Radiolab - Shots Fired: Part 1

Episode Date: March 17, 2017

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up with a six foot tall stack of reports, pictures, and press clippings cataloging the death or injury of 828 people by Florida police.  Jad and Robert talk to Ben about what he found, crunch some numbers, and then our reporter Matt Kielty takes a couple files off Ben's desk and brings us the stories inside them - from a network of grief to a Daytona police chief. And next week, we bring you another, very different story of a police encounter gone wrong. Produced and reported by Matt Kielty For the full presentation of Ben Montgomery's reporting please visit the Tampa Bay Times' 'Why Cops Shoot?" We can't recommend it highly enough.  Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that in reporter Ben Montgomery's six years of Florida data there were, on average, 130 people shot and killed each year. Police officers did indeed shoot 130 people per year, on average, but only half of those shootings were fatal. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.   

Before we start, this podcast contains some tape that's described some pretty graphic violence. We want to let you know that before we get going. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-S. See? See? Yep. Hey, I'm Chad Aboumrod. I'm Robert Krollwich. This is Radio Lab, and today...

We're going to start this show with a fellow named Ben Montgomery, a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. He's a guy we've had on the show before. Ben, say something. Hi. This is Ben. Okay. Good. All right. We just want to know from you, like, what are you guys doing?

How are you doing it? What are you thinking? I'll start at the beginning. Yeah, start at the beginning. Tell us what you're doing. So after the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson. There was growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African-American teenager was shot and killed. When that became a national story, there was a lot of belly aching in the press.

How many people do we see killed in the United States? About by the police each year. How no one keeps accurate statistics. There's currently no national statistics on police shootings, law enforcement officer-involved shootings. And it struck me at the time that, like, what we were. react to is all anecdotal. You know, once in a while, one of these things will catch fire. Tamer Rice. Jason Harrison. Sam DeBose and will become sort of a national story. And I personally was having trouble, like, processing that. Like, number one, is there, uh, is it trending one way or the other? Are police shooting more black people than white people? Just very simply. Yeah. The problem is, we don't know. We have no idea because nobody tracks these. FBI doesn't. State agencies don't for the most part.

Really? So that data doesn't exist somewhere within the police far in itself? In the police department, it does on the local level. However, it doesn't exist in any accurate way by a broader agency. And I could tell you how many purse snatchings there were in Florida in 2011 using the FBI numbers or the numbers submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But I can't tell you how many times police shot somebody. Now, there have been a couple of organizations that have tried to keep track nationally. But everything that's done so far is incomplete. You know, because most of those, you know, like the Guardian has an online database, most of them rely on media reports.

So they're only really keeping track of the ones that sort of hit the public consciousness. That's right. So Ben and his editor's thought, Let's do something that's more complete. Let's do something that's unprecedented. So first thought he had. Florida. It's the third biggest state.

Demographics are pretty similar to the rest of the country. And Florida has wonderful public records laws. Legally, it's easier to get information in Florida than in a lot of other places. So, Ben sat down and started emailing every single police precinct in the entire state of Florida. I think I sent 388 emails asking for five years worth of paper. Any paper generated when an officer fired a firearm and someone was injured or killed as a result of that shooting. Now, this involves a year of work. Hounding police departments, getting lawyers involved.

This is a massive thing that evolved probably no less than 100 people. But eventually... Thank you, sir. Ben put together the most comprehensive police shooting database that we know of. I want to show Matt these documents. A while back we sent our producer Matt Kilty down to the Tampa Bay Times. Oh, is this them right here? To check it out.

Yeah. How many documents do you think you have sitting on this desk? There's probably 5,000 pages. I have a stack of paper that's... about as tall as me, six-week tall. We got them broken down by county, but you can see, so A, B, Bay County, Boca Raton, Boitin Beach, all the way through the alphabet.

You basically just have all these manila folders with tons of papers in them spread across an entire desk. Right. There's a combination of use of force reports, civil court records, and media clippings. They represent 831 shootings. I hope every shooting in the state of Florida in six years time, 2009 to 2014. So what we did was go through all of this material, scrape each of those reports for every bit of information that we could get that we thought was useful.

Circumstantial stuff, did it involve a SWAT team, didn't involve an armed suspect, was there a chase, all the demographic information for the firing officer or officers, and the people were hit by those bullets. Then we thought, let's learn from these. Let's see how we can compile the data and build a database and hopefully draw some conclusions, some lessons, some solutions. This is all going to go into sort of a giant online database at the Tampa Bay Times website. Hopefully other organizations in other states will start to do the same. Perhaps even one day we'll have a national agency that keeps track of this stuff. In any case, in the meantime, here's some of the things that Ben found. And initially, some of it, you know, kind of surprised us.

Well, the biggest sort of counterintuitive line in this, the numbers are flat. He says if you look at the numbers, what you see year after year after year. The numbers of state steady. About 130 people shot by police every year. Which seems odd because, you know, the past couple of years, these videos that go viral and makes it seem like this is a new and intense problem. The numbers show that that doesn't seem to be the case. We also broke these down into category. He says what you see on the most basic level are that about a third of the police shooting cases involve someone on the other side who is, quote, mentally unstable.

And this is a case. We're not taking a guess at whether the person is mentally unstable. These are cases in which there's some evidence in the report that the person has been diagnosed mentally ill. Maybe off their meds at the time of the shooting. And in that category, Ben says they found a surprising number of cases they call suicide by cop. which is where somebody who's usually mentally ill is apparently trying to get themselves shot intentionally. The person is in view of the police, standing on a porch, standing behind a screen door,

and raises a weapon toward the police, either a weapon or what they want the police to think is a weapon. So it's called, I'm going to kill myself, but I'm going to make you do it to me. Right. And that's considered a suicide attempt because they know they're going to get shot. It's an attempt to invite the shooting.

That's right. This is something that people who cover police, apparently know quite well. You know, they're the news briefs that you see once or twice a week. But it was news to us. I mean, clearly, police are now like the de facto front line in dealing with mental illness in this country. But when it got to Ben's central question, what do the numbers say about race? I think I would start with the fact that...

There, I'm not sure it was so surprising. That 40% of people shot by police are black. And that is out of whack with the Florida demographics. What is the percentage of African Americans in Florida? It's not 40%. It's more like 17. That's right. Which means ultimately that if you're a black person in Florida,

you are four times as likely to be shot by police than if you're white. This doesn't tell us much right now, but the breakdown between fatalities for their same demographics... And as we sat there going through this particular set of numbers, 50.9% were carrying a firearm. 9% had a blade. 70% involved some form of resisting arrest. You know, and we talked with numerous times over two years,

you know, drilling down on those numbers. And as we were doing that, 50.9%. You know, it was weird. I started to feel like, you know, I'm really glad that we have these numbers finally. That in itself is a good thing, but... To move further down, 91 of the 570 or 16%.

The numbers themselves don't really get you very far. 16%. The more you hear, it's just like, yeah, this is... only one ultimately limited way of knowing the problem. Yeah. I mean, I mean, what's, what gets to me as like the, I don't know, it's back to where we were and why we wanted to start this. It's a nasty mess.

I'm still just moved by the single cases, the individual cases. And it's hard to remember that each of these is, you know, I mean, they're all written in this. Employment investigations revealed that ASPD officer Matthew Fowler received a call in this staccato, staccato. peril police speak. Fowler approached Department 255 and was confronted by a white male later identified as Anthony Skiles

armed with a knife at Department 255s. Every one of these, every report is at least one human life. Someone was either you know, more often than not, gravely injured or killed. So we have on this table the investigation of the deaths or

severe injury of 831 people. So what we decided to do in collaboration with the Tampa Bay Times is we grabbed a couple of folders right off Ben Montgomery's giant folder stack to follow wherever those stories might lead. Matt, Kilty, and Ben

traveled around Florida on a few different occasions, talking to the people behind those statistics you heard, and over the next couple of weeks, we're going to bring you two of those stories. This podcast is the first. Matt, I guess we'll just turn it over to you. Yep, okay. So day one? Yeah.

Where was this place again? De Land. De Land, Florida. Windows are down. It's hot. It's probably a little 80s. Little town on the east coast of Florida, and we were there because Ben had found out about this event. Do you even know what the thing is called?

It's the third, they call it celebration. The third anniversary celebration of the police killing of Marlon Brown. Okay. And this event was being held at the West Volusia Shrine Club. Shrine Club. Shrine Club. Like Shriners? Like the Shriners.

I'm just going to walk in and in. I'm going to introduce myself. So I walk in, and, you know, it's just like a small community center. A gnarly floor, fluorescent lights. And the first thing I noticed, to be honest, is there's about 20 people in here, mostly black, who are just milling about talking, but on the walls of this place. The photos of all the shriners run the length of this wall. It's just like portraits of old white men wearing fess hats, who were all the former Shriner presidents.

Just old white dudes. Names like George Seeger, Gunter Lundwig. Oh, so, all right, so then. And as I was taking in the scene, this woman came up to me who was hosting the event. Her name is Crystal Brown. I try to do something like this once a year for Marlin's anniversary. Tall, black woman, long dreads and these very piercing hazel eyes. In your relation to Marlon?

X-wife. It was high school sweetheart since I was 15. And I don't know Marlon's story. I don't... Marlon, it was three years, May 8th. It was 12.30 in the morning. And he was allegedly being stopped for not wearing a seatbelt. And so he didn't stop. He got out of his car and he ran. He was on, I guess, some kind of community control

where he was supposed to be home by 12. He was on probation for a drug charge, been caught with some painkillers. So he ran, and immediately the cop car followed him, and eventually Marlin slipped, fell. The cop car hit him. Going 24 miles by him. Ran into him.

He was pinned under the car for about four or five hours. Four or five hours, he used to? Yep. When Crystal and some neighbors got out to the scene. We sat out there and waited four or five hours until they were able to get the car off of them. Marlon was pronounced dead. And so Crystal and I talked for a little bit and...

You'll mind if I sit and join you for a minute? Is that okay? I sort of just walked around and started introducing myself to people. Where are you guys from in Florida? Tampa, Florida. Oh, you're from Tampa. Okay, so we just made the drive. I don't quite know what I was expecting.

I guess I just thought it was, you know, going to be a local event for this one person. But as I started to meet people, I started to meet people from all over, from Tampa, from Palm Beach. Whereabouts in New York are you? I mean, there were people from all over the country. East Flatbush. Brooklyn, Chicago. Georgia and... Yes, this is my son, Tenerys.

I started seeing these people who were wearing these t-shirts. A pink shirt, and then you have two doves. With a big picture of a young black man's face or a name. They represent angels watching over. There was one woman with a picture of her son's eighth-grade graduation photo on her shirt. It's his cap and gown in red. He was 14 years old when he was killed. He was also buried in this same cap in his gown.

And then another mother... This is going on the fourth year, so I have made. Maybe about six or seven. Who had the name of her 23-year-old son Rodney Mitchell on her shirt? I have one with his graduation picture on. I have like a fluorescent black and yellow one. I have this Jamaican color one. I have a black and white.

I have different shirts. Oh, yeah. And I started seeing shirt after shirt after shirt. And I'd say by the time like 40 people had showed up and there were all these different shirts, I just realized like, oh, this is not just a thing for one person. This is a network. Like almost everyone there had lost either. a cousin or a brother or a husband, even a daughter, to police violence.

And in fact, when I later spoke to one of those women you just heard. I have one with his graduation picture. Her name is Natasha Clemens, her 23-year-old son, Roddy Mitchell. He was shot and killed by police during his traffic stop. We're actually going to get into that story later. But she told me that... I've met about 400 other mothers. They've reached out to me and I...

400? Oh, yes. Really? Yeah, through, like, traveling around through Facebook. I've met 400 other mothers, who's lost. their children. Wow. And so I was just seeing like a fraction of that at this community center. God, the scale is surprising. Right. And the other thing for me was how you see these stories

pop up. 37-year-old Alton Sterling. 40-year-old Terrence Prutcher. At least the ones that get pulled up to like a national level. And you see the family members come out. A man with children who depended upon their daddy on a daily basis. And for like two days, you see them on television. That big, bad dude was my twin. brother, that big bad dude was a father. And then they kind of recede. And they're gone. And I guess what I thought is, you know, probably they have these long, drawn-out legal battles,

and then, you know, they go back to their lives, whatever, like, whatever that means. But instead, it's like, oh, no. What happens is they get, like, folded up into this network. And we pray for those mostly that will. You come into this family. And so at the community center, there was a moment of prayer where the 40 to 50 people sat down at these big, round dining tables. Because once upon a time ago, there was no coalition like we have today. There was no way to know what to do.

There was no blueprint on how to get justice, on how to make change, and how to protect our kids and our loved ones. And we ask these prayers and all prayers in God's name. Amen. And so after the prayer, Crystal hauled from the back of the room for everybody to eat So everyone stood up And then the vibe just totally changed And somebody put on some MJ And a lot of people started to crowd around these two big picnic tables

You ladies' mind just uh I'm not gonna make not one comment until I eat Oh no no no no comment Which is where I met this woman I mean the only comment I was looking for was if you could just Describe for me what we got on the table Because I'm just uh What's on the table? Yeah just what's on the table

I mean this table? This table right here So I think you have tea you have sweet tea You have orange tea juice and then you have your condiments for that but on the breakfast table oh okay what's that what's on you've got your eggs you've got your grips you've got your bacon you've got your sausage you got everything you want to have to get nice good and full on today so i'm excited all right can i get your name sure geneva reedville i'm the mother of sandra blaine in case you don't remember july 10th 2015 hello ma'am well it takes how i'm told the reason for your stop is you didn't

fail you failed to signal your lane change got your driver's license insurance with you Can you give me a few minutes, all right? Sandra Bland is pulled over in a small town in Texas. The cop runs her information, comes back to the car. Do you mind putting out your cigarette, please? I'm in my car, but I have to put out my cigarette. Well, you can step on out now. I don't have to step out of my car.

Step out of the car. No, you don't have the right. Step out of the car. You do not have the right to do that. I do have the right. Step out or I will remove you. I am getting removed for a failure to feel. Step out or I will remove you.

I'm giving you a lawful order. Don't touch me. Get out of the car. Don't touch me. I'm not under rest. You don't have the right to take me off my car. I'm under arrest for what? Get out of the car.

And then you go to sign me? Get out. Wow. Now! Eventually, I feel you to signal. You're doing all of this. Get over there. You're about to break my wrist.

Can you stop? You are about to fucking break my wrist. Now! Stop it! Stop it! Sandra was eventually taken in jail. Four days later, in that jail cell, she was found dead, hanged with a plastic garbage bag.

The death was ruled a suicide, and Sandra's family disputed that ruling. You got everything you want to have to get nice, good, and full on today. So I'm excited. Can I get your name? Sure, Geneva-Reedville. I'm the mother of Sandra Bland. Where are you coming from? I'm Chicago.

I want to let you eat your food. One thing I wanted to ask that, have you come to events like this before? Oh, yes, sir. Quite a few. It was in Missouri last week. We go all around. We try to support as many mothers as we can because it's important. Is that exactly, like, is that what it is? Is it really just like a support? Yes, sir. It's support. It's support because that mother, who has lost their baby, needs to be able to see somebody else who looks like them, who's in the same situation that they are, as opposed to someone walking up to them and saying, I know how you feel, but you really don't. Which made me think about something Ben and I had talked about a lot, which is in getting to meet, these women and talk to these women, you get the sense that their experiences is this really

unique sort of loss. It's sucked to lose somebody to cancer. I've lost a friend to cancer recently, in fact. It's a horrible thing and a very, you know, 10, 10 times, 100 times worse for his, for his wife, children than it is for me. I think it's a different thing when your person is killed by another human being and that human being is returned to the streets with a gun a badge in a, you know, in a position of authority. And this is something you do see in Ben's numbers, even though the numbers themselves, they can't really tell you whether or not a shooting was legally justified. What is clear is that over 800 plus shootings, even the shootings where the person was

unarmed, only one police officer has ever been charged. So it's this weird sort of like double grief. Yeah, it's like past and present at the same time. Like you can't put it away because it's, you. every day is another insult, kind of. Right. Soon as something happens. Again, this is Crystal Brown.

Somebody, one of us, is reaching out. Whoever is, like, closest. Like, say if something happened in, you know, here in Florida, we're going to reach out to each other, and then we're going to invite them in. We say this is like the club that nobody really wants to be a part of.

It's crazy, but it's his family. I said family is more than just blood. This is my family. And I could not have made it this far. I couldn't still. be fighting. I wouldn't be doing anything if it wasn't for them. So after the event ended at the community center, Crystal took a bunch of the moms. They all got in their cars and drove over to this like little gem shop.

Is this like, do you guys do this after every event or is this just like Crystal knows this one's around here? This just Crystal knows this one's around here and has been telling everyone about this. This is Deander Joseph. Her son, Andrew died in 2014. So no, we didn't know anything about this, but I figured this must be part of the different type of learning. This is a part of just coping and grieving. Right, right. We're all just simply trying to find our way.

And so Crystal gathered probably 15 of us into this tiny little store because she wanted to show these women, like, here's how I cope or here's how I deal with my grief. You can either get the large sage. At a certain point, Crystal was talking to these two women, and she just had this big bundle of sage in her hand. Yeah, because if you want to do, like, your house, like a, like some deep shit, like, then I open my windows and I just, you really.

I go through my house. She says the sage calms her down. You know, I'm just... And then they went from the gem shop over to Crystal's house. Mid-sized, one-story house into land. And a lot of the women hung out in the living room were drinking juice, talking to Ben about his story. Crystal and her cousin were in the kitchen.

Cook them chicken. The oven got them good. And one thing that caught me by surprise is how these women, when they come together, they bring with them, you know, their own stories. I see stories of grief, of suffering. And yet, when they're in the same room together, it's like they just have fun. Apparently the night before, they'd all gone out dancing together.

There was some earth-winning fire. And now what we're doing, instead of getting motel rooms. Again, this is Natasha Clemens. We're starting to stay over at each other's houses. We sleep in each other's bed, on each other's couch, you know, air mattresses. It becomes like a huge sleepover. And versus us going to sleep, we're up. talking, you know, getting to know each other, you know, telling stories about these

these children, so it's like therapy for us. Vicki's letting me pass. But there was this moment when I spent the day with these women that really stuck with me. I believe we're at the site of Marlon Brown's death. And it was when Crystal led some of us over to the site where her ex-husband, Marlon, was hit by that squad car. It's like, it's about 12 people here. And about eight of them were women who had lost either.

a husband or a brother or a child. And we were basically just in someone's backyard, just walking through this patchy grass. So when you see the video, that street that we just came down, that's the street. And then he turns, mom turns here.

And he comes in. My car was probably over, like, right there. And then the police car that came behind him was probably right here. And then the officer that hit him came in. And then we came on. We came in. He came right here, and that's why they called the execution in the vegetable garden,

because their garden was here. And vegetables were growing and all that? They had onions then, because when they, you know, when they took him away and released it and took down the tape and stuff, when we came back here, that's all you could smell was onions. And so now, like, when you cut, like, it's not as bad now, but just the association, like, so when I'm cutting onions, you get that smell, like, it just, you get those flat.

Mm-hmm. And you're conscious. It just brings you right back here. Mm-hmm. Yep. And the 12 of us just kind of stood there for a minute. Crystal's eyes were starting to get teary. Some of the other women started to cry.

And then... Y'all want me to take some... Yeah, my phone ain't the best. Somebody would have a better phone to me. A couple women handed me their phones. Man, it's broken. It don't look like it's going to do right, but it will. And it's probably about these eight women who huddled together,

and they just stared at the camera with this sort of straight face. All right, three, two, one. And then let me... Three, two, one. All right. Thank you. I think we got them. Then we all started walking back up to the cars.

Crystal, I just want to thank you for just sharing that with us because I know it has to be pretty hard to even come back to the side. Yeah. I think we haven't been out here. It's been a while. But we'll go to the grave saint. We used to go there once a week. At night, at night, 3 o'clock in the morning.

That's why I remember Deanna used to tell you all the time, how do you live so far away from him? Oh my gosh, that was, that was. Yeah, my son's greatest about 15 minutes tops from where I live. It's hard, but every time I visit home, I have to go there and spend some time. Of course, of course. Yeah, that's, yeah. Of course.

Do not, right? And it ain't no quick. Like, you want to go take a chair. Uh-huh. And sit there. Yeah. And it's crazy because, like, it's a cemetery like a little bit further out. And it's crazy.

You can go up out there, like, a certain time every day. And it's this little old white man with his chair, everything, like, set up. Like, he literally, I'm thinking, does he, like, go and have lunch with her every day? Like, there has to be, I don't know if you, it's the cemetery that's way out, like, going towards papas and all this. it's a little white guy that's always sitting out there. He takes his chair. I can have a whole little setup. I would think.

I never stopped to ask them, but I'm... So that trip to Florida was almost about a year ago. And I felt like I happened to be there at this really interesting moment because just a few months after that trip. Geneva Reed Veal, who was the mother of Sandra Bland, who I met, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention. One year ago, yesterday, I lived the worst nightmare anyone could imagine. She was on stage with Michael Brown's mother, Eric Garner's mother.

I watched as my daughter was lowered into the ground. And it was around this time that a few of these women started to call themselves the mothers of the movement. Some of them showed up at the Women's March in D.C. And it was weird because in this short amount of time, this thing that we had stumbled into, this thing that really kind of felt like at the time a support group, had suddenly become a force. Coming up. Hey, put it down.

A cop with a gun, a man with a knife. Put the knife down. Put it down. And a look at the razor-thin, life-or-death moment between them. So stay with us. This is Christopher calling from South Florida. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.

Hey, I'm Chad. I'm Robert Crulwich. And just let's just pick right back up with our story from Florida. With Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery and our own Matt Kilty. All right. So day two. Day two was Daytona. 1153. May 3rd. Daytona Beach. Daytona Beach. That's about everything. And what happened was we went to this thing with these women, mostly black, who have lost people to police violence. And I'm sitting across the table from an African American city councilman in Daytona Beach. And I told him what I'd been working on. I told him some of the numbers we'd learned. And he said, you really need to meet our police chief.

His name is Mike Chitwood. You're not filming. No, just a microphone. He's the police chief of Daytona Beach. Known for its wild and raucous spring break scenes. They have Bike Week that draws 500,000 bikers from all over the country and Daytona International Speedway. And on top of that, the permanent population there is like six. 62,000 people, and over that six-year period, they've only had four police shootings.

And that's low? Yeah, for a city like that, that's really low. Jesse, I need to break down for 2015. And in fact, while we were there, by race of tickets and arrests. Chipwood had his assistant print out these spreadsheets. Oh, those are the stats? Yep. Thank you. And these spreadsheets are actually kind of fascinating, because if you look at them...

You know, you just can go right down here and you can add them up. For things like aggravated assault, theft, shoplifting, speeding, speeding, Our arrest ratio and our ticket ratio basically mirrors our city. In terms of racial demographic. Yeah, we're roughly a 60-40 city, 60% white, 40% African-American. And so when you look at these numbers, that's pretty much what you see. Tickets for speeding, about 60-40, arrest for theft, about 60-40. That's the way we're supposed to, in theory, approach to law.

And so what are they doing differently? Well, a whole bunch of things. First of all. When all these incidents were occurring in around the country, would first of all. Ferguson, everything else, we did a race and policing mandatory training for the entire PD. And basically what we wanted our officers to do is, number one, learn the history of the country. Because the history of the country is that we are a racist nation, no matter how you want to look at it. It started with moving the Indians off of their land for manifest destiny.

When you look at Jim Crow laws, when you look at the Civil War, when you look at slavery, when you look at Bull Connor, for example, turning dogs and fire hoses loose on civil rights marchers. So it's important for officers to understand that that you may go into an African-American community and you may think and act and talk a way where you think you're being respectful and understanding, but in reality, you're not. But let's not for a moment think that there isn't biased in policing because there's biased. We all have biased in us. And the trick is, and I don't know if it's a trick, I don't know if any of us know how to contain that. How do we stop that bias from coming through when you make a decision?

Right. And I think, you know, I've read a lot about implicit bias. And it always seems like it feels like a kinder way to say fear, like a fear of a black person and that fear is greater than what you would feel when you're encountering a white person when you're out on the job as a cop. When you look at some of the shootings that were caught on video, and I think of the poor school janitor who lost his life in Minnesota. Oh, yeah, the Philanica Steele shooting, yeah.

There's a guy who told the officer in no uncertain terms, I'm a good guy. I have a gun permit. You can't get a gun permit. if you're a convicted felon. You can't get a gun permit if you're a drug dealer. So when the minute that young man tells that officer, I have a gun permit for some unknown reason, that officer's threat level with a baby in the car

and I got a guy with his kid, his girlfriend in the car, he's telling me he's a gun permit holder, this is an easy car stop. For some reason, and the reason is because of the color of the man's skin, all of those things never registered, black guy reaching for his pocket,

and I shoot him. And I would like to tell you, in all my years in policing, I would like to sit here and be naive and tell you that we don't shoot on armed people. As a 28-year practitioner of law enforcement, a second-generation cop, I'm appalled at what I see on those videos. I cannot believe that my profession, in some cases, is that out of control. Some of them I understand what's going on. I mean, you're wrestling in the ground for your life, and, you know, there are times that we have to use deadly force.

But the incidents in South Carolina, the incident in Minnesota? I mean, are you kidding me? And you're looking at what are we doing? I mean, how do you train that out of an officer so that when they make a traffic stop, they're not already operating with this level of heightened fear or this perceived threat. In my opinion, number one, you have to train tactically sound. You have to train using real-life scenarios that take that extra split second before you fire your weapon. And I'll give you an anecdote very quickly.

When I first went to Philadelphia Police Department, we were shooting people at a crazy rate on an accidental discharge. The officer had their finger on the trigger when they would go to grab that person. if that person pulled or moved, you would jerk back, and it was a natural reaction to squeeze the trigger. So they sent us all back up to the police academy, and we all had to be retrained on how to keep your finger on the side plate of the weapon, not on the trigger. So if that happened, you wouldn't accidentally trip and fire

and shoot somebody, and you went to thought it was Armageddon. Oh, my God, they're going to get us killed. Well, in reality, what it did was it slowed down your field division. It slowed everything down, that split second didn't make a difference. And that blink of an eye didn't make a difference. It made a difference in you not shooting, because that split second let you see what you thought may have been the color of my glass coming out. My cell phone was a cell phone.

So you buy yourself a little bit of time. And this is the thing that Chibwood comes back to again and again is this idea of time. In certain situations, slow down. When you're dealing with a mentally ill person, slow down. Like whatever you can do, use cover, just create some space to buy yourself another 30 seconds. That extra 30 seconds may be the difference between saving your life and somebody else's life. Another interesting thing was, and Ben, Ben found this out also through some of his reporting with other police chiefs, is the idea that some police chiefs don't like to hire kids out of high school, like 19, 20-year-olds, in part because...

Everything to do is this. They text a lot. That's only know how to communicate. It's like this. And when they look up and go to talk to somebody, and I'm serious about going through the drive-thru a McDonald's, and they could piss off the person ordering a cheeseburger. How did you do it? It's just their demeanor. It's just the way they act.

In fact, Ben told me that he talked to a different police chief who told him... The young people who are coming into the academy the past few years have never been in a physical fight. Which is a problem because when they get into a fight, their heart starts to race and their muscles tense up and they don't really know what to do. So they freak out. And they're way more likely to draw a weapon and use the weapon to, you know, to end the confrontation. So how do you, you can't ask her how many times have you beat somebody up or been beaten up on your resume? No, no. So that Ben says that that's why the police chief told him he looks to hire bouncers. I see, bouncers.

For Chipwood, he said. From just my little myopic world that I live in, we have an awful high number of men and women who served in the military. They are my best officers. They are level-headed. They are well-trained. They know how to follow the policy. Basically, you know how to not freak out during a confrontation.

And last thing, promises the last thing. One of the most important things, Chilwood says is you have to get into the community. And I'm not talking about the good stuff. Oh, they bought Christmas gifts or they cook Thanksgiving dinner. I'm talking day to day. You have to get to know people. Yeah, let me, uh, come on. All right, sure.

And so to make this point, Chipwood got up, walked me down the hall to another office. There you go. All right. Set me down on a computer. The sound comes on about 20 seconds. Okay. To show me this video. So, video starts in silence, and it's a body cam video.

It's a body cam on the cop who is driving a squad car. He's got his body cameras mounted to his eye. On his glasses. So the camera's going where his eyes go. Next to him, passenger side is his partner. Both cops are white. also it's night So the call is for a guy

He was running around with a knife Trying to stab people He was off his meds I think he was on a crack cocaine binge If I remember correctly With a park It's a little neighborhood street And you can see

Down the street Half a block away This shirtless black guy Won't you chill out Derek That's the cop talking to him The cop wearing the body cam And this black man He's got his arm raised

Pretty big knife in his hand And he's walking towards the cops Why don't you stop acting so crazy The black guy gets closer and closer and closer, and finally the cop wearing the body cam pulls out. A taser. The other officer. He was out of the frame is behind him with his firearm out. And the guy, put your fucking knife down.

Put it down. Is approaching, approaching, approaching, approaching. Put the knife down. Put the knife down. He gets within like 10 feet of the cops. And then... Taser. Taser. Taser.

The guy with the body cam fires the taser. The guy holding the knife, he falls on. onto his back, onto this, like, cement driveway. He still got the knife in his hand. Put it down, or you're going to get it again? Put it down or you're going to get it again? And the cop who's got his gun out, he hustles over, kicks the knife out of the guy's hand, grabs him by the hand, turns him over,

and then... He's detained Central Coffield. Cuffs him. And then... Hey, Derek, man. It's not a smart idea to have a knife coming at the police. The officer will say, why didn't you listen to me and just drop the knife and walk to me? Why did you keep coming at me?

You're real lucky you didn't get shot. I won it. I was trying my breath. You were trying your best to get shot? I want to see if I get to you. You want to die? You want to die? I can't.

Huh? I can't die. He tells the officer, goes, I'm Jesus Christ. And I want everybody to know the police bullets can't kill me. I know you can't. All right, Derek, we're going to stand up, all right? Count of three, one, two, three. So the two cops pick them up, walk him over to the squad car, put them in, and the video ends.

Huh. So this is the thing that you. You guys, you use this video for what exactly? This is one of a multitude of videos that we show officers on the correct way to do things. You know, and that's the points we hit home are the officers use time and distance to their advantage. They didn't pull right up and the guy leans in the car and tries to stab one. And now you have to resort to deadly force right away. They use verbal commands first.

Warn them, let him know what's going on. Trigger control was another thing, you know, with that taser, taser, taser, taser, taser. Taser, taser, taiser, taser. And this is important because their guy's partner who was holding the gun, had he heard this pop, he might have just instinctively reacted thinking that was a gunshot and fired his gun. So, you know he's deploying the taser. And communication is key. Communication with the person you're trying to arrest and communication with your fellow officers.

Those are the things that we drive home. And again, there was no doubt in my mind that one officer in particular knew that individual from prior contact. Right. I mean, it's interesting to hear him say the name Derek. Right. It's like Derek is Derek. Derek isn't just a black man shirtless with a knife in his hand. When there's no connection there, it's a lot easier to see somebody is nameless and faceless,

and I got scared and I shot him. But because of that, knowing that officer, because of that, and established some kind of a rapport that made the officer think of how he's going to deal with this thing. And actually, after we finished watching that video and I was packing up, Chitwood told me that just a couple months after that incident. I'm biking through the neighborhood. And my man sitting on the front step, waves at me, hey, Chitwood, how are you doing, man? Derek does?

You stupid son of a bitch, you don't know how close you came to being dead. But he was back on his medication, wasn't doing drugs, and he was completely as normal as me and you are right now. Now, again, almost kind of like when I was with these women, it felt like I was just in Daytona at this specific moment because it was just a few months after I left. Last night's primary election among the big winners, Daytona Beach's police chief.

He is now Volusia County's, new sheriff. Mike Chitwood was elected the sheriff of Volusia County. I am extremely honor. Which is the county that Daytona Beach belongs to. And the other thing to mention is that Chitwood belongs this organization called

Perf, which is the police executive research forum. It's this big coalition of police chiefs. And in 2016, Perf put out what they call their 30 guiding principles for the use of force. And the number one principle, rather than being something law and order, law and order, is

the sanctity of human life. Hmm. Now, just a month after Perf put out those principles, two of the biggest policing organizations in the world, the IACP, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Fraternal Order of Police, the big policing union, both came out against these guiding principles,

basically saying that being a cop is a dangerous job, and some of these principles make it more dangerous. And then just like eight months later or so, the IACP and the Fraternal Order of Police, started to adopt some of these principles publicly. And despite that there still is a bit of a divide between the organizations, but according to Ben... For the very first time, I think you're seeing these massive conversations. The police weren't talking about this two or three years ago.

I don't know, man. I mean, just thinking about this, like you've got these women who have become kind of a political force. You have also this growing movement of cops who are possibly changing the way policing is done in America. at least maybe slowly. Right. But cumulatively, it does, I hesitate to use this word, but it does make, it does feel like reason for hope. Right, and I sort of felt the same way too, but...

There was this experience that I had where I just realized how far hope has to go. We are here to see Natasha Clemens. Natasha Clemens, the mother of Rodney Mitchell. Okay. So Natasha's woman, who you heard earlier back at the community center. I've met 400 other mothers who's lost her children. That's actually when I first met her.

Ben had been reporting on Natasha for like a couple years by this point. And we were there because Ben was going to hand a ton of documents over to Natasha on her son, Rodney's case because she didn't have any. And I was there because we'd set up a short interview with Natasha. But when we got to her door... Oh, no. She just started sobbing. I don't know.

And Ben and I just had no idea what had happened. Eventually I just turned the tape recorder off. So what was happening in that moment? Well, okay, so to back up, so meeting somebody like a chip would, you know. Like there is a sort of hope in that, I believe. But the thing about a Chitwood, a sheriff, a police chief, is that they only have the power to fire a police officer. And that's really about it. After that, it goes into the court system.

And so for Natasha, her son Rodney, 23 years old, unarmed, was shot and killed by two police officers during the traffic stop. After the shooting, a judge ruled that the two officers had done nothing wrong. They had acted in accordance with the law. and it just so happened that 45 minutes before Ben and I showed up at her door, she'd just gotten an email from her lawyers saying that the appeal that she had filed against that decision had just been rejected. And so we sat there in Natasha's apartment for a while. We actually even left for like an hour, eventually came back, kind of just hit reset on the whole thing. Eventually Natasha showed me some pictures of Rodney.

Long dreads. He's got a big smile. Big smile, bright white smile. And then we sat down at her kitchen table. Okay, so if you can walk me back to the night that kind of everything happened. June 11, 2012. Natasha was at home. 9.30 at night. Rodney, who was 23 years old, was back from college and out driving Natasha's car.

That's when all the phone calls started happening. People calling saying... Something's going on with your car. I knew something was wrong. So I immediately started screaming outside to see if I can get somebody to, you know, respond to help me so I can get a ride. Nobody came out, so I started running down the interstate. Barefoot. I just left.

I don't even recall locking the door or anything like that. Eventually, a family member actually picks her up. They drive to the scene. She gets there. It looks like just people everywhere. Police cars. And I was like, where's rotten? I was looking for my vehicle.

And my one cousin says, Tasha, he's over there. She pointed about 20 feet over to where. the car had come to a stop. It had collided with a gas station. But then she had the back of my loop of my pants so that I couldn't run over there. The whole place was surrounded by a police tape and eventually Natasha says it took a couple hours, but a cop pulled her off to the side and told her that her son had been shot and killed by police. I just got on my hands and knees and started praying. Don't let the speech for a police lord. I was basically begging and and playing. That's the only thing I could do. What else do you do? Just cry, scream.

pray, cry, scream, pray, cry, scream, pray. Next thing you know, I woke up, I was at the hospital. Natasha says that she apparently was so frenzied that an EMT on the scene stuck her with something. To calm me down. So when I woke up, I see my family standing over me in the hospital. Now, as to what happened to Rodney that night, Ben has looked at testimony from the cops involved,

from eyewitnesses, different court records, to piece together the events. Yeah, Rodney mentioned... According to all these documents, That night, Rodney and his 16-year-old cousin were in Natasha's car. They had stopped at a gas station. They left the gas station and were driving down this highway wind. He and his little cousin get pulled over by two white officers.

The officer said he saw him without a seatbelt. Turns out Rodney was wearing a seatbelt. And these two officers approach his vehicle. One is kind of standing in front of the car. About several feet away towards the driver's side. And the officer who approaches his window. According to Rodney's cousin. He says, boy, why didn't you pull over sooner?

and then orders Rodney to put the car in park. And Rodney's got both hands at this point on the steering wheel. And he reaches down to put the car in park. And this is where things in the story sort of diverge. Because the cops say that Rodney put the car in park, but then quickly put it back into drive, accelerated at the officer in front of the car. Ronnie's cousin gives two conflicting accounts as to what happened.

There was apparently an eyewitness across the street who said the car had yet to move. But what is clear is what happened next, which is a deputy in front. Pulls out his gun fires two shots into the windshield. The deputy right by the door. Here's the fire. He pulls a gun and fires twice. One bullet went through Rodney's left hand, which he'd put up in self-defense. Another bullet entered through his left temple.

And the car lurches forward and careens across the street. For about 300 yards until it collides with this gas station. Rodney's cousin, at this point, gets out of the car, flees from the scene unharmed. Eventually, paramedics arrive and pronounce Rodney dead at the scene. My mind is always on Rodney. Natasha says when she does think about that night, She always comes back to this one question. Why were the guns pulled?

Why? Why? What was that all about? What do you think the answer is? He's black, and that's just it. Is there ever a moment where you try and put yourself in the mind of those two officers? Absolutely not, because I would never do somebody's kid like that. That never crossed, no.

I would never do that. Do you feel like it's like, do you feel like the cop in that moment it's Rodney's black is what frightens the cop and that's why he pulls his gun out? No, he's a bully. Hell, if somebody gets hurt or somebody gets injured or killed, he's going to get off.

He's behind that blue badge. He's a bully. Is that what you think of cops, like, writ large? That's how it is. That's exactly how it is. No eff, ins and butts about it. Because it's hard for me because I think, like, like it's clear that there's discrimination that exists within the police force and the people

who they are sworn to protect and serve. But like at the end of the day, there's probably a hand, like, well, I don't know, I couldn't give you a percentage, but a number of officers in which, like, yes, they're probably violent individuals who don't belong in a police force. But I would assume that like a majority of the cops mean well have probably, probably have some sort bias where they don't think I see a black person and I'm going to like I'm going to get that boy, but that there's like there's some sort of triggered response and that the police are constantly being put into different situations where they feel under threat and concerned and that like

there's like a whole host of factors leading to these moments where somebody is shot and killed. It's not just that they're out here bullying people. You say that because you're white. That's why you say that. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what, we can try this. Go to my sister. We'll make sure you get your wig.

Go to a tennis salon, get yourself sprayed black. And I guarantee you you'll get a different response. I dare you try it. I bet you we can make you look like a black boy. I'm telling you, you'll see a huge difference. And that's just it. like sitting there in that moment I felt the golf

and I just kept wondering how long does it take to fill that golf? Like how many Chitwoods does it take? How many conversations need to happen? In any case, do you want us to... Ben still had to give Natasha those files on Rodney to get those documents for you? I'll appreciate it.

Sure. Okay. I'm just here. Yeah. Oops. Sorry. So Ben grabbed this huge folder of paper out of the trunk of our car. Walk back inside.

This is not everything. Ben put the stack of Rodney's files on this glass kitchen table. So I took out of this stack, like 10 crime scene photos. because I don't want to be the person to give you those unless you want me to go get them right now but they're I'm surprised

I don't want to have to I don't want to re-traumatize you and they're graphic just frankly they're graphic you know so I'll put it I'll leave it up to you and you know how to tell me right now

but yeah when I'm ready I'll I'll get them something and I'm going to have to eventually see. Three days later, Natasha contacted Ben and said that she was ready to see those photos. Huge thanks to Ben Montgomery at the Tampa Bay Times

and to the staff of the paper that did all the hard work of gathering statistics and material. In the near near future, they're going to be putting out Ben's story, a whole series of videos and interactive graphic with all their final numbers. It should be amazing. Definitely check it out. We'll make sure that we link to it when it's live

from our website, Radio. And then, of course, to our own Matt Gilty, who reported and produced this piece. Next week, we'll bring you part two of Matt, Guilty, and Ben Montgomery's reporting. It's a very different kind of story. Check in for that. Okay. I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Crilwich.

Thanks for listening. This is George Washington III in Charlotte, North Carolina. Radio Lab is produced by Jad Abomrod. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Soren Wheeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Brenna Farrell, David Gable, Matt Kielty, Robert Krollwich, Annie McEwan, Latif Nassar, Melissa O'Donnell, Ariane Wack, and Molly Webster, with help from Tracy Hunt,

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