Civic Cipher 040922 No Charges Brought to Officers in Amir Locke Death (Part 1)

we'll have that perspective as well. Be sure to stick around because we will be discussing the Minneapolis police officer that shot a near lock and the lack of charges being brought fourth in that instance. We're also going to spend some time talking about a clerk, I believe a front desk clerk in Florida who called the police. Police showed up. The clerk called the police on a guest staying there. Clerk was black, guest was not black, called the police on the guests please show up and arrest

the clerk. It was the strangest story, but we're going to get into that. We also have our way Black history fact. We're going to be discussing the Harlem hell Fighters. Those guys are awesome. I've been reading about them, so I'm really excited about that. And a whole lot more coming your way, like we always do each and every week on Civic Cipher. But first and foremost, with your permission, Q Woard, I would like to discuss some ebony excellence. How does that say?

This of course comes from the Atlanta Black Star. So we always like to take a moment and shout out something good going out, and today we're dedicating it to him. Share a little bit more with you here. Thomas comes from a seven sibling home raised by a single mother. He says he'd like to use his story to provide inspiration to others like him who faced hardship but want

to continue in pursuing their goal. This comes from him quote, when I'm recognized, I won't just be won't just have been another black teen on the news for something bad like gang violence? Are me getting wrongfully shot? I want people to look at me and be like, Wow, he's really out there doing something that we really thought we couldn't do just because of how we looked. And quote

his mother, Erica, is an educator herself and Thomas's first teacher. Quote, no matter what life presents you, you just go for it. You write your own story. We know there are narratives out here but about our black boys, but it is our responsibility to change that narrative. She said. We do all types of Ebony excellence, and we talk about Chicago a lot. We have to defend Chicago a lot. On

this show. Well, this ebony excellence and this student in Chicago is well deserving and it certainly does help frame the other side of the conversation the right way. So yeah, a million dollars in scholarships accepted to thirty universities, of course, a straight a student, and he's making national headlines. So once again, shout out to you, Stephen Thomas. Keep going, baby boy and making us all proud.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepenn County Attorney Mike Freeman, who jointly reviewed the case, said there was quote insufficient admissible evidence to file criminal charges end quote. I know you want to get in right there, Cube, but let me finish. They said they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that officer, we're not going to say this name who fatally shot Locke violated the state's use of

deadly for statute. Prosecutors also said they could find no criminal wrongdoing in the decision making that led to Lock's fatal shooting, but strongly criticized the use of a no knock warrant. Well, at least there's something there. You know, you stabbed me in the heart and then don't spit on me. I appreciate that don't spitting on me part. Okay, before I get to the comments from his family, I want to just revisit this for a second. So we talked about this when it happened. We talked about this

on the show. Officers burst into a house. It was an no knock raid. Ten seconds later, a mere Laka is dead. He was sleeping on the couch. It wasn't his apartment. He was sleeping on the couch, he woke up and grabbed his gun, and you know, the video shows he was raising the gun, but he was also rising up out of being asleep, right, and the video cuts off. At least that's the video that I saw.

And as he was like getting up out of the bed and of course had his gun in his hand, the assumption is the following frame is when he was shot and lost his life. I do want to revisit this because I think that this is important. What we see is a police kick in the door, and you're listening to us. Just imagine if you are a gun on I'm not a gun person. I say it all the time on the show. I'm not a gun person, but maybe you are. So imagine you're a gun person, right,

and someone kicks in the door of your house. Right, let's even say that they say that they're the police, right, But you don't know for sure. This could be a robber just saying that they're the police trying to get you to cooperate. You don't know, you know, And if you grew up in a rough neighborhood and you're kind of paranoid, maybe you're a little edgy, right, you know, So let's have that be a part of the narrator, because maybe you do trust someone just says, hey, I'm

the police, do whatever I say. But in a lot of neighborhoods that I've been to, and certainly the neighborhood I come from, the police are also the bad guys in a lot of those stories. So it could be the police. That could not be the police, And even if it is the police, doesn't necessarily mean that everything's

going to be okay. So this is your reality, right, someone kicks in the door of your house and you're startled awake from your sleep, right, and you're a gun owner in this imaginary scenario, so you grab your gun. That's how you protect yourself. That's how you defend yourself from whatever's coming your way. If you're startled, it could be a bear, could be a person, it could be whatever you know, and before you're able to make sense of what's happening, you're dead. All right. Now, Let's not

imagine it to you. Let's imagine you have a child and that happens to your child, or if you're not old enough to have children, let's imagine it's your parent, your father, your mother, to imagine it's anybody that exists in your world. Before they have a chance to even

process what's happening, they're afraid someone's yelling, screaming. A bunch of people are running into the house, and they do the only thing that they believe they can do to protect themselves from whatever these noises are, and before they even get a chance to process it, they're dead. That's what happened here. Now we know that that was established on the show. We made it a point Q and I to say, how.

is here and no one's held accountable. All right, Cue, I want you to jump in right here, because the last time we talked about this, you had a lot to say about a lack of police use accountability and how no one seems to care about that, especially when the person is black.

lost a million people. Yeah, life in and of itself has seemed to become cheap, especially to the haves in this have versus have not world that we live in, this have versus have not country that we live in. Now, understanding that not in all societies, all countries, all city, states, provinces. Is it the haves versus the have nots? Right. In some places, those two separate groups of people exist in

a way that is not adversarial. However, in the capitalist society that we live in, it is very much adversarial. In order for us to remain the haves, you have to remain the have nots. We speak about the idea that they just throw their hands up and say, oh, man, are bad after murdering someone who, even if he was the target of the warrant, was not ordered to be executed. I'm assuming, but this young man not even a person of interest in this no knock surprise, scare you to

death style raid that happened. Now, you mentioned you know someone being a gun person, and gun person sounds like gun advocates. Gun you know a person that's going to march down the street and and you know, protest our Second Amendment.

turn the guns in. The idea for me has not always been that that was a way to protect my family. But I came home to a man sitting on my porch claiming my house. So when you have a pregnant woman and a baby and there's a man sitting on your porch who may or may not have a gun, telling you that your house is his, it puts some things in perspective for you, especially at a time in our country where people that look like us, and more specifically,

my children had to become literal targets. A man became the president on the back of the idea that he would keep people that look like my children out of this country. So when put in a position where hey, sir, and this was by a law enforcement officer, just the heads up, you might be the only person in this community that doesn't have a gun, not telling you you need to get one, just telling you that something to

think about. That was a very sobering moment for me, especially as this pandemic followed, this new movement of hyper zenophobia, hyper racism, hyper bigotry. Then we had a pandemic where you couldn't find toilet paper or water at the store. All of these factors coming into play once again, this have versus have nots thin to be viewed as the have who doesn't have a gun surrounded by have nots that do. It changes the way you think about things

a little bit. But once again, it does not make me a gun person, just a gun owner.

was in the wrong house. But the fact that there's no accountability in situations like that, like you can just can just make mistakes and everybody's like, well, you know, that's the price we pray pay as a society. It's just collateral damage. And that's the part that feels sort of unfair. You know, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the price of life is cheap because these things don't seem to change. You mentioned that a mere lock was not even a

person of interest. He wasn't named in the warrant. They didn't even know he's going to be there. He just happened to be there. The second, the Second Amendment legally affords him the right to bear arms same as any other citizen of this.

to be held accountable, whatever the case is. You said this to me, you that was a brilliant point you made in this case, and in lots of police cases, the police can just make mistakes with no accountability. I do want to read this, and I don't want to get back to police accountability. But let me breathe some life into this. So quote a mere Lock's life matter end quote. Ellison and Freeman said in a statement. Quote he should be alive today and his death is a strategy.

End quote. Lock a twenty two old black man, of course, shot and killed as the swat team executed a warrant related to a homicide investigation in neighboring Saint Paul. He was shot in the face, chest, and shoulder. Shepherd a Gray's round to the wrist. Usually when people are shot in the wrists because they're trying to like protect themselves or like put their hands up or something. It was

later pronounced dead at the hospitals. Not clear from the initial video if his gun was pointed at officers or whether anyone ordered him to drop it before he was shot. The incident lasted less than ten seconds. Okay, I wanted to finish that just so there was said again that comes from the Washington Post. Now, this is the same sort of tactic that ended the life of Breonna Taylor. We've talked about her on the show too. Of course,

that's another her big name. We shouted that name alongside George Floyd when we were protesting in twenty twenty and no knock warrant where she didn't have anything to do with anything, she wasn't involved in anything whatever. And then now she's dead. Her mother had to bury her, and

then everybody's looking at all. The police at least are looking around like, well, shoot, I mean, you know it ain't our fault, you know, And then all the other police in the country are like, yeah, I mean that makes sense, sure, sad, but you know, it's cost of doing business. And we're here to say that cost is too high. That's too high a price, you know. I mean some things you just can't make mistakes on. If you get a weapon, if you get a tool case, only purpose is to end to life. You don't get

to make mistakes. You got to be very sure about that. You know, there's no room for ambiguity. And if you're afraid that someone's going to take your life, perhaps that's the wrong job for you. You know, I'll say it again now this is the part that I think you'll flip out on que. I don't like to just have bad news. If you listen to the show every week, you know, I try to bring some levity or some positivity or

silver lining to just about everything when I can. And I wanted to talk about, well, you know, sometimes there are charges brought forth and then sometimes people are actually convicted, you know, and so you know, we're getting there, We're moving in the right direction. That's really what I wanted

to say. I'm honest, my hand to god. My friend Margaret was with me when we were putting the show together, and she was kind of giving us some feedback on some topics that we needed to talk about this week, and we collectively discovered in researching the amount of police officers that were actually convicted of crimes, we found that there were four right who were convicted of you know,

like killing a person. And I wanted to use Derek Shovin, the person who knelt on the neck of George Floyd, and what other other names I could find, But the only other name that I could find where a black person was involved since twenty twenty was Kim Potter, right. And Kim Potter, if you remember, is the woman who killed Dante Wright. She yelled out taser, taser, taser, and then shot her gun and it killed Dante Wright. He was trying to like escape from a traffic stop, which

again isn't a crime. No one that says that to me will get any more of an audience from me. Everything runs when it's scared. Deer run when there's cats run when they're scared. Anything with a nervous system will run when it's scared or fight. Those are two things that are any creature created by our same creator, whoever you believe that creator to be, has endowed us all with that same operating system. So that is not a crime, right.

That is a higher function is it is a limbic function, more than your thinking brain, That is your lizard brain. I need to survive, however you feel what survival is, It's up to you. But that people do that, and so do other creatures on this planet. But I want to say this. I found four names since twenty twenty. Guess how many I found overall, going back to nineteen sixty five. That's as far back as it goes. Guess how many names I found too? Help me out? How many names do you think I found?

white people that lost their lives. Not a lot of them were black. And that's our reality, and that's why we had to talk about this today. And I know we got like thirty seconds left, so cute your final thoughts before we move on.