Nov 2, 2023
Police Cover Up Black Man's Death After Cop Runs Him Over
Police Cover Up Black Man's Death After Cop Runs Him Over
- 9 minutes
Mississippi, cops ran over a man and
family of victim wasn't notified,
that's right.
In Mississippi, a black man was fatally
ran over by a cop, and a cover up ensued.
Look at the video
>> Talking about the story of Dexter Wade,
who we now know was killed less than
a half hour after leaving his home back
[00:00:17]
in March.
But his family only found
that out this month.
Wade was struck and
killed by a Jackson police car,
apparently as he tried to
cross a highway nearby.
And even though police knew exactly who
they hit within days of that accident
[00:00:34]
officials say, his mother, Betterson Wade,
would spend the next seven months,
she would spend seven months looking for
her son.
It wasn't until 172 difficult
days after Betterson
last saw Wade that they
came together again,
[00:00:51]
this time at his unmarked
grave in a State run cemetery.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, this is tragic beyond
belief to hear that they knew within days
who they hit.
And did not contact this family
makes me doubt even a good
progressive in the brother
like Mayor Chokoi Alamumba,
[00:01:10]
who said he opted to call
Dexter Wade's death a tragic.
And unfortunate incident, but also
stated there was no malicious intent on
the part of city authorities who buried
Wade without notifying his mother.
According to WAPT Jackson news,
the closest the mayor came to offer
[00:01:30]
some semblance of transparency
was when he accounted for
what led to the poor cities and
police response to Wade's death.
There was a lack of communication
with the missing person division,
the coroner's office, and
accident investigation.
Because of that,
[00:01:45]
they were unable to find desteway's family
within an expeditious period of time.
And he was later buried once the coroner
went to them Hind's County Board of
Supervisors, in order to get
permission to do so, the mayor said.
My god, listen,
this statement is absolutely
[00:02:01]
disgusting from someone
of a Lumumba stature.
This is in full context Lumumba and
I are close friends.
I too am a mayor in a southern city,
but before that,
I was a consultant through democracy for
America helping to get him elected.
[00:02:17]
This is absolutely disgusting behavior,
not just because it was a black man,
not just because he was 1520
minutes away from home.
Not just because a couple of days they
knew who he was, but because Lamumba chose
to take this state and claim that he
understands the intent of this officer.
[00:02:36]
He does not know the intent
of this officer.
And even if he did, the fact that
they didn't call this person or
knock on this person's door and talk to
their family is absolutely disgusting.
And you cannot divorce this incident from
the history of how many black men swung
[00:02:52]
from trees in Mississippi not too long
ago and at the hands of police officer.
So this is absolutely disgusting, Yasmin.
This behavior from anybody republican,
democrat,
black, white is unbelievable to me.
Jackson is not a big enough city for you
not to have time to knock on that woman's
[00:03:09]
door and
tell her what happened to her son.
And she spent 120 plus days looking for
her son when he had been murdered, or
I shouldn't say murdered,
because that's a legal term.
He had been killed by a police officer.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, even giving
the cop the benefit of the doubt, and
[00:03:25]
saying he didn't have a malicious intent,
which, as you pointed out,
there's no way of knowing
what this cop's intent was.
But even let's assume that
he had no malicious intent,
why did they not notify the mother?
Why did they not notify the family?
They knew that's, like, such basic
decency to just do that much, right.
[00:03:44]
And it's important also that you pointed
out that this is not a bipartisan
partisan issue, right.
It doesn't matter what party people are,
whatever party lines you follow along.
It doesn't matter who's running the city,
who's running the state, the county,
[00:03:59]
whatever.
There is common decency, and
there's a way to go about doing things.
And this mayor chose not to do that,
this cop in the police department
chose not to follow common decency.
And it's really hard after you
have ignored a mother's wishes,
[00:04:14]
you've failed to contact the mother
after something like this happened,
even if it was an accident, right?
You failed to do the bare minimum, and
it's really hard now in retrospect after
so much time has passed to go back and try
to pretend like you did the right thing.
[00:04:31]
And everybody was doing their best at
their jobs when clearly they weren't.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's also
important to note that we as black people,
especially southern black people,
I don't need to say southern black
people in this country in general.
We don't have the luxury of giving
cops the benefit of the doubt,
[00:04:49]
especially in incidents that
happened in this manner.
There was no forthcoming,
if they knew in a couple of days who
this person was then in a small town,
small southern town, they absolutely
knew his family was looking for him.
They absolutely knew for seven months she
was looking for him, and the fact that
they didn't choose to share information,
they didn't choose to reach out to them.
[00:05:08]
They didn't choose to post it on the news,
in the newspaper, or on TV,
that tells me something is wrong.
And when I say wrong,
I mean wrong against the community, but
right in how America works as
it pertains to black suffering,
especially when it comes
to police officers.
[00:05:24]
Wade's mother Betterston Wade has
recently retained the legal services of
civil rights attorney Ben Crump,
who called this terrible ordeal
a living nightmare for any mother.
This is a living nightmare for
any community.
The secrecy surrounding Dexter's death,
the alleged concealment of vital
[00:05:41]
information, and the callous barrier in
a pauper's field are not just oversights,
they are a grave miscarriage of justice,
Crump said.
This is exactly what I meant,
and a lot of the times I have
pushback on what Crump is saying, but
this is a moment where I have no pushback.
[00:05:57]
The context that we have to bury this in,
no pun intended, is the context in which
Mississippi will allow black people in
Jackson, this very city, to have nasty,
dirty water and also try to
restrict their political right.
Yet and still they will try and
kill them and
[00:06:13]
bury them without reaching out to
their parents who are 20 minutes
away from this unmarked grave
where they bury their son.
Yasmine, what are your take?
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean,
this is such a great example, too,
of the fact that there is never just one
bad apple as far as bad cops go, right?
[00:06:29]
This is so as you said, they've buried it,
they made an intentional decision.
They said, we're gonna do this,
we're gonna bury him in an unmarked grave
over here where the mother can't find him.
We're not gonna tell the mother all of
this happened with approval or at least
the knowledge of people so high up, all
the way up to the mayor's office, right?
[00:06:48]
There are so
many things that went wrong with this.
There are so many people who are to
blame for the way that this was handled.
So even, all things considered, maybe it
really was an accent, maybe it wasn't.
I don't know what it was, but
all things considered, this is wrong, and
[00:07:04]
they knew what they were doing, and
they should be punished for it.
But the sad fact is that probably
nothing's gonna happen because all the way
up to the mayor's office,
they're still just making excuses.
>> Indeed and Betterston,
which is Dexter Wade's mother,
she had a statement in response
to the mayor's comment.
[00:07:20]
And her statement was, you're gonna
tell me that you're just going to get
in touch with me by phone
to tell me my son is dead?
This is what she told NBC.
What happened to a knock on
the door to tell me my son is dead?
Are you telling me that you all didn't
tell me the whole time because you
[00:07:36]
didn't have the correct phone number?
I paid dearly for a mistake when you
could have just stepped on my doorstep?
Stepped on my doorstep,
that is a powerful statement.
This Southern mother asking for
what people call Southern hospitality.
[00:07:52]
She didn't even receive it in
the terms of her son's death.
We should go on in a note also from the
Atlanta Black Star that no sobriety test
was run on the cop who killed Wade.
He was also never cited for
violating any traffic laws.
Authorities did, however,
run a toxicology test on Wade's Bali,
[00:08:10]
which revealed that he had PCP and
methamphetamines in his system.
The family said he also suffered from
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but
there is nothing to connect
the crash to his mental or
physiological state at
the time he was hit.
And again, that's from Atlanta black star.
[00:08:25]
Listen, this idea that you need
to know what's in his body,
he wasn't driving a car.
I don't even want to talk about what was
in his system, the fact that the person
that was driving wasn't cited for
the crimes that he committed.
Possible crimes he committed, or
if he was under influence of anything,
[00:08:44]
we would never know, because what
should have happened didn't happen.
And that in itself tells us that there
was no proper investigation into
the death of Dexter Wade.
And yet again, the state of Mississippi
has claimed the life of a black man
[00:09:00]
with no repercussions, Jasmine
>> Yeah, exactly, and
whenever we talk about systemic
issues in governance and in policing,
this is exactly what we're talking about.
Just the fact that simple protocol,
things that would have been done for
most other people in this
officer's position were not done.
[00:09:16]
That he wasn't given this toxicology
report, all these different things,
there was no repercussions whatsoever.
Just that on its own just shows that
there is some systemic issues going on
within the police department and
all the way up to the mayor's office.
They're not planning on doing anything,
[00:09:33]
the mayor has already
released a statement.
A lot of times, whenever they release
these statements, what they're saying is,
I've done what I'm going to do.
That's the extent of it, I'm not gonna do
anything else, it's done, case closed,
we're moving on.
And that's exactly what
this mayor has done,
and this is what the police department
is telling us, that, you know what?
[00:09:51]
It happened, it's done.
>> Speaker 1: That's a fact.
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