The Daily Beast Podcast - Sister of Black Mom Shot by Secret Service: It’s a Cover Up

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

Retired NYPD sergeant Valarie Carey joins today’s bonus episode along with Adell Coleman, co-host and executive producer of the podcast Say Their Name, to talk about her sister Miriam Carey, who was shot by law enforcement 26 times when she drove into a restricted zone outside of the U.S. Capitol. Plus, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy talk about why Ted Cruz is full of crap about vaccines—no one is hugging him as much as he says they are—and listen to clips of Don Jr. defending his dad, whom he weirdly calls “Trump.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another weekend edition of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for joining us. Today we have a special episode where we're going to talk to Adele Coleman.

Co-host and executive producer of the podcast, Say Their Name, which tells stories of families who've been impacted by a negative experience with a police officer. Also, join us will be retired in NYPD Sergeant Val Carrey. She's going to talk about her sister Miriam Carey's death in the much-needed conversation on how policing impacts families when it goes wrong. But first, let's have some fun. My Jung Fast, Andy Levy, you ready to listen to some exciting clips and have some fun? Yeah, man. Yes, let's go. We're not going to have fun, though.

But yes, continue. I'm going to have fun. Oh, he's being for yourself. Up first, we have pod favorite Lion Ted Cruz. And he's at a meeting with the DC. truckers, he has some things to say. Area Canadian. Flight attendants.

Every week, I fly back and forth to Houston. Almost without exception, every time I'm on an airplane, either the captain or a flight attendant will come up to me, will hug me and say thank you for fighting for us. Because I'll tell you, United Airlines, sadly Houston's a hub of them, has

fired thousands of pilots and flight attendants. What difference does it make? We're in the district. to Columbia right now their mandates affecting kids in D.C. This is wrong. You know how many people at United Airlines fired because of the vaccine mandate? How many? 232 employees.

But that's not what he said. Out of 67,232. I don't know math. If I did know math, I would tell you that that's a very small percentage. Is it possible that all the hugs that he, by the way, absolutely. really did get. Is it possible that some of them were so strong that they cut off the blood to his head? I'm just telling you that if I were a senator who had a video of me trying to hug my wife, Heidi, and accidentally elbowing her in the face, I'm sure you've seen that video because everyone

has seen that video. I would not be bringing up hugging in a public forum. I would just like sit it out, right? Like you are a person who is unable to hug. we have seen videotape of this. Like, let it go, man. Just the idea that he would get up there and say that untold numbers of people have hugged him, you almost have to admire it because it's so blatantly and brazenly untrue. I mean, it's completely unbelievable. Like, there's nobody who watched that, who nodded along with that.

Like, I don't care what your political ideology is. I don't care if you agree with Ted Cruz 100%. I don't care if you're related to Ted Cruz. You know that's not true. Even like really Republican Republicans don't like Ted Cruz. I mean, I want to go back to like the immortal words of one Al Franken, right? Like nobody likes Ted Cruz. Yeah.

Well, to follow up on that, there's sadly video that the Wisters can't see, but, you know, Ted went to the trucker convoy. They're keeping their distance. almost giving him six feet of space even though they don't believe in vaccines. And I want you to hear what he said there. Senator, do you believe the vaccine has saved lives? Look, I hope so. I'm not a doctor. You know what? Why would you take medical advice for me? I wouldn't take medical advice from me. I'm not in the business of giving medical advice. Go talk to your physician if you want to figure out whether you should take the vaccine or not. I hope we have good doctors and good scientists that are figuring that out. And I'm sure we're going to be

debating and looking at the effects. I mean, Dr. Oz is a doctor. I'm not taking his advice. So in that clip, he's saying, don't take medical advice for me. In the first clip, he was talking about how mask mandates are bad. Yes. Anyone else with me on this? There's a problem here?

Well, that was a day before. Oh, it wasn't the same day. Okay. Okay. If it wasn't the same day, it doesn't count. Okay, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would hate to consider Ted Cruz to be a fish microwaving hypocrite.

By the way, I assume that he thinks, since he's not in the business of giving medical advice, I assume that he thinks abortion should be between a woman and her health care provider, right? That's got to be true. Yeah, sure he thinks that. It has to be. I mean, it has to be. Obviously, yeah, yeah. So turning the table to a man who once called Ted Cruz's wife ugly,

and Mr. Trump was on the Nelk Boys podcast. I'm sure you two listen to the Nelk Boys podcast every week. Every day. Yeah, we're regular Nelk Boys. Can you just explain to us what the Nelk Boys are for those of us, like us, who don't know what you're talking about? So as a fellow YouTuber, just like the Nelk Boys, my colleagues in the business, they do pranks where they, for example, take a Bigfoot expert out on an expedition to find Bigfoot, and then they dress somebody. up as Bigfoot and scare the Bigfoot expert and get them very excited. So their new prank is Donald Trump.

The one thing is, is they've been to some Trump rallies before they've actually sang the beloved Trump rally anthem YMCA, definitely not a gay pride song with him before. And they talked about it on the podcast. Would you guys like to hear? Are they Republicans? Well, they're Canadians. So the answer is no? I watched this whole thing last night because I hate myself.

This is that thing where you don't really have an ideology because you're braids. doesn't function well enough to have one. I think they're just psyched to be around a guy they think is cool. Which, by the way, Jesse, that's why I do this podcast. Same, Andy, same. So the recount made a video of the highlights in 32 seconds. I'd love for you guys to hear some of this and see what you think. President of the United States, the windmills, they don't work.

If they kill all the birds, who's coughing back there? Are you okay? You can be Mike Addie any time. You sure, all right, cool. Anytime. During, you know, over our lives, we take. tests and aptitude tests and all this. I've always had a high aptitude for music. I picked the ones I like. YMCA, the gay national anthem. No, we don't want anything to do with Russia. They took over Georgia.

And I don't mean Georgia that we all know and love. You're young, you're smart, you're attractive, you're handsome. Here's a test. Are you ready? Joe Rogan's not a racist. What's the test? I want him to give me the test. I mean, the problem with him is you listen him and you think, I mean, this is how he got elected. He's a fucking idiot and he's a racist moron, but he's a little bit charismatic. So you listen to that thing and you think, like, you know, I don't want him to be my president, but, you know,

it's like with W, uh, W, you know, he has a certain kind of charisma, which as terrible as he is and moronic. I mean, I think that, uh, you know, you see it there. Am I right or am I gas led? So you're saying he's a perfect podcast guest? He's a pretty good guest. I'm actually thinking like there are so many stupid, psychotic Republicans who make great podcast guests. But speaking of podcast guests, Mal you and I were talking about this a little earlier.

I do think that we need, I don't know that we need Joe Biden and Kamala Harris going on some of these idiot podcasts, but it would be nice to see the Rokanas and the Elizabeth Warrens who are good messengers for the left clause. Talking to some of the people encountering some of these idiots going on these type of things. Yeah. What do you guys think of that? You mean like Bernie going on Joe Rogan? That kind of thing? I thought that was a good move for him.

Wait, I think Bernie went on Joe Rogan. He did. No, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying like that. No, I mean, look, Democrats should for sure be doing more stuff going on more media, going to places where historically only Republicans have gone in. And, I mean, there's some, I read some reporting that Democrats sometimes watch Fox News, you know, the media ecosystem doesn't need to be as siloed as it is if Democrats

would go on some of those shows. The problem is you don't want to like enable like a place like one of those very far right networks or even, for example, like there's a huge, Alex Jones got a huge bump having Trump on. So like you don't want a Roe Cona sort of enabling a far right network or giving them content. So, I think it's a tough choice, right? And, I mean, it gives a lot of legitimacy to Joe Rogan to have Bernie Sanders on. Yeah. My thing would be going on these influencer podcasts that are clearly talking to young people who are having their ideologies shaped.

That might be the better move than, say, going on the fascist podcast. Right. But Joe Rogan is a similar problem, right? Like you have, he's got millions of listeners, but he says some pretty destructive stuff. And if Bernie Sanders goes on that, then is Bernie Sanders condoning some of that behavior that I think is the larger question. Well, I mean, I think the answer to that is no. He's not condoning it, but. He can then say it's good, right, credibility.

Yeah, no, no, no, exactly, exactly. And I agree with you that it's a really tough call. and I honestly don't know what the answer is. Like, I was, I know people, there were people who were mad when Bernie went on Rogan, and there were people who were basically saying what Jesse is saying. It's like, hey, you got to get the message out. And they said the same thing when Bernie went on Fox News. I kind of agree with the get the message out part.

Like, I do think it's for Democratic candidates to go on Fox News, I think is fine. I think maybe there are certain shows you don't go on. Unfortunately, they're the highest rated shows. I think it's a tough call. It's one of those things where I sort of, I see both sides of, it and like I have no problem with Bernie doing it and then I understand like if someone else said well I don't want to that's I don't want to do that because I don't want to be an enabler I understand that too I think that really it really is a tough call but I do think every candidate should go talk to the knellk boys

the delk boys forum is the new Iowa caucus exactly I still don't know who they are and I would love to not make them more famous. Though I guess having Trump on makes them more famous. But why don't we turn the tables to a less charismatic member of the family, one Don Jr. Because he wants to talk about why his father is always cuddling up to those authoritarian. I can't believe Trump said something nice about Putin, Kim, he, anyone. He must love them. He's folding to them. If it was me in charge, I tell him to go screw themselves. right? This is some nerd in his mom's basement who's never dealt with anything, never actually had any power, never understood those people because he's never been in the same room as

him. In academia, they're writing this stuff. Like, it's real. Like, they actually have a say, like they actually know what the hell they're talking about. Do you ever think that, like all other things, maybe Trump understood that. He knew exactly how to play these guys. And he played it like a fiddle. First of all, he calls his dad Trump. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think anyone thinks that Trump knew how to handle these guys, and he played them like a bill. Like, I'm not even sure Trump thinks that.

I do think Trump thinks that. I do, actually. I absolutely do think Trump thinks that. But yeah, Don Jr., man, like, what's up? Let's talk about someone who needs a hug. He seems like he needs a lot of things these days. Boy, and he thinks like he needs to lay off some of the other things. I mean, I was thinking about this with the Kim Kardashian video where she says, you just got to work, man, you got to work.

There should be somebody in these people's lives who say, you know, maybe you was billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars should not go. Having been born to an extremely wealthy family and publishing a sex tape, perhaps you are not the person to tell the American people that they should be doing more work. Isn't there someone in Kim Kardashian's life to be like, you know, that might not play so well in Peoria? Well, unfortunately, it's not the mother who shopped the sex tape for her to go to face. But with Don Jr., like, he's sitting there in the living room in his bookless house where there are no books on any of the bookshelves. He's cutting these videos. I mean, isn't Kimberly there? Like, isn't she like, maybe you wouldn't want to post this one, honey?

Maybe we could do one more take or now. Okay, first of all, Don Jr. might have a Kindle. Solid point, Andy. Yeah, I don't. As a Kindle user myself, I don't like to be judged by my bookcase. This is not SpanCon. Yes, continue. The thing is, it's very easy to tell which people have eliminated those kinds of people from their lives.

You know, the kinds of people who say to them, ah, you shouldn't do that. Right. It's really easy to tell. look, there are, I won't name names, but, you know, there are people I used to work with who I think are kind of like that now. But no, I mean, that you're right. Ideally, if you're in any kind of position of power or authority, the first thing you do is hire someone who doesn't agree with you all the time or who knows you and can stop your worst instincts. But none of these people will

ever do that because for as much as they like to parade around like a bunch of alpha males, what they really are is weak and weak people don't like to be disagreed with. They don't like it when people tell them they're not right. So those are the kinds of people who immediately get rid of anyone in their life that might pose a threat to their well-being, you know, i.e., thinking that they're always right. This has been Dr. Andy's Corner. Adele Coleman is the co-host and executive producer of Say Their Name. Val Carey is the sister of Merriam Carey and a retired NYPD sergeant. Adele, can you start off just telling us a little bit about Say Their Name?

Sure, yes. So Say Their Name is a podcast, co-host, an executive produced by myself and Chris Coburt, distributed by DCP Entertainment. We wanted to create a space where we feature families to be able to share their stories of someone that they lost due to a negative police encounter. We thought it was important to highlight these stories, not just necessarily coming from the actual incident, but really learning about who these people and families were. We think that the communities have been impacted, direct loved ones have been impacted,

friends have been impacted, and we don't really hear that, unfortunately, in the day-to-day news coverage or social media hashtags and everything. And we think it's important to memorialize these loved ones. So that's what we utilize, say their name for. We give the families a platform to be able to share with us anything and everything they would like to about who the person was before the incident and how their family and community and loved ones have been impacted since the answer that. One of the families that we got a chance to speak to was the family of Miriam Carrie, her sister, Vow. We visited her in New York and got to really hear intimate details about her love for her sister and her whole family and how they loved each other and their special

connections to the butterfly and just all the work that she's doing and the sacrifice that Vow has made in the name of her little sister. So with that, I want to go to introducing Vow. Hey, Val. Hi, Adele. I'm glad you were able to join us today. I want to just kind of go to you a little bit and feel free to share a little bit about who you are and more about Miriam as well. My name's Val Carey. I'm a Brooklyn night. I'm a retired New York City Police Sergeant. I'm also the sister of Miriam Carey, who was killed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. Capitol Police and U.S. Uniform Secret Service Police. unjustifiably. I know the inner works of policing and I know about law enforcement and I know about protocol and to have my sister unjustifiably killed by law enforcement and me being a retired sergeant. It's very difficult, needless to say, just to have a loved one period killed. But coming from my background and the knowledge that I have, just how the whole incident occurred and the subsequent

events surrounding the cover-up of my sister's death is unsettling. And we still are seeking justice for my sister. It must be so hard to sort of know how the investigation is supposed to go, right, by the book and then to have this experience. Can you talk about that? It is difficult. And because I do know how investigations should go and how things should happen. While it has been a difficult eight years, I know justice delayed is not justice denied, and there is no statute of limitations on murder, and my sister was murdered. One of the things I think, Fow, people often discredit voices from talking about this as they say, you don't understand policing when people say that they need to reform the ways of police. Can you talk about the ways police could actually look

within themselves instead of just defend themselves all the time? I don't necessarily talk about reform per se, but in each department is different. I think that there should be some sort of unilateral training across the country that ties in together as far as in regards to what you're saying as far as looking into themselves because, and this is so broad, because you have different aspects of policing and the individuals who do take the badge as with any profession, officers are people. And I think that the vetting process should be one that is a little bit more stringent. And then there is training that is done. And I know I can speak from the department that I come from. We have sensitivity training and training along the lines of verbal judo and how to deal with

the public at large. Some agencies do not require their personnel to come from the cities that they're policing. So they may not necessarily be of that demographic of the communities that they're policing and may not necessarily know the cultures of that particular community. And so sometimes things can occur based off of the lack of that knowledge. But to speak overall, I mean, there's so many, there's so many things that we could talk about. But in regards to my sister's case, I feel that those officers that pursued my sister that shot upon her car 26 times while having her 13-month-old baby in the car did not exert self-control, did not assess the situation properly. It is my belief that they did not respond to commands from the watch commander, which the family and the public has yet to hear the police radio transmissions to hear whether or not that that pursuit was called off.

And all of these things would be great to know, but there is an active cover-up since the names of the officers have yet to be named and there was no grand jury in the case of my sister's death. I'm so sorry. I mean, I just, I can't even imagine how hard this is. I'm sorry. Val, I have a question. So a lot of the time when people talk about the cultural differences in community policing, I feel like people are very ignorant about that part of this, about why that matters. Could you explain that a bit to us? I think it matters for so many different reasons. I'm going to take a situation here locally in New York City. If you come from a community outside in New York City, whereas you didn't live, let's say, perhaps, in a part. project and you don't know the culture of the residents to sit on the bench in front of the building. You may consider that as loitering, but that front bench is considered what you is equivalent to what one would consider one's backyard. It is important to know the cultures and the natures of different neighborhoods and different people. There's other examples I could

probably no. Well, that was very good. What would be a way you felt that there was some amount of justice for your sister? Obviously, there can never be justice, really. Well, to begin with, accountability begins with acknowledgement, and it begins with identifying the names of the officers that were involved in my sister's death. It involves transparency. It involves those. that were culpable to be held accountable for their actions. No one has had to explain their actions. How do you shoot an unarmed woman in the back multiple times?

There's no justification for that. Agreed. One of the more troubling things I saw when reading up on this was that there was all these people who took your sister into their conspiracy theories. Can you talk about how that affected your family? I'm not going to highlight more about the conspiracy theories, but whatever theories there were may have, in some people's eyes, taken away from the facts of the case. It's disturbing to me because in this day and age now with the internet, things that go online, they can just live there in perpetuity. and my sister left behind a daughter, a little girl, my niece,

who will not get to know the essence of who her mother truly was. And so some people do not have the ability to discern what's factual. You know, some people read things for face value. And so it may not necessarily tell the, true story of who my sister was or what actually happened to her. How is your niece? She's as fine as can be. She's alive, thankfully so.

Oh, I'm so sorry. Is there anything that you like to impart to other families who've experienced things like this that is helpful to them? Okay, so no one has actually written a rulebook. It is my hope that other families do not have to find out about their loved ones being killed on national television by reporters calling them. One thing I can say is that there is a notification protocol, whether it's intercity department to notifications, correspondences. Those proper notifications were not made to myself nor to my family.

I, along my mom and my sister, we all received phone calls from various reporters to notify us of my sister's killing. And I actually, on the day that my sister was killed, I was preparing for an event that I was hosting. So I wasn't paying attention to the television. I actually didn't even have it on. And I received multiple phone calls from what appeared to be the D.C. area. And then I did receive some more. And I didn't answer any of the calls because they weren't registered in my phone. But the one particular call that I did answer came from a 203 area call. And at the time, my sister was living in Connecticut. So I thought it may have been her. And it was a reporter who started to question me as to the type of vehicle my sister was

driving. And so I asked him, you know, what's this line of questioning? And where's this going? And he said to me, obviously, you haven't been watching the news. Turn your TV on to see. CNN. And I turned the TV onto CNN and I saw the footer that was running on the TV saying, stating suspect killed. I did see an officer carrying whom I believed to have been my niece. I saw a vehicle that I believed to have been my sister's vehicle. And this is how I first became aware that something dreadful may have happened to my sister. So to answer your question, I would want families to, and it's hard in that moment, to kind of gather yourself when you're being told,

whether the story's breaking on live TV or whether you're being called by the police to inform you of the situation. If you have great counsel, if you have clergy, you know, surround yourself with great people. one thing I would definitely say do not within the waking hours and in the aftermath you know pay attention to it's hard to say that

because I got caught up for months and actually even years to say going down rabbit holes on social media defending my sister's honor on the things that people were trying to say about her and people who don't even know who she is or was It's just interesting because some people who are on social media really are not well. And then there are some people who just want to jump on what's trending.

And so it's like, let me see how many comments I can get. And so the things that can be said on social media can be hurtful. And you have to definitely take time out. Self-care. Make sure that you're taking time for yourself while you're in the pursuit of justice. for your loved one. That's something I would partake. That's really great.

I just, like I said, I really enjoy talking to you and really meeting officially as much as one can, Miriam, through you and all of your stories that you share with us. I would love it if you could share another one of your stories or maybe even something you share with us so that people could truly understand who Miriam was and is in spirit.

We don't have time to really share all that encompassed to Miriam was, I am and was Miriam's older sister by seven years. And so there was a bit of an age gap there. Miriam looked up to me and I was really thankful and happy to have a younger sister that looked up to me and valued my opinion on things. she was beautiful aesthetically outside and inside. Growing up, she would take some of my personal items, which I can laugh about now. When Miriam decided to study in the field of dentistry, I recall being one of her patients that she had to work on.

And I just, you know, my sister really enjoyed being with us, her sisters, not just me. the Amy. Most of the time it was the three of us, Amy, marrying myself. But I enjoyed doing things like walking, dressed up, and taking part of the New York City Halloween parade. Like we became a part of the parade and going to Fright Night and Great Adventures. And we would do parties at each other's houses. I would do a Kwanza party. She would do a New Year's Eve party. And one of, there are so many, so many memories, so many good memories. Holidays, of course, we all convened over at my mom's house. But one of the more endearing memories that I hold, I hold to my heart,

and I honor my sister each year on her birthday and on her death day. Because I choose to remember her as the vibrant, loving person that she was. and how she lived her life, then to think about the horrific way that she was killed. But on one particular family outing, my sisters and I, we drove up to Niagara Falls with the kids. We went to a butterfly conservatory,

and the butterflies, they were just landing on Miriam and Amy. And I love butterflies, so they weren't landing on me, but they were landing on them. And I captured some great photos of them. and some really pretty butterflies that were landing on Marion. So each year on her birthday and on her death day, I release monarch butterflies and her memory because she's no longer with us,

but she holds a place. And I think of her as a butterfly. Avile, do you still have the petition going? Can we share that if you're comfortable? Yeah, I do still have the petition going. It's on Change.org. I never closed it out, but they can always connect to that petition through the website of www.

justice for Miriamcarry.com, and that's the number four. Or they can go to change.org and they can type in Justice for Miriam Carrey, and they'll be able to find the petition there as well. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, and thank you for allowing me to amplify this complaint. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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