10/19/15 – Keegan Stephan – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
Joining me again on the line is Keegan Stephan.
He is a writer, artist, activist, and organizer in New York City.
His website is keegan.nyc, keegan.nyc, and you can follow him on Twitter, at KeeganNYC.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm pretty well.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
There's a lot of important news to cover, and by news I mean people killed by the cops, people the cops are sworn to protect, in fact, killed to death by them.
So I don't know how long your list is from this last week or the one before that or whatever, but I would say you have the floor, sir.
Introduce whichever stories you want and let us know what's going on.
Sure, thanks.
Yeah, please hop in with anything you have to say.
Oh, I will.
Yeah, you know, something actually, not a killing that occurred this week, but a sort of development in a police killing that occurred in New York City, which is obviously where I am and where I'm watching things most closely, developed this last week that is pretty fascinating and enraging.
A couple of months ago, back in June, police killed a man named Mario Ocasio in the Bronx.
And I remember this story coming out and it being run in all of the local press, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as a pretty justified shooting.
And, you know, what the press said originally was that they were called to the apartment by the family who said that an emotionally disturbed person was threatening them and that when they showed up, he was armed with a pair of scissors and lunged at them.
And so they were, of course, forced to shoot him.
Since then, the NYPD has quietly, after the press cycle was over, completely revised its statement and said that Mario Ocasio was, in fact, unarmed.
They also originally said that he was on heroin and toxicology reports prove that there was no heroin in his system.
He was only under the influence of marijuana.
And his family says that they called because he was having a bad high and not in any sort of threatening way, but laying on the ground saying that he could see God.
So they were worried that he was going to die, that he was incapacitated enough that he could die.
And they say that when the police showed up, they immediately challenged him and started hitting him with batons.
And then they tased him.
And when they shot him with the taser gun, he went into cardiac arrest and died.
And that was that was the end for Mario Ocasio.
So, in other words, you're saying they basically called the EMS.
They didn't even mean to call the police.
It sounds like.
Yeah, they called the EMS.
The police were sent, which is pretty routine here in New York City.
Well, I guess especially if they mentioned drugs.
Yeah.
And we have a lot more cops than paramedics or so it would seem based on their response.
And.
And the NYPD does have an internal protocol.
They are not supposed to make any contact with this classification of people called emotionally disturbed people.
So the radio run that went across the airwaves, I learned from speaking with the lawyer for the Ocasio family this week, was that there was an emotionally disturbed person at this location.
So when the NYPD hears that they're supposed to go and just sort of like stand back, they're not supposed to engage unless there's imminent threat to themselves or others.
And now does the family have their version of what happened here?
Because obviously it's not that he lunged at them with scissors that he didn't have.
So he didn't have the scissors.
The family says that he was laying on the ground and the police stormed in and started handling him, which is obviously against internal protocol.
So the most shocking thing, actually, is that the family also took video of the entire incident.
And then the NYPD confiscated the video in a very in a very roundabout and seemingly illegal manner.
And they have refused to release it even through requests from the lawyer.
And so the lawyer has had to bring a lawsuit independent of the claim for injuries to the family just to get the video from the NYPD.
And so in their version, he's already on the ground being beaten and then they break out the taser.
And then did they did they say how many times the cops tased him or for how long or anything like that?
I haven't heard how many times or for how long, just that that it was the cause of death.
You know, all of these questions could have been cleared up immediately if the NYPD would have released that video, which is very it's a very feels like a tactical maneuver on their part to make these wild claims about the victim and and and, you know, basically lie.
Somehow, an anonymous NYPD source managed to give complete untruths to the press during this press cycle, which were hugely injurious to the family and to the defense's case and and then hide the video so that it couldn't be rebutted.
So we'll see where that goes.
It's also it's a very interesting story about how they went about obscuring justice by taking this video.
The video is taken by the nephew of Mario.
So when the police showed up, Mario's nephew knew well enough to start filming what the police are going to do.
And he's filming it on his cell phone.
And then the police apparently, you know, get pushy with him and he hands it to Mario's partner, Mario's girlfriend.
You know, Mario's girlfriend continues to film and then pockets the cell phone.
And after Mario has gone into cardiac arrest and the EMS has shown up and Mario is going to the hospital, she goes with him after Mario is pronounced dead.
And she's, of course, in this horrible state of shock.
She is, you know, calls the NYPD.
And she's like, where where is my, you know, my nephew, my my partner's nephew?
And they said he's at the precinct.
You need to come here and show us the video if we're going to release him.
So they sort of coerce her into going there and showing him the video.
And then when she gets there, they tell her that they are going to view the video on the cell phone and then give it back to her.
So she hands them the camera and then they don't give it back to her and they don't voucher the camera.
They claim they never took it at the time and do not give it back to her.
And so the video of this police killing is still not available to the public or the family or the courts.
They're rejecting, you know, giving it even to the judge in the case.
Man, that's really too bad.
She didn't email that video clip to somebody for safekeeping, for crying out loud.
Just hand it to the one copy to the cops.
Yeah, it's I guess she must have been having a tough time that day.
So I guess I shouldn't say that, you know.
Yeah, I mean, you know, someone dies.
It's I think it's a really good argument for using a lot of the apps available, like the NWA or the ACLU has put out that automatically upload to their database of police violence.
You know, do things like have automatic video uploads to the cloud.
It's a great argument for things like that, because as savvy as you are, as good as you are interacting with the police, as well as you know your rights, the police might violate their rights, your rights.
They might just take that camera away from you before you get a chance to do what you would want to do with it.
So it's or you might be in a state like this woman was in and you're you know, your your life partner has just been killed and you obviously aren't thinking straight and might make a mistake that can result in the police further obscuring justice.
Right.
Oh, well, I guess she can rest assured that they would have gotten away with it anyway.
So what difference does it make?
But anyway, the case is ongoing.
So actually, you know, I would urge all the listeners out there to read up on this case.
Mario Casio, the lawyer has subpoenaed the video from the NYPD.
The judge has ruled that they need to give it up.
So now we're in the state of limbo if if they're going to give it or if they're going to claim that it doesn't exist.
So you can if you Google his name, you'll find a few articles by Newsweek by photography is not a crime.
That I'll link back to a petition that the lawyer and family have put out there demanding this video.
So, yeah, please go check that out and demand that we get to find out what actually happened.
Yeah.
You know, that's newsworthy itself that it made Newsweek.
You know, that's the thing about that's what you're doing and and what this work represents, making these local news stories national news.
That's what's happening here.
Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter.
That's making it where despite whatever the news networks would have us concentrate on, we just can't help but notice that our feeds are full all day long of innocent people laying down dead at the hands of the cops.
And this case, I think, really exemplifies that.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I'm sorry.
We got to we got to stop and take this break for just a minute.
But we'll be right back, everybody, with Keegan Stephan.
Follow him on Twitter at Keegan NYC.
Be back in just a moment.
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All right, so welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Keegan Stephan.
He is a anti-police brutality and anti-police murder activist.
Check out his Web site, Keegan dot NYC.
Follow him on Twitter at Keegan NYC.
And so at the break, we're talking about, well, this activism.
What's happening here is despite what TV would prefer the.
And really, I think the watershed was Mike Brown and the desecration of his corpse and the complete insane third infantry division shock and awe type response to the protest movement that night that came out.
That was what finally was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as major media being forced to recognize all the rest of the coverage and all the alternative and social media in America up to our eyeballs in police killings.
The thing of it is, is you don't have to be political at all.
You don't have to be interested in this kind of subject at all.
You're just a regular person in America.
You see over and over again, people shot and killed by the cops who were not in the middle of a bank robbery.
Right.
Like somebody robs a bank or mug some old lady and then the cops shoot him.
But in the back, you know, the average American is going to say shouldn't have been robbing people, dude.
Sorry if you got it in the back, but too bad for you or whatever.
Right.
But then this headline is, no, this guy was just broken down on the side of the road and they won't tell us what happened.
But now he's dead or this guy.
He was riding a horse and buggy, taking people on a ride.
And the cop pulled him over because apparently didn't have the right reflector.
The cop believed.
And so, oh, yeah.
And then one to skip a few.
And he was shot seven times in the chest.
And now he's a dead man or the kid, the young, rich white kid who flashed his lights at the cop for driving around with his high beams on all night and being too stupid.
He admitted people were flashing their brights at him all night because he was too stupid to figure out.
You got to pull it backwards, dude, or whatever his problem was.
So he killed this kid.
And this is what is catching everybody's attention that even TV and the major papers can no longer ignore.
Is we're talking about people who are just living their life.
They're not in the middle of committing capital crime.
They're just living their life.
And somehow they're ending up dead at the hands of the cops.
We're supposed to believe over and over and over and over again that they're the ones who are doing it right.
These everyday Joes are all just dying for their first opportunity to try to kill a cop and give them no choice but to shoot him to death.
I mean, that couldn't possibly be right.
And everyone knows it.
All 300 million of us know it.
Yeah.
And we're finally finally trying to expose it.
And I think you're right that social media is making that happen.
You know, in the case we were discussing for the break of Mario Cascio, the news media and the local the local news media and the police were going to run the story that he was a violent threat.
And then it turned out to be completely not true.
One of the more egregious examples we've seen of that recently was the case of Jeremy McDowell.
This is the man who you might have seen the YouTube video of that went extraordinarily viral.
He was in a wheelchair, you know, in the streets, appearing to be in pain.
Police ordered him to put his hands up.
And when he went to put his hands up, like very obviously, they just gave a command to raise his hands.
He took his hands out of his pocket and started to raise them.
They shot him and killed him.
Didn't try any less lethal force, didn't wait to see a weapon.
He falls over dead in this extremely, extremely disturbing video that made the rounds, first on YouTube and social media and then in the mainstream press.
And once again, the police tried to cover it up.
They tried to immediately run a narrative that that Jeremy McDowell was armed, that he had a gun on him.
And, you know, the the justice advocates on social media did not believe it and kept pressing the issue and looking into it and demanding more.
And then the police admitted that they found the gun very far away from the body.
You know, it's not in the video anywhere.
And it was not discovered, like sort of under his body or in his pocket.
And there was there was clearly no gun visible.
So clearly no reason to shoot.
And like you were saying, you know, they were trying to justify it.
But I don't think that there is a person in America who could say that that was a justified shooting and killing, aside from some like literally professional police apologists.
Yeah.
I mean, and of course, if you watch that video, it's so easy to see what they could have just snuck up behind him and dumped him right out of the chair.
Right.
And you know what?
He could have hit his head real hard.
I'm not saying that would have been the right thing to do, necessarily.
But, you know, the idea that, geez, these four jocks had no choice but to kill the crippled guy in the chair who, as in this International Business Times story, says he was already shot before they completely unloaded on him.
He had already been shot at least once.
And but even then they had no choice but to shoot him 10 more times.
What?
Yeah.
He was, you know, if you watch the video, he's clearly not posing a danger to there's no one around.
He's like even if he had a gun, he's not like going to be shooting at anyone.
He's you know, he's he's hurting.
And and instead of like, you know, yeah, sneak up behind him, wait it out, you know, until you can speak with him or like like gain a little more knowledge of what's going on.
They literally shoot him, you know, within seconds of of finding him there in a wheelchair in the middle of the street bleeding.
You know, back to the whole thing about how everybody knows better than this is even some not all necessarily, I guess.
Right.
But I would say most hardened criminals would never shoot a cop, never kill a cop.
You don't do that even if you're the mob.
Right.
You get in real trouble if you do that.
Right.
But we're supposed to believe these cops really believe that these everyday people are trying to kill them every day.
Actually, you know, young people of color like that.
The story told by Darren Wilson about Mike Brown was so utterly unbelievable because being a young person of color in Ferguson, you have lived under tremendous police discrimination and pressure and, you know, people are afraid of the police.
The people that I were organized with in New York City who grew up in the Bronx, you know, the idea that, yes, people are unarmed attacking the police trying to, like, take their weapons when, you know, we fear them and know that they might do violence on provoked is is pretty unimaginable.
And like shocking that they can still put out that narrative with a straight face on a day to day basis.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the the kid with the high beams who flashed his lights at the cops, he was on his way home from church.
Same thing here with this guy, Corey Jones, that you link to in your Twitter feed here.
He was on his way home.
He was a church musician on the way home.
His car broke down.
He's on the side of the road.
How could this possible?
You know, it's sort of like the Branch Davidians.
Oh, yeah.
Was that an ambush?
Well, who was on whose property?
Right.
Who's attacking who?
How could it possibly be that Corey Jones, the church musician, was putting himself in the position to kill a cop that night?
It just couldn't be.
The cop was looking for an excuse to murder somebody.
Now, that sounds pretty plausible to me.
He found somebody that he thought he could kill and get away with killing.
And so now there's a dead body and he doesn't have a great working car.
Yeah.
I mean, the story is just the police narrative is unbelievable.
This guy's car broke down on his way back from a gig, a regular church musician.
And he then decided, you know, he was going to attack the cop that showed up to help him.
That's completely unbelievable.
And it's another situation where we have the police trying to obfuscate justice and obfuscate the truth just to protect themselves, which is really disappointing, really disappointing to see the local press, you know, repeating their narrative without just like, if you're going to even if you feel the need to post what they said, you know, tear it apart.
Yeah.
And how about police claimed instead of police notified us of the truth of being.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thankfully, we've got Sean King writing for the Daily News in New York now who reported on this pretty well, if you want to read, you know, a better story on it.
And I don't mean to say that church folk are never violent or whatever, but it's a it's a little bit outside of the common narrative that, you know, church musicians car breaks down.
So he figures out a plan to murder a cop and almost got away with it, too.
You know?
Yeah.
And, you know, just read the article.
They're totally like pushing, giving accurate accounts away as far as possible.
They're not saying if he had a weapon, which, you know, by not saying they're trying to let people make that argument, build this whole false narrative.
They said that it might take months to complete the investigation.
Should be giving them a window to not release factual information.
The whole thing just reeks of a cover up.
So there's a very dangerous precedent for the police to not be able to release information to the public when this is such a hot topic.
And, you know, our whole democracy is is based on the idea that we can see what our government is doing, how it's operating so that we can vote if we want to change it.
And even that, you know, little bit that we're supposed to have to control our rights is being obfuscated by the police when they do things wrong.
Absolutely.
And now I want to end with this one.
U.S. police killed at least one hundred and one people in September, more than three per day.
And just please tell us where we can find that out for ourselves.
Yeah.
So I shared a graphic today on Twitter that shows that in pretty stark terms.
And the sources on the graphic there in the bottom right hand corner killed by police dot net.
There's they've sort of been doing this recording of police killings the longest and they are, you know, mining local news sources.
And they posted up pretty, pretty straightforward.
It looks like an Excel sheet of all the cases.
But they put links to the articles, you know, and a lot of those are obviously the sort of problematic articles we've been talking about that just regurgitate the police narrative.
But, you know, you can look into them and see further.
You know, it should be shocking to anybody is that one hundred and one people were killed by the police.
And there are countries that like England, you know, that kills fewer people than that in one hundred years.
So, you know, there's a problem here.
There are problems here that need to be fixed.
And the sheer numbers alone should be inspiring us to do something about it.
Yeah.
You know, I actually clicked on the picture there, like I said, in the first place.
Eight hundred and ninety eight killed in the last ten months.
Yeah.
And that doesn't even include October, which has been a bloody month as well.
So and that's I always write when I say this many people have been killed by cops.
I always write at least because those are the ones that were reported.
And there are surely some that even all of our watchful eyes can't document.
Right.
Man.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time on the show.
I'd really like to do this every Monday or every other Monday or whatever you think is right.
And keep this as a regular deal and try to try to name and at least try to humanize the victims here a little bit when we get a chance to, you know, tell people the truth about what's happened to them.
Yeah.
And we'll be out in Union Square tonight doing just that for Jeremy McDowell, the man in the wheelchair who was killed by the police.
Oh, great.
If you're free in New York City, come to Union Square at 7 p.m. tonight for a vigil.
Well, I'm far from there, but I'm sure I know there are some people up there who are listening.
So maybe they'll see you.
All right.
Thanks very much again.
No problem.
All right.
So that is Keegan Stephan.
He's on Twitter at Keegan NYC at Keegan NYC.
And his Web site is Keegan dot NYC doing a great job of keeping track of police killings.
And again, that footnote he mentioned, they're killed by police dot net, a private open source free citizen attempt to keep track of these police killings for you there.
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