Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is the Black Information Network Daily podcast, and I'm
your host, Ramsey's job, and sometimes the amount of stories
that make their way to us means that we simply
can't cover everything that comes our way. But from time
to time, a story just stays with me and I
feel compelled to share it with you and give you
my thoughts. And now one more thing. On this show,
(00:42):
I have been very critical of policing as it's done
in this country. In fact, I've said that many times.
I think that being critical of an institution that has
its ritsen white supremacy, and where the data shows consistently
(01:02):
that there are anti black and anti brown biases in
the practices and policies, the outcome shaped affect individuals, families,
and communities. I think that being critical of the institution
of policing is effectually a way of calling out gaps
(01:26):
and compelling this system to be better and to do
right by us. Once upon a time, I had a
conversation on this show about police chases and how police
chases are not nearly as effective as we might think,
(01:52):
and indeed the consequences of the police chases that offer
then end up affecting the lives of everyone including the
officers for those who are inclined to back the blue,
so to speak. And several times on this show I
(02:14):
have explained at length how the car sol system, and
indeed the entirety of the criminal justice system, is a
very different system for black people seeking to get answers,
looking for justice, looking for accountability. These are things that
have been in place long before I was born, and
(02:37):
I'm sure you know them very well if you're listening
to this show at this point. But again, we have
talked about that on this show as well. So today
we're going to have a conversation at the intersection of
all of these things. First, I'll give you a little
bit of background for people that kind of dismiss police
(02:58):
pursuits as some sort of necessary element that exists in
our society. To that, I say, it is not. There
are other countries around the world where they recognize that
if a person is going to flee from the officers
in a vehicle, that that action presents more of a
(03:22):
danger to the public and to the officers and to
the individual fleeing than is worth the risk, and so
they don't even pursue. Believe it or not, this is
true in Japan, if you're running going too fast, the
police will not even chase you. They have other tactics,
(03:44):
They do police work, they investigate, and of course the
consequences are higher, they're more severe if you choose to
flee from the officers, but critically, no additional people are endangered.
And the fact of the matter is that in this country,
at least the data that I've come across, I believe
it comes from the state of California, it shows that
(04:08):
law enforcement apprehends fleeing suspects at a rate of about
fifty seven point six percent, meaning that they're over forty
percent more than four and ten police chases don't even
result in someone being captured. And of those fifty seven
point six it's in that number that we find people
(04:34):
were captured or apprehended because of crashes, because of some
other sort of impact on the community. And then of course,
you know, people get flat tires, a run out of gas,
police tactics and that sort of stuff. I don't want
to be unfair here, But because I don't want to
be unfair, I do want to talk to the people
(04:55):
who are more conservative minded, people who feel like, well,
this is just what we need to do do to
get criminals off the street. The police need to be
able to do their jobs unencumbered by bureaucracy and rules
and whatever whatever it is these people think. And I
don't want to sound dismissive, but so to be fair,
this is true. People do feel this way. But the
(05:18):
fact is that the risk and the cost is too high.
High speed pursuits expose police departments to a high risk
of loss of life. This means lawsuits, this means officers
being injured and killed, and personal. There's personal cost to
(05:43):
the police departments and the officers themselves, not to mention
the community, to innocent bystanders, to the individuals fleeing get
people in their cars who may not be culpable. This
doesn't include property damage. So there's a lot at risk
(06:04):
here when the police decide to chase. And the truth
of the matter is that there's really no excuse, certainly
not today. With the technology that we have, with drones,
with helicopters, with cameras on every street corner, with a
modicum of police work, we can save lives. And indeed,
there are departments around this country who have opted to
(06:27):
do just that. They realize that the injuries and the
deaths and the property damage is not worth the risk
that a little bit of police work over a little
bit of time can end up apprehended an individual who
has chosen to flee. The consequences, of course, are higher,
and there's again less of an impact on society. Well.
(06:52):
As I mentioned, there is an intersection in today's conversation,
and that intersection lies at the point where people who
are often black and brown, marginalized poor people end up
wanting answers, wanting information, wanting accountability. This is a word
that we know all too well in the black community.
(07:14):
For so long, police have been able to do whatever
it is that they do with no accountability. Qualified immunity
insulates officers public opinion of what police should be able
to do, as insulated officers from consequences of dangerous actions,
of violent actions. And it's even worse for black and
(07:37):
brown people in this country and today. My guest is
Schandell Flowers, and she is a woman who found herself
at this intersection of police chases and a lack of
police accountability. She lost her daughter, India Atkins, on May thirteen,
(08:00):
twenty twenty three, and since then has been on a
journey to try to get justice for her daughter. So
she is here with us today to share her story
and hopefully inform us on ways that perhaps we can
help as well. So welcome to the show, Seandelle. We
appreciate you being here today.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Okay, so do us a favorite tell us from the
beginning for those who don't. I know that this was
covered in the media, But for those of us that
don't know, start from the beginning. Tell us about India.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
On May the thirteenth, twenty twenty three, Indy was living
with my mom and Nymph's Tennessee. Mom received a phone
call and her voicemail picked up. When she played back
her voice mail, my mom listened to police sirens and
police yelling. So she called my daughter, my own this
(09:00):
daughter and me and said something's going on. She heard
police sirens and she doesn't know where India is. She
can't find India. That's my daughter.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So then.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
We find out my daughter was at work at McDonald's
on Hack's Crossroad and Chevy And in Midthis, Tennessee. It's
her first job ever. She was sixteen, still in high school.
Good student, she always made good grades, never had to
study anything, so she was excited about her first job.
(09:37):
She went to work on her day out on maybe thirteenth.
She didn't have to work, so she went out. Her
and her friends planned on working together that night, so
she went to work and when she got off work,
my mom usually picks her up from work every night.
This particular night, my mom was busy told my daughter
(10:00):
to catch an uber home. My daughter called the uber,
but a kid, a boy from her school that she
went to school with, came to McDonald's and ordered food
and he offered her a ride home. She got in
the vehicle with him, and she died within the next
ten minutes of getting in the vehicle. Shelby County sheriffs
(10:24):
got behind the vehicle. The boy did not stop. He
wouldn't stop to let my child out. He just kept going,
so they pursued the car. The medical examiner told me
the car got up to ninety miles per hour. India
(10:46):
was ejected from the front window of the vehicle while
I was going at high speed. Her body flew and
hit the utility pole and the bill ran her over.
(11:06):
The phone called my mom that night, so we know
that the phone was on the scene The officer told
me they never found India's phone, but somebody answered the
phone and told my mama she was gone. Nobody could
get on the scene because soon as the accident it
was a three car accident. Soon as the car hit
(11:28):
the first car, it spent, it hit another car, then
it hit the utility poll and it overturned the first
car that the car hit. I spoke to the guy
and he told me that it was a ten second
delay from the car coming and then the Sheriff's department
(11:53):
truck right behind it. It was a ten second delay
on them getting to the scene. They gave me a
seven page police report. That's not a real report. It
doesn't tell me anything. It just said the names of
the people that was in a accident, the counter car,
and where the accident the current It had a statement
(12:15):
from only one officer, Dippity Crystal David ce Davis. But
she told me she wasn't on the she wasn't involved
in the chase. She just arrived to the scene. So
I wanted to know why her statement is the only
statement I have on the police report. They refused to
(12:36):
give me the officer names involved that tried to pull
the vehicle over. They refused to give me the body
cam footage of the night. They refused to give me
the dispatch audio so I can hear when the officer
called then and asked for permission to chase the car.
They had no permission to chase the car. The boy
(12:58):
stole the car from an elderly white couple who I
also spoke to several times. They stated that he stole
the vehicle. He ran up under their car port, and
he jumped in the vehicle and pulled off with no
weapon involved. So if he didn't have a weapon, it
wasn't a reason for them to chased that car because
(13:20):
it wasn't a feeling me but he was. He had
stolen the same vehicle before previous the previous time he
did have a weapon. Because this is what the couple
told me whose vehicle it was, that the boy he
was really a terrorist. To them, they were terrified of
their life, but they continued to let this juvenile out.
(13:44):
If he would have been held accountable, he wouldn't have
been out to be able to do what he did
that night that took my daughter life. And if it
was so important for them to chase that car, why
did he only get charged with it. He'd go homicide
and get three to six months in a boy's home.
Nobody's being held accountable for my daughter being dead.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
This is my baby.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That's all I have of my sixteen year old.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
He can get out, he can still live his life.
She had plans. That was all took away from her,
from me, from ourselfs.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Then we'll never get back. I don't even know what
happened that night. Still, I'm still just as lost as
anybody else. I spoke to the detective. They had their name,
want to police report. They were very rude, telling me
what I got approve and how they can't be held accountable.
(14:50):
But the laws down there says clearly you have to
call and get permission to chase, and it has to
be a feeling in or worth of the people's They
killed an inner six sixteen year old girl getting off
of work, and nobody even told me they sorry, it's
(15:10):
just get over it. We had a right to chase.
My daughter died the worst way you could possibly think.
When I got the medical examiner report back, I asked
for the medical for examiner report from the beginning. India
(15:32):
died on May the thirteenth. I got the medical examiner
report back like September. The beginning of September. They kept
telling me it wasn't ready, it wasn't ready. I had
to quit my job, went to Memphis, moved down there
just for like two months to try to see if
(15:54):
I can fight for my daughter and do protesting. It
was absolutely nothing I can do. While I was down there,
they gave me the medical example report that obviously says
that it was a police pursuit. That they wouldn't say
to me when I kept asking him what the police
chasing a car? Ma'am, We can't tell you that. That's
how they kept telling me. But I knew it was
(16:15):
a pursuit because they didn't know. My daughter's phone called
my mom. My mom said, and let our whole family
listen to the recording. If you just arrived on the
scene of a crime or a car crash, per se
or what they say, how do you know that boy
was a criminal for you to be yelling at him,
telling him to get the f down on the ground
(16:38):
he tried to try to run.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You heard that on the phone call right, yes?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And I heard the female officer she walks up to
the vehicle and she says, oh my and then the
phone hung up, but nobody the DA Murrow, Steve Murrow,
he claimed it was no phone found. He insisting on
he don't think well, he don't think his officers would do.
(17:05):
And I asked him, did he watch the tape? No,
he haven't, So how can you tell me what happened
at night if you don't even know? I don't know
what happened. The medical examiner reports say my daughter had
spent around, her nose was chopped off. I couldn't identify her.
I didn't even have an option to identify her. It
(17:27):
wasn't even an option for me to be able to
see her one more time. And I feel like because
she was a black girl, they brushing it under the rug,
because they told me because she agreed to accept that
ride home, it's nothing I could do.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
What ron did she do?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And accepting a ride home that's fifteen minutes from her job.
She died right by my mother's house.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
She was going straight.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Okay, Obviously this is a really heavy thing to recall,
and I appreciate you sharing this with us because this
gives us an aperture, those of us who are not
(18:21):
intimately familiar with the criminal justice system, gives us some
insight into how the blue wall of silence works, not
just one officer not telling on another, but indeed how
the system works. You know, you mentioned you had to
wait a long time for the medical examiner's documents. I'm
(18:44):
sure you have to wait and wait for a lot
of these documents.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Right vote. When I got the document, it was signed
out from May the sixteenth, three days after she died.
It was already ready.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
They just telling me and trying to hold me out
so it can just get swept under the rug.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
When I first when.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
The story first got aired to Fox thirteen News, I
reached out to them because they aired the story as
a person died and one child taken to labonner and
a car accident. They didn't say it was a police pursuit.
They tried to really sugar coat what really happened.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
That they.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Told my mom that they removed her body out the street.
That's why we had family on the scene the night
it happened. It was a lot of my family members
made it to the scene, but it was blocked out.
The guy whose car he said they snatched him out
the car and removed him from the scene E meet,
(19:51):
so he could really barely see what was going on.
But he said once he found out a sixteen year
old little girl died, he said he needs and started
crying because he couldn't believe that he was involved in
the crash. But they tried to make him think it
was two kids in the stolen car. When India got out,
(20:16):
the record show her job, record show everything proved she
had just got our work, and she died right after
she got in that vehicle. The boy was a troubled
child anyway, what I'm finding out, they won't tell me
who his parents are. It's like everything is so close,
(20:37):
nipple out of the loop. They told the couple who
car was more information than they told the child mother
who died. They were very rude. I went to the
prosecutor's office and he tried to guide my can to
say that the goal is to rehabilitate the kidd India
(21:01):
had never been in trouble in her life, with no police,
with nobody other than me. Ny was terrified. I'm pretty
sure she wouldn't die.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
If it's not the little boy's fault, it's not the
police's fault, and whose fault, is it. That's a good question,
because I think you're right when we talk about qualified
immunity and the way police are insulated from the consequences
of their actions, the way, at least in this story
in particular, you haven't been able to find out whether
(21:41):
or not they were allowed to chase the vehicle. Then
that casts the doubt on things as well, And then
I think that overall, it's not inconceivable. It's not hard
to imagine that if your daughter had been white, white
six that the whole experience with the police department might
(22:06):
have been a little bit more fruitful. It's easy to imagine.
I'm sure that people would be more willing to help,
more apologetic.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
I said that to an attorney. I told him if
I was a white woman and my daughter was white,
then I had justice. And we beent backing for for
a second. He asked me, was I calling him a racist?
And I told him I'm just calling it like I
see it, and he agreed with me. He said, he
hate to say it, but I'm right because an accident
did happen, and mens it's similar to my daughter's accident,
(22:39):
and there was a white girl, but her body cam
footage was aired immediately. I'm still waiting on body camp
futish day. Every time I get somebody requested for me,
they tell me I can't they don't have it. I
don't live in that states that I have to get
an attorney that'll take the case to even for me
(23:00):
even get a step forward. And I know like from
the minute they seen my daughter on that scene and
realized that they made a mistake, probably pitt maneuver at
the back of that car and kept the innocent child,
they immediately went in to cover up mode. That's why
they don't want to give me my daughter's phone back.
That's why they took forever to give me the medical
(23:21):
examiner report that was ready three days after my daughter passed,
but they made me wait for it. That's why they
tried to air the story on the news like they did.
And when I asked the detective, why did y'all air
that story on the news and now I say it
was a police chase, and she was like, Uh, you
have to talk to the news people, not me. I'm
(23:41):
not I don't work for the news. Very rude, but
you told them what the air, So what are you
talking about? How you being mad at the child mother
that you y'all killed my daughter dad, a child that
never been through the system in her life, never been
in the back of a police car, never been in
to nothing. How is she dead? How was that possible?
(24:06):
I didn't see my own daughter funeral. The whole time
I was outside, laying on the ground trying to breathe.
I could not be in there. I still haven't watched
the video of it. It took every piece of wind
out of me for my child to be gone. When
my child was a good kid. The only thing she
(24:29):
did wrong was it kept in a round home. Now
she'll never be here again. And then for her to
die the way she died. I'm not gonna stop till
I get justice. I want the officer's names involved, and
I want them brought to justice. I want them to
be criminally charged for chasing a vehicle without permission. For one,
(24:54):
if it was a felinit, that boy would be doing
more time than three to six months, and a boy
he could get out and live his life. And my
baby dead. But y'all chase that car to the dealth
with her to get him, just to let him back out.
How do that even make sense.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, this story shows once again how the system has
failed you and oftentimes falls our people. At least here
on this show and on this network, we value black life.
(25:42):
We believe that black life is sacred. And if I may,
I would like to ask if there's any way that
you know we are listeners, is there any way that
we can help. Maybe there's a GoFundMe, Maybe there's some
way that we can donate to legal fund anything like that.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
If you have, I have a go fundme set up
Justice for India aikins. I can send you the link.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Let's spell it out to Justice for India.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I n d I A A k at innes okay.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
On GoFundMe you can search India aikins and make a contribution.
So let's do this. I don't want to compel you
to stay in this moment and and and I don't
want to compel you to relive this trauma anymore than
I'm sure you already have. So I will do my best.
(26:40):
You know, send that link over. We'll include it into
the notes for today's episode if anyone wants to support,
and we'll stay in touch. You know, let's you know
you have my information. You have Chris's information. Let's stay
in contact as you continue to seek justice for India.
(27:02):
Just keep us in the loop and will continue to
have this conversation. I'm sure that there's a lot of
other people around the country, black women in particular, who
have similar stories or unfortunately will experience similar stories. And
to know that there is some connective tissue here and
perhaps a degree of understanding, I'm sure that matters.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Actually, the city of Memphis is like an infestation of
what I just said, children dying at a lawman race,
the police chasing them, I mean they dying all day
every day sine fashion. The police chasing kids that can't
even drive cars instead of finding other sources the way
to get them, instead of chasing down cars where civilians
(27:45):
that it's innocent people dying in that city right now
because of police chasing and it's getting It's so bad.
I never seen nothing like it in my life.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Sure, sure, Well, again, we will continue to report on this.
I appreciate your bravery for today's conversation, and let's make
sure that we follow up and continue to support you
on your quest for justice for India. So with that
in mind, Shandel Flowers, I thank you for your time,
(28:19):
and you know, if you have any thoughts about today's conversation,
of course, you can reach out to me using any
social media at Rams's ja, or you can use the
red microphone talk back feature on the iHeartRadio app. Let's
keep the conversation going.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
It's the same like nobody's listening to me. I'm just
framing and nobody can hear me. So I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh no, I'm definitely listening. So with that in mind,
we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
This has been a production of the Black Information Network.
Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts
you'd like to share, use the red microphone talkback feature
on the iHeart Radio app. While you're there, be sure
to hit subscribe and download all of our episodes. I'm
your host, ramses Jah on all social media. Join us
tomorrow as we share our news with our voice from
(29:10):
our perspective right here on the Black Information Network Daily
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