Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am your host, Ramses.
Job is Ramsey's jah. I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic so.
Indeed you are, and we have a show that we think will be worth you sticking around for First up, we are going to be talking about not one, but two instances of widespread police corruption and police misconduct in police brutality in two major cities in the United States
of America. And on the show, longtime listeners will know that we have been making a case for systemic oppression done to black and brown communities in this country and marginalized communities in this country at the hands of police. And now we have a couple of recent instances of these global or national agencies investigating these police departments and uncovering what Q and I discuss every week on the show and what the data indeed supports in terms of
the police are biased against black and brown people. And that is the tip of the iceberg of indeed the entirety of the carceral system in this country and those of us that look like me and Q suffer more as a result of that. And the second part of the show, we're going to talk about what it means to be energized and fortified by being around like minded individuals, those of us who are activists and those of us who want to create change in the world. Sometimes it
can be a lonely path. Sometimes we don't know who's all working with us, and it feels very isolated. But Q and I had a recent experience at the National Urban League convention in New Orleans, and we're going to share all about that and exactly how wonderful that was. But before we get there, it is time to discuss some ebony. I think you.
Shall RAMS always thinks I shall. Sports related. This story is from Yahoo Sports. I mean the excellence This week is sponsored by actively black. There is greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com Yahoo Sports. In Paris, Julian Alfred awoke at five am on the morning of the Olympic one hundred meter final, feeling like she needed some extra inspiration. The Saint Lucia sprinter opened her journal and
wrote the words Julian Alfred Olympic Champion. She also pulled up videos of some of you saying boat's Olympic victories.
Quote.
I was picturing myself coming across the line and being an Olympic champion, Alfred said. Only hours later, Alfred's vision became reality. Alfred burst out of the blocks and ran away from America's pre race favorite sh Carrie Richardson, was startling ease, winning an ablazing ten point seventy two seconds to secure her tiny Caribbean nation's first Olympic medal. As a smiling out for streak to cross the finish line, she ripped off her bib and started pointing at her name.
It's a name that is now etched in history after the twenty three year old ran the eighth fastest women's one hundred in history Saturday night on stud de Francis, rain soaked purple track. Quote, it means a lot to me, Alfred said. I definitely knew the Saint Lucians would be watching and hoping they could get their first Olympic medal.
I'm sure they're celebrating right now. End quote. Their first Olympic medal in the history of the nation is gold at the one hundred meters, which might be the most popular event at the Summer Games. Julian has been an incredible sprinter at the University of Texas here in the United States, but representing her home nation. She shined bright
like a diamond on that track. And salute to Americans Melissa and Shakerri for winning silver and bronze and that podium of beautiful queens now etched and Olympic history.
Now you see why Q was really good at the sports stuff, because he knows little fun facts like that. All right, The police are still corrupt. They have been since or at least insofar as black people are concerned an extension of white supremacy and white supremacist ideals, and they're hiring practices support that, and their training practices support that, and so forth and so on. Before I even get here is a great example.
Police are.
One of the priorities of police is to learn how to kill someone, you know, So they get a lot of training on how to fire their weapon in someone's life, right, And of course there are people who make arguments of why that's important in this country, and I'm not disputing that. That's not the conversation I want to have. But when
you train someone how to take a life. You don't train someone in the way of cultural competencies and understanding the populations that they're policing, and so forth, you end up with a situation like Sonya Massi's. Because there was a recent article that came out where the officer suggested, for those that are familiar with Sonya Massey's story, that when Sonya told the officer, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus, he took that to mean a threat
on his life. Now, there are people who say that's nonsense. I would be inclined to agree with those people that is nonsense.
But I think he looked at me or read my mind. Yeah.
But but the truth is is that he wouldn't be able to say that, nor would he be able to even think that, if he was trained with a degree of cultural competency, a degree of interacting with different cultures. So rather than prioritizing that type of training, rather than having the institution uphold and support and embrace the differences cultural differences of the different populations that are being policed,
what its prioritized and police training is often brutality. Uh, you know, weapons training, you know that sort of thing, not de escalation, not anything like that. And so police can hide behind, justifiably, behind their fears, and mount a case a defense surrounding this woman.
Just kitchens justifiably if they're afraid, if they just hate, and they're just callous and they lack empathy, they have I think they use fear as a shield.
That's okay, that's say justifiable, That's that's a much better way to say it. Yeah, absolutely right. But my point remains that these institutions were not created to protect and serve everyone, and examples of that exist to this day. Well today we're going to discuss a couple of examples, and you have to forgive me in advance because we do a lot of reading. But it's important that you don't feel like this is Ramses and Q's opinions, nor
is this black people's opinions. The first report comes from the United Nations and the second one comes from the Department, the US Department, sorry, the US Justice Department. So these are not based local biased opinions. Yeah, this is just things you need to know about that corroborate what we've been discussing on the show and what black people have
been discussing at large for decades. First up from The Guardian, a group of United Nations experts is calling on the US federal, state, and local authorities to take quote immediate and comprehensive action to resolve a long standing scandal where people are languishing behind bars after being allegedly tortured by
Chicago police to extract false confessions. I want to stop right here, so now that you know that we're talking about Chicago, the third largest city in the United States of America, I want you to bear in mind that there are a lot of people who point to Chicago to try to suggest political failures from Democrats, to try to suggest black people having some sort of predisposition toward violence or a violent nature.
Yeah, they want to extinguish empathy for black people, so they point to Chicago and use it as an example of quote black on black crime, and why should we care about them if they don't care about themselves.
As the type of language that they use.
So you and I tend to bump into Chicago as an example far too often for reasons that even statistically don't make any sense, because we're talking about populations and proximity to one another instead of really intentionally dishonest cultural generalizations, if you will.
Now, I want to share something. There was a thing called called I forget what it was called, but effectively it was a mass exodus from the South of black people into places like Chicago and Gary, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan because there were opportunities Indianapolis, Indiana, there you go.
And Chicago was probably the biggest example of that, probably followed closely, if not surpassed by Detroit, of destination cities for black men seeking work and seeking a life outside of the Jim Crow South.
Yes, in the seventies and eighties, Detroit had a higher percentage wise black population than in Chicago.
Sure, absolutely, I'd go with that all day, but in terms of numbers, not as a percentage of the population, but in terms of number of Chicago may I don't know this, but the point is is that there was a big mass exodus of black people from the South two places like Chicago. So I say that this to establish Chicago having a a statistically relevant percentage of their population being black and overall amount of black people there
being black. And so that's something that makes it convenient on both sides of you know, people trying to criticize different facets of society. It makes it a convenient example. However, Chicago is it's sort of interesting in that there's been black politicians in Chicago and there's been institutions that have suppressed black people's.
Mobility.
Yes, Chicago is a very interesting example. Rams is because being the third largest city in the United States, it is the largest or the most segregated big city in the country as well. And like hard lines nation outside, like what used to be the case, you know, before we were born, Chicago still holds on to those you know, you people live over there and we stay over here kind of rules. So then, you know, you talk about places like we've mentioned Gary, Indianapolis, Detroit, and Saint Louis.
Black people have kind of moved out into the suburbs and those cities, and they have in Chicago suburbs as well, But the city of Chicago is still very racially segregated.
Okay, Now let's add to that that Chicago is in terms for folks who want to be critical of black populations, democratic policies, you name it in this country, Chicago has it checks two very important boxes too that we've already mentioned. One is that a percentage of the population is statistically black and higher than a lot of o there are big cities like that. The other is that, again, the overall amount of black people in that city is higher.
So you can pick and choose from which column black people's crime rates are statistically higher or black people commit more crimes, and either point can be argued based on a number of factors that come together in Chicago. But I think that this example that will continue to read from the Guardian will show that it's not just subjected
to the criticism, is not just. It should not just be viewed through the lens of folks on the hard right, because the police indeed are shaping outcomes artificially based on the practices we're about to describe in these findings from the United Nations. Now, the United Nations doesn't get involved unless it's like a crime against humanity, right, So allow
me to continue. The group of UNS special reporters who specialize in addressing the scourges of contemporary racism and torture has released a report detailing a long history of brutal and racist police misconduct. They became involved at the behest of an activist Mother's organization in Chicago that was exasperated at what they saw as the patch of response of the authorities over the years to shocking injustice. Numerous cases are highlighted in the twenty six page report, and there
are many more regarded as unresolved for decades. The group of Special Reporters cited quote information we have received regarding historical and continuing allegations of the systemic corruption and use of torture are other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by law enforcement officials in the Chicago area. The report says that such treatment has resulted quote in wrongful convictions and unjust incarceration of affected individuals who are disproportionately of African
and Latino slash Hispanic descent. The names of individual police officers accused of mistreatment have been redacted. The six Special Reporters from the UN Human Rights Division who produced the report are kp Ashweeny, Barbara Reynolds being On Da Costa, Telang Mofonging, Claudia Mailer, and Alice Jill Edwards. They said they had contacted the US government quote to address these
allegations and clarify its obligations under international law. Quote and recalling, for a quote, further action to remedy racialized police violence and his conduct within Chicago's law enforcement and criminal justice system. They submitted their report to the US government in May,
but now have released it publicly. Allegations of injustice stretch from the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties to present day, with people still in prison whom the UN report says signed confessions after allegedly being tortured for hours or even days by being beaten and bones broken, kicked and given electric shocks, suffocated and burnt, among other violence, and deprived of sleep, food, and water, all while racist insults were shouted at them. So again, that's not my opinion, that's
not Que's opinion. These are the findings of the United Nations, and you start to see how the data in and of itself is part of the story, and then not insignificant part of the story. But when you start to see where the data comes from, you start to really examine the data and not just take it at face value. You start to see that some of this data could have been artificially skewed one way or the other. Now, this is in no way me trying to say that
Black people have our own problems. Every community has their own problems in their own they have to decide what paths they want to take. Every society has problems and has passed that they need to take to make society better. This is the part of the human experience. But to be artificial judged without considering the fact that the police
are playing a role in this is unfair. And we have an example now of unbiased reporting that shows one of the largest cities, well two of the largest cities in the country, and how their policing practices have contributed to the data that cast black people in a bad light and leads to conversations like well, black culture is bad and hip hop is bad and all this other nonsense where it's like, well, we got some other things to examine.
Go ahead, Well, I think it's important that you called out that the data doesn't tell the whole story. You and I had a conversation while we were in New Orleans recently about polling numbers and a question asked to a group regarding how you pay for things at the store, and just taking the data would have you believe that most of us pay for items in retail by check it shows immediately when you read that that there's a lot missing from that data.
The data isn't wrong or false or a lie.
It's math right.
It's just not giving you all the context and color that you need. There's nuance that's missing. You have to figure who's being polled, who's doing the polling right. So we're not saying that your numbers are wrong. There's just a lot missing. So you spoke on the show before several times that you're going to find the most crimes being committed where you're policing the most. So if their police are only on this side of town, all the crime they find will be on this side of town.
That does not mean there's no crime happening anywhere else, or that the only people committing crime are those being policed.
It's a great example here, real quick. That example that you mentioned was a TV station pulling their viewers about who pays how people pay at retail places, and when the answer came back with checks, they had to look at that and say, Okay, this data is skewed. Not that the math was wrong, but it's skewed because we're not sampling in a statistically accurate cross section of the populations. Now here's a great example or a great analogy that
goes with that. Let's say I'm a mouse catcher, right, and I go into a mouse and I put all my mouse traps in the living room, and then I catch ten mice. And then I come back and say, well, you know, you have a problem with the mice in the living room, so you need mouse traps in the living room. That data is skewed. Now to your point about police only being on one side of town or over policing, it would skew the data to suggest that these people are committing crimes. No, there are mice all
over the house. Mice do not know the difference between living room anymore than crime knows one population. Crime follows poverty, sure, but I mean there's crime everywhere, and.
Crime also follows opportunity. There you go too.
So again, yes, if all the traps are in the living room, then every mouse that's caught.
Is going to be a That's great.
That's a great analogy, all right, now I want to share the other part. Also, I'm not reading these whole articles. Again, check the Guardian and you can check the Associated Press for the full articles.
But I do need to.
Get to the second one, because I do want to make sure we share This comes from Phoenix, Arizona. Again from the AP. Phoenix police discriminate against black, Hispanic and Native American people, unlawfully detain homeless people, and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force, according to a sweeping federal civil rights investigation of law enforcement in the nation's fifth largest city. So now we're talking about the third largest city and
the fifth largest city. I'd imagine that Houston, the fourth largest city, would have something, and of course New York and LA first and second, they're going to have something too.
But here we are.
The US Justice Department released a report that says investigators found stark racial disparities in how officers in the Phoenix Police Department and forced certain laws, including low level drug and traffic offenses. Investigators found that Phoenix police officers shoot at people who do not pose an imminent threat, fire their weapons after any threat has been eliminated, and routinely delay medical care for people injured in encounters with officers.
The report does not mention whether the federal government is pursuing a court enforced reform plan known as a consent decree, an often costly and lengthy process, but a Justice Department official told reporters that in similar cases that method has
been used to carry out reforms. The Justice Department said Phoenix police officers enforce certain laws, such as low level drug and traffic offenses, loitering and trespassing more harshly against black, Hispanic and Native American people than against white people who engage in the same conduct. Black people in the city are over three point five times more likely than white people, for example, to be cited or arrested for not signaling
before turning. The report says Hispanic drivers are more than fifty percent more likely than white drivers to be cited or arrested for speeding near school's own cameras, and Native American people are more than forty four times more likely than white people on a per capita basis to be
cited or arrested for possessing and consuming alcohol. Officers investigating drug related offenses were also twenty seven percent more likely to release white people in thirty minutes or less, but Native Americans accused of the same offense were detained longer, the Department set and Native Americans were fourteen percent more likely to be booked for trespass while officers cited or released white people accused of the same offense.
We've heard in recent news a call for complete immunity for politicians and police officers. And we'll have to research where this quote comes from. Lord acting is where I read it most recently. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely, so very very important that we don't put people in a position do implicit biases or flat overt racism can just go unchecked. You know, it's important that article said per capita because people would like to argue about how many Native Americans
live here versus how many white people. And this is not about the overall number, it's about the percentages. They use percentages very intentionally as articles that you illmins.
Yeah, this is.
Intentional. This is not by mistake. This is a system that these officers work inside of, so as Ramsas and I have said, we can't count how many times we're not talking about the individual police officer that you know and love. We are talking about the institution of police departments in this country. Their foundation and the very root of how they conduct their business is based on a very very racist, white supremacist foundation.
I don't think anybody could have said it better than that.