Sisters-In-Law: The Podcast | Changing the World
56:15 Share

Thank you.

Welcome to Sisters-in-Law, the podcast, episode three. Today we're talking about George Floyd like the rest of earth, but we're talking about it in a different perspective. Where do we go now and what do we do now? I'm Davida Mathis and my real sister, real lawyer, Janice Mathis is with me on Sisters-in-Law, the podcast. Our topic today is changing the world. Where do we go from here? Jan?

Well, thank you, Davida. This certainly has been a world-changing week. Who would have thought that any item in the news could supplant the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic as the top story in the news? But news stations all over the world were talking about George Floyd, and for good reason. He represents the aspirations and the frustrations

of people of color and some well-meaning white folk all over the globe. This morning, if you were watching television, you would see London, Paris, cities all over the world and all over the United States coming together to say effectively enough is enough. Well, what will it take to end the systemic racism that plagues so many police departments? And is the

Is the discrimination limited to the police? Is it something that pervades all of our society? Well, I tell you, Davina, I believe that it was the accumulation of the pandemic, 40 million Americans out of work, Black people dying at three times the rate of white people, the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who inexplicably in her own home

was shot and killed. The Ahmaud Arbery case. So when George Floyd was executed, it lit a keg of powder that really, frankly, was overdue to explode. And explode is just what it has done. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser painted Black Lives Matter on a public street in Washington, D.C., very near the White House. That's not anything we've ever seen before.

So, there are many prescriptions for what we ought to do. Here are just a few of them. George Floyd is the gentleman who was killed with a knee to his neck. Well, George Floyd had a family. His six-year-old daughter, Gianna, who lives in Texas, was on television with her mother. As her mother described exactly what the child would be missing by having lost her father.

It was poignant. It was sad. It was pitiful. It was pathetic. He won't be there to soothe hurts, to answer hard questions, to host her graduation party or her wedding reception. And what made it so painful is that we didn't see in any of the various events

recordings of the incident where Mr. Floyd was executed, we saw nothing to suggest that he offered resistance or that he did anything that would deprive him and Gianna of a relationship with each other throughout their lives. Let's say, for example, that he did have a counterfeit bill. That's what the police reported was that he was under suspicion of using a counterfeit currency.

But let's remember that the punishment for counterfeiting is not execution in the street without a trial. And there were people watching. Reportedly, there was a nurse who kept saying throughout those horrible nearly nine minutes, let me take his pulse. Let me take his pulse. Well, we've seen the video and it is horrible and it gripped the nation and indeed the world.

George Floyd had moved to Minneapolis looking for better job opportunities. It's ironic that his death came on top of the pandemic, on top of 40 million people who are unemployed, black people dying at two to three times the rate of white people from the pandemic. Don't forget about Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who was killed in her own home, and the hunting down of Ahmaud Arbery. The execution of George Floyd lit a keg of powder.

that was way past due to explode. You know, we're sickened and saddened, not just by the George Floyd killing, but it seems that they come in such rapid succession. Mr. Arbery, we heard the awful tape of the preliminary hearing where it was testified to that they uttered words of denigration against Mr. Arbery as he lay in the street dying, called him the N-word.

But they're not the only ones. Tiara Thomas was killed by a police officer who was the father of three of her children. Some of us remember Sandra Bland, who hung herself after being arrested on a traffic charge. At least it's alleged that she did. But no black woman on her way to a new job with no criminal history would hang herself in a jail because she got a traffic ticket. It just doesn't stand to reason. Now, Katasha McKinney.

who had schizophrenia was killed with a stun gun when she refused to comply, according to police. She probably didn't even understand what they were trying to say to her. No unarmed Black person is exempt from excessive use of force, and Black women suffer from it, perhaps not as often, but when they do, they don't get as much attention from the media or the police or from people. So far, there have been 11 days of protests

all over the world. And I don't know about you, but I feel rage and I feel exhausted and I feel saddened. And then the president comes out to suggest that because there was a slight reduction in unemployment, that George Floyd should be happy. I mean, it's so nonsensical that it doesn't even have any meaning for him to say that. Then we've got the evidence that suggests that

We ought to be enraged. The evidence that's coming out from the George Floyd case suggests that you got one autopsy report that says it looks like he died from underlying heart disease. Another report procured by the family says that it was mechanical strangulation or asphyxiation. But both come to the conclusion, which is common sense, that the cause of his death was homicide.

It's no wonder that the peaceful protests all over the country in the early days were occasionally marred by looting and intentionally set fires. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others have been encouraging the demonstrators. Don't loot because you dilute your message when you loot. And of course, the president had to throw fuel on the fire. When the looting starts, the shooting starts. So now what do we do?

A friend of mine, somebody who I've known for many years, is the Attorney General, Mr. Ellison from Minnesota. It was a good thing that the case has been turned over to him for prosecution in Minnesota on behalf of the state of Minnesota. But he has been careful to keep expectations low, saying over and over again, this is going to be very difficult. Davida?

Well, prosecution is always difficult, Jan. Murder second degree is a more appropriate charge, in my opinion. In Minnesota, Mr. Chauvin could get up to 40 years. It appears that Attorney General Keith Ellison charged Derek Michael Chauvin under subsection 2.1. It is when a person causes a death without intent. And we talked about intent in episode 2.

while committing or attempting to commit a felony other than a sexual conduct felony. But really what it means is that the officer was trying to hurt or commit a felony to physically hurt Mr. Floyd, but he didn't intend to kill him. That's what a second degree murder charge is. It is an upgrade at least,

if convicted, Derek Michael Chauvin could get 40 years in prison. So he upgraded it to murder three, correct? To murder two. He upgraded it to murder second. To murder two.

which is still not an intense murder, an intentional murder, but it is a murder where you intend to commit a felony like serious bodily harm to a person. And when you're doing what you intend to do in this case, inflict serious bodily harm to a person, the person dies. It's a distinction without a whole lot of difference. The difference is you can't get life for it.

There is no intent to kill, but there's an intent to beat up a person or to hurt them in some way that is a felony.

So you think that the knee then on the neck constituted the underlying felony on which the murder depends? Yes. And it also enabled the prosecutor to charge the three officers who were standing by. Well, they weren't just standing by. One was holding the bag, one was holding the feet, and the other was batting away people who were trying to help Mr. Floyd.

But it gave way to aiding and abetting charge for each one of those officers because they were aiding and abetting murder. And I don't think that would have been possible with a third degree murder charge.

What do you make of the fact that two of the officers were in training and one of them is represented by counsel who has already said that my client is not responsible because he was only following orders? I think that was an asinine comment on the part of the attorney because those people, whether they had been police officers for four days or no days,

They should have had the common sense and decency and humanity to know that what Derek Michael Chauvin was doing was wrong. But they weren't just ordinary citizens. The ordinary citizens who were standing by were begging for Derek Michael Chauvin to get his knee off George Floyd's neck.

Those three officers were not ordinary people. They were police officers sworn in. And I tell you, they were trained in some fashion and qualified in some method to be in that position.

So they had a superior duty to those people who were begging for Derek Michael Shelton to get his knee off of George Floyd's neck. They said nothing and did nothing. One, let me backtrack. One did say, oh, shouldn't we turn him over? And one did say he doesn't have a pulse.

But their duty was not just ordinary, but as police officers, they had a heightened duty. And they were trained police officers, hired and paid police officers. So that comment from the attorney saying he had just been on the job four days was stupid. He was on the job. And not only was he on the job, he was supposed to be a human who understood common human decency. So that is not an out for his client. He should have kept his mouth shut.

He shouldn't have said it's better for him not to say anything than to say, shouldn't we turn him over? Well, when the person who should have kept his mouth shut was the lawyer who said he'd only been on the job for four days. That's not a defense. That's not helpful to his client. I'm shocked that a lawyer would say something so ignorant. Well, maybe I'm ignorant too, but I am sympathetic to the fact that it was almost appeared that

that Chauvin was indoctrinating or brainwashing these new young officers to behave in the way that he's behaved

At least 16 times before. Well, just because he does something wrong, he's practiced doing something wrong and he's showing off for these new officers doesn't relieve those other officers of a duty to do something that they were trained to do. Presumably they were trained to be officers. They didn't just come in one day off the street and say, I want to be a police officer and get hired with no training.

Well, you put your finger on something important because there are several jurisdictions now that are proposing or members of legislatures are proposing statutes that would give police officers an affirmative duty to immediately report incidents where another police officer is going beyond their authority and to render aid to anybody who might be in danger of being hurt.

And so if they don't have those laws now, it seems like at least in some jurisdictions, including Minnesota, they may soon have them. Oh, go on. I was just going to say, which is a little bit of a dilution of the typical defense based on sovereign immunity where they can almost do no wrong. Yeah. But make your case in terms of what's going on now and where we should go forward.

Well, we've all seen the protests all over the television. And, you know, it is stunning to see people all over the United States. Big cities, I saw Greenville, South Carolina, our hometown, where there was a demonstration. Demonstrations in Rayford, North Carolina, tiny little places where you wouldn't think they would be motivated to protest in that way. And then in big cities, New York and San Francisco,

and London and Paris and all over the globe. And one woman who was interviewed in London said, we have the same problem here. And so if this becomes a global phenomenon, then perhaps we will require global solutions. The United Nations General Secretary issued an opinion or an op-ed opinion piece this week condemning what was going on in the United States. The Pope issued a statement

So I think that how many billion followers does he have? That really shows that this is a global issue and that the world is watching. And once again, we've been embarrassed by our behavior and also by our president's speech about what is going on in the United States. His inability to connect with it. But going back to the case for just a minute, the original charge was something less severe.

That's correct. And that charge was, and I'm getting them mixed up, they were originally charged with murder. In the third degree. In the third degree. And that carried no more than 25 years in prison. That's correct.

And it didn't require intent. It's like you did it. And, you know, I was so upset because what part of that episode did he not intend? And so I agree with you that the second degree charge is better because it takes into account the actions that

Mr. Chauvin took and the action he intended to do. He intended to inflict very serious bodily harm, which was a would be a felony. He intended to do that. And bringing back the other officers who either helped him or stood guard for him while he did it. They knew or should have known that what Derek Michael Chauvin was doing was a felony.

If he took out a knife and started sticking somebody with it, they would have known that was a felony. They should have known that Derry Michael Shelvin putting his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck was a felony. He was doing something that he was not entitled to do and in the process caused his death. That is the essence of murder second degree. But still, it does not require intent to kill.

Even the second degree charge does not require intent to kill. It requires intent to commit a felony. That's correct. You know, in Georgia, they call that felony murder. Yes. Where the felony, you have to have the felony and the death could be intended or not intended, but the death comes as a result of having committed a felony. Yes. What the linchpin is that the act caused the death while committing or attempting to commit a felony.

And we talked about this in episode two. The intent doesn't necessarily mean that you intend the outcome, but that you intend the outcome that's wrong. And this is

second degree murder charge takes that into account. So it's better. And better for me means that Derek Michael Shelvin could stand to get 40 years. He should get life. It should be first degree. But the prosecutor has to think about it from the aspect of what conviction he could get. And frankly, what the public reaction is going to be. People are pinning a lot of hope

on Keith Ellison and his ability to get these convictions. And it wouldn't be hard to imagine another powder keg exploding if they were to be exonerated. Well, we have to remember what we've talked about before, lesser included offenses.

Murder first degree is the penultimate, is the top murder charge. Murder second degree is a lesser included offense of murder first degree.

Likewise, murder third degree, which requires no intent and no intent to do anything harmful but causing the death, is a lesser included offense of murder first and murder second. So if the jury, if it was charged, if Derek Michael Chauvin was charged with murder in the first degree, a jury could find legally and legally

through the correct process, then he was only guilty of murder second degree. If he was charged with murder second degree, a jury could find

that he was only guilty of murder third degree. So my logic has always been the same, I guess, because I started as a prosecutor charging with murder first degree and let the jury decide what he's guilty of. But maybe they consider that a risky way to do it. That was standard procedure when I was a prosecutor. Yeah, like I think what you said, the prosecutor starts from the top. Right. You don't start charging from the bottom.

Even if you intend to negotiate some kind of plea, you don't have much room to negotiate if you start near the bottom of the hierarchy. And I don't think, well, I think that many people, if he's charged with murder two and the jury finds him guilty of murder three, I think there will still be a substantial amount of discontent.

And perhaps we will go back to the looting. I think it is instructive, though, that the looting and the burning pretty much stopped when those other three officers were charged and when the charge against Chauvin was escalated. And Jan, I think that takes us back to your op-ed piece that we want to explore during this episode.

that we need to do something. Protesting is good. And, you know, I believe in protesting because without the protesting, we never would have gotten to the conversation of what we do next. But now we're at the precipice of what do we do next? How do we make a change? And I have a question for you. You spoke about this in your op-ed, President Obama's 21st century policing policy.

What was it, number one? And number two, what happened to it? Well, it was a series of prescriptions of remedies, public policy remedies, laws, regulations, practices that would make it easier to hold police accountable for excessive use of force and improve relationships between police agencies and communities of color.

And I must say a word about how the policy was established, the initiative was created. Valerie Jarrett, who was like, she never was chief of staff, but she might as well have been, would convene these meetings with somewhere between 10 and 30 people at the White House, convene meetings of activists. I went to several of them, small group meetings where we would hash this stuff out.

So it is not a mystery as to what needs to be done. The uncertainty is how do you get it done? And of course, people say, well, we could just pass a federal law. But that underestimates the power of states' rights. These states are fiercely protective, especially in southern part of the United States.

of being able to fashion their own law in this area. It goes all the way back to the Civil War. I won't take you back there now, but suffice to say that it does. Take us back for a second now, because it is so relevant to the concept of policing in the United States. Well, I shocked somebody. I told them the reason, one of the reasons that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States is

It's because the southern states insisted that the capital be in a slave state. And so they carved D.C. out of Virginia because they didn't want the capital to be in Philadelphia or New York or places where slavery might be illegal. When it became apparent that the South was going to lose the Civil War, Georgia and other states started creating malicious campaigns.

I wonder when I was a young lawyer doing title exams, there would always be something called GMD and a number. That stood for General Militia District. That was how civilians were armed and given authority to make these citizens arrest like the ones that they were trying to make against Mr. Arbery. These are old issues that the United States has grappled with. How much power do states have? What is the proper...

allocation of power between the states and the federal government. But what the federal government has done and can do, it can provide Justice Department grants as incentives to those states that will adopt some of these reforms. And we can go into some of the reforms. There's a long list of them. Let's talk about them because

The protesting will not last forever. And hopefully the goodwill of humans on earth will continue a little bit longer. And while we have this goodwill, we need to put it into action and make something that means something when a police officer encounters an African-American. That is so true. And it reminds me of we would never have gotten the civil rights bill of 1964 if Jack Kennedy hadn't got killed in 63.

We never would have gotten the Voting Rights Act in 65 if they hadn't marched across that bridge, Edmund Pettus Bridge in 64. That is sort of the way American progress has been made. It comes out of pain and dislocation. So let's go to some of the things that we can. A lot of talk about implicit bias training. And many police departments do provide implicit bias training. That's for those who are unconsciously holding people

bad racial attitudes, unconscious bias. I do not personally believe that the evidence supports the fact that this excessive use of force comes from implicit bias. And therefore, I believe that implicit bias training is limited in its ability to stop excessive use of force. You look at a guy like Chauvin, he knows he's being photographed. He knows there are three officers

He knows there are three officers surrounding him. He doesn't care. You can train somebody in skills, but if his heart is black and he believes that black people are inferior, there's no training that's going to train him out of that. So one of the other prescriptions is that you do psychological evaluation and testing before officers are hired.

to see if they have the personality that is likely to lead them to use excessive force. Looking for traits like belligerence. I was doing a candidates forum earlier this week and I was the moderator. I don't know why. Because you know a lot of stuff. When I mentioned would they support a law in South Carolina

where officers or candidates to be officers were screened and the candidates said, oh, like they do in the FBI. So that screening is already available. It should be made a prerequisite to even going to the police academy because why waste the public's resources training somebody who is a racist deep down in his heart?

If you can scream for that before they're allowed to go to the police academy. I think the only reason that you get rid, there are two reasons. One is some police departments have been infiltrated by racist white nationalist elements. Let's take a step back. Do you think that, uh,

Local governments, state governments, federal governments have the authority to institute screening before a candidate can attend the police academy. No, probably not. Well, how does the FBI do it, if you can think about that? I think there's probably a federal statute that permits it. I think a state could pass a law that allows it, but I don't think an individual police department could require it.

if that makes any sense. You could have a law in the state of Maryland that says one of the criteria for becoming a candidate for officer training is that you have to undergo such screening as they deem appropriate. It's not unlike taking the SAT before you go to law school. And so you think maybe state governments could do it, but maybe not municipalities that hire police officers. Well, I think they're, well, what they could say is

We don't hire police officers who have not had this psychological background done. Psychological assessment. Now, you can sue us and try to claim that that's unconstitutional if you like, that it's a deprivation. You're not being treated equally. But if every officer has to have it, I think they would fail in their attack on it. They could have it as policy. Think about the teachers. You know, we can think about teachers because of mom and dad.

They don't hire teachers in Greenville County schools unless they have an A on the national teacher's exam or a B on the national teacher's exam. That's just a prerequisite. But there were school systems that did hire teachers who didn't have those grades or those tests. So it was up to that school district. I'm comparing that to what we were talking about municipalities saying we only hire people who have been screened in this way.

The other thing I think that is, and I think that that training would really help, but it's not training, it's screening. Are you or are you not an unreconstructed racist? And if you are, you have no business on the police department unless it's in a little white town. Yeah, I hope to see that because I think all this talk about implicit bias

It's just a way out and a way around. I can't believe you said out because I was just getting ready to say it's an out. It sounds better than just being a racist. But it's the same thing. Implicit bias means, oh, I didn't know that was offensive to you. I didn't know that the Confederate flag made you feel bad. This is something different. Implicit is the thing you've done so much that it's a part of you. And so if you've been a racist so long that it's normal for you,

then it's implicit. So a racist is a racist is a racist and implicit is just the 20th century way of saying it. I don't think the people who develop these theories and do the training think that. I think they believe what I've been reading a lot about, what they seem to think is that I might come up to you and say, oh, your hair looks so nice. What'd you do to it? Well, that might be an appropriate comment to one person and be inappropriate to another.

And you don't realize that you're being inappropriate. Yeah. Well, I think the ones who have the knee on the neck and the ones who are afraid to drive back and forth and go to their jobs because police might harass them get to decide what racism is to a certain extent. But let's get back to our list of prescriptions. Okay. So then there is screening. There is implicit bias training.

But this jumping around from one police jurisdiction to another after you've had more than one incident proven of excessive use of force should be done away with. There should be a national database. If I go from if I move to Maryland from Georgia, if I want to practice law in Maryland,

and I decided to sit for the Maryland Bar Examination, they most assuredly are going to pull up my Georgia record to see what happened in Georgia. They won't even have to make a test if your record in another state has complaints that have been founded in some way. Exactly. I liken it to that, that we need a national registry

And police departments ought to be required to check that registry before they bring somebody on the force. Because let's be clear, no matter what remedies we put in place, Voting Rights Act, some people say the most effective piece of legislation that has ever been enacted. Once people decide to do an end run around it, there's always a loophole to be found.

They will make a loophole or they'll take you to court and put enough justices on the Supreme Court to outlaw whatever the remedy is. First, we got to get some markers. We have to get some protections for them to do the in-run around. We don't have the protections and we certainly don't have them on a consistent or a statewide or national level. Basis. Right.

So that would be another one, a national database of complaints. It's almost like the sex registry. You can't go anywhere and hide from that. And I get that question several times every week because it appears the question about people being. Which question? People ask me, well, when do you get off? Will you get off when you die?

You don't. And so registering, there should be a registrar for complaints, particularly complaints about race, but just complaints, because if they have to be, if they're registered, they have to be checked before an officer is hired. You'll see whether they're related to race or sexism or whatever.

thievery or any other thing. So I like that, Janice, a national registry, just like the sex offenders registry. And you don't get off. You don't get off until you die. Now, I don't mean convicting a person without a trial, but certainly some type of register of complaints that have been founded in some way.

Just like child abuse complaints. You know, sex offender complaints are one thing, but child abuse complaints are something else. And child abuse complaints are kept in a registry after these complaints are founded and they have reached a certain level. They're kept on a registry forever and they can be checked. That's how school districts around the country know whether they're hiring a child abuser.

You know, this whole discussion takes me back to something that I think is very important. The marches and the demonstrations and even the looting have gotten us to this point. But from this point forward, we will need something in addition to the marches and the rallies. Hopefully no looting. We need people to get to know their elected officials, the people who have the power to

to make these decisions and introduce these laws, they need to be pressured too. They need constant pressure because the tendency is to go with what is the status quo. Then another policy area where we could use some work is no three officers should be so intimidated by a veteran officer that they will stand still in the face of somebody being choked to death. That thin blue line of silence,

where police officers cover up for each other. The reason they do that is because they're afraid that if they don't, they won't get back up when they need it. They might get set up with false accusations themselves. There is a culture in some police departments that inhibits truth-telling by other officers, and that needs to be addressed. That's a very, very serious problem and a very...

a very difficult thing to solve for. How do you address it when officers rely on each other to protect them

They're afraid that if they tell on one, the rest of them will retaliate. For some reason, I don't know why, I've been watching American Gangster over and over again, I guess because they've been showing it over and over again. And I've been watching the movie. I watched my freshman year in college, Serpico. It's the same story. It's the story of a police officer who wants to do right,

But they are hurt by officers that want to do wrong and want to protect themselves by eliminating the officer who wants to do right. And I don't think that's just fiction. I think that concept is real. Oh, I know that to be true. I know that to be true. You could look at those officers who were with Chauvin.

and tell that they were not entirely with it. The older man who got knocked down to the sidewalk and his head was bleeding. Another officer, an officer tried to stop and help him and he was pushed along by one of his fellow officers, maybe just for crowd control, but he wasn't allowed to render aid. But let's go back to how would you go about, and this is not easy, how would you go about encouraging officers to freely report

infractions when they see them and what they know well you could offer them secrecy you can do it anonymously but that has problems because when it comes time to litigate it then they're going to want to know they've got a right to confront the witnesses against them if it goes that far investigation the officer who committed the felony or the wrongdoing knows who was with him or her

Right? So they can deduce who might have been the person who told. No five officers who were with them, they'll try to do something to all five of them because they know they're the only ones who could have told. So silence may not work. Some people have talked about incentives that it goes on your record as a good thing and not a bad thing. It counts for you if you make a complaint against a fellow officer and it turns out to be true, then you are...

You may be eligible for a promotion or you may be eligible for a raise or there's positive incentives that some people talk about. Of course, there could be a statute. And so if you find out that you knew something and you didn't report it, then you're just as guilty of the infraction as the person that you would have reported on. That's one. That's an actual statute. Because that's an affirmative duty to do something if you see something.

And that doesn't exist everywhere. And that is, I don't know any place where that law actually exists. I think it's aspirational. If anybody knows and you hear this podcast, email me at JaniceLMathis at AOL.com because I'd like to know more about that. Yeah, we say see something, say something. They should have an affirmative duty that if they see something, they should say something. Absolutely.

What I like about that approach is it's consistent with what teachers and doctors and people who deal with children have to do if they see evidence of abuse. They're what they call mandatory reporters. We could make all police officers mandatory reporters if they see excessive force because that won't save the person's life if it's eight minutes later. Can you imagine what torture that was to be constrained, people watching you?

Even though the crowd was sympathetic, how humiliating that had to be. Just before death, you excrete your bodily functions. And that happened while he was on the sidewalk. That should have been a clue.

that he was in terrible distress but it didn't matter because Sheldon wanted him in terrible distress that really proves intent you know that two minutes and thirty something seconds after he knew that George Floyd didn't have a pulse he continued to put his weight on his neck he wanted to make sure he couldn't be revived there was a nurse on the scene who asked let me check him but he wouldn't allow it to happen right

And if any of those onlookers had rushed up to do so, they would have been shot and killed too. I like to think that I would have rushed up and bumped into them and disrupted the situation. I've done that before, but not to that extreme. I saw, you've done it too, Jan. That's where I got it from. You see an officer on the side of the road harassing somebody. I pull up and ask a question and it interrupts the harassment. I've done it before, but not to that extreme. Mm-hmm.

Over in Arlington, Virginia, one Saturday morning, pretty Saturday morning, I was out walking the dog. And they had a young brother hemmed up, several officers surrounding him. And I said, what did he do? And so we're investigating a shoplift. And I said, oh, I said, can I pay for the... I think he took a malt liquor or something. I said, can I pay for it? And he said,

But, you know, interestingly enough, that's how you know that you're in a blue state. Those police officers were polite to me. They did not tell me to move on. I stood there until they let the boy go. They said, we're not going to arrest him. It was like they wanted to reassure me. You don't have to get mad and upset. When you lived in Georgia, and I'm still in the red state, but... I don't remember doing that in a red state, but you know what I do remember? Do you remember the case that we worked on where the young man had a mental...

breakdown and he was out in the street without any clothes on and the officer claimed that he grabbed for his gun that the man who was in distress, mental distress grabbed for the officer's gun and didn't get it. He just grabbed for it. I don't know why he didn't just back up and go get in his car but they shot him and he bled to death in the street. That's been 30 years ago or maybe at least 20 years ago and we haven't learned much

This problem is not new. This problem is not new. Arbery's murderers. The lawyer was trying to make the detective or investigator say that the killers were defending themselves. They were using self-defense against Mr. Arbery.

And the detective answered so eloquently. He said, no, Mr. Aubrey was trying to defend himself. All he had was himself and they had guns and a camera. Said he could turn and let them shoot him in the back or he could try to save his own life. He was trying to defend himself. But you know what? I think one critical fact that I hope they will focus on more

He was shot before he reached for the gun. When he came around that van, the first bullet hit him and then you see him grab for the gun. He wasn't close enough. I know it's very important because what does that say? He was not the aggressor. How are you going to be the aggressor when you're on foot with just your shorts and your t-shirt on and the other people in the truck with shotguns and a camera? Two trucks and two guns and a camera. You encountered him.

He didn't make them stop. All he did was try to job. But let's go on because I think you have a few more suggestions. I like the ones that you have made. And Janice, this is more than suggestion. This is policy. And we're going to make sure it gets out to the world. Your little niece, Avery, is going to help publish it on Medium.com.

and some other platforms. Oh, well, thank you for that. We will have a list. You got to give these people a list while their ears are open and their hearts are open. You know, hopefully that's so important because I think about Parkland and I think about those children at Sandy Hook

It is awful as it seems. It will die down if we don't take advantage of this moment. We don't take advantage. But what is it you people want? That is the way it's addressed. And finally, these are the things that we want. A prescription citizen review committees. Now we see these all over. I really learned about them in Atlanta because, you know, in South Carolina, that's not, you know, favored. But talk about citizens review committees and what they do or what they should be able to do.

They are sometimes they're elected, which may be a better way to choose them, but they're elected or appointed. And typically no one person in the government can appoint the citizen review committee because you want them to be independent. So, for example, the city council might have two appointments. The mayor might have one and maybe the chief of police has one.

And you put these people on a committee and their job is to review complaints of excessive force and other police misconduct. They look at they get a chance to see the records. They see the evidence. They can interview the officers if they're willing to be interviewed. And then they make a recommendation as to guilt or innocence and punishment.

What that does is help build confidence in the community that the community's interests are being protected. Now, you would think that the mayor and the council and all these other people, chief of police, would have the citizens' interests in mind.

But what we know from experience is that if you live in one of these communities that is plagued by hyper-policing, you may have a different perspective than somebody who is the mayor or chief of police. And so without being naive about this, there are lots of things we can do. We just need to start doing them. And so, well, how do we do that? You won't be able to do it on your own.

the NAACP, the Urban League, Rainbow Push Coalition. That's what these organizations do. Join one of them. Get on the Criminal Justice Committee. One of the things I love about my church, Alfred Street, we have a social justice committee at Alfred Street Baptist Church. And many churches do. That's not the only one. Many churches do where the job of that committee, just like you have an usher board and a choir, you have a social justice committee.

that works to make sure these things are known, that the community is educated about them, and then there is a mobilization on action strategy plan. We're going to find out this member of city council is sympathetic. He's going to introduce the ordinance. He's going to introduce it on Tuesday night, but on Thursday before the meeting, they have an agenda setting meeting.

And we're going to flood that meeting and we're going to have incidents and anecdotes and data to support why this is good policy. And we're going to make sure the news media is there. That's what I mean by strategizing. That's where the organizations come in. Time is about to expire.

Because we can talk about this. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I would like to see citizens arrest legislatively abolished in every state. That needs to be on every state's agenda that has citizens arrest. You've already talked about curtailing qualified immunity. And the other thing I'd like to see done legislatively is to make no-knock warrants illegal.

Now, they've been made illegal by illegal case law. Case 1995, Wilson versus Arkansas says that the Castle Doctrine, in other words, a person has a right to be safe in his or her own home and to protect his home, even if they have to kill somebody to protect themselves in their own home. And

These no-knock warrants, even though they are no-knock, they're supposed to knock and announce. And those privileges and rights are embedded in the Fourth Amendment. That case says that, but you know how case law is, like Brown v. Board of Education. You know, the case law said one thing, but the statute said something else or nothing at all, and the states do exactly what they want to do.

I would like to see this case legislated that you can't have a warrant where you can bust in on a Breonna Taylor and expect them not announce yourself and expect them not to shoot to protect themselves in their own home. Those things have to be legislated. And finally, I would like to say, and I know you would like to say, it's time for us to quit being naive.

We need to register everybody in our household, everybody we know. It's very important to make sure everyone is registered and to vote.

in between registering voting, we need to be on all these forums, all these town hall meetings, virtual and otherwise, asking the question, are you willing to outlaw citizens' arrests by statute, you know, of our state lawmakers? Are you willing to make a statute that says that

You have to, you can't have no-knock warrants. You have to announce yourself when you're coming in somebody's home. You know, if I could interrupt just for a second to say, in that particular case with Breonna Taylor, there were protections

there. You had to have an affidavit. The affidavit had to swear out that it was an exigent circumstance. You had to state why you thought that whatever evidence you were seeking would be in that dwelling. Of course, those warrants were defective. And and there is not enough. You know, I've gone to the court when a judge is issuing a warrant, signing a warrant. They don't they stop what they're doing long enough to glance at it.

Many of them signed the warrant and handed it back to the officer. Good day, sir. So the protections that are in place are often insufficient and unenforced. So we got a lot of work to do, but the good thing is we are capable of doing the work. But this is a moment in time that we will, this will go down in history with the slaying of Kennedy, the slaying of King, the, um,

the Me Too generation, 9-1-1. This is one of those pivotal moments in American history. Mr. Floyd has a daughter who's six years old. And she said, like I said at the beginning, her mother described what all she was going to be missing. One of her daddy's friends told her that your dad has changed the world. And the little child has been saying that ever since. His death

They always say unearned suffering is redemptive. His death gives us a chance to change not only the United States, but apparently the world. We can't sleep through this opportunity. You've been listening to...

Well, thank you. Where can people find this podcast? We are now on Spotify. We are on several different podcast platforms. Stay tuned. This is episode three. We hope to do an episode every week. We have a lot of talk, but we have a lot of work to do. And we hope you will join us in this work.

Get registered, get your households registered. Thank you, Davina. Legislators are, especially those people who are running for office now. Get in a forum. You don't have to necessarily get in their face physically, but get in a forum because that's where they are and ask them these questions. What will you do? Do you support the training of officers? Do you support a national registry of complaints against officers?

Do you support screening before a person is hired as an officer? Ask them these questions. And if they don't support it, don't give them your vote. Well, Janice, we do this because we hope that in all of our getting that we get, and I appreciate your- We get an understanding. In this regard. And look for Janice's op-ed, Changing the World. It will be on Medium and other platforms so that you can read the entire op-ed.

It's this is along. If you haven't heard about anchor, it's the easiest way to make a podcast. Let me explain. It's free.

There are creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer. Anchor will distribute your podcast for you, so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many more. You can make money from your podcast with no minimum listenership. It's everything you need to make a podcast in one place. Download the free Anchor app or go to anchor.fm to get started.