That's right, y'all. Welcome to another edition of Civic Cipher. I'my host Ramsy's job.
Call me Q Ward, and that just so happens to be my name.
And today's show is a very special show. Now I say that quite a bit, But the reason I have Q with me today is because we're going to tell a story, and we're going to talk about policing from the vantage point and how it affects black men. Today's episode is one where we both can speak from a personal experience and paint a picture. A lot of folks that have, you know, followed the show and have commented on YouTube or sent messages to our Twitter or anything
like that. There's a lot of folks who don't really understand, especially when it comes to the defund the police call that stems from the movement that's taking place in the streets right now on behalf of Black Lives Matter and lots of other groups. They don't understand where that comes from,
and they can't really see the optics. And so it just so happens to be the case that Q and I recently went through an experience where I think we're able to illustrate exactly why we feel like a lot of times policing is unfair to black people and in our case, black men specifically. Now, before we get to
that story, I do want to paint a picture. A lot of folks know that I'm a DJ, and if you don't, you know, I'm a DJ, longtime radio personality, television magazines primarily based in Phoenix, Arizona, and q ward is all of those things as well. So those of you that listen to the show every week, you know me, but maybe you don't know Q. So run down your resume a little bit for folks who maybe this is the first time meeting you.
Oh, resume all of it. I don't know. It's pretty expansive, man, Yeah, man, we got time or diverse if you will. You know, my adult life kind of started in sports and entertainment college football, working with and representing professional athletes, got into racing, then got into sponsorship, gotten alcohol and spirits. That's how we cross paths. Introduced the world to a product called Hennessy Black that transitioned me into a bit more of
a domesticated life, traveled the world a little bit. I spent two and a half years in the road managing comedy tours, road managing, and around two thousand and eleven got into Djane and that's kind of been my vehicle ever since. We've done a lot, you know, since crossing paths and since you know, getting my first set of techniques. But Djane became the vehicle for everything I did after that, and then we got into nonprofit sector. Shouts to the
Change Society, shouts to hashtag Lunchbag, our champion initiative. That's you know, a worldwide project now. And yeah, outside of fatherhood, man, that's it. You know.
Well, there's a couple more things that I think are noteworthy. One of them is that you're bona fide radio personality as well. Word I know that because we've had radio shows together all the other things that you've done in Phoenix. And also you are more than just a DJ. I know lots of DJs, but you're perhaps one of the more recognizable DJs in Phoenix. Certainly, I would say probably on the West coast of the United States in terms of notoriety, in terms of your reach, in terms of
the caliber of gigs that you perform. But you know, since you're primarily based in Phoenix, you know, certainly a big name in old town Scottsdale, which, if you're not from Arizona, is the place where DJs are really celebrated
and elevated to the next level. So the reason I wanted to establish that is because it helps to have a little bit of background on the two men that will be telling this story that will illustrate how sometimes policing can really feel unfair to people who are decent folks, you know, or maybe they're not decent folks, but they're black folks, you know, and they don't get there the
same consideration as other people do. And it's textbook discrimination, it's textbook prejudices, textbook racial profiling.
And when policing citizens, their decency is not something that should be called into, you know, judgment on the spot by someone who clearly has no idea whether you're a decent person or not. So it's you know, the subjects of this conversation are decent folks, but in that context it absolutely should not matter. Absolutely, and the outcomes that are that are now you know, on your social media
timeline it seems once a week. Those things should not be judgment rendered on somebody you considered to be not decent that those things should have nothing to do with those outcomes.
So obviously we have a friendship. We've worked together in several professional capacities over the years. I want you to start this story off by painting the background picture of where Now this is not as I mentioned, we both are primarily based in Phoenix, Arizona, but you know this story does not take place in Phoenix, Arizona. This does not speak to anybody based on their race. This does
not speak to anything based on region. It speaks on policing, and we're able to give you a verifiable example of exactly what happens in our typical interactions with the police. So sorry, paint that picture for us. What's the background?
It's a It's an interesting picture to attempt to paint because almost because it doesn't even require the specific setting that we were in, Like the setting that we were in gives it some very very textured nuance if we were making a picture, if we were making a movie, rather the setting that we were in would be perfect to illustrate this.
But that's what that for an audience. That's exactly why I think.
But to be clear, because I don't even I don't want it to feel so specific to where we were. I don't want to feel like it only happens there, or or of course it happened you were there.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
But so this was July, now, you know, and I don't know that that matters, but it's been a few months, so we got to experience it be really really boiled over with emotion, come down from that emotion, and experience a whole lot of different stuff personally and kind of via watching other people's stories play out in some really
tragic ways via social media. And it's kind of hard to be socially or emotionally tapped into all of these people and all of these stories because you feel it all over again, and it's a lot to carry and to take so personally every time, like it makes you want to check out because I can't keep mourning every week another person having a similar experience with a far more tragic outcome rather but Ramses and I flew to
Florida just to drive back home. And I say that in that way to make you, as the listeners, say, why on earth would they do that? For a very very specific reason. Ramses owns a car dealership. He and a friend of ours bought a car for me the week before this happened, and for reasons that you know, don't even really matter much for what we're talking about.
I was not able to ever take ownership of the car, but I had already developed a very very specific liking to this very very specific car, and it was a gift. So we flew to go pick up this car because it was the only other one I could find in the country, and then drive it back to Phoenix. However, flying to Florida to drive a car back to Arizona requires that you make a trek across the good old
Boy the southern United States exactly. And if you've been paying attention at all via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, CNNMSNBC, or Fox News, you know that the temperature in our country right now is very very high, and the division is circa nineteen thirty, nineteen forty, nineteen fifty, nineteen sixty.
Now, let me explain this to anyone that's listening to this right now. It feels that way right now, especially to other folks who do not live this is not their lived experience, but it feels that way to us, and by us, I mean black males. I would assume that black females feel the same way. But I'm learning not to speak, you know, beyond my own realm of expertise and my own experience, and so but I can
say that my experience is a black experience. It always feels like the nineteen thirties or the nineteen sixties, or very close to it all the time when it comes to the police. There are other things that happen in society that you know, we all can get behind. We can see growth, we can see you know. Obviously, when Obama was elected president, that was a huge deal for everyone. We felt so proud and we felt like, Okay, the world is becoming a kinder place, you know, and more
progressive exactly exactly. But when the police get behind you, it's a very scary thing. It's almost as though, if the police get behind you, you're guilty until you can figure out a way to prove yourself innocent. And I want you to remember that I said that, because you'll see that way of thinking manifested in my behavior as this story continues. So, okay, so we get the car in Florida. What happens next, if I.
May, before moving on, guilty until you can survive this interaction, very good. It's not even about having been proved innocent. You're not in a position in most cases to prove your innocence, so you're almost behaving as if you did something and you don't want to be harmed during this inter If I can just survive this interaction, I'll be okay.
And that i'm then we can and then we can figure out whether or not I actually did something. Sure exactly so I didn't even I didn't want you to move on from that, because when you said it, I was like, man, you start to inventory. Okay, I didn't run the light, I wasn't speeding, I used my blinker, my tags aren't expired.
I didn't skip school, I did my homework. I want that church, I pay my taxes.
Why am I going to get beat up or die?
What is about to happen right now? When you should be like, Okay, I know I didn't do anything, so I'm fine.
That that's amazing that if somebody can have the police behind them and just have a quick thought like that.
To me, it's like you have colleagues that can I have one of the closest people to me in this world, not named Ramses. That's his experience. That should be everyone's experience, but that's his experience. I didn't do anything, so this is going to be okay. At worst, I was driving too fast. I'll get a ticket, I'll go home, I'll pay it. What's the problem. No, that is not.
That never happened our experience. Can you step out of the vehicles anyway? Let me let me not because I could tell these stories all day. I just I want to tell this one story. This is very specific.
It's important because when we have this kind We've had this conversation before with some personal friends who were terrified, but we never said this part. So I'm gonna say it now. Okay, we get the car in Florida. We have to drive through Georgia. Now, except my mother, my grandmother, and her parents are from Georgia. So I'm hype because I'm about to show one of my best friends where my family started in this country, like my mom's very
small hometown in Georgia, making Georgia Bibb County. I'm about to take one of my best friends there and he can see the restaurant that my grandmother and her sisters started in nineteen fifty nine that's still there. Like I'm hype, I'm proud, I can't wait. But I also remember I'm in Georgia. Most people think Atlanta, Atlanta Atlanta. Georgia is a completely different place from Atlanta, to be very very very clear.
And I want to say this too. I love I always say I love Georgia because it's a beautiful place. Alabama's beautiful, all those places are beautiful. Louisiana or Mississippi was gorgeous, you know what. We got to see a bit. And I know that we do have listeners in all those states, you know, And so I do want to say, at least for the folks in Georgia, I absolutely love that place. Atlanta's is sort of where I fell in love,
but Georgia, I found beauty in all of it. But that place has some Confederate flags, like more than Alabama. But like I was like, oh wee, these people were just.
Serious, very very big Confederate flag.
About that action.
But there was a sense of nostalgia and joy and happiness about the fact that I was about to that we were about to drive through Georgia because I was very very excited to actually be able to take someone to where I grew up. I don't get to There's not a lot I don't. I don't have ten friends that I've been able to take to make it because it's just not a destination like that. It's a you know, an hour and a half roughly from Atlanta to Macon and an hour and a half out of the way.
If you went to Atlanta for something, you're not trying to drive to make it on one of those days. So very, very excited about the experience of being able to take Ramses to make and take him to see where my family's from, to see our restaurant, and then to Atlanta, where a lot of my family still lives now. Uh And Atlanta is an experience if you if you're of our elk and you haven't been there, should definitely go.
You should definitely go. Well, we got a lot of road ahead of us, you know, we stopped, get something to eat, we spend some time with family, and then we're preparing now because Atlanta was our kind of sight seeing city. The rest of these states were just about to drive through them, but Georgia very specifically, like I said, that's why I got the state of Georgia tattooed on my arm. I wanted to spend some time there, visit with family and kind of show my brother where I was from.
Listen, let me say this one last thing about Georgia. I grew up in California, lived my life on the West Coast. Matter of fact, you know what, if you're just tuning in Pacific Cipher, I'm you host ramses Jah.
My name is Quentin, but they called me q Ward.
And we're telling a story about a police incident that happened to both of us that illustrates how police treat black folks unfairly. We're stereotyped, we are. There's certainly prejudice built into the practices of police departments, and and I think it gives a little bit more credibility to this call to defund the police. But before we get there, one last thing I want to say about Georgia. Since I have this platform, I'm able to do it. Growing up on the West Coast, I saw lots of black
folks that were that did well for themselves. But it wasn't until I got to Georgia where I saw a neighborhood where every house was a mansion, every driveway had a Ferrari.
Or a Mercedes whatever, Porsche or Maserati, and.
One percent of the people, one percent of the people were black. It was amazing powerful. So all right, so we get to the end of Georgia. Next up is Alabama, and Alabama is where we saw a lot of very openly racist advertisements. I saw a lot of Confederate flags in Georgia, but a lot of openly racist advertisements, advertisements for radio stations that were very demeaning and insulting to anything that was not white.
You know, we heard the most overtly racist radio show we've ever.
Heard, and that was when we got into Mississippi.
And I immediately reached to turn the channel and Rams It's just like, wait, we need to understand, we need to understand where we are.
And I want to say this, I wanted to plug in. If you listen to this show, you recognize that I have this philosophy that compels me to try to find brotherhood, tries to find friendship, tries to find common ground, tries to find some way of bridging the gap, and sometimes you have to go to that side. Listen to what they're saying so that you know how to challenge. If I just write these people off by saying that they're wrong and give up on them, then I haven't created
an ally, i haven't created a cheerleader. I've just left myself a potential enemy that I'll have tount encounter at some point in the future who may be even more powerful. And so for me personally, my choice to lead with love also compels me to educate myself about, you know, what other folks are doing. So I'm not listening to these racist radio stations in these weird backwater parts of the country just for you know, the fun of it.
I'm really trying to understand how could you possibly make a case for you know, whatever it is that you're doing. You know, you know, there's lots of systems and institutions in place, and obviously the political climate of the country, a lot of these talk shows are talking about black and white issues. So let me jump in right here, please please. So we're driving through and we know where we are, and of course, as Q stated, as important as that is, the experience that we're about to have
is very much a universal one in this country. But it was important for us to paint this picture just so you understand where we are in terms of our energy, where we are in terms of how we feel, because we're happy, but we're nervous is not the right word, but alert aware, you know. And you know there's this sort of philosophy in black communities where if you keep your head down, stay out of trouble, then people won't bother you.
The lies we tell ourselves.
Right, and so we sort of naturally had this, you know what, let's keep our head down, let's keep it pushing. I wanted to take a picture when we first got to Mississippi, and Q was not about that action.
I got the picture, we got the picture, but he was ready to leave me, like you want us to do? What?
Yeah? Man?
So after midnight in Mississippi.
Hey man, I needed that. I was never going to go back. So let's get to it.
Q is driving the car where we listened to two rams were.
Listening to the Outcast loud, having having a big old.
Time, all of them, all the casts. Yeah, but them lax.
If you know anything about outcasts, that'll make sense to you. But so we're driving, I'm on my phone playing a game, and we're just having, you know, conversation as you do on a road trip like that, we're enjoying ourselves. And that's that cars on cruise control, I'm sure, And yeah, we're just grooving along. And so we do most of
our driving in Arizona. You'll anyone who's done any driving is aware that on a lot of roads in this country there is a groove sort of punctured into the asphalt, and it's it's designed to wake you up if you veer off the road. Right in Arizona, that groove lies two feet beyond the actual painted line. And so if for some it let's say you switch a lane or you cross over anything like that, you cut cut off the freeway a little too early, you're just gonna cut
over a little bit of paint spine. You know, no one makes a big deal out of that out here. I certainly haven't encountered that as an issue. In Mississippi, that groove is etched into the actual paint line, and we have no way of knowing this, And.
So the paint runs through the middle of it, so part of it is actually in the lane of traffic.
Right, So it's very easy to trigger that loud noise. So I need to make sure that this picture is painted accurately. It's midnight, one in the morning in Mississippi, on a back road on our way to Louisiana. The trees are among the tallest I've seen in my life. There is no moon shining, there are no stars shining. It is pitch black.
Correction, we're on the highway still, but for the level of dark, it may as well be in a back road. There are no lights. Yeah, it felt like that pitch black.
Yeah, and we noticed that before anything started happening. And then as Q's driving, I hear a little bit of a noise. I well, just that quick. It wasn't half a second, I.
Say out loud at that moment. That was weird because I know I didn't swerve off the road.
And I confirm that because I'm like, well, where did that come from? Yeah? I look, the etching is in the paint, it's not beyond it. So that was that. We keep driving. But for those of you that know, if you're outside of a car and you hear that noise, it's very loud outside the car. In the car, it's enough to wake you up. So outside of the car, it's extremely loud. You know, cars are insulated from those those types of noises, So you know we're going on
mind in our business. After another minute or so, the.
Blues into another big Boy verse.
The U we see the police lights turn on like a Christmas tree behind us. So I'm gonna take you through this. There is a gripping, paralytics sort of fear that will take over your body when that happens.
Especially if it's one or two o'clock in the morning and it's pitch black in Mississippi.
Yes, yes, absolutely, when you're alone and it's just you and the police we see. The thing is, I know that the police can say and do whatever they want. They don't have to be right in order to be believed, you know. They they they a lot of times, as we've seen, are are given to fear and and so you don't have to do anything wrong in order to lose your life, to get beat up and them justify it, to be put in jail and them justify it. They can trump up the charges and have you locked away
for nothing. Just okay. I happen to spend a half a second running over a line that I didn't know was there, you know, and then all of a sudden and it happens all the time. And if you don't know that Google is free but.
You never experienced it.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta you got a solid run with respect to the police out here. So good for you. But so yeah, we we naturally have to pull over. Both of us are terrified, but also we know that we haven't done anything. Or when in the world do they pull themself before the cruise control is on? And you know, we both know how to play the game. My first experience with the police was the LAPD and this was before the Rodney King riots and all that sort of stuff. The police out there were always known
to be the bad guys. It's such a funny thing that a lot of folks grow up and they think that the police are the good guys. And they very well may be. I'm not trying to say, but for me, the way that I grew up is you definitely want to steer clear of the police if they see you, keep your head down, keep it pushing, don't You don't want no interaction with them people because they don't like you. They will hurt you, harm you. All these and I
saw those things happen. I saw the police smash a man's head into a car sitting on the ground and dent the door in. That happened when I was probably like five years old. He was sitting there and they did that. So I had everything. There was no confirmation bias here. There's an actual lived experience. So police get behind us. License and registration. Q takes out what paper work he could put together.
Yeah, so bought this car thirty hours ago. I have to go through this folder that the dealership gave me with every document concerning this vehicle from ever to try to find the proper paperwork to give to the officer. So I ask for his permission to sift through this, you know, Manila envelope of documents, trying to find the right paperwork. I don't want them to think there's anything fishy going on. I just actually have to find this because I've never had to present this document before.
As you were, so normally that's enough. Given the paperwork, everything's fine. You know, there's a little bit of a swerve, goes back to the car, comes back and gives back the paperwork and asks can you step out of the vehicle now? Let me say something.
Before Normally normally say before you say before you say before you say, before you say, do you know why we pulled you over? Was the question that the guy asked when he first walked up to the car. And because I know I was not speeding, I say that to him. No, sir, I don't know because I wasn't speeding. The car was on cruise control. This is when he says back to us that he heard the noise from the grooves outside of the lane. So the sequence is
important here. Important to bring that up because the why matters. And I also bring this up because when having this conversation with just Ramses and I, Ramses brought this up to me, and in the moment I never thought about it. Why when hearing that noise would an officer pull you over? Maybe because it was the middle of the night, they thought you may have had something to drink our sobriety was never mentioned, nor was it tested.
It was it never even came into question. And that's the point I was trying to make some You said that, yes, so I'm glad. I'm glad you said it that way. I was gonna I was gonna get that. But at least the officers talking to to Q on this side of the car could very well ascertain from his speech, from his mannerism's eye contact, et cetera, that this person was not a person who was inebriated in the least.
Any reasonable thinking person could tell that. Certainly, any police officer who was trained to identify a person who is inebriated versus a person who is sober would be able to identify that at the at that point when you've identified yourself, there's no outstanding warrants, when you've given all the information on the car, when the car is clearly not stolen, and you say I'm not from here. I didn't realize that I'm on my way out of town.
I'm you know, ten minutes from the border. There's nothing else to talk about here. So the fact that I'm gonna jump ahead, but we're gonna go back, the fact that they brought dogs out was not only was it an insulting and scary and unnecessary, it was extremely unfair. And it speaks to this idea that black folks gotta be up to something, and I.
Want to say this now, have to be up to something.
I want to say this now and I'll say it again later. But if we were sixty year old white couple forty year old. Yeah, doesn't just having a cruise. Same things happen and same exact story. I highly doubt that they would have asked anybody to step out of the car. But if they did, highly doubt they would have brought the dogs. But I'll get to the dogs in a second. Okay, you're just tuning in the civic cipher. I'm ramses Josh.
They called me q Ward and that just so happens to be my actual name.
Indeed, and we are telling a story about getting pulled over. That speaks to why this call to defund the police exists. Now, I do want to say this, for a police officer sitting on the side of the road hidden, that does not prevent crime. Now, my charge with the police, and I think a lot of folks charged with policing and the police departments across this country, is that they prevent crime or otherwise cause crime to be less significant or whatever.
And I don't believe that hiding in the shadows, waiting for somebody to make a little bit of noise, pulling them out of the car, keeping them on the side of the road, scared in the middle of the night. You know where they bring dogs out is preventing any crime. It certainly wasn't true in our case. So the fact that the police department had extra money to pay people to sit hidden on the side of the road almost to entrap some passers by for no reason. There was
no harm committed. There was no harm by us, making that half of the less than half of the second worth of noise in the middle of nowhere, you know. But so far in the story, they've come and I know that they've ascertained whether or not we were inebriated. They verified that the vehicle checks out. That should be the end of the story. But I would charge anybody listening to this that because we were black, that is the reason why the situation went further. And so they
asked you to step out of the car. Immediately, I pulled my phone out because now I need to record what's happening, because this is the point where situations turn from very scary to near death. And this isn't just something that I've seen on the phone, as I stated, I've seen this happen in real life, you know, the
only time I've ever seen someone lose their life. The police were involved, and I'm from Compton as in Compton, California, and I'm born in eighty two, so I saw a lot of stuff, but only time I ever saw a life snuffed out was by the police in my thirty eight years. So Qwo steps out of the car I'm filming, and I can't really film out the back window because those lights in the police car behind you, those lights
are so bright. But I can film sort of the shadows just in case something happens, you know, I'll know, you know, whatever's going on. But then I realize, you know what, if something happens to Q, it's probably gonna happen to me too. So I switch over to Facebook Live because if something happens to me, I can't upload a six minute long video. I'm not gonna have time while i'm whatever, enduring whatever if they take my phone from me and claim it as evidence and I can't
call anyone or whatever. There's a little tricks that police do, but so so far in the story, we have extra police sitting there, not preventing crime, not even being visible to actually prevent crime. They're waiting to entrap someone who is either speeding or makes a little noise on the road to check them for sobriety, and neither of those things are true. Shouldn't have been escalated. But here we are queues out the car. I'm terrified, and the officer
later comes back to get me. But before I tell what happens to me, I want you to say what the officer talk to you about.
We roll the windows down. When the officer approaches the car, initially ramses, just let you guys know that we can't see anything. The brightest spotlights that Mississippi taxpayers dollars can buy are attached to this massive SUV that's behind ours.
But we can hear, and that's important because we're in Mississippi, and I want you to at least try to imagine what the state trooper in Mississippi sounds like at three o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the morning, whatever it was in the pitch black in Mississippi.
Not that accent.
Okay. So our attorney heard this story and immediately you do not have to step out of the car, and she's breaking down all of our rights and all of the proper steps and everything that should have happened.
We love you, Amy.
The problem is in that setting, none of that matters if I get killed. It doesn't matter that this officer was wrong, because he'll say he was right, and so will his partner. You guys will put me on a T shirt. I will have a hashtag, and a lot of people that care about me will be very angry. The officers will be given paid leave and at worst
reassigned to another agency. So I can't try to be a dignified man and stand on principle and tell him that no, I'm not getting out of the car because he has no right, Because I don't want to become this guy's enemy at all. I don't want to make him think we're on a different team. I don't want him to think that I'm angry or that I present any threat of danger to him. The problem is, no matter how nice and polite and respectful and compliant I am, when I open this door and get out of this car,
things can get very very bad for me instantly. And aside from putting the car and drive and driving it really fast until I'm somewhere that I think is safe, which in this instance would not exist, there's nothing I can do but what he says and hope for the best that nothing happens. So I want you to understand when we say we're scared, it's not like scary movie scared.
It's okay, my heart's beaten too fast. It scared. I want to say this, man, because there's sometimes So I got bit by a dog when I was little. I grew up with a phobia of dogs. Whenever I would encounter a loose dog, I would feel my heart beating in my throat. I couldn't come up with words, I couldn't breathe right, and that sort of thing. It's the same sort of panic response that I have when the police are with me, because my brain turns it into
a life and death experience, almost like a phobia. Like people would tell me all the time, don't be scared of the dog. Dog doesn't bite. No, No, I can't. It's not that easy for me because I've experienced trauma.
Right, and dogs and dogs bite. Yeah, exactly, your dog too, miss Yeah, your dog bites too.
So it's the same thing. You can't. It's not like you can turn that off. You know, you're just there, and when police expect you to act reasonable and you have some sort of panic taking place, you know you can't breathe. Are they're hurting you or anything like that, and you react the way that your body is reacting, and they consider that a threat, or they say that you're assaulting whatever it is that they want to do
to twist the story. You see how they can twist the optics and change the story and use that against you. Now Q's out of the car. He's back talking to the two police officers, because there's a second one back there. Now the officer comes to my window. Now, now I've done nothing. I've said nothing, even if Q was drinking dirty whatever and has nothing to do with me. I was a passenger in the car. There's nothing going on here, right, he asked from my ID, took it, walk back to
the car. I'm still filming. Comes back to the car and asks me to get out of the car. Now, I want to say this again. If I was the sixty two year old spouse of a white corporate executive driving the same vehicle, given the same set of circumstances, what I've been pulled out of the car, I think that everyone would agree. The answer to that is absolutely not. There's no reason for me to be out of the car.
But because I look like me, and because Q looks like Q, because we're driving a Porsche in the middle of it doesn't matter where we are. You know, the police are trying to investigate. They're looking for something even though it's not there. And the thing about that, I would challenge anybody if you look through someone's phone anything, like, if you're looking for something, you're gonna find it even
if it's not there. Fortunately for us, you know, obviously the story has a happy ending and there's nothing to find a brand new car, you know whatever. But you know, there's this conversation that exists how black folks are overly policed. Right in other words, if you put ninety percent of the police officers in black neighborhoods and ten percent of the police officers and white neighborhoods, you know, studies show that black and white folks used marijuana approximately the same rates.
You know what I mean. Obviously, you know, in terms of the actual dollars that have been stolen from people, you know, there's there's only one champion there. You know, there's a person who might rob a liquor store, a rob a bank, get a couple hundred bucks, but the actual crimes you know that that take. But you know, I'm not here to debate that. The thing is, if you put all the police in this neighborhood, it doesn't
matter if the rates are exactly the same. The police are going to find more people, and if those people get longer sentences than what you end up with is this narrative in this country that we have now, which is, well, black people fill up all the jails. Black people are the ones always getting arrested. Black people are the ones on cops. And the truth is there are systems in place doing that. You know, there's a lot of systems. You know, drugs and a lot of communities is really
a form of it. It's like a part of the economy there. You know, it's not necessarily you know, just a health issue. It's a part of the economy. And that was done deliberately by the government. Again, Google is free. I'm not making this up. This isn't something that I think would sound cool on this radio show. But my phone dies right as I'm supposed to step out of
the car. So everybody that's watching on Facebook Live that sees the lights flashing behind us, that that cares and loves me, and Q and knows what we're going through. Everyone that sees that is aware. You know, while I can. I want to shout out Sindbad. I want to shout out Hannah and Alyssa. I want to shout out Tessa. I want to shout out Carly. I want to shout out everybody that was there that made phone calls, that
did everything like that. But my phone dies. I have to get out of the car now and walk back to the car, to the police car. He says, stand right here and look in this direction. I did not move. I didn't speak unless spoken to. I did not move. Now. I want to say this to any of our white allies listening to the show. You might feel like, okay, well I'm standing out of the car. Might put my hands on my hips, might check my phone, might do
you know whatever, have a friendly back and forth. That fear your heart beating in your throat doesn't allow you to do that. You'd sit there, you know, like it's a different experience, like the way I see some white folks interact with the police. It's like seeing a like
superpowers or something, and it's just not true with me. Now, there are some people that reach their breaking point Jacob Blake, you know, was he was apparently doing some stuff, trying to break up a fight with two other folks or whatever the story is, doesn't matter. He's walking away from the police. You know, there is a breaking point for any creature endowed with consciousness where it's like, I'm just not going to be bullied. But in this instance, I'm
doing like cute, I'm playing along. So now I'm outside of the CARQ was outside of the car. We're up against this SUV and this man who's already searched the vehicle with his flashlight already asked if he could search the vehicle, and we gave him permission.
And of course I gave him permission, right because once again I can't flex my constitutional rights. Of course, he's supposed to have legitimate probable cause. Of course he should be required to present some type of warrant. But what am I gonna do on the side of the highway in the middle of the night in Mississippi. Yeah, I guess you can search the car if that means that I can get back in that car and drive away after you don't find anything.
Sir, exactly. And I want to say this that also could have should have been enough, because he did search that car real quick. If you're just tuning in the civic scipher, I'm your host, Rams' joh. They called me q Ward and we're telling a story about when we got pulled over in Mississippi that I believe speaks to a lot of experiences that black folks endure when interacting with police. Were speaking on black men, because that might be a little different night. That's one thing that I
can speak on. This happened to me obviously several times about my life. This just happens to be the most recent experience, and it happened to take place in Mississippi. Now, you have to bear in mind that we initially got pulled over for less than a half of a second of the road noise, that is the etching into the side of the asphalt that's meant to wake up the driver.
And again in Mississippi, that etching is on the paint, whereas in Arizona, where we're from and do most of our driving, it's about one two feet outside of that line. That's the reason we got pulled over. At best, a police officer would pull us over and say to us license and registration and ascertain as to whether or not the driver was inebriated. If the driver was clearly inebriated, or they wanted to, you know, you issue a test or something like that, then this would have been just
find normal routine thing. But it was not.
That.
We're both standing outside of the car after giving them permission to search the vehicle, and then they bring a dog to smell the car. Now, if they brought the dog and if there were drugs in the car or something like that, even that would be enough, right, But they come back. It's a brand new car. We just got it. They come back and say the dog has indicated the presence of drugs, so now he has to
get the gloves on. We're standing on the side of the road, terrified, in a state where we don't know anybody. It's dark, like the darkest has ever been. Those trees are so big that the light doesn't make its way to the ground. It's two in the morning.
There's no street lights.
It's it's us and the police and that's it. And they have a dog out there. So now there's all these police lights, all these you know, and they have a dogs in the car. This guy puts on these blue gloves and goes through this Porsche to try to find the drugs that were Remember a little bit of road noise, some.
People can see us, rams and I'm smiling. I'm furious, right, it's like smile to keep from screaming and cursing and hyperventilating, right, like laugh to not cry kind of thing. It's not a joke. It's not funny, you know. Thank God we're
telling this story. So it worked out right. But there's two points that we haven't touched on that matter, and I want rams Us to speak to this point because of his experience in this situation, being very very specific to the differences between two things, officer of the law and human being. When I step out of this car in the middle of the night in Mississippi after hearing that action, there is a chance that I am about to die. I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not being irrational.
I'm not exaggerating the fact that I'm being asked out of the car having done nothing means that this officer's looking for a reason. I admittedly exhale when I got out of the car. Because both the state trooper and the sheriff, we're.
Black, put a pin in that because we'll come back to it.
And for a moment, I no longer felt like I was going to die.
Now, when I get out of the car is when I'm able to determine the same thing that it was terrified. But when I got back to the police car, I recognized that the sheriff, the person who was already at the suv, the police suv, was a human being who happened to be a police officer. I want you to remember that he was a man. He was a human just like me, just like you, and he happened to be a police officer. The man who initially asked me to get out of the car initially asked you to
get out of the car. The state trooper was a police officer first and a human being second. In other words, the institution that employed him has taken precedence over his reason his ability to reason and make sense of the situation.
In other words, he didn't prioritize. Okay, let me investigate why this singular infraction, if you will, took place, and this car made a little bit of noise on the side of the road while driving, and determine, oh, there's no problem there these fine people can go on about their business. The police officer, the institution that employs him, that has taken it's it's sort of like the Stanford experiments.
You understand, there's there's this this way that your job, especially if it comes with an iota of tenuous power, will compel you to treat people like they're beneath you and to subjugate them, treat them unfairly, bully them, et cetera. And he very much had that energy black as he was. So I'm not speaking to white officers, and you haven't heard me say that in this this episode. What I'm
speaking to is policing. And when people say there are some good cops, I will I will offer that that narrative, this experience for fodder, because there was a huge being there who happened to be a police officer. But the other gentleman who was the state trooper, was a police officer first and very much guided by the principles that we fight so hard to dismantle, those principles that are built into that system that treat black folks unfairly. That
person is the reason I stood absolutely still. That's the person that got the dog, that's the person that put those gloves on and went through that car. That's the person that told us that the dog indicated that there were drugs in the car. That dog can smell one
part per million or whatever. And obviously, and you know, let me, let let me let me rather, you want to get something in the human knows needs to smell one million trillion fractions the fifth of a particle of something in order for it to register with our senses.
This dog only needs to smell one trillion.
Really, that's the best you could do.
You can't. So there's something there, you know what he told them. I didn't find anything. The dog didn't find anything, but he smells something. What he tell us, and it's probably listen to this, y'all. You were parked somewhere and someone brushed up against the car, possibly with marijuana.
In their pock pocket. That's what he told us that the dog smelled. Now, mind you, we'm driving for twelve hours, sixty five seventy miles an hour, and the dog smelled that one particle per trillion or whatever. And he said that, like, obviously that's nonsense, but he said that to justify.
And the last time we parked was three States ago.
I'm trying to tell you brushed up against more actual tree than that, just trying to you know, check out where our surroundings. Anyway, this story speaks to the experience of black folks. You know. Now, let's say, just to piggyback off my example earlier, it's it's well documented, it's been well researched. You can look it up yourself if you don't believe me. But marijuana, for instance, is used roughly the same by black folks and white folks as
a percentage. You know, black folks and white folks get pulled over the same amount as a percentage, then you should see the same percentage of folks being convicted of, you know, those sorts of crimes. But because by and large, uh maybe not pulled over. But let's say searched, pulled out of their car or whatever. If you only do that to black folks, and you don't do that to
white folks. Again, if we're you know, sixty five year olds on a business trip or going golfing or something like that, they're not pulling us out of the car. Sixty five year old white corporate privileged corporate executives, you know, and our decadent capitalists, pig sort of mobile in our portie. They're not bothering us. You know, these systems were built
by those people to favor them. They're meant to subjugate us, to treat us very unfairly, and to criminalize us at every single turn, and even execute us if they feel inclined to do so, and do that without any sort of repercussions, or to.
Put plainly, if they feel like it, yeah, simple, I don't even want to say it with the level of intelligence that you did. If they feel so inclined, No, if they just felt like it that day. Yeah, they were a little scared, you know, gon'y're not They're not scared at all. I don't want to give them that. They're not afraid.
There's nothing to be afraid of the tuche.
We're clearly standing outside of the car.
We don't they both have Yeah, y'all have guns.
We got guns and adult so you're not scared.
So listen. I really wanted to do this show. I really wanted to explain to you know, not too long on the show, we had Janelle Wood and a lot of people think of police officers as individuals, and I understand why, because police officers are people, but the institution that they work for is a racist. It's it's roots turn racism. Patrol. The word patrol comes from slave patrols, and for those who don't know that, again, google is.
And the way that police and the criminal justice system has treated black folks is very much built into the systems that we're trying to dismantle. So a police officer, an individual can be my brother. Sure, I believe that all men are leaders and all women are my sisters, you know, in the figurative sport sense of the word. But the systems that they represent can are absolutely the enemy.
In this story and in most all black folks stories that sound like this, it's just it just illustrates how there's two different worlds when it comes to policing, just like there's two different worlds when it comes to politics. There's two different worlds when it comes to economics and jobs and hiring practices and on and on and on and on. These you know, these are the same stories that I'll say it now my ancestors were telling, and
it's no different. The difference now is that we can we have a little bit more on the way of a voice because of the various platforms that we're able to use, and obviously with civic cipher, we're trying to share that so that we can empower those allies of our causes, of black and brown causes, because I understand that our brown brothers and sisters also have to deal with largely the same issues of you know, discrimination and subjugation, and you know, we feel like with a little bit
more of a voice, maybe we can perhaps move the needle with a call like defund the police, which maybe is not the most eloquent way of laying out your argument, but certainly does speak directly to.
We didn't do a focus group for that one, probably.
But it does again speak directly to, you know, a way of reallocating resources to where you're not just paying people to sit on the side of the road to pull over people and make a little bit of noise and terrorize them for an hour and a half to bring a dog out and then try to explain or explain it away when you wouldn't have done that if
those were some white folks that you pulled over. It just seems like a waste of resources, and those resources could have been invested into the community that actually in a way that would have actually prevented crime. Now again, I could tell so many stories like these. The only time in my life a gun was ever pointed at me was by a police officer. I've never been arrested. Only time I've been in handcuffs. Police have ripped the flesh off of my arms by handling me with handcuffs.
I've never been arrested. I've never done anything wrong to warrant that. A lot of times they're bullies, a lot of times they're wrong, and so forth. But we'll save that for another episode.
And in most cases, as long as you allow them to rob you of your dignity and humiliate you, you'll be fine. Yeah, it's what we're led to believe because even then, yes, sir, no, sir, I'm sorry, sir. They have proven and we've seen the live video evidence twenty times since George Floyd. Even when if you just comply, if you just allow them to violate your rights, then you should be okay.
But again, we'll talk about that more on another episode, and I very much look forward to it. If you will please come back hang out with me. I very much enjoyed it. Let's do it. But that's going to do it for us today. Once again, I'm ramses Jah.
They called me q Ward and it just so happens to be my name.
If you have any questions, any topics you want us to talk about, if you want to donate to the show, the show is supported by listeners. If you're liking what you're hearing, if you're liking what you're doing, you can donate through the website civiccipher dot com. Again, that's civiccipher dot com. And you can check us out on all social media at Civic Cipher and until next week at the same time on the same channel, Peace Peace