010624 The Police Shooting of Niani Finlayson (Part 1)

The short of the story is that the woman called the police she could get some support to get a man out of her house. She got a knife from the kitchen I believe, to like protect herself and her daughter from what she thought was an abusive man. And then the police showed up and then they killed her in front of her daughter. And so we're going to talk about that because whenever black women die, you know, it's a story, but we are going to do our best to bring the human element to it, so please

stick around for that. We're also going to be spending some time talking about a letter that we received from a longtime listener of the show, Philip C. Shout out to Phillips C. He's a person that keeps us on our toes and he pointed out what he believed to be some holes in our conversation last week about empathy

and human nature. And you know, we use the monopoly example to help illustrate some points, and so we're going to be speaking to some of those holes that he pointed out for us, but first and informed most like we always do at this time, let's discuss them. Any excellence, shall we? We shall qu Why don't you knock this onever a any excellence this week?

the company become and remain successful. In her former role as VP, she led the Xbox division dedicated to building and commercializing products and services for game creators and partners. She worked with thousands of developers partners to bring games players on console, PC, mobile, and the cloud, and was strumental in directing strategy, policy, mergers and acquisitions, and integration.

Out and her new role as President of Xbox, Sarah will be in charge of all software and hardware platforms, which will include the redesign disc list excuse me, which will include the redesigned disc list, Xbox Series X to be released in twenty twenty four, and the next gen hybrid Xbox Console in twenty twenty eight. She will also oversee player and creator experiences, platform engineering, strategy, business planning,

data and analytics, and business development. Sarah currently sits on the Board of Counselors at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the Board of Directors at the Entertainment Software Association ZUARA, the leading subscription management platform and Chegg, a leading student first connected learning platform. To say that she's thriving in a space that wasn't built for her will be an understatement.

make sense. In just a second, I'm going to read from ABC News body camera footage released in police shooting a woman who called nine to one one for alleged domestic incident. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released body camera footage on Friday of a deputy involved shooting of a twenty seven year old woman after they entered her home responding to a domestic violence call that she made. Nanni Finlayson was allegedly shot and killed in her home.

I don't like that word allegedly because I saw her get shot, allegedly shot and killed in her home in Lancaster, California, after an officer fired four shots at her on December fourth. The LASD said she called the police because she claimed that her boyfriend would not leave her alone. According to an LASD statement, In the nine one one call made by Finlayson for police to assist her, audio of which was released by LASD, Finlayson can be heard yelling for

someone to get their hands off her. She told the dispatcher she needed assistance getting a man out of her home. Three deputies arrived on the scene. In the body camera footage, yelling could be heard coming from inside the apartment. After police tried to kick the door down, Finlayson answered the door and appeared to have a knife in one hand,

according to the body camera footage. In the body camera video, Finlayson said, I'm going to stab him and Leysen then disappeared off camera as she left the doorway and went back into her home. At this point, deputies had their guns drawn. Deputies followed Findlayson into the home, where she proceeded to yell at who Hall says is her ex boyfriend to leave, and Layson's daughter could also be seen on camera saying he pushed me or he punched me.

I think she said he pushed me. Finlayson then grabbed the alleged A strange boyfriend with one hand as the knife was in her other hand. Deputy Tie Shelton then fired at Findlayson four times, causing her to drop to the ground. No. No, the alleged ex boyfriend yelled at police after the shooting, Why did you shoot? Finlayson's daughter also witnessed the shooting. Yeah, so this video is up on our social media. It's at Civic Sipher. You're welcome to check that out. I there's a warning there. It

says trigger warning. So you are going to witness a human being losing their life if you're sensitive to that type of content, like we both are here. Q hasn't seen this video yet, right.

everyone else, again, it's there to check out. But I'm going to try to explain it for those who may not. I've seen it. So what happens is, again we start coming to a door, so the body camera footage picks up, and then as the article mentions, there's yelling going on inside the house, as is typical with domestic disputes. My understanding, based on what I was in the video, is that Nannie wanted her boyfriend to leave, and he felt like he was going to stick around and plead his case

of why he should be able to stay. If I was guessing, the pushing the daughter thing was probably the result of a physical altercation between the two of them. The man did not appear to be engaging in any sort of violent behavior. He was sitting down, he was, you know whatever. But of course this is where the video picks up. But you could very easily see that if a man was violent, pushing and punching kids and stuff, that he's not going to stick around for the police.

I don't think, you know, the man seemed to be reasonably coherent, and so this is this is just deduction. But I feel like my powers of deduction do not come with life and death, you know, consequences, and the police is due and so if I'm able to deduce this, I would imagine that an officer would be able to deduce this as well, because the stakes are a lot higher. It should be able to respond to this. But this

is why I'm telling you this way. Anyway, So the police start kicking in the door, and the officer whose camera were watching this is the man who ended up shooting this woman, he asked the officer in front. This is a female officer. He asked the female officer, Hey, let me have your taser. She takes the taser out and hands.

with testosterone and strength. She's protecting herself and her daughter and her home perhaps from this man who will not leave. This is why she called the police in the first place. And she's agitated, and this is a tense situation, so she opens the door. She's like, yo, she's already mad. You know, imagine if somebody had pushed your daughter or armed your child or whatever. You know, it's a tense situation.

You know. This is why officers in theory would come in and defeat situations, or they would have the experts on the scene. If that police budget was divested in, different areas were invested into that were more dedicated to dealing with, you know, diffusing situations. Who knows, man, But anyway, at this point, the officer drops the taser and pulls out his gun because obviously it's time for somebody to die.

And then, based on what I see, which is what he saw, Nanni walks into the corner of the living room and then her boyfriend is on the other side of the living room, right, and she's trying to tell the officers what he did. He did this, he did that, you know whatever, And and she has the knife. Let's say,

the knife's in her right hand. She's pointing at him with her left hand right and as she's agitated and explaining and shouting like this is what this man is done that the knife is not raised, it's lowered to her side, and she's pointing with her left hand. This is the way I remember it. Again, you're welcome to watch the video and draw your own conclusions. But she's kind of walking and motioning, and she's communicating not just with her words but with her body. And she takes

a step toward him. Again, he's super far away. The knife's not raised, it's not a tack posture, nothing like that. But once she's like explaining, and you know, when you're walking and you're animated, just kind of making your point and she kind of like does a gesture and then immediately bam and she just falls. That was the end of her story. So what I saw was a woman calling the police for help and the police coming and killing her. She had done her best to protect herself

up until that point. And those people are going to say, well, she had a knife. There's gonna be people who say, well, she should have. Oh, by the way, after he shot her, he said drop the weapon. You can hear him saying drop the weapon after she's already gone into the ground. So anyway, there are people say, well, she had a knife, what was the officer supposed to do? The officers there there, they have to protect him too, nobody should be harmed,

blah blah blah. Right, And these are arguments that people who, let's be honest, just want to protect the police. These are arguments that these people will make. Okay, But any reasonable person would see that that response and say, well, these people clearly did not show up to diffuse anything. Well, at least this one officer did. They did not show up to diffuse anything.

blah blah. And sure that you could make the argument that that's a reasonable threat, but also you can make the argument that these officers are not trained to understand that an intense moment like that, when people say things out of frustration, out of anger, because they feel violated and they've called you to help them, that people might say things and these aren't, in and of themselves credible

threats and they should not be tr treated as such. Right, and a person like me looking at this with a degree of grace, understanding that this is a tency. This is not a murderous woman doesn't walk around all the time with knives talking about it. She's gonna stab people. There's something that happened that needs to be diffused. But officers, remember we always say to a man with a hammer, all the world is a nail. Right now, all that being said, remember I said, I'm gonna tell the story

that starts backwards. So even if a person wanted to make that argument, well, what was the officer supposed to do? On and on and on? Right, this is the same officer that killed another black man in twenty twenty, got his job back, kept it pushing everything's cool, and now he's taking another black life. All right, So I'm gonna read this story to you. This comes from the Daily Beast. I had to go back to June of twenty twenty

to get this article. Beauties claim they killed the black man in his home when he tried to grab a gun. His family says otherwise. A Los Angeles man was fatally shot in his home by deputies Thursday morning in a tragic domestic dispute gone wrong. His family, however, insists the tragic incident could have been avoided if authorities didn't prematurely

pull the trigger. Michael Blue Thomas, aged sixty two, was killed in his living room in the early hours on Thursday after Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies responded to a domestic dispute call, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. But while authorities claimed Thomas was shot after reaching for one of the deputy's guns, his fiancee and attorney insist the opposite, that he was turning away. Quote. They broke

the front down and they grabbed mister Thomas immediately. Bradley Gage, the family's attorney, told The Daily Beast on Friday, as they were holding him, they hurt him by twisting his arm at that point because he was uncomfortable. Well, mister Thomas tried to move and one deputy just stepped back and shot him. He was murdered without justification. It was one hundred percent avoidable. Now, because we're journalists, we have

to say the other half of the story. According to the Sheriff's Department, deputies responded to a domestic domestic violence in progress call. During the altercation, the suspect reached down and attempted to gain control of one of the deputy's firearms. It was at that time when a deputy involved shooting occurred. And now let's go back to the family. The claim that he reached for a gun is completely false, Gauge added, noting that the incident completely defies the Fourth Amendment quote.

He was disabled, He had problems with his hands. Remember he's sixty two. He had problems with his hands. It would have been painful for him to try to grab a gun. Now. When the shooting was first reported, Kimberly also said that Thomas never tried to grab one of the deputy's guns. I heard Michael say, I have a right not to let you in the house. She said, it's already said. Thomas was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No deputies were injured. Okay,

so I've been doing some talking to you. Give us insight into your mind.

has put me in danger going to kill me? Because if not calling for help might and that is an impossible position to have to be in, right, and the fear is very very real. Ramaes and I off air often struggle with the idea of what we do here.