Revelations, the cop who killed Leonard Cure. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating Sergeant Buck Aldridge, the Camden County Sheriff's Office deputy who killed the recently exonerated Leonard Cure, who served 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, [00:00:18] during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 near the Georgia, Florida state line on October the 16th. Before we get to a video clip about this, let me say, Leonard went home to Florida to visit his mom. He was coming back from visiting his mother. After he did 16 years in prison, he was murdered at the hands of a cop. [00:00:38] Here's the video of this tragic event. Please be warned that this is a very graphic video. >> Speaker 2: Sir, tickets in the state of Georgia are criminal offenses. >> Speaker 1: I don't have a ticket in Georgia. >> Speaker 2: You do now. [00:00:54] >> Speaker 3: Why? >> Speaker 2: You passed me doing 100 miles an hour. >> Speaker 2: And what am I going- >> Hands behind your back. Yes, you're going to jail. Hands behind your back. Put your hands behind your back. [00:01:28] >> Yeah, bitch. Yeah, bitch. >> Stay down. Stay down. Stay down. [00:01:44] Camden, shots fired. >> It's too late. >> Speaker 2: Shots fired, Camden. Stay down. Do not get up. Stay down. Stay down. [00:02:02] Stay down. >> Speaker 1: This is a tragic situation, and it requires a certain amount of humanity to understand what's going on. The GBI is looking into another traffic stop where Sergeant Aldridge repeatedly [00:02:19] used his Taser on a suspect who was already on the ground in June 2022. The bodycam footage also showing a canine being on the, excuse me, sicced, on the suspect while he was on the ground. According to News4JAX, Aldridge chased two vehicles as [00:02:37] they sped on the highway after trying to pull them over for going 63 miles per hour in a 73 zone. Pull over before you kill somebody, Aldridge could be heard saying over his megaphone. [00:02:53] The chase lasted for 16 minutes as speeds reached 120 miles per hour until the vehicles crashed. Listen to me. First of all, police officers should not be chasing people in high speed chase because people are speeding. [00:03:09] If you're chasing someone because they did something violent or they have the capacity to do violence, or they're trying to get away from a crime that something violent happened in, that's one thing. But as you sit here and try and chase people for speeding, you just escalate a situation that doesn't need to be escalated. [00:03:25] They said, for going 63 miles per hour in a 70 mile per hour zone, this officer chased him and said, slow down before you kill someone. You have to look into his motives at that point, because they're under the speed limit. They're going less than what the speed limit is, but [00:03:40] still being chased by a police officer. He escalated that situation, just like he did the one we just watched. Aldridge is seen on the video approaching the crashed vehicles with his gun drawn as he yelled, show me your effing hands. Get on your effing hands, or get your effing hands up now and get them up. [00:03:57] As he opened the door, a man was seen lying on his back and falling out of the vehicle. The man appeared to be hurt or disoriented as Aldridge put his gun away and instructed the man to get out. The man tried to speak to Aldridge, but the deputy punched him in the head as he yelled, shut the eff up. [00:04:13] Aldridge pulled the man out of the car, and as the man laid on the ground, another deputy approached. The deputies yelled, hands behind your back, and as it appears as though the driver was trying to put his hands behind his back, but the deputies used their Tasers on him. However, the police report claimed the driver continued to physically resist, [00:04:33] pulling his hands away from up and trying to get back on his feet. This is what we hear so often. This resisting arrest thing is unbelievably disgusting, Yasmin, and we see police officers using it so many times as it pertains to what they're [00:04:49] gonna use as a reason to escalate situations. >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's the fact that these cops have so much authority, not just the authority, but they have deadly force behind that authority, right? And a lot of people, myself included, have issues with authority, [00:05:05] and for succumbing to authority and things like that. Just because he told me to do something doesn't necessarily mean that I wanna do it or that I think that I should. And in this guy's case, he already served 16 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. He clearly didn't wanna go back, and I think that's very, very, [00:05:22] very understandable. But then on top of that, he's going under the speed limit. Why was he being targeted? If a cop was behind me chasing me and I'm going under the speed limit, I would be very, very concerned, I would be threatened, and I would not wanna stop. I would probably call 911 from my car if that was happening to me on the road. [00:05:41] That's an unusual thing to be happening. That was an unusual thing for the cop to be doing. He shouldn't have been doing that. And then overall, if your job is to serve and protect, right, was he actually making these streets any safer or did he just create a situation where there wasn't one and then escalate it to the point that a man died? [00:06:01] >> Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that is a wonderful statement, and at that point, then that should be enough grounds to charge police officer with murder or some type of something that's responsible for this loss of this man life. When we consider what Mr. Cure Leonard has been through, 16 years for something he [00:06:18] didn't do, claiming he was innocent the entire time, watching the system place and use false evidence to convict him, and then to see him complying. Brown also noted, we should acknowledge this, Brown also noted that Aldridge made similar mistakes when he pulled over 53-year-old Cure. [00:06:35] So we saw the same mistakes he made in the first incident with the other people, the crash, in this incident, where the officer used his Taser on Cure despite him following the deputy's instructions. After that, Cure became non compliant. [00:06:50] And I know I don't know Cure personally, but I know what was going through his mind at that moment for sure. I'm doing everything this officer told me to do, and he's still gonna try to kill me. So it wasn't till that point did he become non compliant. I'm doing what you said, you still tase me. [00:07:07] And so I'm only doing only what I can do, and that is to protect myself, because I see you at this point, not as an officer of the law or an authority figure, I see you as someone trying to kill me. Aldridge is currently on administrative leave due to the shooting and death of Cure, and the deputy was fired before using excessive force. [00:07:25] He was fired before for using excessive force. How are you a police officer? And this is according to First Coast News. Aldridge was fired from the Kingsland Police Department back in 2017 for violating department use of necessary and appropriate force and on and off duty conduct policies. [00:07:42] The deputy worked for KPD for five years and received his first disciplinary action in February 2014 after using unnecessary force on an individual during the course of a traffic stop to take the person into custody based on the belief that probable cause existed for a crime that was occurring. [00:08:00] We know this because of Atlanta Star covering, Atlanta Black Star. Aldridge was ordered to attend mandatory training on communication skills building and to be retrained and counseled on how to properly conduct a traffic stop. He was also ordered to get retrained on probable cause for resisting arrest. [00:08:18] Aldridge was placed on administrative leave in April of 2017 for his alleged misconduct. Alleged misconduct, what's alleged about this? We saw it on the tape. This time we read about it and saw the incident from the before time. [00:08:34] This person should not have been a police officer. If you're fired from stealing from a bank, no bank's gonna hire you again. The idea that a police officer can be fired for using or misusing the trust that's embedded in his badge and given to him, entrusted with him, and watching him get rehired again and [00:08:52] commit crime, 2014, 2017, 2023 is absolutely ridiculous. And the end result is just what it is right now. The complacency in state agencies to rehire these officers or keep them on the force will lead to the death of someone, just as it has. [00:09:08] Yasmin, your point. >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish that I was just more surprised about this, right? I wish I was more surprised about the fact that he had been fired from his previous job as a cop for demonstrating similar behavior, and I wish I was more surprised that he was rehired somewhere else. [00:09:26] We see this happen all over the place. It's textbook, almost, whenever you see an incident like this with some kind of cop who's acting in a way that he shouldn't be acting, and then he just gets fired and rehired. And you wait for all the press to calm down, you wait for all the media to stop talking about it, and then you quietly rehire them, [00:09:44] give them the job back, whatever. It's like what we were talking about in the previous story or one of the previous stories, that the punishments for these actions have to be severe enough that they deter the same thing from happening again in the future, and we're never seeing that, right? These cops continue to act this way because they know on some level that [00:10:03] they'll either get away with it or they won't have to pay a price that they normally would have to pay. The price that anyone else would have to pay, I should say, if they had killed somebody this way on the street. So the cops know that they're protected, and there are reasons for that protection. But I think at this point, we need to rethink some of those rules because [00:10:21] obviously, these reasons are being exploited, and instead, what we have are cops who are killing people and just getting away with it. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, if we go back to the history of qualified immunity on this protection you're talking about, the only reason for it is to prevent white [00:10:37] cops from being tried and convicted for kidnapping and also abusing black people and killing them in some cases, as is the case in this time. We also need to remind people what you said about the Alabama situation, where when people aren't tried or held accountable in proper manners, [00:10:53] it doesn't stop bad behavior. And this seems to be the case here because the city manager who suspended Aldridge suspended him without pay for only three days and recommended a 12-month probationary period following an internal investigation. The exact actions that caused the investigation are unclear, and [00:11:10] he was terminated four months later, before eventually being hired by the Camden County Sheriff's Office. So we see his actions only got him three days without work. He was fired from a police department because of bad behavior, and then four months later, I mean, he said, I'll join another police department. [00:11:28] There is no downtime for bad police officers. When you act with this much force, unnecessary force, when you escalate situations, when you put the public safety at harm, or you take away the trust in public safety in this manner, it does not matter, you'll get a job somewhere else, is what his resume can say and has shown us. [00:11:48] And I think until we're ready to be serious about this and address what policing is and acknowledge that policing in this country is not working, policing in this country is not working. We do not have nowhere near the population of China yet, and still we [00:12:03] represent a larger prison population of the world's prison population. We are overpolicing minority communities. We're overincarcerating people. We need to rethink what it means to police American citizens. And we can't say that it's successful when we see so many black people are dying. [00:12:21] People, in general, but black people specifically, black men, even more specifically, are dying at the hands of police officer. And in this case, someone who had already gave 17 years of their lives, 16 years of their lives, that they did not owe the state for a crime that they did not commit. [00:12:36] And now we are at this point. Yasmin, I would love to hear your response real quick before we go to break. >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's a much bigger conversation that can be had. We don't have time to have it right now, but there is a much bigger conversation around, what is the point? [00:12:52] What is the actual purpose of having these police departments? What is the point of giving them more money and giving them bigger weapons and bigger so-called protections against the citizens, right? That's a whole other thing, what is the reason that they're giving the public, and what is the actual reason? [00:13:08] That's what we need to think about.