Keep riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. This is civic side for Iron, your host Rams's job. Big shout out to my man c Ward who is out of town for this taping, but have no fear, Doctor Camilla Westenberg is here to hold down the co captain chair for the evening, afternoon morning. Whatever time day you are consuming this media, be sure to stick around because we have a lot more in store for you.
We are going to be discussing a one Johnny Hallman who lost his life at the hands of police in a very violent and unnecessary way, and we need to give you some insight into this particular incident because this is not white cop, black suspect. This is a black officer and there are some implications there we need to discuss. But before we get there, let's discuss Baba becoming a better ally Baba. Today's Baba is sponsored by Friends of
the Movement. You can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that is Fotmglobal dot com so today reading that Megan Butten's family was considering moving if their Pennsylvania school district
didn't change courses from NPR. By the way, she normally isn't politically active, she said, but felt compelled to volunteer when a slate of Democrats launched bids to take back their school board in Central Bucks school district, just north of Philadelphia. Central Bucks is well known both statewide and nationally for heated board meetings over masks and pride flags, policies manning certain books, and directives to not use students
preferred names and pronouns. Accusations of discrimination against LGBTQ students have also led to an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Education. Quote. I couldn't have my kids in a school district where these kinds of things were happening, Buddon said. Standing in the Bucks County Democratic headquarters on election night, Button saab when the results rolled in Democrats took all five seats up for election, the room erupted
in cheers, Friends, neighbors, and strangers hugged. Quote. It was very moving and very joyous feeling from everyone. Button recalled in a sense of relief, if there was a question about whether the conservative led school boards policies reflected the will of the local community, Tuesday's election may have provided
an answer. And so you know, we often ask for you to use these examples to model your life after or to take action if there was a fund rating initiative or any fund raising initiative or anything like that. And the highest good I believe that any of us can do is whole elected office. And of course Meghan Button is an example of that, So shout out to her. Okay, So next topic, how are you feeling good? Okay, I'm good. I appreciate your getting here.
Where was Bucks School in Where was it located? Again?
That was Central Books in Philadelphia?
Really okay.
So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about a video that we are going to play a little bit later. I'm gonna read a little bit, but I want you to be be caught up to speed. Yeah, what we're going to witness is I'm going to play the audio. But the audio by itself is not very clear because the speaking voice and the cadence and the accent of mister Johnny Hallman, who is now deceased, is not He does not speak with what we in the radio industry
called non regional viction. It's a very thick Southern accent, and he speaks very quickly, so you might not be able to make out what he's saying, but hopefully you'd be able to feel his energy when we get there. I'm going to share a bit. This comes from NBC News.
The daughter of Johnny Hallman said she became physically ill watching body camera footage of the sixty two year old church deacon screaming out for help and repeatedly saying he cannot breathe during a fatal encounter with an Atlanta police officer. Halman died on August tenth after former officer Kevin sorry Kieran Kimberrel used a stun gun on him and then handcuffed him following a minor traffic incident. Died after a
minor traffic incident. And when we talk about police over and you know, this is a show that's very critical of the way that policing as an institution is done. I know individual officers, police officers kind people, good people, well intentioned, well meaning people who are part of a system that desperately needs reform. Okay, I want to make
sure that I say that. Okay. So yeah, Kimber was fired by the Atlanta Police Department because he did not follow standard operating procedures, police said Tuesday.
Okay.
Arntra Fallen's, her family, and their attorney met with the city last month to view footage of the incident. Again, this is the daughter of the deceased Johnny Hallman quote. It was very heartbreaking, Follen said Wednesday. Her father had called her during the encounter. I'm not going to play the whole video, but there is a moment when he's
trying to make a phone call. I think there was a couple of moments actually, but toward the end, the officers says, sign this ticket, and he's still he's older man. He's trying to work his phone, and the officer becomes impatient. Mister Hallman says, I'm going to sign the ticket, and the officer by then is very frustrated and starts to grab him to place him under arrest, and he says, wait, I said I'd sign the ticket, you know, And then by then the officer has escalated and obviously he lost
his life. Okay, but he did call his daughter during the encounter. So you won't be able to see that if you're listening to this on the audio. Relatives said that Hallman was driving home from Bible study wow at a daughter's house and taking dinner to his wife when he was involved in a car accident. He called police to the scene, the family said. The Atlanta Police Department said in its initial statement that Hallman became quote agitated and uncooperative when the officer found him to be the
at fault driver and issued him a citation. Authorities said he quote resisted as the officer attempted to take him into custody, and a struggle ensued. After several minutes of struggling, the officer used his stun gun and in place Hallman in handcuffs. According to the police, it was then that the officer realized that Hallmand was unresponsive and requested at ems.
So again, I want you to know that the officer and this was black, and of course Johnny Hallman was black as well, so we're not Sometimes we get a chance to illustrate how the system is and there's a component of racism often in the system and in the officer as well. But even without that component of racism, a system will still compel you to engage in racist behaviors,
to mistreat people. Remember once, once upon a time, slavery was legal in this country, and freed black people could own slaves too, and they did because that was the economic model. So what we're going to look at is something that is not dissimilar to that a black officer engaged in what we we believe to be a white supremacist institution. I believe that it's more than a belief, that is an objective fact. It was founded as slave patrol,
so it is everyday life, right. So let's get to this video and then we will talk about it.
Uh.
And I feel compelled to mention that this comes from the Daily Mail. It has been sort of edited a bit, so you'll hear music and things like that. That's not my doing. But for the most part of all the videos, this one it seems to be the most intact and appropriate for today's Today's show. So here we go.
All right, I did find you a fault.
This started off as a simple conversation which ended up with tragic consequences.
My life with Green. You cut your term short.
No, No, I've done him.
What you kept telling me at me it was my poe.
Why are you at me?
I'm gonna sna tell you it was not my fuck.
He's praying into my trunk. You ain't right right here. Sixty two year old church deacon Johnny Hallman got into an altercation with a police officer in Atlanta after a vehicle went into his pickup truck.
I told you once, bore your voice. You're not you understand what I'm telling you. Now, you're gonna sign this ticket and I'm gonna take you to jail. I suggested you signed the ticket, then you could talk to my sergeant or whoever you want to talk to, your frieze, your wife. I don't care, but you're gonna sign it right here.
Here you go.
When Harman refuses to sign a citation, the situation quickly escalates.
So I'm gonna ask you one more time.
Sign the ticket.
Sign the ticket, Sign the ticket from I'm not I'm.
Can crazy, I'm all right, all right. I know you can't see what's going on, but basically, he's telling the officer that he needs to know whether or not signing this is an admission of guilt. The officer seems to be frustrated. We can't see the officer, of course, and then uh, there's they're now struggling. He's saying that he's hurting the officers, hurting his arm. That's what we're witnessing right now.
Sadly, Hallman was pronounced dead at the hospital after the incident, which took place on August tenth.
Okay, so let's discuss. So one of the things that you may not have heard from the audio is him saying, I'm going to sign the ticket.
Yeah.
Another thing that he said was I'm an old man, and I believe that he said that in a way to kind of de escalate the situation. In other words, I mean you no harm. Another thing that he said. Again, I have captions here, so I can read what he's saying in the studio, but if you're just listening to
the audio, you may not know. Part of the reason why he was hesitating when it came to signing the ticket is because he was worried that it might be an admission of guilt and it obviously felt like he wasn't at fault, and the officer did not respond to that inquiry. In other words, a lot of times you might receive a ticket and an officer will say, this is not an admission of guilt or innocence. This is simply a signing to say that you've received the ticket.
You can plead whether or not you're a guilty or innocent at court. And so he was asking that question when the officer started to grab him. He was saying, I'm an old man, I'm hurting it, I can't breathe, all these things. Of course, he died there on the sidewalk. So I wanted to bring you up to speed. Of course, I'd like for you to jump in here your thoughts, Doctor Westenberg.
Well, actually, I go back to the very beginning, to the reporting of the incident and the newscaster, if I heard it correctly, it says that Johnny Holdemann got into an altercation with the police officer. Now, or perhaps the police officer got into an altercation with him.
That's what it seems like that.
Okay, So I say, first, it's for me somewhat tainted because a decision has been made by the presentation of the story by the media to that audience. The other thing that I found really interesting is that I heard no inquiry about where you're coming from.
What are you doing.
Let's get this into perspective. What's the big picture? And he said, he hit me. And I didn't see any in that where attention was given to let's look at this. I don't know if he pointed to the back of his car or to the side of his car. I did not hear any verbiage that said anything about where that hitting, where the contact took place. Okay, well, and he did not give attention to what he said. He said, he hit me, so let's look at that situation, and
where is the other let's walk over. I don't see any investigation of what actually occurred. And then he called his audience reasonable that someone would want to let a family member know what's taking place. That's that's just simply not unusual. And he said it was going to sign it. He said, I'm going to sign it. Give him a moment, just you are first, Evidently an incident has occurred between two cars that within itself was a little unst I
should have been on both parts recognize that. Okay, you have to give a person time to settle down, come to grips with it, and not rush them through the process. This gentleman may not have ever been in a situation before with police. So look, he's a deacon, he was he had been to Bible study. Okay, you know, did the policeman where are you're coming from? Where have you been?
You know?
He just went bam right into the situation and started yeah, and and and here you have this person with a personality and a persona, and he knows who he is as an individual, and the policeman does not take any time in the dialogue to deal with that, or even when he said he hit me, to investigate that, you know what you were just talking about, explaining that it doesn't it doesn't indicate guilt or not to have said that would have been delightful to show him, to have
shared that with him. Sir, I just want to let you know that this is just a process that we have to go through, Okay, but instead you're going and a stun gun That simply just does not make sense.
You know, there's something else here When we're looking at this story, and indeed the story from the first part of the show, what we have are traumatic events that officers, if they're not trained to deal with them, they certainly there's a there's a prevalence of them because they are the ones that are responding to traumatic event, so would reasonably assume that they could deal with trauma better than
the average person. Tense tense moments, I'll say in the first example from the first part of the show, where the woman was handcuff naked on her her in her living room as a result of a no knock warrant who lived alone, older black woman, she kept begging to call somebody since I feel uncomfortable, And of course then we see mister Johnny Hallman pull out his phone to make a call as well. And my guess is that if I was in a similar situation, I would want
someone to know too. I'm sure that that sentiment is shares particularly among black people, because situations can get very dangerous very quickly. Tense situations, i would argue, are more tense if you are black with respect to police interactions. Right, And so, what we see when we talk about systemic elements, systemic oppression, systemic entities in our society. Systems have a
tendency to treat things like one size fits all. No knock warrants get the bad guys completely ignoring the fact that we're gonna kill a ton of people that have nothing to do with their names out on the warran. They don't have anything to do with it. We're gonna make mistakes or whatever. The collateral damage is just collateral damage.
And because officers are often empowered by communities that do not feel that additional tension, they're they're blindly supported the blue flag, that flag, that abomination of the American flag where it's black and white and then there's a blue strip. There are people out there that just thinks that police can do no wrong. And you know, we talk about it on social media time and again that systems and indeed individual actors create trauma that ripples through the black community.
I feel like you want to jump in police.
Well, you know, I would just say it's human Well, I won't say it's human nature, but it often occurs that whenever a person it's fortunate enough to have a superior role over other individuals oftentimes goes to the head. This is outside of being in the policeman are in that field and that particular area is that the hierarchy
of it. I mean, whether it's on the job, wherever you might be, if someone an organization, a committee, in any of those instances where you are over sometimes you have the capacity to assume that role in an exaggerated fashion.
Sure, exactly, that's it.
Well, a police officer, that is the ultimate. You are given the car, the lights to stop you, and everything right, and that's something that has to be realized, which means means that a concerted effort should be made. I mean, just think you're driving down the road and you see a light coming behind you. The heart starts pounding, start looking doing everything? Am I doing everything right?
You know?
What have I done?
And it passes you.
And go and you go yeah. And I want for our listeners real quick, I want to say for our listeners, I know that everybody experiences this, but again, imagine how much more intense that feels when you're black. Again, briefly, before we close, I want to share this. I come from Compton, California. My first years were in a place in the eighties, of course, where there was drugs and all kind of stuff, right, a very scary place. The scariest of all was the police. The scariest of all,
and that has been trap. I've seen police hurt people like unnecessarily so remember of people were talking about how bad the lapd were that's a real thing. I saw it had with these eyes as a child, and so that trauma, that fear of police and the police being empowered to do whatever they want without having to deal with that kind of contributes to this weird predicament that we find ourselves in. But let's leave it right there. As always, we never have enough time with this show,
but please do us a favor. Check our social media at Civic Cipher. What you'll find is both of these videos so you can see for yourself. Cib I c c I P H E R. I of course would like to thank you doctor Westernberg for coming, as always.
In It's a wonderful, wonderful show.
Sure, sure, and I appreciate you having these conversations with me and having these conversations with me since I was nineteen years old in college.
I am.
Glad to have been raised by you in this tradition. Do us a favor. Please hit the website Civiccipher dot com download this in any previous episodes. Again, as I mentioned, follow us on social media. You can hit me at Ramsey's jock qs I am qboard. He will be next back next week and until then, peace,