120223 The No-Knock Warrant at Anjanette Young’s Apartment (Part 1)

that you know and love from this show. I have a pinch heater in the building. One of our strongest supporters. Our origin story starts with this woman, the one and only doctor Kumilla Westernberg, joins us. Welcome back to the show.

Our hope is that by going through these articles and videos that it kind of gives you an aperture into what it feels like to experience discrimination of course, there's a lot of conversations around you know, a country, particularly with those on the right, that feel like a lot of what it is that we're doing and bringing attention to is imagined, and that let's say that we have a victim mentality and all these sorts of things and

so on. The heels of a recent conversation for those that listen to the show Weekly with Doctor ya Afo, where we discussed generational trauma, we want to give you a glimpse into what this trauma may look and feel like and ask that you do your own thought experiments and extrapolate and run it all the way back. It's very important that we share these moments and we give you these these again, these apertures into the black experience. But for some and foremost, before we get there, let's

take a moment and celebrate some ebony excellence. Today's ABNY Excellence is sponsored by Major Threads. For innovative fashionable sportswear, check majorthreads dot com. Today, I'm gonna share a bit about the one and only LeVar Burton. I grew up with LeVar Burton. He used to host a show called Reading Rainbow, and then he transitioned into Kunta Kine and then later became Jeordie LaForge on Star Trek. I am

a trekky, I do admit. So he's a guy that I know in love for many years, and he is an example of ebony excellence because he is speaking out about book bands. So I'll read from Cenn. It's not unusual for political statements to feature at the National Book Awards, as the National Book Foundation noted in its own statement

ahead of the event. Aside from the finalist comments about the Israel Hamas War, several speakers and authors use their platforms at the awards ceremony to address efforts to ban

books in US schools and libraries. LeVar Burton, children's author and former host of the iconic TV program Reading Rainbow mceed the awards ceremony and opened with a joke quote before we get going, are there any Moms for liberty in the house, he asked, referring to a conservative group behind recent attempts to remove certain books from school shows. No good, then hands will not need to be thrown tonight, all right. In his opening speech, Burton alluded to the

climate in which book banning attempts are taking place. He goes on to say, it was my mother who taught me at a very young age that if you can read in at least one language, you are, by her definition, free, And that idea of freedom feels especially fraught in this global political moment. He goes on to say, there are wars and rumors of wars, and the machineries of war at work. On the home front. We are fighting for control of truth and how we interpret truth in this country.

Books are being banned, words are being silenced, and writers and others who champion books are under attack. So shout out to Lavarburg for being an example of ebony excellence. All right, so first and foremost, we are going to talk about no knock warrants for the uninitiated. And no knock warrant is a warrant obtained by police departments that allows them to announce they're at the door and then

immediately kick the door in. And it is a very dangerous tactic and it starts a situation off high stress, a lot of trauma, and and you don't know what's going on now. Police argue that this is an effective way of catching criminals that they're reasonably sure will be behind the door without giving them the opportunity to run, to flee, escape, what have you. However, we've seen in recent years the collateral damage that stems from no knock warrants.

That damage includes the loss of life, which in our estimation on this show, is too high a price. We expect the officers that are paid for by our tax dollars that are the result of indeed, our political representation and our voting. You know that we have police departments and police chiefs and mayors and so forth, the whole structure. We expect that the cost is not too high to

the public. And what we've learned with Breonna Taylor, for instance, is that the deadly ripple effects of these no knock warrants coupled with a very in our estimation, toxic culture of policing, bullying culture of policing the holier than now. You know, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm the law in these parts. I can kill with impunity. I have the gun. You don't you do what I say? And if you don't,

you know it can cost you everything. That type of culture coupled with a tactic that doesn't really lend itself to police doing actual police work. It just it starts off on the bully level already insure as that we end up with stories like Breonna Taylor, stories like Marvin Guy, a gentleman in Texas who's now serving life in prison because when the police kicked in his door, he thought

that they were burglars. This is indeed a tactic that burglars use too, kicking the door and say this is the police, and then everybody gets on the ground and then they tie everybody up and then rob the house. So Marvin Guy was defending his house. He shot back and an officer, you know, he was protecting his home and the right to bear arms in this country. One officer was killed and he had no idea that this was the police. He had no He just heard commotion

and screaming. And now he has to spend the rest of his life in prison because an officer died. And it's in Texas, and that's the way it goes. A mere Lock is another name I feel compelled to mention because we talked about him on this show. It was a video for that one as well. He's kicked in the door. A mere Lock was not named in the warrant, but he died as a result of a no knock warrant. He did not have a weapon, he was not resisting, he was sleeping on a couch in my recollection of

that event. So why are we talking about no lock warrants today? Well, a video has finally been released in Chicago. Was a woman who went through a very, very traumatic experience. And I'm going to ask a question after we go through this video. I'm not going to play the whole video, but i'd certainly want to give you a glimpse into

what's happening. Of course, you can only really hear what's going on here, but again, this glimpse into no knock warrants and indeed, the way that black people are treated and traumatized, it boggles the mind if indeed you are a person with a degree of empathy and compassion. So I'll read a bit just so you can follow the story. This comes from NBC News Chicago. A Chicago police sergeant has been fired. So there was a little bit of justice here, and she filed lawsuit and in one let

make sure I mentioned that. But this sergeant has been fired for his role in a botched twenty nineteen raid at the home of a black woman who was handcuffed while naked after police officers were sent to the wrong address. I want you to hear her screaming naked. She's not a young woman, she's you know this. She lives it alone.

It is heartbreaking. The Chicago Police Board voted five to three Thursday to fire Sergeant Alex Wolinski for multiple rules violations and failure of leadership in the raid and an apartment of an Jeanette Young. According to a thirty one page written ruling, The Chicago Sun Times recorded, Young, a social worker, was getting ready for bed in February twenty nineteen when several officers serving a no knock warrant stormed into her apartment on Chicago's Near West Side, searching for

a man believed to have an illegal gun. A man believed him not a mass murderer, a man believed to have an illegal gun because you know you have That was it. So we're going to hear the collateral damage, how this impacts not only this woman or family, but a community. You know, we talk about this up and then people don't believe that there are real implications. Here's there's almost like this kind of suck it up, Buttercup.

And then when you take a step back and you look at four hundred years of this and you look at the trauma that manifests itself in many ways, from socioeconomics to healthcare, to environmental racism, to police brutality and injustice, the carceral system. You know, I could go on and on and on that suck it up, buttercub. It doesn't fly.

And without context, people get to have these narratives that like, oh, well, black people should just do this and completely absolve themselves, and indeed, this country from its responsibility to the can of black people in the society. Let me continue reading here. The botched raid and the city's handling of it prompted anger from clergy, lawmakers and civil rights activists, who decried it as a racist and an affront to a black woman's dignity, which it is. Well, I'll let you decide

for yourself. Don't let me color. I've seen this video, so I have my own feelings, but I don't want to compel any of you listening feel any kind of way I am. Indeed, I implore you to watch the video yourself. Watch it. You're gonna listen, But I want you to watch it too, And as I mentioned, Young later sued the city over the raid, resulting in the Chicago City Council voting unanimously in December twenty twenty one to pay her two point nine million dollars to settle

her lawsuit. Let's get to the video here.

let me call a man. And I keep telling you you got the wrong way, you got the.

a man. Okay, yes, I don't know what the size of the apartment was, but they could have be escalated and said miss, we're looking for a man. We don't want to harm you. I apologize because coming in, will you please just step over here. I don't know if they touched her or not. I haven't seen the video.

sense at all. Sure, I don't see any grounds for the whole the whole situation is wrong.

in Vegas, Fremont Street. If you're there's these little strips in a lot of cities around the country, and you can just go and enjoy night life. You don't have to do anything crazy.

friends police and on Mill Avenue. The police had bikes and horses just so they can move around a little bit better, hold up on me, started screaming at me. I was terrified, and get on the ground. Get on the ground, right. So I'm on the ground and then they, you know, get me all wrapped up and I keep trying to ask what I did, and no one's really listening. You know what I mean, What do I do? What

I do? My friends are standing around watching this happen to me, helpless, because of course each of these people is they have a gun, and you know, I'm from Compton, California, so I know, you know, this is a life and death situation potentially. Let me do my best to get out of it alive, right, So I'm not going to push back too much. But again, there is a modicum of dignity that I believe that every every creature endowed

with consciousness deserves. This is my belief. And when that line is crossed, even for myself, there's a point where you push back and you just insist, like this is not right, this is not fair. We hurt the woman an Jeanette Young saying this in the video, this is not right. Turns out they were looking for a white man in a yellow Isn't that funny? And that wasn't

enough for them to let me go. Of course, ye I was searched, I was detained all these sorts of things, and of course I didn't have anything on me, none of that, you know what I mean. But they used it as an opportunity to see what else they could shake out, and I think that again we're talking about police culture coupled with these tactics. As you mentioned, these tactics are okay, what in the world a no knock warrant on an apartment when you're looking for a man

with a gun. You can't flush a gun down a toilet, and you can do a bit of police work and still find it without having a handcuff an older black woman naked in the living room of her house.

And you know, that's the sort of thing I would in Heaven and eartholver right, it's very very upsetting to listen to a woman screaming and she was right, and no one's listening to her, and they just assume that she's you know, it's guilty until proven innocent sort of mentality that a lot of times. I certainly had that when I was shaking down, shaken down on Middle Avenue.