- 1 day ago
- #georgefloyd
- #breonnataylor
We’re talking about justice, police brutality and more with the attorney who is fighting on the front lines for #georgefloyd and #breonnataylor.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Good morning, Essence family. Over the last several weeks, we've witnessed several Black
00:12deaths in our community, from Breonna Taylor to the recent killing of George Floyd. Both have
00:18resulted in civil unrest, and today we're here with the family attorney for Breonna and George,
00:23Attorney Benjamin Crump. Thank you for joining us this morning, Attorney Crump. For those who
00:29aren't familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit about your background and the type of cases you
00:35handle? Certainly. I'm so very honored to be talking with you in the Essence family. I'm Attorney Ben
00:42Crump. I'm a national civil rights lawyer. I've had the honor of fighting for justice in the way of my
00:50personal hero, Thurgood Marshall, fought for our community and our culture in the 1950s all the
00:57way to the time of his death. I've represented the families of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in
01:04Sanford, Florida in 2012, Michael Brown, who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, Tamir Rice,
01:12who was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, and so many people. I represented Janie Liggins and 13 Black women that
01:21were raped in Oklahoma City by a white police officer, and because of us working zealously,
01:30we were able to get this police convicted and sentenced to 263 years in prison for assaulting
01:40women. Only Black women. Also, currently, I'm representing the family of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia,
01:48representing the family of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and George Floyd, who was tragically
01:57killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And so with that, I am cautiously optimistic that with your help, we're going to get
02:06justice for all three of these families we're currently working on. Ahmaud Arbery, Brunswick, Georgia,
02:14the young man who was jogging and killed by the father and son murderous duo, Breonna Taylor, who was executed in her
02:22own apartment after a botched, no-knock, I think unconstitutional and dangerous search warrant. She was completely
02:31innocent. And then, obviously, George Floyd. And the reason I say that, Aisha, is because we have,
02:40in the last three high-profile cases I've worked on, Botham Jones and Dallas, Texas, we got a conviction
02:47there, even though she was saying self-defense when the white policewoman, Amber Geiger, allegedly went
02:54into the wrong apartment. And then with Corey Jones, the church drummer, who was broke down on the side
03:01of the road at three o'clock in the morning, on the phone with the tow truck driver and an undercover
03:06police officer in plain clothes came in, had a white cargo ban, shot and killed Corey, and lied about it.
03:16But by the grace of God, he was on the phone with the tow truck company, and they recorded the
03:22conversation. An all-white jury convicted that police officer and sentenced him to 25 years in prison,
03:29the first time in 35 years that a police officer had been convicted of killing a black person in the
03:36state of Florida, and then Marquise McLaughlin, the young man who was killed by another white vigilante
03:44type trying to impose their will, said that they were in a handicapped parking spot, and the video
03:50surveillance captured him shooting Marquise McLaughlin in front of his three children, his five-year-old son,
03:58his three-year-old daughter, and his one-year-old son. And what was so heartbreaking and tragic about that
04:04video was at the convenience store door, his little son, Marquise Jr., reaches out for his father,
04:14and his father falls at his feet. And that's the last time his son would ever see his father alive
04:21again. Well, the jury, an all-white jury convicted him, didn't take his stand-your-ground defense,
04:29and he got sentenced to 25 years. So I'm cautiously optimistic. We together will get justice.
04:36Now, do you reach out to these families, or do they find you? What is the process as far as,
04:41you know, what cases do you pick? Or, you know, how do you field your cases?
04:47Well, unfortunately, we get dozens of calls a week by black and brown people who have suffered
04:56injustices at the hands of the very people who are supposed to protect and serve them.
05:02So I have a national law firm. I have 13 offices around the country. And we have a call center
05:10that constantly had mostly people of color calling, trying to get justice. And so in these cases,
05:18they call, and we can't take them all. What I look to do is look for two things. I look for cases that
05:26shocks my conscience that just said, we got to do something. I know we got way too much work,
05:33but we just got to help this family. Just like the call was Trayvon Martin's family. I said,
05:39we just got to help them. And then secondly, I think like Thurgood Marsha, I don't just take cases that
05:47will have an impact just on this particular individual or this particular family. I try to
05:53take cases that will have the greatest impact on greater society, like the Ahmaud Arbery case,
06:02like the George Floyd case, or like the rape case with the women cases that nobody gives attention
06:10until we get involved and give it attention. Remember Trayvon Martin, only one news outlet reported on
06:18Trayvon the night he was killed for 47 seconds. That was all his life was worth. And then the next
06:24interview wasn't until a week later where we got CBS, I mean begged and pleaded them. I called all my
06:32friends in the media saying, this kid was killed in Sanford, Florida. He was just walking home. He had
06:37a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. And they always said, what's significant about that, Ben?
06:42Why would we cover that? Black people get killed every day. But you take those cases because you
06:48know in your heart that it's the right thing to do. And then you use all your resources to make people
06:54care about these young people of color. And we're really proud because Trayvon did something many cases
07:01have never done before. It became the number one news story in the world in 2012, a young black kid.
07:10In the case of George Floyd, how is the family coping? And, you know, in addition to Breonna Taylor
07:19and Imad, how are those families coping? You know, you have families dealing with the coronavirus,
07:25and now you have families dealing with, you know, these deaths. How are they handling everything right
07:30now? You know, it's so deep when you say that because we're dealing with the coronavirus pandemic,
07:38but we as African-Americans, we also are dealing with a pandemic that we've had to deal with long
07:46before the coronavirus. And that's the pandemic of racism and discrimination. So when you asked about,
07:54Ayesha, when you asked about Joyce Brown family, who I'm actually about to have a call with the vice
08:00president and them for him to offer his condolences, Biden, that is, they are devastated because
08:09they can't unsee what they saw on that video. And the fact that the DA came out yesterday and
08:17killed George all over again, talking about there may be evidence that shows there was no crime
08:23committed. And we all saw the video with our own eyes. We saw this police officer who had his knee on
08:32his neck when he was face down with handcuffs. And he kept his knee for not just one minute, but two
08:41minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes, over eight
08:48minutes. He kept his knee on his neck while he was begging for him to take his knee off saying,
08:55I can't breathe. And I always say that in every interview, I count to eight minutes out for dramatic
09:00effect because people have to feel that sense of suffocating, not having breath to understand how tragic
09:11his death was. And that the police who was there to protect and serve him, who were trained to be
09:19professionals, offered him no humanity whatsoever. It was the people, the lay people trying to
09:28deescalate the situation and the police who were trained were escalating the situation. And when you
09:35look at that video, you conclude, but one thing, this was murder. We all can see it, but the DA is
09:43saying they don't have probable cause to arrest him yet because they haven't finished their investigation.
09:49And we won't let another Eric Gardner happen. And I know they said, you know, he died at the hospital.
09:58Do you think he took his last breaths right there on that ground? We do. We have retained Dr.
10:05Michael Bodden. Michael Bodden. We're going to have an independent autopsy performed. We would get
10:10possession of the body back today. And hopefully we will have our autopsy concluded at the end of this
10:18weekend. But we do believe he went unconscious right there on that street. And we're so horrific
10:29and sad. And it just makes you want to holler is the fact when you watch that tape and how hard it is to
10:36watch. But there's a woman out there, a lay person who claims to be an EMT. And she asked 16 times,
10:45can I just take his post to make sure he's not dead, that y'all aren't killing him. And you remember that
10:51police officer, he had the mace and he was holding everybody back. And you got to think they didn't
10:59even have humanity to make sure that the lady could see if he was alive. And all of that is going to come
11:06out in this trial. But it's evidence that they murdered him. And also the fact that he ended up
11:12urinating on himself to tell you that, you know, the medical crisis that he was already in.
11:19Now, over the last couple of days, there's been protests and riots in Minneapolis. And also in
11:28Breonna Taylor's hometown, they have also been protests as well. What do the families think
11:34about what's going on in those cities? Well, the families are thankful for the
11:39protesters using their voice to call and demand for justice for Breonna Taylor and for George Floyd.
11:47They make a plea for peace. They really don't want violence and looting or anything. However,
11:54they do understand that we in the black community have no peace. After watching that video, we cannot
12:02unsee what we saw. We witnessed the truth and the truth should equal justice, but they are not seeing
12:11the truth or they are trying to deny themselves seeing the truth. The police had that police report
12:19that came out before we saw the video that was just false information talking about he was threatening
12:25them that he posed. He was violent towards them. You don't see any of that in that video talking about
12:34that they had, they didn't mention one time about a knee in the neck. They said that he died of a medical
12:41condition. Not breathing. Not breathing. Yes, exactly. And then I got to say about Breonna Taylor,
12:48because I don't want her to get forgotten in all of this. Exactly. Please, please, please go listen to
12:54the 911 tape that just came out yesterday from her boyfriend, Kenny Walker. And they dropped the charges
13:00against him. Why was he originally charged anyway? He was originally charged, I believe,
13:06because they were conspiring to cover up because they knew they had executed an innocent black woman
13:13in her own apartment. Can you imagine your own apartment? You sleep at 1230, one o'clock at night,
13:20and then you hear somebody at your door. They don't identify themselves. They bust in the door. You're
13:27thinking you're being burglarized. Kenny Walker does what any, I believe, good man would do,
13:34try to protect his home, protect this woman, protect their lives. He's a registered gun owner,
13:40no criminal history whatsoever, gets the gun, and he files a warning shot at the door as these police
13:47officers come through in plain clothes. They haven't identified themselves there in plain clothes. And then
13:53the police just unloaded 25, 30 rounds. I mean, shooting from the front door, shooting from the
14:00window, shooting from the patio. They're so reckless that they shoot a bullet into the next door neighbors
14:08at that apartment where their five-year-old daughter is asleep in the room. I mean, it was just shooting
14:15blind into that apartment. And tragically, Aisha, Breonna Taylor is mutilated with bullet holes while
14:26she's in her underwear, eight bullets at least. And they didn't even have to come in her apartment
14:34because they had already had that person they were searching for in custody. And so we cannot forget our
14:42sister, Breonna Taylor. We got to say her name and demand justice, just like we're doing with George
14:46Floyd and Ahmaud Albrecht. The police chief resigned. They dropped the charges against Kenny because,
14:53you know, self-defense and don't work for us, Aisha. No, there's no such thing as stand your ground
14:59when you're black. Yeah. I mean, in your own house. I mean, the boys, the murderous duo,
15:05the father and son in Brunswick, killed Ahmaud Albrecht in bright daylight. Lynch, him got video
15:11of it. The police show up. They say self-defense and they're allowed to go home, sleep in their beds
15:16for over 10 weeks in peace. Kenny Walker called 9-1-1 saying, we believe we've been burglarized,
15:24somebody breaking in our house. The police, when they confront him, he said, we thought y'all were
15:29burglars. It was self-defense. They arrest him, take him to jail and charge him with attempted murder.
15:37And he was facing life in prison. And to us who care about justice, used our voices against the
15:45enemies of equality and say, you must free Kenny Walker. And that was a victory for us, but it's
15:51still a bittersweet victory because Brianna is gone. That was his love. And he had to watch her die.
16:00Now, going back to Minneapolis this morning, Donald, well, last night, Donald Trump
16:05called the protesters thugs. If there was one thing you can say to Donald Trump, what would that be?
16:12That is very interesting. He didn't call the armed white militia who went to the state
16:21house in Michigan. It's exercising their first amendment rights to free speech over that governor
16:30closing down the state because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, when black people go and try to
16:38exercise our first amendment constitutional rights to demand justice for George Floyd,
16:46we are hit with rubber bullets, tear gas, arrested, and the National Guard is called in.
16:57Why is it that when African Americans declare our constitutional rights, this president calls us
17:05anything but a child of God? There cannot be two justice systems in America, one for black America and
17:13one for white America. There has to be equal justice for the United States of America. And it's sad that our
17:20president is not putting that message out, that he's putting the divisive message out to be a dog
17:28whistle to his base. And finally, one last question. What resolution do you want to see out of your three
17:36cases right now? Obviously, we want these killers brought to justice and charged to the full extent of
17:45the law for killing unarmed black people in each one of these tragedies. These young people who had their
17:53whole lives ahead of them with Ahmad and Brianna, both 26 years old. Ahmad was 25, would have turned 26 and two
18:02months after he had died. And then certainly George Floyd, who has two young children, who has to go through
18:11this world now knowing that their father was taken from them. So it should be murder on each and every case,
18:19because that's what the facts and the evidence say. And the bigger picture is simply this. We have to
18:27the picture. Asked America, do you believe in Thomas Jefferson's words? Do you believe in the preamble to the
18:37Declaration of Independence? When it says we hold these truths to be self evident that we are all endowed with
18:48certain qualities from our creator inalienable rights amongst them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
18:56Do you believe that white America? Do you believe that? Because if you believe that,
19:04then you got to give equal justice to Maude Albrecht. You got to give equal justice to Brown and Taylor,
19:10and you got to get equal justice to George Floyd. Because if not, then you cannot say that we have equal
19:20justice to justice in 2020. Because if those would have been white citizens, and there were not arrests,
19:27it would be far worse than what's happening in Minneapolis.
19:33And on that note, I thank you for joining us this morning. And we'll touch base in a couple of weeks to get an update on your cases.
19:39I look forward to it. Thank you, Essence family. Thank you.
Comments