Speaker 1: Learning to love ourselves and our messy and complicated truth
Speaker 1: is hard enough. But what happens when you have that
Speaker 1: feeling of otherness just hanging over your head, where you
Speaker 1: don't feel understood even within your own tribe. How do
Speaker 1: you confidently grow into your own skin or maybe even
Speaker 1: grow out of it when the road to acceptance and
Speaker 1: healing is so rough and bumping. Welcome back to in
Speaker 1: the deep stories that shape us. I'm your host, Zak Stafford.
Speaker 1: If you've been following us since day one, you're familiar
Speaker 1: with the stories of hardship. Our guests have shared those
Speaker 1: struggles of identity, discrimination, or health, and how these people
Speaker 1: have managed to move forward despite their circumstances. And if
Speaker 1: you're new, well check those stories out. You won't regret it.
Speaker 1: We're going to continue listening to these stories from black
Speaker 1: and Latin X people, hoping to gain clarity and get closer,
Speaker 1: even if just a little, to a road of healing
Speaker 1: and understanding. I think by now all of us have
Speaker 1: had some understanding that many black people living in America,
Speaker 1: especially black men, have that other type of talk with
Speaker 1: our family, the one that teaches you to keep your
Speaker 1: hands on the wheel or respond with yes, sir, no
Speaker 1: sir answers when interacting with police, and regardless of how
Speaker 1: much you prep in advance, no matter how many different
Speaker 1: scenarios you recreate in your head, can a person really
Speaker 1: be fully prepared for those human reactions, those feelings of anxiety,
Speaker 1: or that fight or fight feeling that can take over
Speaker 1: in times of danger. As a black man myself, I've
Speaker 1: had my own experiences with the police throughout my life.
Speaker 1: I've had the cops who follow you around town, hoping
Speaker 1: you miss one stop sign, do one thing they can
Speaker 1: deem suspicious. And as a journalist, I've dedicated most of
Speaker 1: my life to exploring how these cops misused their power
Speaker 1: towards people that look like me all around this country,
Speaker 1: much of which has been inspired by my own personal experiences.
Speaker 1: But through all of these years and countless stories, I
Speaker 1: have yet to ever sit down and have the conversation
Speaker 1: you're about to hear to day, a conversation with a
Speaker 1: man who was pulled over, was shot by the police
Speaker 1: five times, and became paralyzed at the age of nineteen,
Speaker 1: and today is working to not defund the police, but
Speaker 1: rather change them from within. Leonford's powerful story brings up
Speaker 1: so many questions for me personally and challenges me even
Speaker 1: more because even more than his body of work, Leon's
Speaker 1: journey begs the question can you truly heal and continue
Speaker 1: to help others all while facing your inner pains and
Speaker 1: stigmas that have plagued you in your community for a
Speaker 1: long time? And even more powerful, can you take this
Speaker 1: healing and turn the people that have wronged you, those
Speaker 1: that have hurt you into a sort of ally for change.
Speaker 1: So I am from the east side of Pittsburgh in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood called Garfield. It's like a small town, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all one degree of separation away. And so I
Speaker 1: was fortunate enough to build relationships with, you know, all
Speaker 1: of my different relatives all throughout Pittsburgh. I was a
Speaker 1: kid that always wanted to be outside. They used to
Speaker 1: call me professor because I was also I was also
Speaker 1: the kid that could have a full conversation with any adult.
Speaker 1: I remember just being at the table while my grandmother
Speaker 1: and aunts and uncles were playing spades. The games used
Speaker 1: to be rowity, but there was like a lot of love, Whereas,
Speaker 1: like you know, towards the corner, my cousins would be
Speaker 1: shooting dice, and my grandmother would say stay away from
Speaker 1: the dice game because you know, you just never know,
Speaker 1: like somebody's gonna fight or something, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I played football growing up. I didn't love it as
Speaker 1: much as my son loves it. I have a night
Speaker 1: year old son, and he loves so Paul. I mean
Speaker 1: in each hands that I like, could skip football practice.
Speaker 1: I was definitely doing. At what were you doing when
Speaker 1: you skip football practice? Just hanging out with friends, right
Speaker 1: and uh, dirt bikes and just hanging out. Would you say,
Speaker 1: this time of your life, you're pretty happy with everyone
Speaker 1: and everything going on, Absolutely happy. I was spoiled. So
Speaker 1: when I was five or six years old, my dad, uh,
Speaker 1: he was indicted by the FBI for conspiracy to sell
Speaker 1: drugs and he actually served maybe fourteen years in federal prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was my first huge shift in my life
Speaker 1: where my dad was a very active father, you know,
Speaker 1: supported the Little league football teams and things, and then
Speaker 1: you know, he was snatched away. Something that really stands
Speaker 1: out in Leon's story. It's just this idea of manhood
Speaker 1: of fatherhood because on the one hand, he has his father,
Speaker 1: his own personal superhero, but on the other he has
Speaker 1: the world's opinion of his character. It's almost like living
Speaker 1: in between two worlds, one where his father is very present,
Speaker 1: a great man, friend, a great leader, even, and another
Speaker 1: where he's getting hurt, stabbed, shot, or even arrested. I
Speaker 1: can relate to that feeling because my dad was also
Speaker 1: hurt like Leon's. He was even indicted at one point two,
Speaker 1: and there's feelings of anxiety that feeling of am I
Speaker 1: next are incredibly difficult to shake. So I felt like
Speaker 1: I lived in two worlds. In one world, always was
Speaker 1: like a star student, and the teachers treated me really
Speaker 1: well because they knew that my parents were engaged. And
Speaker 1: then once my dad was indicted, they kind of looked
Speaker 1: at me like deferently, like I was a problem child,
Speaker 1: you know, like I had done something wrong, and my
Speaker 1: relationships with school changed because of that. I instantly felt
Speaker 1: my blackness, right, I felt my privilege kind of be
Speaker 1: stripped away, because I do feel like I was privileged.
Speaker 1: My father was very well respected, and there was like
Speaker 1: this deep reverence for him as a as a person
Speaker 1: because he's just a stand up guy, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: He's a person who keeps his word. He took care
Speaker 1: of so many people, from you know, saving homes from foreclosure,
Speaker 1: to paying taxes, supporting youth sports, and just you know,
Speaker 1: being someone that people in the community felt they could
Speaker 1: lean on. But that has a huge heart. So one world,
Speaker 1: I'm revered even though my dad went to prison, and
Speaker 1: people are like treating me well and trying to look
Speaker 1: out for me since my dad was gone. On the
Speaker 1: other side, you know, these predominantly white teachers were treated
Speaker 1: me like I was a criminal. So that was very confusing,
Speaker 1: and I was struggling with why. You know, five and
Speaker 1: six years old, I didn't have the language to say,
Speaker 1: maybe because I'm block and they think my dad's a criminal,
Speaker 1: and so they think I'm going to become a criminal
Speaker 1: or you know, I don't know the reason, but I
Speaker 1: certainly felt it. I felt the shift. I still have
Speaker 1: the first letter that my dad wrote me when he
Speaker 1: went to prison. He basically said that I'm not to
Speaker 1: blame for him going to prison. My mom wasn't to blame.
Speaker 1: It was his fault, his the choices that he made.
Speaker 1: He broke down the importance of rules, how rules and
Speaker 1: laws are similar, how all laws and rules aren't right,
Speaker 1: but until we change them, we have to follow them
Speaker 1: right in a way. And he said, you know, wrote
Speaker 1: about how h he wanted me to, you know, listen
Speaker 1: to my mom, follow her rules, and he wanted me
Speaker 1: to become the best part of him, not the worst part.
Speaker 1: And you know, in reading this letter and being so
Speaker 1: close to my father, I thought about the possibilities of
Speaker 1: me being incarcerated one day, and that certainly frightened me.
Speaker 1: So even now I go to therapy and I'm a
Speaker 1: huge mental health advocate. There's certain things that I experienced
Speaker 1: from my father that made me who I am. But
Speaker 1: I won't necessarily do it to my son or say
Speaker 1: those things to my son, right, So I appreciate them,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate my father for him doing his best.
Speaker 1: Just because I've been exposed to a different way of
Speaker 1: engaging with trauma and healing doesn't negate the lessons that
Speaker 1: he learned throughout his life. And so I'm like moving forward,
Speaker 1: but I'm also acknowledging the past. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: acknowledging the lessons from my father and my grandfather, even
Speaker 1: those lessons that society today may say are very harsh,
Speaker 1: which is complicated, you know, what you're saying takes me
Speaker 1: back to something my dad said to me. He said,
Speaker 1: I want you to be better than me, and what
Speaker 1: that requires of you is to be different than me
Speaker 1: and to deal with things different than me. So I'm
Speaker 1: still be me and treat you how I know how
Speaker 1: to treat you, but do not be me. Be different,
Speaker 1: because you will be better. So here is Leon existing,
Speaker 1: living his life, listening to his father's advice be different.
Speaker 1: But then on a regular Sunday morning, he gets a
Speaker 1: call from one of his cousins to hang out. Something
Speaker 1: tells him to stay, but he decides to go anyway.
Speaker 1: Leon and his cousins are really into fitness. They work
Speaker 1: out all of the time. They're so close. They boxed
Speaker 1: together and even have a packed not to do drugs.
Speaker 1: But on this day, his cousin is hanging out with
Speaker 1: a girl and Leon gets a whiff of weed. His
Speaker 1: cousin has broken the pact. They all decide to go
Speaker 1: to their grandma's house, but Leon goes alone in his car.
Speaker 1: I got my car and drove off. I drove to
Speaker 1: the corner to stop saying made a left, and so
Speaker 1: I was driving the correct way on the one way street,
Speaker 1: and then I saw a police cruiser coming towards me
Speaker 1: the wrong way with no lights on, just illegally driving
Speaker 1: down the street. And so when we passed each other,
Speaker 1: I had to like move over a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I locked eyes with those police officers and instantly knew
Speaker 1: that they were going to pull me over. I get
Speaker 1: asked this question often, like how did you know? It's
Speaker 1: just an instinct. It's just hard to explain to people
Speaker 1: who have never had that experience what that is like.
Speaker 1: And so I get to the next stop. Sound, made
Speaker 1: a left, drove about a block, made a right over
Speaker 1: a bridge. As I'm driving over the bridge, guy said,
Speaker 1: I say, behind me, police cruiser and they are speeding.
Speaker 1: Through investigations, we know that they were driving about ninety
Speaker 1: mile an hour trying to catch up to me. They
Speaker 1: call it fishing. That's the term that they used. Uh
Speaker 1: so they we're definitely fishing. And so this police cruise
Speaker 1: just speeding behind me. I knew they were going to
Speaker 1: pull me over, and so, you know, I began to prepare.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't have my seatbelt on, so I
Speaker 1: put my seatbelt on. You know those types of things, right,
Speaker 1: I want to stay, put their lights on and out
Speaker 1: immediately pulled over. I used to keep my driver's license
Speaker 1: and registration in a little zip block bag, so I
Speaker 1: got that for them and the officer immediately I just
Speaker 1: came to the window and just snatched my license and
Speaker 1: it's you know where you going up, telling what's going
Speaker 1: to my grandmother's house, and h eggs and them that
Speaker 1: I do anything wrong, and he said, I ran the
Speaker 1: stop up saying he went back to the cruiser to
Speaker 1: run my name. Everything came back Claire that the car
Speaker 1: was registered to me. But then he decided to type
Speaker 1: in Elford. So you can imagine on their system typing
Speaker 1: al Ford, every name from Linda, Larry, any name or
Speaker 1: social the al that's gonna pop up, and so he
Speaker 1: just basically decided to pick lamont Ford. I get frustrated
Speaker 1: a lot with this because the media, they would say, oh,
Speaker 1: they thought he was a gang member, or they thought
Speaker 1: he was a criminal, and he wasn't this criminal he was.
Speaker 1: He wasn't this game. He wasn't this bad person who
Speaker 1: they thought he was. The reality is that la Montford
Speaker 1: didn't even have a active warrant that night I was shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so life for the record, he didn't have an
Speaker 1: active work. So even if it was, even if I
Speaker 1: was al mont Ford, La Monteford wouldn't have deserved what
Speaker 1: happened to me. The idea of justice in Leon's story
Speaker 1: is so complicated because even if you think, well, damn,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have driven off and stayed and complied, this
Speaker 1: idea of being punished for having a human reaction feeling scared,
Speaker 1: feeling worried, feeling defenseless, isn't usually a means for such
Speaker 1: a drastic punishment. I've seen this time and time again
Speaker 1: in my own career, especially when I covered police in
Speaker 1: these incidents. At times, cops play the parts of both
Speaker 1: juror and prosecutor, tipping the scales to their favor and
Speaker 1: hopes of gaining a couple more informants for their needs.
Speaker 1: Going back to Leon for a second, think about it.
Speaker 1: He's nineteen, the police are confusing him for another person,
Speaker 1: and lamont Ford, he's scared, and no matter how much
Speaker 1: he pleads, they are not taking no for an answer.
Speaker 1: It's his word against authorities. At that point, I was terrified.
Speaker 1: You know, nineteen years old, gave my driver's license, registration
Speaker 1: and car insurance. These officers. Now we're telling me, well,
Speaker 1: how about you get out of your car and come
Speaker 1: to our car and look at this photo of Lamont Ford.
Speaker 1: I never heard anything like that before, so I told
Speaker 1: them I don't need to know what lamant for looks like,
Speaker 1: and saying we'll get your block ass out of the
Speaker 1: car before we pull you out. It was that moment
Speaker 1: where I kind of thought, well, I'm not getting out
Speaker 1: out of this car because I felt safe inside of
Speaker 1: the car, and one of the officers reached in through
Speaker 1: the window and locked the door, opened the door. Two
Speaker 1: officers both grabbed me and tried to yank me out
Speaker 1: the car. So when I put the car and drive,
Speaker 1: the officer on the passenger side immediately jumped inside of
Speaker 1: the vehicle and within a half a second begin firing
Speaker 1: shots point blank range. And I was shot once in
Speaker 1: my neck, twice in my chest, once in my arm,
Speaker 1: and once in my hip. One of the bullets that
Speaker 1: went through my chest is the bullet that paralyzed me. Wow,
Speaker 1: you said that you felt safer in your car, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you grew up knowing that police were
Speaker 1: that s aggressive in your neighborhoods. What do you think
Speaker 1: was in you that day that said, I better hit
Speaker 1: the gas to the pedal, because you know, that's something
Speaker 1: when I talked to white people especially and they look
Speaker 1: at these reports, they'll say, well, you shouldn't have driven off,
Speaker 1: you should have stayed. You would have just listened. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like everything in your body was saying, get
Speaker 1: out as fast as you can. And the fact here
Speaker 1: is that you were right, you were in danger. You
Speaker 1: did get shot. But why do you think your body
Speaker 1: said try to get out? In that moment? I did
Speaker 1: not feel safe around these police officers and they weren't
Speaker 1: taking no for an answer, and I felt like they
Speaker 1: were going to harm me, and so you know, I
Speaker 1: thought my best bet was to drive off. My parents
Speaker 1: told me, you know, don't drive with your hood on,
Speaker 1: don't have friends in the back seat, don't blast music. Right,
Speaker 1: So my parents gave me information. However, I didn't have
Speaker 1: the language to say, hey, I don't feel safe. I
Speaker 1: would like for a supervisor to come to the sea. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would have changed anything. However,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a duty of mine to equip
Speaker 1: young people and people in community in general with the
Speaker 1: language to protect them, to potentially prevent them from experiencing
Speaker 1: what I experienced. And even with those words of caution
Speaker 1: in his head from his parents, Leon woke up in
Speaker 1: the ICU. He wakes up to a police officer in
Speaker 1: the room without his family. Confused. I remember there was
Speaker 1: a suction tube that I would use to get out
Speaker 1: of the saliva out of my mouth because of the tubes,
Speaker 1: and I was hooked up to all these you know,
Speaker 1: i VS and things, and I accidentally dropped the suction
Speaker 1: my mouth. You know, it was full of saliva and
Speaker 1: I'm like China, spit it out. But I began to choke.
Speaker 1: And as I was choking, you know, I was banging
Speaker 1: the bed to get the police officers attention, and he
Speaker 1: turned the TV up. Wow. As I was choking in
Speaker 1: the machines are going off. And then you know, nurses
Speaker 1: ran into the room and they, you know, they got
Speaker 1: the saliva out of my mouth. They were so upset
Speaker 1: with this police officer, but they too felt powerless. But
Speaker 1: it was just like man, I had so much fear
Speaker 1: and anger that began to crystallize into hatred. I was
Speaker 1: shockled to the bed even though they knew I was paralyzed.
Speaker 1: I was arraigned from my hospital bed because I was
Speaker 1: charged and I couldn't see my family for almost two weeks,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know why. They actually had to
Speaker 1: hire an attorney to figure out a way to see me.
Speaker 1: I was devastated. When my family came to visit me,
Speaker 1: I was I was so happy, man, and I would
Speaker 1: just remember their sadness. They're worried and just like my
Speaker 1: dad when he was shot. You know, I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital bed saying I'm okay, I'm good, even though
Speaker 1: on the inside I wasn't. The mental emotional leaving physical pain.
Speaker 1: It was unbearable, you know. I remember hitting the button
Speaker 1: repeatedly to take more fame to get them to come
Speaker 1: just knocked me out. I just wanted to sleep, and
Speaker 1: so when I would wake up, I would be out
Speaker 1: for a while and it felt like a dream, and
Speaker 1: then I would soon be knocked out of gain Battam Murphy.
Speaker 1: I think most people would have grown resentful or maybe
Speaker 1: just given up on life after something so traumatizing, but
Speaker 1: Leon's journey never ended with this tragic day, and though
Speaker 1: he was left with conflicting emotions at times, he quickly
Speaker 1: realized that if he wanted to heal, truly heal, he'd
Speaker 1: have to open himself up to things he never even
Speaker 1: imagined and with people he never thought would be willing
Speaker 1: to lend a hand. And this is something we will
Speaker 1: cover in Part two, because Leon's journey is as complex
Speaker 1: and beautiful as it is powerful, and proves how healing
Speaker 1: yourself can sometimes come by lifting others up along the way.