August 7, 2025 • 34 mins
On the afternoon of Friday, May 8, 2020, Sacramento Fire Capt. Gary Loesch received a call from an assistant city manager urging him to attend an unplanned meeting at Old City Hall—one he hadn’t been formally invited to, but suspected was about a recent incident involving his department.
Two months earlier, five firefighters had responded to a medical call in south Sacramento for a man acting erratically due to a diabetic episode. Police were called for backup and handcuffed the man in the prone position as firefighters attempted to treat him. He lost consciousness, slipped into a coma, and died a week later after being removed from life support.
Loesch had launched an internal investigation, but he knew city officials were conducting their own. When he arrived at the meeting, he found city attorneys and staff reviewing police body cam footage showing Reggie Payne struggling while restrained on his parents’ living room floor. A city official quickly demanded the immediate termination of all five firefighters—a move that shocked Loesch, who questioned the lack of due process and the absence of any accountability for the police officers involved. While he agreed discipline was necessary, firing the firefighters felt extreme and unjustified. Something wasn't right. And it was only the beginning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On the afternoon of Friday, May twenty twenty, staff and
fire officials at the Sacramento Fire Department headquarters on Freeport
Boulevard and Sacramento were powering down computers and readying to leave.
For many, it had been a long work week and
weekend planned were starting to overtake work tasks and deadlines.
(00:23):
Sacramento Fire Captain Gary Losch was in his office when
he got a call from an assistant city manager. The
official told him there was a meeting in progress at
Old City Hall that he should really be a part of.
This struck Losch's odd city meetings were always planned in advance.
Department heads had busy schedules, and getting more than one
of them in a room together took time. He obviously
(00:47):
hadn't been formally invited to this one. Still, Loch had
a pretty good idea what the meeting was about. Just
two months earlier, five of his firefighters had answered a
medical call in South Sacramento man acting erratically from what
dispatch described as a possible diabetic episode. The team had
called police for backup. The police handcuffed the man in
(01:09):
the prone position. As firefighters worked on him, he lost
consciousness and was rushed to a hospital, where he slipped
into a coma. A week later, his family pulled him
off life support. Losh asked his own staff to investigate
the incident, but he knew some officials at city Hall
his bosses, had launched their own inquiry. His suspicions were
(01:32):
confirmed when he walked into the conference room. Around the
table sat members of the city manager's office, several city attorneys,
and others. A flat screen TV in the room showed
images from police body camp footage. There was Reggie struggling
while handcuffed on the ground in the prone position in
those agonizing minutes on his parents' living room floor. One
(01:56):
of the city officials who was present cut right to
the chase. All five firefighters there that night should be
immediately terminated. Losch was stunned. The inquiries into the incident
hadn't been completed, and city officials were already calling for
the firefighters jobs. What about due process and what about
(02:16):
the three police officers involved. Losher members the moment vividly.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It felt like we were putting the cart before the horse,
and we had to terminate members to appease people without
the proper investigation being completed. It was like these members
were going to be scapegoaded so the public could see
that something was being done.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Losh agreed that the firefighters had messed up and should
be disciplined, but firing them seems extreme, especially when the
police officers were assigned no blame. Something didn't feel right,
and it was only the beginning. This is Finding Sexy Sweat,
(03:01):
a podcast where me, Jeff Pearlman, and my colleague Rick
Jervis attempt to retrace the life of our former friend
and fellow journalist, Reggie.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Paine, better known by his rap name Sexy Sweat, to.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Try and learn how our life paths differed so sharply
and why Reggie met such an untimely death after a
medical call to his parents' home in Sacramento. This is
episode eight, No One Will Know My Struggle.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
In the last episode, we went through the last week
of Reggie's life in a coma, effectively brain dead, and
the agonizing decision his family made to take him off
life support. We discovered that city fire officials ordered an
investigation into the incident, and soon learned that officials up
the chain of command had later ordered their own query,
(03:51):
later released as the Parker Report.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Before either of those investigations were completed, Fire Chief Gary
Lews was told that the city plan to fire all
five firefighters during a conference call that was confirmed in
that conference room at city Hall in a meeting he
was called to join at the last minute. Of the
eight first responders who arrived at Reggie's parents' house that night,
only Eric Munson agreed to speak with us. He's the
(04:17):
engineer who drove Firingsine twelve that night. He since retired
from the department.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
We made requests to speak to high ranking officials involved
in the incident's aftermath. Not one of them agreed to
speak to us on the record, except for Gary Loasch.
We should say here. Losch was fired in May of
twenty twenty two for a quote incompatibility of management style,
among other things. That's according to local news reports. Losch
(04:46):
filed a wrongful termination claim later that year and won
a three hundred thousand dollars settlement from the city. Today,
he lives in Florida, where he says he could be
closer to his aging mother.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So yeah, there's no love lost between los and Sacramento
City Hall.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
When I spoke to him, Losch chose his words carefully.
He said he had been willing to cooperate with the
city's investigation into Reggie's death and was blindsided in that
meeting of May eighth when he realized the city was
determined to fire five firefighters who were at the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I made a statement like, wait a minute, you
just can't do this. There is no completed investigation. We
got a lot of you know, there's one hundred steps
doing wrong, step twenty nine, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Losch said. He later agreed with the five firefighters unpaid
administrative leave while the investigations played out. He considered it
a compromise to save them from swift termination.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
We didn't have the entire investigation gun and they were
just basically being thrown to the wolves. It's almost the
safe faith for the city to say they were doing something.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
After reviewing the bodycam footage and talking with his investigators,
los agreed that the five firefighters aired by allowing Reggie
to stay in the prone position for so long. He
planned to recommend emotions for all five and some suspensions,
but not termination.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Losh had spent three decades, including in various leadership roles,
at the Philadelphia Fire Department, before taking the top job
with Sacramento Fire. In all those years, he'd never seen
such a hasty move to terminate firefighters again. While the
city targeted firefighters, the three police officers involved, Officers Mormon, Mauer,
(06:33):
and Helmeic faced no penalties or consequences for their actions
at night. The city manager's office oversees discipline at the
fire department, but police officials are largely responsible for investigations
and discipline of officers. In other words, police are free
to police themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Losch was stuck between appeasing his bosses at city Hall
and making sure his firefighters got a fair deal.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
It made me too bad because they weren't getting due process.
You know, I had worked my way up in Philly,
and since being the guy that made sure everybody got
due process, I'd made it known when I came to
the city of Sacramento that everyone would be held responsible,
no matter male, female, black, white, anything. Everybody was being
(07:20):
held responsible for their actions that they would take. But
you know, I'll go back to the adage, you're innocent
to im proven guilty.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
We didn't even have an investigation completed.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Even before that meeting. It seemed like the city's mind
was made up police would face no accountability, while the
firefighters would be offered up scapegoats for an angry public.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Like I said from the early phone call, the pressure
coming from another department head and from the administration was
they got to be fired.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Loch said he pushed carefully yet persistently for less stringent
punishment for the firefighters, but after George Floyd's death sparked
a new round of protests against police brutally across Sacramento,
that task became impossible.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
And that just ramped everything up. And I guess the
city didn't want another George Floyd type of spotlight on him,
and this was to get rid of the members right away.
And I'm like, you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Those wasn't the only one feeling that Floyd's death and
the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests would make the investigation
into Reggie's death more politically charged. Captain Jeffrey Klein, the
highest ranking fire official on the scene that night, declined
to come on this podcast, but in the deposition eighteen
months after Reggie's death, Clein said he was told by
fire officials and others that police officers were off limits.
(08:40):
Here's Clein from the deposition given on October fourteenth, twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 6 (08:46):
So from the inception of the call, anytime that any
of the fire personnel brought up law enforcement, the actions
of law enforcement, this topic of law enforcement, we were
told repeatedly that we're not discussing the police officers and
the actions of the police officers are off limits.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
According to Climb, less than two months after the incident,
while it was still being investigated, a fire department official
took him aside in a parking lot and gave him
a sobering warning the city was coming for him.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
I was informed very shortly after being placed on administrative
leave by one of our administrators that the city had
made the determination that they were going to terminate me
and it was not reversible. That fire administration does not
support it, but it's going to happen regardless.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And attorney for the family asked Klein about the role
George Floyd's murder played in investigating the police's role in
Reggie's case.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Everyone that you've dealt with regarding this call in the
fire administration chain of command has talked about the politics
of this type of a call, right yes, and specifically
referenced to the George Floyd case.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
There were a lot of references to that very early
in the process.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, As Captain Jeffrey Klein and the other firefighters feared
for their jobs, Reggie's family struggled to make sense of
what happened. To Reggie's mother, Harriet, it all seemed like
(10:22):
a fog filled dream. The nine one call to help
with Reggie's diabetic episode, the handcuffs, Reggie huffing and struggling
on the floor the hospital, the coma, the way her
son slipped away in her hands.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Reggie was cremated and the family was scheduled to have
a celebration of life ceremony at a local funeral home
with more than one hundred people attending. But it was
March of twenty twenty, COVID was ramping up and lockdowns
were being put in place, so the ceremony was abruptly canceled.
There would be no final goodbyes.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Still, the family had questions. Within forty eight hours of
the incident, Harriet tried to get a copy of the
police report. Instead, she was visited by a homicide investigator
who interviewed her for more than an hour. Still, she
was given no access to the police report. The family
grew frustrated.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
Somebody got paid for this, somebody didn't do something right.
Speaker 9 (11:22):
I need some answers.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
They were in an awkward position still morning, with COVID
anxiety mounting all around them. They didn't want to invite
a lot of unwanted media attention, but they knew they
needed help. Urged on by a family friend, they contacted
the officer of Benjamin Crump, the high profile of civil
rights attorney whose cases have included Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown,
(11:47):
and George Floyd, but Crumb's office declined to pick up
Reggie's case. They tried reaching out to John Burris, an
Oakland based civil rights attorney, also not interested.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
The story had been picked up in a few local
media articles, and the bodycam footage had been released, but
it hadn't gotten nearly the same level of publicity as
other police custody death cases.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That might have been the timing. The news cycle was
consumed by COVID lockdowns and hospitals being overrun, and this
was a complex case. Was it a police custody case?
Reggie was, after all, in police handcuffs when he slipped
into a coma, or was it a fire department custody case,
since they, as first responders, initiated the call to police.
(12:39):
For a while, Reggie's family thought the case would go
the way of scores of other police custody deaths, quietly
filed away with many lingering questions. Then a family friend
recommended an attorney, who pointed them to caw dun Bagdaddy,
a prominent trial lawyer out of San Francisco who specializes
in personal injury and wrongful death. Back Daddy agreed to
(13:01):
take the case on his colleague, Joseph Nicholson, began digging
into Reggie's file. Nicholson told me he got hooked on
Reggie's case the moment he saw the body camp footage.
Speaker 10 (13:12):
I watched that video and I'm putting myself in the
place of the guy on the floor saying I can't
read mama, and I'm just appalled, and I want to
be his advocate.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Backed by Nicholson and Bagdaddy, the family filed a wrong
for death lawsuit against the city of Sacramento in November
of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
As Reggie's case became better known, more and more of
his friends learned of his death. Some of whom hadn't
spoken with him in decades. Alan Scott Gordon, his friend
from Grambling, found out through a mutual friend.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
And I was like wow, And it wasn't really clear
how Reggie passed away. You know, I didn't know what
was the complication. Diabetes wasn't thinking its medication. So that's
the narrative that I was on until I ractually read
an article on some point out, Hey, Rach the hands
of you know, neglect from first responders or from the police.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Alex Harris, another Gambling colleague, found out through a Facebook post.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
It really hurts because Reggie was a friend of mine.
It I loved Reggie, and it was just like, oh
my God, like damn, this didn't seem like that was
the way he should have left his earth, Like not
like that.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
The Quandra Hurt, the family friend from sixty nine Village,
got a call from Reggie's sister Crystal shortly after his death.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
Everything wasn't shocked because it didn't understand how did it
go down like that? But I know as time further
went on, like days or weeks, things were coming out
for his videos and audios and stuff like that, and
so at that point you become angry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Friends and families weren't the only ones struggling with Reggie's
death and its aftermath. The firefighters there that night, suspended
in June over the incident, soon realized the city wanted
to place the blame for his death squarely on their shoulders.
Eric Munchen, who drove the fire engineto Reggie's parents' house,
says the condemnation took a severe emotional toll on him
(15:11):
and his colleagues.
Speaker 13 (15:12):
At one point, one of us had it gone in
our mouth. At one point, one of us was ready
to just quit, up end.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And move away from everything.
Speaker 13 (15:23):
One of us lost a marriage and a family over this.
This put us and ran us all through the absolute
ringer to a degree that I don't think any of
us ever could have expected to see come from our
city or our department with what was going on.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
The City's investigation into Reggie's death, which became known as
the Parker Report, was released in October of twenty twenty.
It was a searing indictment of the five firefighters, detailing
how they violated policy and were negligent in their care
of Reggie. The report does include that police handcuffed Reggie
in the prone position, but directs all blame onto the firefighters.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
The report states that firefighters violated something called the Sacramento
County Emergency Medical Services Agency Protocols by allowing Reggie to
stay in the prone position. Not mentioned in the report.
Police officers also violated a Sacramento Police Department General Order
number five hundred and twenty two point zero two by
placing and keeping Reggie in a restrained prone position even
(16:31):
though he was on a medical call and clearly in
a state of quote excited delirium. The city chose not
to pursue that violation by police.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
In February twenty twenty one, four months after the release
of the Parker report, the firefighters were formerly notified of
their punishment. Captain Klein's job was terminated, and the other
four firefighters were also disciplined, including losing sponsorship for their
paramedical licenses for two years, but they kept their jobs.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
The task of formerly firing client felt to Chief Losche,
even though he had pushed for far more lenient penalties.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
We messed up on that job, you know, on that instant.
But the penalty was way too harsh, meaning that by
terminating and not taking in his career and all the
things that he had done well and all the people
he had saved over these years.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
A month later, the Sacramento County District Attorney's office released
its determination on whether or not to bring charges against
the attending police officers. All three were completely absolved. In
the release document, prosecutors described the officer's conduct that night
as quote reasonable given the circumstances they encountered end quote.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
The firefighters were enraged. Here's Eric Munson again.
Speaker 13 (17:54):
I figured and thought it was the biggest bullshit of
potential bullshits there could have been as and primarily because
one of the autopsy or coigner's reports, I don't know
which it specifically was stated, and this was the second
report that went out in regards to mister Payne stated
(18:16):
that body positioning by PD could not be overruled as
causation of death. But yet PD had done their own
internal investigation and had it opened and closed in the process,
there is something in the timeline of less than a week.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
As he dug into the facts of the case. Nicholson,
the family attorney, also found it strange that firefighters received
such harsh discipline but the police officers there that night
were not held accountable for their actions.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
It should have been a routine call, It should have
been about saving Reggie's life, and obviously it went horribly wrong,
and it went horribly wrong for predictable and preventable reasons.
Watching the video, I think a lot of people, most people,
certainly myself, were disgusted by what was captured on that
(19:08):
But what happened even after that day, I think was
even more egregious in some ways because the insult to
the family continued for so long and to this day,
I don't think there's really been ever any real accountability
specifically to the actions of the police officers. I would say,
you know, what happened that day, they were failures on
(19:29):
both sides, the firefighters and the police. But I don't
think the firefighters, you know, they weren't the ones restraining him.
They aren't the ones who killed him. The police officers
were the ones who restrained him. They were the ones
whose force caused him to pass and to suffer in
the process.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Captain Kline didn't stay fired for long. Soon after being
notified of his termination, he appealed the decision, and an
arbitrator in twenty twenty three sided with Klein, and he
got his job back at the fire department at the
same rank and salary. He also received one hundred and
thirty eight thousand dollars in paid leave during the investigation.
(20:17):
As we worked on this podcast and talked to people,
one question that kept spinning in our minds was was
this all preventable? Could anything have kept this entire ordeal
from turning out the way it did. Those are questions
we pose to nearly everyone we spoke to and got
a range of responses.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
We should start with the racial makeup of both the
Sacramento Police and fire departments. We knew it in an
earlier episode. The whole Sacramento in twenty ten was thirty
seven percent white, twelve percent black, and thirty percent Hispanic.
Its police department was sixty six percent white, six percent black,
and fourteen percent Hispanic. The fire department was even more proportionate,
(21:01):
seventy one percent white, three percent black, thirteen percent Hispanic.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That racial disparity at times fostered bullying and racially charged
remarks from white firefighters to black and brown squad members.
In February twenty twenty one, about a year After Reggie's incident,
firefighter Desmond Lewis, who was black, quit the department after
allegedly enduring racially insensitive comments from white firefighter colleagues, including
(21:31):
some pertaining to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Lewis reapplied to the department a few years later and
was rehired.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Captain James Butler spent thirty years working at the Sacramento
Fire Department and devoted a large chunk of his tenure
to hiring more firefighters of color. Butler, who is black,
said it was a constant challenge both convincing minority recruits
to join the department and getting support from the city.
He stressed, that's the importance of having black firefighters working
(22:02):
in Sacramento's black neighborhoods.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I asked Butler about Reggie's case. He wasn't involved in
the incident, so he couldn't speak to what happened specifically,
but he recounted a recurring case in the late nineteen
nineties involving a South Sacramento man experiencing violent diabetic episodes
nearly identical to Reggie's. Butler and other firefighters were repeatedly
(22:26):
called to help him out. Butler described him as a
large black man.
Speaker 9 (22:31):
It took all of us to hold him down to
get him. You know, usually we start an IV we'll
give him sugar and all this stuff if they're passed out.
And if we can't do that, we give him what's
called gluke gone. And it's just a shot.
Speaker 14 (22:46):
But you still got to hold him still to get
the shot right. And it took all of us to
get this guy, to restrain him, to get him down,
and then he would wake up and he's all, hey,
what's up.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Guy.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Nither stat never.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Face with a large black man flailing and reacting erratically
to a diabetic episode. Butler and the other firefighters didn't
immediately call police. They didn't handcuff him or put the
man in the prone position for more than six minutes. Instead,
they held him down the best they could and gave
him a shot of glucagun.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Both Chief Flowers and Eric Munson, who are both white,
adamantly denied that race played any role whatsoever in Reggie's case.
But I asked Butler whether he thinks having black firefighters
there that night may have made a difference.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I believe yes.
Speaker 8 (23:39):
I mean and you can't always like that, you know
that situation, but you can better your odds by having
more of us there, hired on the department, having more
people you know, of Indian descent, more people among descent,
more people of Latino descent.
Speaker 14 (23:59):
Now just seventy percent white male.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's not what lives here. That's not who we're serving.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Now that he's had time and distance to think about it,
we also asked Loose whether Reggie's death could have been prevented.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Could this had turned out different? Absolutely, would the patient
had survived. I don't honestly know what he totally passed
away from because from what I was told, if I'm
correct on my memory is there was no autopsy even done.
I believe that the patient might have been cremated fairly
quickly if I'm not getting cases mixed up, and so
(24:35):
we don't. We only have whatever the doctor said after
he had heard some of the information from what transpired
in the home. So I don't know if the patient
would have survived anyway, But I can say training between
the two departments, clearer protocols, and yes, there was some
fault on the fire department absolutely could have changed this. Yes,
(24:56):
and better training needed to be implemented for the fires
Service when they come across the bation that needs to
be restrained.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Los is correct. Early COVID precautions led to Reggie's body
being cremated soon after death. There was no autopsy. Still
it's unclear what policy changes, if any, came out of
Reggie's case. As we said earlier, a City of Sacramento
spokeswoman declined to comment for this podcast. As part of
(25:24):
our records request, we received a series of policy protocols
and arrest control training guides for the police department. Nothing
in those documents specifically says whether any changes were made
after the incident with Reggie.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Police had Reggie handcuffed face down with his legs criss
crossed and into his back for seven minutes, just two
and a half minutes, shy of the amount of time
George Floyd was kept in a similar position. After Floyd's death,
states across the country passed more than one hundred and
forty law enforcement oversight bills to increase police accountability. Could
(26:03):
something like this happen again in Sacramento. The family brought
that question up in their initial lawsuit against the city.
They requested concrete policy changes to prevent what happened to
Reggie from happening again.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
The lawsuit dragged on years, ticked by depositions and more depositions,
and then even more depositions, more than twenty five in.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All most sides dug in. The case seemed destined to
play out in a federal courtroom. But then in April
of twenty twenty four, the family settled with the city
for around four point three million dollars, slightly more than
the four point one million that the family of Stefan
Clark received in similar settlements from the City of Sacramento.
(26:47):
The policy changes were quested by the family, however, didn't
make it into the settlement agreement. This was not a
surprise to their attorney, Joseph Nicholson.
Speaker 10 (26:56):
The settlement is a sort of a tacit. But it's
hard for me to say that nothing like this will
happen again in Sacramento because I haven't seen the types
of changes we would have liked to see. This has
never really been about money. Again. It comes back to
why I like representing real people, because you know, it's
not about the money for them, It's about justice and
preventing this. And I know Reggie's sisters, you know, are
(27:18):
really into the overall movement to try to just you know,
prevent police violence against primarily black men.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Despite all the rallies and protests and worldwide condemnation in
the wake of the George Floyd murder, nothing's truly changed,
said Barry Axious, the community activists. In his words, police
around the country still abuse and kills suspects on mental
health and medical calls. Even if another similar incident is
caught on tape in the future, he doubts the streets
(27:48):
will you're rupt again in the same way.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
We just got fucked. He just got sucked.
Speaker 15 (27:55):
And so that's a way to where that's why all
things are still similarly the same, because the agenda was.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Never ever to stop police batality. It never was.
Speaker 15 (28:05):
It was the agenda was to make people not look
at it the way they look at it as they did,
And that's why you still have cops killing folks on
mental health cults. And I don't think it's going to
stop until you change the police Bill of rights, the
immunity with the police. It's just so much different stuff
that has to be changed before.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
There's actual true change.
Speaker 15 (28:28):
And I think that's the unfortunate part about where we're
at right now.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Months blurt into years for Reggie's family following his death.
The lawsuit and settlement forced him to relive that horrible
night over and over. They were disappointed that the DA
would not be filing charges against police officers and that
their efforts to change restraint policy didn't make a dent.
The family moved to the nearby city of Starckton, California,
(28:56):
but memories of Reggie, especially his final words in those
final moments, still linger and haunt.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Them even now. When his family members reread his autobiography,
hearing Reggie's voice and the words, they realized just how
insightful and prescient some of the passages were. How Reggie's
writing still impacts them.
Speaker 16 (29:19):
I often wonder how many other black men have suffered
or been tortured over the years, dead and gone, and
no one even knows or knew personally. Is one of
my worst fears. No one will even know my struggle
when I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I guess as we sit here toward the end of
this project, I really find myself, on the one hand,
heartbroken by what happened, and on the other hand, filled
with some gratitude that we were able to talk about
Reggie and find out what happened. And you know, throughout
this process, I've been in contact with his system, Janine,
(30:01):
who keeps telling me how meaningful it's been to her
that we've been able to sort of bring back her
brother and talk about her brother. And as tragic as
it is, as heartbreaking as it is, as much as
I think we both wish more justice could be done
in this country for just the scores and scores of
black men who face similar fates, I think there's something
(30:24):
beautiful at least in rediscovering a long lost friend and
being able to tell his story for people.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I feel like, in a lot of ways, we actually
did find him because we found out so much about him,
about his background, about him going to high school, about
him coming out of the sixty nine Village projects, his
time in Grambling, and so in some ways I feel
like I know him a lot better. I think it's
important to tell not just Reggie's stories, but a lot
of people's story across the country. You know, it's been
(30:52):
five years since George Floyd. Now we're sitting here in
twenty twenty five, and a lot of the stories of
things that happen across the country have come and gone,
and people tend to forget. So I think it's important
to highlight some of these stories and keep them in
people's consciousness.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And what actually hurts me here, sitting here in twenty
twenty five, is it really does feel like we're going backwards,
like it feels like after George Floyd. These incidents are
presented with less and less attention. There are so many
of these stories that just keep happening. I think, as
we come to the end of this, the sad but
(31:33):
unavoidable reality is that our lives diverged so much from
Reggie's because he just had so much more to overcome.
And at the end of the day, when I look
at my life, I just realized how much I was
handed and how in many ways it was pretty easy.
(31:54):
I didn't suffer from any debilitating mental illnesses. I grew
up in a Placid, boring, but you know, secure community.
My parents paid for my college. I knew I was
going to work at a newspaper. I had a support
network of a gazillion different people, and while Reggie had
an amazing, amazing family and amazing, amazing friends, I think
(32:18):
at the end of the day, he just faced hurdles
that I never had to deal with or even come
close to dealing with. And sometimes those kind of things
are unconquerable no matter how hard you try. After Reggie's death,
Harriet brought her son's ashes home and share them among
(32:40):
family members. Jeaneine and Crystal, Reggie's sisters, got small urns
with some of his remains. Reggie's son, Lowa Regg also
got some. Today, most of Reggie's ashes rest in and
earn about the fireplace and a Harriet's home in Stockton.
(33:00):
When we visited them last year, I asked her what
it's like to lose her child.
Speaker 8 (33:05):
My whole life has changed, my whole life.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
It's totally new, it's just.
Speaker 8 (33:18):
New.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
But I don't go nowhere without this on. Harriet held
up a small heart shaped glass locket dangling from a
silver necklace around her neck, next to two small quartz crystals.
Inside the locket was a pinch of Reggie's ashes. Emblazoned
on it in cursive writing were the words always in
my heart. Harriet said, it's the first thing she puts
(33:42):
on every morning and the last thing she takes off
each night. In between. She carries Reggie with her everywhere
she goes. As she spoke every now and then she
twirled the locket in her fingers or gave it an
unconscious tiny pat Reggie, don't go nowhere? What out it?
(34:16):
Finding Sexy Sweat is a production of School of Humans
and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was reported, written and hosted
by Jeff Perlman and Rick Jervis. It was produced by
Gabby Watts with production support from Etily's Perez Zaron Burnett Is.
Our story editor Jesse Niswanger scored and mixed this episode.
George Washington I read the excerpts from the Harassment of Reginald. DP.
(34:40):
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Curley, and Brandon Barr.
Please leave the show a review and you can follow
along with the show on Instagram at School of Humans
On the afternoon of Friday, May twenty twenty, staff and
fire officials at the Sacramento Fire Department headquarters on Freeport
Boulevard and Sacramento were powering down computers and readying to leave.
For many, it had been a long work week and
weekend planned were starting to overtake work tasks and deadlines.
(00:23):
Sacramento Fire Captain Gary Losch was in his office when
he got a call from an assistant city manager. The
official told him there was a meeting in progress at
Old City Hall that he should really be a part of.
This struck Losch's odd city meetings were always planned in advance.
Department heads had busy schedules, and getting more than one
of them in a room together took time. He obviously
(00:47):
hadn't been formally invited to this one. Still, Loch had
a pretty good idea what the meeting was about. Just
two months earlier, five of his firefighters had answered a
medical call in South Sacramento man acting erratically from what
dispatch described as a possible diabetic episode. The team had
called police for backup. The police handcuffed the man in
(01:09):
the prone position. As firefighters worked on him, he lost
consciousness and was rushed to a hospital, where he slipped
into a coma. A week later, his family pulled him
off life support. Losh asked his own staff to investigate
the incident, but he knew some officials at city Hall
his bosses, had launched their own inquiry. His suspicions were
(01:32):
confirmed when he walked into the conference room. Around the
table sat members of the city manager's office, several city attorneys,
and others. A flat screen TV in the room showed
images from police body camp footage. There was Reggie struggling
while handcuffed on the ground in the prone position in
those agonizing minutes on his parents' living room floor. One
(01:56):
of the city officials who was present cut right to
the chase. All five firefighters there that night should be
immediately terminated. Losch was stunned. The inquiries into the incident
hadn't been completed, and city officials were already calling for
the firefighters jobs. What about due process and what about
(02:16):
the three police officers involved. Losher members the moment vividly.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It felt like we were putting the cart before the horse,
and we had to terminate members to appease people without
the proper investigation being completed. It was like these members
were going to be scapegoaded so the public could see
that something was being done.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Losh agreed that the firefighters had messed up and should
be disciplined, but firing them seems extreme, especially when the
police officers were assigned no blame. Something didn't feel right,
and it was only the beginning. This is Finding Sexy Sweat,
(03:01):
a podcast where me, Jeff Pearlman, and my colleague Rick
Jervis attempt to retrace the life of our former friend
and fellow journalist, Reggie.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Paine, better known by his rap name Sexy Sweat, to.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Try and learn how our life paths differed so sharply
and why Reggie met such an untimely death after a
medical call to his parents' home in Sacramento. This is
episode eight, No One Will Know My Struggle.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
In the last episode, we went through the last week
of Reggie's life in a coma, effectively brain dead, and
the agonizing decision his family made to take him off
life support. We discovered that city fire officials ordered an
investigation into the incident, and soon learned that officials up
the chain of command had later ordered their own query,
(03:51):
later released as the Parker Report.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Before either of those investigations were completed, Fire Chief Gary
Lews was told that the city plan to fire all
five firefighters during a conference call that was confirmed in
that conference room at city Hall in a meeting he
was called to join at the last minute. Of the
eight first responders who arrived at Reggie's parents' house that night,
only Eric Munson agreed to speak with us. He's the
(04:17):
engineer who drove Firingsine twelve that night. He since retired
from the department.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
We made requests to speak to high ranking officials involved
in the incident's aftermath. Not one of them agreed to
speak to us on the record, except for Gary Loasch.
We should say here. Losch was fired in May of
twenty twenty two for a quote incompatibility of management style,
among other things. That's according to local news reports. Losch
(04:46):
filed a wrongful termination claim later that year and won
a three hundred thousand dollars settlement from the city. Today,
he lives in Florida, where he says he could be
closer to his aging mother.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So yeah, there's no love lost between los and Sacramento
City Hall.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
When I spoke to him, Losch chose his words carefully.
He said he had been willing to cooperate with the
city's investigation into Reggie's death and was blindsided in that
meeting of May eighth when he realized the city was
determined to fire five firefighters who were at the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I made a statement like, wait a minute, you
just can't do this. There is no completed investigation. We
got a lot of you know, there's one hundred steps
doing wrong, step twenty nine, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Losch said. He later agreed with the five firefighters unpaid
administrative leave while the investigations played out. He considered it
a compromise to save them from swift termination.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
We didn't have the entire investigation gun and they were
just basically being thrown to the wolves. It's almost the
safe faith for the city to say they were doing something.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
After reviewing the bodycam footage and talking with his investigators,
los agreed that the five firefighters aired by allowing Reggie
to stay in the prone position for so long. He
planned to recommend emotions for all five and some suspensions,
but not termination.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Losh had spent three decades, including in various leadership roles,
at the Philadelphia Fire Department, before taking the top job
with Sacramento Fire. In all those years, he'd never seen
such a hasty move to terminate firefighters again. While the
city targeted firefighters, the three police officers involved, Officers Mormon, Mauer,
(06:33):
and Helmeic faced no penalties or consequences for their actions
at night. The city manager's office oversees discipline at the
fire department, but police officials are largely responsible for investigations
and discipline of officers. In other words, police are free
to police themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Losch was stuck between appeasing his bosses at city Hall
and making sure his firefighters got a fair deal.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
It made me too bad because they weren't getting due process.
You know, I had worked my way up in Philly,
and since being the guy that made sure everybody got
due process, I'd made it known when I came to
the city of Sacramento that everyone would be held responsible,
no matter male, female, black, white, anything. Everybody was being
(07:20):
held responsible for their actions that they would take. But
you know, I'll go back to the adage, you're innocent
to im proven guilty.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
We didn't even have an investigation completed.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Even before that meeting. It seemed like the city's mind
was made up police would face no accountability, while the
firefighters would be offered up scapegoats for an angry public.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Like I said from the early phone call, the pressure
coming from another department head and from the administration was
they got to be fired.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Loch said he pushed carefully yet persistently for less stringent
punishment for the firefighters, but after George Floyd's death sparked
a new round of protests against police brutally across Sacramento,
that task became impossible.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
And that just ramped everything up. And I guess the
city didn't want another George Floyd type of spotlight on him,
and this was to get rid of the members right away.
And I'm like, you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Those wasn't the only one feeling that Floyd's death and
the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests would make the investigation
into Reggie's death more politically charged. Captain Jeffrey Klein, the
highest ranking fire official on the scene that night, declined
to come on this podcast, but in the deposition eighteen
months after Reggie's death, Clein said he was told by
fire officials and others that police officers were off limits.
(08:40):
Here's Clein from the deposition given on October fourteenth, twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 6 (08:46):
So from the inception of the call, anytime that any
of the fire personnel brought up law enforcement, the actions
of law enforcement, this topic of law enforcement, we were
told repeatedly that we're not discussing the police officers and
the actions of the police officers are off limits.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
According to Climb, less than two months after the incident,
while it was still being investigated, a fire department official
took him aside in a parking lot and gave him
a sobering warning the city was coming for him.
Speaker 6 (09:20):
I was informed very shortly after being placed on administrative
leave by one of our administrators that the city had
made the determination that they were going to terminate me
and it was not reversible. That fire administration does not
support it, but it's going to happen regardless.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And attorney for the family asked Klein about the role
George Floyd's murder played in investigating the police's role in
Reggie's case.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Everyone that you've dealt with regarding this call in the
fire administration chain of command has talked about the politics
of this type of a call, right yes, and specifically
referenced to the George Floyd case.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
There were a lot of references to that very early
in the process.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, As Captain Jeffrey Klein and the other firefighters feared
for their jobs, Reggie's family struggled to make sense of
what happened. To Reggie's mother, Harriet, it all seemed like
(10:22):
a fog filled dream. The nine one call to help
with Reggie's diabetic episode, the handcuffs, Reggie huffing and struggling
on the floor the hospital, the coma, the way her
son slipped away in her hands.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Reggie was cremated and the family was scheduled to have
a celebration of life ceremony at a local funeral home
with more than one hundred people attending. But it was
March of twenty twenty, COVID was ramping up and lockdowns
were being put in place, so the ceremony was abruptly canceled.
There would be no final goodbyes.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Still, the family had questions. Within forty eight hours of
the incident, Harriet tried to get a copy of the
police report. Instead, she was visited by a homicide investigator
who interviewed her for more than an hour. Still, she
was given no access to the police report. The family
grew frustrated.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
Somebody got paid for this, somebody didn't do something right.
Speaker 9 (11:22):
I need some answers.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
They were in an awkward position still morning, with COVID
anxiety mounting all around them. They didn't want to invite
a lot of unwanted media attention, but they knew they
needed help. Urged on by a family friend, they contacted
the officer of Benjamin Crump, the high profile of civil
rights attorney whose cases have included Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown,
(11:47):
and George Floyd, but Crumb's office declined to pick up
Reggie's case. They tried reaching out to John Burris, an
Oakland based civil rights attorney, also not interested.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
The story had been picked up in a few local
media articles, and the bodycam footage had been released, but
it hadn't gotten nearly the same level of publicity as
other police custody death cases.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That might have been the timing. The news cycle was
consumed by COVID lockdowns and hospitals being overrun, and this
was a complex case. Was it a police custody case?
Reggie was, after all, in police handcuffs when he slipped
into a coma, or was it a fire department custody case,
since they, as first responders, initiated the call to police.
(12:39):
For a while, Reggie's family thought the case would go
the way of scores of other police custody deaths, quietly
filed away with many lingering questions. Then a family friend
recommended an attorney, who pointed them to caw dun Bagdaddy,
a prominent trial lawyer out of San Francisco who specializes
in personal injury and wrongful death. Back Daddy agreed to
(13:01):
take the case on his colleague, Joseph Nicholson, began digging
into Reggie's file. Nicholson told me he got hooked on
Reggie's case the moment he saw the body camp footage.
Speaker 10 (13:12):
I watched that video and I'm putting myself in the
place of the guy on the floor saying I can't
read mama, and I'm just appalled, and I want to
be his advocate.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Backed by Nicholson and Bagdaddy, the family filed a wrong
for death lawsuit against the city of Sacramento in November
of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
As Reggie's case became better known, more and more of
his friends learned of his death. Some of whom hadn't
spoken with him in decades. Alan Scott Gordon, his friend
from Grambling, found out through a mutual friend.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
And I was like wow, And it wasn't really clear
how Reggie passed away. You know, I didn't know what
was the complication. Diabetes wasn't thinking its medication. So that's
the narrative that I was on until I ractually read
an article on some point out, Hey, Rach the hands
of you know, neglect from first responders or from the police.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Alex Harris, another Gambling colleague, found out through a Facebook post.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
It really hurts because Reggie was a friend of mine.
It I loved Reggie, and it was just like, oh
my God, like damn, this didn't seem like that was
the way he should have left his earth, Like not
like that.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
The Quandra Hurt, the family friend from sixty nine Village,
got a call from Reggie's sister Crystal shortly after his death.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
Everything wasn't shocked because it didn't understand how did it
go down like that? But I know as time further
went on, like days or weeks, things were coming out
for his videos and audios and stuff like that, and
so at that point you become angry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Friends and families weren't the only ones struggling with Reggie's
death and its aftermath. The firefighters there that night, suspended
in June over the incident, soon realized the city wanted
to place the blame for his death squarely on their shoulders.
Eric Munchen, who drove the fire engineto Reggie's parents' house,
says the condemnation took a severe emotional toll on him
(15:11):
and his colleagues.
Speaker 13 (15:12):
At one point, one of us had it gone in
our mouth. At one point, one of us was ready
to just quit, up end.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And move away from everything.
Speaker 13 (15:23):
One of us lost a marriage and a family over this.
This put us and ran us all through the absolute
ringer to a degree that I don't think any of
us ever could have expected to see come from our
city or our department with what was going on.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
The City's investigation into Reggie's death, which became known as
the Parker Report, was released in October of twenty twenty.
It was a searing indictment of the five firefighters, detailing
how they violated policy and were negligent in their care
of Reggie. The report does include that police handcuffed Reggie
in the prone position, but directs all blame onto the firefighters.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
The report states that firefighters violated something called the Sacramento
County Emergency Medical Services Agency Protocols by allowing Reggie to
stay in the prone position. Not mentioned in the report.
Police officers also violated a Sacramento Police Department General Order
number five hundred and twenty two point zero two by
placing and keeping Reggie in a restrained prone position even
(16:31):
though he was on a medical call and clearly in
a state of quote excited delirium. The city chose not
to pursue that violation by police.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
In February twenty twenty one, four months after the release
of the Parker report, the firefighters were formerly notified of
their punishment. Captain Klein's job was terminated, and the other
four firefighters were also disciplined, including losing sponsorship for their
paramedical licenses for two years, but they kept their jobs.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
The task of formerly firing client felt to Chief Losche,
even though he had pushed for far more lenient penalties.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
We messed up on that job, you know, on that instant.
But the penalty was way too harsh, meaning that by
terminating and not taking in his career and all the
things that he had done well and all the people
he had saved over these years.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
A month later, the Sacramento County District Attorney's office released
its determination on whether or not to bring charges against
the attending police officers. All three were completely absolved. In
the release document, prosecutors described the officer's conduct that night
as quote reasonable given the circumstances they encountered end quote.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
The firefighters were enraged. Here's Eric Munson again.
Speaker 13 (17:54):
I figured and thought it was the biggest bullshit of
potential bullshits there could have been as and primarily because
one of the autopsy or coigner's reports, I don't know
which it specifically was stated, and this was the second
report that went out in regards to mister Payne stated
(18:16):
that body positioning by PD could not be overruled as
causation of death. But yet PD had done their own
internal investigation and had it opened and closed in the process,
there is something in the timeline of less than a week.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
As he dug into the facts of the case. Nicholson,
the family attorney, also found it strange that firefighters received
such harsh discipline but the police officers there that night
were not held accountable for their actions.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
It should have been a routine call, It should have
been about saving Reggie's life, and obviously it went horribly wrong,
and it went horribly wrong for predictable and preventable reasons.
Watching the video, I think a lot of people, most people,
certainly myself, were disgusted by what was captured on that
(19:08):
But what happened even after that day, I think was
even more egregious in some ways because the insult to
the family continued for so long and to this day,
I don't think there's really been ever any real accountability
specifically to the actions of the police officers. I would say,
you know, what happened that day, they were failures on
(19:29):
both sides, the firefighters and the police. But I don't
think the firefighters, you know, they weren't the ones restraining him.
They aren't the ones who killed him. The police officers
were the ones who restrained him. They were the ones
whose force caused him to pass and to suffer in
the process.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Captain Kline didn't stay fired for long. Soon after being
notified of his termination, he appealed the decision, and an
arbitrator in twenty twenty three sided with Klein, and he
got his job back at the fire department at the
same rank and salary. He also received one hundred and
thirty eight thousand dollars in paid leave during the investigation.
(20:17):
As we worked on this podcast and talked to people,
one question that kept spinning in our minds was was
this all preventable? Could anything have kept this entire ordeal
from turning out the way it did. Those are questions
we pose to nearly everyone we spoke to and got
a range of responses.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
We should start with the racial makeup of both the
Sacramento Police and fire departments. We knew it in an
earlier episode. The whole Sacramento in twenty ten was thirty
seven percent white, twelve percent black, and thirty percent Hispanic.
Its police department was sixty six percent white, six percent black,
and fourteen percent Hispanic. The fire department was even more proportionate,
(21:01):
seventy one percent white, three percent black, thirteen percent Hispanic.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That racial disparity at times fostered bullying and racially charged
remarks from white firefighters to black and brown squad members.
In February twenty twenty one, about a year After Reggie's incident,
firefighter Desmond Lewis, who was black, quit the department after
allegedly enduring racially insensitive comments from white firefighter colleagues, including
(21:31):
some pertaining to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Lewis reapplied to the department a few years later and
was rehired.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Captain James Butler spent thirty years working at the Sacramento
Fire Department and devoted a large chunk of his tenure
to hiring more firefighters of color. Butler, who is black,
said it was a constant challenge both convincing minority recruits
to join the department and getting support from the city.
He stressed, that's the importance of having black firefighters working
(22:02):
in Sacramento's black neighborhoods.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
I asked Butler about Reggie's case. He wasn't involved in
the incident, so he couldn't speak to what happened specifically,
but he recounted a recurring case in the late nineteen
nineties involving a South Sacramento man experiencing violent diabetic episodes
nearly identical to Reggie's. Butler and other firefighters were repeatedly
(22:26):
called to help him out. Butler described him as a
large black man.
Speaker 9 (22:31):
It took all of us to hold him down to
get him. You know, usually we start an IV we'll
give him sugar and all this stuff if they're passed out.
And if we can't do that, we give him what's
called gluke gone. And it's just a shot.
Speaker 14 (22:46):
But you still got to hold him still to get
the shot right. And it took all of us to
get this guy, to restrain him, to get him down,
and then he would wake up and he's all, hey,
what's up.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Guy.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Nither stat never.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Face with a large black man flailing and reacting erratically
to a diabetic episode. Butler and the other firefighters didn't
immediately call police. They didn't handcuff him or put the
man in the prone position for more than six minutes. Instead,
they held him down the best they could and gave
him a shot of glucagun.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Both Chief Flowers and Eric Munson, who are both white,
adamantly denied that race played any role whatsoever in Reggie's case.
But I asked Butler whether he thinks having black firefighters
there that night may have made a difference.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I believe yes.
Speaker 8 (23:39):
I mean and you can't always like that, you know
that situation, but you can better your odds by having
more of us there, hired on the department, having more
people you know, of Indian descent, more people among descent,
more people of Latino descent.
Speaker 14 (23:59):
Now just seventy percent white male.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's not what lives here. That's not who we're serving.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Now that he's had time and distance to think about it,
we also asked Loose whether Reggie's death could have been prevented.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Could this had turned out different? Absolutely, would the patient
had survived. I don't honestly know what he totally passed
away from because from what I was told, if I'm
correct on my memory is there was no autopsy even done.
I believe that the patient might have been cremated fairly
quickly if I'm not getting cases mixed up, and so
(24:35):
we don't. We only have whatever the doctor said after
he had heard some of the information from what transpired
in the home. So I don't know if the patient
would have survived anyway, But I can say training between
the two departments, clearer protocols, and yes, there was some
fault on the fire department absolutely could have changed this. Yes,
(24:56):
and better training needed to be implemented for the fires
Service when they come across the bation that needs to
be restrained.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Los is correct. Early COVID precautions led to Reggie's body
being cremated soon after death. There was no autopsy. Still
it's unclear what policy changes, if any, came out of
Reggie's case. As we said earlier, a City of Sacramento
spokeswoman declined to comment for this podcast. As part of
(25:24):
our records request, we received a series of policy protocols
and arrest control training guides for the police department. Nothing
in those documents specifically says whether any changes were made
after the incident with Reggie.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Police had Reggie handcuffed face down with his legs criss
crossed and into his back for seven minutes, just two
and a half minutes, shy of the amount of time
George Floyd was kept in a similar position. After Floyd's death,
states across the country passed more than one hundred and
forty law enforcement oversight bills to increase police accountability. Could
(26:03):
something like this happen again in Sacramento. The family brought
that question up in their initial lawsuit against the city.
They requested concrete policy changes to prevent what happened to
Reggie from happening again.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
The lawsuit dragged on years, ticked by depositions and more depositions,
and then even more depositions, more than twenty five in.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All most sides dug in. The case seemed destined to
play out in a federal courtroom. But then in April
of twenty twenty four, the family settled with the city
for around four point three million dollars, slightly more than
the four point one million that the family of Stefan
Clark received in similar settlements from the City of Sacramento.
(26:47):
The policy changes were quested by the family, however, didn't
make it into the settlement agreement. This was not a
surprise to their attorney, Joseph Nicholson.
Speaker 10 (26:56):
The settlement is a sort of a tacit. But it's
hard for me to say that nothing like this will
happen again in Sacramento because I haven't seen the types
of changes we would have liked to see. This has
never really been about money. Again. It comes back to
why I like representing real people, because you know, it's
not about the money for them, It's about justice and
preventing this. And I know Reggie's sisters, you know, are
(27:18):
really into the overall movement to try to just you know,
prevent police violence against primarily black men.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Despite all the rallies and protests and worldwide condemnation in
the wake of the George Floyd murder, nothing's truly changed,
said Barry Axious, the community activists. In his words, police
around the country still abuse and kills suspects on mental
health and medical calls. Even if another similar incident is
caught on tape in the future, he doubts the streets
(27:48):
will you're rupt again in the same way.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
We just got fucked. He just got sucked.
Speaker 15 (27:55):
And so that's a way to where that's why all
things are still similarly the same, because the agenda was.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Never ever to stop police batality. It never was.
Speaker 15 (28:05):
It was the agenda was to make people not look
at it the way they look at it as they did,
And that's why you still have cops killing folks on
mental health cults. And I don't think it's going to
stop until you change the police Bill of rights, the
immunity with the police. It's just so much different stuff
that has to be changed before.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
There's actual true change.
Speaker 15 (28:28):
And I think that's the unfortunate part about where we're
at right now.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Months blurt into years for Reggie's family following his death.
The lawsuit and settlement forced him to relive that horrible
night over and over. They were disappointed that the DA
would not be filing charges against police officers and that
their efforts to change restraint policy didn't make a dent.
The family moved to the nearby city of Starckton, California,
(28:56):
but memories of Reggie, especially his final words in those
final moments, still linger and haunt.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Them even now. When his family members reread his autobiography,
hearing Reggie's voice and the words, they realized just how
insightful and prescient some of the passages were. How Reggie's
writing still impacts them.
Speaker 16 (29:19):
I often wonder how many other black men have suffered
or been tortured over the years, dead and gone, and
no one even knows or knew personally. Is one of
my worst fears. No one will even know my struggle
when I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I guess as we sit here toward the end of
this project, I really find myself, on the one hand,
heartbroken by what happened, and on the other hand, filled
with some gratitude that we were able to talk about
Reggie and find out what happened. And you know, throughout
this process, I've been in contact with his system, Janine,
(30:01):
who keeps telling me how meaningful it's been to her
that we've been able to sort of bring back her
brother and talk about her brother. And as tragic as
it is, as heartbreaking as it is, as much as
I think we both wish more justice could be done
in this country for just the scores and scores of
black men who face similar fates, I think there's something
(30:24):
beautiful at least in rediscovering a long lost friend and
being able to tell his story for people.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I feel like, in a lot of ways, we actually
did find him because we found out so much about him,
about his background, about him going to high school, about
him coming out of the sixty nine Village projects, his
time in Grambling, and so in some ways I feel
like I know him a lot better. I think it's
important to tell not just Reggie's stories, but a lot
of people's story across the country. You know, it's been
(30:52):
five years since George Floyd. Now we're sitting here in
twenty twenty five, and a lot of the stories of
things that happen across the country have come and gone,
and people tend to forget. So I think it's important
to highlight some of these stories and keep them in
people's consciousness.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And what actually hurts me here, sitting here in twenty
twenty five, is it really does feel like we're going backwards,
like it feels like after George Floyd. These incidents are
presented with less and less attention. There are so many
of these stories that just keep happening. I think, as
we come to the end of this, the sad but
(31:33):
unavoidable reality is that our lives diverged so much from
Reggie's because he just had so much more to overcome.
And at the end of the day, when I look
at my life, I just realized how much I was
handed and how in many ways it was pretty easy.
(31:54):
I didn't suffer from any debilitating mental illnesses. I grew
up in a Placid, boring, but you know, secure community.
My parents paid for my college. I knew I was
going to work at a newspaper. I had a support
network of a gazillion different people, and while Reggie had
an amazing, amazing family and amazing, amazing friends, I think
(32:18):
at the end of the day, he just faced hurdles
that I never had to deal with or even come
close to dealing with. And sometimes those kind of things
are unconquerable no matter how hard you try. After Reggie's death,
Harriet brought her son's ashes home and share them among
(32:40):
family members. Jeaneine and Crystal, Reggie's sisters, got small urns
with some of his remains. Reggie's son, Lowa Regg also
got some. Today, most of Reggie's ashes rest in and
earn about the fireplace and a Harriet's home in Stockton.
(33:00):
When we visited them last year, I asked her what
it's like to lose her child.
Speaker 8 (33:05):
My whole life has changed, my whole life.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
It's totally new, it's just.
Speaker 8 (33:18):
New.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
But I don't go nowhere without this on. Harriet held
up a small heart shaped glass locket dangling from a
silver necklace around her neck, next to two small quartz crystals.
Inside the locket was a pinch of Reggie's ashes. Emblazoned
on it in cursive writing were the words always in
my heart. Harriet said, it's the first thing she puts
(33:42):
on every morning and the last thing she takes off
each night. In between. She carries Reggie with her everywhere
she goes. As she spoke every now and then she
twirled the locket in her fingers or gave it an
unconscious tiny pat Reggie, don't go nowhere? What out it?
(34:16):
Finding Sexy Sweat is a production of School of Humans
and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was reported, written and hosted
by Jeff Perlman and Rick Jervis. It was produced by
Gabby Watts with production support from Etily's Perez Zaron Burnett Is.
Our story editor Jesse Niswanger scored and mixed this episode.
George Washington I read the excerpts from the Harassment of Reginald. DP.
(34:40):
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Curley, and Brandon Barr.
Please leave the show a review and you can follow
along with the show on Instagram at School of Humans
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