It’s In the Video! | Episode 4

After Niles’ death, Gerald uses what he believes to be the only option available to him to set the record straight - social media. Kate introduces footage and interviews with reporter Colleen Sanders, who broke Gerald’s story and the public trial that followed.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This podcast is a dramatization of fictionalized events that contains
culturally insensitive language and violence. I have an uncle that
I've never met. His name was Aaron, and he died
in an awful car accident at the young age of sixteen,
when a drunk driver plowed into his Mustang on Pacific

(00:23):
Coast Highway, just less than a mile and a half
from the home where my grandparents. His parents lived to
this day. The drunk driver walked away with a few
minor cuts and scrapes, and he also escaped our judicial
system with nothing more than probation, a fine, and community service.
The last time I visited my grandmother, or my bubby

(00:45):
as I call her, we were sitting in her kitchenette,
and I could sense that she was in a rare,
reflective mood. So I asked her about Uncle Aaron and
what it was like losing her son. So suddenly she
stared blankly in my direction, as if I was no
longer in the room, almost as if she couldn't see me.

(01:07):
And then she touched her wrinkled but sturdy hand to
her temple and said to me softly, Kate, I think
I heard the sound of my brain crack inside my
head when I think of Gerald inside Jason's forty two
sports bar and Grill coming to terms with the fact

(01:27):
that Niles was dead. I can't help but wonder did
Gerald hear his spring cracked two just like my bubbies?

(01:53):
As the medics stepped out the front door in the
police department, swat team swept him away from the building.
Here's what we do for sure what was happening inside
the bar. Gerald, with his assault rifle still strapped over
his shoulder, draws the handgun from his waistband and walks
decisively over to Sergeant Place and presses the barrel hard
against the officer's forehead. Gerald fires off three successive shots

(02:22):
just inches above Sergeant places head. Oh my good man.
Let me let me just tell you something about the bullets. Okay,
they ripped into the kitchen towel, and then they exploded
into these like little white clouds. Like literally, I can
see these little white clouds. Check this out. You see
this right here, m I still have tiny shots stuck
underneath my skin. This is the voice of Martin Sims.

(02:43):
He pulls back his long sleeve shirt and shows me
this gnarly constellation of scars running up his forearm. Jesus,
that must have hurt. Man, sh it still hurts, really?
Oh yeah, every time something brushes up against it feels
like I'm being poked by a thousand little pieces of glass.
So where you relieved when you're real is Jerald was
shooting into the wall? That was was they relieved? I mean, sure,

(03:03):
I was glad he didn't kill a man, but his
shooting to the wall was no small thing. And at
that point, I'm thinking to myself, what if Jase's right?
What if this cop is our only means of protection?
Like Gerald, busting off warning shots isn't going to put
anyone at ease. So look, if anything, that was the
moment I knew I better wise up. How So, it

(03:25):
just became clear to me that if I was going
to make it out of their live, I could not
sit back and wait for some crazy man to do
the right thing. So I started applot on how to
get myself out of the situation, and my best chance
of doing that was I needed to flip Chase Well
Martin was gaining clarity on what he should do next.
The hostage negotiation team debated with their next move should
be Commander Ammon's accounts, when I heard the shots ring

(03:48):
out again, my first instinct was to make sure we
stood down okay. I quickly got confirmation from Captain Flora's
that the weapons discharge came from inside the building. My
next priority was to get home or talking to the
HTS again and figure out exactly what the hell was
going on in there. In the security cam we see
Gerald leave the kitchen and go all the way over
to the dining room. This is pivotal because he doesn't

(04:09):
have line of sight, nor is he an earshot of
everybody else still in the kitchen, So here he is
about as far away as he possibly could be. Martin recalls,
but what was scary about that was it was my
real first opportunity to try to make a break for it,
try and escape. And he was right, because not only

(04:31):
were they separated by distance, Gerald at this point in
time seemed just sort of out of it. For a
couple of minutes. There's footage of Gerald with his hands
bawled up and fist clasped to his head, and he's
rocking back and forth making a weird, anguished sound. In
the background, we can hear the throw line phone ringing

(04:53):
incessantly as Homer and the rest of the command trailer
eagerly attempt to re establish contact by observing Gerald in
the security feed. The phone ring doesn't even register with
him as he continues to rock back and forth and
what I'm sure was an unconscious attempt to self soothe.
And even though I've been able to watch and rewatch
this physical manifestation of his grief, It's still hard to

(05:16):
fathom how unimaginably painful and frankly out of body these
moments must have been for him. Just keep in mind,
he's in the same room where he and Niles had
just done renovations. I'd be willing to bet that the
molding they worked on earlier hadn't even completely dried, and
yet in that short amount of time, so much had
changed Forever. From the looks of it, Gerald's grief written

(05:41):
spell could have gone on for a very long time,
but it was cut short by biology like a spring.
We see Gerald stand up and dart across the room,
where he vomits into a paint bucket. Yeah, I mean,
I clearly remember hearing it throw up. This may sound
a little elis, but that's when I knew I should

(06:02):
make a move. Listen to this conversation between Martin and Jason. Hey, hey, Jason, listen,
all right, you gotta pick that cop. Just listen, just
just like you did outside, I'm a help car. We
gotta hustle to that door, and then we gotta try
to make it out of Man, I'm not gonna grab
some fucking cop. Half did and go out in front
of both the cops with them shoot guns and just

(06:24):
went out there with the As for the metic didn't shooting.
That was before he saw popping shots off again. They
say the cops don't shoot. Huh, who's this stop Jerey
from shooting us on the way out? You really thing
he shoot you? I mean, aren't you gospoll to see
boys or some ship? Mar ook? Kay? Man, I think
I'll probably the best friend. Ye wait, yeah he shoot. Listen. Well,

(06:50):
Martin and Jay's argued the pros and cons of making
a quick escape. Gerald, still in the dining room, can
be seen gathering himself after literally purging his guts out,
but as he comes up from that bucket, there's something
about his posture worth noting he seems renewed. Focused. Moments later,
Gerald leaves the selvm post exile in the dining room

(07:11):
and rejoins everyone else in the kitchen. So he came
straight at me, and I'm thinking to myself, oh shit,
like I'm in trouble. Martin recounts, you know, because I
figured he heard me trying to get Jason to make
a break forward. Instead, he says, what give me your phone?
What're you gonna do with you? Got say that? Oh?

(07:51):
So Gerald takes my phone and he holds it in
front of the sergeant place, like right in front of
his face. The cops like no, no, He's like trying
to turn away, and then Gerald grabs his chin and
he makes him watch it. And then Gerald walks out,
and I mean, we had no idea what he was

(08:11):
playing on. Next, Gerald retreats back to the dining room area,
where he can be seen fiddling with both his phone
and Martin's phone when Gerald receives a notification that sets
in motion a chain of historical events. It was a
prompt from the increasingly popular social media app polycam. What
might the message on Gerald's phone have said? I can

(08:34):
tell you exactly what it said, because it's always the same.
That's Philibko. The twenty year old chairman, CEO and founder
of Polycamp. First, it's addressed to the user name, in
this case Gerald O. G. Then it says, welcome to polycamp.
Open the app now to post or stream your first video?
And is there anything special about that notification? Nope, totally ordinary.

(08:56):
But Gerald was no ordinary user, was he? Uh? He
was not? And he posted a video? Well yes, technically
his first video was a live stream, which he then
archived as a video post. Was there anything special about it?
His post slash live stream. I don't think we'd be

(09:17):
having this conversation if it wasn't special. Immediately after completing
the polycam sign up process, Gerald finally answers the incoming
call from the hostage negotiation team. Listen to this exchange. Hello,
go to this link in for a minute. I need
a pen. Does somebody get me a pen? Okay, I'm

(09:40):
ready polycam dot com for which slash s f J
O w J. Did he hang up again? He's off picture?
So what was your impression when you first saw your
old post or a link? At first? I wasn't quite
sure what I was looking at. The police had pushed

(10:01):
the media back another thirty yards, so to the naked eye.
It was difficult to even make out what was happening.
This is the voice of local TV newsfield reporter Colleen Sanders.
But I knew it had to be something because for
hours we couldn't see into that bar at all, and
then all of a sudden, there was this perfect three

(10:22):
ft by three ft square of window pane looking right
inside the building at about stomach II. So I look
over to my cameraman who was He was playing that
annoyingly popular phone game at the time. What was it called?
It begins with a b bow dash. Anyway, He's not

(10:42):
seeing what I'm seeing at all, So to get his attention,
I literally threw the cap of my band at him
and I got him right on the notes. Anyway, he
looks up and I kind of give him the start
rolling hand motion. And why were you used so incognito
about it? There were four other stations on site and
all of them were watching Paint Drive just like me

(11:04):
and my team. So you wanted to ski? Well? Yeah,
So anyway, my cameraman zooms in and we see someone
taping this handwritten sign up in that perfectly shaped three
foot square space in the window, and then they fold
the construction paper back behind the sign, which again negates
our ability to see into the bar. But but what

(11:25):
there was a message that simply read go here in
five minutes, and it had the U r L written underneath.
What did you think of it? I didn't know if
it was going to be something big or if we
were going to go back to sitting on our hands
and blame bow Dash on our phones. But it turned
out to be what kate off the charts big, like

(11:47):
once in a lifetime big. I mentioned before the problem
with this case is that we were constantly on our
heels and having to play catchup. Commander Ammond's reflects, and
that's okay, it's our job to play catch up. But
so many things that transpired were, frankly, things we had
never trained for, simply because they had never happened. Keep
in mind, we're still on our heels after hearing gunfire

(12:09):
from inside the building. Then we get hit with this
link from the lead h T and who knows where
that's headed. Plus Hobbs informs me that we now have
our second reported fatality of the evening, as confirmed by
the medic. And then I find out that the press
has picked up on the link and is now broadcasting
and all over the news. Sorry, Kate, I have to
call bullshit on that. We never showed the U r

(12:31):
L on our station. Come on, I'm legal, wouldn't have
allowed us to do that even if we wanted to.
Every time we cut to Gerald handwritten signed the link
was blurred out. My team and I have checked all
the broadcast footage coming from Colleen's network. She is correct,
none of it showed the actual poly chimu are l.
But there's definitely coverage where the lower third titles say

(12:52):
in bold letters, kidnapper Gerald Hayes to make announcement on
social media app. So Commander MS does have a point,
and that the news media certainly helped amplify exposure of
Gerald's link. So why do you think so many people
believe that you and your station are responsible for getting
Generald's link out there? Look, me and my team we

(13:14):
broke that story and we are proud of that. And
because we broke the story, I think a lot of
people conflate that with us being responsible for Gerald's link
going viral or trending or whatever. But that wasn't us.
That was someone else or some online organization, Regardless of
how you look at it. The reality on the ground

(13:35):
for law enforcement was that it added attention to the
links existence, which just raised the temperature on a situation
that was already white hot. Back in the trailer, Captain
Flores was adamant and very animated in his opinion that
we should take the building immediately because he felt the
ht S were operating more like terrorists than kidnappers. Okay,
I thought that was a bit extreme, but given Florida's

(13:56):
military background in Afghanistan, I understood how he could get
and his thinking. Did you consider sending Swaddon as he suggested? No,
I still thought that was prettymature, And for once, Homer
and Patterson were united in their assessment and both insisted
that we still had options that did not require force.

(14:16):
You know, negotiators are always going to agree to negotiate.
Detective Patterson gives his take. I generally disagree with homer style,
but I take his outdated methods of the time over
the spray and pray approach that Captain Floor as in
some of his tactical guys were suggesting. But mostly, if
you want my opinion, I think the debate in the

(14:37):
trailer at that time was really more about everyone venting nervous,
pent up energy, you know, and intense, high stakes situations
like this. The reality is that sometimes you just need
to wait to see what comes next. And that's exactly
what we ended up doing. Well, everyone outside the bar
waited for the link to go live. Gerald was still
making preparations for his big move. Martin grab one of

(15:00):
those cheers and willed that cop into the dining room.
Get that tape off his mouth. What if he starts
yelling to the concert sidneys? Do we just just no,
I'm not responsible? All right, come on, let's get you
into this chair. Well, Martin attends the sergeant place. Gerald,

(15:21):
already back in the dining room can be seen sort
of talking to himself. Unfortunately, no matter how many times
I poured over the footage and the surveillance videos, I
couldn't hear what Gerald was muttering during these pivotal moments.
But then I caught a break. Hello, Okay, Yes, needless

(15:43):
to say, I had jitters leading up to my second
meeting with Jace. I knew if I lost him this time,
I wasn't going to get a third opportunity. I met
j said his Silver Living residents, I don't know if

(16:06):
he was choosing to stay closer to a support network
or if he like I thought a change of venue
would be a good idea for this go around. We
sat in this nice little outdoor courtyard where patients could
take visitors and get some sunshine. But mostly I feel
like it was just a really big smoking area. There
were used ash trays on every table, and when Jay's

(16:27):
asked me if I minded if he smoked, I answered,
of course not, even though truth be told, if I
had one pet peeve its cigarette smoke. Needless to say,
I wasn't going to let my idiosyncrasies deter us from
getting off on the right foot. You spent a lot
of time out here the smoke, mostly at this vape,
which I could do in my room. But my blood

(16:47):
tender friend gave me this flower itself, so you know.
Oh wait, wait, my bad, my bad, you want this?
I'm retired, Okay, okay, anyway, we got two big rules
in the sleeping quarters here, no visitors and no smoking anything.
Never quiz by. I will say this something about Jason's mood.

(17:10):
His demeanor was so much more easy going this time,
and it wasn't just the weed. Even before he started smoking.
He just seemed to be in a much better headspace.
So I was super mindful of what I said and
how I said it as we got to talking. I
started with small talk before I finally worked my way
around to asking him about the moments leading up to
Gerald's link going live. But eventually I got there, and

(17:34):
to his credit, Jason was very open. It was strange.
You know. At the time, it didn't make much sense
or I didn't really think much of it, But looking
back at it now, I think I know what he meant.
The strange moment he's referring to is when Gerald was
in the dining room sort of talking to himself, the
part I couldn't hear in the surveillance video right before

(17:56):
he had me and Martin we all Sergeant Placey j
Old was standing in the middle of the dining room,
and it was almost like he was talking to a ghost.
He said, Yeah, this could work, Niles. You built that
wall too, So I called out to him a couple
of times to get his attention. When he finally turned
to me, he had this wide look in his eyes,
like somebody waking up from a nightmare. I think, you know,

(18:19):
I haven't just lost Niles. This might sound weird or whatever. No, no, no, no,
go on. Look, I don't have proof of this, and
I never asked Je, but I think he felt like
now spirit was guying him, you know, like he was
just making himself available to the spirit that was moving him.
That makes sense, Yeah, like yeah, yeah, like that. So

(18:44):
the link goes live, Yes, And what were your initial thoughts? Well,
for a second there, it wasn't readily apparent to me
what I was looking at, because when the live stream
first started, there was this weird layer right in the
middle of the video, and it made it difficult to
get a grasp on what all I was seeing. This

(19:06):
is the voice of Colleen Sanders, again recapping her experience
watching Gerald's feed as it went live. The confusion she's
referring to is that Gerald started the live feed filming
footage of Sergeant Place and Officer Web beating Niles. But
he adjusted the shot pretty quickly and then you could
see and it was like, oh, oh, you knew exactly

(19:29):
what this was, and I, oh, it's just so violent myself. Unfortunately,
we've seen so many variations of this type of thing,
from from the police shootings to the no knock warrants

(19:49):
to the rough rides, and of course the choke holds,
but this one was striking because of the sheer brutality
of it all. And I don't know, I mean, oh,
it's disgusting even hearing myself compare the awfulness of all
these horrible occurrences. But but the way they attacked Niles,

(20:13):
it literally made me sick. It was just barbaric. It
was inhuman and an insult to injury. I knew right
then that my reporting up until that point was wrong.

(20:41):
So obviously we had no idea what was going to
be on the link Commander Ammon's recounts. And as I'm
watching the video, initially, I'm thinking to myself, this is
a bad look for the officers involved, the department as
a whole, and it directly undermined a lot of the
positive messaging that we've been trying to put out since
Rodney King. Right, I'm also thinking this is familiar territory.

(21:03):
We've done with this type of controversy before. So from
a management perspective, as I'm looking at part one of
the live stream, my assessment was we can handle this,
and what about part two of the video. We were
totally unprepared for that. After the live links showed footage
of the incident, Gerald flips the camera into sealthy mode

(21:24):
and we moved from familiar ground to totally uncharted territory.
Gerald's face fills the screen as he delivers the following message, Hello,
my name is Gerald Hayes. Earlier today, my son Nows
was being severity by two members of the police department.

(21:47):
During the attack. I came to my son's a hate
as you would expect to hope any fall that would
do to protect his child. The video to Jock, I
saw that's the real version of what happened. There was
a new car jacking or anything illegal about what Niles
was doing when he got pulled over. Those reports is false.

(22:11):
He was dropping my friend's car, Chase Shure, and he
had Chase's permission to do so. So these low stations
out there, please stop with the lies. With the video
you just watched. Does not show is that my son Niles,
he just died about an hour ago from the injuries

(22:31):
that he took in the police attack. Now, it was
a good kid. He was sweet, he's kind, he's thoughtful,
he's crazy smart, and he had a real future ahead
of him, and he did not deserve to go out
like this. So I'm I'm thinking to myself, how many

(22:55):
times have we seen this shall and then there's no
trial or no confiction, no justice. And then if by
some miracle we do get some accountability, it still ain't
gonna be enough to bring my boy back. It ain't

(23:17):
gonna stop the next clown, motherfucking Costing doing the same
fum a ship all over and over again. So now
I ain't gonna let this ship keep happening. We we
gotta do something different, and I need y'all help. So
we're gonna hold trial right here, right now. Gerald turns

(23:38):
the camera into landscape you, and now we see Sergeant
Place in the frame as well. The two of them
are seated on the same stage Gerald was building earlier
in the day. Sergeant Place, how do you plead in
the murder of nowadays? What you can't do this? This
isn't right when you're killing my son wasn't right. How

(24:01):
do you please? I'm not I'm not doing this man.
I'm giving you a chance, which is more than you
gave my boy. So if you don't want to take it,
then find the video evidence will speak for you and
your punk as partner. What you're saying, I mean innocent?

(24:23):
Then who's responsible for my son's death? Was it your
partner that you shot and killed? Oh no, I see, no,
you go You're gonna lay all the blame on him.
So okay, so you're gonna own up to what you did.
You are what you are, You are responsible? I am.
Do you need to see the video again because it's

(24:44):
playing this day that you and your partner's vicious, unwarted
and unlawful attack on Now is what times when you're
doing a suspect and their resisting arrest, police officers are
required to use force, sometimes a lot of force to
gain compliance. Your son was belligerent, he was combative, and

(25:05):
he was resisting. So when his hands were on the
steering wheel and you were punching him in the face,
he was resisting. Then yes, What about when your partner
smashed through the window and dragged them out into the
street like the dog? He was resisting there too, I
guess yes. I got the funk out of here with this.
Birected the suspect to get out of the car multiple times,
and he refused. He refused, So me and my partner

(25:28):
lawfully moved in to make him complain. You pulled in
and then you beat him to That's not what killed him,
So don't believe a lie in ays that that should defict.
What killed him was your refusal to get him care
after you unlawfully assaulted not one but two police officers
and seized control of the scene. And because you put

(25:50):
right now as well being, you were responsible. I asked
for goddamn police over an hour to send a fucking doctor,
and they dragged their feet. Maybe, but all you had
to do was opened that door and surrender, and your
son would have been on his way to the hospital. Bullshit.
I wasn't gonna let another cop mer now until I
saw that he got the help that he needed. How
many times have we saw when you got to fund

(26:11):
somebody up, beat him up, taste them up, shoot him up,
and you do nothing that they deaf but they laugh
brow You think I was gonna let that ship happen, Well,
that's the call you made, but obviously it was the
wrong one and now you have to live with that.
But if I were in your shoes, I would have
laid down my arms so my son could have got
the help he needs. Man, you really trying to put
their ship on me. I don't know what's wrong with

(26:32):
you people. Let me ask you a question. You're a
gang banger, right, convicted felon? How many times you gonna
you ain't got nothing to do with this? Doesn't it?
How many times your in probation? Now you think I
don't know what each and every one of those gang
tats on your arms means. Let's face it, Gerald, there's

(26:54):
no way that you're not the bad guy here. Just
be honest for the people out there. Tell him about yourself,
tell them who you really are. You're not just some
innocent father that caught a bad break, are you? O?
Relea Souls? Despite what the people seen in that video,
what I've seen with my own two eyes, your defenses
that Now's death had nothing to do with your inhumane prejudice,

(27:15):
assault on his rights and on his body. Now's with
for an errand man to pick up basketball tickets and
he ended up dead. Treybond Martin went to a fucking
liquor store for some fucking skittles and ended up dead.
How can you defend that? I can't speak to that
other situation all I'm saying is if you had not

(27:36):
started the shooting, I started shooting? Yes, yes, will You
assaulted two police officers carrying out their duties. What you
broke the law? The reason we pulled your son over
in the first place was because he was driving erratically.
He broke the law. You and him both set off
a chain reaction of unlawful events that resulted in gunfire.

(27:58):
If it wasn't for you, no one would be dead
right now, are you talking to? My partner would still
be alive, and after the suspect was apprehended, we would
have put him in custody and gotten in the medical
care that he needs. Once you intervened, everything went to ship.
Your mistakes, your unlawful behavior was fatal. Had I not intervened.

(28:18):
How many more blows would my son have had to
take before you were done? Quote unquote subduing him huh?
Knocking his teeth thought wasn't enough? Breaking his neck wasn't enough.
How many times did you and your partner strike? Now?
Oh you don't know that either, do you? And then
then you say that I started this ship when you

(28:39):
struck my son first, You took the first shot and
the second shot it's in the video, man, it's in
the video. Officer of the law. I have the right
to protect myself and so did my partner. And once
you started beating my son, I had the god given
right as a father to protect them. Your motherfucker's declare
war on our sons, our daughters, are brothers, are sisters,

(28:59):
our mother us, our fathers, our fathers before fathers. And
the only justification for your actions is that to the police,
well fuck that. This should ain't gonna fly no more.
I'm fed up, we all fed up. As a father,
as a father, you made a dangerous situation even more
dangerous because of that. You are to blame. You've convinced

(29:22):
yourself that you are the victim here. You're not. You're
trying to get sympathy from other people. The truth is
you don't deserve it. You are nothing more than a
common thug. And I think the people out there should
know exactly what type of thug is puppeteering this puppeteering
this force. Because you've been in control of the situation

(29:42):
the entire time. On your watch, a compass died. Your
son has died. I'll probably plead to death myself while
you singulartedly try and kill our criminal. Justice was killing
you because if you as because of your refusal to surrender,
did you let your shore he die on that boy

(30:04):
for you like you're fucking as you're fucking liar. In
the video, we see Gerald strike Sergeant Place in the face,
so handcuffed, the cop loses his balance and falls out
of his chair. Joe flips the phone back in the
selfie mode, his face filling the screen. The time is
seven pm. Voting stars now and ends midnight. Vote up

(30:26):
for innocent, vote down for guilty. If the people say
he innocent, I'll let Sergeant Place walk. You declare him guilty,
I'm gonna kill him. We go live again at eleven pm.
Thirty minute before voting closes, The world responds to Gerald's
trial Next Time I Got Him hashtag matter, starring Amen

(31:07):
Joseph as Gerald Hayes, Jennifer Christopher as Kate Bell, Steve
Harris as Jason Shaw Hayley, Joel Osmond as Sergeant Place,
Pooch Hall as Martin Simms, and Snoop Dogg as Big H.
Additional performances by Nile Bullock as Nile's Hayes Serena Pouncey

(31:28):
as Michelle Hayes, Monte Russell as Detective Patterson, and Alex
Vaughan as Darrell Hanover. Hashtag Matter was written and directed
by Dylan C. Brown. Our executive producers are Sandy Bailey,
Lauren Holman, Dylan Brown, Winnie Kemp, and Aymon Joseph. Audio

(31:50):
designed by Wolf at the Door, Sound design and mix
by Josh Falcon, music by Jonathan Sandford, edited by Darren Bowling,
and our sound director is Alexander Kemp. Produced by Toby
Lawless and Lucy Jones. Casting by Lawless Casting. Hashtag Matter

(32:12):
is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I
Heart Radio and an association with Wolf at the Door.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.