 Here in San Antonio in 1968-69, Bob Joe Phillips, a young black man here in San Antonio was killed by the police and was never prosecuted. Snip came to San Antonio with the black power to move. So if we just say this to let you understand that we do have a history on this issue. Okay, we see it as our responsibility to try to educate the people in our community about dealing with the police. We're not saying that we're going to solve every problem that there is in regards to our relationship with the police. But we're saying that we might be able to save an incident, might be able to save a life with the correct information. At this point right now, before we go on with our workshop, I'm going to ask our committee to come forward and give us a few words and then we'll go tomorrow in the south who will be conducting remainder of our workshop. Yes, we are with that history. That is somehow that history. And upon the shoulders of the people of SNCC and the Black Panther Party, I stand today as your first black commissioner. There is no doubt that the movement was instrumental in the fight for equality here in San Antonio and Bear County and they continue. Many of the members continue to do wonderful works in speaking up and speaking out. I just wanted to come briefly and thank every panelist, every body who's come today, Mario and others who've organized this. This is an important, important community discussion to know your rights. Of course all of us who are maybe of every humor growing up have had parents talk to us about how to conduct yourself and when you deal with law enforcement. But I remember getting my first driving while black. During 1990, was it 99? The Spurs went to the championships for the first time. And my friend, Raj Daniels, his mother was a colonel and he knew that we could get finals tickets at the commissary over at Fort Santa. And so we decided to camp out in front of the commissary. We had, you know, our tents, we had our, you know, and so I went back. I was driving my dad's 88 fleet with Rohan and I went back to get some Cheetos or something at his house that he went too far from Fort Sam. And I was raised and taught that when you are on a military base, you don't speak. You drive the speed limit up below it, you just don't speak. So I was extremely careful. And I remember looking at my tail lights and making sure all my lights were working, all those kinds of things. Because, you know, I was a kid that was raised with the ACLU and with my father's civil rights, you know, member. So everything was a-okay. But as I go on New Bromphil Street, this is when it was open, when the game was open. All of a sudden, a whole bunch of police lights come. And the next thing I know, there's probably six post-police vehicles behind me and the wagon. And so I wasn't speeding. And so the officer said to me, your tail lights, what's that? And I remember, I had just looked at it going into the house. And so, you know, it gave me the ability to go after you guess you realized that I was okay. I told him what I was doing, camping out, and he let me go. But I was pulled over, I was profiled. The first time I was profiled, there was no doubt I was profiled. And at the time, I was actually working with the ACLU over at the aerial house. And their former director told me, these are the things that you got to do whenever that happens. And one of the most common excuses that law enforcement uses is that your tail light is out. And so what you do is say, officers, show me the defect. Okay? And you go and you inspect it. And if it's not out, you make sure you get that officer back and I heard a file of formal complaint. And follow that process through. I'll tell you about the sending time. After I ran for Congress and lost, I was given a run on the election campaign for C. Rodriguez and I was given Denver Heights. And there were some law enforcement that were kind of in the neighborhood. And I felt, you know, that maybe something could happen. But I was in capy pants, a nice button of shirt. I had my clipboard and I was buck walking for zero. Well, I kind of noticed some of the law enforcement following us. And I also noticed that there were a lot of Hispanic men on the front doors and out on porches while I was buck walking. And so we eventually got pulled over and the officer said to me, my sister was driving and I was buck walking. And the officer said that we're looking for a Hispanic male selling drugs in the neighborhood. That's why I pulled you all over. So I got a walking on Hispanic in black. But that was a very interesting experience. I won't tell you what I said to the officer, but there was no citation. I don't know what drug dealers walking around with the clipboard. You know, the role of County Commissioner touches on the justice system. We obviously oversee the jail and sheriff's department. And it was my honor to stand with you to get the body cameras for the first time in the history of Bear County for all of the sheriff's deputies. And yes, they were dragging their feet. When they were dragging their feet, I called them out on case day. But we have a lot of work to do with respect to ensuring that all people are treated with respect and professionalism and service. Just as we saw a Facebook post of a woman in sunrise, her 15-year-old son was lost. And SAPD, two officers just ignored him. He was crying and thought he was just a 15-year-old kid. And that loses faith and trust in the system. In our own sheriff's department, we have a horrible situation where two young African-American teenage girls at Judson High School were arrested and their food was knocked down on the water burger and their hat was knocked over at the water burger. And I'm proud to say that I work behind the scene to get those charges dropped. Those charges were dropped. I had a change.org petition against me, but I was already working on the issue. The issue happened on a Friday night. I had a friend who told me about it Saturday night. When I got home, I think I was at the mall. I went and looked at the video. I told my friend who knew the mother of one of the young ladies, I need to talk to the parents. And they had just gotten her out of jail. They were very emotionally distraught. They were tired frankly from being up all night. And so they asked that I call the next day. After church time on Sunday, I called. They still didn't want to talk. I said, look, I really need to talk to you in order to help you and begin this investigation. So I listened to the mother and I told her that I would get these charges dropped. If the video was showed, everything came out correctly. We have to do an investigation. So after that, I called the sheriff, former sheriff Cameroon. We had a conversation. I was not always satisfied that the sheriff was understanding the side of these two young girls. And I get along with pretty much anybody, but probably some of the toughest conversations that I ever had behind the scenes were when I fought for getting an African-American to be the project manager as part of a team at the AT&T Center and the conversation I had with the sheriff. I'm not going into the details, but it was a very tough conversation that I had with her about how dissatisfied I was and what a waste of time it was to send these two young ladies who were on their way to a bright and prosperous future to a criminal record. And very shortly after that conversation, probably about two weeks later, those charges were dropped. So that's why the work and legacy matters. I'm honored to be the first black commissioner, but when I leave, I want you to remember the things that I did to help people in our community get better justice and get a better county to work for them. That's what I'd rather you remember. So Godspeed in the work today to empower our community about our rights. This country, more than ever, needs all of us to tell the truth to power about what our rights are so that we may be treated with dignity. Don't think for a minute that the gains that folks like Abe and Mario have made will not exceed that threshold in the next couple of years. But count me in as part of the resistance. I'm ready to fight along with each and every one of you so that we can make sure that we are treated and given justice and fairness for all. So thank you for your participation today. All right. Of course, my name is Mario Osales, and we're going to do this. We should have a little thing. We're going to make a few adjustments, but we're going to have two kind of discussion pieces. And first of all, I'd like to congratulate Mario up. Come on up. And him and myself will talk about a few things, and then we're going to show a video. We're going to talk about how we're going to show... It's going to be about two great videos, I do believe. So we're going to do that. So let's just give a little bit of background information. Claudia and I are both members of SNCC. And SNCC and Antonio is a very interesting organization, and it's been called a hybrid by Professor Jones University of Atlanta, because we were part of Black Panther, for self-defense, and SNCC as well, so we were both. And during the time that we were members, we were entitled because most of the Black Panther chapters in the country, and some SNCC chapters, operated in all military lines. So we had military labels, or diplomatic type labels, depending on how you look at that. I was the Minister of Justice, and that kind of fit my personality, I suppose. And Claudius was the Minister of Defense, and I might see why that happened. So, and then we had a lot of ministers and so forth, and these are the titles that we usually work. I wasn't on that team of titles, but they played a role in terms of leadership, and that's what we tried our very best to do. Let me just tell you a few things. The SNCC organization in San Antonio, we had a free breakfast program right here, right in this very building. We fed children in the right next to the cafeteria. We fed over 125 children free breakfast every morning. We carried them from their house, from most of them in the southern homes, or really, of course. We carried them over to here, fed them in the cafeteria, and then we took them to school. In the afternoons, we would sometimes tutor them. This is all part of the SNCC and Black Panther survival programs. We had a legal defense program. We had a sick and fellow union program. We had a free breakfast program. We had a city program that was designed to meet the needs of the community, and that was very important. At the time, and we had a program here, it actually, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, you find out a lot of things. Over the course of time, the FBI was spying on us quite regularly. Of course, they were spying on everybody. They were ever black or spying on anyone connected with the civil rights movement. They did that already in places, either through electronic e-dropping devices, or people that would come to your meeting and were working with them, or whatever the case may be. Unfortunately, and I won't call any names, but unfortunately, there was one person who was a pastor's father here. Unfortunately, one person who convinced the pastor, because the FBI had convinced him to come to talk to the pastor, to remove the breakfast program from the church. That was part of what Abraham mentioned, Operation Pointale Pro, and that was to disrupt any black organization or civil rights organization that was trying to make a real change in the community. We had to deal with that and discover some of this on the Freedom of Information Act. I did keep some pretty good notes at the time, so my process of elimination is looking back through those notes and knowing exactly who was going to the payphone and calling downtown to know what happened. But anyway, so all of that was a very interesting experience. We kept on doing what we needed to do. We protested the murder of Bobby Joe Belms at downtown San Antonio, and we actually disrupted the King River Parade. We started off with about 50 demonstrators. We marched from the Victorian courts to downtowns right when the river parade was getting out. And by the time we looked around, we had made our way through the downtown area. I remember being on the Barrow Street in front of the Knicks Hospital, and when I looked around behind my back, there had to be at least $10,000 of other people, and they were chanting. They were saying stop police abuse. It was just unbelievable, spontaneous demonstration. Today after that, I think it was the day after that, and Clarence might want to speak to that for a couple of days after that. Our office was raided, I don't know, two or three hundred police officers, because we had had the Dallas police, also the Dallas snake chapter had come to San Antonio to help us out if we needed any help. And in those days, there was nothing like being young. In those days, we armed ourselves. We brandished weapons, and they were loaded. So the snake chapter from Dallas came down here, and they had all kind of, apparently automatic rifle, they had a vehicle, a B-A-R, they had all kinds of weapons, and they stood out in front of the snake office, and while we were there, we were leading upstairs, and they guarded the office. In those days, attacked our office, and many of the members were arrested. I'm going to stop there, because I want Clarence to say a few things about some of the stuff that he experienced, and then we'll move on from there. So, Clarence, take the mic. Was that just the term of the argument? In the year report, a little girl got shot downtown by police officers recklessly by an Olympic struck her. And in the short discussions, I decided, no more. But as a minister of defense, my job was education, as far as I was concerned. We had to educate ourselves how we could do it like Tommy just said. We had to go the right way to do it, the wrong way to do it. My job was to keep us alive long enough to get what we wanted done. And believe me, we could have died once dead, very badly. And when he said they were in our office, there was no joke. There were police everywhere, shot. Matter of fact, they had been handcuffed across the corner, two shots done across the corner. But, it is what it is. And that's what we do. And the people that decide to do that are special people. You guys are very special people because you decide to be here and you care. And that's all that matters is caring and informing yourself. If you do it wrong, you guys do everybody out. And you make that. And that's the difference between the police department now and then. And one main fact is militarization. You are, until you move otherwise, ISIS to them. They're trained by the same people. They train the FBI, give you seminars, all the police departments, and you are the enemy. You have no rights. On that point, if you don't know your rights, you sure don't have it. You must know what you can and can't do what other people can do and what they can do. And as we learned in the movement back in the 60s, you're a very life-dependent. It was nothing serious about it. It was dirty, bit of date. You could keep a job as soon as they find you working and go to your boss and you get fired. But we kept on. The objective is to make a change. If you can't take care of yourself and educate other people and affecting that change, it's all useless. It's all worthless. You are the forefront of this movement. You chose to be here. You chose to be somebody. You chose to educate yourself. You chose to share your knowledge that makes you very important. I just want you to remember that you, all of you, are the movement. Someone asked me one time at a seminar at a college, what would I do if I found myself in charge of a national organization? Thousands of people won't be the first thing I do. My response was I educate everyone to be me. You don't want to be a leader. You want to be among the leaders. You're no good if you can't thank for yourself to do the things you're supposed to be doing without asking someone. You've got to man up. You've got to be the man. If that's what you want to do, you've got to do it. I hope you carry something from this meeting. Thank you very much for your time. I, too, would like to recognize Kevin for being here and allowing us to be here and he know what that is. But let me tell you, it's a really price I'm glad to see you come to because look, we've got pastors and the general and a few last hours are concerned about civil and human rights and the ones that are applaud them and we should applaud them not well. We have a video, I believe we're going to show if somebody can crack that up on the table and just before we crack that up I want to give you a quick story. We were very very much concerned about the city full of children who couldn't take a place. We were very much concerned about the police officers and if somebody on the other day told me, this was his first one, he said, well, I backed the blue and I said, me too, I backed the blue. I said, so there's a difference between backing the blue and backing the blue. I said, so don't lump in the blue because there's enough of them to give all of you all of that name. And any time you have the police officer violating people's rights, he's actually putting the other police officers lives in danger and I don't know what the problem is, they need to think about that. I did have one on this police officer tell me once, I'm very I have a problem with a guy that they've assigned to me. I don't want this guy assigned to me. I treat everybody fairly and I don't get on anybody's case. This guy's always causing trouble. And I said, well, you filed a complaint and he goes, yeah, I did. So there are some police officers that have actually filed complaints against other police officers. And national statistics show that some of the black police officers feel that the Black Lives Matter movement is a good movement. There's another percentage that don't. When the statistics also show that about 20, only 27 percent of white officers Black Lives Matter is a decent group. So we have this big difference of opinion within the ranks of the police themselves. We have a police advisory board that takes complaints and in my opinion, it's absolutely worthless. It actually is. Because the community is not represented under like a chip nor do they have the power. They don't have subpoena power, they don't have contempt power. They have no way to actually at least all the students being charged before that board can actually refuse to testify. So what's the purpose of the board? I don't say it's cosmetic. We've gone through this cosmetic stuff when they come up with all these nice cosmetics to sound good. We haven't been having these meetings and I'm being very critical about some of these other meetings that have taken place to better police community relations. We're all in favor of that. But no one wants to talk about that no good police contract that took the accountability out of the contract. There's no accountability in the contract anymore. So a police officer that did something a few years back, that can't come up in a new disciplinary hearing. So we can't look at a pattern of this police officer, a continuing pattern of disrespect and violations because now in the police union contract that's not allowed come on man, as Barack Obama would say, come on man. What person in his right mind would say that's accountability or that's just it's not. So we still have that problem to deal with and will continue to do so. My last remark before we go here is someone a police officer said to me I think all lives matter and I said, well in that case you don't have a problem with black lives matter. So what are you trying to tell me? Black lives never matter. Other lives always matter. Black lives never matter. So that's why they say black lives matter. And if you're saying all lives matter then that must be good or something wrong with you. Because when you just say that as a juxtaposition or an opposition of what I'm saying tells me something about you and I don't know what you're trying to say. And he actually backed off and said, he had a point there. I said I know I've got a good point that's got me problem.