Oct 30, 2023
The Bullpen: USC Student Speaks Out After Wrongful Arrest and Suspension
- 19 minutes
[MUSIC]
In the Bullpen today we have an update.
Remember the story that we covered
about a college student, Mr.
Judah Atkins at the University
of Southern California?
[00:00:15]
Well, Mr. Atkins was arrested for
a crime he never committed,
he was arrested for armed robbery.
He never did any of this.
He ends up going to jail, stays in
jail way longer than he should have.
They don't allow him to make a phone call
initially, stays in jail, but guess what?
[00:00:33]
He gets adjudicated.
It is obvious he's not the person,
no problem.
But see, in the midst of this,
the school decided to expel him.
He gets adjudicated, he didn't do it,
school should update.
[00:00:50]
They never should have taken
him off the roster anyway, but
they did not provide that opportunity for
him to come back to the institution,
even though he was a victim of
the criminal justice system,
the institution decided to
victimize him a second time.
[00:01:07]
We have Mr. Atkins on the show.
Good day, Sir.
Wish it was under better circumstances.
Welcome to the show.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you so
much, Dr. Richie.
It's a pleasure to be here.
>> Sir I would like for you to tell
us in your own words what happened
that night you were arrested or
that day you were arrested,
[00:01:26]
and the experience and
then the response from your university.
>> That night just is always gonna
be a very vivid picture in my mind.
It was the last day of my freshman year,
class had just ended, and
I went with my friend Tomas Banea,
my other friend Arjun to
[00:01:44]
the SC Choreographic Showcase,
which is just know, a ballet recital for
some of the dancers in
the Kaufman School of Dance here.
We just saw one of our mutual friends
saw him, as you saw in the store.
I had my own receipt and
[00:01:59]
also witnesses to say I was there during
the time that the alleged crime happened.
And then after just when I was on,
my friends saw some more
friends later that night.
And after that, while walking home,
I was just stopped by or
[00:02:14]
actually I first noticed a helicopter
light just over me while I'm walking home.
And then officers just start just
coming and piling up the street and
I'm just walking by and
they just a few officers come up to me and
just stop and
detain me with few words or like, stop.
[00:02:33]
And soon after that, I'm just,
I'm walking back home, a USC student.
And moments after they have me playing
my hands in their car, asking for
fingerprints, being handcuffed.
And after that just goes into the whole
live events that happened after.
[00:02:50]
>> Speaker 2: Wow.
Okay, so you get arrested.
They're not telling you all of
the details at this point, right?
You go to the precinct or
you go to the jail.
[00:03:05]
>> Speaker 2: Yes.
>> Speaker 1: Tell me about you not
receiving your phone call immediately,
and also them basically denying
your opportunity to simply
eat food to stay alive,
tell us about that experience.
[00:03:23]
>> Speaker 2: Well, first before that,
when you first enter into jail,
you're held in a holding tank
to be processed just throughout.
And you're being just sifted through,
just like hundreds of people going in
out of this one cell that was in for about
24 hours just being held there no food,
[00:03:39]
no calls, no anything,
just in complete shock.
And then after that, I'm transferred to
another cell with a few other cellmates,
which is just probably
four by four foot cell.
And there's absolutely no one,
no officers for at least a day.
[00:03:56]
And then when I finally do see one,
I'm just asking,
can I get a phone call, meals, anything?
And they withhold phone calls for
about four days, I ask why and
there's absolutely no response.
They just treat you a machine,
another robot in their system,
[00:04:12]
another cog in the system.
And the meals that they give, they give
one for breakfast and one for dinner.
It was absolutely just disgusting.
Burnt, just like burnt everything,
burnt peas, corn, like,
absolutely an edible meal.
So I was probably surviving off 200,
300 calories per day for
[00:04:29]
those first, like four or five days
while also being transferred out and
sifted between cells and holding tanks.
>> Speaker 1: Wow.
When you finally are able to make
a phone call, because your friends don't
know what has happened here, your parents,
they don't know what's going on with you.
[00:04:49]
You just finished your semester and
all of a sudden you disappear.
On day four, you get a phone call,
what happened.
>> On day four I get a phone call,
I call out to my mom, my dad,
my friends are with me.
[00:05:05]
I reach out to Tomas and he was
the only person who actually came well,
aside from my parents, obviously,
who actually came to see me.
And at that point I was,
this is gonna get dropped, hopefully.
I know that I haven't done anything
wrong and he's being really supportive.
[00:05:22]
Tomas is one of my best friends I've ever
had in my entire life, he's there for me.
He's saying,
you're gonna get through this.
This is before my arraignment, so I have
a little bit more hope that, they just got
the wrong person, nothing bad is
going to happen, I'll be out of here.
[00:05:37]
I have a ten-minute call with Tomas and
then I get a visit with him,
a five minute in person visit,
because he also is staying back for
me because he's supposed to be
going back home to Connecticut, but
he stayed there for
me just while I was in jail for this time.
[00:05:54]
And I finally get to the actual
arraignment itself, and
that's where I just hear the prosecutors
just go off about what I allegedly did,
saying I robbed this car,
that I broke in with a gun, etc, etc.
[00:06:09]
And they raised the bail to $150,000,
and that's when it fully sets in.
That's like, wow,
my life is actually over.
>> Speaker 1: You've spent two
weeks in the LA County jail.
You have this enhanced bond.
[00:06:25]
There's virtually zero evidence saying you
did this crime, here are the connectors.
What did they say was the reason
they targeted you and
arrested you specifically for
a crime you never committed?
[00:06:43]
>> Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot
of factors that go into it, but
at first they said that the victim
themselves identified me in a lineup
of people that had been allegedly around
the crime scene, which, first of all,
I'd never even been
around the crime scene.
Cuz the crime scene was in downtown LA,
nearly 5 miles away, if not more,
[00:07:03]
while I'm back at USC's main campus or
near USC's main campus.
And then after the prosecutors just went
off about how I'm the one who had a gun,
a low shotgun,
actually robbing a car itself,
I had a bag with cell phones and
a bunch of other stolen goods.
[00:07:22]
And one of the only reasons that I
was even able to get indicted and
have reconnaissance as fast as I did
was because I had Life 360 on my phone,
an app which tracks where
you go place to place.
I was, if I'm able to retain
the evidence from my phone,
then I'm gonna be able
to exonerate myself.
[00:07:39]
But that in itself was a long,
long process, post-release and
also trying to convince the judge that,
hey, I have the evidence on my phone.
First of all, not even aside from the fact
that I'm being innocent self, but
I have concrete evidence, and
I was finally able to obtain that.
[00:07:56]
>> Speaker 1: So at this point, you're
talking to prosecutors, they're saying,
we don't wanna hear you, we know you
did A, B, and C, you did none of that.
It's almost as if any black person would
do kind of scenario, they just wanna
put you in this situation and say you're
guilty, we're going to prosecute you.
[00:08:12]
We have no evidence, but
we're going to do it anyway.
You get an enhanced bond.
You don't have some arrest record,
you're not a convicted felon.
You don't have anything that typically
a court would weigh and say this person is
a flight risk we need to make sure that
in lieu of the charges and their history,
[00:08:29]
we need to enhance the bond so
that they come back to court.
Bonds are not supposed to be
prosecutorial by Constitution.
So now you have evidence called Life 360.
Life 360 tracks your every location.
[00:08:46]
You could provide this information.
I'm sure you're telling everyone you meet
trying to be thinking that they're decent
cuz you're decent, hey, listen,
there's been a big mix-up here.
I actually have something,
can I show it to you?
What was their response to you in
the judicial system when you said,
[00:09:02]
I have concrete evidence via technology
that if you all have access to it or
I have access to it, it can prove I was
never around the area you say I was in.
What was their response?
>> Speaker 2: Well,
it was just a lot of technical semantics.
And this part of the issue was a lot that
my mother and my father were dealing with
[00:09:18]
themselves because I had limited amount
of phone calls just being in jail itself.
So once I told them that they reached out
to the prosecutors, the public defender,
the judge trying to put in the whole
motion to actually retain the evidence.
[00:09:33]
So, yeah, just a lot of paperwork,
a lot of just hard work
actually trying to get that put on for
display at trial.
But obviously the prosecutors
had their own defense of just,
this person is absolute the worst,
actually committed these crimes.
[00:09:51]
And mixing me up with a long list of
people who I've never even talked to cuz I
eventually realized that the actual
perpetrators were high school students.
I'm like,
I have never even met these people at all.
And just the blame racism of just a lot
of prosecutors and I don't wanna go up to
the victim themselves, but
identifying me in that lineup just because
[00:10:11]
the clothes I was wearing and
the way that I look, I was like, wow.
But no, recovering that
evidence was a long ways to go.
And we even tried to go for
it after I was released on reconnaissance,
which is another week-long
process that took.
Plus being on the ankle monitor itself.
[00:10:29]
>> Speaker 1: I find it ironic, and
I said this in my initial coverage
of the story,
that a judge eventually lets you go on
what we call a signature bond for
armed robbery.
[00:10:44]
Armed robbery charge usually does not
carry a signature bond as a way to get
out, but you go from an enhanced bond to
a recognizant bond over a period of time,
which is pretty extreme
inside of the judicial ranks.
[00:11:01]
But let's talk about the reality that
you're innocent until proven guilty or
innocent unless proven guilty.
You're innocent the entire time,
you're not guilty of anything,
you have not been found guilty
in the court of law anywhere.
Let's go now to the reality of what
happened while you're in jail.
[00:11:17]
Your school decided to arbitrarily
take action against you,
the University of Southern California.
They took action against you.
What did they do?
>> Once they heard that I had been
arrested, there had been so much pushback
[00:11:33]
once my parents called out and once my
friends such as Tomas Manea reached out.
Tomas himself even told me that they
asked if I was an athlete or not.
And once I said no, they immediately
just turned just back down,
put no effort into actually
seeing if I was innocent or not.
[00:11:52]
And then after they issued the suspension,
which is what they call their Aeron
protective measures, in case a student
actually does commit a crime.
But for me, being an innocent person, I
was just absolutely heartbroken because I
didn't even know about
this until I was released.
[00:12:08]
So imagine just, I was released, and
then the first thing I see as I look at
my phones, I'm just getting,
you've been suspended from USC, I'm,
wow, I've been released, and
I can't even go back to my normal life.
So that was a months-long battle,
actually showing them evidence.
[00:12:24]
Being in talks with people such as
Darren Moko, who was an amazing help to
actually gain a suspension lift and
being able to go back to school here.
Which was just such a toll cuz I was just
thinking that I was not able to go back to
the place where I've been working for
my entire life.
[00:12:40]
The past 13,
14 years of just being in school, working,
doing all the things that I've done,
just gone to absolute waste.
So that was a shell shock to me.
>> Speaker 1: The institution provided a
statement, tis is when initially they were
[00:12:58]
saying, hey, he's suspended,
we will look at all information,
we make decisions based on
information currently available.
But clearly it was publicly available
that you were innocent, right?
[00:13:14]
We could see that, but
still, there was no update.
Why did it take them so long?
And thankfully, you had an advocate and
your advocate what's the name of the
advocate inside of the institution again?
>> Speaker 2: Darren Moko.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, big ups, I wanna bring
attention to that because I think I'm
[00:13:31]
a college professor myself, big ups
to people who advocate for students.
>> Speaker 2: Absolutely.
>> Speaker 1: So you get an advocate,
the advocate, there we go.
The advocate works on your behalf,
listens to your story, advocates.
What made this so difficult to just update
it quickly and say, the man's innocent?
[00:13:50]
We probably should not have made this
decision based on a police report anyway.
>> Speaker 2: I believe that one of the
biggest things for USC is just their image
and not being held accountable for actions
that are very bad on the USC reputation.
[00:14:06]
Because USC works in part with their
Department of Public Services,
DPS here and LAPD who are constantly in
talks and having a mess up as extreme as
this is one of their students being
arrested because of an alert.
Because USC also sends out crime reports
just about things that happen in the area
[00:14:23]
in efforts to protect the students and
people around the area.
But a lot of these reports
are really faulty and really dense,
and a lot of them will just have the race
of the person and no other facts.
It's a black male or Hispanic male
wearing this type of clothing
[00:14:39]
with a very generalized weight and height.
And in reality creates more fear than
it actually does finding a resolution
to things that should be held just
directly in the police's hands.
And so for USC to not put comment out
to shows forever that they're scared
of the pushback and
the impact the story could possibly have.
[00:14:58]
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, and
that's why leadership should have called
whoever they have as their liaison and
say, I need to see this directly
because I don't believe one
of our students did this.
So before we go on record doing
something against the student,
[00:15:14]
we need to see the evidence that you have.
And they would have produced none cuz
they had none actually against you.
They probably could have resolved this
before it became a story as it is today.
Give us the update as to what's
happening now as it relates
to your matriculation at
the University of Southern California.
[00:15:33]
>> Speaker 2: Well,
thanks to Darren Malcolm,
I was able to get that suspension off.
I am back in school I'm almost or
past halfway through my first
semester of junior year here, but
there's been absolutely no compensation or
even apology from the school itself.
[00:15:48]
I've still had to deal with
a lot of bills, tuition also,
just helping pay off my student loans and
all the financial work that my mother and
father and my friends have put
into even trying to get me out.
[00:16:04]
Which was a big help of the GoFundMe
that my friend Daphne Yaman,
who first wrote this story, put out.
And it's been an amazing just
turn-off support so far.
It means the entire world to me,
just seeing how many people have
reached out to me have done it to me.
[00:16:22]
Just taking a little bit of that pressure
off, just trying to pay rent and
maintain a lot of things in my life, but
that's been a really big help for me.
But yeah,
just trying to move forward more, but
make sure doesn't happen to
another person is my main goal.
[00:16:38]
And also trying to get my life back
on track and finish out what know,
originally planned to do here at USC and
graduate.
>> Speaker 1: What's your major?
What are your major name?
>> Speaker 2: I'm
a semi-media studies major.
Hopefully one day I wanna be a director,
highlighting just underrepresented voices.
[00:16:55]
I wrote stories about
African American peoples and
also queer communities themselves.
So that means a lot to me.
It's highlighting all
the underrepresented people,
especially since I have a lot
of type of people in my life.
>> Speaker 1: I think that's
a beautiful thing, brother.
[00:17:13]
Sometimes life has a funny
way of giving you a mess,
and you did nothing to deserve and
your message
becomes the mess you got with age on it,
M-E-S-S-A-G-E.
[00:17:30]
Over time, it becomes a great catalyst for
how you transform the world.
I believe you are a world transformer, I
think you're a game changer at the highest
level and I know you're going to finish
that degree and go on to do great things.
[00:17:46]
Allow this to be a motivation
to your continued success,
understanding that there's an experience
that you've had that you'll never forget,
unfortunately, yes, but
it can also be powerful when you transform
that energy into something positive.
[00:18:02]
Where's that GoFundMe,
I wanna make sure we do the best
we can to contribute even more.
We got that GoFundMe.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you, Dr. Richie.
>> Speaker 1: Absolutely.
For those who are watching,
I want you to do the very best you can
to contribute to this GoFundMe,
this young brother should not have
[00:18:21]
to spend another dime to pay for
his higher education.
We have to support people like
him in the village because
I know something that you know,
Judah Atkins,
when he gets into the arena of management,
[00:18:38]
in whatever capacity that may be,
he's going to do the right
thing by people,
right thing by people around him.
So this is what leadership looks like.
For those who have been supportive,
what would you like to say to them, Judah?
[00:18:57]
>> Speaker 2: I mean,
it means the absolute world to me.
I wanna say thank you,
Ben Pap and Daphne Yaman, for
putting this story on such
a higher pedestal and
having know reach how much it has so
far and people donate support.
Absolutely means the world to me.
[00:19:12]
Reach out to me absolutely anytime,
I'd like to talk to them personally and
thank them, and just hopefully
the story can gain attraction and
help a lot more people.
>> Speaker 1: There you go.
Very thankful for your time today.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you.
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