In an exclusive an interview with the victim of a nearly deadly encounter with a cop, Kevon Miller describes how the officer avoided jail time despite committing a crime that required a mandatory minimum sentence

Story Transcript

TAYA GRAHAM Welcome to the Police Accountability Report. I want you to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it privately to us at par@therealnews.com and please like, share and comment on our video. You know, I read your comments and I appreciate them.

You can follow the Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or @eyesonpolice at Twitter. And of course you can follow me directly at @tayasbaltimore on Facebook and Twitter. And I want to thank you for joining us for the first season of the Police Accountability Report. We are taking a short break but we will be back with a new show premiering on YouTube, December 5th.Thank you James. But please keep sending in your tips. We will still be reading them and we still need them. And I want to give a quick shout out to Nollie D who’s been a good friend to the show.

So as we’ve said before, and we will say again, the point of the show is to hold the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. Part of that process is examining the political forces that empower policing in a country inundated with it. Case in point is a story we are going to tell you today. A story that reveals just how above the law, law enforcement really is. It’s part of a political and cultural phenomena that has created the two tiered criminal justice system we’ve called out before. But this dual system of leniency for some and cruelty for others is not enforced simply by dictate. No, as we will see today, it isn’t part the result of the powerful tools of rhetoric that along with the complicity of mainstream media tells a story that justifies the stark imbalance of American policing. It makes a style of unjust, just as possible.

Remember as the Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, rhetoric is the process of making the worst appear the better cause. But in the realm of policing and law enforcement, that concept has been turned into a narrative akin to a religion. And what is the impact of this rhetoric on the psyche of our country? Let’s examine the past to understand the present. As we all know, one of the most pernicious policies in this country has been the war on drugs. For decades, police use the pretext of drug crimes to initiate illegal arrest, seize property, and disrupt poor communities. Stephen, we’ve discussed the special psychology of the war on drugs but it’s also bolstered by mythology, isn’t it?

STEPHEN JANIS Well, yeah. The mythology of the war and drugs is a mythology of the perniciousness of the object. You know, that possession of an object somehow was comported an entire spectrum of some sort of, you know, force or some sort of evil or in many ways the racialized animosity or the animosity of the other. But a lot of, and in the animosity against support and that object allowed the police to basically circumvent the civil rights of almost all of us.

And of course against that was the narrative that you saw in media and you saw in Hollywood films and everything that the impediment to somehow taming that object and the people who possessed it were the civil rights that had been granted to us through the constitution of the United States. It was a dual sort of narrative. This and the one hand embodying this object in any proximity to it is evil. And then the other hand, the only way to extinguish it is to violate the principles that this country was founded on. So it, it was really a way to make policing sort of the prime narrator of why some people weren’t deserving a political agency.

TAYA GRAHAM Right. It reminds me of that saying that someone who’s willing to deny liberty for the sake of security deserves neither.

STEPHEN JANIS Yeah.

TAYA GRAHAM So this constant reiteration that conditions like poverty, addiction and general malaise are the byproducts of a moral or personal failure while untrue, needs a social agent to make it real. And that agent as Steven discussed is policing. Policing is the mythmaking machine that equates poverty with moral failure and inequity is a byproduct of productive capitalism.

Think about it. How else could a government agency take billions of dollars of property without due process or take the freedom of tens of millions of people because they possess a substance or shoot and kill us over a car stop. How can these injustices be sustained without the rhetoric that accompanies it? The idea that police are in an existential struggle and under threat. It’s a narrative that is assembled, one illegal arrest at a time and of course to drive this point home even further, we have a story that reveals the true imperative of the so-called justice system. How it protects those who enforce it and how the so-called tough on crime laws aren’t predicated upon justice but are there to create a potent scarlet letter to wield against the victims of governmental overreach and neglect.

Case in point is a police misconduct story we referenced before. The conviction and sentencing of Baltimore police officer Michael Gentil. Gentil was convicted of using a handgun in the commission of a felony when he pointed a gun at our guest, Kevon Miller. And we will let Mr. Miller tell the story. Not just about the crime itself but what happened when it was time to mete out justice. Kevon, thank you so much for joining us.

KEVON MILLER Thanks for having me.

TAYA GRAHAM So first just tell us about your encounter with Officer Gentil. What happened?

KEVON MILLER Well, on the night in question, I was actually like taking a break from work. I was just going to, it was kind of cold out. So I was going to go get a hot coffee from the convenience store, not too far from ours. I meant from my job. After I got the tea, I’m walking up Monument Street. As I get towards Edison and Monument, I’m crossing the street. I’m like in the middle, what do they call it?

TAYA GRAHAM The crosswalk?

KEVON MILLER Yeah, like in the middle of the crosswalk. And as I’m getting ready to cross the street, a car comes turning the corner really fast and it almost hit me. So like as the car almost hit me, I’m trying to back up and it’s like, it’s a curve right behind me. So it’s like, all right, I kind of tripped over the curve and it’s like the momentum of my hand made the tea come out of my hand and it hit his car.

So he rolled up maybe about a hundred feet, if that. And he stopped his car and got out of his car and he said something that I really couldn’t hear. I’m like, basically like, you almost hit me with your car. That’s what I’m yelling to him back like, you couldn’t, you almost hit me with your car. But I’m still walking towards my job, crossing the street and he get out of his car. And there’s like two, maybe three seconds later after he get out of his car, he pulled out his gun. He pulled out his gun. He pointed at me and he started to walk me down. I got my hands in the air and he is steady coming close to me, like, what the fuck did you throw at my car? I’m sorry if I’m not.. [crosstalk 00:06:28]

TAYA GRAHAM It’s okay.

STEPHEN JANIS It’s okay. We’re just going to be on YouTube.

KEVON MILLER What did you just threw on my car? I’m like, man, this is almost hot tea. I mean this hot tea. You almost hit me with your car. So it’s like, you’re not hearing anything I was saying. It’s like, he is mad. So he keep asking me the same question over and over. What the fuck was that on my car, this, that and the third. And I keep repeating that it was hot tea and I keep repeating, you almost hit me with your car. So it was like, after that he’s getting closer to me now. He’s maybe your distance away from me. So that’s maybe like 10 feet. He was calling me a stupid as stupid. He called me and he started at [inaudible 00:07:06] started called, he called me a bunch of names, pretty much whatever you could and no book. And then next thing you know it, was like you stupid fucking nigger, turnaround, which I was already on the ground.

I had my hands up, he told me to sit on the ground. So I’m like sitting on a curve and he told me to turn around. So once I turned around, he told me to lay flat. So now I’m laid flat. I got my hand stretched out and it’s like my chin is on the ground and it’s like two seconds after that he kicked me and what the fuck was that on my car? So after that it was like boom, my heart, pressed against my head, which I knew he kicked me because once he did that, once he stomped my head, he busted open my chin. So after that I kind of like turned around and I’m like trying to sit on my butt. And as I’m sitting on my butt, I could see his foot pulling back. So I knew he kicked the back of my head while he stomped the back of my head.

And after he’d do that, I’m like, man, you just put your, like, what did, what, you just hit me? Like what was the point of that? And he was like, man, you threw something on my car. I’m like, man, it was tea. Again, I keep saying the same thing and he just cussing me out. He just saying a bunch of words. I don’t, I can’t remember everything verbatim what he said but he was saying all a lot of like degrading words to me.

STEPHEN JANIS And the gun was pointed at you this whole time?

KEVON MILLER Yeah, so it was like…

TAYA GRAHAM Did at any point he said that he was a police officer?

KEVON MILLER No, not that. He didn’t. He never, he never said that he was a police officer.

TAYA GRAHAM So for all you knew this was a deranged, mad man pulling a gun on you.

STEPHEN JANIS Just a road rage.

TAYA GRAHAM I didn’t know who he was, and you know, my nerves started to really kick in, even though I had to kind of like play it cool because nobody was out there.

It was like dark out there. It was kind of late at night and it was only kind of like cars riding, riding pass. So I ain’t know what he was going there. He could’ve shot me and you know, kind of got away with it. But…

Didn’t it turned out that there was a witness that actually saw him pull a gun on you?

KEVON MILLER Yeah, it was a, it was a lady that was driving, that was driving by and she saw it. And as she saw it, she called into the dispatch. She called the police and let them know what was happening. So that was kind of like one of the, you know, things that was working on my side. Because when I initially, I started to tell a story about what happened, I really didn’t think nobody would believe me, you know? So once I knew there was a witness, I kind of felt good about that.

But again, as I’m starting to get up, he’s starting to back up but he’s still got the gun pointed towards me. And as he backing up, he’s still calling me names, but he kind of like walking towards his car. So now as he’s walking towards his car, I’m like walking towards my job but I’m also looking for my phone cause I’m trying to like get his license for it or something. And I didn’t have my phone. It was inside of work.

So once he got into his car, I’m like, I’m kind of angry cause I’m like, man, I’m feeling my chin. I had like a Raven City on and it’s really bloody so I’m upset. So once he get into his car, it’s like I started to like walk towards his car, but I’m like faking like I got something in my hand, like it’s a phone or something. Like I’m trying to take a picture of his car. Once he seen me try to do that, he sped off.

TAYA GRAHAM Yes. So tell us, didn’t you actually go to police headquarters to speak with him, to maybe find out where his head was at when he did this.

KEVON MILLER I’m like, yeah man, I’m, I started the brainstorm and I’m like, it’s a police precinct maybe three or four blocks up the street from where I work. So I’m like, man, after work, I’m saying to myself, I’m going to go, I’m going to go up there. I’m like, I got to see what’s up. I got to confront him. I got to see like, what was the reason for him assaulting me. So that was my whole point of going to the police precinct.

So when I got to the police precinct, I kind of like rode around that little parking lot for a second. Well, not even a parking lot, like outside of their parking lot. But I saw his car and it still had like the tea residue and like the sugar and stuff on his car. So it was a police officer that I was sitting outside of the, I was basically right to the side of his car and I asked police officer that was sitting there and I said, Is this a police officer’s car? He asked me why. I kind of explained to him what happened. He was like, man, there’s nothing really I can do to you. I have to refer you to my Sergeant. He called his Sergeant. His Sergeant came to meet me outside. I started to tell him the story and I’m like basically like, man, I want to see this guy. I want to talk to him. I want to see like, what was the reason for it. Officer Gentil comes downstairs and once I see him, he’s like this him, and I’m like, yeah, that’s him.

And then Officer Gentil come downstairs. Once he see me, like got his hands on his belt. It’s like he’s very confident and he’s like very confident. He started looking at me. I’m like, I looked him right in his eyes saying, man, like what was the reason for you doing it? Honestly, at that particular time I was looking for a reason. I was looking for a reason for him to tell me why he did it. Like I was stressed out. I was having a bad day. I’m like, man, he was like, even if he would’ve told me like, man, I thought you just threw something at my car, like you were trying to hurt me or something. That’s what drew my reaction. If he going to let me know why he did it, I probably wouldn’t have took it this far because again, I’m an understanding person. I understand people make mistakes, and sometimes things trigger people to do things that they wish they never did. But he, he didn’t give me apology or anything.

He basically, in a nutshell said to me, it was my fault. He basically told me that his job is stressful, which I know it is. You’re a police officer so you got to deal with a lot. He’s like, my job is stressful. I got to deal with a lot every day. And he started talking about the guys that be on Monument Street and how he got a ride up and down Monument Street. And basically he was saying, you got to see people like me every day. Pretty much. You got to deal with people like me. I took that, I took offense to that in a way because it’s like, what do you mean you got to you got to deal with people like, like me? Pretty much people in Monument Street is nothing but black and brown people, which means you know, black and you know, Hispanic people that lives in that area.

So he basically talking about, he got to deal with my color and the kids and the men that looked like me. So my response to that was, man, listen, I have to deal with these same people on a daily basis and I have to deal with people like you when I’m, what I mean by that, when I say I got to deal with people like you is I have got to deal with cops like you, prejudice people like you. People that don’t like me because of my skin or whatever. Like, that’s what I took from that and that’s what I was trying to get him to understand. I have to deal with both. Right. You get to go home and probably live a better life than I do, daily. You know, your stresses aren’t as big as mine. I have the same amount of stress you have.

It’s just I don’t have the cover of this shield, you know, so my life is actually more dangerous than you. What I took from that conversation with that Sergeant and Officer Gentil was that they aren’t going to do absolutely squat for me. The Sergeant was basically trying to get me to go home. He just kept saying to me, man, go home. Take care of your kids. Get them ready for school. Like basically trying to pat me on my back like, hey, it’s all right. Just let it go, instead of doing his job.

TAYA GRAHAM Right. So when you were leaving the police station, you encountered some other police officers. What did they say to you?

KEVON MILLER Well, again, when I left the precinct, I was feeling kind of defeated. I wasn’t saying anything to them guys. So once I was, I was on my way back to my work truck and the officers stopped me, like hey man, what happened? Like he basically asked me, I’m like, man, like, nothing. They, I didn’t tell them nothing. I ain’t doing nothing because again I felt defeated. He like, look man, meet me up here at Erdman Shopping Center. Listen, I looked at him like, meet you at Erdman Shopping Center shopping center? I’m looking at him, I’m skeptical. Why you telling me to meet him up there? When his friends or partners and other police officer come up and he was like, look man, meet him up there. He was like, I’m going to go with you. So again, I don’t really interact with police like that.

So again, I was kind of nervous to go up there but when I went up there them guys like, man, look, this guy not right. He’s a racist. This is the type of things that he do. And again, I’m not trying to, I’m not putting words in these guys mouth. This is what these guys said to me and they are, they are the ones that gave me the number to Internal Affairs. They’re, like, man, call them. That’s not right what he did to you. And he’s like, this man do things like this on a regular. And they started telling me a bunch of stories about their encounters with the guy. So I’m like, all right. I took the number. I sat on it all night. I’m just like looking at my chin when I went home, it’s bleeding. And I’m just thinking about it and I’m still skeptical. I’m like, now all of these people are police. Like what are they going to do for me?

The way it was, I ended up calling Internal Affairs that next morning. They took my, they basically took a report of everything that I said to them. But they kind of already heard something about it a little bit because they was like, man, we already got the witness phone call. So they already had the phone call of the witness report and that it was a white male pointing a gun at a black male. So once he told me that, I’m like, all right, maybe they’ll believe what I’m saying. Because really before all of that, and even before the witness, I’m like, there’s no way in hell these people would believe what I’m saying. That’s what I’m like, it’s no point in me going through with it. But he told me like, I believe what you said, I believe what you’re saying because of that witness.

TAYA GRAHAM After you talked to IAD, after you decide that you can trust these other police officers, Officer Gentil actually ends up being convicted of using a gun in the commission of a felony. And he got the mandatory minimum sentence which is a mandatory minimum of five years. And he was, it was said that he was going to have to serve six out of a total 10 recommended by the prosecutor. So what happened when you were at the sentencing? I know you’ve read your victim statement but what happened to Officer Gentil?

KEVON MILLER Basically? Well, the first time when he went for sentencing, he acquired a new lawyer like two days before his first initial sentencing. So while we were in court, the State’s Attorney was basically asking them like, I mean, what is the reason for him acquiring a new attorney, as basically everything is set in stone. He was found guilty already for using a gun and a commission of a felony or whatever it was. I’m not really sure on what the charges were but he was like, it’s nothing really that he can do the stop that mandatory minimum of five years. So the guy, Gentil’s attorneys starts to talk and somehow he didn’t give the judge a clear reason. He just said, I have some things in the works. Basically, he’s like, basically it might be unorthodox, this, that and the third. But he was like, I might be reaching but there’s some things that I want to try.

He’s like, I’m not caught up to the case as much because he just was acquired two days before the sentencing. So basically Officer Gentil bought 30 days order from jail again. So we’re moving on to the second part of the sentencing. And so the second time we go, for some reason the judge granted Officer Gentil Appellate Bond. And I don’t know what was the reasons for that. I don’t know what he can appeal because he got found guilty by a judge. It wasn’t even a jury. You got found guilty by a judge. And again, I don’t want to really say anything bad about the judge because I feel in a way he did what he could.

Well, in the beginning stages before all the bullcrap came along, I feel he did what he, I felt justice was served at that particular time. And so, you know, we come back and you, you give him a bond and be able to stay home until he can go back up for an appeal. And that kind of threw me for a loop because I’m like, man, if the roles were reversed, is no way in hell. There’s no possible way I would ever, ever, ever get house arrest.

TAYA GRAHAM Right. And what was even worse was that not only does the appeal process take, you know, months and months, like you know, 12 months, 18 months, the judge actually offered him time served. Which means that while he’s sitting at home, he was actually going to earn time to against his sentence. Which in theory, if they dragged the appellate process out long enough, he might hardly have to spend any time at jail whatsoever.

KEVON MILLER And that’s the thing that’s kind of upsetting me is because again, if I were to did this to Officer Gentil, I would’ve pulled the gun out on him and if I were to made him lay flat on the ground, if I would’ve stomped the back of his head, I would be doing 20 years probably. Probably more.

You would have charged me for the gun. You would have charged me for the assault. You would’ve charged me for the gun and the commission of a crime. You would’ve charge me with everything you could. They had give me every freaking year possible on those charges. And there would be nothing that I can say, when I couldn’t go in there and say, Oh, I had a bad day. I wish I could’ve took it back. It’s nothing I can say. It’s things that I did in my life that were way, like less than what he did to me and I had way worse things. I lost everything being in jail, sometimes for things that I’ve done and for things that I did, I didn’t do. So I have lost everything a couple of times.

TAYA GRAHAM It’s terrible.

KEVON MILLER And for him to be able to go in there because he’s an officer, it’s for him to be able to go in there and say, my stepfather’s sick, or my stepmom’s sick and start crying and say I’m, I lost everything. I lost my job.

That gains you sympathy but that gains me nothing. If I go in there and saying the same at that exact thing. If I had his charges and I go in there and say, I can say, my kid ready to die tomorrow. These people will still take, send me to jail. You won’t give me no house arrest and that’s unfair to me. And again, that’s withdraws the divide of citizens and the police because when the police do something, they get a slap on the wrist and sent home. But regular people on the street, regular civilians, they do the same as that thing and they gets sent to jail. It’s not fair. It’s not fair because you are a police officer, you should be held accountable for things that you do because you took that oath to protect people instead of going out here doing things to hurt people.

Again, when I was younger, I had a lot of incidents with the police where they were, some of them were bad, some of them were bad run-ins with the law. I mean, far as me getting beat up, even getting robbed.

STEPHEN JANIS You were robbed?

TAYA GRAHAM You were robbed by police officers?

KEVON MILLER Yes. I mean backing in, this is not that recent. This is like, let’s say my early twenties. I’m 34 so my early twenties to my mid twenties. If, again, if when you out there on the street and there’s some of these guys from that Gun Task Force, like Hersl. He’s one of the main people that he will, yeah, if he know…

STEPHEN JANIS Hersl robbed you?

KEVON MILLER No. He didn’t but people that he were around. I don’t even know the cop’s name but he used to be East Baltimore down in that same area, doing those types of things. A lot of those cops were. Again, I ain’t going to say a lot. A certain select few because I don’t want to put all the cops

STEPHEN JANIS Were robbing you? They take your money from you? Were robbing you.

KEVON MILLER So if I had money in my pocket and they know, okay, he might be a drug dealer. People don’t want to go to jail and still have to spend that money. So if I have, again, if I had $500 in my pocket, they’ll take it, they’ll take it and probably let you walk. So again, you might, you might’ve had a bag of weed in your pocket but you have $500 in your pocket. So they don’t like, they might even send you home with your weed but they’re going to take your money, they’re going to take in money at ask you . Like all right. So you know a lot of people will give the money because they don’t want to have to go to jail.

They’re going to have to pay a bail to get out. They go ahead to pay a lawyer. Right. And a bunch of other things that they might have to pay for.

TAYA GRAHAM Cheaper to give them the money.

KEVON MILLER Cheaper just to go ahead and let them take the money.

STEPHEN JANIS Just so people know, Hersl was one of the eight, seven members, the original members of the country’s task force, which were convicted of robbing residents, dealing drugs and stealing overtime. So just…

KEVON MILLER So for all the people that think that, Oh, these cops are just like good cops. All of them aren’t. And I don’t want to just discredit the good ones cause again, I didn’t had police helped me in time where I’ve needed help.

TAYA GRAHAM Stephen, there’s a really interesting argument that was put forth by a lawyer who was in that court who was really surprised to see this unorthodox ruling. Can you talk a little bit about that?

STEPHEN JANIS Yeah. His name is Joshua Hoffman. He’s a criminal defense attorney. He just happened to wander into the court and when this Appeal Bond was being issued and Officer was allowed to avoid the mandatory minimum sentences, which were required under the law. And he was so angry about what he saw. He wrote an editorial for the Baltimore Sun talking about how unfair it was for a police officer to avoid this punishment that would’ve been applied to anybody but him. So we interviewed Mr. Hoffman about why he said that. Let’s take a little listen to what he’s said.

STEPHEN JANIS So what did it, what was it, it was unusual what you saw. What was unusual about it?

JOSHUA HOFFMAN Well the fact that he was out pretrial and the fact that he got to stay home during the appeal, that the five year mandatory minimum sentence is really serious. When I first came in the courtroom, there was a police officer next to me and I’m gathering that this was one of the officers involved in the prosecution. And when I first started hearing what was going on, I’m like elbowing him. I’m like, what’s going on? They got a cop with a five year mandatory minimum thing. I couldn’t believe it.

So I’m watching really closely at that point and I couldn’t believe that it was actually happening. And it’s not that I was happy to see this man go through this or anything, but I was happy to see that there was some accountability and that a police officer was going to get treated the same way one of my clients might get treated. And when they had Appeal Bond thing happened. It was, you know, the wool got pulled back and I said, okay, so the favorable treatment for police officers is still something we’re doing and this judge is going to bend over way backwards to make it happen.

STEPHEN JANIS So as you can see, as he points out, you know, he’s not in favor of mandatory minimums. Many people aren’t in favor of mandatory minimums but if you create them and apply them only to people who aren’t police officers, it shows that they’re not really mandatory minimums, right. They are meant to punish people who are not police and they are not meant to hold everyone accountable. And that’s the problem. The two tiered system of justice, you know, is what he was angry about.

KEVON MILLER And I think that’s what the judge didn’t want to give him. I think the judge, I’m not sure, I’m not saying that, that’s what it is but I think the judge didn’t want to give him the five years. I think he felt like it was too harsh.

STEPHEN JANIS Right, right. You know, you, that’s the great point. I mean, one thing we’re missing, not we’re missing, but you know, mandatory minimums are horrible. You know, people like you’re saying, you can go in front of a judge and you know there are mitigating circumstances. There are things, you have family, they’re going to be like fuck it. It’s a, it’s a mandatory minimum. You’ve got to go to jail. And that’s why people don’t support them.

TAYA GRAHAM And even some judges say that they wish they had discretion, you know, in cases where you know, someone has a hardship in their family or saying, you know, you really don’t deserve a sentence so strong, but they say my hands are tied. It’s a mandatory minimum. But it seems like this judge found a way around it.

STEPHEN JANIS The mandatory minimum is meant to do one specific thing and achieve one thing, politically speaking. To take inflexibility and to dehumanize people. So once you possess a gun or you do something with a gun, you’re no longer a human. And anyone who ends up in that predicament for a variety of reasons is no longer human. The only person who has full human complexity is a police officer who for some reason as you point out, and it was extremely moving, and I’m really glad you shared this with people, that he can come up and plea hardship and plea and the court is sympathetic. But you know, if you went up there Mr. Miller and said that, I totally agree with you. They’d be like, whatever. You know, you made your bad choice. And that’s the whole point of mandatory minimums. To create an inflexible justice system that has no compassion and only knows cruelty.

TAYA GRAHAM So here we have the true imperative American policing in stark relief. A cop convicted of a heinous crime but trapped in the same inflexible system that gives him his power. A dilemma that the same system allows him to ultimately avoid but a privilege afforded only to him, not others, not to us. And why is that? Why when a cop pulls a gun and commits a crime, the system considers him in all his complexity. The judge confers on him the benefit of the doubt. His humanity is posited against the system’s insatiable cruelty. But for us, the people he purports to serve, there is no such accommodation. Instead, like our guest, we would not be so lucky. And the question that must be asked is why? Why don’t we, the people, merit the same consideration as Officer Gentil, the people who live in the community, the people whose wealth and taxes are drained into the bottomless abyss of police spending.

Why don’t we warrant the same treatment? I can tell you because the true focus of the SWAT teams and the surveillance, the specialized units and the no-knock warrants is to cover up the truth. The truth that the people who have suffered from the inherent inequalities that the finer country do not deserve either justice or fairness, to paper over the crimes of a country that does not provide health care for its citizens education for its youth, and wages endless war at the expense of social services. To maintain this imbalance of power, there must be a story to justify it. And that narrative is wrought in part by the over-policing that has made America a veritable cop land. A social construction of a criminal class that deserves neither agency nor comfort.

I’d like to thank our guests Kevon Miller for joining us and sharing his fight for police accountability. And of course, I’d like to thank my cohost, Stephen Janis for his research and writing. This is the end of Season One of the Police Accountability Report and we will be back December 5th, 2019 but that doesn’t mean stop sending us your tips.

Please send us your evidence of police misconduct to par@therealnews.com. Please like and share and comment on the show. We really appreciate you and you know that I read and respond to your comments and of course you can follow me at @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. I’m your host, Taya Graham and I want to thank you for joining me for the Police Accountability Report. See you in three weeks.