#RolandMartinUnfiltered - DC statehood bill passes house; More Ma'Khia Bryant bodycam video released; Daunte Wright funeral

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

4.22.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: DC statehood bill passes house; More Ma'Khia Bryant bodycam video released; No charges against the cop who shot 17-year-old Anthony Thompson; California police officer charged with manslaughter for the shooting of Laudemere Arboleda; Daunte Wright laid to rest + What does watching the constant attack on Black lives by the police do to our mental health?Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's Thursday, April 22nd, 2021. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, D.C. Statehood passes the House. We'll talk with former mayor and current council member Vincent Gray about this momentous day. Ohio officials released more body cam video of the shooting of Makia Bryant on yesterday. We'll break it down. In Tennessee, no charges will be filed against the officer who shot 17-year-old Anthony Thompson at school. And in California, a police officer will be charged with manslaughter for the shooting of a man there. In Minneapolis, Daunte Wright was laid to rest.

He was killed by cops there in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Plus, what is watching the constant attack on black lives for the police to drive mental health? We'll talk about secondary trauma. It's time to bring the funk and roll the mark on the filter. Let's go. Whatever the piss, he's on it Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling

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You know he's Rollin' Marten now. All right, folks, we apologize for the second day in a row. We had some major technical issues and so was to try to get those things sorted out. But the show must go on for the second year in a row. The House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 51, granting statehood to Washington, D.C. It took place on a party line vote, 216 to 208. Democrats, of course, now send it over to the Senate, where the only way it gets passed there is if they end the filibuster. Republicans oppose the bill because it could mean two Democratic United States Senate seats. But Democrats believe granting statehood to D.C. is about civil rights and representation. And keep in mind, folks, that you have states like Wyoming, which is less population than, of course, D.C.

They have two and that's 92 percent white. They got two Republican United States senators. D.C. Mayor Amirio Bowser released this statement after the House vote. The bill introduced by the distinguished Eleanor Holmes Norton in 2019 would create the nation's 51st state, the state of Washington, Douglas Commonwealth. Joining us today is former D.C. mayor and current council member Vincent Gray. Council Member Gray, how you doing? Is the councilman there? Folks, I can't hear if the council member is there, so if he's there, please let me know. Councilman Gray, are you there?

All right, well, y'all sort that out, folks. Let me go to my panel real quick. Greg Carr, Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He joins us right now. Greg, are you there? I am. I am. All right. Yes, I can hear you, Greg. Just fine. And all right, folks. Let's see here. Again, I can tell you, I can get you. So, yeah, I can hear Greg. So, again, sorry, folks. Again, like I said, we keep having some technical issues. Omokongo, the bingo, of course, with the American University. Doc, are you there? Yes, I am here. Cool. All right. Got both of you. Greg, I want to start with you first off.

That is real simple. What does this mean? Again, getting statehood for the District of Columbia. Now it goes over to the Senate. Now we've got to wait to see what Sinema and Manchin does. Well, we know Sinema and Manchin will likely would likely vote against D.C. statehood. So getting rid of the filibuster would be the first step. Cori Bush tweeted out earlier that this is a this is another reason to abolish the filibuster would be the first step. Cori Bush tweeted out earlier that this is another reason to abolish the filibuster. At a moment like this, however, we must understand that ultimately the ultimate objective is statehood. But this fight is energized by this vote passing the House of Representatives. In a moment, I reflect back on the song by the great a cappella group Sweet Honey and the Rock that came out of the Harambee singers, the great Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagan.

And they had a song, No Taxation Without Representation, Give the People Their Right to Vote. And they literally sang through the history of this long fight and the options that could be available to D.C. Retrocession into Maryland, for example, or other things that are being proposed. But you nailed it, Roland. You've been saying this all along, and so many folks have been saying it. This is about nothing but power, and behind that power is white nationalism.

They should be afraid of two representatives from the District of Columbia, even as it becomes increasingly nonwhite, I mean, increasingly white, being progressive. They should be afraid of that because what they've shown is they're willing to dismantle this entire experiment if it means they can hold on to power with those little white hands for just a little longer. So they should be shaking in their boots. Demography's coming, baby. At some point, it's going to be a reality. So today's a good day. I mean, you're absolutely right. And again, you know, the thing that I found to be real interesting, and I'm trying to pull this tweet up here, and it was pretty hilarious to me when I saw the reaction of Republicans and all the different reasons they were throwing out here.

Omicongo, one of those was by Congressman Steve Cleese. He was concerned about the crime rate in D.C. I'm sorry. Is there no crime in Louisiana where he's from? Is there no crime in Mississippi? And then not only that, first of all, go ahead and comment on that just stupidity. I mean, how ridiculous can you get? I mean, every single day they come up with new reasons to try to deny us our rights to have statehood. As a resident of D.C., I've heard so many ridiculous arguments. And as if we become a state, even if the crime was an issue, that all of a sudden it will stop if we became a state. I mean, these guys, as Dr. Carr said, it's all about power. They don't want us to have that Senate representation. And we have to end the filibuster because they will continue to be the party of no.

They do not want us to have any power. And we just can't stand for it anymore. Now, going to the House, I should be going to the Senate. And this is just every bill we can talk about. Statehood. We could talk about the issue of H.R. 1. We could talk about the George Floyd Justice Act. Everything we talk about, it boils down as to whether or not the two senators from Arizona and West Virginia are going to have some goddamn guts in the filibuster.

It's as simple as that. I mean, otherwise, what the hell are we doing? Otherwise, what we're seeing right now, Mitch McConnell might as well run the damn Senate. I agree 100 percent, Matt. It is completely ridiculous. It's as if Mitch McConnell still is running the Senate, because earlier we had a situation with the anti-lynching bill and the George Floyd bill, bills that get passed by voice votes. They said, well, once we get the Democrats into power, we can make some changes. But yet here we are. And we have Mitch McConnell issuing warnings, saying, well, you better not do this, you better not do that, or you're going to pay for it. Well, right now, it's like they're

still in charge. So we got to get those guts up in there. And Manchin and Arizona, Senator as well, they got to really make sure that they understand who they're representing. And I'm hoping that when we get to these midterms, we can get some more representation so that they won't even be a factor. That's right. That's right. Look, Greg, go ahead. No, no, no. Go right ahead. I'm sorry, brother. Well, but here's the deal, though. I understand that particular point there. But guess what? If the Republicans are able to push through their voter suppression bills, that's going to be a problem because here's the piece. Right now, Democrats only hold a four-vote majority in the House. If the Republicans

gerrymander congressional seats, Democrats could lose five seats in Florida alone. Boom, your majority is gone. It's true, Roland. I mean, and I must agree with Dr. Dabenga, we have to, and we've been saying this all along, and this is another reason why this space is so damn important. Folks tell people to really support Roland Martin Unfiltered because this is a nuanced conversation. We have to be thinking not only the short game, but the long game. The midterm elections were always going to be in play. The Democratic Party, quadrupling down on their appeal to the lost white nationalist vote, flubbed these recent elections again. But because it was a presidential election, black and brown folk, particularly black folk, voting in our own interest and in self-defense, put Donald Trump out of office. The midterms, we always knew there was going to be an incremental battle because Republicans,

I mean, Democrats messed up this election, this past election cycle. What that means is that, as you said, we had a deep inflection point. Today, for example, the Florida Supreme Court threw out and invalidated a ballot measure that was being proposed to decriminalize, actually to legalize recreational marijuana. That combined with the attempt by the GOP-controlled state legislature to diminish the capacity to put ballot initiatives in play in Florida is their attempt to hold on for this naked power grab, as we heard Reverend Barber talk about today in testifying for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. You've got in 47 states 300-plus different amendments that have been put into state legislatures to try to stop this.

They're not going to be able to stop people from having babies, and they're not going to be able to maintain control. But in this little 18- to 24-month window we have, this will be the last time that this prospect of American democracy can be solved without violence, because if they put these these these measures in place to suppress the vote, that doesn't mean people are going to say, oh, well, you all win. I guess we'll just go on back and get fitted for these sharecropper clothes. No, that means we're in the street for real and you don't have enough police, baby. So people need to understand the elect the midterm elections were always part of this strategy. We know who Joe Manchin is.

We know who Kristen Sinema is. And as you have been saying consistently, brother, since election night, we know who Ron Johnson in Wisconsin is. We know who Marco Rubio in Florida is. Those are statewide elections. You can't gerrymander your way out. You have to suppress the vote. So we got to keep our eyes on the prize, recognize there are a lot of moving parts, and understand that we always knew this was going to be a battle to battle war.

Former Mayor of D.C. Councilman Vincent Gray joins us right now. Councilman Gray, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. How are you, sir? Doing great. All right. So real simple. What kind of pressure is going to have to be brought to bear on these two Democratic senators? They are the ones who are holding up this. If Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and if Joe Manchin of West Virginia would stop opposing ending the filibuster, D.C. can become a state, the 51st state, and President Joe Biden can sign it into law? Well, we should become a state almost immediately. We've been fighting now for decades and decades in order to become a state.

And some of us have gone to jail fighting for this. We've fought this at every turn we possibly can. And, of course, we were fortunate today to be able to get the House vote to move forward. But we still face this filibuster, and that is the opportunity for Republicans to stop what it is that we want done to be able to move forward to bring full democracy to the people of the District of Columbia. We have virtually as many people in the District of Columbia as the entire state of Wyoming and the entire state of Vermont. It's just absolutely absurd that we have to continue to be faced with conditions that continuously say, nope, if you want to be a state, you're going to have to do this in a variety of different ways. And having to work through a senator from Arizona, to have to work through a senator from West Virginia to get this done is absolutely unconscionable. They don't have those kind of conditions blocking them from being able to move forward. Nobody is stopping the people from Arizona or the people from West Virginia from having democracy. of Vermont, the state of Wyoming. They just have so many people who are, who we have to go through

the kind of hurdles and hoops that we have to jump through in order to be able to get the democracy that we deserve. So it just doesn't make sense to have to work through Arizona, to have to work through West Virginia. Nobody has stopped them. Nobody has stopped them from being able to have the democracy that they have earned by virtue of being citizens of the United States of America. So it's time for the people of America to recognize that if we don't stand up, if we don't stand up, every area of democracy is in peril uh in in america so well uh i would say this here councilman gray i think what's going to take uh y'all are going to mobilize and organize

and literally put thousands of people in the halls of congress y'all are going to see in wave after wave after wave every single day the offices of cinema Manchin to get their attention. I mean, that has to happen. I completely agree. And we need to stand up and fight. We have fought for so many years, Roland, for democracy in the District of Columbia. It's time for us to become the state that we've designated the name for to be able to move forward. So I'm ready to fight and continue to fight. I've been fighting for years.

I've been here all my life. I've been in the District of Columbia the entirety of my life, and I want the same democracy, the same opportunity, the same rights that should be accorded me as any other state in America. So I'm ready to do whatever is necessary. Well, all right. Well, Councilman Gray, you keep us abreast. We certainly will keep covering this

because we think this is important. It should happen. And there's no time better than now to make it happen. Former mayor of D.C. and now current councilman, Mr. Gray, thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Folks, let's go to Columbus, Ohio, where the death of Makia Bryant

at the hands of a Columbus police officer has exposed the Columbus Police Department's disturbing use of force records and their shocking lack of accountability. Now, yesterday we talked about the body cam footage that was released. And then now let's do this right now, though. We're going to break this thing down with three former police officers. But here's the deal. From 2001 to 2018, according to the Columbus Division of Police, there were hundreds of use of force incidents with just one resulting in discipline. Now, regardless of the amount of force used, 99 percent of incidents in Columbus took place with no discipline whatsoever.

We're going to talk about that in just a moment with Samuel Singh Yongwei. But folks, it's just crazy what we're seeing. I want to introduce right now to you our law enforcement panel, Reddit Hudson, founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform and Accountability. Randall Ennis, a criminal defense attorney and former police officer. Linda Williams, she's the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and Data Scientists and Policy Analysts, Samuel Singh Yongwei. So glad to have all of you here. And so let me know when we have read it on the line. So so so let's do this here. OK, so I read this. I don't see him. That's fine. So let's do this. Yeah, I want to go to all four. I want to go to the three law enforcement officers first.

Linda, I want to start with you. You've seen the video. You've seen the video of Makia Bryant being shot four times by the police officer there in Columbus. We played it repeatedly on yesterday. Your assessment of what took place, it was 22 seconds from the moment the cop opens the door to the first shots being fired. He had a taser on him and his front belt. Could have used that. But so your assessment, was this proper use of force? Was it a justified shooting? So thank you all, Roland, for having me. A couple of things.

First and foremost, we've lost too many lives and yet another family is mourning the loss of their loved ones. Now, as law enforcement teaches use of force, use of force was justified yesterday. Now, that's not to say that because use of force is justified that you cannot use other options. They train in law enforcement that you counter a force with equal force or a step above. In that split debt second decision, as that officer came upon that, he used that deadly force. Now, in itself, that's why we're looking at this thing frame by frame, and we will dissect it

in an active investigation. However, when he approached, there was deadly force being to that young lady that was against the car. Whether he used voice commands or not, he was trying to neutralize that situation because daily force was being used against the young lady in the pink suit. Now, I have not seen it in its entirety if he used voice commands or whatever, but he was tasked to neutralize. I'm sure as he looked again, if he had a taser, maybe he would have, should have, could have

used a taser. But in that split second decision, he was trying to prevent the death of another individual. Now, let's go to you, Randall. You're a criminal defense attorney, home police officer. Your assessment of this shooting of Makia Bryant. Yes, Roland, thank you for having me. And of course, our thoughts and prayers go out to the Bryant family. Any loss of life, of course, is tragic, but it's especially tragic and disturbing when it is a 16-year-old.

I think we need to take a step back a little bit. I mean, you could start with the police officer who's in a cruiser is receiving a call from dispatch. I'm not 100% clear what he got, what he heard, but the likelihood is he was told of an altercation. He may have been told about a deadly weapon, meaning the knife. And then, of course, we pick it up from that 22-second time frame.

He gets out of the vehicle. We see him approaching. We see some violence occur with the decedent, Ms. Bryant, and another woman. We see that sort of force used. And then we see her move on to another woman. And of course, there's a male that's involved pushing on someone as well. And then the key and critical component in terms of the level of force that she used, the deadly physical force, is it appears that she has this weapon in her hand, this knife,

and her hand is raised. And, you know, in that time frame, and of course the officer gave some commands, I heard a get down, you know, get down. In that time frame, he took the decision to use deadly physical force. And yes, we can talk about a taser if you had it. But this particular incident highlights quickly, in some instances, police officers have to make these life and death decisions. It's going to be an investigation, of course, but as I see it in that little time

frame and the investigation is, of course, ongoing and perhaps there'll be more video footage released, there'll be more information released from the dispatcher and what occurred in that regard. But if that is in fact a knife and she's about to exert potentially deadly physical force on another person, under the law, the officer might be justified in exercising deadly physical force upon the perpetrator. In this case, unfortunately, a 16 year old, Mr. Bryant. Ready to explain this, there are people who said, okay, he shot her four times center mass. Apparently he's an expert marksman.

If you're gonna use deadly force, why not shoot her in the leg? Why not, as opposed to four times in the chest? What is your response to people who say that could have happened if he by choosing to use the gun and not a taser? You're asking me? Yes. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, man, when you're making a decision that fast, the ability to shoot a hand or a leg or a limb is limited. That's, you know, that's television plot lines, man. When you are trying to stop a threat,

soon amassed is what you're trained to do. But there's another thing in play here, Roland, because the two assessments I just heard are accurate and on the money. This would be a difficult case to make against the officer. But there's something else in play here, man. And it is, to me, what doesn't sit with me about this case, notwithstanding the facts, is the initial response that I saw.

Currently, I mean, I've responded to fights. I'm sure these other individuals have responded to fights, big fights, small fights. He exited the vehicle with his gun in his hand, from what I can see on the video, prior to his assessment. Whatever the call that came out prior to his assessment, whatever the caller came out prior to his engagement, these people, he already had his weapon in his hand. I don't, I, I, hold up. I don't think he did. So let's, so hold on one second. Hold on a second. Let's read it in one second. Let's do this here. I know we have a video queued up. I don't want to have to show the video,

but folks, if y'all could go ahead and queue the video up, I just want to be clear. Let's do this here. Go ahead and roll the video so that way we see exactly what's going on. Go ahead. Yeah. What trouble me.

Here we go. Here we go. Here we go, Reddit. Here we go. Here we go. Hold on a second. So right there. So here we go, here we go. Hold on a second. So right there. So according to what we just saw there, Reddit. So guys, roll the video again. I think when you get to about the 15 second mark, then you see he pulls it out.

What we see there. I've seen shorter versions, maybe. Yeah, so this is the actual... So let's do this here. I'm going to turn the audio up so our guests can all hear the commands then they can actually see what happens.

So play it now. Okay, let me tell you what I was going to say. What's going on? What's going on? Hey, hey, hey! Get down! Get down! get down, get down. Hey, no, you ain't shoot my fucking baby. You shot my baby.

Okay, here we go. So he can bail out of that now. So he comes up, he says, Twy, hey, what's going on? What's going on? And all of a sudden he sees Bryant, another girl, come tumbling towards his direction. Then all of a sudden he appears to reach for his gun come tumbling towards his direction. Then all of a sudden he parents to reach for his gun. Then she goes towards the young lady in the pink.

Then that's when he yells, get down three or four times. Then fires four shots, center mass, into Bryant. Go ahead, Reddit. Now, what I would say, just based on what I saw there, still, I'm in the same place I was prior rolling. It looked like they had enough officers on the scene to physically engage these young people with firearms.

When the young lady first ran out and pushed the girl down, to me, in my experience, I would have had hands on her then because I'm already telling you to stop doing what you're doing. Banking hands is a risk to the officer. Yes, we take risks on our jobs all the time. It has to do with how you respond to the community generally. It has to do beyond your training and the technical duties and don'ts that have to do with liability for the department, how you feel about the community you're policing.

And when you respond to a fight like that, what bothers me is that even though the prior assessments that I just heard are absolutely correct, those assessments apply across the board. How many examples of white kids have received a weapon in hand? Kyle Rittenhouse murdered somebody, and he walked down the street with the weapon still in his hand. He got a good present of angels. They gave him glasses and a bill of license. I heard nine people, all people praying. And it's happening. It's still on. And they buy him a hamburger.

It has to do with the systemic response to us as a people. Yes, on the facts, was the officer in court of law justified in using deadly force? Yes. We don't know that that would have been a fatal wound to the young lady, had the girl been able to stab her. But who's to say? And who's to say, if I'm the young lady in the pink or the parents of the young lady in the pink, that I don't want that action taken? It's a complication there for our community to have an in-house discussion about relative to violence in our community. But writ large, man, the problem remains that law enforcement's response on facts included is different in our community than it is in their communities. And that is the system

that we have to address. And we will address it. I'm confident in the momentum that has been gained by the work that people have done on the streets, organizers and activists, and the increasingly amplified voices of brothers and sisters like these two individuals that you have me on today with, really addressing the issue of systemic racism in our criminal justice system. I don't think I would have made the choice. Samuel, you are not a law enforcement officer. You're a data specialist. And you have been unpacking the data of how problematic the Columbus Police Department has been over the last almost decade.

Could you explain that? Absolutely. So first of all, you know, just to build off of the last conversation, Makia Bryant should be alive today, right? And I think, frankly, when we look at the data, if she was in virtually any other country, she would have been alive today. Because if you look at countries all across the world,

you look at Japan, for example, Japan has a population more than a third the size of the United States, almost half the size of the United States in a given year, it is rare for anybody to be killed by police again. And it's not like they don't have knives. It's not like they don't have heights. They have those much more often in many places than you might think. The reality is the police respond to those situations differently. They do so in a way without using deadly force routinely

thousands if not millions of times a year, and they ought to be held to the same standard in the United States. We shouldn't be accepting a reality in which people are being killed by the police because they had a knife. That doesn't happen in other countries. It is not acceptable. We cannot lower our standards just because we are so used to being killed by the police and wondering whether or not we're unarmed, whether or not the circumstance is so mundane that maybe we might have some sympathy, maybe we might have a chance at having the officer indicted. No, we have to look at this in the context of what's going on across the world. Policing is not unique to the United States. There are different approaches to each of these situations, some of which protect and preserve both the people who are feeling

threatened in that moment and the people who are allegedly the perpetrator so that they can see their day in court so that they are not being killed on the spot. The police should not be judged, jury and executioner. Now, that being said, with this individual case, we need to look at the entire systemic factors that have been alluded to that are bigger than this individual case and are also clear and plain view in Columbus. In Columbus, Makia Bryant was the fifth child killed by the police since 2013, the fifth one. So this is a pattern. Columbus Police Department, Columbus Police Division has killed more children than any other local law enforcement agency in the country, other than three agencies. So, again, this is a huge problem.

When we dive deeper into the data, we've been tracking killings by the police all across the country. What we have found is that 45 people have been killed by the police in Columbus since 2013, 45 people. And that black people are five times more likely to be killed by the police in Columbus since 2013, 45 people, and that Black people are five times more likely to be killed by the police than white people, and that there are particular on the force, that multiple on their records. Youth force over 100 times have not been accountable. 99% of all youth force incidents,

there is zero discipline. And that 1% is a counseling or a verbal reprimand. It is not a termination. So again, that's the system that we're looking at. And that's what we need to be focused on, not not sort of trying to untease the particulars about this individual case, because we already understand that this is a bigger problem and it needs a bigger solution. Linda, your thoughts about what Samuel just laid out. Forty people have been killed by Columbus police since 2013. My brother is on spot.

I used my platform since I became president of Noble in July of 28 to call out systemic racism. Now, everything that me and Randall stated are true. But what he stated is true. There is a disparity in how they treat black and brown citizens. I said that, you know, in law enforcement, you are trained to counter force with a counter force of equal force or one step above. But I dare to say if that was a citizen that was not black or brown, I'm certain the approach would have been different. And so, again, we realize that there's a dual system of judicial in our country. And of course, we have to call it out for what it is. But that was just one.

And, you know, you asked a question from a professional perspective. That's that's what they're trying to do. Let me just say that was done in a split second in over 30-some years of law enforcement, I have never been trained as a deputy sheriff or a federal agent to do warning shots or practice shots. We are trained to shoot center mass to neutralize the source. However, as again, there are other ways that you can do it, but that was a split-second decision. And I do concur with you. Racial biases do play into it.

People look at us and have a whole other assessment of how they're supposed to mitigate a circumstance. So I dare to say if it was some citizens that were not black and brown, it probably would have played out different. But as it was given and as that officer approached, he was trying to neutralize deadly force. Randall, go ahead. Yeah, well, so far I haven't heard anything that I necessarily disagree with from anyone, from all of the esteemed panelists. You know, this to a large degree, if we step back is a societal failure.

I mean, when you look at what happens in certain communities, in our communities, when you look at the manner with which police are trained, I mean that from the perspective of better training, more training, train, train, train. equation with their biases. And you know, we have to realize that when you put a police officer in an academy and you're training them extensively, perhaps the way they were trained in 1960 with a few variations, maybe a different weapon or maybe a little bit more in terms of the spectrum that involves diversity. Maybe there's a little bit more, but you cannot stop the quest to train police officers better. And the best police officers, I don't think would disagree with that. You have to train police officers. And, you know, to come back to this situation, again,

it's a very, very difficult life and death situation in a couple of seconds. And this might have been a situation quite tragically where the police officer doesn't do anything or doesn't make that move. And unfortunately, what makes it a second later, you could have two people dead. You can have, God forbid, a woman getting stabbed and dying and then the deadly physical force being executed thereafter. So there are permutations on how this could have played out. I tend to take a step back and let all of the facts come in.

I don't think we know all of the facts. I haven't heard the dispatcher's report or, you know, I haven't seen all of the body camera views. And so I like to let, to some degree, things play out. But I think the whole notion of a societal failure on many levels as it relates to what happens in communities, as it relates to how we train our police or how much better we can do. I think that all gets brought to the fore here. But to the point here, Red, that Samuel was talking about, and we had the mayor on last night and he laid it out. I mean, the reality is this police department has a problem.

The mayor told us last night right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered for the first time that he is going to hire in the history of this city a police chief not from Columbus. They've, because of the last shooting, when I had him on about four or five months ago, they pushed hard for every officer to have body camera footage because that was a part of the problem. And so the Columbus Police Department, they've had historically, as Samuel laid out, you know, that number of shootings over an eight year period. I think Samuel even put out a tweet that six percent of the officers were responsible for 50 percent of the use of force incidents. Read it. Wow. Yeah, that's correct. I don't disagree with anything that I've heard. I will say, though, as you heard me say in the past, Roland, I think the best training writ large, notwithstanding the facts of this case, which are narrowly confined to an incident that on camera appears to be legally something that this officer was able to do.

The best training to me is accountability for those officers that violate our civil rights, human rights and civil liberties across the board. I don't think that you can train racism out of any officer on any department. Too many times that has been part of the cultural problem in law enforcement from coast to coast. So I think that the best training that these officers can get writ large, not necessarily in this case, is accountability, being punished when they violate the rights of the people being sworn to serve. That's not the only department that has problems across this country. Right here where I am in St. Louis, we have major issues on our police department in terms of use of force, excessive force violations, and people being killed by police while unarmed.

We had a case here, just to give you an example. Jason Stockley was a former officer here who announced a murder on camera. He was caught on the camera inside of his car. And the audience, you know, doing it, you say, you're going to kill them. And they caught up to him, and he emptied a clip into him and was exonerated by the military in St. Louis. So systemic issues is one we're going to have to continue to stay focused on and fight. And the help of brothers and sisters on this panel and others in that network of people

who are criminal justice advocates is also going experience of going to play a vital role in our ability to address the culture that produces outcomes like this, notwithstanding the facts of this situation where the young lady had a nightmare. Yes, but would that be a response to the different ladies? Samuel, final comment, please.

So all I'll say is, you know, we talk about training, but it's not that these officers who are using force at such high rates are not trained. Many cases, they're the veterans. They're the trainers. We saw with Derek Chauvin. He was a trainer. Right. We saw, you know, Dante Wright as well. Officer Potter, she was a trainer. Like these are officers who are trained extensively, more than the average officer. And they're actually engaging in even more force. So I don't think that we can just throw training at this and expect a different outcome. I think many of these officers have been trained quite extensively. And that's part of the problem.

When we look at what they're being trained to do, 58 hours on average for a recruit, 58 hours you spend firearms training, learning how to shoot. Again, center mass. Not every country does that. In Spain, they actually do train officers to shoot at the leg, and the police managed to do that. Now, it's not impossible. Again, we can look big, we can think bigger.

But again, you have trained 58 hours in firearms, eight hours in de-escalation. So what are you actually learning to do? So again, I mean, I think we have to think bigger than training. We have to think about expectations around officers and holding them accountable to those expectations and frankly, raising the bar on what we expect these officers to behave like, because it is clear when we look at the big picture, when we look at the data, there are places that are doing things dramatically differently and the world hasn't ended. Crime rates aren't out of control. People aren't unsafe. If anything, people are even safer. And they are in addition to, folks, I appreciate it. I want to go back to my panel here. Greg Carr, Mocongo, as well as Amisha Cross. Amisha, I'm going to bring you in here. The reason this is valuable and the reason it's important for our audience

and why I wanted three black law enforcement experts on because we need to hear their perspective in terms of this particular shooting here. There are a lot of people out there, and I literally had some calls from people who said to me, Roland, this is not one of the issues that we need to be spending lots of time on. We need to move on. And I said, no. I said, absolutely not. I'm not going to just simply dismiss this thing outright and say, oh, that's it.

We're good. You know, justify it. Let's move on. Because even if, even if it is determined by the police department, by the civilian review board, by the district attorney, that this was a justified shooting, we still should be pushing officers and police departments to find alternative ways to engage with the citizenry outside of using lethal force. That was a point that Samuel was making. I agree with you 100 percent. The issue that I have here, first and foremost, we have to recognize that there's a lot going on that, you know, wasn't initially spoken about as this case was originally, you know, published or publicized in the media. This was a young woman who was a

foster child. It's a foster child. That in and of itself, you know, creates its own level of burden when it comes to, you know, thinking about what may or may not have been going on in her head at the time. You know, we don't know how many foster homes she's been through. We don't know what the circumstances around that process was. We do know that, as was spoken by some of your previous guests, there have been many cases where there was an armed white person, somebody who had a knife. I've seen videos on social media as of today where there were armed white people who had knives who charged police officers themselves and were still able to be walked out alive. So I do think that there are some things that we need to take into context here. But also, we have to let this process play out. I think that there's going to be an investigation.

This officer has currently been placed on leave. There's a lot that is going to come out as this investigation progresses. I don't think that we should immediately jump to conclusions. But I also feel as though the narrative that we're seeing around this, we see around cases with black women and girls all too often. There is a quick push to push for advocacy when it comes to African-American males when they are facing deadly force or when they've passed away due to an officer's excessive use of force. We don't see that same rally around when it happens to be a Black woman or a Black girl who falls victim to the same thing. So I do think that there are advocates who are right now saying, hey, don't just dismiss this because you would not if the

same situation happened to a Black man. Let's make sure that we are being vigilant. Let's make sure that we are pushing to have reforms. But also let's make sure that we are not accepting officers who use deadly force when we've seen cases where deadly force is not used when the person isn't Black or brown. I think that that's the bigger part of the issue here. We've seen mental health cases. We've seen cases where the person doesn't have a mental health issue, where, again, deadly force was not used. Somebody brought up Kyle Rittenhouse. He walked around with an AK-47. Deadly force was not used. We saw how, you know, there's been apprehensions of white terrorists, essentially. We saw it with the guy who shot up the church in South Carolina. At the end of the day, we see time and time again where there has been a weapon,

a highly potential deadly weapon, where white people have been apprehended and there has not been a death. So I do think that there's something to be said about how the force was used in this case. Let's on that particular point there, I'm a Congo again, lessons learned from this. That is important because as I said, even if they determined this was a justified shooting, we should still be using it to train officers to say, how should you respond? What should the reaction be? All those type of things in order for people to understand, again, why this matters, how critical this is. Absolutely. And going back to what Ms. Cross is saying as well, particularly for our Black sisters and daughters and mothers, so many things get swept under the table. And I have a child. My daughter is about to be 15. And so seeing these videos is extremely problematic. And one of the things we have to pay attention to, Roland, when you talk about lessons learned, I wonder if Columbus Police Department would have been so quick to show this video if the officer was completely unjustified in what they did.

And so what they're doing right now is they're quick to build this case right now where everything that they're saying, everything that they're showing, even from the 911 calls, is building up this case to support this officer. And I don't think it would be the case if it was in reverse. So I think that's also something we have to pay attention to. Another thing we have to pay attention to is, as the mayor said, is that some are guilty, but all of us are responsible. We need to, like you said, keep the pressure on to make sure that we're checking how the training gets done, to check how people are allocated in terms of the communities that they serve in, and to really focus on this thing called de-escalation because if we don't have that there's going to continue to be more black bodies on the street they're going to be younger and younger and people are going to continually say that they're justified while the written houses of the world continue to walk free i saw a story

of a man who was the police officer got caught into the window of this of this guy who was trying to get away white male and he started jacketing up with a hammer, hitting him in the head, and still walked away fine. And one of the officers there had a rifle. So we have to acknowledge these disparities. And like you said, we can't just let this go because it's most likely going to be determined as justified. There's more work that needs to be done, especially when it comes to protecting our

children. Greg Carr. Oh, I mean, of course, I agree with everything that's been said. I don't think that you can train racism out of these folk. In fact, I think about the social scientist Amos Wilson, who once said that black folk kill black folk because we haven't been trained to kill white people. And as I'm listening, I wonder how many black police officers have killed white citizens. I understand that these aren't movies and you can't shoot in a particular place to wound. But what I saw there were girls clustered up, swinging at each other.

And this man very patiently, very quickly, very efficiently pulled out his gun and fired in a way that he assumed he wasn't going to hit anyone else. But see, this gets down to the real issue, it seems to me. The philosopher Sylvia Winter, right after the Rodney King insurrections of 1992, where we saw for the first time that videotaping the police beating the hell out of a black person has very little meaning to a jury determined to let those officers go. She said she quoted three initials,

which were used at the time by LAPD when they were responding to something involving black folk. N-H-I. I think that applies here. No humans involved. This was their uninformal way of saying we're responding to a situation where there are no humans involved. And that is the simple fact. There are no humans involved here. And let me just say this very quickly. Black officers and nonwhite officers kill black people, black police, kill black people

at the same rate as white officers. Now, some of that has to do with the fact that those black and brown officers are often policing black and brown communities. But the problem here isn't a problem as it relates to the police, whether they're black or white. This ain't going to be solved by hiring more. This is a police problem, because black people are not human. The Financial Times today had a report, and they were citing the work of the criminologist at Bowling Green State University, Philip Stinson, a former police officer, said that about 1,000 people a year in the United States are killed by police.

Less than 2 percent of those deaths ever result in charges being filed against the officers. And since 2005, there have been about 140 cases of police being arrested on charges. Of the 97 cases that have concluded, only seven have resulted in murder convictions. Now, y'all know why that third charge and the white boy in Minnesota, you know why they were able to get that third-degree manslaughter charge? Because up until then, the courts had ruled that you could not use third-degree manslaughter except as if a person were threatening a group. But do you know when that became a different precedent in the state of Minnesota? When Muhammad Noor, a black police officer, killed that white woman in Minnesota.

And that's why Derek Chauvin could be charged with it because that black man shot a white woman. You go into jail. Ask yourself, how many black cops killing white people out here? That's as far as you need to go in this analysis. Folks, today the police officer in Tennessee who shot and killed a 17-year-old black student inside his high school, they released the body

cam footage in that particular case. It has been very traumatic. His family did not want the body cam footage released. Again, trigger warning to those who, you know, give me about 10 seconds if you want to turn away and not see this particular video. But we want to be able to show we've been talking about it. It's another one of these examples. So let's go ahead and roll it All right. DA Charm Allen broke down all of the body cam footage to explain why she concluded Officer Jonathan Claybo was justified in firing two shots at Anthony Thompson Jr. Authorities decided to release the body cam footage showing the events leading up to and

what happened on April 12th inside the Austin East High School bathroom. Now, this incident all started because Thompson's girlfriend told her mom that he assaulted her. This is some of the 911 call. Sorry, I have some issues there. And so again, that was the case that took place there in Tennessee. Now, in California, for the first time in Contra Costa County history, the D.A.'s office has charged a county sheriff's deputy, Andrew Hall, with felony counts of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a semi-automatic weapon for family shooting. Arboleta on November in November 2018. Arboleta was shot nine times as he tried to drive his vehicle between two police vehicles. If convicted, Hall faces up to 20 plus years in prison and would be barred from working in law enforcement ever again. Now, Hall was Hall was cleared last month for killing a homeless man. Terrell Wilson was jaywalking, wielding a knife and reportedly throwing rocks at cars.

But now he is going to face trial in this particular case here. And, of course, in Minnesota today, it was a sad day as the family of Daunte Wright laid him to rest. He was a black motorist who was killed by police. Friend's family, including relatives of George Floyd and Oscar Grant, gathered at shallow tip of international ministries in Minneapolis to pay their respects. Congressman Ilhan Omar presented Dante's mother a flag that flew over the Capitol on behalf of right. And so it was quite the emotional day. It is. There were some comments that I saw.

They talked about all of the death that we have to experience. In fact, I was there was someone had posted a comment in a chat group that I'm a member of, and they said this, and it was very interesting. They said, my, oh, my, how good are we at burying our people? We've had way too much practice. How do we deal with and confront the black mental health when it comes to these issues in terms of this what is some called secondary trauma? We're doing this right now. Out of Ohio is attorney and mental health advocate Corey Minor Smith. Corey, glad to have you in Roller Mountain Unfiltered. Speak to that issue in terms of dealing with these fundamental problems of people seeing this,

how we have to give trigger warning before we show video on here. People have to do the exact same thing. Instagram actually sets it to where before you can actually see some content, you can label it to give people an opportunity not to have to watch it. Yes, it's very important to have those opportunities to turn away. For many of us, it's just generational trauma in and of itself compounded with everything that we're seeing in present time and even yesterday. And I just want to take this opportunity to

extend my condolences to Makaya Bryant's family and the Columbus community. This is all very traumatic for us. As we continue to observe, as we continue to hear. It's like an inoculation of trauma every time we see something, every time we hear something. And then you have to hear or maybe you're engaging in the discourse centered around all of these different instances that we're seeing almost daily, where people like us, black people, brown people, people of color are being killed without weapons. Even if they are innocent, they are being killed. And especially for our children, it's important for us to take the time to talk to them about these incidents because they are seeing people that are of their same age or around their age who are being killed by law enforcement. So it's a very scary situation. And many times we just need to stop and turn off the social media and turn off the news and use that opportunity to love up on our family members

and take the time to really, truly engage in discussions with our loved ones about the things that we're experiencing through secondary trauma. So how do we deal with it? Because there was a comment I just see right now. Zeta Jones on YouTube says, we haven't dealt with it, we're just coping. Right. So we need to, as especially in the black community, to embrace the opportunities to engage in counseling.

There's a lot of stigma associated with mental health and for sure to go out to receive treatment from a counselor or a therapist or a psychiatrist or to rely on medications. So it's important for us as a community to embrace opportunities to engage in counseling and to take the opportunity to, you know, incorporate that in our religious beliefs as well. So it doesn't make you less than a Christian because you rely on outside sources other than prayer and leaving your issues at the altar. But these things are very real, even if they're not happening to us. But for many of us, we've had these things

happen in our own families. And so it's important that we take the opportunity to address it individually and collectively. And so with that, I mean, obviously, you know, we can do that as individuals. It's very easy to say turn it off when in fact we people are living, I mean, you know, it's ubiquitous, these devices. And so we talk about talking with children about it.

What do we say? Are there any other tools that can be provided to help people? Yes, absolutely. I encourage people to look into community organizations like NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, that has a lot of resources available for free. There's the opportunity to call 1-800 numbers that are confidential and free and available 24-7. But personally, as a mother, I have two sons and both of them have had their individuals that they personally identify with and felt the fear. As a mother, I couldn't truly understand their fear, but they expressed it the best that they could. So when I'm talking about talking to children, I'm talking to them in real terms that they can understand and helping them to cope with their feelings. As parents or loved ones of children, we may not be able to do it alone, but we can go with our child to talk to a counselor so that they can feel free and opening

up and expressing how they feel. It may not be easy, but the first step is for the caregiver to sit the child down and just listen and take the opportunity to try to understand how the child is feeling and then work together to have coping mechanisms that the children can use when they're not in your presence or when you all are together. So for example, my youngest son, he was around, he is around the age and would have been Tamir Rice if he was still alive. And when he heard of Tamir Rice's death, my son did not want me to pick him up from his grandmother's house, which was literally down the street. But he was so fearful of the police that day that he literally begged me not to come and pick him up from his grandmother's house.

He asked me, why do they hate us so much? He said that, you know, they would pull us over and kill us. And that was his fear. That was his thought. So I couldn't immediately tell my son, no, don't feel that way. You don't have to feel that way. But as a mother hearing his words, I had to listen to what he had to say and then help him to navigate through how he was feeling and then offering that opportunity for him to talk to a professional if he chose to

do so. So our children know way more than we know. Of course, I wouldn't have wanted him to see the videos, but he did. It's easily accessible to all of us and especially our children. My oldest son directly identified with Trayvon Martin, and he felt scared to just go to his grandmother's house on the bus. And he notified or he advised me or warned me that he might not come home. And I didn't understand what he meant. But he told me Trayvon Martin was just going to the store and he never came home. I'm going to grandma's house on the bus, but I might not come home. And that's a very, very real feeling.

And it's scary as a parent to hear that because you don't know what you can do. And it's very little you can do when your child is not in your presence. Corey, Myron Smith, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Greg, Carl, I want to start with you. How do you deal with this in your students, your class? Because surely this comes up. Well, I think Attorney Smith is right. The first thing that I try to do is remind them that this is a safe space. It's one of the reasons that they chose coming to a black college. That's number one. And then, as she said, I listen, but I listen with an ear that is attuned as a black man to the fact that we experience this trauma in ways that make us internalize our true feelings.

And so what I found over the years, I guess now over 25 years of teaching between Ohio State Temple and now Howard, class is close to 30, what I found is that when we are comfortable and when we have our conversations with each other, if we can let go of that fear, what comes out is the rage. What comes out is the anger. And sometimes it has to be triggered with a prompt. So my hip hop class, for example, when we get to the part now in the early 90s, we start talking about gangster rap. So I'll play, fuck the police, coming straight from the underground. Young brother got it bad because I'm brown. They think they have the authority to kill a minority. But see, I ain't the one for a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun to be beaten on. I said, no, what do y'all think about

that? What comes out is the anger. See, because where that trauma breeds is fear. And we often respond to the fear by somehow reinforcing the idea that we can't stand up straight and express what we think. And I think that is the thing that cripples us, because when you let go of that fear, when you're in a comfortable space, that's when you can begin to address your full humanity. Not only should we be enraged, we should be comfortable in sitting in the feeling that if you come for me, if I can't even do it, I fantasize about killing you before you kill me. And I can say that out of my mouth, stand up straight and not worry about any white lash because I'm in a black space. That's why I chose to work in a black institution. And any Negro that thinks somehow that's an inappropriate response. I tell them very simply, look in the mirror and deal with your fear. Don't be scared. Free yourself. Omar Congo, how do you confront this in your classroom?

This is amazing hearing Dr. Carr speak on this because I am in the exact opposite situation teaching at American University where the majority of my students are white. And I've had situations where I've had students ask me to share, have a disclaimer before I would show some of these videos when I would show them in earlier times. And I said, it's very interesting. We talk about a disclaimer, but for us, it's every day on loop. We can't escape these videos. We have to work intentionally to try to escape these things. And so number one, you're asking to have, you know, your emotions be protected, which I respect, but how do we put into a place where you're respecting our emotions? And then I asked them another question. I tell them every time I see one of these videos, depending on who it is, I see myself, family member, friend, sister,

parent, brother, whatever. Do you see yourself or anybody else in your family or in your friend group in these videos that you see? And the overwhelming majority of them will say no. And I tell them that's the problem. Your inability to humanize us in the way you humanize your own community is why these situations will continue to happen. You won't see them. You will assume the knowledge that the mindset of, well, they must have done something. You know, police are always right. My dad's a cop. My aunt was in the military. And therefore, and I know they're good. And we do the work by the end of the semester to break that. And many of the students who come through my class, they end up seeing what we're talking about and they come out being advocates for the things that we're talking

about tonight. But they're not coming in with that knowledge and with those emotions. And so it's a lot of work to get them there, but it's worthy work because we're going to also need them in this fight as well. Final comment, Amisha Cross. So I'm most, I'm concerned across the board, but I think I'm most concerned when it comes to K through 12 students because they don't have the privilege of having a doctor car in the classroom. Ninety seven percent of K through 12 students, black students across this country are taught by white women. So at the end of the day, they don't have someone who is an empowering advocate in front of them, you know, reinstilling or talking about this in a way that can help them not be afraid, in a way that can help them not push towards anger, in a way that can help them focus their energy. They have teachers in front of them who honestly don't see the plight, in many cases do not care, and aren't even having the conversations like we're having or even,

you know, on a smaller scale in their classrooms. We're also acknowledging the fact that a lot of the victims of police brutality do happen to be children of color. We're talking about your Trayvon Martins. We're talking about your—we're talking about a lot of—we're talking about what we just saw happen in Ohio. We're talking about what we saw with Laquan McDonald in Chicago. We have seen time after time where K-12 young people are losing their lives to white supremacy, and they don't have an outlet.

They don't have counselors in the majority of these schools that are predominantly African American. And in many cases, the counselors that they do have don't want to talk about police brutality. So this is a case for me where my great concern is what are we doing for the K through 12 students? What are we doing for the students who don't have that pillar in the classroom that can have those conversations? What are we doing for those students who are living in fear, not because of what's going on in their communities, but because they know that

this protect and serve mantra does not affect them. That protect and serve obviously means that in many cases, their Black bodies are the things that are the most brutalized. Their Black bodies are the things that police officers happen to be afraid of for whatever reason. And I think that we have to really take that into consideration because in our public schools, school resource officers, SROs, are funded at much higher rates than our counseling services are for these young people. So they are left too thin for themselves.

All right, folks, we will leave it there. We have a shortened show today because I have to literally give a keynote speech to the Alphas at Kansas State University. And so I've got to do that literally right now. So, Omicongo, Amisha and Greg Carr, I certainly appreciate y'all being with us, folks. If y'all want to support what we do here at Roland Martin Unfiltered, please do so by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show. It allows for us to continue doing things like building our OTT app so you don't have to worry about watching solely on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter as well.

So simply, go to our cash app, dollar sign RM Unfiltered. You're also PayPal.me forward slash RMartinUnfiltered. Of course, Venmo.com forward slash RMUnfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com or Roland at RolandMartinUniltered. Of course, Venmo.com forward slash R M unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at Roland S Martin.com or Roland at Roland Martin unfiltered.com. All right, folks, that is it. I certainly appreciate it.

Thank you so very much. Again, we're building something great. I've been on the phone last couple of days. Our OTP platform is coming along very, very well. And so that's going good. But let's do this here. Don't forget, my six-part series on Intergenerational Conversation on Facebook is going to launch on Monday. Here's a preview of our first conversation between Dr. Janetta B. Cole and activist Tiffany Law.

People our age have lost the ability to focus the discipline on the art of organizing. It takes all of y'all to represent your generation. The African proverb says, the young go fast, the elders know the way. That is so freaking dope. What a powerful combination. The challenges, there's so many of them, and they're complex. And we need to be moving to address them. But I'm able to say, watch out, Tiffany.

I know this girl. Like you said, giving folks the wisdom and we can go fast together, it happens in a lot of spaces. I don't think it happens enough. All right, folks, don't forget that conversation taking place on Monday. That's it for me. I'll see you guys tomorrow right here on Roller Martin.

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