery as we know it. The court ruled that the defendants in the case had qualified immunity and the prisoners had no standing in bringing this suit forward.
Joining me today is Emily Early. Welcome, Emily.
Emily Early: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And Emily, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and where you’re from before we unpack this tragedy that’s going on down in Alabama.
Emily Early: Sure. Well first, again, I’d like to thank you for having me on your radio show to educate your audience about this really important issue that exists very much so in many of our own backyards and many people don’t know about forced prison labor and slavery that happens inside the prison walls.
I am an attorney with an organization called The Center for Constitutional Rights, which is a racial and justice advocacy organization founded in 1966. We are headquartered in New York, but we are expanding into the South through our Southern initiative, of which I am the head. My official title is the associate director of our Southern regional office, and I’m also a trained attorney. And again, I live in Atlanta, but I have colleagues who are part of this Southern initiative who reside in Alabama and who are helping to lead the litigation that I’m here to talk about today, as well as another colleague in Atlanta, and one in Jackson, Mississippi.
The case name is Stanley v. Ivey, and, again, was brought on behalf of six individuals who are incarcerated inside of Alabama prisons. I will note that one of our original six plaintiffs, Mr. Dexter Avery, sadly passed away a couple of months ago while he was in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. So I wanted to note that, unfortunately, and to make sure that we say his name in the course of this interview.
The suit was brought on behalf of these individuals who have been punished for not working, or refusing to work. And the defendants whom we sued are the governor of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner.
The claims that we brought were intended to, if you will, give teeth or force to the constitutional amendment that the voters of Alabama overwhelmingly voted in support of in November of 2022 that got rid of the exceptions clause, or the prison loophole clause that you were talking about, Mr. Musa, earlier, that exists, though, in Alabama’s state constitution.
After the ratification of the 13th Amendment, each state that decided to become a part of the union also had to ratify their own versions of the 13th Amendment. And so Alabama, like many other states, has its own version of the 13th federal amendment that also excludes from the prohibition of slavery persons who are duly convicted of the commission of a crime. And so in November 2022, voters voted to ratify the constitution to get rid of that prison loophole, or that exceptions clause, as it’s referred to.
Nonetheless, the state government, including the governor herself and the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, John Han, enacted executive laws that still proceed to punish people and threaten to punish people for refusing to work and not working. And our clients have been subjected to those laws that were passed, very much so in violation of the 2022 constitutional ratification.
So our suit, again, was filed, like I said, in May of this year. Intentionally we filed on May 1 because we recognize that this lawsuit is not only about pushing up against and eliminating this prison-industrial complex, the system of mass incarceration, but it is also very much an issue of labor rights and ensuring that individuals who are choosing to work and who do work under their own free will have the right protections of safety, adequate pay, fairness, and are treated with dignity and humanity. And this system of forced prison labor inside of the Alabama Department of Corrections that still exists, notwithstanding the constitutional amendment, is very much so not providing workers these principles, these rights, this concept of justice.
So in early August of 2024 of this year, our case was dismissed by the Montgomery County circuit court for not actually qualified immunity but what is called sovereign immunity and standing. The court gave absolutely no reasoning whatsoever in its two-sentence dismissal of this lawsuit.
But what sovereign immunity effectively is, it says that the state or the sovereign, it’s a doctrine that derives from British law that says that the king, the sovereign cannot be sued. And if the king or the sovereign or the head of state is sued then, as a matter of policy, everything that the sovereign does could be subjected to a lawsuit.
And so this doctrine of sovereign immunity was created centuries ago, and it’s adopted into many states common law, in statutes, even in federal law in one form or another. And again, that just says that the government and officers and instrumentalities of the state cannot be sued. However, there are rules that have to be met or elements that have to be met before sovereign immunity even can be triggered before it comes into play. And even if those elements are met, there are exceptions to sovereign immunity.
So our position is that sovereign immunity does not apply to this case because our clients are seeking what’s called forward-looking or prospective relief, meaning an injunction to stop the governor and the Alabama Department of Corrections from enforcing these laws that violate Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution that outlaws prison slavery, and also a declaration that declares that what these laws are doing violate Section 32 of the constitution. So because that’s the form of relief that our clients are seeking, sovereign immunity doesn’t apply.
Mansa Musa: I mentioned earlier that we interviewed two members of a union who was involved with being co-plaintiffs in a suit, and I want our audience to know that, as you clarify, Emily, this not necessarily having anything to do with what y’all talking about, but the reality is that they complained about the same conditions that you’re complaining about and that’s being brought to the court’s attention, the inhumanity, the cruel and unusual punishment that’s taking place as it relates to men and women that’s in the Alabama prison system.
But talk about why you think that the state of Alabama, specifically the governor and the Department of Corrections, why you think that they’re taking such a staunch position to ensure and maintain this forced labor system. Because as you said, the state of Alabama, the citizens in the state of Alabama ratified the constitution eliminating any use of forced labor by getting rid of the exception clause in the state constitution. Why do you think that they’re so adamant about holding fast to this particular position?
Emily Early: Well, I think it’s because of two justifications among others, but the two I’ll focus on here today are profit, number one, and you talked about that earlier in the interview. And number two is controlling the bodies that are inside of the prison system, which are overwhelmingly Black and low income. And as it concerns the motivation of profit, the prison system in Alabama — And I would also go as far as to say in many other states — Could not function if they did not rest on, rely on the labor of incarcerated individuals.
Incarcerated workers inside of Alabama Department of Corrections prisons, they cook the food that incarcerated individuals eat. They clean the bathrooms, the hallways, the dormitories, the grounds outside of the four prison walls. They also work — And this is a piece that I haven’t covered as much, but our lawsuit also focuses on this — They are also contracted out to private industries.
Even some of the restaurants that we frequent often in our very own communities, McDonald’s or Buffalo Wild Wings, they’re also cooking and cleaning and performing at these fast food restaurants. And then they take a van that they have to pay for, it comes out of their own pay, that Alabama Department of Corrections transports them to and then picks them back up, and then they come back and then they sleep back inside of the prison walls.
And there also are some incarcerated individuals who are performing security functions because the staff, the prison system is so understaffed and overworked. And so sometimes there are even individuals who are performing some of those same security functions that correctional officers would perform. So it definitely is profit. The Alabama Department of Corrections makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the backs of Black and Brown bodies inside of the prison system.
And the second justification for why the state is resisting and forcing this constitutional ratification, which relates to the first reason, is it is an extension, the prison slavery is an extension of slavery, a method used to control and dehumanize and subjugate individuals who are Black in society. And because they are now in this system of incarceration, I think there is very much an attitude, not just among the state government, but, unfortunately, among many in our society and in our community, that we can just do away with people who are inside of prison walls.
And that is not the case. That should not be the case at all. And they still deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity. And if they choose to work, then they should be provided with the same protections that those in the free world have.
Mansa Musa: I want to unpack that as well because I was locked up 48 years prior to getting released. And at one time during my incarceration, I worked what we call industry, that’s what most prisoners referred to it as, industry. And they have with Maryland, MCE, Maryland Correctional Enterprises, and Maryland Correctional Enterprises is legislated by the state of Maryland. This particular corporation is legislated by the state of Maryland and all the labor for, they automatically get, they don’t have to bid for no contracts for state property to make the furniture, anything relative to the state. The chemicals that’s used in the institutions and in government buildings, the uniforms that the officers wear, the clothing that we wear, all these products are made by prisoners in MCE. The furniture for the state house is made by prisoners in MCE.
One, we wasn’t getting minimum wage. Two, we didn’t have no healthcare plan. Three, we couldn’t buy into social security. And four, in order to get any type of, which was considered money, we had to do an enormous amount of work in order to get a bonus.
And I was looking at the state of Alabama, the fact that they outsourcing the labor in Alabama and the fact that they’re outsourcing it. And most of these people in the work release or pre-release environment, they’re not getting, one, they’re not getting minimum wage, and, if I’m not mistaken, in some cases they’re paying for their own room and board. And you can correct me if I’m wrong on that. I know they’re paying for transportation.
And the last thing I noticed in the conversation we had was that in order to maintain the labor pool, they was denying people parole or the ability to progress through the system because they didn’t want to lose their labor. In y’all suit or y’all fact finding, did any of this come up?
Emily Early: As far as the parole piece, it’s not something that we have highlighted directly in the suit, however, it’s something we’re very keenly aware of, that the rate of parole grants in Alabama is abysmal. It’s very, very low. And for that reason, we actually are representing a couple of our clients who are clients in the forced prison labor, Stanley v. Ivy case, in their parole hearings. And even there in our representation, at least on the first try, two of our clients were denied parole.
But that’s something that we’re keenly aware of. And I agree with you, Mr. Musa, that yes, the denial of parole, I think, is tied, in one way or another, to the state’s need to keep people incarcerated to continue to profit off of their labor and to continue to keep the system running.
Mansa Musa: Another observation that was made in our previous conversations was that the fact that the utilization of prison labor automatically stopped, infringes on the rights of people having society to work. So I got cheap labor on the prison-industrial complex. I can take this labor, the same labor, and outsource it to, like you say, fast food restaurants, butcher shops, anywhere that they need labor, and they could have unions there, and I’m undermining the unions and undermining the ability for people to get minimum wage or living wage because I got cheap labor.
Do you think that this has something to do with the fact that it’s the relation between the business community has a hand in ensuring or maintaining this particular standard of slavery in the Alabama prison system? Is a connection between the business community in conjunction with the governor or the state in order to maintain cheap labor? Because if I got cheap labor and they don’t have to unionize, I don’t have to pay health, medical benefits, they don’t have to buy into social security, their pension, or none of that. Have you seen that?
Emily Early: No, I haven’t seen that necessarily, if I’m understanding your question correctly. I think what I do agree with, and I’m gathering from your statements, is that individuals who are incarcerated within the Department of Corrections in Alabama but are contracted out to private employers don’t have to be paid health insurance, 401k, if they qualify for it, and I think that is the case. However, and many of the folks that we did speak to — And I’m not saying this is the case across the board — But many of the folks whom we spoke to in our investigation were paid the same as free world workers and I think have to be paid. They cannot be paid less.
But what happens is the State Department of Corrections takes out 40% of their paycheck and it goes back to the state prison system. And so while they may be paid the same as some individuals who are free world workers, they don’t have the same take home pay. And that’s because the Department of Corrections is taking out its own cut, fees for transportation, fees for laundry, fees for the commissary. Right there, you mentioned room and board, and that is the case as well where, in some jails and prisons, individuals have to pay for their own incarceration.
Mansa Musa: My understanding is that they don’t have the right to say, I don’t want to work. If they don’t work, then they’re being punished even if they’re being given, in the state system they call it infractions. They’re being given disciplinary charges for refusing to work. Is that something that came out in the course of your investigation or gathering the facts of the suit?
Emily Early: Sure. So if people have been assigned to work and they are unable to work for whatever reason, or even if they refuse to work because the conditions are not safe, as happened with one of our clients, Mr. Reginald Burrell, who was injured while working at a furniture store in the free world community and was disciplined for saying he was not going back because it was not a safe environment.
That very much so is what is happening inside of the Department of Corrections where individuals, they cannot work, they refuse to work, they exercise a choice that they should have to not work for whatever reason, and then are consequently written up. That has happened to each of our plaintiffs. That threat remains and is ongoing because of these laws that the Alabama governor and the Department of Corrections commissioner and the Alabama legislature enacted after Section 32 of the constitution was ratified.
So each of those provisions, they relate to one another. And what they effectively do is authorize disciplinary reports and write-ups for literally refusing to work or failing to work or failing to report to work.
And the consequences of those disciplinary write-ups are extra duty, so individuals can be assigned even more work, which can effectively lengthen their sentence; They can lose privileges such as visitation with family and friends who come to visit them, which is very key to their survival and mental health and stability while on the inside; They can also be transferred to more dangerous prisons, which has also happened to some of our clients as a result of a disciplinary write up; They also can lose their good time credit, which is a system where folks earn, effectively, days of time that can be knocked off their sentence for good behavior. But if they’re written up, then they can lose a lot of good time, which, once again, extends or re-extends their sentence.
So they’re being punished over and over and over again, even though they were sentenced to incarceration and, effectively, are now being sentenced to labor, to slavery, to involuntary servitude inside the prisons.
Mansa Musa: And you know what, as you was talking, I was reminded of, I think the case was Sardin v. O’Connor, it’s a US case that came out with the concept of in order to prove an 8th Amendment claim or a claim relative to the conditions, you had to show atypical and significant hardship. You had to show that whatever you was complaining about was atypical and had significant hardship on you.
And I remember when they first came out with this concept, a lot of legal scholars unpacked it and was showing how difficult it was to meet this standard. But I was looking up in the Alabama prison system, it’s one of the most cruel, inhumane prison systems in the country. Some of the prisons — And that’s one of the things I was made aware of in terms of getting people to work — They threaten to transfer them to some of the more notorious prisons in order to pretty much get them to change their mind about not wanting to work.
But talk about going forward, what do you think the standing, what do you think the court, the higher court, going to do in terms of recognizing y’all claim that they don’t have sovereign immunity and that what y’all arguing and the issue that y’all raising has standing?
Emily Early: Sure. So we’re not sure what the court will do, but of course our hope is, and we think we’re right, is that the court will reverse the circuit court’s dismissal of the case and the judgment that the circuit court entered in favor of the defendants, and remand or send the case back to the circuit court. So the case would then be reinstated, and we would continue to litigate the case.
We think that we are right on the law. We think that the circuit court was absolutely wrong on sovereign immunity. It’s very clear that this is a case that does not trigger sovereign immunity, and even if it does, it meets one of the exceptions. And on standing, we think that our clients have fled the claim that shows that they were injured by these three laws, the Executive Order no. 725, the Administrative Regulation 403 that was promulgated in response to the executive order, and then the Alabama statutory code provision that also punishes folks for refusing to work, that all these laws have harmed our plaintiffs, and the defendant’s continued enforcement of these laws harms our plaintiffs, and the lawsuit that they have brought for injunctive and declaratory relief will redress or resolve those harms.
So we think that they have the standing necessary to raise these claims to enforce their right under Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution. So again, we think we’re right on the law, and we can only see what the court will say once the defendant submits their brief and we submit a reply brief. We are also requesting oral argument, so there may be an opportunity for us to go before the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals to have our day in court on behalf of our clients to plead our case.
Mansa Musa: OK. Thank you, Emily. And as we close out, tell our audience how they can stay on top of this or keep being informed about what’s going on with this lawsuit, and how they can track some of the work that y’all are doing.
Emily Early: Sure. Well, they can absolutely follow us on all the major platforms. Again, our organization is the Center for Constitutional Rights. Our website is ccrjustice.org. And this case is titled Stanley v. Ivy, and it’s currently pending in the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals. You can find a specific case page also on our ccrjustice.org website about Stanley v. Ivy. So if you just Google it, you can get updates. And again, we do try to update our casework on all the major social media platforms.
Mansa Musa: Thank you very much. You rattled the bars today, Emily. And we want to remind our audience that we’re talking about humanity. We’re talking about people who has been duly convicted, but the sentence was what they were serving. The crime, you have crime and punishment, the crime that I committed, and then the punishment is the time that I’m given. The punishment is not that I be leased out in forced labor and subjected to inhumane working conditions and don’t have no redress.
And so we asking that you really look into this situation that’s going on and ask yourself, would you want to wake up one day and find out that you cannot refuse to work? And that if you refuse to work, that you’re going to be subjected to more punishment, more cruelty, only because someone chooses to ignore the will of the citizens of the state of Alabama.
Thank you, Emily. We appreciate you.
Emily Early: Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only because of The Real News that you get this kind of coverage of what’s going on in Alabama, what’s going on throughout the United States of America and the world. And guess what? We’re actually the real news.
A new bill in Washington, DC seeks to end the district’s use of solitary confinement in jails. Rattling the Bars‘ Mansa Musa speaks with two formerly incarcerated organizers: Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad of the Unlock the Box DC campaign, which advocates for an end to the barbaric practice of solitary confinement around the country and to pass the ERASE Bill.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Oftentimes we hear about Unlock the Box, and it’s almost becoming cliché. It’s an organization called Solitary Watch that monitors solitary confinement throughout the world and the United States in particular, and they’re real strategic in highlighting the torture and abuse that solitary confinement is.
What we have with us today, people that’s in this space right today. And guess where they’re operating out of? Our nation’s capital. They’re operating out of Washington DC, and they’re organizing to Unlock the Box. But guess where they’re trying to Unlock the Box at? In DC jail.
So why would you have solitary confinement in an environment where the nature of the environment is a transitory environment? The people in that environment, they’re pending conviction, they haven’t got convicted, they’ve only been charged, but yet they’re being treated like they’re doing severe time, and they’re being subjected to solitary confinement.
Joining me today is Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad. Welcome, men.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. How you doing today?
Herbert Robinson:
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Mansa Musa:
I’m doing all right. So let’s start with you, Herbert, because we had you on before talking about Unlock the Box. I was recently at an activity that y’all was doing, y’all sponsored, about Unlock the Box. That’s where I met brother Umar. And y’all was talking about some of the things that y’all was doing, some of your initiatives y’all was taking, but more importantly, y’all was in the space of educating people about Unlock the Box and what exactly that is.
Tell our audience what exactly is Unlock the Box, and where y’all staying at right now in terms of the coalition that y’all building to Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. Again, I thank you for letting me be on and appreciate you, Umar, for joining. The Unlock the Box DC is the coalition here in DC that’s trying to end solitary confinement. It’s built up of transformative justice advocates and a lot of the organizations in DC that look at solitary confinement as torture, along with the United Nations. United Nations had what they brought about as the Mandela rule that says 15 days or more in solitary confinement is torture.
And solitary confinement is often described as torture, and involves isolating individuals for 22 to 24 hours a day inside of a cell.
So the Unlock the Box campaign is here to end that. And we are offering a different change into the community. Because it’s in DC jail, it’s being looked at as a judicial issue, but we’re looking at it as a public health issue.
Mansa Musa:
And one of the things that y’all, I recall at the conference that y’all was having on it, y’all had got someone to introduce a bill to do what?
Herbert Robinson:
Yes. So that bill was introduced by a champion, and that’s council member Brianne Nadeau.
Mansa Musa:
From Washington DC?
Herbert Robinson:
From Washington DC. Yes. Brianne Nadeau introduced the bill for us, and the bill is to abolish solitary confinement. We are seeking the in solitary confinement, and we’re asking that each person housed in DC jail is entitled to eight hours a day outside of their cell.
DC jail uses solitary confinement, but they have named it with different names. They have a mental unit that they use for solitary confinement, they have protective custody, they have safe cells, they have disciplinary. They house the LGBT community in solitary confinement because they don’t have nowhere else to put them. And they do the juveniles like that at times on different units.
So with this being said, it’s like the jail that’s lacking the programs and the resources, and that’s what we seek, to figure out how to implement these programs and resources inside the jail. Because there’s a lot that could be done, man, to help the people adjust and better themselves under them conditions, especially when it comes to social and emotional learning and cognitive thinking and things like that to deal with problem solving and be aware of their anger and how they respond and react to certain situations.
And these are things that’s stripped away from you when you locked in that cell by yourself. You become possessive of your own material and things like that. And then the dignity of rewashing clothes that the whole unit then wore and then giving back to you to put on. These things, they take away from you, they strip you down.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Yeah. And I did 48 years before I got out, but I did four-and-a-half of them years in the super max, which was solitary confinement. I did a lot of time on segregation, which is solitary confinement, but I never looked at it like that.
But when I got to super max, I really realized that the impact that isolation had, because sometimes it was like 24 and none, 23 and one, or 24 and none for the most part. And everything was designed around how you would do your due diligence with yourself in your cell.
Umar, talk about your experience. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and some of your experience and your experience dealing with solitary confinement. I recall your speech at the conference that the Unlock the Box Coalition was having, and I’ve been in this space for a minute, but I was really impressed. That’s what made me approach you about coming on and educating our audience about solitary confinement.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Yes sir. Well, first I want to thank you, brother Mansa Musa, for having me here today. I also want to thank my brother Herbert Robinson for always bringing me along. Brother Herbert is my mentor, has been my mentor for some time, so I always try to get in any space that I can with him and get involved with any campaign he’s a part of because we both have some of these shared experience.
At the age of 16, I was sentenced to juvenile life in DC Superior Court, and I was fortunate that at some point in time, roughly around 2017, 2018, the DC Council came up what’s called the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. What the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act does it affords our juveniles who committed crimes before the age of 18, the first version, second version, the age of 25 and under who have served a minimum of 20 years or 15 years to petition the court for release.
And everything is predicated on your conduct while you’ve been incarcerated throughout these years since you were a juvenile. I petitioned the court for release after 29 years, 10 months, and I was released. I was released back into society.
And I made it my top priority because while I was incarcerated, I knew that if I should ever be released, the one thing that I wanted to work on and I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to was working first and foremost just criminal justice reform in general, but more importantly in this solitary confinement period. But it has to be a starting point. There had to be a starting point. And I’m from Washington, DC, so what better place to start but in Washington, DC?
But over 29 years and 10 months, I roughly spent about six years, six-and-a-half years consecutively in solitary confinement. And one thing that I always say, and I shout it from the rooftop, solitary confinement is 100%, make no mistake about it, torture.
This is torture that needs to be ended because these are the same citizens that will be returning back to the community at some point in time. Who do you want living next door to you: Somebody who has been reformed, who has spent years in incarceration, who has reformed himself, bettered himself when he’s coming back out, back into society as someone who’s a better person.
Or do you want someone who is batshit crazy? Who has practically lost his mind because he’s been sitting inside of a cell alone counting bricks on a wall? I mean, this is a public safety issue. And if this is a public safety issue, then we got to treat this in a manner where this is an emergency in solitary confinement. Who would want to lock somebody in a room the size of your bathroom and leave them in there for years on top of years on top of years, but expecting them to still come out in the same conditions that they went in? That’s insanity. That’s insanity.
So Unlock the Box. I’m involved with a lot of organizations, Free Minds writing workshop and book club, building communities in our prisons. Currently, I’m a BreakFree Education hour 2024 fellow. I’m a fellow, that’s where I’m working at right now. But I just was hired for a job with Dreaming Out Loud, which is an organization that works to end the food inequities in the greater Washington DC area.
But whatever my brother Herbert Robinson is involved in because we are passionate about these same issues. But the top one being, the top one being, first and foremost, is erasing solitary confinement, unlocking the box. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Hey Herbert, because Umar made a good point. And this is his mantra. That’s his mantra. He said it at the conference, the coalition, that solitary confinement is 100% torture. When we think of torture and we see the forms of torture that take place in the movies, we see torture as more physical. Why are y’all saying that solitary confinement?
And he outlined the different reasons what’s behind, emotional, social, physical, mental. But why do you say it’s torture, and how do you get people to understand it being torture? Because when you say someone is being tortured, they waterboard people they falsely accused, they locked up in Iraq, named them illegal combatants. They waterboarded them and the US say, well, that’s torture. They did a lot of physical things to them and they claim that’s torture.
So most people might think say, well, when you say torture and it ain’t got no physical element to it, you just putting somebody in a cell, feeding them, giving them a shower, some food, break them out maybe once in a while and give them some rec, how is that torture?
Herbert Robinson:
So as the brother spoke, because when he said torture, he broke it down from psychological, emotional, mental, physical. This torture happens on every level. You come from being in society with your family to being incarcerated. Now if you’re incarcerated on population, you might have access to the phone and things at a regular basis.
In solitary confinement, you don’t get that. You might be put in a position where you can only send one letter a month, have one 15-minute phone call a month. That’s torture. Sitting there wondering what your family doing for 30 days before you could send your next letter or receive your next letter or get your next phone call.
Again, having them collect everybody’s under clothes off of the tier and wash them in the same laundry basket and then come and pass them back out. Not you, your personal stuff, but just, this your size, this yours. This the stuff the man next to you could have just, man, shitted in in or whatever the day before. But this is what you got to wear now because they feel as though it’s clean enough for you to wear, that you still see hairballs and stuff in it. Like this is torture.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s torture.
Herbert Robinson:
But on the flip side, just imagine being trapped in your bathroom, but there’s COVID. For the people that was trapped in their house during COVID felt as though they was being tortured. They couldn’t handle being stuck in their own home. But just imagine people that’s incarcerated as being trapped inside of something the size of a bathroom, that is considered a bathroom because they have a toilet and sink in it as well. Some have showers too.
Mansa Musa:
Right there in the cell.
Herbert Robinson:
And you’re being trapped in it. So you have some that complain about that, say it’s not solitary confinement because in some locations you have a celly. But I think at times that make it worse because now when this person has to relieve themselves or go take care of any personal hygiene or washing themselves, you are within arm’s reach at all times.
I don’t feel comfortable and could never get comfortable being trapped in a cell with a man right there that’s washing his complete body naked in the shower. But this is what you’re forced under. These are the things you want to know about torture. I call that torture, sir. That’s torture to me.
Mansa Musa:
That would be torture. Umar, how did you deal with solitary confinement? Because you say you did six in all years. And like I said, I was regimented. I was real regimented in everything I did. But when I came out of that space, when I got released from the super max in Baltimore and they send me to Jessup, which was known as the cut, and I was standing in what they call center hall, which is where all the traffic goes.
And the whole time, this was my first time ever being out and about and around people. And I knew a lot of people in that institution, and they was coming by hollering at me and everything. They hadn’t seen me in long. But I was paralyzed. My back was against the wall and I was paralyzed. Literally I was paralyzed. And a friend of mine seen it and said, come on man, let’s go outside. No one recognized that I was paralyzed from not being around people.
Umar, how did you deal with it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
No, you was traumatized because you were tortured for the period of time that you was in solitary confinement. That’s called trauma, brother. That was psychological trauma that paralyzed your limbs.
Listen, listen, it’s like being sick. It’s like being sick. And you become so ill and sick that your limbs won’t even function properly no matter how much you want to move those limbs. Brother, that’s trauma.
And see, the thing is this when you ask the brother, well, some people going not see it as torture. Okay, well, go lock yourself in your bathroom without no food. Go lock yourself in your bathroom without no clothes, no TV, and no phone, no radio. And then somebody bring you what they want to give you as food three times a day. You stay in there for three, four, five, or six years and then tell me, still tell that that ain’t torture inside of your bathroom.
Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody to come around and, at will when they want to, yank you off your cell and beat on you with not only their fists, but with instruments. Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody that come around where you trying to sleep and hawk spitting through your tray slot or kicking your door won’t allow you to sleep every time they see you falling asleep. Tell me that ain’t torture.
Because if I’m not mistaken, what they have in the Geneva Convention also deems torture is that at a certain period of time when they continuously turn on lights and when they continuously try to, it’s called sleep deprivation. That, sir, is what torture is. And that is what’s going on not only in Washington, DC, not only in Baltimore County, but in the state prisons across the United States and in federal rural prisons.
Now you ask the question in specific, how did I deal with it? See, I dealt with it because I knew I didn’t have any other choice but to deal with it because I’m a resilient young man, first and foremost. I had already suffered so much emotional loss, so much physical loss because I’m an only child. My mother and father already died. I didn’t have brothers and sisters. So all I had was myself.
So I knew that if I wasn’t strong for me, who was going to be strong for me? So what I would do is I would get up in the morning and I would offer salat. I would offer the early morning fajr prayer. Bright and early before breakfast even came around, I would pace the floor a little bit, read the Quran, and then I wait for breakfast to come, eat my breakfast, straight back out to the salat.
Then I would work out. I work out to the zuhr prayer, which is the midday prayer. I will work out to that time, pray, get back to working out after prayer and get my food at lunch. After lunch, get back to working out again.
And I’m giving you this regimen because here’s what it entailed. It entailed every hour that I was awake that I had to be doing something that my mind could grasp onto. That I wouldn’t be looking at these walls, that I wouldn’t be trying to count the bricks on the walls or trying to count the spots on the floor. Or I may see a stain on the floor and I’m saying, oh, that look like Jesus on the floor.
Because I had almost got to that point, make no mistake about it. You see a spill on the floor, but the spill may have been on the floor so long that it takes a certain design of somebody that you may have known, right? That’s when you know you’re losing your damn mind. That’s when you know that what you are experiencing is torture. Because now what it does is it’s starting to alter your perspective on how you see the world. That’s torture, brother.
So I had to do things, man, that my mind could physically identify with, that I could grasp onto and that would keep me sane, which is prayer, which is working out, but also which was getting inside of the vents, the vent that blows out, they controls the air to the cell. And I would talk to other people in the other cells because I wanted to make sure that they was all right.
Here I am damn near losing my mind, but I wanted to make sure other brothers was all right. Why? Because we all in the same struggle. We all in the same fight and I don’t want to be the only one up here sitting like, I’m all right. But then that’s what was giving me a peace of mind, so I wouldn’t lose my mind, talking to somebody else. So I know that they needed it too.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, that’s real succinct. And I’ve been in that space. Like I told, I said earlier, I was regimented. So I had a regimen that I had set up and everything was based on whatever I wanted to do that day. But it was a regimen. I worked out, studied law, read books, went to sleep, woke up, ate, boom, bam, boom, bam, boom.
That was a regimen to keep me from going crazy, keep me from pacing the floor, keep me from looking on the floor and seeing something down there and saying, oh look, that’s Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot. Or keep me from wanting to cut my wrist with a spoon.
But Herbert, talk about where y’all at right now, what the campaign look like in terms of, one, trying to get the legislation passed at the DC City Council. That’s what you’re talking about when you say the councilwoman, that was the councilwoman at the DC City Council. Talk about where y’all at with the Unlock the Box campaign and what’s y’all upcoming initiative around Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
So right now with the Unlock the Box campaign, the fiscal year is ending. So we have a push till December to try to get a hearing this year, but if not, we’ll be looking to secure a hearing next year, the beginning of next year. And that task is through the judiciary chair, Councilmember Brooke Pinto here in Washington DC. Right now we have nine councilmembers that have signed on in support of the bill.
Mansa Musa:
For the benefit of our audience, what’s the bill number?
Herbert Robinson:
It’s the ERASE Act 2023. I will have to go…
Mansa Musa:
That’s good enough. Just so let them know that when you say the bill, they know it is an actual bill.
Herbert Robinson:
Yeah, it’s ERASE Act 2023. And so out of the nine that we have signed on, it’s only 13. One is being voted into office next month. But we do have, throughout one of his campaign forums, we had him actually verbally say that he agrees that solitary confinement is torture and he wants to support us ending it.
So in that sense, we have 10, we are only missing three. And that’s the chairman, Brooke Pinto, the ex-chairman, Mendelsohn, and Trayon White. Trayon White asked us to set up a conversation with him so we can explain a little bit more about the bill, and that’s where we at with that step and the process of scheduling meetings with Mendelsohn as well as Brooke Pinto.
Mansa Musa:
In terms of work, because y’all did a nice thing with organizing the coalition. So in terms of getting people involved with the coalition, what are y’all doing around that?
Herbert Robinson:
So ERASESolitary.com is the website and you can go on, there’s links on there to ask for those that want to join the coalition, want to do any volunteer work for the coalition, bring in your organizations, and we take individuals. We go out and do canvassing. It’s always something that can be done, especially when it comes to social media posts and editing, things like that, website work. We always got a space where we can find help and need help. So one could go onto the website, ERASESolitary.com, and check that out.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, you have to answer this question. Why you think they so resistant to recognizing this torture and doing something about it? When I say they, I’m talking about the system, the state, the government, the powers that be. Why you think it’s such a resistance on their part to recognize this is torture and enact legislation to eliminate it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’ll give you a scenario better. I give it to you in the form of a scenario to help you understand it. I kill somebody in the street, but the state that got the death penalty want to kill me. That’s retaliatory in nature. But this is supposed to be a government for the people and by the people.
But now somebody killed one of my brothers in the street, I go back and kill them and they give me life. I mean what makes it right for them to kill me for killing somebody, the state, but then I kill somebody for killing somebody, the same thing they done, and you give me a life sentence? It’s retaliatory in nature.
And that’s the way that the Americans judicial system functions. You do something we don’t like… Because listen, you know, Herbert know, and many people that been in solitary confinement that hear this know, and those that haven’t been that need to be educated need to know this. Do you know that you could be put in solitary confinement because you got an extra tray out the chow hall line because you was hungry? You were hungry, so you wanted seconds, and you got in the line to get seconds, and they locked you up and put you in solitary confinement because you were hungry.
Do you know that the officer can not like you and shake your cell down because they can anytime they want to do what’s called random searches, but they’re not so random. Search in your cell and plant a knife, drugs, or whatever they want to plan in your cell just to get you in solitary confinement so that when he does his overtime mandated shift, he can be working in solitary confinement so that he can physically abuse you outside of the purview of the camera.
So what we need to do more is we need to not only educate people about solitary confinement, what solitary confinement really is, we need to educate them about how they get people into solitary confinement and for what reasons they get them in solitary confinement, so they can do torturous things to them that they couldn’t do within the sight of the camera. But when you put them in solitary confinement, they say, oh, they got a camera on the hall. I don’t live in the hall. I live on a cell in the hall where there’s no camera at. And this is where the torturous activities go on at.
Mansa Musa:
You rattled the bars that time, Umar. Took a tray. Somebody hungry, they put him in solitary confinement. Police say man disrespected him, put him in solitary confinement. Man walking too slow, solitary confinement. Oh, better still, look. Got a tray, torture you. You talk back, torture. Not walking fast enough, torture.
Herbert, you got the last word on this here. Tell our audience how they can get in touch with you and how they become involved in the campaign, and some of your other initiatives that you might be involved with.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. So again, ERASESolitary.com is a way to get in touch with the Unlock the Box campaign and you go on there and there’s links to sign up and join the coalition and all that.
As far as me, I have a website, and on my website you could check out a lot of what I’m into, from Growing Pain Solutions to AGG transportation. I’m trying to build out one in the transportation industry and the other is in this advocacy sector.
But I have what I call Building Inclusive Communities, where I try to bring in brothers like Umar and a lot of those that I’ve worked with. And we sharing our voice, we trying to be heard, we trying to fight for what we believe in and what we feel as though the community needs and what we feel as though, when we go out into the community and talk to the community, what they tell us they need. We ain’t just doing this for ourselves and we ain’t just bringing the information that we feel, but nah, this is stuff we bringing out from the community. We out here, we in the community, we do these rallies, as you seen, and we engaging all those around us.
Mansa Musa:
Umar, how can people get in touch with you and some of the things that you’re doing, some of your initiatives you’re taking, as we close out?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’m actually, excuse me. Yes, sir. I’m actually on Facebook and I’m on Instagram ,and my Instagram and Facebook is basically tied together. Cinquan815, and Cinquan is spelled with a C. C-I-N-Q-U-A-N 815. You can find me on Facebook or you can find me on Instagram, the same thing.
You can see what I’m into on a daily basis. You can see the type of work that I advocate for. You can see pictures of different conferences and canvassing that we have done, and you can find out how to get involved also.
But thank you for having me, brother. I really appreciate this. This really needed to get out. People need to understand what solitary confinement is, what’s really going on. You know what I mean? And how they can help the movement. And man, anytime you need me, brother, anytime, and I know Herbert feel the same, call on us, and we going to be there because this a fight that we got to keep on fighting as long as we walking this earth.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. This is a fight that we got to keep on fighting. Y’all rattled the bars.
And we want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to look at this particular episode of Rattling the Bars and ask yourself, just ask yourself when you get your plate, you take your plate to the bathroom, sit on top of the toilet stool, wash your hands, sit on the toilet, and start eating it. Then you wait for somebody to open the door and take it out.
Ask yourself, did you wait for them to come open your door and tell you that you got 15 minutes to take a shower? And then on top of that, they tell you that the laundry is coming back and they’re giving you some underwear that you got pick of the litter, doodoo stains in them, nut balls in them. And then they tell you that at the end of the day when you get up out of there, after doing six years in that environment, oh, you all right. Ain’t nothing wrong with you. And by the way, you wasn’t being tortured.
Y’all rattled the bars, and we thank you for y’all coming on today. And we ask our listeners to understand this and understand this real clearly. It’s only from The Real News and Rattling the Bars, you get this kind of information. All three of us have been in solitary confinement. We’re not talking about this as a theory. We’re talking about this from actual practical. We all lived this experience and we are campaigning against it. And this is why these men are on here today to talk about it.
Thank y’all for joining us, and we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, because guess what? We really are the news.
Since the 1990s, 2 million people with felony convictions have regained the right to vote, thanks to crucial reforms abolishing felony disenfranchisement in 26 states. This election, these voters could play a crucial role—and based on data from 2020, many of them prefer Trump. There’s more to this story however, from incarcerated people’s limited access to information, to the role of prisoners’ race and even positive perceptions of Harris’ gender in shaping incarcerated voters’ preferences. Nicole Lewis, engagement editor for The Marshall Project joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s findings and insights into the politics of prisoners.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: We hear during this period that the most important election ever in the history of elections is getting ready to take place. We hear that if we don’t come out and vote, that Armageddon going to follow if certain people get elected. This is what we are hearing.
But for the abolitionists and for prisoners, what do this mean for them? What do this mean for us? What do it mean to say that this is the most important election ever when you are sitting in a cell serving triple life sentences? This the most important election ever, and you are in an environment where the judges have complete control over your livelihood.
Joining me today is Nicole Lewis from the Marshall Project to talk about why prisoners are voting for Trump, but more importantly, to give us some insight to the electoral process and electoral assistance as it relates to those of us are on the plantation.
Welcome, Nicole.
Nicole Lewis: Thanks for having me on.
Mansa Musa: First, tell our audience a little bit about yourself before we get into the subject matter.
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m a journalist. I’m an editor at the Marshall Project, and we are a nonprofit news organization that covers the criminal justice system. And typically, our pieces take a systemic look at issues of abuse, harm, wrongdoing, inequality. We use journalism, we tell stories to shine a bright spotlight on where things are not working. And our mission is to create a national sense of urgency about the criminal justice system.
Mansa Musa: OK. And right there. So, as you’ve seen how my intro as it relates to the electoral process and from the abolition, and I’m talking specifically from an abolitionist perspective or from the carceral… We’re not trying to reform prison, we’re not trying to make sanitized prisons, we’re trying to abolish prison. That’s what the abolitionist position is.
But in that regard, how do the abolitionists, and this is a question that we’ve been proposing lately, what’s the abolitionist perspective on the electoral process?
So, you wrote a piece on why prisoners vote for Trump. So, let’s talk about this, OK. And I’m going to set it up like this here.
All right. When I was locked up, I was telling one of my colleagues this. When I was locked up, I was in one institution, and when I was walking around the institution, they had, throughout the institution, vote for Robert Ehrlich. Robert Ehrlich was a Republican that was running for governor in the State of Maryland. And I’m like, why would anybody in their right mind vote for Ehrlich?
And so, I’m asking around because the population’s somewhat enlightened. I’m asking around, why are we putting this stuff up here saying vote for Ehrlich? And that’s what they said. They said that a Democrat delegate had went to Ehrlich and asked Ehrlich would he be inclined to pardon lifers or cut life with people that had life sentences, cut their sentences or look at their case? And that was the highest issue for prisoners in the State of Maryland at that time.
So, we got a secular interest that’s being represented. And somebody went to a Republican governor, a potential Republican governor saying, would you be inclined to do this? And he said, yeah.
And the delegate came back to us and said, this is what he going to do versus what the Democrat governor is doing or has been doing. So, what’s the difference? OK, we saying don’t vote for Trump or why people vote for Trump, but they saying don’t vote for Trump, but vote Democrat. However, the Democrats are in control now. You got Democratic president, vice president running, in some quarters they call it a top cop. So, why wouldn’t people vote for Trump? Come on.
Nicole Lewis: You framed this really perfectly. I think you’re asking all the right questions here. So, let me back up before I truly get into that answer to just give a little bit more context. So, for the last three elections, I’ve run a survey of incarcerated people. It started in 2020. I did one in 2022, and, of course, I did one ahead of this election in 2024.
So, this year alone, we heard from 54,000 people across 45 different states, prisons, and 745 facilities across the country. So, this is the largest representation that we have right now of what incarcerated people are thinking about this election.
And like you said, it’s been framed in the media as a really consequential and incredibly important election. I think it’s the right question to ask: what does it actually mean for incarcerated people? That’s the intention behind it.
For the last six years I’ve been at TNP as a reporter, I’ve covered felony disenfranchisement laws. So, what I’ve seen is the way that states have reconsidered people losing their voting rights when they’re convicted of a felony.
And so, it’s really important to know that, since the late 1990s, about 2 million people with felony convictions now have regained the right to vote. And so, that’s mostly people on the outside, that’s people coming home, that’s not necessarily people in prison.
So, this is the backdrop under which I’m doing this survey. It’s the first time in 20 years that you’ve got 2 million people with felony convictions who can decide who represents them at all levels of our government.
So, when we take a look inside and we ask incarcerated people, mostly in prison who are not eligible to vote, we say, well, who would you pick? Who’s interesting to you? We’ve actually found, time and again, so we saw it in 2020, we see it again here, that many incarcerated people would choose Trump. They would choose him for president.
And I think it’s really important to know that, by and large, it’s a lot of white men who are incarcerated who feel very strongly about Trump. Black men somewhat, to some degree, but that survey result is really driven by the white prison population. So, that’s just to start there. Trump has white male supporters behind bars. I don’t actually think that that should be that surprising [laughs]. That tracks what we see.
But let me break it down even further. So, when we go and we ask people and we say, well, what is interesting to you about this candidate? Why does he appeal to you? It’s exactly what you’re saying in this previous Maryland race. A lot of people have — Or they have a false understanding, I want to make this really clear because it’s not correct. They have a false understanding that Trump is going to help them get out of prison.
And the reason they believe this is because of some of the work that he did with the First Step Act. That was federal. So, it doesn’t apply to people in state prisons. Because of some of the work that he’s done with Kim Kardashian, because of people like Alice Johnson who he was able to get out of prison. But again, by and large our surveys are entirely people in the state system. And so, it’s not actually asking federal people.
But it’s this idea that permeates the perception of his policy that he’s going to be good for incarcerated people over the facts. So, people might not have full access to news. They might not be able to watch news on the TV. They might not be able to read it. And so, if you hear someone say, Trump, he’s really good for us, he’s going to get us out, that he’s my shot, of course people are going to say, yeah, no, this is my candidate. This makes sense to us.
And so, we’ve seen again and again, like you said, criminal justice issues, getting out of prison, prison reform, abolition to some degree, reentry, release, all of these things are very important to incarcerated people. So, they’re making decisions based on who they think could support them the most.
But there’s more to the story. There’s more to the story there.
The other thing I think is really important to know is that when Kamala entered the race, when she became the Democratic nominee, we actually saw a surge of support for her. So, a lot of people, particularly Black people who were saying originally that they would vote for Trump in a Trump-Biden race, said that they would now choose the VP.
And they’re conflicted about this because a lot of people, we could, again, we could see, and when we followed up with people, we could see people saying, I’m conflicted. She’s a prosecutor. I don’t know what that means in terms of her ability to help me. That seems completely very clear. That seems like her job was putting people away.
But they’re so desperate. There’s such clarity that no system, no party, no person, particularly no man has helped them in their situation, that they’re willing to take a gamble on a woman.
So, it’s this interesting thing where her identity as a woman is now seen as like, well, maybe she would do something different than what these guys have done and not done for us over many, many years. So, it’s a complex situation where people are working on…
Mansa Musa: And on that note right there, and I agree on the complexities of it, because prison’s not monolithic, and everything is motivated by what’s of interest to them.
And I was talking about with one of my colleagues earlier, that the only time we was monolithic in our thinking was from in the early ’60s and to the ’70s, Attica and beyond, where the prison conditions were so horrific that the repression and the brutality forced us into a position where we had to resist. It wasn’t a matter of if you going to resist or you going to die, it’s a matter of resist and possibly live or possibly die, but at least stand and fight.
And so, that attitude of being monolithic was right there. We was talking about the conditions of the prison, the way we was living, the way they was feeding us, the way they was clothing us, and the way they was [inaudible] us. When prison, they started reforming the plantation and coming up with different scenarios of getting people out. That’s where the interest became more secular in terms of what’s in it for me? Which leads me to my next question.
OK. In your survey, it was established that most people thought that Trump, because the first act is responsible for them getting out. OK. But then look at what’s been taking place for the last four years. Because I’m comparing that against… So when you come to me and say, as a candidate or you saying as a candidate that vote for me, but you don’t have on your agenda nothing about prison reform, you don’t have nothing on your agenda about changing family unification, all those things that’s of interest to me.
But I got one example, albeit far-fetched as it might be, that he didn’t do nothing, no more than do a photo op, get somebody out, and he running on the photo op. But I got that as a reference in comparison to what I got from the Democrats. So, how did you survey jails with that?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, again, such a good question because these are all the issues. So, let me think about where I would start on that. So, I do think that it’s perception over reality for sure.
Mansa Musa: That’s right. That’s right [laughs].
Nicole Lewis: And I think that an important point to be made here is that when Trump was in power, at the end of his term, he went on an execution spree. He was —
Mansa Musa: Yeah, exactly.
Nicole Lewis: We had a moratorium on executions. And so, he killed people. Well, he said, let’s let these executions go forward. So, I wonder if incarcerated people understood the reality, were really able to engage more deeply with what’s happening, would people still feel this way? Have some more thoughts there. So, that’s one thing.
But I will say from what we’ve been looking at and trying to get our heads around both candidates’ policies, both candidates are actually really thin on criminal justice issues right now. There is a lack of clarity on both sides about productive things that people would do.
But I will say still, when we stack the policy perspectives up against each other, Trump is much more punitive. He’s really taking a much more punitive approach. He’s really trying to limit any and all kinds of protections, trying to continue to restart the death penalty. So, it’s pretty clear that if, as a president, he would have a very different policy and position.
Kamala is sort of still undeveloped. She’s a blank slate. We don’t exactly know what a Kamala presidency means.
I think what’s more important for incarcerated people to understand is that the president can only do but so much to affect state policy. And this is really, again, when I’ve covered voting rights, we step back and we say, where could you actually move the needle at the moment? Where does this matter? Why does any of this matter?
The president is limited. They mostly oversee the federal system, federal prisoners, they oversee the BOP. Most people are incarcerated in the state system, and it’s the state leadership that basically determines that policy.
So, where I think the participation, if you were saying to yourself, I care about this democracy. I want to participate, I want to make my voice heard. If that’s your route, then the midterms become really critical elections. And so, those are elections in which people are more likely to choose their governor. They’re more likely to vote. In some states where judges are elected, they get to vote on judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, city council, state legislature, these folks who actually set the policy and the laws for how the state system is going to work.
So, we get so caught up in what’s Kamala going to do for me? What’s Trump going to do for me? And there’s really all these smaller elections where people have much more power to move the needle, to think about reform, to think about releases, to think about improving conditions, to think about how our court system operates.
And so, I’ve always said that incarcerated people have really intimate knowledge. You have real clarity about how the system functions. You have real clarity about whether or not states are using their tax dollars appropriately to house people. Are we harming people? Are people getting the rehabilitation help?
So, I think that there’s real knowledge that’s locked up. There’s a real understanding of is this working? Is this experiment that we have, is it working? Is it productive? Is it doing anything for anyone? Is it just harmful?
So, that’s really what I would say of, I know we pay a lot of attention to what’s Trump or what’s Kamala going to do for me. I would say neither person is going to do much. Trump is objectively, when we compare policy side by side, potentially much more harmful for incarcerated people. But two years from now, in the midterms, it’s really going to be consequential in terms of people’s experiences.
Mansa Musa: And I agree with you on that, because Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the House, said all politics are local.
But I had the opportunity to interview some people in Louisiana and they got an organization called Voices of the Educated. And it’s called, it’s VOTE, Voices of the Educated. What they did, going back to your analysis about the impact of local elections, they was able to mobilize the community to vote around the sheriff election.
But the way they was able to get traction on it was, they went to everybody that was locked up, still locked up, and the ones that was out that was locked up, that went through the county jail, this particular jail, and said, man, listen, we trying to get rid of these sheriffs. You know what the conditions are in this environment. So, it’s not a matter of not knowing that. So, we are asking you to vote for this person because this person is signed onto our agenda saying that they going to do the necessary things to change the conditions.
And they was able to get the sheriff in. And the sheriff did some things and didn’t do other things, because when you dealing with the political aspect of it, you still beholden to your stakeholders, for lack of a better word. But we do get traction and do get changes.
And I think that in terms of what you just said, I think the biggest problem is we are enlightened, but we’re not educated on the electoral system as it relates to local politics.
Like you say, you can’t go nowhere in prison and not find out, talk to somebody, and they don’t know the judicial system, their appeal procedures. OK, I got my direct appeal, now I got a post convicted, I got a habeas corpus, but I do know these… Or somebody in that system is telling me about these things.
But what I don’t know is, and nobody organized me around, is that all the judges on the bench, they come up for elections. You dig what I’m saying?
So, as we close out, talk about why you think that we don’t have that kind of attention nationwide. Because like you say, on the federal level, even on the federal level, the president has so much to do. But even beyond that, the Congress, the judiciary, the committees, and the Congress where the people are locally elected, the congressperson, the Senate person, are locally elected, why you think that we don’t have that kind of insight, or why you think that it’s not being mobilized in that regard?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, it’s really what you’re talking about here is if people had more clarity, they could come up with a strategy for how they win. They could make decisions. Yes, absolutely.
And I would say that in this regard, and incarcerated people are really no different than the rest of the public. Midterm elections tend to be the lowest turnout elections. People just don’t show up. Even though the local officials are the people who are going to make the most influential decisions in their lives. So, there’s really not much difference from people on the outside who blow those off as well.
But I think there’s some unique elements to prison. One of the things we always ask in our survey is, how do you get your news? Who do you talk to about this? How would you actually go about educating yourself?
And what we’ve seen is that news is extremely controlled, information is extremely censored. So, even if you wanted to, even if you were like, I’m going to figure this out for myself so I can make decisions, you still might be prevented by the administration from accessing the news and information that you would need to have a clear understanding.
And we see this again and again. We ask people directly because we know how it works. So, we want to say, well, if you wanted to even understand more about your governor, what would you consult? And people tell us, we’re really cut out. We’re really censored. Newspaper clippings don’t come in. By and large now, many prisons have moved towards scanning mail. So, you can imagine you take a newspaper, you scan it down, you can’t even read it anymore.
So, there’s all these systemic barriers that keep people unable to really self-advocate, because information is really that power. So, that’s one component.
I think another component is just a little bit about how politics in this country works. The whole news media, we spend a ton of time on the presidential election. A lot of resources go into covering it. And so, I don’t know that we spend the same amount of time actually, as journalists, I’m saying as my industry, scrutinizing district attorneys, scrutinizing judges, sheriffs. I don’t think that they get the same amount of attention. And it’s harder for us as well. So, we actually can’t see…
The Marshall Project has done some work in Cleveland where we produced a judge’s guide to help Clevelanders make decisions about these folks. We can’t actually even see into their record fully because we don’t have access to the data. It’s really unclear.
So, people in our community are saying, our readers are saying, well, we want to know who’s tough on sentencing? And who sent more Black people? They want to know these. We can’t even truly answer them because of the way data is withheld from the public. It becomes systematically, again, a little bit harder to scrutinize these folks.
So, in the long run, they just don’t get the same amount of media attention. So, if you don’t get the media attention, and then media is censored in prison. So, you see how it works. There’s a lack of information.
But again, I think that it’s incredibly important for incarcerated people to understand that they have insights about the system that are powerful. That they are deeply informed about an aspect of pretty much every state budget. The most expensive item is the carceral system.
So, you’ve got folks who are experiencing it, who have an ability to help the public understand what is not working. And so, I think that when I talk to people, they say, oh, why does it matter? They can’t quite connect what they’ve gone through to how it could be useful in making change. And I say, well, you know something that many people don’t understand. You know something so intimately about what’s broken.
I think that’s really powerful. I think that that is enough to say if voting is the route that you want to go, if voting feels important, to take that knowledge and really think about how you’re going to apply it to the system itself.
So, whenever I’m reporting on people, I say, well, you know more than many of us, it’s my job here to try to even understand. And I feel like I understand a little, but you understand even more. And I think that alone is really powerful, and it’s something that no one can really take away. No one can contradict that you saw it with your own eyes.
Mansa Musa: Right. And Nicole, you rattled the bars today because, at the end of the day, we look at when those of us that’s on the plantation, we have the insight to how we got there. We have the insight to who controlling it. We have the insight to how to get off of it through a system.
I suffer from the apathy when it comes to the electoral process. But at the same token, I recognized after talking to brothers and sisters in Louisiana, looking at DC code, offenders got the right to vote.
And like you said, being educated on understanding that this system, electoral system, is not national, it’s local. And there are a lot of the policies and procedures that we’re trying to have impact or effect, we can have impact and affect them through who we put in the office. And on a local level, we can control that because we have numbers. And I think that’s the takeaway for me in this conversation.
But you got the last word, Nicole. What you want to tell our audience about this system and some of your upcoming work or what you’re doing now?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Yeah. I would say right to that point of we’re in a really historic moment for voting rights for people with felony convictions. And so, 26 states and the District of Columbia in the last two decades have reconsidered why we even take away people’s voting rights when they go to prison. That’s a question we have to ask ourselves.
And we can see, we can locate that history. For many states, we can see very clearly that felony disenfranchisement was a way to disempower Black communities. This is something that state lawmakers were standing up openly saying at the time, in this period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
And so, now we’re in a moment, fast-forward, where many states have said, well, we need to redo that. We need to reconsider that. So, it’s now more than ever, people have more access and ability to participate. It doesn’t mean that they always do. It doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect system.
The other thing I think people should know is that there’s a pretty aggressive backlash to this expansion of voting rights. So, in several states, Republicans are actively trying to undermine the expansion of voting rights. So, I think it’s a really important moment for people to decide to think about that apathy and really question it and say, is this in my best interest? What can I do? No matter what your politics are.
So, as a journalist, I don’t advocate for one party over the other. I don’t advocate for one reform over the other. I’m simply here to provide this information to say you have power, you know something really unique and special. Prison is extremely expensive. So, how you’re treated there really matters. Local actors, local agents, a lot of them you get to vote for. So, you get to decide who wins and who has your interest.
And just to question if anyone says there’s one candidate who’s going to be great for you, I would just question that a little bit to say we really want to make sure that we’re making decisions based off of the full facts. And so, we just got to ask deeper, bigger questions about who’s actually good and why.
Mansa Musa: And if our listeners and our viewers want to follow you or get in touch with you, how can they do that?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Absolutely. So, you can find all of my work at themarshallproject.org, and it’s Marshall with two L’s. Unfortunately, I’m not really on social media, the way that X has gone. But my email’s online at the Marshall Project.
I would say some of the next work that I’m working on that we’re trying to think about is, my work is actually very designed to understand some of the needs, issues, interests of incarcerated people and their families, and then we try to figure out how do we make work that reflects.
So if people want to email me, it’s just nlewis@themarshallproject.org. Just tell me what’s important to you, what matters, what you’re seeing. And that’s one way we try to make decisions about what kinds of stories we look into.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Nicole rattling the bars today. And she reminds us that, as 2.4 million people are in prison, on the plantation, those of us that have our voting rights restored, is apathy in our best interest when it comes to the electoral process? Is it sitting back, not doing nothing in our better interests? Is it sitting back, vilifying the candidates and saying, have nothing to do with me in our best interest? Or is it, as we heard, becoming more informed about this system and how we can utilize this system to effectively change?
Because at the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s sitting behind the doors locked down. At the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s being denied parole. We’re the ones being given harsh sentences. We’re the ones who our families don’t have access to because of a myriad of reasons. And we can change these things if we can change these things. Or are we willing to try to change these things? To utilize this mechanism as a technique as opposed to anything other than that.
Thank you, Nicole. I really appreciate you coming on. And we ask that y’all continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars because it’s only on The Real News and Rattling the Bars you are going to get someone like Nicole Lewis to come in and educate us on this system, and educate us on all the myths associated with the electoral system and how this is being shaped to get us to look a certain way at certain candidates, as opposed to looking into ourselves and how we can utilize our own strength and our own powers.
We ask you continue to do this, and because there’s only one reason we ask, we are actually The Real News.
Policing and prison abolition policy questions have been minimized in the lead-up to the 2024 November election, despite their significance in the last election cycle. Yet these ideas have finally pierced into mainstream debate, and committed prison abolitionists are tirelessly organizing to free incarcerated people, improve conditions within the prison system, and close or prevent the opening of new correctional facilities. Rattling the Bars looks back on the past year of discussions with abolitionists on the stakes and political lessons leading up to November’s presidential election.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A corrected version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa: On Tuesday, this country will be holding elections for Presidency as well as other national, state and local elections. Nationwide the cry is that the election for presidency is the most important elections this nation will be having. Rattling the Bars and The Real News have been focusing on the impact the elections will have on the prison industrial complex. More importantly how does the abolition movement look at the electoral system. What role does it play in the abolishment of the prison industrial complex. You can hear the views of abolitionists from previously recorded interviews.
Back in May we covered the Free Her March where formerly incarcerated women were calling for clemency for 100 women:
Mansa: Okay. We got the Bronx with us today. Why are you here today?
Star:
Because we’re here to petition the President, and everybody else on his team, to grant clemency to Michelle West, and all the other women who deserve it.
Speaker 8:
He told us when we was here four years ago that he was going to free a hundred women within the hundred days of him being in office. And he has not done any of what he said he was going to do. So we’re here today asking for him to free our women, and free them now.
Star:
We are tired of giving the Democrats what they want, and they don’t give us what we need.
Speaker 3:
So what do we want?
Star:
We want freedom for all women and girls. We want rehabilitation, and alternatives to incarceration.
Speaker 9:
We want Michelle West Free!
Miquelle West:
I’m Miquelle West, Michelle West’s daughter. My mom was incarcerated when I was ten years old for a drug conspiracy case. And she’s serving two life sentences and 15 years.
Speaker 9:
I represent the women that want to be free. Let our women be free. Let our women out of [inaudible 00:04:06].
Music:
Music
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:36].
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:39]
Speaker 11:
Stop criminalizing us for poverty, stop criminalizing us for how we cope from this trauma that has been put on us historically, and continues into this present day. Free my sisters.
Speaker 12:
The women get treated badly. The women get raped in jail. All kinds of things. I served federal time, and I know what it’s like to be in there. And I say free women today.
Andrea James:
We told them to free those women, and they didn’t do it. They’re sending them to other prisons that, guess what? Also are raping our sisters inside of the federal system. So we’ve got a lot of work to do, people.
Laura Whitehorn:
The response is to move all the women at once, all of a sudden to just throw them out into places all over the country with no preparation, no bathroom facilities. They’re being, as one of them said, the men who raped them, should, and are, going to prison. And the women are being punished now because they’re saying that the BOP, which can’t control their own staff, has to close the prison because they can’t manage it. And they take the women. I’ve been walking with different friends of mine who were in Dublin with me.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 14:
It was not a low-security place at that point. And we’re all having flashbacks of what it was to be transferred in that way, where you’re treated like a sack of laundry, except that you’re chained up. You’re chained at the waist. You can’t use the bathroom for hours, you get no food. They sat on a bus for five hours in the parking lot of the prison. And then at the end of five hours, they were taken back into the prison. They said, “Oh, we don’t know where to take you.” So the way that they’re being treated and then their families… Some people have children and their families are in the Bay Area. So the children were able to visit their moms in the prison, and now the moms have been sent like across country.
Mansa:
All this is the remedy for their abusive behavior. The remedy for their abusive behavior become more abusive.
Mansa Musa: Hear Andrea James, founder and executive director of the National Council for incarcerated Women and Girls and Families for Justice as Healing.
Andrea James:
We were incarcerated in the federal system. We were in prison with sisters who are never coming home unless their sentences are commuted. So it’s kind of different when you determine what space you’re going to work out of when you haven’t had the full experience of what we’re talking about here. But if you were like us, if you were women that were incarcerated in the federal system, who were mothers, who were wives, who were aunties, and grandmothers and sisters, and moms in particular, we have been separated from our children, but some of us had the opportunity to go to prison and come home. So we’re fighting for sisters that unless we get clemency for them, they’ll never come home. And we’ve got to really understand that. We’re talking about is the liberation of our people, and we want to bring attention to the intentionality of incarceration of our people and the policies that led up to that. Now, we started our work after, we started organizing in the federal prison for women in Danbury, Connecticut in 2010, and brought the work-out with us starting in 2011. And then other sisters inside Justine Moore, Virginia Douglas, Big Shay, they started to come home. So it wasn’t rocket science for us, but in the federal prison, you would see this from all over the country, sometimes from different Black communities around the world.
And so it wasn’t rocket science for us to stop this work. But we started in the prison realizing not really totally clear about what clemency was as a tool. But after coming home in 2011, that became crystal clear to us. We met Amy Povah at CAN-DO Clemency. She taught us a lot about clemency as a tool. And then of course, President Obama, who we got in front of and who centered women and brought us to the White House. But also we should not be going backwards from what President Obama did with clemency.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s pick up on right there because, all right, now for the benefit of our audience, clemency is a federal mandate and it’s top heavy in its bureaucracy. Honest you know-
Andrea James:
It’s a tool, it’s a privilege bestowed upon. It’s not a mandate, it’s a tool. It’s bestowed upon the President of the United States to grant relief to people from their sentences. And that takes many forms. It could be freedom, immediate freedom, commuting your sentence, meaning it only stops the sentence that you are serving from within a carceral place, a prison.
We decided at some point you can only go so far with what’s happening in Congress right now, who’s controlling Congress, what they’re paying attention to. We fought so hard against the passage of the First Step Act, the way it was presented, because it’s been a big smoke screen. And we knew when Congress passed First Step that it really wasn’t what we needed. It didn’t address the people who needed to get out. It called out the very people that needed the most relief and so how could we ever support a bill like that. And we never crossed over in support of it, even though we fought valiantly to try and add retroactivity and other things to the first step. And then it was put into the hands of the most vile regime of a think tank called the Heritage Foundation also responsible now for project 2025 to implement the First Step Act. And it’s just, we are one of the few, I don’t know if any other organizations have done it, but our legal division led by our senior council, Catherine Sevcenko, has followed the implementation of the First Step Act. And it’s been just a sham. It’s been a [inaudible 00:13:59], but the PR on it would make anybody think that everybody who’s come like 30,000 people got released because of First Step Act. That’s not true. But I digress.
So when we talk about the FIX [Clemency] Act, at some point, yes, we have to weigh in. We need legislators who are directly affected like Congresswoman Ayanna, Pressley, to carry these bills forward for us and to at least put them into existence knowing that we got a big struggle to get them to go anywhere because the members of Congress were satisfied with the First Step Act. As abysmal as it is, they weren’t going to center criminal justice reform in any significant following that for years, we knew that. That’s the path of how things go. We haven’t heard a peep about criminal justice reform other than Trump wanting to bring the death penalty back for drug dealers. We haven’t even heard. It’s not even on the current candidates platforms.
And so we had to shift our energy to, and it’s not really a shift, it’s just, what are we picking up now to being present and to make sure that the concept of liberation of our people isn’t just left to hope somebody’s going to keep it at the forefront? That’s our job. Nobody’s coming to save us. If nobody gives a shit about our issue. If you’re going to do this work, you have to be consistent in finding ways of staying in the public eye, of showing up, of taking up space, of getting in the street. And so that’s what we did with the 10th anniversary.
We did this, did this 10 years ago in 2014, and that’s how we got the attention, because of the work of civil rights lawyer, Nkechi Taifa who brought the National Council and the sisterhood to the attention of President Obama and Valerie Jarrett to say, “Yo Prez, we see you. We see you equating. We see you connecting clemency to racial justice. That clemency is racial justice. We see you going into the federal prisons.” How could it be that he was the first President of the United States to go to visit a federal prison? How could that be?
Mansa Musa: In August, The Real News’s Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and I talked to David Schultz, a criminal reform and social justice advocate, about How poor and working-class voters navigate an electoral system that doesn’t serve them.
Max: So I wanted to ask just as two guys on the front lines of that struggle, what do you think the pundit class covering the elections in mainstream media should learn about the conversations that y’all are having and that folks in these communities are having about the election right now?
David Schultz:
Okay, yeah. So I’ll start with that one. So I would say it’s important for individuals. I think being in Washington DC obviously puts us in a unique position because we’re obviously a very political city. I guess it’s different when I go to different areas, different cities. I was just traveling. Recently, I was in Chicago, and of course it was very political there because we’re getting ready to have the Democratic and national convention. But usually it’s not.
So that puts us in a unique perspective to see how politics really affect our everyday lives. I think you’re a hundred percent correct. I think that individuals that are from smaller, more rural areas really want to see and are more concerned with that direct impact. And so elections for them kind of seem like this far away thing. It’s like they kind of drop something in a box and if they’re the person they like personality wise really, or who agrees with them on more things than the other, then that’s how they go for.
But they don’t really do their research on the candidates as well as they should to see really are they living up to what they’re saying? Are they voting this way even though they’re saying they might be voting this way? And so I think that it’s important for the pundits, so to speak, to really listen to grassroots individuals because we are the ones that matter. We are the people that they say in the constitution. We are the ones that are the make everything one. We’re the working class. So at the end of the day, our vote matters and they want our vote. So I think it’s imperative that they listen to what our needs and specific asks are.
Mansa Musa:
I think on the grassroots, when you’re dealing with a grassroots level, it’s imperative that we educate the people that’s affected because like you say, people want jobs. People want quality education. People want safe living environment. People want food quality, cheap food. As far as food prices being so high. People want rent control. They don’t want to be living in squalor and then paying astronomical fees to live there.
So it’s important that we educate… When you’re dealing with the grassroots, it’s important that you educate the population to understand that you have to find a candidate that’s going to represent your interest. When the Black Panther Party bring Bobby Seale for mayor. They wasn’t running Bobby Seale for mayor, to try to get Bobby Seale to be the mayor, they was educating people about how, like Dave said earlier, where the monies come from, how the monies are allocated, and how you can have a voice in monies being allocated to your neighborhood, to clean up your neighborhood, to have the trash collected.
How monies could be allocated towards medical or universal healthcare for everyone. So when I look at it from the grassroots level, I’m always in my mind… My mind is always in this area, educating the people about the electoral process, educating the people about, “Okay, if you get involved with this process, then make sure you had a candidate that’s going to represent your interest because the candidate is going to come and say what they think you want to hear.”
They’re going to put on all kinds of activities to motivate your interest. But when it does settle and they leave, trash hasn’t been collected. It’s high unemployment rate in your neighborhood, housing, you live in a squalor. You’re not safe and your children being targeted because you’re not safe. So when I look at it from the perspective, I look at it from a perspective that it is incoming from me and people that’s in that space to educate the people on the budget, educate the people on electoral process, educate the people on how to go about vetting account. Like you say, candidates have listening sessions.
So when a candidate have a listening session, then it’s coming from people like myself and Dave to get people to come down there and educate in electorate like ask questions about, “Okay.” Because if you don’t do what we say you supposed to do, same way we elected you in, we can get the recall and get you out.
David Schultz:
Can I just add one quick thing? Can I just say from a grassroots level to answer your other question is what the individuals are saying is the basic needs is what they’re struggling with when it comes to housing and especially affordable housing, it doesn’t matter if you’re a returning citizen, if you’re just a working class individual, that basic need is a struggle that basically grassroots individuals are really looking to have fixed this election cycle.
And just the basic necessity of being able to keep food on their table and be able to feed their kids. So I know it sounds basic, but that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot of in the community and what they are really focusing on this election cycle.
Mansa Musa: And we recently sat down with Jeronimo Aguilar and John Cannon to talk about Prop. 6, initiative to have removed from California State Constitution it’s version of the 13-amendment legalizing slavery.
Mansa: I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa: how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
Mansa Musa: We have amplified the voices of the abolition movement. We don’t give voice to the voiceless, because everyone has a voice. We just turn up the volume. Thank you for watching Rattling the Bars on The Real News Network.
Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, including its prisons. Yet rather than evacuate incarcerated people, the state left prisoners locked up in their cells without running water or light to survive the storm on their own. Schuyler Mitchell, who recently covered this story for The Intercept, speaks to Rattling the Bars about this manmade disaster and its consequences.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Imagine you are told that a major storm is coming your way, a hurricane of Katrina proportion is coming your way, and you’re told to evacuate. Would you evacuate or would you remain where you at? But more importantly, imagine that you cannot evacuate because you are incarcerated, because you are a prisoner in the prison industrial complex, in a carceral system that has no evacuation plans for the people that are incarcerated, or are imprisoned, or on the plantation. Joining me today is Schuyler Mitchell, who wrote an article called Hurricane-Struck North Carolina Prisoners Were Locked in Cells With Their Own Feces For Nearly a Week. Welcome, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa:
All right, and tell our audience a little bit about yourself, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so I’m an independent investigative journalist. I am a columnist at Truthout, and then I also report for places including The Intercept, which is where I wrote this investigation. I report on a lot of different things, but lots of different instances of power, corruption, cases where the people in power, or powerful corporations, or whatever it is, aren’t treating people with dignity or kind of doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So I do some reporting and research on the prison industrial complex. So yeah, I started working on this story after Hurricane Helene.
Mansa Musa:
Right, and I’m going to open up by saying, well, it’s a quote that you had in your article, say, “We thought we were going to die there. We didn’t think anybody was going to come back for us.” Did anybody come back for them, or if they did come back, how did they come back?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so for context, so Hurricane Helene hit in the middle of the night, late Thursday night, early morning hours, Friday, September 27th. And at this one institution called Mountain View in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, from late that night until Wednesday, October 2nd, nearly a week, they didn’t think anybody was going to come back for them. They had no running water, no potable water. There was a shipment of potable drinking water that came several days in. But before that, they were drinking from the sinks is what family members told me, not knowing that what they were essentially drinking was sewer water, because it was non-potable water after the hurricane hit.
They didn’t have lights in their cells, there were some emergency lights that a generator supplied in common areas. And the generator supplied, I heard, power to the prison guards’ laptops or computers, but they didn’t have power in the cell. So yeah, so for five days, thinking about being in darkness, some people reported having water in their cells from flooding if you were on the bottom floor of the facility. Very few food rations. You know, crackers for breakfast or a piece of bread with peanut butter for dinner, and the response was slow.
So there were several facilities throughout Western North Carolina that were eventually evacuated. It was very disorganized is what family members told me, right, where in the case of Mountain View, it’s less than half a mile away from another facility called Avery-Mitchell. And Avery-Mitchell also, their power went out, their water lines were busted, but they got evacuated 24 hours before Mountain View did.
And when you’re in those conditions, 24 hours, and you don’t know if anybody’s going to come save you, that’s a long time, when they’re right next to each other. So the family members were saying they didn’t understand why one facility got evacuated first, and even that one, they had a multi-day delay. And there was a period of many days where family members were trying to get information about what was happening at these facilities, but prisons are by design a black box. It’s really hard [inaudible 00:04:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… information about what’s going on.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this, then. Okay, how did you become involved? Somebody reached out to you and asked that you could possibly intervene or make some noise about their conditions? That’s how you initially got involved, or was you just doing your due diligence?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so it’s actually the second. I knew that Western… I’m originally from North Carolina, I’m not from the mountains, but I know, I grew up going there a lot, I spent a lot of time there, I knew that there were lots of facilities that were in the path of the hurricane. And so I just started doing some research to see if I had seen any other reporting about what happened at those prisons. And there was actually a press release on the morning of October 2nd from the North Carolina Department of Corrections that said that they’d evacuated a certain number of facilities. [inaudible 00:05:33]-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… was five. And so then, what I did was I actually took the names of the different facilities from that press release, and I put them on Facebook, because after the hurricane, Facebook was still a big place for where people were exchanging information. There were all these different Facebook groups, like Hurricane Helene Safety Check-In, where people were posting, trying to find their loved ones. It was a horrible situation across the western part of the state. But what I saw when I put in the name Mountain View or Avery-Mitchell were posts for days of people posting in these groups, commenting on the Department of Corrections Facebook page, saying, “What’s going on? Do you have any information for me?”
And then, finally, after several days, on October 2nd, there were a couple posts from people who said, “I finally heard from my loved one, he gave me a call. He’s been evacuated, but for days, they were in horrible conditions.” And people were posting that, and so I just reached out to them and I spoke to… There were at least five people I spoke to that had direct knowledge of what happened at Mountain View, but then I also spoke to like five or four more family members as well from other facilities.
And everybody had the same story about lack of communication and just utter panic for nearly a week, just not knowing what was going on. And then, specifically in the case of Mountain View, everybody told me the exact same things about their loved ones calling them, finally, after nearly a week and saying, “I’m okay. I’m now on the eastern part of the state, but the things that I saw in Mountain [inaudible 00:07:11] for nearly a week were just horrible.” And having to defecate in plastic bags because the toilets are full.
You know, I went to the Department of for comment. Obviously as a journalist, it’s something that you have to go to them for comment. And what the spokesperson said to me, they acknowledged that this had happened, and they were like, “That was a solution that they devised on their own,” and were kind of dismissive, which is interesting, because the question is, “Well, why did they have to devise that solution?” So yeah, I actually found the story just from looking on Facebook and reaching out to people who had been impacted.
Mansa Musa:
And in terms of the information, and you definitely was able to capture what was going on in real time. Talk about the… Because you just mentioned about the Department of Corrections or the Division of Corrections response, and they sanitized it in certain quotes. You know, “No, no, we had water,” plausible denial. But talk about, in your investigation, was you ever able to discern from them, do they have evacuation plans for these type of events?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I mean, they said they did. Again, it’s like a black box, so it’s really hard to know. I think what we do know from what happened is that there was not a proactive response. If they’d had a proactive plan in place, there wouldn’t have been a five-day period where people weren’t knowing when their next meal was coming, or not knowing if they would have enough water. One of the things that I heard was people making decisions about, “Should I use this water to bathe myself or drink it?” You know, because there were limited rations.
So I don’t know what the plan was. Eventually, they did follow through on a plan, because they did evacuate certain facilities. But who’s to say what if things went according to their plan that they already had in place, that either way, the outcome was not what it should have been. And I did see that there is actually a petition circulating, asking the federal system… And so I should clarify, these were state prisons, but the federal DOJ, they also have a Bureau of Prisons. And yeah, there was a petition circulating, asking the government to have a clear evacuation plan in place. And I think we saw this happen then again in Florida, right, with Hurricane [inaudible 00:09:53]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, talk about that.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… after. Yeah, so less than, what, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton was barreling towards Florida, and there were state correctional facilities that were in the mandatory evacuation zones that were not evacuated. Ultimately, I didn’t see any reporting after that said… There was a lot of coverage of Florida before that happened I think because of the situation had just happened in North Carolina. I think people were more attuned to the fact that this was something that they needed to keep an eye on, the fact that incarcerated people just are often overlooked and [inaudible 00:10:30]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
So there was definitely a lot more pressure on the State Department of Corrections in advance of Hurricane Milton to evacuate facilities. I don’t believe they did, but it’s just another example of different state systems also have different policies and respond in different ways. And one of the things that the family members I spoke with fed again and again was just people, they feel overlooked, they feel like nobody cares. And obviously, lots of people are really hurting across Western North Carolina from [inaudible 00:11:07] hurricane, but people often just don’t think about people who didn’t have any choice to evacuate or any choice of what they were going to do when the storm hit.
And we know there were lots of people that were missing after the hurricane, but these are all people that are in the state’s care, right? It’s the state’s responsibility to ensure their well-being. There should have never been a period where people didn’t know where their loved ones were. They knew, they were in the state system. Yeah, and it’s just going to be an issue that’s going to continue.
The Intercept actually did a project several years ago called Climate and Punishment, where they mapped DHS data about prisons across the country, with different information about wildfire, heat, and flood [inaudible 00:11:54]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
And they did this in-depth investigation about the impact of the climate crisis on prisons. But whether it’s flooding, or severe heat, or wildfires, this is just an issue that’s not going away. And I think it’s right to call for more transparency about what the plan is in these.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to unpack some of you say for the benefit of our audience. Like you say, a mandatory evacuation site, a lot of the plantations in the prison industrial complex is in areas that will be evacuated, because of any type of climate situation, or be it, like you say, fires, or hurricanes, or rain, or inclement weather, like frigid weather. A lot of these prisons or a lot of these plantations are in these areas that they designate. They designate this as an evacuation zone, “This is a mandatory evacuation.”
So the reality is that they could look at it and say, “Okay, this is a mandatory evacuation zone. Oh, we got four facilities that house anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people collectively, or more.” And in terms of, all right, you recognize that the population that need to be evacuated, but when you start making an assessment of evacuation, they don’t even include them in the conversation. They’re not even included in the conversation in the sense of, “Okay, they’re in the path of Hurricane Helene. We know it’s coming, we telling people to get out of town. What is our plan for this population right here?”
They don’t have no plan, because that’s by the design. It’s by design. You know, according to the 13th Amendment, we are slaves under the system of the 13th Amendment. So therefore, the value that’s associated with our lives is not. Was you able to glean this from your research, or from this particular article, or your study in general?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, so the interesting thing in Western North Carolina was there weren’t the same mandatory evacuation orders, just because I think that region is not used to seeing these types of hurricanes. So I think it just really walloped the area. And it did take people by surprise, even though there were warnings and forecastings. But unlike in the case of Florida, where there were absolutely mandatory evacuation zones, where they’ve made the explicit choice not to evacuate those prisons…
I think, yeah, I mean, but in reporting on the prison system, you see this time and time again, where it’s incredibly hard, for example, for incarcerated people to win cases that they bring against prisons or prison guards for mistreatment, or for instances where their human rights have been violated. The bar for winning those lawsuits and getting any sort of justice is intentionally set really high. One of the women that I spoke with for my article, her husband was one of the people at Mountain View. They have three kids, a teenager and two young kids. And she said to me that she herself has also been in prison before. And she said, “When he was telling me about some of his experiences in the past, I didn’t really believe it could be that bad. But then, I actually was on the inside and I saw it myself.”
And that’s something that didn’t even make its way into the piece, but she was saying… But she was the one who said, actually at the end of the story, “When you’re in there, you’re treated less than a human. You’re treated like a rabid dog,” and that was an exact quote. And so yeah, once you start talking to people, lots of people have similar stories, and I think the climate crisis really exacerbates these existing inequalities, and really reveals how neglected people can be. And when I went for comment to the Department of Corrections, they said, “Well, lots of people in Western North Carolina have it way worse.” That was almost exactly what the response was. And even just in the official statement, there wasn’t a full, of course, acknowledgement of what people had said that they had gone through.
One of the other things that was interesting to me about Mountain View was actually a day before the hurricane hit, somebody committed suicide at that facility. And what one of the women said to me, she was asking questions about, “What was it like there, that he decided that he needed… That was his only way out?” And Mountain View, it’s single cells, so people are locked in their cells for most of the hours of the day, and they’re allowed to do their job for the lunch hour. But it was pretty high, it was a medium-security facility, but there wasn’t a lot of freedom of movement at that facility.
And it’s not the exact same thing as solitary, but everybody I spoke to… I spoke to somebody also who was incarcerated and who lived through everything that happened at Mountain View. His partner was able to connect me with him through the Department of Corrections phone system. And I spoke to him, and they all say that it’s a pretty… Even when there’s not a hurricane, it’s not a great place to be. I guess nobody expects prisons to be great or anything like [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Mansa Musa:
Right. No, I understand. [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Schuyler Mitchell:
… learn about it. It’s quite bad, the conditions that people have to-
Mansa Musa:
And the crazy part about that is, like you say, it’s medium security, and the security paradigm, you have max, medium, minimum, and pre-release. So in the case of Mountain View, most of these individuals are transitioning out. So it’s not like they’re having served significant time. But more importantly, the reality is that the system in North Carolina or throughout this country is really designed to dehumanize us, to ignore our humanity.
And when, like you say, global warming, climate crisis that’s developing in the world, people that’s incarcerated or on the plantation, we got it bad, because we’re not considered human to begin with. We’re considered slaves. And in terms of the monies that’s going to be invested in trying to get us out of a situation that’s a natural disaster, is not priority for the state. But answer this question, have you ever been able to glean, like is it a FEMA response that could be used for this type of situation, in hindsight?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I’m not sure about how the FEMA response would overlap with the State Department of Corrections, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that again, what we do now is that this is a population of people that are always an afterthought, and yeah, whatever resources that can be made available to prevent this from happening again, clearly, there’s a need for that. But yeah, I don’t know about FEMA specifically in this case.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, and in terms, as we get ready to close out, because you talk to the family members, and tell our audience how your sense coming from them, their anxiety and their stress, as it relates to this type of situation? Because really, we need people to understand that, okay, “You saying that I did something to go to prison, got that. You’re saying that I’m serving a sentence, got that. You’re saying that I’m going to be confined to a prison, got that. But you’re also saying, according to the Constitution of the United States, I can’t be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. I got to be treated like a human being at some junction. But at the same token, my family is not locked up, my family is not sentenced to a certain time, and my family is my family, and taxpayers, and have a right to know what’s going on with me.” Talk about the family members or your conversation. What did you take away from them?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, my conversations with family members were incredibly moving. And I spoke to people who… This was an all-men’s prison, so it was people’s sons, partners, husbands, yeah, siblings, whatever that were in there. And one of the things that someone said to me, she was like, “Nobody cares or pays attention to this until someone like you, a journalist starts looking into it.” That was one sentiment that I heard. There was another woman where her 26-year-old son was one of the people in the prison, and she was saying, “He might be 26, but he’s still my son. And I called around and I got a voicemail for somebody who works in the prison system, and the voicemail said, ‘Please only leave messages in the case of emergency. Don’t leave a message if you’re asking about the whereabouts of a certain inmate’,” was the voicemail. And she said to me, she was like, “How dare he say that? Because it is an emergency if I don’t know where my son is.”
And another person said, “My Sammy, my loved one, he did something bad. He deserves to serve his time, but he’s still a person [inaudible 00:22:18]-“
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
“… and he’s still very much loved.” And that was, of course, the message over, and over, and over again was like, these are people, people love them. They knew they were going to prison. They didn’t sign up for being cruel and unusual punishment, days of not being evacuated. And yeah, I think if everybody could have the conversations that I had… I mean, I was very grateful to these people for opening up to me and trusting me with their stories. I think there’s so much more coverage that needs to be done on this issue.
I mean, there’s just no end to the amount of abuses that take place across the federal and state prison system. I mean, this wasn’t even a private prison, so that’s a whole other layer. But yeah, everybody just really was saying that they felt like no one cared and they felt unheard. And I think one of the things that is good about doing this work is you do see how many people do care and want to talk about this issue. And I think as many people that can to spread important information about the prison system, like what you’re doing on the show, and report on the issue, it’s so important, and people really, really value that.
Mansa Musa:
And as we close out, I want to make sure that I always understand what we’re talking about, because if this same situation took place in a foreign country, that United States citizens was being held in captivity, that a national disaster came through there, and it came back to this country that they were standing in their feces, they was drinking sewer water, they didn’t know whether they were going to live or die, they was given food that was not nutritional, we would be up in arms and an uproar, protesting, everybody, the four winds, talking about taking any funding we giving this country, stopping everything.
We are coming short in sending a [inaudible 00:24:21] courier over there to take our people out there or take their citizen out. We’re talking about right here in the United States of America, and where we don’t have the common decency as a state to recognize that we are dealing with human beings, no matter what they did, that this is human beings that we’re dealing with. As we close out, what do you want our audience to take away from this article, Ms. Mitchell?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, I think what you just said is a really great point. I think yeah, what I want people to take away from this article is this is one specific prison, one specific case after one specific hurricane. I mean, think about it on a national scale, think about how many people we have in this country that are incarcerated. We have a massive prison industrial complex. Yeah, and I think just as we are all increasingly impacted by natural disasters and are able to make choices about what we do in those situations, this is a massive population of people that has, by definition, had choice taken away from them. And they don’t [inaudible 00:25:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Exactly.
Schuyler Mitchell:
They don’t have a say, and they don’t have a voice, and it’s really hard to get information in and out. So yeah, it’s just many layers of problems that are piled on top of each other. And yeah, that’s I think my biggest takeaway. And what you said is so important. If this happened anywhere else, people would be able to, I think, kind of see it for what it was. But it’s hard to see it when it’s in your own country, for a lot of the time.
Mansa Musa:
And if our audience, and the viewers, and listeners want to follow your work, how can they stay in touch with you or track your work?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I am on Twitter. It’s my first name, Schuyler, with an underscore in between the Y and the L. And I think my email should be on my website, but if people actually have any insights, have anybody that they know that’s in a prison or anything that they want me to look into or cover, I’m super passionate about this issue, and I love to do investigations. So if you need somebody to dig deep, I’m your girl. So yeah, feel free to reach out to me with any tips as well.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Schuyler, you rallied the bars today. You brought to the attention to raise the national consciousness about how do we treat people as human beings. How do we treat people? Should we treat them as human beings or should we treat them as numbers? It stands to reason that the state of North Carolina is looking at people as numbers, and in both sense, a number in terms of how much money they can make off of them, and a number in the sense of when they don’t have to do nothing for them, they just write them off.
We want our audience to understand, and we want our listeners to be mindful of this here, we’re talking about human beings. This is a humane issue. This is not an issue that’s dealing with whether a person did something or didn’t do something. They are wards of the state, and when you say you’re a ward of the state, the state is obligated to provide for your safety, and your safety is important, and your safety should be not compromised by virtue of you not having an evacuation plan in effect, for you not having the necessary infrastructure to ensure that people that are under your custody that’s coming home, it wasn’t like they not coming, they coming home at one time or another, and that you treat them less than human. Schuyler, we appreciate you. We appreciate your advocacy, and we look forward to staying in touch with you. Thank you very much.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Oct. 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
This month, when Emmanuel Macron’s newly chosen prime minister, Michel Barnier, laid out his first government agenda to the National Assembly, much attention was naturally focused on the budget and immigration. But a seemingly throwaway line pointed to another aspect of security and policing. “We will generalize the methods experimented with during the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Barnier promised.
I have previously written for Jacobin about the controversial algorithmic video surveillance that France rolled out in advance of the Olympics — a test that was supposed to last through March 2025 and concern only large-scale public events like sporting matches and concerts. Experts in surveillance and human rights told me about the debilitating effects that such mass surveillance can have on dissent and peaceful protest — creating a dissuasive “chilling effect.”
“You get people used to it in that happy face, ‘celebration capitalism’ environment of the Olympics, and then that new technology that was injected during the Games in that state of exception becomes the norm for policing moving forward,” Jules Boykoff, a political scientist who has published multiple books about the Olympics, warned at the time.
As if on cue, as soon as the Olympics ended, a steady drumbeat of Macronist politicians began manufacturing consent around the need to keep this technology, which has not yet been independently studied or analyzed.
In September, less than two weeks after the Paralympic closing ceremony, Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez declared himself “in favor” of extending the technology. The news channel France Info, citing a government source, reported that Barnier’s interior minister also envisioned making the technology permanent. (Currently, a bill floated by a member of his right-wing Républicains party proposes a three-year extension.) Barnier’s speech, while not specifically mentioning the algorithmic video surveillance tool, pushed in this same direction.
“The government is going to do everything in its power to entrench [algorithmic video surveillance technology],” Élisa Martin, a member of the left-wing France Insoumise, told me over the phone. “We’re absolutely certain of this.”
“A Security Showcase for the World”
On July 26, as hundreds of boats carrying Olympians made their way down the river Seine during a rain-soaked opening ceremony watched by twenty-five million viewers worldwide, another show was taking place underground. On the French capital’s metro platforms, nearly five hundred state-of-the-art surveillance cameras were capturing and analyzing human behaviors in real time, assisted by an artificial intelligence tool called CityVision. The AI-based technology, produced by a French start-up, was rolled out across the metro system.
Above ground, 45,000 national police and an additional 20,000 military operatives patrolled the city. An estimated fifty-three drones were shot down by military anti-drone units in the first several days of the Games.
“The Olympics, and especially the opening ceremony on the Seine, were sold as “a security showcase for the world and a moment of experimentation,” Noémie Levain, a legal expert at La Quadrature du Net, a digital rights NGO, told me.
After the National Assembly passed an omnibus Olympics bill on May 19, 2023, which included, among other things, the legalization of AI-assisted mass surveillance tools, French tech start-ups presented offers for Olympics contracts — with several then selected in January 2024. One has been likened to a French version of Palantir — the Peter Thiel–owned surveillance company best known for its discriminatory policing tool used in cities like Los Angeles, which is set to host the next summer Olympics in 2028.
“The bread and butter of these companies is the analysis of human bodies,” Levain told me. “The idea is to analyze them, classify them, and come up with data points.”
The tool, as currently intended, is supposed to catch “predetermined events,” such as a terrorist attack or an “unusual crowd movement.” But researchers worry that the increased use of algorithms in predictive policing, which use racially biased statistics as their initial input, creates a pipeline for additional surveillance of vulnerable communities. “Increasing evidence suggests that human prejudices have been baked into these tools because the machine-learning models are trained on biased police data,” Will Douglas Heaven wrote in MIT Technology Review.
In the French case, little is known about how the technologies actually operate and at what point they’re deployed by police, Yoann Nabat, a jurist and lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, said. “It’s a black box,” he told me.
Algorithmic video surveillance “is only supposed to be a decision aid,” Nabat added. “It is supposed to alert the person behind the screens to say, ‘Be careful, you have to look in this place, at this time.’ Except that there’s a thin line between automation and human interaction. We know that with the lack of existing resources that decision support often turns into the decision itself.”
From Experiment to Fait Accompli
Much has been written about the shock doctrine — the period often following a natural disaster when vulture-like private companies swoop in to take over public services. According to Boykoff, a similar process takes place before, during, and after mega-events like the Olympics.
Katia Roux, the head of advocacy at Amnesty International France, described a similar phenomenon in France. “We haven’t had the balance sheet yet,” she told me of the Olympics surveillance tools. Yet, “there’s a clear political desire to legalize this technology and the Olympics were just a way to get a foot in the door.”
Elia Verdon, a member of France’s Observatory on Surveillance and Democracy, agreed. “I think we have to be careful with periods of experimentation,” she warned. “We end up accepting a technology at a given time in response to a possible threat, and then the next threat, they go even further.”
Since pronouncing themselves in favor of the new technology, Barnier and Nuñez have since walked back their statements about the extension of the measures, saying that they are still waiting for the results of a government report that must be presented before parliament by the end of the year. But it seems that the French public may have already been swayed by government rhetoric — with a recent poll showing that 65 percent of French people supported augmented video surveillance in public space.
“If it’s deemed successful, they’ll extend it,” Levain, from La Quadrature du Net, said. “If it’s not, they’ll say we need more experiments with it. There are so many actors involved, so much money, so much lobbying, they’re not just going to say, ‘Alright, let’s just stop.’”
With an increasingly hard-line government using immigration as a wedge to pass restrictive policies, it’s hard to imagine that the army of private companies in what Macron calls his “start-up nation” won’t step up with more offers.
This November, California voters will have the chance to pass Proposition 6. This ballot referendum would nullify the state constitution’s exception for involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, and institute additional protections for incarcerated people. Jeronimo Aguilar of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and John Cannon of All of Us or None join Rattling the Bars for a breakdown of Prop 6.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
It might sound odd, it might sound strange, it might even be mind-boggling to believe that in this country, these United States of America, slavery is still legal in some form, shape, or fashion. The 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States codified slavery under the circumstances that anyone duly convicted of a crime, they can be a slave. They can be held accountable as a slave, their labor can be processed like slave labor, and they have no rights to say nothing about that.
Joining me today are two extraordinary men in this fight to abolish slavery. And I was amazed when Jeronimo reached out to me. We had talked before, and I was amazed when he reached out to me, and they came full circle on their strategy on how to eradicate slavery as we know it. And so, I’m going to let them explain it.
Introduce yourself, Jeronimo and John.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right on, man. Jeronimo Aguilar here. I go by Jeronimo, I go by Geronimo. Either one is fine with me. I’m a Chicano activist, also organizer with all of us in West Sacramento, and also a policy analyst with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and just honored to be a servant to the movement, man. I’ll pass it over to John.
John Cannon:
My name is John Cannon. I also go by John John. I’m also an organizer with All of Us or None. I’m out here with the Oakland chapter. And did 10 years incarcerated, so being able to get out and just fight for the same things I saw behind those walls just gives me a real purpose.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And all of us probably been in this space where you bring an expert witness in to court to testify. Before the expert witness testify, they run a list of all the things they have accomplished in terms of qualifying them to be an expert. So, it’s sufficed to say, we are an expert in this matter when it comes to being slaves, or being on the plantation, under the prison-industrial complex.
But Jeronimo, let’s start with you. All right. I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And so, again, following that, I believe it was, man, 1858, ’59, you saw a Fugitive Slave Act that was [crosstalk]. And a lot of you are familiar with the federal Fugitive Slave Act, but California had its own Fugitive Slave Act that they passed. Don’t quote me on those years, but it was definitely in this era of oppression.
And in that Fugitive Slave Act, what they did is that they gave slave owners from the South a year to recapture their slaves that ran off to California looking for freedom.
Well, that one year that they gave them actually turned into a sunset clause that ended up lasting five-plus years. And basically, anybody that was African-American, that was Black, that was here in California, could be kidnapped and trafficked back to the South without any evidence.
All the slave master had to say was, oh, yeah, he used to be my slave. He ran off. He didn’t need no proof. He didn’t need to know nothing. Just by his word. And they were capturing folks that never had even been enslaved.
Mansa Musa:
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this. And both of y’all been wearing this. You can go first, Jeronimo. Okay, I understand what you’re saying, and I come out of that space. I did 48 years in that space.
So now, how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
So, all of those things are going to be… We’re going to have to be following and monitoring things, implement it. We know that, like you said, man, they’re not going to just give this stuff up. All of the money that’s being made. California, fifth largest economy, CDC’s got a $14 billion budget.
And so, that money… I mean, what we’ve seen here in California, Mansa, is we’ve literally reduced the prison system. We’re under 100,000 now. We’re at about 90,000 incarcerated, and their budget has gone up. So, make that make sense. They’re figuring out ways to make money.
Mansa Musa:
And tell our audience what CDCR is.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, that’s California Department of Corrections. The R is for Rehabilitation. And like John says, CDCR, we really call it CDC. But we’re trying to get that R to actually mean something by having rehabilitation, access to rehabilitation, education, and other things be prioritized as much as labor, giving folks the opportunity to work.
Because we know folks are still going to want to work inside. We’re not trying to take away that opportunity for folks. But you shouldn’t be forced into a job, and then you want to take a class, but you’re not able to because of that. They’re prioritizing that exploitation over anything else.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, John. And talk about the feedback that y’all got from the inside, in terms of educating the population about what is expected. Because ultimately, it’s going to be on the inside that’s going to be monitoring the effect of the legislation. It’s going to be on the inside where we know from our own personal experience that we create programs to help us rehabilitate ourselves and to socialize. So, this would be a golden opportunity for that kind of initiative on the part of those of us that are still behind the walls and still on the plantation.
Talk about that, John. What kind of feedback are y’all getting from those of us that’s still on the plantation?
John Cannon:
So, we have members on the inside. And some of the feedback we’re getting is, we got a lot of letters that were written to us about people’s personal experiences, and it’s a lot similar to mine. I understood a lot of what people were saying and how some people, they want to prioritize being able to continue their education. They want to be able to do stuff that’s actually going to help them for when they get out, so they are rehabilitated when they get out here into California, on the outside world.
And also, some of the feedback we’re getting, just like Jeronimo said, is that this doesn’t mean people are just going to stop working. There’s a lot of people… There’s a waiting list to get on some of these jobs in prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
John Cannon:
So, it’s not the fact that people don’t want to work. People do want to work. But for those people that don’t want to be forced to work, some people want to prioritize certain courses that are offered. You have anger management courses, you have drug rehabilitative courses, and you can’t even access these courses if you’re assigned a job duty. So, those courses are there for no reason if you can’t access them.
So, this is some of the feedback that we’re getting from the inside from our members.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And Jeronimo, talk about where we at in terms of how y’all assessing the Proposition 6, because you don’t have no opposition. That’s a given. I think I was looking at some of the footage, and I think, since from ACLU say, who going to come out and say we agree with slavery? So, talk about where y’all at in terms of getting this passed or getting people to vote on it.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, those of us that worked on the legislation, ACA 8, it was ACA 3 once upon a time, three, four years ago, and it failed in the California Senate the first time around. We brought it back with ACA 8, and man, it was —
Mansa Musa:
What’s ACA?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Assembly Constitutional Amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
And so, the author of the bill was Assemblymember Wilson. She was in the assembly. Before her, it was Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager, who’s now actually in Congress, I believe. So, yeah. It was a couple of assembly members that had brought it up.
So, there were ACAs. And just the fact that it failed one time, it showed us that it’s not as much as an afterthought as folks think, as you would think, especially here in California.
And, I mean, it goes back to that history that we were talking about. I mean, shoot, California’s first governor was actually a slaveholder, Peter Hardeman Burnett. You talk about the founder of San Quentin was a California senator named James Estelle, and he was also a slave holder.
So, that I think a lot of the stuff that we have even subconsciously in the population here in California, they don’t understand that they’re aligning with… Sometimes it’s not so much of like who’s going to agree with slavery, but they buy some of this stuff that the Tough on Crime or CDCR puts out around, oh, yeah. Well, that’s true. They should work, man. They’re criminals. Or, they should do this and that. And they’re not understanding that they’re actually buying into the whole thing on slavery.
And so, with the proposition itself, man, it hasn’t pulled us as high as we would have liked. I could have told you that because ACA 8 was so hard to pass. I knew it was going to be a struggle.
And then, here in California, we’re in a pretty big crisis as it comes to the criminal justice reform. You got Proposition 36 that’s on the ballot as well, which is trying to repeal some of Prop 47, which was a landmark proposition that we passed that reduced a lot of felonies down to misdemeanors. It allowed folks to not have to end up in the prison system for low-level offenses, non-violent stuff, drugs. Stuff that it’s common sense, that it should focus [crosstalk].
Mansa Musa:
Fueling the plantations. That’s it. Fueling the plantations.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Exactly.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all got that. Y’all been successful at taking the source away from where they’re getting the labor from, and now y’all killing the utilization of the labor.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all been fighting on all fronts.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
We’ve been fighting on all fronts, and they’re pushing back, though.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
The system is definitely pushing back, and we’re filling it right now with Prop 36 on the ballot. And it’s being funded by — And this is to your point, Mansa. We just learned that Walmart dropped another $1 million to support what’s going on with Prop 36.
And so, why would Walmart be so invested in making sure that Tough on Crime passes, that more prisons get filled up? Well, that’s because they rely on that labor.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
They’re exploiting that labor. They’re using that labor of Black and Brown people. And so, people need to see this, maybe. What I’m hoping this episode really is is public education for folks so they could really see, even in a state like California, it’s so invested and married to the idea of exploitation and cheap labor. California and the US has never lost its appetite for cheap labor.
And so, when you think about it, it’s going to find ways to do that. It’s always going to go back to the same thing that it knows. And so, that’s what we’re seeing.
So, Prop 6, it’s polling… We’re at 50/50 right now. I mean, we’re a little bit on the side of… The last polling that came out was not favorable to us, but I think that we’re getting closer to that 50/50 range. It’s going to be a tough, drag-out fight.
I think, really, the thing is, the real positive is what we’re seeing that there’s a huge percentage of folks that are uneducated on this subject. And when you’re able to explain the stuff that we’re talking about here, all these different factors are at play, with the corporations and all these different people that are making money, and they don’t care about the regular person that’s struggling to pay his bills, even if he hasn’t been locked up. But he don’t care about that taxpayer.
Prop 6 actually will benefit the taxpayer because they’re getting return on their investment in the criminal justice system. You got $133,000 it costs to incarcerate somebody for a year. And our people in there, they’re not learning how to read, they’re not learning how to write, they’re not learning nothing. They’re just being forced to make money for these corporations.
So, once they start seeing all this stuff and we’re able to educate them, we’re able to move them to a yes at a pretty good rate. So, I feel confident.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John, you say you in Oakland, right?
John Cannon:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
And so, what are y’all doing now? Because just like Jeronimo said, it’s the fight to the finish. So, the fight is, we know the election’s coming up in November, but we know that we have to educate people to understand what the prop is, and now, how to counter the opposition. What are y’all doing in Oakland to get the vote out, get people out to respond to the proposition?
John Cannon:
The main thing we’re doing in Oakland is educating our folks on slavery, on the history of slavery and involuntary servitude, the history of what our constitution is, and also getting people engaged with voting.
There’s a lot of people that haven’t voted. Making sure people know their rights in California, because we’ve been encountering a lot of people that didn’t even know they could vote. People on parole could vote. In California, you can vote on parole. Technically, you’re allowed to vote while you’re in jail, you just can’t vote in prison. So, that’s the main part, is making sure people know.
Even myself, when I was released from prison, I didn’t even know I could vote until I came to All of Us or None, and we were actually one of the organizations that was on that proposition to get people to vote on parole.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. All right. And as we close out this for both of y’all, all right, so, what do we expect in November based on y’all taking the temperature of the climate out there? What can we look forward to? And then, two, how can our viewers always become more involved in the process of getting Proposition 6 passed? We go with you, start with you, Jeronimo.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
I think I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful about particularly Proposition 6 in California. Like I said, there’s an all-out assault on criminal justice reform happening right now in California, so it’s a tough time. And this last legislative session, it was probably… The four or five years that I’ve been working on the policy side, trying to pass statewide bills at the Capitol, this is probably the most challenging year. The majority of our bills just didn’t make it through the legislature.
So, for us to pass ACA 8 in a climate like this, it shows you we got some very talented and skillful organizers. And so, I have that same faith and confidence in them that we’ll get Proposition 6 passed. God willing, we can defeat Proposition 36 as well.
But with that said, I think the way folks can activate, we have a website, voteyesprop6.com. Folks can check us out there. We also got our organization’s website, prisonerswithchildren.org.
And then, on social media, All of Us or None Action is basically housing all of our Proposition 6 work. And so, we’re teaming up with some… trying to get some influencers and high-level folks out there to get the word out, make sure they hit the polls and vote.
We’re doing big regional events out here in California on Oct. 8. We’re doing a statewide day of action. So, we’re going to be in here at Sac State. I’m doing something at the University of Sacramento. UC Berkeley is going to have a big event. They’re doing something out there in LA, Bakersfield, Stockton. So all over the state.
And like John said, the main thing, our mission as the grassroots ballot committee is really to activate our people, man, those that have been disenfranchised. Those that typically don’t vote, and they got every reason not to vote because of the way this system is designed.
But at the same time, there’s certain stuff that is important for us to get out and get active on. And so, this is one of those. We have the historic opportunity to end slavery and stop the forced labor and exploitation of our people inside.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John?
John Cannon:
Yeah. And I would just say, spreading the information, spreading the knowledge as much as you can. And we have materials that we’ll send out. If you’re in California, you want to do any type of outreach, you could reach out to me at john@prisonerswithchildren.org. I can send you a whole package with materials, postcards, flyers, and just make sure we’re spreading the information to everybody.
And also getting people aware that voting is coming up, and it’s important to vote. I know that I actually was one of those people that thought voting didn’t matter. And I remember my sister, she told me what someone told her, what my grandma told her, and she said, if our vote doesn’t count, then why they’ve been trying to take it from us since forever, or keep us from voting? So, it made sense. So, it does count. We’ve got to get out there and just spread the news to everybody we can.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to add this as we close out. It does count, but the reason why it does count is because of y’all. Y’all making it count. Y’all educating people on the importance of understanding how to utilize their voice. Y’all educating people on understanding where it came from, the history of their voice.
But more importantly, y’all mobilizing people and franchising people to change and dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Y’all rattling the bars today.
There you have it. The Real News and Rattling the Bars. I really appreciate both of y’all, man. Y’all, look, y’all really made me feel good today because I’m one of those that was cynical when it came to the electoral process. I was one of those that didn’t believe in it. But then I remember what Tip O’Neill said, that all politics are local. But more importantly, y’all skill organization, y’all skill strategy, has now enlightened people on how to be effective in raising your voice and voting to get effective change. Thank you.
John Cannon:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Look, this is the only way you’re going to get this kind of information. Two skilled individuals in the state of California, Sunshine State, where you got a big Hollywood sign up. But behind the Hollywood sign is slave labor. Now we got people that’s challenging it and attacking it, and ultimately going to be a drama, or say this is a historical event. This is going to go down history as the few that tackled the many and won. I’m out.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Oct. 17, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled this week to allow a state law passed earlier this year to be enforced, enfranchising thousands of people who were formerly convicted of felony level crimes and thwarting efforts by Republican state officials to deem the law unconstitutional.
In a bipartisan vote this summer of the unicameral state legislature, Nebraska lawmakers enacted a veto-proof law that ended a prohibition on residents voting for at least two years after serving a sentence for a felony, overturning a 2005 state law that had enacted the restriction. However, Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans, claimed the new law was unconstitutional, and before it could take effect, ordered election officials across the state to bar people with felony convictions from registering if that two-year period hadn’t elapsed.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska, representing state residents who would be restricted from voting under the action from Hilgers and Evnen, implored the state Supreme Court to intervene, and in a split decision from Tuesday, the court did just that.
Hilgers and Evnen asserted that only the state’s board of pardons could restore voting rights. The state Supreme Court, however, issued a split decision on Wednesday that overturned their attempt to block the new state law.
In Nebraska, the state Supreme Court must have a supermajority of justices deem a state law unconstitutional in order for it to be blocked. Only two of the five justices on the bench came to the conclusion that the new law was unlawful, while two others couldn’t bring themselves to rule either way on the matter. A fifth justice found that the new law was constitutional, as ruling otherwise would give too much power to the two executive branch offices in question.
The split decision means that the new law is now enforced, and that state residents with past felony convictions can vote right away if their sentences have been completed.
The ruling allows a small window for such residents to register to vote. The deadline to register for this year’s election is this Friday. Residents can still register to vote in person through October 25.
The ruling could influence two important elections. A contentious Senate seat is up for grabs in the state, between independent candidate Dan Osborn and Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. And since Nebraska allocates one Electoral College vote per congressional district, the ruling could affect the district encompassing the state’s largest city of Omaha, where most of the formerly disenfranchised residents currently live, potentially tipping the scales of the presidential election as well.
The ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court was celebrated by people who would have otherwise been restricted from voting this year.
“For so long, I was uncertain if my voice would truly count under this law. Today’s decision reaffirms the fundamental principle that every vote matters,” said Gregory Spung, one of the petitioners in the case who intends to register as an independent voter.
“It is a weight off my shoulders, and not just because of what it means for me,” said petitioner Jeremy Jonak, a Republican voter who was affected by the actions of Hilgers and Evnen. “Over the years, so many of us have earned a second chance. We live in every part of the state, and the truth is most of us are just trying to live our lives and leave the past behind us.”
Dakaria Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 in the morning when he saw the flash of a Michigan State Trooper’s siren. Although Larriett was stone-cold sober, he soon discovered this would not be enough to protect him. After accusing him of a minor traffic violation, Officer George Kanyuh began to speculate over Larriett’s sobriety. A lawsuit brought by Larriett alleges that, after subjecting Larriett to a series of sobriety field tests, Kanyuh spent over two minutes unsuccessfully looking for drugs in his patrol car to use as planted evidence against Larriett. Once this failed, Kanyuh and his partner, Matthew Okaiye, took Larriett into custody and forced him to endure even more humiliating ordeals at the police station—including requiring him to defecate in front of them. It’s only thanks to body camera footage that the truth of this incident was revealed, but there are countless cases of similar behavior by police across the country which has never come to light. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of Police Accountability Report review the case and its implications, speaking directly with Dakaria Larriett about his ordeal.
Written by: Stephen Janis Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.
And today we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of a bogus DUI stop that led to the false arrest of a man who is still suffering from the consequences of it. A harrowing encounter with Michigan State troopers that led to questionable charges, a humiliating search, and allegations of an officer attempting to plant drugs. But, it also calls into question the whole idea of how DUIs are investigated, all of which we will break down for you as we unpack yet another problematic use of police powers.
And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @TayasBaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you and please like, share, and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out and it can even help our guests. And of course, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there. And I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you all how much I really appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.
And of course, we have to thank our corporate sponsor. Oh wait, that’s right, we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, but you can donate below, and we have a Patreon Accountability Report, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do, because we don’t run ads or take those corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Now, there is no crime more potentially destructive or dangerous than driving while drunk here at the Police Accountability Report, we support efforts by law enforcement to prevent it. However, we have also noticed a troubling trend, as we’ve reported, on questionable DUI arrests across the country. Sometimes it seems that police are overly eager to charge someone driving while drunk, overreach that can have devastating consequences for the people subject to it.
And no DUI stop embodies this problem more than the video I’m showing you right now. It depicts the highly-suspect arrest of a Michigan man who’s being put through a grueling field sobriety test. Despite passing every facet of it, he still ended up in handcuffs, but that was only the beginning of his ordeal. That’s because even after his detainment, police weren’t done subjecting him to the cruelty and violations of our criminal justice system. The details of which we will share with you shortly, but first, the arrest itself.
This story starts in Benton Harbor, Michigan in April of 2024. There, Dakarai Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 A.M. when he was pulled over by a Michigan State trooper for, ostensibly, not coming to a stop for a flashing red light. An accusation Dakarai firmly denies. However, from the beginning, the officer began accusing him of being drunk. Take a look.
Kanyuh:
Hey, how you doing?
Dakarai Larriett:
Good.
Kanyuh:
Good. You got a license on you?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yep, it’s in my bag.
Kanyuh:
In the back?
Dakarai Larriett:
In my bag.
Kanyuh:
Oh, go for it. Yeah, the reason I’m sobbing, there’s two red lights there. Make sure you come to a complete stop.
Thank you.
Where you coming from?
Dakarai Larriett:
St. Joe’s.
Kanyuh:
St. Joe? Where are you trying to get?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m dropping him off right here.
Kanyuh:
Oh, okay. This address here? With the fence?
Okay. Do you have any paperwork for the vehicle?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry?
Kanyuh:
Any paperwork for the vehicle like registration insurance?
Dakarai Larriett:
I do.
Kanyuh:
Can I see that please?
Dakarai Larriett:
Sure.
Kanyuh:
Does alcohol impact your ability to drive today?
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:03:51]
Kanyuh:
Okay. When was your last drink? Has it been at least two hours?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. All right. Two hours you said? What was it specifically? Smelling fruity and a little bit of something else on you.
Dakarai Larriett:
There was no alcohol in on me.
Kanyuh:
I can smell it on your breath. Something fruity like what were you drinking?
Dakarai Larriett:
There was no alcohol in here.
Kanyuh:
No? But it’s been at least two hours.
Dakarai Larriett:
There’s no alcohol on me.
Kanyuh:
All righty. Just hop out for me. I’m going to verify, okay.
Taya Graham:
Now Dakarai again politely denied the accusations. As you can see, he’s calm and collected in his answers. The officer did not accuse him of driving recklessly or swerving, instead, he simply ordered Dakarai to get out of the car as he continued to question him. Let’s watch.
Kanyuh:
You do the open carry for protection at all or no?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t.
Kanyuh:
Okay. You should, it’s kind of crazy out here. Right back this way for me.
Why are you changing your story on that? I said two hours, and then I said I smell it on your breath, and now you’re denying it at all that’s suspicious to me.
Dakarai Larriett:
I am not commenting any further. I’m not [inaudible 00:05:13].
Kanyuh:
Okay.
Taya Graham:
And so, it appears that based on a “fruity” smell and Dakarai invoking his right not to answer questions, the officer begins what can only be called the most potentially treacherous aspect of American DUI enforcement: the field sobriety test.
Now I want to make something clear before we watch, field sobriety tests are not as scientific as they’re portrayed. The six studies cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to justify the use of these tests were not peer reviewed, and reveal a harrowing number of false positives anywhere between 20-40% of the time. Nevertheless, it has become a key tool of law enforcement even though it is important to note that you can refuse to take it. Still, unfortunately, Dakarai is put through a grueling battery of examinations starting with the horizontal gaze test.
Kanyuh:
And then arms down at your side like a pencil dive. Yep, just remain like that and then don’t move until I tie you move. Okay? Do you understand those instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t stand there like that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Weird question I got to ask you. I’m going to check your eyes. What I want you to do is just follow the tip of my finger with only your eyes. Do not move your head, okay? Do you understand?
Is there any reason you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Are you wearing contacts right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I am.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Same thing, just keep following with your eyes and only your eyes. You got to rub your eyes or something?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. You’re just not tracking it.
How long you had your contacts in?
Dakarai Larriett:
An hour or so.
Kanyuh:
Hour or so? So they’re not dry or anything?
Dakarai Larriett:
They’re fine.
Kanyuh:
They’re fine? Okay.
Taya Graham:
Next, the officer asked Dakarai to do the so-called Walk-and-Turn Test, an assessment, by the way, that can generate false positives 30% of the time and, truthfully, isn’t easy. Take a look.
Kanyuh:
Good.
See this line here?
Yeah, we can use this line.
See this crack? Go ahead and stand on the crack with your left foot on it, and then your right foot in front of it, heel to toe. See how mine are heel to toe? Go ahead and do so.
When I tell you to do so, you’re going to take nine steps heel to toe, when you get to your ninth step, I want you to turn, taking a series of small steps, come nine heel-to-toe steps, back up that line, all the way to nine. It’s important you’re keeping your arms down at your side, you’re looking down at your toe, and you’re counting out loud. When you begin the test, don’t stop until you’ve completed it.
Taya Graham:
Now, even though he performs the test meticulously, the officer persists in putting him through even more stressful examinations. At this point it seems crystal clear Dakarai has no problem with doing exactly what the officer demands, but he still makes him continue.
Kanyuh:
Do you understand those instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t think so.
Kanyuh:
Okay, I’ll stand back here, and whenever you’re ready, you may begin.
Dakarai Larriett:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 3, 9.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Kanyuh:
Good.
Taya Graham:
But now, the officer ups the ante. That’s because even though Dakarai passes the so-called Standard Field Sobriety test endorsed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, the officer turns to a battery of non-standard tests that are even less scientific, raising even more questions about the process that includes asking him to recite the alphabet. Let’s listen.
Kanyuh:
So you know your alphabet? Okay, I’m not having you say it backwards, that’s not a real thing. Can you say your alphabet starting at A as in Adam, stop at R as in Robert, A to R. Do you have that ability? Okay, go ahead and do so.
Dakarai Larriett:
A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R.
Kanyuh:
Good.
Taya Graham:
Then, venturing further into non-scientific territory, he asked Dakarai to count backwards.
Kanyuh:
Starting at the number 99. Can you count backwards from 99 to 81?
Dakarai Larriett:
99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91, 90…
Taya Graham:
But Officer Kanyuh is not done, not hardly, because even though Dakarai passed each test flawlessly, the troop returns to another questionable exam, the One-Leg Stand Test, which once again has been accused of being non-scientific and inaccurate, 30% of the time.
Kanyuh:
I want you to stand just like this again, the same drama we’ve always been doing. Good. Remain like that and then don’t move ’til how to move, okay? Do you understand these instructions? Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do this? No? Okay. Whenever you’re ready, you may begin.
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:10:22].
Kanyuh:
Remember to look down at that toe.
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:10:36].
Taya Graham:
Now as each of these tests unfold one after another, I want you to think about how Dakarai is feeling.
First, he’s flawlessly following orders. One can only imagine how gut-wrenching it is taking these vague, imprecise, if not scientifically questionable, tests with your life hanging in the balance.
And even though he is clearly under duress, he is respectful and steady, and he is obviously not drunk and not high, and yet the endurance test continues with another scientifically-sketchy request that requires him to decide when 30 seconds has elapsed. Just watch.
Kanyuh:
Go ahead and just take one step forward. Good. Hit same heels and toes touching just like this. Arms down at the side. When I tell you to do so, I want you to tilt your head back, close your eyes, and when you believe 30 seconds has passed, bring your head forward and say stop. Okay. Does that…
Dakarai Larriett:
Closing my eyes?
Kanyuh:
Yep, closing your eyes. When you believe 30 seconds has passed, look forward, say stop. You understand the instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
I think so.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Whenever you’re ready, begin.
How much time was that?
Dakarai Larriett:
About 30 seconds.
Kanyuh:
And then how’d you get there?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry?
Kanyuh:
Did you count 1, 2, 3? You didn’t do one Mississippi or anything like that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. So just 1, 2, 3. Okay, cool.
Taya Graham:
And there’s more. Yes, there’s more. The officer, not satisfied, veers into another non-standard test known as the Finger-to-Nose test, which again is non-standard and is not an accepted test from the National Highway Safety Administration. Still the officer persists. Just look.
Kanyuh:
You’re going to keep your hands down to your side, and I’m going to call out an arm, so if I say left, you’re going to take your left arm… This is the tip of your finger. This is the tip of your finger and this is the pad of your finger. Okay? This is the difference. I want you to take the tip of your finger, the tip and touch, the tip of your nose.
Go ahead and tilt your head back and close your eyes. Left, right, left, right, right, left. Good. You follow me.
Taya Graham:
And finally, the officer asks Dakarai to incriminate himself, requiring that he assess his own drunkenness even though it appears he has passed every single test thrown at him. Just listen.
Kanyuh:
On a scale of zero to five, as far as five being unsafe to operate a motor vehicles the most drunk and high you’ve ever been, and then zero being sober, where are you at right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t know. Is that relevant? I really know what you’re talking about.
Kanyuh:
It is relevant, but if you don’t want to answer it, I don’t care.
Dakarai Larriett:
I have not had any alcohol.
Kanyuh:
Not had any alcohol.
Dakarai Larriett:
I have not.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Now how about marijuana? Did you have had that?
Dakarai Larriett:
Excuse me?
Kanyuh:
Marijuana?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. What did you say?
Kanyuh:
I said how about marijuana?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
No marijuana? No.
Dakarai Larriett:
Okay. You want to hang out right here for me?
Taya Graham:
Now, apparently the officer has already reached his conclusion about Dakarai’s condition. You can listen here as he discusses it with another trooper who just arrived on the scene. It’s also a rare glimpse into how officers interpret a field sobriety test. Even if, for all intents and purposes, you passed, the point is it seems that no one passes.
Kanyuh:
Booze and marijuana. His eyelids fluttered worse than that guy’s.
Okaiye:
He’s got neck pulsation too.
Kanyuh:
He had numerous clues on the walk and turn like crazy
Okaiye:
I didn’t catch the standard, but you said walk and turn one night thing and all that?
Kanyuh:
One night stand was the wobbles [inaudible 00:14:52] was 23 seconds, fly with flutter, sways. Finger-nose. Terrible.
Okaiye:
What’s all that? Romberg?
Kanyuh:
99 to 81, he stopped at 89. So even his mental, short-term memory. He’s going to refuse and then search warrant, but…
Okaiye:
He’s showing?
Kanyuh:
In the driving.
Okaiye:
What do you think you? You think is just number [inaudible 00:15:14]?
Kanyuh:
I think he’s got a medication he’s not telling…
Okaiye:
He’s got medication and I’m guessing it’s a medication for… He may be… I think he’s got a medication for that. And with that would be consuming substances like THC, marijuana, alcohol, whatever. You know what that does.
Kanyuh:
Yeah.
Okaiye:
Explaining what you’re seeing.
Kanyuh:
His driving behavior, I saw lack of smooth pursuit, but he wasn’t very good at following my finger.
Okaiye:
Lack of smooth, and divided attention, abilities affected. Whenever you speak with him, he’s looking away and moving his head, so I think it’s a combination of THC for sure. I didn’t really evaluate him, but you can definitely see impairment for THC. And then I think in his medications, describing medications affecting it, too. It’s performing effects of I’m going to take them,
Taya Graham:
But let me play some audio for you here that brought to Kari a lot of concern. Apparently at roughly 3:25, officer Kanyuh can be seen on body cam rifling through the trunk of his squad car for about two minutes, and then the video goes dark. During those moments. Officer Okaiye seems to say, “Drugs?” And Officer Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I had a stash in your somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s at.”
But you take a listen and judge for yourself.
Kanyuh:
I don’t think I have any.
Okaiye:
[inaudible 00:16:59] in the box.
Kanyuh:
Yeah, I had a stash in here somewhere. I don’t even know where it’s at. [inaudible 00:17:11] Don’t know why he thought, but yeah, I’m assuming weed and alcohol.
Taya Graham:
Now I am unfamiliar with any part of a field sobriety test where an officer needs to search for a stash in his own patrol car, but perhaps Michigan State troopers have a unique investigative technique.
And I do understand, as I said before, that drunk driving is incredibly destructive, but it’s equally pernicious to accuse someone of it who’s ostensibly not guilty, and perhaps even worse is to fabricate a crime to make the innocent guilty. Remember, our system is designed to protect the innocent, and yet those safeguards fail as you what the officer does next when he says, “I’m going to take him.”
Kanyuh:
Is it Dakarai? Am I saying that wrong?
Dakarai Larriett:
It’s Dakarai.
Kanyuh:
Darkarai, I told you the reason for the stop was there’s two red lights. Okay? I know they’re flashing, but that’s still, you have to treat it like a stop sign at nighttime. At midnight the lights turn from red to flashing. Flashing red still means stop.
I walk up to the car and I can smell alcohol, whether it’s you or your passenger, that’s why I asked the question, “Have you been drinking?” To which you responded it was two hours ago, and then you denied drinking alcohol.
Dakarai Larriett:
Actually what you stated was, “Was it at least two hours?” Something like that. You kind of inferred something, but no, I’ve not been drinking.
Kanyuh:
Well, I didn’t mean to give you a leading question.
Dakarai Larriett:
No, but to be clear, I have not been drinking.
Kanyuh:
You haven’t had any alcohol?
Dakarai Larriett:
I did stop. Correct. And I did stop at each of those lights.
Kanyuh:
I do have an on camera.
Dakarai Larriett:
Okay.
Kanyuh:
So it is recorded.
Dakarai Larriett:
All right.
Kanyuh:
Along with all my sobriety evaluations, which have led me to determine you are under the influence and driving. So now I have to bring you in for a blood draw, and then you have to sit a detox window. I can’t let you operate safely, because I don’t believe that you can.
Dakarai Larriett:
Please explain to me what test I failed.
Kanyuh:
Well, they’re not pass or fail, okay? But I’m noticing several signs of divided attention, not being able to focus on the instructions as I’ve given them.
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, I’m being tired.
Kanyuh:
And then fine motor skills being impaired, such as not being able to touch the heel to toe, the rigid body movements, you have sway, and on and on and on. I’ll type up a whole, probably be an eight-page report on this. And then here’s the deal, if you’re right and there’s nothing in your body, everything gets thrown out.
Taya Graham:
He said, “If I’m wrong.” Well that’s an awfully big if, and you will soon learn what happened when Dakarai was tested when we speak to him, and what we showed was just the beginning of the way that Dakarai’s rights and body were violated by these troopers and he will share what happened to him in jail.
But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into the case and going through the documents to report back to us. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So, Stephen, what were the results of the blood test? Was the officer wrong?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, it turns out the officer was absolutely wrong. The blood test showed no sign of any alcohol or anything else. So really it was a completely negative and actually inaccurate assessment of Dakarai’s state at that time. And so really it shows how flawed these systems are for evaluating people. And so yeah, absolutely nothing, zero, negative, although it took five months to find out.
Taya Graham:
Can you discuss some of the questions surrounding the field sobriety tests and what concerns it raises in these types of cases?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think one of the concerns it raises is pretty simple. You have something masquerading a science that isn’t as scientific as it seems.
If you look at the studies, they were controlled environments that aren’t similar to what happens when you’re out in the field, and they’re also highly inaccurate, like showing inaccuracy rates of sometimes up to 35%. So I think it’s very, very, very critical to look at these with a cautious eye and not be so willing to embrace an officer’s interpretation of some very subjective test and say, “Well that person is drunk.”
Taya Graham:
Stephen, you also researched a strange statement the officer made, which is that he had over 800 hours of field sobriety training.
Okaiye:
Well, like I said, we’re trained in standardized field sobriety evaluations. We’ve had over 800 hours that, and let’s say he’s wrong, let’s say I’m wrong, let’s say that you are completely fine. In our professional opinion through our training experience, we don’t believe you can operate their motor vehicle safely, so it’s our job as we swore to take an oath to make sure that you get home and everybody else gets home safe. We’re not going to chance it.
What we’re going to have to do is we’ll allow you to park your vehicle, let your friend park your vehicle, whatever, we’re not trying to cost you the money, but we do have to take you to hospital, make sure you’re okay, because the substance we believe you’re taking with your medication, and then get the blood draw done. After blood draw is done, you’ll be detoxed and be free to go. There’s no added charges, nothing like that.
Taya Graham:
We researched the updated Michigan field sobriety test. Does that number sound right to you?
Stephen Janis:
Taya, it’s really interesting. What’s required right now is 24 hours of training for officers, including field training and some classwork, so 800 hours seems highly excessive. The guy really is doing a lot of time in the classroom. I don’t know if that really measures up, or if we can say that’s actually accurate, but right now the standard is much, much lower, and so I think questions remain about this entire arrest.
Taya Graham:
So do you have any insight into why these field tests occur at all? I, Wouldn’t it be easier just to do a breath, or urine, or blood tests and just let the science speak for itself?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think that’s the big, big question. I know officers need tools to evaluate people, and they need tools to come up with probable cause, but we’ve watched so many of these where there’s so many questions and people really seem to pass them on every ostensible measure, and yet they still end up being arrested. So I think there needs to be a full and thorough evaluation of this process to make sure it’s really generating the results that are helpful in the sense that you’re arresting drunk drivers, but not innocent people, Taya.
Taya Graham:
And now to learn what happened after he was detained, the humiliation he endured at the hands of police and the consequences for him. Since I’m joined by Dakarai Larriett. Dakarai, thank you so much for joining me.
Dakarai Larriett:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taya Graham:
So tell me how this begins. Where were you headed before you were pulled over?
Dakarai Larriett:
Thanks for asking. So I was just dropping a friend off at his home.
Taya Graham:
When you were pulled over, how did the officer approach you? Did he describe why you were pulled over?
Dakarai Larriett:
So when he pulled me over, he mentioned that he believed I ran some blinking red lights a couple of miles away.
Taya Graham:
So the officer put you through a sobriety test. Can you describe what that was like for you?
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, it’s funny, I used to be a ballet dancer, and studied at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and the way he was describing all of the steps, I thought to myself, “Is this a dance routine?”
It started out initially as an inspection of my eyes and my ability to follow his finger, I believe. And from there it became standing in one place, counting, I guess determining my perception of time and space, and a very complex heel-toe routine. I was asked, do I know the alphabet? And from there I had to do A through R. I did a number countdown and that was just with Officer Kanyuh. Officer Okaiye also inspected me and asked a number of different questions about my ability to drive.
Taya Graham:
I’ve tested myself and my friends stone-cold sober sobriety tests and found them difficult. What was going through your mind during this extensive test?
Dakarai Larriett:
So, I was wearing pajamas. It was 3:00 A.M. I planned to drop my buddy off and then hit right back to the house and go to sleep. So I was not dressed for the weather. We have to remember this was Michigan on April 10th, it’s still winter weather, and I was shivering. I was in this dark alley. It was scary. I thought I was about to be murdered, frankly.
So imagine having to do those tests and you’re thinking this is your last moment on this planet. I was thinking of my family. I had been in Cleveland, Ohio earlier that day for the solar eclipse, and spent some time with my sister, and it just really hit me that that might’ve been my last time seeing her or any of my family members, and I thought about my dog.
Taya Graham:
I’m so sorry.
Dakarai Larriett:
Sorry.
Taya Graham:
I know it’s traumatizing.
Dakarai Larriett:
My dog was in daycare, because I was in Cleveland for the weekend for the eclipse and I was just thinking, “What if my dog was at home by himself all this time when something happened to him?” He’s a nearly thirteen-year-old dog, he’s a senior dog, I’m sorry.
Taya Graham:
Trooper Kanyuh said you were wobbling excessively, that you fluttered and swayed during the one leg stand, and that your walk and turn were terrible, and that there were numerous clues that you were intoxicated. In truth, it’s a blessing to have the body camera, because it shows that you held your leg in the exact position you wanted for 26 seconds, on one foot, with not a single error.
When you listen to the body camera, does it shock you to hear what the officer was saying and how he mischaracterized what happened?
Dakarai Larriett:
I guess the other interesting thing for me, and I guess surprise if you will, was what was happening to my friend in the passenger seat. So, that is not in the video that has gone public, and I have not shared that body cam video, because it is obviously altered. All the videos are altered.
In fact, I made my freedom of Information Act request two, three days after this incident. It took them five months to give me video, and there are missing chunks in the video, audio between the officers even when they’re standing next to each other is inconsistent. So it sounds like it was dubbed, and there are sections that are completely missing audio. You can tell they were obsessed with the car, “Nice car.”
It was just humiliation and my survival mechanism was, “Dakarai, you’re not going to win this battle in a dark alley at 3:00 A.M. two cops. You will not. Be quiet, comply. You can win the war because you are going to have all the evidence on your side. You’re sober, you don’t use drugs. All the evidence is going to support your side of the story.”
And I guess that’s why I was so heartbroken when I heard the word “drugs” uttered by Okaiye because then I thought, “Well you can’t even win when you’re doing the right thing. If they had just found the stash, I would still be in jail and my life would be ruined.”
Taya Graham:
So if I understand correctly, you were pressured into a blood draw at the hospital. It was the best thing, considering that you had no drugs in your system, but still you were pressured into it.
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes, I was absolutely pressured to do the blood draw.
And how did I arrive at the decision to do it? Well, I was told that I would get six points on my license and a suspension if I did not comply. But I thought it was so odd that they wouldn’t just give me a breathalyzer, like something objective, besides a dance routine.
Taya Graham:
The way the officers treated you, I thought, was very demeaning, and I hate to bring this up, but you were accused of swallowing drugs and you were made to go to the bathroom in front of Trooper Kanyuh. This officer appeared very polite on the early body camera, but forcing you to do this is violating.
Dakarai Larriett:
Going into the jail, it’s a typical booking process As one was seen on TV, because I’ve never been through this process before, ever, never been stopped like this, but name, all my identifying factors, et cetera, and fingerprints. All that is collected. And then they put me in this machine that looks like something from TSA and they are scanning me, I presume for any type of contraband.
And there is a novice that is running the machine, and very unclear on how to operate it and they identify what they called an anomaly. And from there on throughout the night, I am being sent through this machine, I presume x-rays, again, and again, and again. So I’m not even really lodged, if you will, in the jail. I go to the cell, I come back, I go to the cell, I come back.
Finally, they brought on a technician that seemed like she actually knew what she was doing. She looks at it and she goes, oh, those are gas bubbles. In the midst of all of this going on, Kanyuh goes, “That looks like a bag of drugs! Confess now or you’re going to face a trafficking charge, too!” At some point I’m going back and forth, back and forth to the cell, and I asked if I could use the restroom.
Kanyuh comes behind me and says that’s where I need to go. It’s just this open toilet that anyone in the room can see and he yells, “Don’t flush!” It was so dehumanizing.
Taya Graham:
It seems to me the officer is very performative in his behavior of being a good guy and a professional on camera, but in the jail he really does change.
Dakarai Larriett:
A couple of follow-ups on that.
So, when he was playing the good guy, good cop and Okaiye obviously tried to do it as well, I just want to go back to something you said. They offered to park my car for me. And I was discussing this with the passenger this morning, and we both just like light bulb moment realized that would’ve been the opportunity to plant.
Taya Graham:
So something that concerns me, is that for about two minutes the officer’s really been searching through his patrol car and then he says to another officer that you seem confused, and then he says he’s trying to find his stash. What do you think this means?
Dakarai Larriett:
It’s a hundred percent drugs, and it’s all written there in very plain, easy-to-understand language not even coded. And you really have to think about not only do we have that which is mind-boggling, but the context of it all.
So the context is he spent two minutes digging through his cop car, the backseat, then he moved to the trunk, whatever he was looking for, he wanted it badly. Okaiye comes around to the back of the car probably trying to figure out what’s going on with this guy, because think about it, I’ve been standing in the cold, waiting after the sobriety test while he’s fumbling around in the car.
So Okaiye comes around to see what’s going on. He says “drugs.” Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I knew I had a stash in here.” So he connects drugs to stash. Then there’s a little bit of mumbling, but listen to it intently. They then basically make a comment to each other that I’m going to refuse anyway, meaning I would refuse an opportunity for them to get in my car, to search my car, to park my car, and that’s when they ultimately decide “We’ll just charge him on weed and alcohol.”
Taya Graham:
Did their dash camera show that you allegedly ran through this flashing red light? You calmly told them you committed no moving violations. Can you tell me what the dash camera actually showed?
Dakarai Larriett:
I believe the light they’re referring to was completely green, so that one was thrown out. And then the light that they alleged that I did not stop at, the one that actually was red, I pulled two, I paused, I put my signal on and I turned.
Taya Graham:
I read that it took over five months for you to receive your negative drug and alcohol results. Is that correct?
Dakarai Larriett:
At the hospital, I immediately tested negative for alcohol, and because the hospital was connected to my own healthcare plan, I managed to get that report in real time, and pulled it for myself when I got home that afternoon. And then, of course, they confirmed the result to me when I asked at the jail.
Now in terms of getting the drug test results and Michigan State Police’s version of the alcohol test results, that did not happen until the very end of September. But if you look at the timeline in the request for testing, they knew by middle of April that everything was negative, and it seems like they continued to test, and test, and test. I don’t know if that’s a standard procedure or they were just incredulous that I was negative.
Taya Graham:
Can you tell me what you went through during that time, that five months waiting to be proven fully innocent? It must have been incredibly stressful.
Dakarai Larriett:
My first responsibility was to confirm that there was not a criminal matter at all against me, and the case actually was thrown out within a week, but they refused to give me a receipt or confirmation or anything like that until I received that formal test. But I still haven’t received anything that says that the case is a hundred percent closed. I have not.
So two and a half months I did not have a plastic driver’s license card, couldn’t rent a car. I traveled extensively, and I would contact the sergeant, who I believed to be the bosses of the two troopers, almost weekly. Like, “Hey, what’s going on? Did you guys get the results? This is really inconveniencing my life.” And I would get answers that were very opaque, like, “we’re still working on your test” which really confused me and worried me that there was some tampering happening.
Taya Graham:
What do you want as the result of sharing your experience? What do you hope that outcome will be?
Dakarai Larriett:
I made a commitment that when I was mistreated I would use my resources, my privilege, to help those behind me. And I could have easily just walked away, and took my driver’s license, and been fine, but I decided I have got to expose this, I’ve got to get these troopers off the streets, and I’ve already reached out to some major, major law firms and encouraged them to look into what’s going on in Southwest Michigan. I am already protected. I’m not under any criminal investigation, but when I was in that jail, I knew that there were innocent people in there.
Taya Graham:
If you could speak directly to the troopers who arrested and harassed you, what would you want to say to them? What would you want to tell them if you knew they were listening to you right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I would want them to know that I’m a person. I’m a human being. People care about me. Think about that. Think about what you’re supposed to be doing in your job. You’re supposed to be taking care of people protecting, not inventing crimes.
Taya Graham:
Now, I want to reiterate what I said at the beginning of the show, drunk driving is a dangerous and destructive crime. And I, for one, understand why police departments and the public emphasize efforts to thwart it. Drunk driving deaths account for roughly one third of all traffic fatalities every year. Roughly 11,000 died in 2023 due to people driving while intoxicated.
But also, I think that what we witnessed in the video of Dakarai’s arrest shows the pitfalls of abandoning common sense and sound science as we try to prevent it, or more precisely what happens when a zeal to address a problem with cops and cuffs overwhelms common sense and the nuance that comes with it.
This is certainly not the only false DUI arrest we have covered. There were the bogus charges against a Dallas firefighter Thomas C, who was forced to retire from his lifelong job as a first responder when officers used another specious field sobriety test to accuse him of driving under the influence, because he freely admitted using his doctor-prescribed Adderall. It took him two years to get his test results, which, although they were negative or too late to save his job.
Or we shared the story of Harris Elias of Colorado, a professional pilot who was pulled over and again, thanks to a biased interpretation of a field sobriety test, ended up with false DUI charges, charges that took months to clear, that threatened his ability to do his job, and later resulted in a major civil rights lawsuit.
All of these share some common problems. Cops are overly eager to bring DUI charges, and because of that, ignoring the evidence that is contrary to their opinions. Add to that a very subjective and flawed field sobriety test, a diagnostic process that seems easily susceptible to the concept of confirmation bias, where the officer administering the test already believes the subject is intoxicated, and thus interprets the results to confirm what he already believes, no matter how the person performs.
And yes, there are imperatives that often lead to the incarceration of the innocent. Well-intentioned organizations like MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, run DUI Ticket Competitions that frequently encourage officers to hand out DUIs in order to receive grants, awards, public acclaim, and promotions. Even the most wholesome goals can be warped when law enforcement is incentivized by quotas and financial rewards.
But I believe something else lies deeper at the very root of these bogus arrests we’ve covered, something more profound than just an officer making a bad decision, or not maintaining an open mind about how to enforce the law. I believe that flawed field sobriety tests are just like the other unjust forms of governance that were originally designed to solve a problem, but in the end seem only to perpetuate them. So what do I mean?
Well, Stephen and I have spent a great deal of time reporting across the country on a variety of issues, and that includes our hometown of Baltimore where we spent five years documenting the use of tax breaks to spur development. As you may or may not know, Baltimore is a city beset by poverty and housing segregation that has struggled to stem population loss. It’s often deemed one of the most violent cities in America, and it has some of the highest concentrations of poverty, with thousands of abandoned homes, and to top it all off the highest property tax rate in the state, almost double the surrounding counties.
Put simply much of Baltimore is part of America’s great inequality machine, incapable of producing enough affordable housing or reasonably priced healthcare for all of us, while increasing the amount of wealth concentrated among the top 1%, a symbol in many ways for how our current system consistently fails to address the needs of the many. And to my point about our flawed system for catching drunk drivers, Baltimore’s response has been equally flawed in addressing the root problem that afflicts our community.
As we outlined in our documentary Tax Broke, one of the city’s primary solutions to population loss has been to award huge tax breaks to these developers. These carve-outs have allowed the wealthiest suburban builders to avoid paying the high rate that the city’s working class is regularly subjected to.
And this is no pittance. Some estimate the city has given away billions in future revenues in order to build luxury developments that ironically do not include affordable housing. Instead, future tax revenue that should help pay for critical services and investment in the city’s future has been handed over to the already wealthy.
Now of course, you’re probably asking at this point, “Taya, what are you talking about? How are tax breaks for development related to unfounded DUI arrests? What on earth are the commonalities between a bad development strategy and an overeager DUI cop?” Well hear me out.
Here’s where it all ties together, and I will even give it a title: America is the Land of the Perverse Incentive. In other words, our country and its great neoliberal project have abandoned the idea that the government can do good and productive things. Instead, the elites have exchanged that idea for the false narrative that only incentives laden with cash can prompt real productive behavior.
In this land of perverse incentives, medical companies are incentivized to bill people for diseases that they do not have. As stated in this report by the Wall Street Journal that found billions of dollars spent on patients who did not have the underlying disease that the medical insurers submitted to the government.
In the land of perverse incentives, private equity firms take over stable companies and load them up with debt so they can pay themselves a dividend. Then, they fire staff and neglect investing in the firm itself, selling a carcass to Wall Street for the vultures.
In the land of perverse incentives, people make more money trading money than they do building things like affordable housing. In fact, Wall Street creates huge funds to purchase single-family homes across the country and then they jack up rents, so middle-class families are stuck without options.
And of course, in the land of perverse incentives, cops who make more DOI arrests are given awards, and departments that make more drunk driving stops are given more money, and thus we have the stories we reported before. And finally, in the land of perverse incentives, one of the poorest cities in the country has doled out billions in tax breaks to wealthy developers who don’t need it, in fact, it’s so absurd that luxury condos on top of the Four Seasons hotel in Baltimore received millions in tax breaks for environmental mediation, even though the records we uncovered showed none was done, and that the condos in question were literally hundreds of feet above the ground where the non-existent pollution was actually supposed to be.
All of this is why we end up with sketchy DOI arrests based on shaky science, or a poor city that can’t build affordable housing, but can fund wealthy developers to build luxury apartments. Why a city rocked with poverty is neglected, while a system that monetizes the sick, so wealthy Wall Street investors can get rich over billing them and pushing them into bankruptcy, is called, ironically, health care.
It’s this thread that connects all the dots of the realities that often seem to contradict themselves. Why would the wealthiest country in the world not be able to deliver affordable medical care to all who need it? And why would one of the poorest cities in the country not be able to build affordable housing if it is at the same time capable of giving away a billion dollars of tax revenue to the ultra rich?
All of these questions are worth asking, because the outcomes are just so difficult to comprehend. Being sick should not be a prerequisite to bankruptcy. Being poor should not mean you pay higher taxes than someone who is unfathomably wealthy. Being sober, by having difficulty balancing on one leg, which was decidedly not the case with our guest, should not lead to an arrest charge and a shattered life.
These apparent destructive inadequacies of governance affect all of us. This inability to use the resources of the people to serve the people ensures that we all suffer. This type of incentivized mayhem that finds form in bad policing should make us all question the priority of those who hold and wield the power. It’s incumbent upon us to hold them accountable and remind them that they serve us, not the other way around.
I would like to thank my guest, Dakarai, for coming forward, courageously sharing his experience and shining a light on this abuse of power. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Holy D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you.
And a very special thanks to our Accountability Reports Patreons, we appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next live stream, especially Patreon Associate Producers, John E.R., David K, Louis P, and our super friends, Shane B, Pineapple Girl, Chris R, Matter of Rights, and Angela True.
And I want you to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @TayasBaltimore, and we might be able to investigate for you. And please like, share, and comment on our videos, it can actually help our guests, and you know I read your comments and I really appreciate them.
And of course, once again, we have to thank our corporate sponsor. Wait, that’s right, we don’t have a corporate sponsor. We don’t take corporate dollars. We don’t run ads, but we do have a Patreon, Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. You know you never see an ad on this channel, and we’re never going to be sponsored, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.
My name is Taya Graham and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
On the heels of 2023, a year when Baltimore’s annual homicide number significantly declined for the first time in nearly a decade, the Baltimore Police held a press conference to celebrate what public officials and the Department of Justice called “a significant milestone.”
That early 2024 “milestone”: two of the many reforms required by the federal consent decree—the result of a civil rights investigation following the 2015 police killing of Freddie Gray—were recently completed to the approval of the Department of Justice. These completed reforms are related to transporting people in police custody and “officer support and wellness practices.”
At the press conference, City Solicitor Ebony Thompson suggested that 2023’s violence reduction was the result of these reforms. “This milestone is occurring at a time when the city is achieving a recent and historic reduction in violent crime,” Thompson said, calling the reforms “a testament to the effectiveness of constitutional and community focused policing.”
The arrest data in Open Baltimore demonstrates that, contrary to what would be expected, data gathering by police has become less comprehensive and more faulty since the implementation of the federal consent decree.
Another way of looking at this “milestone”: over the previous seven years, only around 5% of the consent decree-mandated reforms have been completed. Following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a Department of Justice civil rights investigation revealed a staggering pattern and practice of civil rights violations and discriminatory policing. As a result of that investigation, the Baltimore Police Department entered into a federal consent decree in April 2017. Seven years later, the most significant elements of the consent decree, regarding police misconduct (including use of force), have barely even begun. WYPR reported that “about 15% of the decree hasn’t been touched yet.”
This means the claim being made, really, is that murders have declined because police are reducing the number of “rough rides” and also receiving more wellness support—a specious connection, and an example of how reform is regularly misrepresented to the public by political leaders and police.
As the Baltimore Police Department goes through another year under the consent decree, with changes to the department slow going, TRNN found that Baltimore data transparency and retention has gotten worse and its numbers have become increasingly unreliable.
The Baltimore City Police Department provides Open Baltimore, the city’s publicly accessible data hub, with data about crime and police activity. Baltimore’s political leaders and police pride themselves on data access and transparency. These datasets are often used as research tools for citizens, reporters, and those in policy development and law enforcement. Indeed, everyone is encouraged to consult Open Baltimore.
But we found these datasets to be deeply flawed in ways that would make any conclusions drawn from them unsound—especially for governance and policing. The arrest data in Open Baltimore demonstrates that, contrary to what would be expected, data gathering by police has become less comprehensive and more faulty since the implementation of the federal consent decree.
Specifically, there are significant differences between Open Baltimore arrest data and Uniform Crime Report data (UCR). UCR is provided to the FBI by law enforcement offices all over the country each year and was, for decades, the most referenced and most frequently cited dataset about crime. There are flaws with UCR, including the problem with all law enforcement data: it is self-reported by law enforcement.
That said, UCR data for 1990-2020 was provided to TRNN by Baltimore Police via a public information request, making it the most comprehensive data set available for such a long period of time.
The number of arrests recorded in Open Baltimore data varies significantly from the numbers in UCR, often by thousands. Baltimore Police provide data to both the FBI and Open Baltimore, making the cause of differences between the two datasets especially confounding. Additionally, there are a significant number of arrests not included in the Open Baltimore dataset, and the differences between the numbers recorded in UCR and Open Baltimore data have widened over time. Arrests seemingly disappear from Open Baltimore.
In February 2023, we pulled an arrest data file from Open Baltimore. In the arrest data between the years 2010-2020, a total of 335,805 arrests were shown.
That same arrest file was pulled four months later in June 2023. There were 386 fewer arrests.
An additional data analysis was completed in January 2024. The same trend continued, at a much greater rate. In the course of nearly a year, more than 4,300 arrests were removed from the total for 2010-2020.
Year
# of arrests 2/8/23
# of arrests 6/23/23
# of arrests 1/24/24
Difference (Feb. 2023-June 2023)
Difference (Feb. 2023-Jan. 2024)
2010
45,560
45,515
45,224
-45
-336
2011
43,704
43,667
43,364
-37
-340
2012
42,681
42,632
42,333
-49
-348
2013
39,866
39,821
39,542
-45
-324
2014
37,495
37,447
37,078
-48
-417
2015
26,084
26,059
25,732
-25
-352
2016
23,420
23,402
23,089
-18
-331
2017
22,493
22,428
21,989
-65
-504
2018
20,940
20,912
20,543
-28
-397
2019
19,622
19,601
19,407
-21
-215
2020
13,940
13,935
13,162
-5
-778
Total
355,805
335,419
331,463
-386
-4342
Table 1: Total arrests recorded for years 2010-2020 as retrieved Feb. 2023 vs June 2023 vs. Jan. 2024 from Open Baltimore.
When we spoke to Baltimore City employees, including representatives from Open Baltimore and Baltimore Police, their reason for removing previously-recorded arrests from Open Baltimore’s data was unclear. Arrests that are documented but do not result in a charge, or are accidentally duplicated or inaccurately entered are removed during reviews by police. Additionally, the police explained that expungements may have something to do with the lower numbers of arrests. They could not tell us how frequently arrests are removed for either of those reasons.
This arrest data is frequently cited. One recent example of Open Baltimore’s flawed year-to-year data being cited is the Baltimore Banner’s 2022 analysis of arrests. At the end of 2022, the Banner reported that arrests had increased for the first time in nearly a decade. While the broad conclusions are correct—based on the data, arrests did slightly increase in 2022—the year-to-year arrest numbers cited by the Banner are quite different from past UCR numbers and contemporaneous reporting because the number of arrests recorded in those years in Open Baltimore have declined.
Whatever the reason for the lowered arrest numbers, it means that Open Baltimore provides an increasingly incomplete picture of police activity from the past as each dataset gets older. It is not a record of those people who were handcuffed and arrested at a specific point in time—their lives put on hold for weeks, months, or years—but a record of how some of those arrests were processed long after that, based on an unknown and unnamed number of factors.
A recent review of Open Baltimore shows that, months after our year-long analysis, arrest data continues to decline.
TRNN also looked at geographic location data within Open Baltimore’s arrest data. Over the past 13 years, Open Baltimore’s arrest data is missing locations in, on average, 37% of arrests. That percentage increased from 4% in 2010 to as high as 61% in 2022.
The percentage of missing data has increased significantly since 2015 when the city police were put under increased scrutiny following Freddie Gray’s death (46% missing location data) and in 2017 (49% missing data) when the consent decree was implemented.
Year
# of arrests with missing location data 1/24/2024
Total arrests 1/24/2024
% of arrests with missing location data
2010
1,646
45,224
3.6%
2011
13,573
43,364
31.3%
2012
12,640
42,333
29.9%
2013
11,876
39,542
30.0%
2014
14,485
37,078
39.1%
2015
11,727
25,732
45.6%
2016
10,836
23,089
46.9%
2017
10,814
21,989
49.2%
2018
10,545
20,543
51.3%
2019
10,550
19,407
54.4%
2020
7.394
13,162
56.2%
2021
6,434
11,130
57.8%
2022
7,605
12,360
61.5%
2023
7,971
13,594
58.6%
Total
138,096
368,547
37.5%
Table 2: Missing location data by year per Open Baltimore.
It is unclear whether this location-based data is missing from police records as well, or if police records maintain this data with locations and, for reasons unknown, it was not given to Open Baltimore.
One more example of how poor data entry has been in Baltimore: throughout the ’90s, there are entries in Maryland Case Search in which the officer name is “Officer, Police” or “Police, Officer.” Over 500 of these results are for arrests in Baltimore City where the last name is “Officer.” There are over 300 where the first name is “Police” and nearly 300 where the first name is “Baltimore.” That data entry in the ’90s was poor is hardly a surprise. That these “Officer, Police” permutations have stood for decades in the database shows that data cleansing and validation has never been prioritized.
Representatives from city government, including Open Baltimore, seemed entirely unaware of these problems with Open Baltimore’s data until we brought them to their attention. After months seeking comment or explanation, Open Baltimore was not able to provide a thorough explanation.
In a city where policing is scrutinized for bias and professionalized for data gathering, and police enforcement itself is informed by targeting “microzones,” the lack of comprehensive location data (nearly 40% is missing) available to the public is troubling.
Open Baltimore provides an increasingly incomplete picture of police activity from the past as each dataset gets older. It is not a record of those people who were handcuffed and arrested at a specific point in time—their lives put on hold for weeks, months, or years—but a record of how some of those arrests were processed long after that, based on an unknown and unnamed number of factors.
A History of Dirty Data
While there are problems with the police records provided to Open Baltimore, the unreliability of Baltimore crime data has been a decades-long problem. Collection and reporting of crime data has been a hotly contested issue in Baltimore and the data provided has been frequently insufficient, unsound, and in some cases, manipulated.
In the ’90s—the decade leading up to “zero tolerance”—then-Councilperson Martin O’Malley and others accused Mayor Kurt Schmoke of adjusting statistics to make crime seem lower than it actually was. Police Commissioner Thomas Frazier’s report in the mid-’90s about nonfatal shooting reductions was also challenged.
After O’Malley was elected mayor in 1999, he commissioned an audit which found violent crime was frequently downgraded. As a result of the audit, thousands of felonies were added to the official number for 1999. This also had the effect of making any decrease in crime during the first year of the O’Malley administration even more dramatic.
O’Malley would later be accused of the same sort of stats manipulation. In 2001, O’Malley said there were 78,000 arrests, but the official number was 86,000. Official arrest numbers for 2005 are around 100,000, while the ACLU claimed the number was 108,000.
In 2006, WBAL Investigative Reporter Jayne Miller (a TRNN contributor) revealed that police were simply not counting all of the violent crimes reported. For example, Miller found that “police wrote no report of a shooting… despite locating and interviewing the intended target, who was not hurt. Instead, the officers combined the incident with armed robbery that occurred earlier that night in the same area—a practice known as duplicating.”
After 2006, the department shifted away from mass arrest towards what they framed as more “targeted” styles of policing, focused on violent offenders rather than low-level offenders. In Part Two of this series, we noted that the data from these years showed a decrease in low-level offenses but did not show an increase in the enforcement of violent crimes. A policy of greater focus on guns and gun possession during this period is also not reflected in the data. Gun seizures were much higher in the ’90s than in the period where gun policing was supposedly the focus.
Here We Go Again
The short history and long tail of Baltimore’s “zero tolerance” policing.
In our reporting, we also learned that gun seizure data—another metric often cited by the police to illustrate how hard police are working to get guns “off the street” and reduce violence—includes guns given to the police during gun buyback programs. For example, in 2017 there were 1,917 gun seizures. In 2018, there were 3,911. The reason for that jump was not the result of increased enforcement or a jump in the rate of illegal gun possession, it was because the city resurrected its gun buyback program. That 2018 buyback resulted in 1,089 guns handed over to police.
Willingly handing over a gun to police in exchange for cash is most likely not what the public imagines BPD is describing when they announce the total of gun “seizures” in a year.
Baltimore Police do not provide data about nonfatal shooting numbers before 1999 because, police told us, the department does not have the ability to easily extract this number from the broader aggravated assault category that shootings were once categorized under. This means that the police department, whose strategies are often informed by data on shootings and murders, does not have information about the number of nonfatal shootings that occurred before 1999. There is seemingly no way to easily look at how that crucial number has historically changed.
“We Have No Idea What Is Happening”
These problems with data and the lack of transparency are costly. Baltimore spends more per capita on its police department than any other major American city, but the city and department have consistently failed in their oversight of how that money is actually spent, especially on police overtime. Exorbitant overtime is a commonly used indicator when searching for problem police officers and police corruption. For example, members of the infamous Gun Trace Task Force were among the officers who were nearly doubling their salary with overtime. And, as Baltimore Brew reported, the same overtime offenders appeared year after year; the Maryland State Office of Legislative Audits recently found that Baltimore Police “failed to effectively monitor $66.5 million in overtime.”
Police quarreled with the auditor’s conclusions and assured overtime practices would now be reformed and ready by the end of May 2024. They were not. Since 2016, the Baltimore Police has failed overtime audits each year—and each year, police explain that the department needs a little more time to fix overtime.
Melissa Schober, a community advocate, has been calling attention to the failed overtime audit by the Baltimore Police for years. She told TRNN that her concerns extend to the broader metrics used by police, not just overtime. Metrics remain oblique and undefined and, according to police, cannot improve because they are contingent upon a police budget they claim is inadequate. The Baltimore City police budget is nearly $600 million per year, Schober stressed.
The refusal to properly share, let alone collect, this data also enables police misconduct.
“My fury isn’t just at the overtime overspending. It is that years after the Fiscal Year 2016—that’s July 1, 2015, so nearly a decade ago—we are still somehow ‘in progress’ on documenting metrics because carrying those things out are ‘budget dependent’ but they never manage to say how much they’re short and when they expect to complete the work,” Schober said. “Until and unless the BPD can say, ‘Here’s our outcome and here is the numerator and denominator and here’s how we validate those numbers (or counts), here’s our data dictionary and here’s how we train our folks to count things,’ we have no idea what is happening with money.”
While the city celebrates the “progress” police are making with the federal consent decree, data remains incomplete. Some data-gathering related to the consent decree has not even begun.
The consent decree requires the police to record stop and search data, but, as the Baltimore Banner reported, that has not even started, even though it is perhaps the most crucial way, data-wise, to get a sense of discriminatory and unconstitutional policing. The Baltimore Sun recently reported that Baltimore Police do not keep track of how often their officers get in police chases. Soon after the Sun published their story, police released the data they previously said they did not track.
The refusal to properly share, let alone collect, this data also enables police misconduct. There is no way to determine how often questionable stops occur, because it is only when police stops result in arrests that they are recorded. For defense attorneys, this is not only a gap in data, it’s a convenient way for police not to account for constitutional violations.
The lack of stop and search data means constitutional violations are revealed only when they happen to someone arrested for a crime—at which point the constitutional violation is often ignored by prosecutors and judges because the arrestee was found to have broken the law.
“Police are never discouraged from crossing the line when they stop and search someone without probable cause—and they are actually encouraged to cross the line any time they find a gun,” defense attorney and former public defender Natalie Finegar told TRNN.
Since 2017, Baltimore Police have relied on an expansive—and controversial—plainclothes policing unit called DAT (District Action Team) whose primary job is gun and drug interdiction. They do this in part by searching people they deem “suspicious” or representing “characteristics of an armed person.” The Baltimore Police argue that this kind of “proactive policing” and these types of questionable stops are vital to violence reduction. The police lack data to back up this claim.
“When auditors looked at percent of time spent on proactive policing, the BPD was unable to produce documentation detailing how and why they selected that as a performance measure, and then how they monitored, controlled, and analyzed data.”
Melissa Schober, community advocate
“While it can be difficult to correlate officer proactivity and visibility to what crimes have been prevented, we have seen that when these units are deployed, they have an impact on crime suppression and calming for the community,” Baltimore Police spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge told TRNN.
According to Schober, the problem is not only the inability of police to provide data, but to even explain why certain data points such as “proactive policing” were even analyzed.
“When auditors looked at percent of time spent on proactive policing, the BPD was unable to produce documentation detailing how and why they selected that as a performance measure, and then how they monitored, controlled, and analyzed data,” Schober said.
Data’s Inconvenient Truths
Last year, Baltimore recorded 262 murders, a decline of 70 from 2022—a “historic” reduction. This drop in murders is notable and important. Far fewer people died in Baltimore from gun violence last year compared to previous years, and these declines have continued into 2024—as of June, murders had declined by another 36%.
Our data analysis in Part Two noted that, due to population decline, the current drop in murders puts the city’s murder rate—people killed per 100,000—at almost the exact same place it was in 1990. The use of that 300 number as a benchmark, as we explained in Part One, dates back to the early ’90s when the city first surpassed 300 murders per year, and also had a significantly higher population. When accounting for population decline, 1990’s 300 murders-per-year number is around 240 murders.
In 2024, Baltimore will likely have far fewer than even 240 homicides. At the end of June, Baltimore had recorded 89 homicides, which makes the city on track to endure fewer than 200 murders for the first time since 2011.
The mayor and others have already credited the one-year reduction to its Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) and other interrelated initiatives. But there is simply no way to look at one or two years of data and make any serious determinations as to what caused that decline—especially when violent crime is “dropping fast” nationwide. In 2024, homicides have declined at rates that are even more impressive than last year’s reductions.
As we saw in the ’90s, New York City’s violence reduction was prematurely credited to “zero tolerance” policies. Within a couple of years, the supposed success of “zero tolerance” meant it was exported to cities such as Baltimore and New Orleans. While many scholars have since questioned if “zero tolerance” had much to do with crime reduction, the policy itself, which led to Baltimore police arresting hundreds of thousands for low-level crimes, inarguably caused irreparable harm—especially to Black communities.
Baltimore’s crime numbers game
For decades, “common wisdom” regarding violence reduction has failed a city that regularly surpasses 300 murders a year and spends the most per capita on policing.
Data informs policy creation, so the data should be vetted. During our conversation with city employees who handle and publish data, they described themselves as “like Uber,” which is to say, they are a neutral transporter of data from one place to another. The police send Open Baltimore data and they post it, no questions asked.
So, returning to our initial question, why are arrests being removed from Open Baltimore? If part of this gap between Open Baltimore and UCR data is actually due to expungements, as police claimed, that still creates a problem in the data. An expungement does not mean the arrest did not occur. It means the person who was arrested went through the lengthy process of removing an arrest or charge from their personal criminal record in order to gain employment, rent an apartment, or apply for a loan.
If recorded arrests are leaving Open Baltimore because of expungements (or any other reason), police who provide data to Open Baltimore and Open Baltimore itself should account for the change by maintaining a record of removed arrests in the data provided to Open Baltimore. When someone consults Open Baltimore for arrest numbers, they reasonably assume they are getting a record of those arrests for that year, not how those numbers look currently, with arrests removed for reasons that Baltimore Police cannot adequately explain.
With nearly 40% of arrests lacking location data and Open Baltimore’s removed arrests, the data contains too many unknowns.
Past policies have been built upon incomplete and frequently flawed data. Data collection begins with fingers on a keyboard. Data-driven policies are only effective if the data collection and cleansing processes are logical, consistent, and thoroughly understood. Poor data collection, for example, can lead to sloppy data entry, which, in turn, leads to dirty data, which then, in turn, leads to potentially wildly inaccurate conclusions—and, therefore, faulty and ineffective policy decisions.
Recent changes to data input methods and analysis—that is, changes in the system used to record and categorize this data—make comparisons between years much more difficult. This means residents, reporters, and other members of the public cannot easily fact check claims by city officials and law enforcement.
Cities sometimes change the methods they use to measure crime. In 2021, the FBI retired UCR and began using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) instead. NIBRS categorizes data quite differently than UCR. This means that certain crimes may appear to increase or decrease as an effect of recording them in the NIBRS system, not because of a difference in the number. “This does not mean that crime has increased; it just means the way crimes are reported has changed,” Baltimore Police explain on their website.
Recent changes to Baltimore’s police districts mean even short-term comparisons between years or areas of the city are going to be much more difficult. The redistricting of Baltimore’s police department’s districts—for the first time in over 50 years—makes it “impossible” to easily compare police metrics going forward. Indeed, at a Public Safety Committee hearing in late 2023, the data on homicides and nonfatal shootings by district that was presented simply stopped in early July because of redistricting.
Data does not lie, but it often reveals inconvenient truths. But data can only be as truthful as it is complete and accurate. Interrogating the city’s publicly available data reveals ongoing and historic systemic flaws in collection and reporting to such an extent that it’s likely not possible to derive reliable or even usable conclusions from the information shared in the name of transparency.
Epilogue: ‘Excessive Force’
It was May 23 around 1PM when members of Baltimore Police Department’s District Action Team, looking for a robbery suspect, ran up on 24-year-old Jaemaun Joyner. Tackled by police, Joyner lay on his back on the pavement gasping, arms and legs pinned. One of the cops announced that Joyner reached for something. “I ain’t reaching for nothing,” Joyner screamed. “I can’t breathe.”
Police went through Joyner’s pockets. He asked what they were doing. That’s when Detective Connor Johnson grabbed Joyner by the throat and pressed his service weapon against Joyner’s temple. “He put something in my pocket! He put something in my pocket,” Joyner screamed over and over again with a gun to his head.
Joyner was arrested on gun and drug charges.
Joyner’s lawyers said that a detective holding a gun to someone’s head was clearly an example of excessive force, and outside the bounds of anything acceptable by a police officer, especially one in a city under a consent decree. “I’ve read the consent decree and BPD policy, and nowhere does it say it’s reasonable for an officer to hold a gun to someone’s temple,” defense attorney Jessica Rubin told the Baltimore Banner. “Point blank, period. That’s the most egregious thing an officer can do.”
Joyner’s lawyers stressed that the statement of probable cause—a police officer’s written and sworn description of an arrest—did not describe Johnson holding a gun to Joyner’s head at all.
Had the stop not resulted in an arrest, there likely would have been no documentation of the incident.
The police report also suggested Joyner remained a suspect in the robbery even though the victim confirmed he was not involved. After spending 54 days in jail, Joyner was released— his charges dropped only after his lawyers showed the shocking body-worn camera footage to the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.
Johnson has made the news before. He was involved in a fatal shooting last year. Residents have complained about his questionable traffic stops and searches. His Internal Affairs summary, obtained by TRNN, shows a complaint marked “sustained” for failing to properly seatbelt someone who was arrested.
In a moment when officials celebrate consent decree “milestones” such as proper seatbelting, Baltimore’s criminal defense attorneys see a department reverting to the very tactics that got the department investigated by the Department of Justice nearly a decade ago.
“This is what we’ve been trying to get away from since Freddie Gray,” defense attorney Hunter Pruette told TRNN. “And they’re trying to walk it back. I think these are the same tactics that led us to the problem we had before.”
Baltimore police appear unconcerned. Police said they had been aware of the incident and saw no reason to suspend Johnson while it was being investigated. When Commissioner Daryl Worley was asked about the incident at a press conference, the 25-plus-year veteran of the department defended Johnson’s behavior.
“He was out there doing his job, in an area where we want him to be, and going after individuals with guns,” Worley said.
Earlier this month, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced they would not criminally charge Johnson for holding his service weapon to a restrained man’s head.
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.
For nearly half a century, Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz was a political prisoner of the United States. Prior to his incarceration, Shoatz fought against US capitalism and imperialism as a member of the Black Panther Party, and then as a soldier of the Black Liberation Army. Due to his two successful escapes from prison and organizing behind bars, Shoatz spent two decades in solitary confinement. Despite this brutal repression, Shoatz continued to struggle for liberation, leaving behind a trove of political writings that continue to inspire revolutionaries to this day. Shoatz’s children, Russell Shoatz III and Sharon Shoatz, join Rattling the Bars for a discussion on his newly published memoir, co-written with Kanya D’Almeida, I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Back in the ’60s, we had an organization that formed a formidable fighting formation. It was known as the Black Panther Party. The founder of Rattling the Bars, Eddie Conway, was a former member of the Black Panther Party. He was set up, framed, and locked up for almost 40 years before he was released.
During this time, while he was incarcerated, he organized a collective of prisoners that we developed. A collective called the Maryland Pen Intercommunal Survival Collective, [inaudible] as a hybrid form of the Black Panther Party.
Joining me today is the children of Russell Maroon Shoatz, who also found himself in the same situation that Eddie Conway and other members of the Black Panther Party found themselves in. They dared to struggle and they dared to win, and as a result of that, they found themselves captive, enslaved, and fighting for their freedom.
Joining me today is Russell Shoatz and Sharon Shoatz. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Sharon Shoatz: Thank you.
Russell Shoatz III: Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa: All right, so recently — And if not, y’all can correct me as we go along — Y’all have a new book coming out called I Am Maroon, and it’s a memoir of your father, Russell Maroon Shoatz. And it’s slated to come out this month, or is it already out this month?
Sharon Shoatz: Yeah, the pub date, September the third, the publication date. September…
Mansa Musa: OK. So let’s unpack. Let’s unpack. First of all, who was Russell Maroon Shoatz? You can start with this one, Russell. Sharon, you can fill in — And it’s not a chauvinist thing, it’s just the way I want to do it at this time.
Russell Shoatz III: So my father was, basically, a young Black person growing up in a community, a Black community in West Philadelphia. At that time, pre ’60s and pre Civil Rights time, there was a gang culture in Philadelphia. He was a part of that. There was a doo-wop culture in Philadelphia, he was a part of that, singing on the corner, drinking wines, all that stuff.
Went to some juvenile detention centers for his youth involvement in some of that gang and street activity, then became older and got politicized through going see Malcolm in New York. And then was involved in a political action, which was the retaliation shooting of a police officer after Amadou Diallo style, George Floyd style shooting of a youth in Philadelphia. And that’s kind of a nutshell bio of my dad.
Mansa Musa: And Sharon, in terms of your father’s maturation, because y’all was young when he got locked up, how did you process his maturation in terms of, like your brother said, growing up in Philly, being subjected, like all like Watts, Compton, Southeast DC, you name it, any ghetto that was being colonized by the country and policed by the police. How did you look at your father’s growth and development in terms of his ultimate maturation to become a political figure?
Sharon Shoatz: For me, I think I lived in two worlds, one in which I knew my father was a part of something larger that I couldn’t actually define as a child. But I know my family was instrumental, his family in particular, my aunts and uncles were definitely there for us growing up and keeping us in that realm of consciousness about what was going on with my father, but not really cluing us in on it as we know it in his autobiography.
And then, on the other hand, we were children growing up, and we weren’t subjected to the type of bullying that we see today. But I know when my father escaped both times, we then encountered questions about who we were. Because the Shoatz name, it’s not a common name, and when you see that plastered all over the newspaper, “Cop Killer”, you then as a child, then get those questions.
But I didn’t feel that our community wasn’t there for us. The community was still very supportive. And again, the Shoatz family, my aunts, my grandmother, they were always there to help us understand some of what was going on, but not really the level that I know it to this day.
Mansa Musa: Right. And OK, let’s talk about how did this particular project come about? Because do y’all have another book that was written, or was this the first book that’s written?
Sharon Shoatz: So his first book was the Maroon the Implacable, which was a series of writings that he had did over a number of years that was out there in the ether. A lot of anarchists was publishing it, and people were reading it all over the world, really.
And then, this project in particular came about, I would say, in the ’90s, particularly in 1990 when I moved to New York City. He had asked me to get his dossier to the tribunal. They were having a tribunal at that time for US held political prisoners, the human rights abuses. And I was new to New York, the geography and the landscape, so I didn’t find it. It was on Hunter’s campus, and I didn’t know the campus, and I didn’t know where I was going.
But in the process, I end up meeting members of the Black Panther Party and the BLA. And that was like Safiya Bukhari and [inaudible], the Holder Brothers. And these people actually knew my father. So here I was meeting these 20th century revolutionaries in the Black Panther Party, and it was on the hills of the landscape of Nelson Mandela being free. I had went to LA, I happened to see him at the Coliseum.
So they started telling me stories. So it allowed me to lean in on these stories that I had never heard. I had visited them all through my life. My family was there and supportive, but they had never really shared any stories. And so from that, it allowed me to press my father, like who are you? Who are you? And I know you my father, the seed and the genetic piece, but —
Mansa Musa: But who are you?
Sharon Shoatz: Yeah. So that started us writing back and forth until we had this family document. And then, he wanted to then use that document to get out of solitary. And that’s the collaboration where Kanya comes in.
And now we have what you have today, which is the publication of I Am Maroon, which was a family document that was used to try to secure his freedom from solitary. Fred Ho had suggested that he use it. They brought Kanya in, and then that collaboration began. And here you have this final production of I Am Maroon.
Mansa Musa: And Russell, like Sharon said, she found herself, at one point in time, after being exposed to our comrades, members of the Black Panther Party and other revolutionaries and people fighting our struggle. At one point, she became enlightened that, OK, my father’s my father, but he’s somebody else. Did you have that same experience, being exposed to people that ultimately gave you a different perspective of your father, or you always had this perspective of your father’s being a freedom fighter and a revolutionary?
Russell Shoatz III: No, no. Yeah, I had this similar experience —
Mansa Musa: Talk about it.
Russell Shoatz III: So I had been visiting my dad and doing work around him for a couple years before my sisters joined in that movement to liberate my father. And just like her, and all of us, and people after my sister, Sharon, my other sisters and brothers, as we all came to support him at different times, would ask him, who are you, dude?
Even if I had conversations with my sister and be like, oh, dad said this, or whatever, it’s still that because it’s your biological father or whatever. It’s still that, I guess, interpersonal conversation that you want to have with that person, with your dad and say… My first question, in my naivete, my first question was, who was the shooter? Did you shoot the cop or did one of the other [inaudible].
And that question was for me to be to the next question was, if you did shoot them, then why don’t you let them dudes go? And if you didn’t shoot them, why don’t you try to get out? But that wasn’t their rubric, that wasn’t their understanding. That wasn’t going to happen. They all kind of went to death. They would die before they would tell on each other or try to get out of the situation. But yes, it went very similar. Everybody wanted to know who their father was.
Mansa Musa: Right. And let’s frame this situation, because we’re talking about Philadelphia and Rizzo and the Gestapo. LA had a Gestapo unit, but Philadelphia had a Gestapo unit of police that even your father spoke about in the early years when he was young, that they just randomly walked down on Black youth and commenced to beating them and then lock them up.
But let’s talk about that period, to your knowledge, in terms of what led to them ultimately being captives. What was that environment, from your knowledge, because he talk about in the book, what was that environment like during that era that gave birth to Maroon?
Russell Shoatz III: If people don’t know, they should Google Rizzo. Rizzo was the police chief in Philadelphia. He is the forerunner of the police states that we see today. They had a Gestapo unit in LA. They had a couple units around the country at that time.
But even prior to those days, when Rizzo came into office, he was the first police chief to say, let’s send our officers over to Israel and train over there with them. Let’s be tactical with the dogs and stuff like that. Let’s strip the Panthers naked in front of their office. Let’s do all of these radical things, policing-wise, to keep, for lack of better terms, the people on edge. And it really did keep people on edge.
And also, the sentencing and the judicial followed his lead in the context of Philadelphia having the most lifers, the most juvenile lifers, the most people without parole, juvenile lifers without parole, lifers without parole, just the toughest sentencing in the country over a mass group of people. And so that’s just a part of that culture.
But you also see it in the activism ideology of Philly all the way from my dad, through MOVE, through the juvenile lifers. And so it’s a certain type of energy that came out of that tough, tough repression that you’re seeing bloom 30, 40 years after.
Mansa Musa: Sharon?
Sharon Shoatz: And I would also just add to that, not much, but the fact of the racism was more entrenched with Rizzo, as well as the brutality and oppression. But even that racist mentality of law and order, and we have to keep these Black or minority people in their place. With housing, with discrimination, it was just rampant in Philadelphia.
So it is not a wonder that there were people taking up arms in Philadelphia to deal with oppressive state and injustice where they saw it, right in their communities where they lived at. They saw it every day.
Mansa Musa: And also, I remember, before they dropped the bomb on the MOVE, I remember looking at an article in a radical newsletter where they had a picture of the police taking the butt of the gun and bashing one of the MOVE members’ head in. It was almost like the My Lai massacre where they showed that picture of the police shooting the brain out of that kid in Vietnam.
Russell Shoatz III: Oh yeah.
Mansa Musa: I like what you say about Google it, but more importantly, you don’t have to Google to find out who Rizzo is, all you gotta do is read I Am Maroon to get an understanding on who the Philadelphia police were, how they operated. That’ll give you context that this is a real live person that’s regurgitating or recounting this event.
Talk about your father in terms of working his way out and ultimately getting to a point where he was positioned to get out, and how the death of 1,000 cuts had took its toll on him in terms of his health and everything.
Sharon Shoatz: I think Maroon, my dad, never relented from freedom. And it didn’t matter what it took or what toll his body was going to take, because ultimately, those beatings… When you escape from prison, don’t think they just rush you back in nice. I mean, he took a few beat downs.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, I already know.
Sharon Shoatz: He took several beat downs to the point where his body ultimately succumbed to some of that, of course. And then the brutality of solitary confinement. To come out and not being able to walk up and down steps because you hadn’t walked up and down steps for 22 years.
And when he came out, we was happy, but we didn’t think about the physical toll that it would take on him. And to know that the prison, the food is unhealthy. And it’s up to the point where the medical is non-existent.
Sharon Shoatz: [Inaudible]. My sister, I mean, she was really on his medical health, and she held them to a standard. So they was calling her and reporting what his status was. You got to hold them accountable in the prison system, if not your loved one is languishing there with the run around they give you on the phone.
Russell Shoatz III: I know that, actually, all the way up to the warden, but also all the way up to the Deputy of the Prisons, who controls all the prisons in Philadelphia, they were probably actually glad that my father was released just on the strength of my sister’s constant calling them, constantly being on them. So just one less person, all right, Maroon’s out of here. Won’t got to hear Teresa no more. We won’t hear Teresa Shoatz calling us every day about follow up, what’s going on, blah, blah, blah.
So when you talk about that ongoing struggle for freedom, there were a lot of different people involved over the years, a lot of different moving parts. And definitely towards the end, because we had pretty much threw a lot of things at the wall, but we had not engaged the medical community within the prison, the nurses, the doctors.
The doctors, when he would get sent out to other institutions, all the way up to the deputy of all of the prisons, and engaging them and saying, our father is in this situation, it was COVID, all these things. He got stage IV cancer. You guys don’t have the apparatus or anything to really take care of anybody with these conditions. Allow us to have him. And they fought that, they fought that.
Mansa Musa: And speaking, I did 48 years in prison prior to getting out, and I did a limited amount of time in solitary confinement. I was in the super max. But more importantly, I can identify with that situation because I remember that when a police officer had got killed in the Maryland pen when they was doing an investigation, and the legislators was coming in to justify pumping more money into building more prisons, and barbed wire, handcuffs.
And they had the speaker of the House on the state level, on the Senate and the delegate side, and had the attorney general for the state of Maryland come in. They came in the South Wing, which was like the lock-up wing where most of us did our time. And when they left out of there, when they left out of that wing, left out, they was only over there for maybe a good, maybe, maybe five minutes — Maybe.
They came outside. They were like this here [panting]. Saying, we just came from the innermost circle of hell. Now imagine your father being in the innermost circle of hell 20-some years, inside and maintaining his faculties.
So the torture, it’s because of Mumia Abu-Jamal that they got medicine for Hepatitis C, that they was able to get the pill that helped to correct a lot of that ailment for people that’s locked up. Going back to your medical, it wasn’t that they got an attitude of like, we take a [hippocratic] oath and that we going to do the best. No, we are hypocrites in taking the oath that we are not going to apply. And it’s because of y’all work that your father was able to at least get out and live a semblance of life before he transitioned.
Talk about where y’all going there with the book at this time. What’s on the agenda, and what do y’all want people to know about the work and the importance of the work as it relates to raising people’s [consciousness] about the struggle and the struggle continue, and the contribution and sacrifice your father made, either one of y’all?
Sharon Shoatz: Well, we’re on a book tour trying to get it out through the book tours, through programs like yours. So we thank you, definitely —
Mansa Musa: Most definitely.
Sharon Shoatz: …For having us on. And we are just trying to promote it throughout as many ways as we can, throughout media and the tours. So we’re in Philadelphia on the 22nd. I’m in Ohio next week at a [inaudible] conference with the book. And then, we’re in Philly on the 22nd. We’re in DC and Baltimore on the 28th. And then, we’re heading to Atlanta, Texas, and then we’re heading to the West Coast.
November the second, we’ll be with Mike Africa from MOVE and his book. He has a new book out, On A Move, and we’ll be with him at the Huey Newton Foundation on Nov. 2.
So we’re taking it on the road and we hope that people, for me, it’s twofold. One, that my father’s an incredible, complicated, beautifully flawed person, but he never relented from the struggle for freedom for oppressed people all across the globe. And secondly, the part for our family, they never really knew who he was.
From this perspective, I have cousins. Oh yeah, we always heard about Uncle Russell. But until he came home for those 52 days, and it was a line of family to see him, and I’m glad they were able to meet him. But again, as I didn’t know who he was, neither did they. They only knew the legend and the myth and oh, Uncle Russell.
But this story lays it out very well. And if you’re from Philadelphia, the geographics is —
Mansa Musa: Come on, come on. That’s important.
Sharon Shoatz: …Extraordinary because he lays it out the middle-class stronghold. And now Philly is, what, I think, the poorest city in the country? Clearly, back then there was a middle-class stronghold, and he talks about it in depth.
And so I think from those two perspectives, the part of freedom and this oppressed system and where we see an oppressed system and injustice, we need to be doing something about it in our own little way. I can’t be Maroon. I have the genetics, but he’s something special. And I can’t be him, but I can take from what I know.
And like Maya Angelou said, when you know better, you do better. When you know better, you do better. And we have freedom fighters that are still locked up.
And why? Why? And I don’t know why people aren’t on board with that. Black Lives Matter, they stood on the shoulders of these revolutionaries. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t have been an agenda regarding political prisoners. With regards to that, my brother talks about every other revolution, they free their freedom fighters.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Sharon Shoatz: I’ll stop there and let my brother —
Mansa Musa: Come on, Russ.
Russell Shoatz III: Well, it’s a catch-22 for me. And it’s a little tougher for me to envision what I would like people to see. Because what I would like people to see is probably further down the road and maybe either another publication, because this publication is actually, my dad wrote this long before he got out, long before he even got sick and stuff like that. And so there’s actually a part of his life that’s not there.
And then, there’s a part of his life right when he’s transitioning, and then there’s a part of a life when he gets out and comes home and he’s actually home and not in prison. That’s not in a book. There’s a part of his life where he turns into a whole different person than we know what’s in the book that he probably even knew of himself or what he just turned into a whole nother different person that nobody knew, nobody ever saw before, any of that. And so those things are important to me.
Also, I don’t want people to get mixed up and think that this is some more of his teachings. These aren’t his teachings. This is just him saying, this is my life. This is what I did, blah, blah, blah. You can get knowledge and jewels and teachings out of that, but if you really wanted to know his teachings, the final teachings kind of, sort of, you would want to look towards his comment, or in court, his transcripts from court.
Also him being like, I’m a Muslim now and everybody should take the Shahada. Everybody should blah, blah, blah. Like, really fundamental Islamic stance. And not just Islamic, but a spiritual space, the space that most people are in when they’re about to transition. And so that transition space is a whole different space with more information, knowledge, and jewels that you really only get only if you’re there or around or hear about it or what have you.
But he was on a mission to get people to contemplate their mortality because he was at that space of really, really contemplating his mortality. But most freedom fighters have already contemplated their mortality. If you are thinking about going over that wall, you trying to escape, then you got to think about them killing you.
Or if you in some prison and they put on the Star Wars uniform and knock on the door and come in to beat you up, that’s just part of it. If you are fighting for liberation and you incarcerated, nine times out of 10, there’s going to be some situations where you got to think about, well, are they going to come in here and try to do me?
And so contemplation of mortality added with your life as a tool of liberation, because that whole book is just about him saying, you can use your life actually as a tool for liberation, if that makes any sense. So those two things, you can’t do anything. You’re not going to be real effective, you’re going to be fearful and scared if you don’t contemplate your mortality.
And people in Palestine, people in South America, people all over the world every day wake up, have to contemplate their mortality. Every day in Palestine, when you wake up, you got to be like, what’s cracking today? Is it a bomb? Is it a bullet? Is it a beating? What is it? Because it could be all them things, but I contemplated that. And now from there, I’m moving on to here.
I thought about it. Yeah, it may happen. It’s a possibility. We all came here to leave. But that was something in my dad’s last teaching, that was part of his last teaching. Are you ready? Are you ready? You built for this? You ready?
Mansa Musa: There you have it, The Real News Rattling the Bars. You have The Prison Letters of George Jackson, you have The Autobiography of Malcolm X, You have Revolutionary Suicide, Seize the Time. You have Martial Law. You have The Greatest Threat by Eddie Conway. And now you have I Am Maroon. But in each one of these books is a story that’s woven all the way out about people fighting for their liberation. The story of us always, since we’ve been brought to these shores, fighting for our liberation.
And it’s important that y’all, our listeners and our viewers, understand this and look to the book, I Am Maroon, and enlighten yourself. And like both Sharon and Russell said, it’s not about the individual, it’s about the collective. It’s about the struggle, the struggle for liberation, and the struggle to free humanity.
Thank y’all for coming on. Really appreciate y’all, and we definitely going to be posting this information, and we’ll see y’all when y’all get on this end at Sankofa, if I don’t come to Philly and check y’all out.
Sharon Shoatz: See you.
Russell Shoatz III: Yeah. Come to the brunch, come and eat some of that food. It is a free brunch, you don’t want to miss that.
Mansa Musa: All right. All right. Thank you. All right. All power to the people.
Like many cop watchers, Carolina Ft. Worth has an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of her local city. So when she noticed Fort Worth police seemed to be targeting the vehicles of bar workers late at night, she set out to investigate. According to Carolina, many of the tow companies in the city are operated by retired police officers, raising questions about the possibility of a racket being run from within the police department. As she was filming police towing cars in the downtown area, an officer familiar to Carolina confronted her and began to arrest her. The ensuing police-initiated altercation left Carolina bleeding and unconscious on the ground with a dislocated shoulder and elbow. Carolina Ft. Worth joins Police Accountability Report to discuss her harrowing ordeal, and how police across the country are engaged in similar kinds of suspicious behavior driven by municipal and even potentially illegal private economic incentives.
Studio Production: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As we always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops, instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.
And today we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of an officer throwing a well-known cop watcher to the ground and causing severe physical injuries for simply filming them. An example of police reacting violently for being watched, raising questions about just how dangerous it can be to hold police accountable.
But before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you. And please like, share, and comment on our videos it can help get the word out and it can even help our guests.
And of course, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there, and I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.
And we do have a Patreon called Accountability Report, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.
All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we have documented rigorously on this show, filming cops is not easy or without risk. For one thing, they have the power to retaliate with an arrest, but also they have the threat of using violence to subdue those who dare to turn the camera in their direction. And that’s exactly what happened in the video I’m showing you now.
It depicts a Texas cop watcher, Carolina in Fort Worth, as she tries to film police for what she believed were unwarranted parking tickets. But how police responded and the severe consequences for her is what we address today in detail.
Now, just to note, this story has received a lot of attention within the Cop Watcher community, but today we are going to break it down with new footage and an interview with the victim of the arrest herself, Carolina in Fort Worth. And believe me, she has a lot to say. But first, let’s review what happened.
The story starts in June of this year in Fort Worth, Texas. There, Carolina was filming police in a parking lot. She believed cops were running a bit of a scam, writing unwarranted tickets, and in the process, unjustly saddling, hardworking bartenders and waitstaff from a nearby entertainment district with excessive fines and towing of their cars.
Bear in mind, this was 3:30 in the morning when she initially started filming. Let’s watch.
Carolina In Fortworth:
They’re saying, “Okay, we’re going to tow this, we’re going to tow that. Let’s see, what are we going to do?” I bet it’s a cop car that’s broken. That’s hilarious if it is. Predator tow truck drivers, they’re the worst. They’re towing a bunch of cars off. They’re trying to build the entertainment district up, right? This is a great way to do it. This is great for community relations and it’s a great idea for community relations to start towing people’s cars. I think that’s a wonderful idea.
Taya Graham:
Now, at this point, it is undeniable that Carolina in Fort Worth is doing nothing wrong. She isn’t interfering with police, simply filming them and for good reason. As you can see, police, were having cars towed from the parking lot right in the heart of one of Fort Worth’s most vibrant gathering spots.
But soon things get tense when police decide they don’t want their towing dragnet scrutinized, take a look.
Carolina In Fortworth:
That’s great for community policing. They’re trying to build up the entertainment center, but now you’re going to tow everybody’s shit. That’s a private parking lot. How the hell are you going to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Oh, you’re going to ignore me. Okay. Do you see any towing will be strictly enforced signs? I don’t see any.
So there’s no signs that say towing will be enforced. What does this say? This is validated parking. It says, “Please register upon parking. Validated parking. Please register upon parking. Business is [inaudible 00:04:16], validated parking for Folk Street Warehouses.
Ways to validate. You can scan the QR code or text pay. Failure to pay or extend time may result in boots.” Okay, so how do they know if they paid or not? How do you know if they paid or not ladies? Hey ladies. Hey ladies. Hey ladies. Hey, Krueger.
Taya Graham:
Now, shortly after she begins questioning the ticket-writing officers, another cop shows up on the scene, a member of the Fort Worth Police Department that she was more than familiar with, and it doesn’t take him long to confront her. Take a listen.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:04:48] sounds [inaudible 00:04:49].
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, I’m not going to the floor. There’s no investigation. There’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of the street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Taya Graham:
She asked a simple question that we hear quite often on this show, but is rarely answered, why? Why do you, Officer Krueger, believe you have the right to arrest me? What law empowers you to put me in handcuffs?
Krueger doesn’t answer, but not being able to articulate a reason also doesn’t stop him from deploying the powers of the state in a highly questionable manner.
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest. Turn around please.
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting. Stop resisting.
Taya Graham:
Stop resisting. Seriously, how many times on this show have we heard that phrase, cops who say, “Stop resisting,” when the victim clearly isn’t. However, this time we have several other camera angles to in fact, check on Officer Krueger’s camera performance.
First, let’s watch the officer’s body worn camera and you be the judge. If she was resisting.
Officer Krueger:
Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street.
Carolina In Fortworth:
There’s nothing to report. There’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Speaker 4:
We’re doing an-
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest, turn around, put your hands-
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, no, no, no, no.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:06:34]
Taya Graham:
Okay. How exactly can you resist if you are lying on the ground bleeding? I mean, seriously. Resistance cannot occur when you are unconscious. That is simply an indisputable fact. You can’t resist if you’re lying on the ground in a pool of your own blood.
But just to be sure, let’s watch the footage from an entirely different angle, courtesy of the CCTV video released by the Fort Worth Police Department.
Officer Krueger:
Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street. You can go-
Carolina In Fortworth:
You did this before, there’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of the street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Speaker 4:
We’re doing an-
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest. Turn around, put your hands behind your back.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:07:34] in ambulance.
Taya Graham:
Again, it’s hard to understand why the officer chose to be so aggressive. Yes, she was following the officers with a camera, which can be annoying, but that comes with the territory of having a badge and a gun. And yes, Carolina in Fort Worth is a stickler for accountability as you will learn later.
But why he decided that a cell phone camera justifies near deadly force is simply hard to understand.
Let’s just listen to his reaction after Carolina in Fort Worth is literally snoring. Snoring because she was literally knocked out.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:08:17], I need a supervisor and an ambulance.
Taya Graham:
Being knocked unconscious was just one of several severe injuries, Carolina in Fort Worth endured. She also suffered a dislocated elbow and shoulder along with bruising and abrasions on her face, which I am showing you on the screen right now.
She also suffered damage to her orbital ridge and needed stitches to repair the damage around her eyes and lips. But of course, none of the aforementioned injuries include the trauma of being taken to the ground for nothing.
Now, the incident actually attracted local media attention and was widely decried as excessive. But when she and fellow cop watcher, Manuel Mata, confronted Officer Kruger just a few days later, he was not receptive to their complaints.
Take a look.
Carolina In Fortworth:
When’s the last time you falsified the police report?
Officer Krueger:
I have never falsified a police report.
Carolina In Fortworth:
You know what jaywalking is? Jaywalking occurs between two lights. There wasn’t two lights in here.
Officer Krueger:
Are you referring to jaywalking as a concept or jaywalking as a statue?
Carolina In Fortworth:
As a statute.
Officer Krueger:
You’re stupid. There’s only one. This was in the concept.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Oh, no, no. Jaywalking is not a real thing.
Manuel Mata:
Remember, I told y’all to give me a ticket. What’d you say? You’re going to jail for jaywalking. And then how do I end up with [inaudible 00:09:40]? Because y’all plain lie, right? It’s all on your cameras. And didn’t you just say it’s not a third degree felony to turn it off or mute it, right? Yeah, that’s how I like my servants, closed mouthed.
Taya Graham:
But there’s so much more going on behind the scenes than the questionable arrest you just watched, and that includes some intriguing background on the officer and his contentious relations with Carolina Rodriguez.
And for more on that, we will be talking to her later. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So Stephen, what did the Fort Worth police charge her with?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I’ll tell you, it’s really amazing. It’s resistance, interfering, evading arrest, and false report all from what you see on video. It’s kind of hard to believe that they would use these charges, but it seems to me that it’s actually kind of purposeful because they’re trying to make her look as bad as possible because a video makes them look bad.
So those are the charges. They’re kind of shocking. We reached out to the police department. They said, “We don’t have media credentials.” We need to present them before they will answer our questions about whether they’re going forward with these charges.
Taya Graham:
Okay, wow. Interfering, but resisting and evading arrest? That really does seem like a stretch. You reached out to prosecutors about the case. What are they saying?
Stephen Janis:
Well, first of Taya, the prosecutors have not gotten back to us. But secondly, you’re right. It does seem really weird to charge you with things like that when she’s actually unconscious on the ground.
I don’t see how you evade an arrest when you’re lying on the ground snoring. I don’t see how you resist an arrest when you’re incapacitated.
So really, I think these charges are very questionable and hopefully prosecutors will back off on this, but we haven’t heard yet. When we do. We’ll say something in the chat.
Taya Graham:
Now this officer has had problems before. Can you talk about that and the concerns that it raises?
Stephen Janis:
Well, as Carolina in Fort Worth herself will tell us in the interview later, he has been noted for being very aggressive with the community.
Now, we reached out to Fort Worth Police Department and asked them specifically what they’re going to do about this officer. And they have not gotten back to us, but I think it raises concerns to see how quickly he turned to force.
He could have talked to her, he could have engaged her, but he didn’t. And I think that’s problematic. I think that might be emblematic of some of the he has as a police officer, Taya.
Taya Graham:
Now to get her take on what happened and how her relationship with Fort Worth police presages much of what happens and what she thinks about cop watching and why she will continue to fight for transparency and accountability.
I’m joined by Carolina in Fort Worth, our cop Watcher. Carolina, thank you for joining me.
Carolina In Fortworth:
You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here. Glad you asked me.
Taya Graham:
So please help us understand what we see in this video. First, we see you approach officers asking them questions about their car impounding practices. You’re a cop watcher. What were you investigating that night?
Carolina In Fortworth:
It was about three o’clock in the morning after the bars are already closed and most of the teenagers and everybody are gone. And I just noticed a bunch of activity going on at the end of the street.
So I walked down there to see what was going on, and I’m really into community policing, just like the chief says he’s in the community policing, but I noticed that there’s a row cars that were parked on a private parking area, but you had to pay for the parking spot. And so I was trying to figure out what was going on, but nobody would really tell me. And you have to really look at the clues to kind of guess because they won’t tell you what’s going on.
So I was trying to just put guesses together. So I heard this one lady say, “Well, I paid $31 to park here and you’re not taking my car.”
And I saw a man walk up, a cop walk up to her and go, “No, no, no, no, we’re not taking yours. You’re leaving in yours, right?” So I assumed that they were going to take that whole row of cars because there’s a tow truck there already.
Now the tow truck driver, I have a good reporter to tow truck drivers, but this one I’ve had bad karma with before. And so I said, so I asked him what’s going on? And he didn’t tell me. He totally walked by me like I wasn’t there. He totally ignored me. Didn’t even say, “I can’t tell you,” or, “You know I can’t tell you,” or anything like that. He just totally ignored me and he walked right on by me to go to his tow truck.
So I just assumed that they were going to tow that whole row of cars. And I thought, well, that’s not very good community policing because why don’t they just put a note on the car and say, “Hey, we’re going to tow you next time you’re here.” It was a private parking area. It was 3:30 in the morning. Those people that were in those cars were probably too drunk to drive and drove home with somebody else or maybe working at a restaurant somewhere and still haven’t finished their job yet.
So I think it’s pretty dirty that they’re pulling these cars out without any kind of type of warning. It’s not community policing. Who’s the crime hurting that they’re parked like that on a private parking area?
Taya Graham:
So the officers didn’t seem interested in responding to your questions, but it suddenly became violent. Can you help me understand what happened?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I’m still asking myself that to this very day because what happened was is after the tow truck driver walked by me and ignored me, I noticed two female cops walking by me. And I’ve talked to those two ladies before, but they were just strolling. They didn’t look like they were busy doing anything. They were just strolling, really just strolling along like you’d see two ladies at the mall doing, just strolling.
So I started to ask them what was going on and they ignored me. They totally ignored me. So I tried to get their attention and I said, “Fire, fire, fire, fire,” and they still ignored me and they kept on walking. So I thought, okay, I let them walk up to where they were and I said, “Well, I’m going to go find out what’s going on.” So I started to walk up towards them, right? And then I saw Krueger jump out of the vehicle.
Well, first I talked to the girls. I was like, “Girls, do they have to pay? How do you know they haven’t paid that you’re towing them off like that?” And they were starting to answer me and then Krueger jumped out of the car and said, “Hey Carolina, I need you to go across the street. I’m not going to tell you again.” He said it to me one time.
I said, “But there’s nothing going on. What do you mean I have to go across the street?” I was questioning his unlawful order to go across the street. I figured it was an unlawful order because I didn’t see anything going on. The girls were strolling. I saw two officers in the street, they were talking to each other like on a break. I didn’t see anything going on at all.
And so he walked toward me and he said that, “I’m going to arrest you if you don’t go across the street.” I said, “Okay, okay, okay, but just tell me first what’s going on?” And that’s when he attacked me.
I didn’t know where it came from. I have no idea what I did to cause him to do that. I asked him, just tell me what’s going on first. What’s wrong with asking? He only asked me one time to move, right? And I just wanted to know what was going on because that’s what I’m trying to portray to the people. But he never said anything. He just grabbed my wrist and then I mean, threw me down on the ground. And that’s the last thing I remember from there.
Taya Graham:
So for all of us who were watching the live stream, it was horrifying and quite obvious you’d been knocked unconscious. What were your injuries and were you medically treated?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, like I said, I don’t remember anything that happened after I hit the ground. Nothing. I don’t remember the ride to the… If I rode in an ambulance or if I rode in somebody’s car. I don’t know if they carried me. I have no idea. But I woke up in a hospital bed with my arm. My good arm chained to the size of the bed. I was like, “What the heck is going on here?”
In the meantime, I’m going in and out of consciousness. So I passed back out again after I saw my arm was attached. And then I felt them shaking me and they woke me up and they said they were giving me something in my IV. I didn’t even know I had an IV and they were starting to just put my arm back into the socket. My arm had been out of the socket the whole time, didn’t even know it.
I just couldn’t believe it. And then I couldn’t see because both my eyes were swelled shut. So I didn’t know why my eyes were swelled shut and I just didn’t know what was going on. There was no mirror there. All I know is that I was chained to the bed. Nobody was answering any questions to me. And there was a female cop sitting at the foot of my bed. And that’s the only thing I remember from there, because I went back later and found out that I only was there from four to nine, not enough time to treat my injuries and monitor me at all.
The doctors there at the emergency room told me that this whole eye socket right here is broken. It’s still broken and if I touch it, I can feel little pieces of bone moving, right? I can feel the little pieces of bone moving.
I still have the black eye on this side and on this side. And I had a, my lip was split open and so they weren’t going to do anything about it. And I asked him to sew me up. Can you please sew me up, doctor? And he goes, “Are you sure you want me to sew you up?” He goes, “I think we need to wait for one of the orthopedic people to come.” I’m like, “No, just sew me up.” So he sewed me up.
So it looks like I have collagen on this side because it’s a big old bump right there. So I have to have that fixed. But the bad thing is I can touch my bone right here and I can feel it moving. Every once in a while my eye will go blurry. And then I have ringing in my ears constantly now, constantly. So I’m going to have to get all that taken care of.
Taya Graham:
So after you were briefly given medical, you were taken to jail, right?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Okay. This is amazing. So when I went to the first… Here in Fort Worth, you go to the city jail first and then they transfer you to the county jail and you have to go and a tunnel underneath like a rat, underneath the street.
So recently we’ve had overcrowding at the jail, and so they’ve been holding the people at the city jail for longer than they can handle. So usually you’re only at the city jail for about 12 hours while they just check you in. But they’ve been holding people there for three days.
So when I got to the city jail, they all knew who I was. They already knew who I was. And they said, “Well, she’s in really bad shape. We don’t want to take her because we don’t have any medical stuff over here. We don’t have any way to give her meds. We don’t have any way if she goes into a seizure, we don’t have anything for her. So we don’t want her.” And they made me stay there.
And I remember crawling on the floor from the front door to where I got checked in over to the cell, my regular cell that we always go to over there. So I crawled on the floor over there and they just let me do it. And she goes, “I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re having to make you stay here three days.” But next thing I know, I passed out on the floor. They put me in a wheelchair and they wheeled me into the tunnel.
And they were going to use one of my old mug shots, but one of the jailers said, “No, you need to take a picture of her now. You don’t need to use one of her old mug shots.” I remember that. I told him, I said, “Yeah, you can use my old mug shot. That’s fine.” I didn’t realize that that would be an important piece of evidence, that mug shot. That mug shot was really important. And I’m glad that that woman, whoever it was, insisted that I take that mug shot picture.
Taya Graham:
So what exactly were you charged with and how were you treated and how long were you kept incarcerated?
Carolina In Fortworth:
My first charge is interference with public duties. Okay, we have a clause that says, “Speech can be used as a defense to interference.” It really has to be physical. I really have to come in between whatever they’re doing or working on. I didn’t see myself do that.
If I walked into their crime scene, it’s because they didn’t have it marked, right? But I didn’t see a body with a cover on it. I didn’t see anybody taking notes. I didn’t see anybody measuring anything. I didn’t see anybody taking pictures of anything. I saw tow trucks towing off a vehicle. So I don’t know how I interfered with that just by asking what’s going on.
My next charge was false reporting. False reporting, because when the girls were ignoring me, I said, “Fire, fire.” That’s what you’re supposed to do when you want someone to take your attention. You say fire, but it was not in a crowded theater and they totally ignored me and didn’t take the report. So I got charged for that.
Then I got charged for resisting, which I suppose was resisting after I was knocked out because that’s when he started saying, “Quit resisting.”
All right. And then also evading. So that means running away, running away from them. So I don’t know how I can interfere and run away at the same time. That doesn’t make any sense. And also if you look at his body cam footage, my arms are behind my back, I put my arm behind my back to be arrested. I didn’t resist whatsoever.
Supposedly he grabbed both my arms and threw me on the ground. That’s what happened. So I don’t know what I did to be handled that way. I have no idea what I did. I didn’t know that asking a question would cause you to be thrown on the ground and knocked unconscious.
Taya Graham:
Did you have to pay bail? And are there any conditions around your release?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, there was no really conditions except for I had Harvey and Manuel and a lot of other people, they helped me get out of jail. They helped get that 10% to get me out, and I have to report there every week. And I’m surprised that they’re still going pressing forward with these charges. I’m really surprised because I don’t know how they can justify any one of them, any one of them at all.
But I have to report there every week to the bonds people and that’s about it. So it was $4,000. They had to get 10% of that. So each bond was a thousand dollars.
Taya Graham:
Now the officer who slammed you onto the ground, his name is Officer Kruger and he has a bit of a history with cop watchers. Can you share with me a little background about him?
For example, I believe he pulled a gun on Manuel Mata, who’s been of course a guest on PAR before.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, see, I knew Officer Kruger before this happened, only because he was the same officer that arrested Manuel Mata at gunpoint for walking across that very street that he told me to walk across. Manuel and I do a lot of cop watching down there, and what we do is we go on separate sides of the street and we walk together simultaneously down the street and we keep an eye on each other to see, to watch each other.
I had turned around just briefly to get my equipment ready to go, and when I turned around, he was gone. He totally disappeared. I was like, what in the world? I’m looking for him across where we were he was supposed to be. He didn’t see him. Then all of a sudden I get a phone call. It’s Manuel Mata said he’s in jail, that they had arrested him when I had my back turned.
So he was arrested at gunpoint for jaywalking. Well, you can’t bring somebody to jail for jaywalking because the punishment is not jail time. You can only take somebody into jail if the punishment is jail time.
So they added a charge onto his little arrest there and they added evading. So he walked across the street, was held at gunpoint, made to lay down on the ground, but he was evading too. That didn’t make any sense. That’s why that charge got dismissed for him.
Come to find out is that we found out when Manuel Mata got arrested that this man had been fired from the Irving Police Department for hurting two women in two different occasions, pulling one out of a car, and that was one of them, within 28 seconds of arrival. And the other one was jumping a woman who had turned to go back to her house, and he jumped her, and both of them were hurt. I don’t know if they’ve had any lawsuits or anything like that, but he sued the city of Irving because he was fired and he got his job back. But it had stipulations and the stipulations were psychiatric help, meetings with the psychiatric thing, drug testing, all sorts of little stipulations he had to do for a whole year if he came back. And I guess he didn’t want to do the stipulations because he was hired at the Fort Worth Police Department right after that.
Taya Graham:
Now you’ve recently won a lawsuit against another Texas Police department. What can you tell me about that suit?
Carolina In Fortworth:
So I was just sitting on the bench filming them and a man came out from behind from where he was supposed to be watching stuff go through the X-ray machine, and he took a camera and he put it like two inches away from my face and started daring me to hit him.
My lawyer took that and we won a small lawsuit. The man was already retired and everything, but it was very small, pretty insignificant, but at least it sent a message saying that they can’t do that to us anymore. They just can’t do that to us just because we’re filming something.
I was sitting on the bench. I wasn’t instigating. I wasn’t interfering. I was sitting on a bench just filming that new equipment that we had and that was it.
So they feel like… I think they talk among each other that we’re instigators, that were bad guys, that we just try to make trouble. We’re just trying to get views and all that sort of thing. But most of us are really trying to find, we’re doing investigative journalism work and they don’t seem to understand that. They don’t watch our videos either. They just judge us by hearsay.
Taya Graham:
Now, something that really amazed me is that you went out cop watching and live-streaming practically the day after you were released. Why are you so dedicated to cop watching and why are you willing to risk jail and even injury to do this work?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I went right out the next day because the reason why we do this is to make sure that people don’t get hurt. We were watching their rights. We’re making sure that they don’t get violated, and we actually have saved a lot of people with our cameras, and I was not going to let them think that they had taken me down or put me out.
I want them to know that I’m going to be doing this until my very last breath. I don’t care. And I mean, of course I was sore. I had my arm in a sling and I have the ringing in my ears, but I’m still going to do it. I’m still going to make as much time as possible to do it because we’re out there protecting the citizens is what we’re doing, and trying to teach them their rights and bring awareness to the rest of the country or the rest of the world that it’s not fair what they do to us. It’s not fair.
I mean, I was lucky. I mean, I had a camera. How many times have they done this to people that don’t have cameras? How many times have they hurt people that actually die? Three people a day are killed by police every day, and we don’t want one of them to be here in Fort Worth, and that’s why we’re out with our cameras every single day.
Taya Graham:
You told me you like to protect the underdog. What inspires you to cop watch?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I guess because what happens is that these cops are allowed to lie to the people. And I hate that we’re brought up as little kids to trust the police that listen to what they say because their heroes, they’re out there protecting you and making sure that nobody gets hurt. But in the meantime, what we’re finding out is that they break the rules to get people, they break the rules to get people.
In other words, would they stop a vehicle and they take everybody’s driver’s license or everybody’s ID to check them, all for warrants, to see if they can catch anybody that has a warrant out maybe instead of just taking the drivers. And I feel like if we have to play by the rules, they should play by the rules, and I don’t think they should be able to lie to us.
Taya Graham:
Okay. Now, the treatment of Carolina in Fort Worth prompts quite a few reactions from me. None of them I would add are particularly charitable to the institution of law enforcement.
For one thing, I still can’t really reconcile the officer’s behavior with Carolina’s simple act of filming. I mean, if there’s any example of the excessive use of law enforcement in our country against transparency, this one really takes the cake.
But there is something else going on here that I think is perhaps revealing about how policing in general has become misguided to say the least. It’s an idea that actually sheds light on the imperative that informs what the officers were actually doing that evening that’s been overlooked, if not ignored, but deserves further examination.
So let me put this simply. The officers in question weren’t investigating a murder, tracking down a burglar, or otherwise pursuing the laudable goal of public safety.
They weren’t helping a cat out of a tree or helping a distraught family search for a missing loved one. No, that’s not what was happening.
Instead, they were writing parking tickets at 3:30 in the morning, no less. That’s right. The officers who were uncomfortable under the gaze of the cop watchers cell phone were exacting fees and fines from the hardworking people who I assume really can’t afford it. They were even towing the vehicles of the entertainment district workers who were more than likely finishing a night-long shift in a bar or a restaurant.
Now, I want you to think about that, what it means and why it matters. I mean, we spent billions in this country on law enforcement. We train and equip cops to work for roughly 18,000 police departments spanning small towns to big cities across the country. And the idea, at least in theory, is that this investment will somehow translate into better public safety.
But how? And I asked this question seriously, how does writing parking tickets achieve that goal? How does towing cars in the middle of the night advance the off-sighted imperative to protect and serve?
Well, clearly it doesn’t, and that’s sort of the point, right? I mean, time and time again on this show, we encounter examples of overreach by the law enforcement industrial complex that seems more designed to simply punish than to protect. A clear lack of consideration for the people that ultimately pay for it. Something that I think speaks to the broader issues about why the uniquely American process of enforcing the law seems predicated on a philosophy that’s far removed from the idea of a collective common good.
What do I mean? Well consider this article in the Washington Post. It recounts how a group of former police officers participated in a mind-boggling crime that sounds like it’s lifted straight from a Hollywood script, not just troubling but profoundly disturbing.
The officers included two former members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which we’ve covered often on the show for some pretty questionable arrests.
Now, these officers were working at the behest of a Chinese national who wanted to extract money from his former business partner. The person who hired what were described as mercenaries was not named in the indictment. She allegedly had a dispute with the man whose home was raided and she wanted to collect the money she felt was her due.
The officers showed up with expired badges and forced their way into the victim’s home. The cops then proceeded to pressure him to sign paperwork to turn over roughly $37 million. They tore his shirt, threw him against the wall, and threatened to deport him. All of this while his two youngest sons cowered in fear, unsure of what would happen next.
At one point an officer said he was in fact not law enforcement, suggesting that the man was facing an immediate threat to his life.
All of this prompted him to sign over a $37 million stock under the threat of a bunch of cops who actually weren’t even cops.
But I think the broader point of this story about bizarre police behavior goes beyond a faux raid and a bit of boneheaded extortion, a tale of policing for profits that isn’t just isolated to a group of former cops turned bill collectors.
No, I think this is in fact a symbol or what drives bad policing and our historic economic inequality and the reason that Carolina was confronting a bevy of police in a nondescript parking lot at three A.M. in the morning. All of this really is not about morality or crime or law and order. It is though about a particular type of cruelty that underlies the fragile system of democracy in which we all hope to flourish.
It is put simply a regime of enforcement, not tethered to any idea of bolstering or building a community, but rather exacerbating the inequality that greases the wheels of penalties for the people who aren’t part of the fabulously wealthy.
I mean, you can’t maintain the historic concentration of wealth without some type of system that extracts and enforces the inequitable reality that we all share.
I think we can see this imperative at work in the story I just recounted and the near deadly encounter with Carolina not just the aggressive behavior alone, but the deeper systemic failures that drive police to do things that really make no sense.
I mean, let’s face it, parking tickets are supposed to encourage the most productive use of space, not impose usury fines on unwitting people. They aren’t supposed to be deployed like a weapon to burden the working class with fines and tow truck fees and costs that can drown a person who’s barely getting by.
Meanwhile, the fact that a bunch of retired cops thought they could turn into a crew of paramilitary bill collectors shows the same inherent disregard for the rights of the people that often put law enforcement at odds with the people they purport to serve.
But what really strikes me about both stories is that each, in its own way, tells a story about us, about how we are not respected and how we often suffer in silence while the government uses the police we fund to make our lives miserable.
Now, this is not to suggest that a parking ticket is the end of the world or that a $300 tow will necessarily destroy a person’s life. And this is not to say that an errant mob squad that illegally raided a man’s home got away with it. In fact, the only reason we know about it is because they’re actually being prosecuted.
But what this does tell us is that government power must be kept in check, and by extension, the government’s ability to employ, deploy, and empower people with guns and badges. Now, I know I make this point often, but the work to hold police accountable is vital, not just because cops are inherently bad or they’re always doing something wrong.
I would say just the opposite. They behave better when we watch them just like anyone else would. But what’s really important is to understand the fluidity of power or rather who it really serves, how it concentrates at the top and flows down until it envelops the working people of this country in a deluge of fines, fees, and petty arrests. How it leads to a country where a just release report noted that America spends more on healthcare than any other wealthy country, and yet we have the worst outcomes in terms of life expectancy and wellness to other comparable nations.
That’s why we have to comprehend the true nature of the punishment regime that makes all of these incongruous realities possible, how it accumulates power in institutions that are supposed to serve and then swallows whole the communal benefits and turns into over-policing and an invasive attempt to shape our lives in ways that are often punitive and destructive.
The broader point is that inequitable power is not reluctant or discreet. It doesn’t watch over us to be constructive or helpful. Ultimately, it is intended to prescribe a reality where we don’t matter, our rights don’t matter, and our pursuits of happiness don’t matter. Where cop watchers are just a nuisance. The working class is ripe for exploitation, and every single one of us is diminished by a system predicated on denying our humanity.
That’s why we need cop watchers, activists, journalists, YouTubers, and perhaps even a show that reports on all of them.
That’s why we need to be vigilant, demanding and skeptical, and that’s why we need the community that you are all a part of, the people that refuse to be ignored or forgotten.
I want to thank Carolina in Fort Worth for speaking with us, sharing her experience and being willing to get back on the streets and filming police. Thank you, Carolina. And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I have to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey, our further support. Thank you and a very special thanks to our accountability report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon Associate producers, John ER, David K, Louie P, and Lucille Garcia and super friends, Shane B, Kenneth K, Pineapple Girl, matter of Rights, and Chris R.
And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate.
Reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly at Taya’s Baltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. Anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
This story was originally published by In These Times on Sep. 25, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
In a lot of ways, an attack on Nabala Cafe always felt inevitable — and we didn’t even have a Palestinian flag hanging in the window when we first opened in July.
So many sellers of Palestinian flags also sell Israeli flags, so it didn’t feel right to give them money. But a community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window — as visible as possible.
“A community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window—as visible as possible.”
I named the shop Nabala Cafe as a tribute to my ancestral home in Palestine, Bayt Nabala, a village that was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948. Three thousand villagers (called “Nabalis”) mostly fled east towards Ramallah. As Israel occupied more and more Palestinian land over time, Nabalis continued to be displaced. Some stayed in Palestine or across the eastern border in Jordan, but we’ve all been forced to find homes in different parts of the world.
Chicago is home to the largest population of Palestinians in the United States, and we have a strong community of hundreds of Nabalis living in the area. The concept of Nabala Cafe started here, building on the deep community roots of Nabalis that have remained strong over decades, all centering our home of Bayt Nabala.
Nabala Cafe offers a selection of free books to community members, and those who come to the cafe frequently grab a book off the shelves and spend time reading there. Photo by Steel Brooks
For years I felt dejected and disconnected from the world, spending my time and energy in corporate sales. Each day I was pushing consumer data to companies who would leverage it for financial gain while irreparably damaging the communities and environments they exploited. During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.
But this was never enough. There was always more to do in the community — more time needed to build relationships, more space needed to share skills and develop a well-rounded community, and more energy needed to develop sustainable mutual aid networks and broader social movements.
“During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.”
But instead I was spending most of my time and energy downtown, empowering the consumerism of the Loop and all of the global corporate entities with deep ties to Chicago’s business sector.
Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem — shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care. With some encouragement from loved ones, I started the project in earnest in 2022. About two years later I was finally putting up our decorations honoring Palestine and opening the doors to the public.
Palestinians and Palestinian businesses have been frequent targets since the genocide in Gaza began. When we opened, we thought that it would only be a matter of time before someone attacked us. And on a recent evening, someone smashed the window where we displayed our flag.
After a window was smashed at Nabala Cafe, a board was put up to cover the open space. Community members came together to paint a mural on the board, so even after the window was fixed, Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid decided to keep the board facing inward as a reminder of the community support the cafe received after the attack. Photo by Steel Brooks
At least two other nearby businesses, the bookstore Women & Children First and the clothing store Naaz Studios, were also attacked in recent months in similar ways. And as we know all too well, attacks on businesses that support Palestinian liberation are just a small slice of the overall violence we have seen over the past year.
There have been evictions handed out to residents displaying Palestinian flags on their apartments and employments terminated for the simple act of wearing a keffiyeh. Three college students who were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs were shot in Vermont. A woman attempted to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian girl in Texas. And right here in the Chicago area, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was violently murdered in October 2023.
“Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem—shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care.”
It’s not just the murderers and vandals attacking Palestinians. It’s the police too. So many cops have ties to white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and so many police departments have had training exchange programs with the Israeli Occupation Forces — the same forces who have likely murdered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the last year alone.
It’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is calling and trying to intimidate Palestinian activists like In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi. The same FBI and federal authorities who have taken Palestinians away from their families with horrifying regularity since September 11, 2001.
So for those of us who have been attacked in these various ways, questions we hold are: What can justice look like when anti-Palestinian racism is so deeply embedded and so violent? How are we supposed to respond? How can we focus on continuing to build community and relationships and not resign ourselves to searching for solutions from those who are explicitly oppressing, surveilling and attacking us?
After our window was broken, many people suggested involving police — but for what exactly? Consider the hypocrisy of collaborating with law enforcement that enacts such violence of its own. And even if the person who smashed our window was arrested and jailed, and even if the U.S. carceral system was somehow — in some alternate universe — a truly rehabilitative force, there are still too many people empowered by genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians and deeply indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda.
But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.
“But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.”
Instead of turning to police, we turned to what Nabala Cafe is all about: community. As soon as word got out about the attack, our community came through to support us. We raised more than 10 times the money we needed to replace the broken window in less than 24 hours. Our business flourished in a way that we could not have ever imagined, and people got to work immediately beautifying our space, including painting a mural on our boarded-up window and covering the sidewalk with chalk artwork.
Our community was there with love and care when we needed it. But I also know we’re lucky and benefit from Palestine currently being the center of so many discussions. One thing I couldn’t help thinking about during all of this is what I would have done if our community hadn’t shown up, or if I was somewhere else and didn’t have the support we have here. That is the reality for so many others.
The Palestinian flag at Nabala Cafe still hangs proudly in the window. Photo by Steel Brooks
The stress and fear that I felt the moment I found out about the broken window was paralyzing. The only thing I could think to do was let people know what happened and call the insurance company. I didn’t even think to sweep up the glass until a friend came by with a broom. And I didn’t even consider that we’d need to board up the window until another friend reached out and offered to do it.
So many businesses and individuals who experience a violating attack like this are not met with even a fraction of the support that we received. Often, they are completely alone.
How can we fault these folks for mobilizing police and the carceral system when they have no one else to turn to? Even if they would prefer a different course of action, their fears and stresses are valid, the violence is real and present and, for businesses similar to ours, the threat to so many people’s livelihoods is palpable and frightening.
It’s our duty to show up for our communities in every way possible, because when we do not show up, that void is taken by police. I hope that one of the lessons we can take away from the attack on Nabala Cafe is that we need to make a collective effort to serve and support one another, so that relying on police for anything is a non-starter. We’re better off without them.
And police seem to always make that calculation for us. When I arrived at the cafe to deal with the broken window, it was about 7 a.m., more than seven hours after the window was broken. Police were on the scene overnight, and their biggest accomplishment was using police tape to hang a black garbage bag over the wide open window.
Nabala Cafe features artwork by Palestinian artists and about Palestine which can be purchased by those at the cafe. For owner Eyad Zeid, the artwork is part of an effort to spread the beauty of Palestinian culture throughout the neighborhood. Photo by Steel Brooks
When I called them to file a report in the morning (unfortunately required for insurance claims), they absurdly asked me what happened. I had just arrived, how would I have known? Then, when I asked them what happened, and what had occurred while they were there overnight, they said they didn’t know and that they didn’t document anything because “there was no victim present.” They didn’t say anything about considering it a targeted attack and just handed me a piece of paper reading “criminal damage to property” and that included a report number. That was that and I haven’t heard from them since.
Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.
“Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.”
It’s of course challenging because so many of us are putting our time and energy into making a living that also unfortunately benefits the ruling class; we have limited free time, so showing up for community becomes that much more difficult.
But the fundamental question is how we can continue to use our collective power to build community strength — and we do have some key examples to draw from.
One surrounds a Palestinian woman who faces eviction in Logan Square for hanging a Palestinian flag outside her apartment, and who has courageously left it hanging through a time-consuming legal battle. An incredible community formed around her — a true multiracial and religiously diverse community (including both Palestinians and Jews) — who protested, created artwork, and planned many different events in support of her and in service of free expression. It’s been nearly a year and this community is stronger than ever.
Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid prepares Karak Chai. Many associate Karak Chai with community, comfort and supporting loved ones. Photo by Steel Brooks
Another surrounds the firing of a woman who was wearing a keffiyeh at her job at an Apple store in Lincoln Park. The way the staff at the store advocated and fought for her was so inspirational, and months later so many of these folks are embedded in more supportive and impactful community spaces.
These are small, but courageous acts. But that’s what we need right now, and that’s how we can protect each other, keep each other safe, and build community together.
And our actions don’t even need to be courageous to have an impact. It can be as simple as striking up conversations with neighbors and community members we’ve never met, or those that we continue to be in relationship and friendship with. Ultimately we need to consistently show up for one another on a massive scale, but there’s no telling what small acts can bring.
I’m incredibly grateful for our community, and more proud of Nabala Cafe than ever. I’m more optimistic than ever that it can be a space of connection and bonding, of love and nourishment.
Because we can’t arrest our way to liberation, we can only get there by building together.
The role of the death penalty as a toll of the racist system of criminal punishment has been long documented. In the case of Alameda County, California, the inside story of how prosecutors influenced jury selections to increase the likelihood of death penalty convictions demonstrates how the racism of capital punishment remains with us in the 21st century. For decades, prosecutors worked to limit jury participation from Black and Jewish individuals in order to produce juries that were more likely to support capital punishment. Michael Collins, Senior Director of Government Affairs at Color Of Change, joins Rattling the Bars for a revealing discussion on prosecutor misconduct, and what it tells us about the state of the criminal injustice system.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
The death penalty in the United States of America. At one point in time, the Supreme Court had put it on hold because of the manner in which it was being given out. At that time, the way it was being given out is upon a person being found guilty of a capital offense, the judge made the ultimate determination whether they got the death penalty or not. Throughout the course of litigation and the evolution of the legislative process, the death penalty started taking on the shape of a jury determining whether or not a person gets the death penalty or not after they were sentenced.
What we have now, in this day and age; and when I first heard it, it startled me to even believe that this was taking place; but in California, they have, in certain parts, the death penalty being given out, but more importantly, the death penalty given out by the prosecutor and the courts through their systematic exclusion of people’s juries of their peers. The prosecutors, along with the courts, have systematically set up a template where they look at anybody that they think is going to be fair and impartial and have them removed from the jury. Subsequently, a lot of men and women are on death row in California.
Here to talk about the abuse of this system and the discovery of the process and exposing it is Michael Collins from Color of Change.
Welcome, Mike.
Michael Collins:
[inaudible 00:01:54] to be here. Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, first, tell us a little bit about yourself, then a little bit about your organization before we unpack the issue.
Michael Collins:
I’m originally from Scotland, as you can probably tell.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
In the US since 2010, so like 15 years or so. Was in Baltimore for 10, 12 years off and on, and then I’m now in Atlanta.
Color of Change, where I work, is one of the largest racial justice organizations in the country. I oversee a team that works on state and local policy issues. We do a lot of work on prosecutor accountability and criminal justice reform, which is how we became involved in this death penalty scandal.
Mansa Musa:
All right.
And right there, because when I was at the conference in Maryland, [inaudible 00:02:50] Maryland, one of the panelists was one of your colleagues, and the topic they was talking about was prosecutorial misconduct. And in her presentation she talked about, and you can correct me as I go along … And I think it’s Alameda County in California?
Michael Collins:
Yep. That’s where Oakland is. Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Right. In Oakland, they had … Since 2001, the prosecutors always had set up a system where they systematically excluded minorities, poor people; anyone that they thought would be objective in evaluating the case, they had them excluded, therefore jury nullification, and stacking the jury that resulted in numerous people getting the death penalty.
Talk about this case and how it came about.
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it really was shocking when we first heard about it. You know, we had been doing work on prosecutor accountability in Oakland in Alameda County, and there was a prosecutor elected, a Black woman, called Pamela Price, who was elected on a platform of trying to reform the justice system and use prosecutorial discretion to kind of right the wrongs of racial injustice and do more progressive policies within the office. And she discovered, or one of her staff discovered, that over a period of three or four decades, prosecutors in the office had been systematically excluding Black and Jewish people from death penalty juries.
Now, in other words, how this happened was, when you go into a trial, there’s a process of jury selection, and prosecutors and defense lawyers can strike certain people from juries. Maybe people have seen some of this on TV.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
You’re not allowed to … Constitutionally, you are not allowed to strike people for race reasons, for religious reasons. But there was a sense from these prosecutors, who were very tough on crime prosecutors, who wanted to … They saw the death penalty as a trophy almost to be achieved, and they wanted to win at all costs. And so they believed that Black people and Jewish people would be less sympathetic to the death penalty and more likely perhaps to find an individual not guilty; more squeamish, if you like, about finding someone guilty who would then get the death penalty.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
And so what Pamela Price, this district attorney, discovered was a series of notes and papers that documented the ways in which individual prosecutors were excluding people from juries in this way and really giving people an unfair trial.
And California has, for a number of years now, had a moratorium on the death penalty. They’ve essentially hit the pause button on the death penalty. But for a number of years it was really a state that carried out the death penalty [inaudible 00:06:28].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, you’re right.
Michael Collins:
And also, one of the more startling things about this is Pamela Price, she came in, she discovered these notes. I think her reaction was, “This is crazy. How does this happen?” And it actually turns out that somebody sort of raised the alarm bell about this as far back as 2004; a prosecutor in the Oakland office who came out and he was like, “Listen, I was leading the trainings on this. I was somebody who was part of making these policies.” And the admission went before judges, it went before courts of appeals, and they threw it out, they didn’t believe this guy. And they kind of hounded this guy, the death penalty prosecutor, who essentially had a change of heart, and they hounded him out of town. And he now lives in Montana and practices law.
And I think he probably feels a sense of vindication about this, but it’s very troubling for us, the cover-up that’s gone on and the number of people that are implicated. So far, we know of at least 35 cases of individuals, but the DA is investigating this; it’s probably going to be more than 35 cases. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
It probably extends beyond the death penalty to be honest. It probably extends to other, I would say, serious crime cases where, as I say, prosecutors wanted to win at all costs and used any tactic to get a guilty verdict, including essentially tampering with the jury.
And we are in a position now where I think what we want is some level of accountability. We want these individuals who have been sentenced to be exonerated. They were given an unfair trial. That’s abundantly clear. The judges and the prosecutors who were involved in this scandal, who stole lives and who essentially put people on a path to the death penalty, what is the accountability for them? And so that’s something that Color of Change is really pushing.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so talk about the … Because now you’re saying over three decades. First, how long has the moratorium been on?
Michael Collins:
Since the current governor took office. So I think it’s four or five years.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so four or five years. So prior to that, they was executing people.
Michael Collins:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so how many people, if y’all have this information, how many people have been executed in that period [inaudible 00:09:30] period?
Michael Collins:
We don’t have the numbers on that. I think what we are looking at just now is 35 cases where they’ve identified that are people who are now serving life sentences as a result of the moratorium. Because when the governor said, “We’re not doing the death penalty anymore” and hit the pause button on the death penalty … And again, I’ll stress that it is a pause button, right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, right, right.
Michael Collins:
A new governor, a new person could take office. It’s not like it’s been eliminated.
But when we kind of hit the pause button on the death penalty, there were a number of people who had their death penalty convictions converted into life sentences. And that was how part of this process was uncovered, because Pamela Price, this district attorney, her office was working on what kind of sentence that people … They were working with a judge to try and figure out some sort of solution to these cases where people were having their cases converted to another sentence, like perhaps a life sentence, life without parole, something like that. And in the process of working with a federal judge, that’s when they discovered these notes and files and [inaudible 00:10:49].
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here.
Michael Collins:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so I know in the state of Maryland where I served my time at, and I’m in the District of Columbia now, the sentencing mechanism, as I opened up, was a case came out, Furman Act versus United States. That’s the case that … Furman versus United States. That’s the case that they used to change the way the death penalty was being given out back in the seventies.
Because during that time, Andre Davis had just got arrested, so there was a campaign out in California to abolish the death penalty. But what wound up happening is they had a series of case litigation saying they violated the eighth amendment. So what ultimately happened was that the Supreme Court ruled that the way the death penalty was being given out, which was the judge was the sole person that gave it out, they changed it to now they allowed for after the person was found guilty, then the jury would determine whether or not they got the death penalty, that was based on the person that’s being looked at for the death penalty, or have the opportunity to allocute why it shouldn’t be given.
But how was the system set up in California? Is the person found guilty and then given the death penalty? Or is the person found guilty and then they have a sentencing phase? How is the system in California?
Michael Collins:
Yeah, I think a person’s found guilty and then there’s a sentencing phase. And there were a lot of articles about this and about the different lawyers in California.
I mean, I think there’s obviously a movement to end the death penalty, and it’s gathered a lot of momentum in the last five or 10 years. But I think if you go back to the eighties and the nineties especially, this era, whether you were in Maryland or whether you were in California, whether in Kentucky, just across the country, this very tough on crime era and harsh sentences, I think that the death penalty for prosecutors, or what we’ve been told and what we’ve read, the death penalty cases were almost like a prize for the prosecutors [inaudible 00:13:06] do the cases. It was the most complex cases, it had the most prestige attached to it, and they were really valued on their ability to win these cases. And so they would send their best prosecutors to do these cases. They would ask for the death penalty frequently.
And that’s why we have a situation where … At the very least, we know in a place like Oakland, which is not a huge place, we have 35 cases right now that they’re looking at; one of the cases has already been overturned, the conviction has been quashed of an individual. We expect that to happen in a lot of these cases as they examine the evidence, how much the death penalty was … The jury selection was a key factor in the conviction.
But yeah, I mean, it certainly was the case that the death penalty was used very frequently in California.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So in terms of … And the reason why I asked that question, I’m trying, for the purpose of educating our audience, to see at what juncture was the exclusion taking place? Or was it across the board, because [inaudible 00:14:21]-
Michael Collins:
Yeah. So my understanding is the exclusion took place as they were selecting the jury. Right? You start off with a pool … Maybe some of your audience have been selected for jury duty, when you go in and you’re sitting in a room and there’s maybe a hundred people, and then eventually they whittle it down to 12 people and some alternates. And in that process, as a prosecutor and as a defense lawyer, you’re striking people from the jury and saying, “No, I don’t want this person.”
The reasons for doing that are supposed to be sort of ethical and constitutional, like, “What do you think of the … ” You’ll be asked, “What do you think of the police? What do you think of law enforcement? Do you trust the judicial process?” They’re trying to figure out, “Are you going to be able to properly serve on this jury? Are you tainted in some way?”
But the notes were really about a feeling that Black people were not sympathetic to the death penalty [inaudible 00:15:30] not convict; or Jewish people, because of their beliefs, because of their religion, were also not sympathetic to the death penalty. And so the prosecutors were trained and instructed to make sure, if they found out a person was … If they had a Jewish last name or something like that, or if a person was Black, ask some questions, figure it out, but essentially get them off the jury.
And there was even a case … I mentioned before, we’re talking a lot about prosecutors, judges were involved in this as well.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Michael Collins:
There was a case where a judge pulled the prosecutor after jury selection into his chambers and said, “You have a Jewish person on the jury. What are you doing? Get that person off the jury.”
Mansa Musa:
Oh my Goodness.
Michael Collins:
And so the sort of depths of the scandal are beyond kind of prosecutors. It’s a real institutional crisis.
And that’s why we want the governor to get involved, Governor Newsom to get involved and provide resources to investigate this. We want the Attorney General to get involved and investigate this. Because this is a very clear and obvious scandal.
And it’s not enough to, in our opinion, re-sentence these individuals, exonerate them. Other people did some very, very shady things and very unethical things and illegal things and ruined people’s lives. And as far as they were concerned, these people were going to be killed. And so we want to make sure that there’s accountability for that. They treated this like it was a sport, like it was a competition, and people’s lives have been ruined as a result. And we want to make sure that people are held accountable for what they did.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about the … Okay, so talk about this prosecutor, the one that came in with this reform. Was this something she campaigned on and then carried it out?
Michael Collins:
No. So-
Mansa Musa:
What’s her background? What’s your information on her?
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it’s a good question.
So Color of Change has worked a lot on trying to reshape the way that prosecutors operate. I mean, historically, prosecutors, they are the most powerful player in the system. They will decide how much bail you get, how long you’re going to be on probation. Everybody likes to imagine trials like judge, jury and [inaudible 00:18:00]. Most cases are a guilty plea that are executed by the prosecutor themselves. So they have tremendous power. And very often, as we’ve seen with this scandal, prosecutors are just old school tough on crime; “I’m going to get the heaviest sentence and put this guy away for as long as possible.” That was their vision of justice.
And Color of Change, along with a number of other organizations, wanted to elect prosecutors that were more justice oriented, that were more reform minded, that were people who had a different view of the justice system and wanted to use some of that tremendous power within the prosecutor’s office to do good, to do justice, to reform them.
And so roundabouts of 2016, 2017, you saw a lot of prosecutors get elected that were more interested in things like police accountability; Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, Kim Fox in Chicago. There was also Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.
Mansa Musa:
Philadelphia. Right.
Michael Collins:
And they came in and they did things like exonerations. They would investigate previous cases where the office itself had convicted somebody and they would find wrongdoing, and then they would overturn that verdict and the person would go free. They did things like non-prosecution of low level offenses or diversion, stuff like that.
Anyway, Pamela Price came in as the Oakland DA, a historically Black jurisdiction. She herself had a civil rights background, was not a prosecutor, and took office to really try to reshape the office after decades of having a tough on crime prosecutor, mostly white led office that [inaudible 00:20:07] locking up Black people and throwing away the key. And she came in with a lot more of a nuanced approach.
And I think … She didn’t campaign necessarily on this scandal, but I think it’s true to say that a lot of other prosecutors, the traditional tough on crime prosecutors, would’ve discovered these files and been like, “Just put that back. Forget it.”
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Michael Collins:
Because you’re opening a hornet’s nest here, because if you think about … There’s victims involved, there’s family members, there’s cases; some of these cases are sort of 20, 30 years old. It’s not easy what the office is going to have to go through to reinvestigate these things.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
But I think this crop of prosecutors that has a different vision of justice and what justice is, and they do want to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, whether it is somebody who commits a homicide or a prosecutor who commits misconduct or a police killing, they apply that kind of one standard of justice.
And so she was very open and sort of found these files and then approached a federal judge and said to the judge, “Look, here’s all this evidence that there was this of systemic racism, anti-Semitism that resulted in people getting the death penalty.” And the federal judge was the one who said, “Okay, you need to review all these cases. You need to move forward with a full [inaudible 00:21:42].” So that’s what’s happening right now.
So that’s kind of Pamela Price’s story. Incidentally, she’s actually being recalled in California.
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah, yeah. Larry Krasner. He was like … In Philadelphia, it was the same thing we have with them.
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it’s the same thing. There was a big backlash [inaudible 00:21:54]-
Mansa Musa:
Kim Fields. Yeah, yeah. Same thing we have with them.
Michael Collins:
… Prosecutors in this sort of … You know.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Collins:
And it’s hard because if she is recalled in November, I don’t really know what’s going to happen to these cases.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, I know. You know what’s going to happen. They’re going to go to the defendants and they’re going to sweep it up under the rug.
Michael Collins:
Yeah. Well, that-
Mansa Musa:
But talk about the community, because that’s what that lead me right into this because of what you say about her and the prospect that she might be recalled. Talk about your organization’s work in educating and mobilizing the community, because ultimately, if the community is engaged in the process because it’s their family members that’s being … Oakland is the birth for the Black Panther party. Oakland has a rich history of civil disobedience, police brutality. The list goes on and on. If the community … Where are y’all at in terms of organizing or mobilizing or having some kind of coalition around this-
Michael Collins:
Yeah, we have a coalition on prosecutor accountability where we try and … You know, we are not sort of … Prosecutors are part of a very broken system, right? We don’t want to be cheerleaders for these prosecutors. We talk more about accountability, so prosecutor accountability.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
So we have a coalition that we’re members of with Ella Baker Center and ACLU and a number of other local groups, where we meet regularly with the DA, but we try and push her to embrace more progressive policies. We try and push her to move more quickly on some death penalty cases. But at the same time, if she’s doing the right thing like she’s doing on these death penalty cases, we’re certainly going to defend her and go out there and support what she’s doing.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right, right. Because … Yeah. Right.
Michael Collins:
So we do community events. I’m actually in New Orleans just now where we’re holding an event with around about a hundred folks from across the country from different groups to talk about, how do you … Including people from Oakland, to talk about, how can you push your prosecutor and what should you do about it?
But as you know, it’s a very tough time for criminal justice reform, right?
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:24:02] That’s right. That’s right.
Michael Collins:
[inaudible 00:24:02] public backlash, where coming out of the killing of George Floyd, there was actually a lot of mobilization of people on the streets calling for reform. And very quickly that’s disappeared and we’ve been attacked relentlessly. Anybody who engages in reform, police accountability, the establishment wants rid of them, the conservatives.
And to be honest, especially in a place like California, what we see is a lot of centrist Democrats running scared-
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Michael Collins:
… Using the same talking points as Donald Trump on crime. And that’s just very unfortunate.
So it is an uphill struggle because there’s so much misinformation out there about crime and about prosecutors and about progressive policies. But we’re trying, we’re trying to educate people. And when you see something like this happen, we try and tell people, “Look, other prosecutors would look the other way.”
And that certainly is what happened. As I mentioned before, this scandal goes back decades [inaudible 00:25:11].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s crazy.
Michael Collins:
And this woman is in office and she has had [inaudible 00:25:13].
Mansa Musa:
But the thing about the thing that … To highlight your point about reform and how we had the upper hand in terms of George Floyd, but George Jackson said that, and he was the best [inaudible 00:25:30] person, he would describe it as reform; all the call for police accountability and divest, all those, the fascists and capitalists, they took them conversations and they twist it, and they twist it to the form like Cop City where we saying like, “Well, we’re doing this to create the reform that you’re talking about, so we want better educating, better training. But you’re trained to be paramilitary.”
And the same thing with what’s going on right now in terms of any type of social justice movement around prosecuting misconduct and what they call progressive prosecutors. I interned with a organization that that’s what they did. They got prosecutors, they educated them, got them involved and become progressive prosecutors. But all the progressive prosecutors are just doing what they was mandated to do, to find the truth for justice, search for the truth and justice, all them are being recalled, targeted, and organizations like yourself.
Talk about where y’all at now in terms of y’all next strategy around this issue.
Michael Collins:
So we are having conversations with the Attorney General’s office because the Attorney General plays this role where they themselves can identify that misconduct has happened, the unconstitutional jury instructions, and they can make a ruling. And they have more resources and more [inaudible 00:27:04] than the local DA.
So we met two weeks ago, I think, with the Attorney General’s office to try and push them to get more involved. We’re pushing the governor to dedicate more resources and get more involved in this, you know, somebody who himself opposes the death penalty. And we’re trying to keep the drum beat going in terms of [inaudible 00:27:31] attention. Good organizations like you guys; really appreciate you reaching out to us on this because it is so important that more people know about this.
I’m always surprised that it isn’t a bigger story. When I found out about this, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be front page.”
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right. It should be. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Collins:
But I guess there’s so much going on just now, I don’t know, you never can tell what’s going to [inaudible 00:27:55].
Mansa Musa:
But in terms of, how can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you and how do they … Tell them how, if they want to support y’all efforts, what they can do to [inaudible 00:28:07].
Michael Collins:
Yeah, so Color of Change has a website called Winning Justice, which is our prosecutor accountability work. And if you go on there, you’ll see a number of actions that people can take around this death penalty scandal, even with their own local prosecutors, trying to get involved, set up coalitions, actions that can be taken where you can push your own prosecutor, whether they’re progressive or not, to do more justice and engaging [inaudible 00:28:34].
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
So yeah, it’s Winning Justice is our website. And if you search for it, you’ll find it and you’ll see a ton of actions and just our positions on a bunch of different issues and what we try and do with prosecutors to get them to engage more in reform.
Mansa Musa:
Well, thank you, Mike.
There you have it. The real news rattling the bar. It might be strange, it really might be a stretch of your imagination to believe that elected officials would actually say that if you are Black and you are Jewish, that you don’t have a right to serve on the jury because you might be sympathetic to the defendant, be it the death penalty, be it the defendant’s economic and social conditions.
But because they think that you might be sympathetic to that, that is saying like, “Well, you might just be objective to see that it’s a set of circumstances that contributed to the outcome of the charge. But no, as opposed to do that and search for the truth, what I do as a prosecutor, I put a playbook together and say, ‘These people, under all circumstances, cannot serve on the jury’, and do it for over three decades, not knowing how many people has been executed as a result of this malicious behavior.”
Yet ain’t nobody being charged, ain’t nobody being indicted, ain’t nobody being fired. They’re being awarded a medal of honor for this dishonorable act.
We ask that you look into this matter and make a determination. Do you want your tax dollars to support this type of behavior? We ask that you look into this matter and check out what the Color of Change has to offer in terms of their advocacy and see if it’s something that you might want to get involved with.
The State of Missouri is scheduled to execute Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams on Sept. 24 for a crime that even prosecutors now say he did not commit. On Sept. 12, a Missouri judge denied a motion filed by prosecutors to vacate Williams’ conviction and death penalty. Despite more than half a million petition signatures demanding Williams be freed, Missouri is set to proceed with the execution. Michelle Smith, Co-Director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, joins Rattling the Bars to explain Williams’ case and the fight to free him before it’s too late.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
In this country, according to the Constitution of the United States, a presumption of innocent goes with a person that’s arrested. They’re presumed innocent until they are found guilty. It’s not they’re presumed innocent until they exonerate themselves. It’s the burden is always on the state to prosecute a person beyond a reasonable doubt.
We have a situation today, where a man that is innocent, not by me saying this, but by the very people that prosecuted him saying this, that he’s innocent. Not me saying this, the evidence, the DNA evidence is saying this. Not me saying this, but a preponderance of evidence and people coming out on behalf of Marcellus Williams Khaliifah, better known as Khaliifah, who is slated to be executed the 24th of this month.
Joining me today is a supporter and an advocate for Khaliifah, is Michelle Smith. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Smith:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the space to talk about Khaliifah’s case.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so let’s start right here. First, tell us a little bit about what you do, then we are going to what’s going on with Khaliifah.
Michelle Smith:
Sure. So, well, as far as myself and my organization, I am the co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. We are the only statewide entity in Missouri that primarily fights to get rid of capital punishment. That is our main goal. And, in doing that, we do a lot of different things.
We do things from legislative advocacy, trying to change the actual law, to connecting with our community, and educating our citizens about the usage of the death penalty in Missouri. And also, we advocate for people who are on death row, which is what we’re doing currently for Khaliifah. So, we do a lot. And, this case right now, it is very dire. He has an execution date in, what, 11 days, and so we’re really trying to amplify his case, this injustice, and what is happening in our state concerning the pending execution of an innocent Black man.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so let’s right there.
Okay, an innocent black man. All right, make the case based on what the facts say, why he’s innocent, but start with what they say that he allegedly done.
Michelle Smith:
Sure.
So in 1998 there was a, the victim’s name is Felicia Gale, and she was in her home and there was a person who entered her home, and brutally killed her, and it was a tragic situation for sure. I never want to take away from that. A family lost [inaudible 00:03:30].
And so after this happened in 1998, a few months prior, another person, another woman, had been murdered in her home in a similar fashion. And the medical examiner at the time said they looked similar, but also the way that they were killed with a knife from their home, and also this knife was basically left sticking out of their bodies. So the medical examiner thought that there was some similarities, maybe it was some type of serial killer situation, but both of the cases went cold for a very long time. There were no suspects and no one arrested in either of those cases.
A little over a year later, the victim in this case, Mrs. Gale, her husband, who was a doctor, he decided to offer a $10,000 reward for someone to come forward with information because he and his family wanted justice for the killing of his wife. So once he offered that $10,000 reward, several people came forward basically saying that Khaliifah had confessed to killing this victim. And those people were… One was a girlfriend, someone he was dating, and another person was a person he met in jail.
So we all call that a jailhouse informant, or a jailhouse snitch. So these two particular people who I’ve actually learned knew each other, the informant, and the person in jail, and the girlfriend. So they both said Khaliifah basically told them that he had killed this victim, and the main crux of the case during that time… And he went to trial in 2001…
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Michelle Smith:
So several years after the murder, he went to trial. The informants both received money, they received $5,000. In one case with the jailhouse informant, he actually met the victim’s husband at the prosecutor’s office where the victim’s husband handed him $5,000 in cash. So it’s just egregious.
But, the main crux of the case at that time was these two people’s statements, and the fact that Khaliifah was in possession of the victim’s laptop computer. Now, you and I both know that there is a time, and even still today, stolen property is sold, handed off, et cetera. And so the fact that Khaliifah had her laptop was not necessarily surprising to me, because people do trade in stolen property.
And, interestingly enough, the girlfriend at the time, who said Khaliifah had the laptop, it was later found out that she’s the one who gave him the laptop, because she [inaudible 00:06:18] off the street again. At that point it had been stolen property. So he had been in possession of the victim’s laptop, and these people said that he told them that he had done this.
But, when we look at the actual evidence, and when I say evidence, I mean physical evidence, not only blood at the scene, but things like footprints. There was a bloody footprint left at the home from the person who had did this. Those did not match Khaliifah. Also, the victim, of course, she struggled, this was a brutal situation, and the victim was clutching hairs in her hand of the perpetrator, the person that had harmed her, and when they tested those hairs that were clutched in her hand, they did not match Khaliifah either. Any fingerprints in the home did not match him either, and the blood on the knife also did not match Khaliifah.
So there is no physical evidence that actually matches Khaliifah in this case. Again, the only thing that the prosecution originally put their case on is these two “witnesses” who said that Khaliifah told them that he did it, and the fact that he had item of the victims in his possession, including her laptop.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, answer this for the benefit of our audience…
Michelle Smith:
Go ahead.
Mansa Musa:
Because the error that you talking about, that he got locked up, The Innocence Project, the DNA became like the national standard for exonerating. Kirk Bloodsworth, they got a law I call Kirk Bloodsworth law, but Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up with me, and Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up in the 80s, ’85 or ’86. And Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up for allegedly raping and killing a little young girl. They had the underwear of the little young girl in their possession, the state did, and never tested it. So when they ultimately tested it, it exonerated him. But what that did that started this national campaign to give value to DNA evidence. That’s what this did. And I’m setting this backdrop up.
So whenever DNA evidence came up during that period, during the late nineties, or in that whole ’90 and 2000, and the OJ, you had… DNA evidence was like the crux. It was like the end of all. Why wasn’t this evidence taken into, if you know, why wasn’t this evidence, which is evidence that’s scientifically sound evidence, because you got hundreds of thousands of people that are locked up to this day based on DNA evidence. Why was this evidence excluded and didn’t go towards his innocence to your knowledge?
Michelle Smith:
Well, I’ll say a couple of things.
First, getting DNA tested in cases is always and often contentious. So, often the courts don’t approve the testing. You assume that when a case has some type of evidence, it is automatically tested. That’s not necessarily the case. So in Marcellus’ or Khaliifah’s case, the forensic evidence, the DNA was not tested until 2015, and I mean the current good DNA testing, not just like a blood test, but actual…
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michelle Smith:
So it was conducted in 2015.
And during that time what happened was the DNA on the weapon, it was not Khaliifah’s DNA, but whoever’s DNA was, it was unknown. They didn’t know who. So of course the assumption is the DNA must match the perpetrator, and they did not know who that was. They were not allowed to run the DNA through the FBI system, I think it’s called CODIS. They were not allowed to run it through the system, so for many years that DNA went unknown.
However, a few weeks ago, probably mid-August, some DNA testing was conducted further on that knife, and when that testing came back, they had tested the prosecutor who originally prosecuted the case in 2001 and one of his investigators. And, interestingly enough, the DNA came back to match them. So what that told the current prosecutor’s office is that the evidence was contaminated, because obviously the prosecutor didn’t do it himself. So the fact that the DNA on the knife matched him, meaning that there was some contamination that happened, there was some mishandling of the evidence. And so the fact that the reality is the prosecutor’s DNA is on the weapon and also that investigator means that there was some type of breakdown in the chain of custody and the handling of that material.
A few weeks ago, August 28th when the hearing was held, that original prosecutor, he got on the stand, and testified, and he basically said that “Yes, I did handle the knife without any gloves.” He said the trial again happened three years after the murder, and because they had already run the fingerprint testing and the blood testing, he felt like it was okay for him to handle the knife without gloves. Actually said he did it all the time, which is concerning to me. And so that’s how his DNA got on the knife.
He handled it without gloves. He said he pulled it out of the package, and put the evidence sticker on it, and he showed it to several of the witnesses to confirm that that’s the knife that they saw, witnesses being the police officers, and he did. So the fact that the weapon was mishandled and the evidence contaminated obviously means that there’s something going on, because had the prosecutor not done that, it’s possible that the actual perpetrator’s DNA would have still been found on the knife, but because it had been mishandled, right now the DNA, again, does not match Khaliifah, but it has proven the evidence has been mishandled. So that is why there such contention around the DNA evidence in this case.
Mansa Musa:
All right, talk about this here. What about the hair follicles? Did anything come out in terms of testing that against Khaliifah’s hair follicles?
Michelle Smith:
Yes, and none of the other evidence matched Khaliifah, the hair, the footprints, the fingerprints, there is no physical evidence in that home, in that murder scene, that matched Khaliifah. The only evidence they had was the fact that he was in possession of the victim’s laptop and that these two people said that he told them he did it. They didn’t see it happen. They weren’t there either, but they both said that he told.
And the person from jail, interestingly enough, he did not know that man. He had just been in jail with him for a few days up to a week, so the fact that you would even be in jail with someone and just confessing to them that you killed people, that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Mansa Musa:
But that’s a common phenomenon in prison. People, they sit around, and they look at the paper, and they read about somebody’s case and they use that to get out. They call the state’s attorney, state’s attorney, don’t even look and see whether or not it’s any validity to it.
But let’s talk about, excuse me, the current prosecutor. And the current prosecutor and them and the states representative saying they are saying that he should be released or he should definitely not be executed. Talk about that, talk about that right there.
Michelle Smith:
Sure. So in our state, in 2021, there was a law passed in Missouri. And that law says that the local prosecutor, which is the office that prosecuted a person, that local prosecutor has the right to bring forth a case, a motion to court, to ask the court to set aside conviction, and that happens when the attorneys for the person who was convicted brings evidence to the prosecutor and then he himself in his office reviews the evidence.
So it’s not that a prosecutor just brings any case, he actually has his own staff review the evidence, his investigators, he runs the testing, et cetera. And once he was done reviewing this case, he decided that, “Yes, this case is not something I would have brought to court if I had been in court at that time. Our office messed up, our office mishandled evidence, and our office convicted someone who we today believe, who is not guilty, who is innocent.”
And so because of all of those reasons, the prosecutor brought the motion to court, asked the judge to review it, and to vacate that conviction. But, there is another party in this matter, which is the state attorney, the Attorney General of Missouri. And so the Attorney General of Missouri has the right to challenge the local prosecutor’s assertions. And this has been done several times. Now in the past three times, it has been used since 2021, the person was exonerated and freed and none of those people were on death row. All three of those people had life sentences. One was prison 28 years, one was in prison 34, and one was in prison for 42 years, and all of them were black men. Each of those black men have been exonerated and released after decades incarcerated.
But in this particular case, when the prosecutor brought forth the case and asked for to be reviewed, the State Attorney General has tried to block him at every point, at every turn. They were going to take a Alford plea, which is basically a plea deal [inaudible 00:16:36] some evidence, but that still there is doubt in that conviction. And the judge was going to accept that Alford plea, and in exchange they were going to give a Khaliifah a life in prison sentence.
Now life in prison is still a conviction and incarceration, however, it would’ve saved his life. He would not be facing execution. But, the State Attorney General went to the Supreme Court that evening, asked them to throw out this plea deal and hold the hearing, and once that hearing was held, the judge then reviewed the evidence… And it came out yesterday, so the judgment came out yesterday and it said that basically the DNA evidence that again points to the prosecutor, meaning that it was contaminated, is not “clear and convincing.” There’s a very high bar, when we’re talking about innocence, there’s a very high bar and person has to meet and the judge does not feel that this case meets that high enough bar in order to vacate the conviction. So the judge denied the motion to vacate the conviction.
So at this point, again, Khaliifah is facing execution on September 24th. His attorneys as well as the local prosecutor are trying to figure out their next legal move in court. I’m not quite sure what that is, but of course they can go to the state Supreme Court, they can also go to the US Supreme Court, and so we anticipate them doing that, and I’m sure that they’re going to keep fighting to bring justice to this case, and to exonerate Khaliifah, and also stop his impending execution. But we are in [inaudible 00:18:20]
Mansa Musa:
I got you. This is literally like you say, the 11th hour, but also from my information is the family members came out and said… Took a position on Khaliifah. What was that?
Michelle Smith:
In these cases, the victim’s families don’t always agree with the prosecution, and I think that’s a fallacy that people assume so. But the victim’s family, Mrs. Gale’s family have stated publicly that they don’t believe in the death penalty.
Again, her husband is a doctor and I’m sure that him being a doctor, a person that is tasked with saving people’s lives, is what grounds his own ideology in this, but the family is not for the death penalty. Now the family believes that Khaliifah is guilty of the murder. They have stated that as well. They don’t believe he’s innocent. They believe he’s guilty, but they also don’t believe in death penalty. So they would be satisfied if he was just incarcerated. But I explain to people often that the prosecutor, they don’t always align with the family. The prosecutor is a political position, and the decisions that they make in the office are often politically motivated. It’s not always about the family.
I’ve seen cases where… There’s one case of a man who family, the victim’s family was his own family, because in his case, when he was 19, he killed a member of his family. I believe she was a great aunt who was an elderly person, and he was doing drugs, sadly, and he killed his great aunt trying to get money. But the victim’s family, his family are same family.
And that victim’s family went to the governor, I believe it was Texas, and went to the governor of Texas and told him, “We don’t want our loved one killed. We understand what he did. We are a family of faith. We are a family of forgiveness, and we want him here, and we believe that he’s a better person, and we don’t want to lose him.” And the state said, “we don’t care what you think” and executed him anyway.
So the prosecution is not always about the victim’s families, or the victim’s loved ones, or justice for the victim’s family, because in Khaliifah’s case, the victim’s family does not agree with the death penalty, however, the state is still pushing for Khaliifah to be executed. So it is not always what the victims want.
Mansa Musa:
We want to educate our audience on this point when they offer Khaliifah an Alford, because the Alford plea is a plea that’s saying that I’m innocent, it’s just that the circumstances, I can’t overcome these circumstances at this time. It’s not that they can’t be overcome, it’s just they can’t be overcome at this time. So this is a better course.
So given the Alford plea, he still would’ve been able to pursue his quest to be exonerated, which is really what this is about, an innocent man. Talk about an innocent man getting ready to be legally murdered. Talk about the state of Missouri and how they do the… Overwhelming numbers of blacks on death row, or is this generally that they go out, and they execute or they try to get the death penalty across the board, or is just systemically poor and poor people?
Michelle Smith:
Interestingly enough, when we talk about… Of course, racism is embedded in the capital punishment, death penalty system, it is the crutch of it is how it was done. There was a time where we were lynched.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Michelle Smith:
They made it legal and they made it state and they made it in the gas chamber, or an execution chair, but it’s still state-sanctioned murder. And since it is still embedded in racism, there is a little bit of difference. It’s not necessarily the race of the defendant, which that has a part, but statistically it’s the race of the victim.
Being a white female means that you’re three and a half times more likely to receive a death sentence. So if the victim is a white woman or a white female child, whoever the perpetrator is, nevermind [inaudible 00:22:33] whoever. But that goes to show you who’s valued in society. Because if Khaliifah’s victim was a black man or a black woman, he very likely would not be on death row right now. That’s just the reality of the situation.
So, racism does definitely play a part, who the victim is plays a huge part, but it is also who the defendant is as well. And in our particular state, because we are a state that held onto slavery, actually Missouri was a [inaudible 00:23:05] only state.
Mansa Musa:
Yes.
Michelle Smith:
So Missouri is the South. I tell people that often Missouri is the south, and when we look at it, we look at the lynchings in our state, and we can really overlay a map of the executions and they almost match. So places that did lynching, extrajudicial murders, now carries out the death penalty, capital punishment. It is definitely mostly black men, for the most part, but the overwhelming majority of people are poor. And that’s what we need to talk about, too.
People who are facing capital punishment, or lengthy sentences in prison are poor, don’t have access to the best legal help. In Khaliifah’s case, his attorneys, back at that time, his defense attorneys today, those two men are judges, and they came to court and they said, “Listen, we were ineffective because we had another death penalty case at the time, and we were stretched thin, we were busy, we had more than one capital punishment case, and we did not do everything that we could for Khaliifah because of that other case.” And they actually admitted that in court as well. So the representation for people, most of the time get public defenders, and they don’t have the robust representation. Everybody’s not OJ. Everybody cannot afford Johnnie Cochran and a great legal team.
Mansa Musa:
Dream team.
Michelle Smith:
Exactly. And so most poor people are facing these particular punishments because they don’t have access to their robust legal representation, and that’s the crux of it.
Even right now in our state, there are approximately 10 to 12 pending capital punishment cases, meaning they’re sitting in jail, waiting to go to trial, and they’ve been charged with murder and facing a death penalty. And guess what? All of those people right now are white men from rural Missouri. So they’re from small towns in Missouri, they’re all white men. And it is really an indictment, again, of our system. So when we talk about racism and the division and the biases, we truly need to understand that our system, our country, hates poor people overall.
Mansa Musa:
Criminalize poverty.
Michelle Smith:
[inaudible 00:25:16] tell you is, if you’re poor and you don’t have access to resources, or access to amazing litigation, et cetera, you are going to be victimized in this system.
Mansa Musa:
They criminalize poverty.
But talk… Look, before as we get ready to close out, talk about Khaliifa. I asked you earlier, I said, make the case why you think he’s innocent, and I’ll leave that up to our viewers based on the preponderance of information that you gave us, the facts of his case is in public record, but talk about Khaliifa, how is he doing and what kind of person is Khaliifa, for the benefit of our audience?
Michelle Smith:
So Khaliifah is again, his birth name was Marcellus Williams. He has been a very devout Muslim for many, many years and he took upon the Islamic name Khaliifah upon his shahada, which is that naming ceremony. He is also the Imam at the prison he’s in. So he is a person that is looked up to that is very admired. He guides the other Muslim men in that prison, and he’s always trying to make sure that he stays in alignment with Allah. So because of that, he keeps his faith right up front, and he is doing okay. We talked a few weeks ago and he honestly encourages me, because I’m not… Sadly, I don’t have the faith that he has. He’s always concerned asking me how I’m doing, telling me everything is going to be okay, because I’m a worrier, but he is very much that person that really stays calm, keeps other people calm around him, and has their perspective that everything is going to work out because he is such a faithful individual.
He’s also a father, a grandfather. He is very involved in his family, and he’s a poet. Khaliifah writes amazing poetry and we put together a collection of his poetry as well. He’s written poems about, one is called the Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine, and it is an amazing poem about just the atrocities that are happening to the Palestinian people. He’s written a poem about George Floyd and the issues of what happened in 2020. So he’s very in tune with what’s going on today, and he has written some amazing poetry. So he is a beautiful-spirited person. He is definitely someone that has so much to give to others, and we are truly fighting for his innocence and his life so that he can go on impacting people in a positive way.
Mansa Musa:
So tell our audience right now, what can they do, how they can support and try to help reverse this process that we know that going to take place unless we get some support and raise the voices of Khaliifa.
Michelle Smith:
So of course, his legal team are doing all they can in court and we appreciate that, but as far as the community, locally here in Missouri and nationwide, just amplify Khaliifah’s story in his case, talk to your community members, talk to your family, talk to your loved ones about the fact that death penalty does not solve anything, and actually killing innocent people should be something we as a society should not be doing.
We have a petition for Khaliifah. We also have a webpage, which is www.freeKhaliifah.org. His name is spelled K-H-A-L-I-I-F-A-H, and it has a toolkit where we have graphics, and we have information that you can share on social media. You can print also and share as well. We have a little email template that you can email our governor, especially if you live in Missouri, you can definitely utilize that. So we’re really asking people to learn and to amplify the case, amplify Khaliifah’s life and humanity, and we would love this to get as big as possible. Some people have made videos on TikTok and Instagram, and those are amazing as well, because those get a lot of views and really inspire other people to learn more, and so that’s truly what we’re looking to do, amplify Khaliifah’s case.
Next Tuesday the 17th, from six to nine P.M. we will be going live on Instagram, bringing on several people to talk about Khaliifah’s case and trying to do a social media push really just to amplify the case, again, and to amplify his life because a lot of people don’t know what’s happening, so we definitely want more people to understand what is going on and how it not only affects us in Missouri, it affects us nationwide because we should have a stop at killing innocent people. That definitely is not something we should be doing.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you. There you have it. The Real News, Rattling the Bars. We ask that you review this information about Marcellus Khaliifah Williams. We ask that you asked yourself if you was in this situation, would you want to get a fair trial? Would you want people to really look at the information and the evidence when you confronted with this information and this evidence? Ask yourself, would you, as a juror, if you knew all this as a juror, would you have found Khaliifah guilty of murder? Ask yourself if you as a juror, would not be able to discern when person have interest over humanity, where a person would take and sell somebody out for $5,000? Ask yourself what would you do?
We’re asking that you look at this information and follow what Michelle was saying as far as on the Instagram, on their webpage is very interactive, and make your voice known. Because if we continue to allow this country to execute people, legally with impunity, then as Angela Davis say, “If they come for me at night, they’ll come for you in the morning.” And this is them coming for us in the morning and we don’t raise the voice of Khaliifah. Thank you, Michelle.
Michelle Smith:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mansa Musa:
And we asked you to continue to support Rattling the Bars and the Real News because we’re actually the Real News.
Darcy Layton was pleasantly surprised with a free sweater and fruit from her local convenience store—but what she didn’t know was that a more sinister surprise was awaiting her outdoors. Without explanation, local police confronted Layton and ordered her to show ID. Police body camera footage reveals the officer got physical when Layton was slow to give her full name, and arrested her under questionable pretenses. Suddenly facing charges, Latyon was hit with another shock from police: if she did not accept a guilty plea, she would be involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitalization. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report investigate the case and examine how it reveals the role of police in enforcing social boundaries by criminalizing mental illness and homelessness.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose. Holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.
And today, we will achieve that goal by showing you this video of a cop making an inexplicable arrest of a woman who was simply standing on a public sidewalk. A questionable use of power to detain and cage a person who had not committed a crime. But it’s an arrest which reveals the destructive consequences of over-policing and why cops need to be watched at all times. But first, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you.
You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct and please share and like and comment. It really helps us and it can even help our guests and you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And please consider joining our channel and if you click that blue fundraising button over here, you can make a huge difference to help keep us going. If you donate $75 or more or become a $10 a month supporter, you’ll receive an exclusive Real News T-shirt as a special thank you so please consider helping us. You never see ads here and you know we don’t take corporate dollars.
All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we reported on the show repeatedly over and over again, police power is often used in situations that do not justify it, but in fact call for entirely different solutions. There are incidents where people simply need the help of another human being, not a gun, a badge or a set of handcuffs and no use of police power is more indicative of our penchant for applying it to the wrong situations than the video I’m showing you now.
It depicts an encounter between Darcy Layton and an Ogden, Utah police officer that ended with horrible consequences for her and questions about how the department treats people in need at their most vulnerable moments. The story starts in Ogden, Utah in April 2023. There, Darcy Layton is experiencing what she’ll tell us later was a moment of personal crisis. Not violent, as you will see, or even alarming. She’s just dealing with the consequences of her tenuous housing situation and she’s struggling with the stress of it. She happened at the same time to be standing on a street outside of a 7-Eleven, which is a fact that will be important later. That’s when an Ogden police officer drove to confront her for reasons that remain unknown. Take a listen.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, excuse me. Hey.
Darcy Layton:
Hi.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hi. What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry, I was kind of praying to God for a minute.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, no, that’s fine. It’s just the people at 7-Eleven don’t want you here so can I get your name?
Darcy Layton:
Oh, they didn’t tell me that [inaudible 00:03:01] been in there.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, well what’s your name? What’s your name? Hey, stop. Stop.
Taya Graham:
Now, you will notice as the officer exits the vehicle, Darcy was clearly standing on a public sidewalk, not on the property of a 7-Eleven. And as is her right, since the officer had not expressed reasonable, articulate suspicion that she had committed a crime, she had declined to identify herself and simply exercise her right and walk away, but the officer decided to pursue. Take a look.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, what’s your name ma’am? Ma’am, what’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m okay. I just would go for a walk, I’m okay.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I didn’t shop with [inaudible 00:03:51].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, what’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m going to go. I’m fine. I haven’t done anything wrong.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re not leaving.
Darcy Layton:
I’m fine.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re trespassing. They want you out of here.
Darcy Layton:
I am walking off the, wait, wait. I’m not trespassing. I’m on public road.
Taya Graham:
First of all, the officer has not established that she has committed a crime. Yes, as you heard, he accused her of trespassing. But given that she seems far removed from the actual property of the 7-Eleven, that is at best, a questionable allegation. Still, without any evidence of intent of a crime, he continues to try to detain her – watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come back to my car.
Darcy Layton:
I was on a public road.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come back to my car.
Darcy Layton:
Public road, public road.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come, stop.
Darcy Layton:
Let me go.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
What the you fuck [inaudible 00:04:30].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck, fucking God. Oh my God.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so for some reason that I cannot conceivably justify legally he puts his hands on her and I will note at the time this occurred, she was not threatening anyone and she was in the process of leaving the area, as I will repeat, is her right. Therefore, the question at this point is why did the officer put his hands on her? What exactly is the crime? Take a look for yourself and decide if this use of force is justified.
Darcy Layton:
[inaudible 00:05:03].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking stop, fucking God. Oh my God.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
If you don’t stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking hell.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].
Darcy Layton:
Rick, you got a PP.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, don’t feel my leg.
Darcy Layton:
Rick you got a PP. God, damn you.
Taya Graham:
Before I weigh in on the legality of this arrest or what the law entitles the officer to do, at this point I want you to take a look at something that we see quite often when watching police body cameras, but rarely discuss, the way the officer initiates pain compliance. Now you can see how the officer bends her arm up into her arm socket. This is an extremely painful maneuver that can have lasting physical effects. Just recall our last show when Eddie Holguin was still suffering from the ongoing nerve pain of a previous arrest when the police arrested him again and caused pain in the same arm. Still, despite the risks, along with the obvious fact, Darcy is hardly a physically formidable detainee, the officer continues to press her arm up and into her shoulder, see for yourself.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking hell.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].
Darcy Layton:
Rick, you got a PP.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, don’t feel my leg.
Darcy Layton:
Rick you got a PP. God, damn you. [inaudible 00:06:44] Fucking bullshit [inaudible 00:06:44]. God damn.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, give me your other arm. Give me your other arm.
Taya Graham:
Now, I really want you to think about what you’re seeing here. A woman pressed into the ground on the wet sidewalk, her arm dangerously pushed up into her back and is facing this physical duress for doing what exactly? What was the crime here? What was the threat to the public safety? A couple of 7-Eleven employees didn’t like her. Is that how we justify the use of force? Let’s just listen and see if the officer shares the particulars of the crime upon which he bases his use of force.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re being ridiculous.
Darcy Layton:
Don’t you dare, mother fucker. Fuck, your mother.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Sit up.
Darcy Layton:
It’s okay, fucking your mother.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Sit up.
Darcy Layton:
If you’re okay with fucking your mother. Fuck you, bullshit, [inaudible 00:07:36].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Please stand up.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck Eddie. God damn it. Fucking, what is your problem?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come on.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Put your shoes on.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Let’s go.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do, please? What did I fucking do? You, God damn it.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What did I do? What crime had I committed? A fairly simple question and yet the officer does not answer it. Now, instead, he ridicules Darcy and continues to implement pain compliance, a situation that only gets worse as he forces her into the patrol car all the while maintaining his silence about her alleged crime.
Darcy Layton:
Please, what did I fucking do? You God damn it.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop. Stop. Do you have anything on you shouldn’t have? What’s your name? Huh? What’s your name? I’m going to add another charge.
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry please be nice.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking bullshit.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Please be nice. Who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Police, get in.
Darcy Layton:
Please, who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in. Get in please. Can you put your feet in the car please?
Taya Graham:
I’m going to add another charge. Well, that’s interesting. For what exactly? Because you can’t have a secondary offense without an underlying crime to justify it, right, officer? So what exactly is the first offense that justifies the second? Because as far as I can tell you never really made clear what the initial reason for the arrest is. And let me say this as well, this particular arrest up until this point embodies many of the problems people endure when they push back on the state of law enforcement in this country.
This is why people don’t trust the police because so far the officer has been less than forthcoming about his justification for this violent arrest, and yet he has been more than articulate about his disdain for Darcy, which incidentally, is not a crime. In other words, you can’t arrest people that you don’t like. But still the officer persists and continues to refuse to answer questions. Just watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in, please. Can you put your feet in the car please? It’s soaking [inaudible 00:09:57].
Darcy Layton:
I’m very hot.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
Ah.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Huh? What is your name? What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I don’t know.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Huh?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I just kind of daydreaming for a minute.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay. What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I don’t know. I don’t remember. [inaudible 00:10:23]
Taya Graham:
But now perhaps the officer realizes that he has made an arrest for no good reason so he starts to make an accusation on body camera, the one that seems problematic, if not impossible. Take a look.
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry I fucking [inaudible 00:10:39] myself I didn’t mean to you.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Lean your up a little bit.
Darcy Layton:
Am I dead?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Why did you scratch me? Did you bite me?
Darcy Layton:
They drowning me in the fucking hole.
Taya Graham:
Did you bite me, seriously? This is what we like to call body worn camera performance. You know, I don’t have reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause to make an arrest, but what I do have is the ability to perform my own version of stop resisting on body worn camera to justify any actions that might not meet the actual legal threshold for putting someone in handcuffs. Now, I’m not going to review the entire video, but here are a few excerpts and you tell me when and where she had the opportunity or inclination to bite the officer. Let’s watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
What the fuck.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking, fuck. What the hell?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking dick.
Taya Graham:
So I, for one, didn’t see it and if you did, please leave a comment sharing where you did if you do indeed think she tried to harm the officer. But for the record, the bite may have been literally impossible because as Darcy shared with me later, she didn’t have her dentures in. But in the meantime, there is much to reveal about what led up to the arrest and the way police in Ogden, Utah have been aggressively targeting members of the community that we will unpack for you when we speak to Darcy and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg, details, which only make the circumstances surrounding this example of over-policing even more questionable. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Tay, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So Stephen, how are police justifying the arrest? What crime did Darcy commit?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I looked at the charging documents. We obtained them from the police department. Pretty simple. They charged her with some very questionable crimes that don’t seem to match the body-worn camera, namely trespassing and then interfering. But of course interfering would be a secondary offense to trespassing. And if you look at the video, you could see that she’s clearly on the sidewalk, I think, although the snow is covering, but not on the property.
But what they did because of those charges is that they had her plead guilty to the trespassing, threatening to charge her with that other bogus charge, which is injuring a police officer, which again, on video clearly contradicts what the officer was saying. So really it’s an example of law enforcement using their powers, to strong-arm someone into giving up their rights.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so wait, you’re saying Ogden, Utah prosecutors actually threatened her with charges of assaulting an officer. What was the plea offer and what eventually happened?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean Tay, it’s amazing. What they use is that very, I think questionable charge of trespassing to then intimidate her and saying that she was going to have to plead guilty of something that clearly wasn’t on body-worn camera, which just shows you how ridiculously ill-equipped I would say, our justice system is to defend people who can’t afford a high-priced lawyer. I’m sure if she had an expensive lawyer, that case would’ve been tossed in a second, but instead she ended up spending time in jail having plead guilty to a crime she didn’t commit.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, it seems to me that police are targeting this area’s unhoused population. What does this use of police power say about the underlying imperative of it and how does this jive with some of the theories of police power and its role in capitalism?
Stephen Janis:
Well, Tay, let me go back to what I just said. Let’s do a little thought experience. Imagine if all these unhoused people had expensive lawyers who could fight back and question the police, question the charges, question the legality, put officers on the stand and put the legal system on the stand as well. Let’s imagine what would happen. Do you think they’d be harassing these people? Do you think they’d be arresting them and pulling them in for charges they didn’t commit? Do you think so? I don’t think so. And that just shows you that our justice system is for sale and it goes to the highest bidder and that’s the problem we see here. People don’t have a way to defend themselves. They don’t have access to the same services that rich people do. And so police mess with them. That’s all this is. That’s what it is.
Taya Graham:
And now to talk about their encounters with police prior to the arrest we just watched and how law enforcement continues to harass them, I’m joined by Darcy Layton and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg. Darcy and Eddie, thank you so much for joining us.
Darcy Layton:
Thank you Taya for having me.
Taya Graham:
So first, what were you at the convenience store before you were grabbed by police?
Darcy Layton:
I had gone for a walk but forgot my ID, my wallet and keys and I had somebody mail it to me, that was mailed to my address and I was just kind of asking if anybody knew where they might’ve moved to because I’d been living there for three years already in my apartment and still receiving mail to this person. Yeah, so I was just taking a break from my house for a minute. I was getting ready to head back home and somebody offered to buy me a drink. I wasn’t panhandling by any means, but it was cold and raining so somebody offered me, they put a jacket on me and offered to buy me a drink and they bought me some bananas and that’s why I was there.
Taya Graham:
An officer approached you but did not seem to explain why you were being stopped or detained or articulate any kind of reasonable suspicion. Did the officer ever explain to you what your crime was?
Darcy Layton:
I wasn’t catching on, I’m hard of hearing in my left ear and he approached me from my left side and at the time I was saying a prayer and I even mentioned that to him and then he said, “Stop.” So I thought he meant stop praying. But I couldn’t see him. I had been offered a ride home by two people in two white cars and thought it was one of them coming back to offer me a ride again. So I didn’t look. I just kept my eyes closed, praying still when he said to stop. At some point after I saw the video, but I didn’t hear it while I was standing there because of the deafness in my left ear, after they finally released the video over a year later to me, that’s when I heard him say that the store didn’t want me there, but I was already off the property.
Taya Graham:
The officer appeared to be strongly twisting your arm behind your back and then put you face down on the wet sidewalk. Was any reason given for using these pain compliance techniques or even for cuffing you?
Darcy Layton:
There was nothing given to me, nothing I heard at all. He basically told me that I wasn’t wanted on the property, they wanted me to leave, so I was walking away from the property. I was already off the property. I started to walk away when he said, “Stop.” And so I continued on my way By then I was on the public road, which is not their property anyway.
Taya Graham:
Did the officers identify themselves or give you any information?
Darcy Layton:
No, they didn’t and would not, I asked them repeatedly afterwards. Even at that point, who are they? Who are you and what’s going on? What did I do? And they would not respond to me and give me an answer whatsoever so I was uncertain of them even being official officers at all. Whatever happened to a rights to remain silent because they never even said anything about that. And so I was just remaining silent and then I felt like I must’ve been so confused because I didn’t realize, know what was going on because they wouldn’t give me any information whatsoever about who they were even when I asked who they were. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them information about who I was because I’d heard on TV or on the news to make sure that if you don’t trust that they are true officers, to call 911 and go to a store or somewhere where there’s more people and get some real officers on board before contacting or telling them anything. So I didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong here by not giving them my name at first, but I did give them my first name, but it’s not in the video.
Taya Graham:
Darcy, were you injured during the encounter? It looked very painful.
Darcy Layton:
Yeah. Well I also have previous injuries in my lower back, a slipping disc. It is slipping. There’s no fluid in my, between L-4 and L-5. It just, it’s completely gone so it’s bone on bone already. They were putting their knee in my back pushing so hard that I lost control of my bladder with all their weight on top of me and up in my cervical C-spine now and my neck also with more damage as well. It was hurting pretty bad. Yes, that’s why I was swearing so much. Definitely causing me pain.
Taya Graham:
So the part with multiple officers being on top of you wasn’t shown in the body camera video we have because that body cam was not available because of the cost, right?
Darcy Layton:
Because I am on SSI for disabilities that I have and I only get, well right now, back then it was just a little over $900 a month. I had been going to that store at least three times a week every month for three years. But the income level is not high enough to retain that. They want $2,000 for the entire footage. So after asking for over a year and getting the run around of nothing coming back to us, they finally released seven minutes of the video to me just last week or week before. So yeah, I had nothing to go on yet, but they still want $2,000 for the entirety of it. And on SSI you’re not allowed to have anything more than $2,000 at a time on hand so how would I survive?
Taya Graham:
If there were three officers present and one of them was on top of you, I have a feeling, and now this is just speculation that the body camera video probably looked pretty bad to have three officers on top of one woman and perhaps they don’t want the world to see that.
Darcy Layton:
I was face down so it was hard for me to see anything. But when they first pulled me up, I was totally soaked because they had me down in the gutter with a lot of water coming down. Then they were giving me a hard time. They were saying, “Okay, miss no name.” And then they said, “Come on [inaudible 00:19:57]” I mean I’m white, I’m as white as they come and I also read part of his police report and it said he was working overtime and I don’t see crime in the area being necessity for any cop to work overtime in the area. Generally, it’s a pretty calm town.
Taya Graham:
I have seen officers make double their salary with overtime in Baltimore, so I know it’s a precious commodity. What were you charged with and how long were you in jail?
Darcy Layton:
It was like interfering with arresting officer and failure to disclose information and then they were trying to say that I assaulted the officer and I bit the officer and I scratched the officer. However, I was face down with my arm behind my back the whole time. I don’t see how any of that could have possibly happened and I had no teeth. So yeah, my dentures do not fit right. I choke when I try to eat with food so I don’t even wear them at all, but I’m cool with that. It’s fine.
Taya Graham:
Now, something I noted during the body cam video was the officer started pointing at his arm with his smartwatch and suggested that maybe you had bitten him or was that even possible or was it likely he reddened his own arm while cuffing you? I mean you didn’t even have your dentures in, right?
Darcy Layton:
Oh yeah and face down like I was, I thought they were going to drown me right there on the spot in the gutter with so much water coming down and then as much pressure as they applied to me with their knee in my back and I could not hold my bladder whatsoever, like I was getting ran over almost by car. It was stupid. And then I believe, they don’t really have calendars in the jail anyway. They don’t treat you very well here in Ogden in the jail. I believe it was like nine days that I stayed there in the jail before they let me out with no medication. I’m schizophrenic, I got Alzheimer’s or not Alzheimer’s, sorry, what is that called? Parkinson’s like movements and Parkinson’s going on, early stages, but I did not get a single visit from a nurse of any kind.
Also, I did read their written report down at the police station. Just recently, they finally allowed me to see that. He stated that I had said my head hurt, which I never did. They said that they brought a paramedic down there to have me checked out before he brought me to jail. It never happened. There was never a paramedic brought by and the whole time I was there for nine days in jail, zero medications brought to me for my conditions.
Taya Graham:
Darcy, that’s awful you didn’t receive your medications while you were in jail. How are you feeling right now though? I mean how are you processing this? What you describe is really awful.
Darcy Layton:
I have a real hard time being around the officers. Eddie likes to play these videos trying to get them to, he’s just wanting to learn as much as he can about police brutality and them making them do things better and be accountable for their actions and I am stressed out post-traumatic stress disorder and I have to keep getting out the vehicle because he keeps planning so much he doesn’t understand how it causes me stress and I have to go for a walk to get away from it. But I’m having some serious issues. I went and spoke with a therapist just yesterday and it makes me shake. I mean I’m dealing with it, I’m working on it, not letting it bring me down like it was. But yeah, I had some serious, serious issues there and I’m going to get through it though. But yeah, I don’t trust them.
Taya Graham:
So you told us that you’re homeless right now living out of your truck with Eddie. Have the police offered you any help?
Darcy Layton:
In a truck right now that’s just what we do. Most of them have been a hindrance. We’ve run into a couple of real good ones though that are very helpful. We’ve even had them come to a court hearing just to be there for support with us, a couple months back. She was a really nice lady. She did show up because I was having some real uncomfortable feelings about going around police officers and feeling safe at all and triggering my post-traumatic stress disorder coming in and she showed up and she’s very cool.
Eddie Clegg:
She’s an advocate.
Darcy Layton:
An advocate. And she even gathered us up some clothes and stuff and a pill medication holder to help me with my medication because I could lose them sometimes in here and sometimes I forget or I’ll fall asleep before I take my nighttime ones. Not purposely, I just check out though. So yeah, it was good to find at least one out there.
Taya Graham:
How did the police generally treat homeless people in the area? Now you’re living out of a truck and at the time of arrest Darcy, you actually still had an apartment. How do police handle homeless people and do they offer any support services?
Darcy Layton:
At the time of the 7-Eleven incident when I was tackled by the officer or yeah, I was living in an apartment. I had been there for a year and I had just come out on a rainy day with no makeup on and looked like a wet cat already so when I was put into the jail, they were treating me as if I was homeless and the judge even said, or the representative even said, “Well what are we going to do for her address? Where do we send the information?” Because they automatically assumed I was homeless and didn’t even ask me so I don’t know. They have harassed people on Washington Boulevard just because they’re homeless. They stop them and check their bags. One, the other day had just barely gotten released from jail. I don’t know what from, but Eddie got out to record, to make sure he wasn’t bothering him. This guy’s frail and shaky, he’s not doing anything wrong.
Eddie Clegg:
Just got out of jail.
Darcy Layton:
He’s got his backpack and his belongings, whatever he can carry and you can’t carry hardly anything. You need more things with you than you can carry already, but he’s not doing anything wrong. He’s minding his own business and this guy is messing with him. He picked it up and got out of the vehicle, pulled over the side of the road, got out and started to film, record the guy.
Eddie Clegg:
I watched him go through his backpack. The guy’s telling me somebody stole my wallet, I don’t have any ID, but I got my paperwork. I just got out of jail. He didn’t care about the paperwork, he wasn’t trying to find out who he was.
Darcy Layton:
And they give camping tickets to people who are laying out on the parks they don’t let you be at the shelter property during the day.
Eddie Clegg:
And he found a beer bottle in the backpack, so he went to his car and he was going to write him up. I know he was. But he hadn’t seen me yet. Talking to the guy, I got it on video and he was telling me, “Yeah, I tried to tell him that I had ID in here, show my paperwork but he didn’t want to see it.” And then when he seen me recording, he got out of his car, he went back over and says, “Well, I’m not going to charge you with anything, you’re free to go.” And he actually zipped his backpack back up. He zipped it back up and they don’t do that. So he knew he was doing something wrong and I was so happy that he did that. I told him that pretty cool of him to zip your backpack up and let you go and I gave the guy $20 and said, “Things are looking up for you, hang in there.”
Taya Graham:
How do you think the police should have handled this encounter? I mean you were off 7-Eleven property when they approached. I mean how do you think this could have been handled differently?
Darcy Layton:
Well, afterwards when I finally, like a year later, by the time they finally let me see the real video, they should have called for probably paramedics or took me to the hospital because knowing, I took some college courses myself in physiology and psychology and all that. I know, based on watching the video that I needed to go get checked by a doctor mentally because I was a little out there that day because of the schizophrenia, but I still was not doing anything wrong and he is the one who needed to be checked out, not really me.
Eddie Clegg:
So yeah, he had no right, he wasn’t called there. They didn’t tell her to leave. They would’ve told her.
Darcy Layton:
Rogue. He’d gone rogue.
Eddie Clegg:
Yeah, he told her they didn’t want her on property, she started to leave, he should have let it go with that.
Darcy Layton:
Because that’s what he told me. Basically, they don’t want you here, they want you to leave. And so I started to leave as he told me and then he grabbed me for no God damn reason.
Taya Graham:
I think it’s so important for people to understand how people who are on hard times are treated in your area and how an arrest can really alter the course of someone’s life. Thank you. Darcy and Eddie.
Now, as with many of the police encounters we unpack on this show, there is always more to comprehend than just the questionable actions of an overly aggressive cop, motives and imperatives so to speak, that need to be fully understood so that we can get to the root cause of what makes such questionable police behavior possible. Now, one aspect of police power we witnessed in this arrest that is critical to the broader mission of law enforcement is how the officer was able to control space. In other words, as you watch the arrest, you notice the officer has the ability to set arbitrary boundaries and use them to put it mildly to entrap Darcy.
Now when I say entrap, I use that word for a reason because as you witnessed on the video, the officer didn’t care about what was a public sidewalk versus what was private property and he wasn’t the least bit interested in what constituted a public roadway versus what was the private purview of the 7-Eleven, the nuances of space were not of concern, instead, he became the arbiter of it. While this fact may seem trivial, it is not because all of the consequences of policing that we have covered on this show, this arbitrary control of space, is the most essential aspect of what makes excessive law enforcement a threat to our civil liberties. It is the malleable ability to deem a person occupying space to be illegal that gives cops one of the most severe holds over our lives. I mean, think about it. There’s a reason the right to peaceably assemble is part of the First Amendment, not the 10th.
There is an important underlying intention to forcefully stating that the people have the right to redress their government in public space that goes beyond the legal text and into the realm of the truly profound. And what makes it profound is that in effect, those several dozen words preclude just the sort of policing we witnessed in that video. It should at least in theory, make it impossible for an officer to simply determine that anyone standing anywhere could be construed as a criminal simply because they say it is so. Now, imagine for a moment if those words did not exist, imagine for just a second what police could do if the text of the First Amendment had somehow been different. Well, in a sense we live in that reality because as Stephen just told us police had the power to intimidate. Ms. Layton pleaded guilty despite the fact she did not commit a crime.
Cops could literally fashion a crime that does not legally exist just to deny Darcy her right to peaceably assemble. It’s hard to see this type of policing as anything but punishing someone for simply appearing to be homeless. This is a specific expansion of police power that has come under scrutiny by an innovative thinker who is warned the consequences of allowing it to grow unchecked. His name is Mark Neocleous and he is the author of the book called The Fabrication of Social Order, A Critical Theory of Police Power. Now it sounds complicated, but I promise it really isn’t because what the book concludes about police power simply exposes the imperative that drives arrests like we saw today. The book’s thesis is that policing in our modern capitalist society is more about order than it is law enforcement, that police play a critical role in maintaining the order of society based upon profit.
In fact, the primary purpose of police is to in fact fabricate an order that would not otherwise exist to create a world where labor is at the mercy of a capitalist elite, and power is a tool of inequality warriors armed with guns and badges. Neocleous argues that the fabrication of order and the resulting influence of police power start with the types of arbitrary power we have just witnessed. In other words, while Darcy’s arrest might seem trivial and insignificant in the broader story of the battle of America’s flawed law enforcement industrial complex, it’s actually where this entire story starts. That’s because the power has to be at its essence, arbitrary. In other words, it has to be applied solely at the discretion of authority. It can’t be precluded or prescribed by law. It simply cannot be limited or curtailed by a set of amendments outlined in the Constitution.
It has to be random, chaotic, and most of all indiscriminate. And what I mean is that in order for this type of police power that Neocleous envisions to proliferate, it must be random, unknowable and infallible. It must be indiscriminate, contradictory, and most of all unfair. And it must embody all of these seemingly contradictory concepts to adhere to the underlying principle that drives it, to sow chaos in the lives of people who can least afford it, to create and fabricate crises in the lives of working-class people that seemingly strip us of our rights and thus our political power. I mean the biggest fear of the elites that run this country is the working class rising up and opposing the political order that currently profits off a record level of wealth inequality. They really don’t want us to figure out that their catastrophic greed is in fact a problem, not us.
Now having a small handful of people living like kings plundering on natural resources and flying private jets is not what ails us, but it is in fact the result of the underlying chaos caused by intractable poverty that is actually making our beautiful planet uninhabitable. In other words, it’s you, not us, who are the problem. And that’s the point of the policing we watched earlier. It’s overarching control over what should be public space is the most potent facet of bad law enforcement because as the officer manipulated space so too did he manipulate Darcy. As he was able to turn a public sidewalk into an illegal no-go zone. So too was he able to put Darcy in handcuffs, and as he was able to deem the otherwise legally protected actions of Darcy into a crime worthy of the use of force, he was also able to wipe away her civil rights and turn her into a menace to society.
And it is worth noting as Stephen reported from the charging documents and as Darcy related to us, that there was no legal code or law violation recounted in the charging documents. I mean, the officer didn’t even try to cite a law to justify her nine-day incarceration. The only accusation he did make was the unsubstantiated claim that she bit him, an allegation the body worn camera certainly calls into question and as I said, she told me and Eddie that she didn’t even have her dentures in the morning the alleged bite occurred. My point is this is exactly why the growth of police power seems, in essence, to be antithetical to our constitutional rights, why processes like civil asset forfeiture continue to grow unabated as our entire legal system sits by and watches. All of this is the result of police power that has been allowed, or perhaps I should say, encouraged to become as indiscriminate as possible.
It’s just a result of a system expanding its influence through illogic that rather than create a law enforcement system that is rational, predictable, and fair, what we have is a set of protocols that are intended to be exactly the opposite, irrational, unpredictable, and most importantly indifferent to the notion of justice. In this sense, what we have is policing that does not in fact fabricate order, but instead manufactures disorder. What I mean is that police aren’t the gatekeepers of civilized society as some cop-agandists like to argue, but instead, agents of chaos. They literally wreak havoc in our lives like they did with Darcy. And in doing so, only make difficult problems worse for the people who are already suffering. It’s an update on the aforementioned theory of police power and how this power unchecked, moves to our lives. We have to recognize it for what it is and what it is to keep it in check. And when we see it like we did in Darcy’s case, we have to call it out and reveal it as a real threat to civilized society.
We have to let the powers that be known that we see what you are doing and we know what you want to diminish our civil liberties, and we have to be clear that you can’t have them because we are willing to fight to not just keep them but expand them, bad policing or not. We know we deserve better and we will not compromise until we get it.
I want to thank our guests, Darcy and Eddie for reaching out to us. We really do wish you both the best and I hope that by shining a light on your experience, certain officers will be a bit kinder. And of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter, Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey R for their support, thank you Noli D. And a very special thanks to our accountability report, Patreons, we appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next live stream, especially Patreon associate producers, Johnny R, David K, Louis P, and Lucita Garcia, and our super friends, Shane B, Kenneth K, Pineapple Girl, Matter of Rights, and Chris R.
And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly at Tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have the Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We do not run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
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