'Far too many commonalities': Trump's tweets serve as reminder Canada and U.S. need to combat racism

Guests: Mychal Denzel Smith, Maggie Hagerman, Sarah Adjekum

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: So you're not unhappy about the chant?

VOICE 2: Those people in North Carolina, that stadium was packed. It was a record crowd and I could have filled it ten times as you know. Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots.

LL: That is U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday when he was questioned in response to the people at a rally in North Carolina last week who started chanting this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Crowd chanting send her back]

LL: Now just in case you didn't quite get that, they're saying "send her back." Echoing tweets the president sent out last week telling four Congress women of colour to go back to where they came from, even though all of them are U.S. citizens. President Trump tweeted about the four women again on Sunday saying they should apologize to America for the "horrible, hateful things they have said" and that "I don't believe the four Congresswoman are capable of loving our country." It's all sparking discussion about the rise of racist rhetoric, why it's happening and how to tackle it. Canada isn't immune from this issue. We've seen rallies from far right groups here in recent months, some of which have become violent. And it's all raising questions about whether efforts to fight racism have stalled. To talk about this I'm joined by three guests. Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching. He joins us from our New York studio. Also joining us is Maggie Hagerman. She's a sociology professor at Mississippi State University. She studies racism and she joins us from Seattle, Washington. And Sarah Adjekum is a Canadian activist, social worker and PhD student at McMaster University in Health and Society. And she joins us from our studio in Hamilton, Ontario. Welcome to you all.

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: Thank you.

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: Thank you.

LL: Mychal Denzel Smith, let's begin with you. What was your reaction to those chants that we heard just now?

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: Honestly this is scary and I say that because the direction of this level of vitriol at the sitting Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar specifically, makes me feel like what's being asked or people being compelled to do or engage in this is a level of violence against her. And it's certainly like that specifically is very frightening to me the idea of the president sitting president of the United States rallying a base toward that goal. But it's also not that surprising. It is part of the project of one the United States since its inception but also of this particular presidency and administration to engage in a reassertion of white dominance. You know the the Trump presidency exists largely as a backlash to the Obama presidency the first black presidency in the United States. And what what he was elected for. What the these these constituents turned out for was a return to a certain kind of language and rhetoric use and bullying of marginalized people to to then reassert white identity white dominance white supremacy in a country that they felt like was slipping away from them and their identity slipping away from them. So this is not surprising. This is part and parcel of what was meant to happen, but it's still frightening nonetheless.

LL: Maggie Hagerman what went through your mind hearing this.

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: Well as a sociologist, I think a lot about the impact on children of everything that Mychal was just saying. And I think that based on my research you know these kinds of comments are absolutely shaping the way that young people who are coming of age in those Trump era are thinking, not only about their own identity and about the identity of others, but also about our democracy as a whole. And so I too was very alarmed by this although like Mychal said I don't think that certainly racism isn't anything new in this country, but absolutely I think this is and this is a scary moment.

LL: And Sarah Adjekum, as a Canadian how are these comments resonating with you?

SARAH ADJEKUM: I think that unfortunately there's far too many commonalities between what we're seeing in the States in regards to Trump's comments towards Allen and you know what they call the squad. And what we're seeing here at home, unfortunately these sentiments aren't news and that racism isn't new and they definitely have the function of trying to denote who deserves citizenship or is considered a citizen and who is not. And quite often that's attributed to things like skin colour and religion. And so what we're seeing especially guys still in Omar who's a black Muslim woman is that the idea that she cannot be American and she cannot love her country on the basis of the colour of her skin and her religion.

LL: Mychal Denzel Smith I just want to come back to you. You talked about this not being surprising because President Trump's whole presidency is I'm not sure if you meant it this way based on a backlash against the presidency of Obama. Does that mean that the racism has spiked under Trump or was it there before?

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: It's not what spiked is the sort of unvarnished version of racism in which we see it. Like so the Republican project since at least the end of what we would consider the civil rights movement and the beginning of the Nixon era has been that of the use of coded language to ensure that they are not alien because they've learned they learned in that time that you can put people off through the use of of you know uncivil or you know language and that what we're seeing now is just sort of the end of polite racism that you could trace back to sort of the Tea Party movement that was in response to President Obama basically saying you know are we are losing our country were losing our sense of identity and that being very much wrapped in a sense of like whiteness and the wages of whiteness. And what the sort of psychic ramifications of identifying with whiteness were and that being very much tied then to a U.S. American identity. And so Donald Trump is able to win on the heels of that he's able to like rally that he's able to harness that energy and propel him to the to the president's. So what we've seen is not that it's not that racism itself. Because I would I would try to complicate our understanding of racism and understand that it is part and parcel of our institutions. And that's where the it's baked in and that is where we see the denial of resources. We see the criminalization of people like that. That is not necessarily changed. What we have seen though here is a way in which their people have been unlocked from talking about it in ways that maybe would have been coded language before.

LL: Maggie Hagerman, is this something that is measurable? Have you researched whether it's gotten worse in recent years?

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: Well certainly there are scholars that have been doing this work looking at survey data not only know in the more recent years but across decades in the United States. But my research has really focussed on talking to children and young people. And I found that for the white kids that I spoke to during the Obama years you know they were very much buying into narratives of racial progress. You know first black president. You know things are getting better. However what I've noticed in more recent years and talking to kids during the Trump era particularly white children is that they are sort of you know saying well you know maybe these narratives are being challenged interrupted by Trump's explicit racist rhetoric and behaviour. But I still don't care. So sort of this I don't see racism because it doesn't exist has turned into. I do see racism but I still don't care about it. It's not important to me and so it's been very striking to hear young people in a middle school age children ages 10 to 13. Talk about you know not caring. When they hear that you know when they hear something that Trump says or something that he does and that's been very striking to me.

LL: Okay. I want to play all of you some tape from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren right now.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Is the president racist?

VOICE 2: Look at his remarks. He's made racist remarks and he's been racially hateful to people. That's what matters. I don't have to look at his heart. It's not the point. He behaves. Look at what he's done.

LL: OK. So this seems to be about how we label racism or call it out and I guess we're looking at here about what can be done to tackle racism. Mychal Denzel Smith, what do you think she's getting at here?

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: Well I think it speaks is something that makes a conversation about racism very difficult in this country. And it's that she's saying I don't have to look into his heart and I think a lot of people do want to place the burden of racist ideology on some personal bigotry that lives deep inside someone this is why you'll hear people talk about I don't have a racist bone in my body or whatever and that not being the most important thing like we could personal bigotries are not necessarily the thing that we need to be addressing from a policy standpoint. What is troubling what is what is problematic on this level is that someone with this level of Black who has exhibited these levels of personal bigotry and animosity has the power of enacting those things and so from the office of the U.S. presidency. And so but but that's the other part of that though is that those machinations could work even without someone who exhibits those like personal bigotries. So dealing with the complicated ways in which like racism dictates so much of our lives and so much of our institutional work means that we have to separate out the idea of like whether or not we call out someone who is explicitly racist and that has its function and it has its use to. To establish sort of norms to say this is not OK. This is not just not okay to think this way it's not OK to say these things out loud but it also means that people can have a level of complacency when doing that work and not then examine the ways in which this ideology undergirds each of our institutions and the impact that that has on people.

LL: Sarah Adjekum I want to come back to you. You live in a community in Hamilton where there have actually been violent confrontations with far right groups recently. So that's right on your doorstep. When you look at that and the situation here in Canada, how possible is it to engage in dialogue about racism in situations like that?

SARAH ADJEKUM: Well I work as an educator primarily and so I think that it is extremely important to have a dialogue to bring together these people who see these differences as irreconcilable and ingrained in you know something deeper, something biological. I think that it's important to note that a lot of these people who are reacting with violence who are you know affiliated with things like the old right and from friends of populism they do so in part because they think it's easy to scapegoat particular groups and that isn't necessarily just something that's embedded in the individual or in the community it's actually a part of our own cultural practices and our own history. These ideas of people having to go back to their country these ideas of what it means to be Canadian or American are as old as confederation themselves are as old as America itself. And what we're seeing in this modern iteration are these people who feel disenfranchised because the world is changing because you know diversity is becoming more common conversation who see these changes as having a negative impact towards them and what they don't recognize is that when we are engaging in things like equity initiatives and diversity initiatives it's an effort to deal with these unjust things that have happened in the past. Other than to you know further disenfranchise a particular group in this case people who are white identified or straight or holds specific religious views in Hamilton specifically. You know what happened during the pride protest what we saw were people you know antagonizing people who were celebrating their their queerness, their identities. And I think it's troubling you know that this is on our doorstep, but it does invite us to take a closer look at our own wrongdoings, our own history as a country that you know did have an LGBTQ purge, that has persecuted gay and lesbian individuals and continues to have anti-immigrants and anti-refugee views.

LL: So you do see this as an opportunity to actually learn from these situations then?

SARAH ADJEKUM: Absolutely. I think that ultimately you know when we talk about populism it speaks to a number of people who become disenfranchised with their government who would feel that they are excluded from certain political and economic processes and feel like there's no easier recourse than to blame or scapegoat particular groups who they think are coming in and gaining undeserved benefits. And so for me that seems like an issue of misinformation partly and also again the perpetuation of these myths of who should belong, who should have access to these resources and who should not.

LL: And Maggie Hagerman, I'm interested in what you were saying earlier about children and their reactions to what Trump has to say. What then is the parents role? What needs to change in order to make real measurable progress here?

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: Well one of the things that's very striking to me is that when I talk to these children's parents they themselves are you know almost inarticulate about race and racism and a history of racism in America. And so I think that if white adults are not able to even speak to one another about these realities I'm not really sure how they're then going to help you know educate their own children or work with their kids to sort of help them sort out you know what's happening. And so I think that really there is there is a need. Like Sarah said for you know some serious education and reeducation. But I also think that you know a lot of parents particularly parents that have economic resources and the choices they make about how to set up their children's lives are really important too. So we know for example you know patterns of school segregation and residential segregation and the wealth gap in this country the racial wealth gap in this country. These are all things that also matter. And that might not be labelled as explicitly racist on the surface but they absolutely you know at the structural level institutional level reinforce and reproduce the racial inequality that we're trying to deal with.

LL: Well Mychal Denzel Smith you were referencing that too. I mean is it you talk about the institutionalization of racism. That is huge and as you said baked in. How do you tackle that?

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: I mean that's a level of policy work to understand the organizing that happens and I think part of what I think gets complicated and confusing about conversations around racism and how to address institutional racism is that we then are looking to like root out the racist within the system. But we have to address is the ways in which even purportedly color-blind policy has a disparate impact on marginalized communities. So basically what Maggie is getting at and saying like you can look at something like school segregation and you can look at the criminal justice system and you can see just laws on the books or ways in which social norms arise that are exclusionary that are denied resources to people and you have to be honest about those things you have to be honest about the fact that like this is a reinforcement of white identity and white isolation from other communities that they'd rather not be done deal with because it does then mean that history comes to bear and you have to deal with the ways in which these neighbourhoods have been built the ways in which schools have been funded the ways in which police have been deployed to criminalize communities the ways in which prisons have been built a house people that have been criminalized and all of these different facets of our institutions and societal and communal backbone that we're not really honest with ourselves around the ways in which they've been built and what they are what their purpose is and what they've been maintaining. And so with that it is a lot of a lot of the work has to do with one of the acknowledgment. And then to building policy that is to to mitigate the harm and to then re-establish new institutions and that's democratic work. Like that is not for me to say like what exactly to prescribe, but that is democratic work that we can only come to the table when we agree upon our history.

LL: Let me ask each of you this and your answer is going to have to be brief. Can we have these complex conversations in the face of people who are shouting "send her home?" Maggie?

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: I think we need to. I don't think it's a question of whether we can, I think it's that we need to because I think that these kinds of comments are destructive to our democratic society, to our political efforts and from my vantage point to the children growing up in this world. And so yeah I think Trump's racism is a destructive threat to the country that we say we want for ourselves and for our children and that we need to find ways to resist that as challenging as it may be.

LL: Sarah?

SARAH ADJEKUM: I'd say that it's important to have these conversations, but I'm going to note you know depending on your lived experience your identity it's not always safe to have these conversations and you know engaging in that kind of emotional lever with people who are not necessarily willing to reciprocate can be very harmful. But nonetheless I feel like it is important for them to be taken place like all levels of government. So you know we need to have our heads of state, our leaders talking amongst themselves, addressing equity and diversity in our parliamentary representation and the impact that that's also having on our country.

LL: Mychal we have about 30 seconds left.

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: Yeah, we don't have any other choice. Even when they're not screaming "send her back," we are are still existing in a fraught political environment that is going to be dangerous and violent. We don't have any other choice but to have these conversations.

LL: Well then I imagine we will be having more the closer we get to elections in both countries. Thank you very much to all three of you.

SARAH ADJEKUM: Thank you.

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH: Thank you.

MAGGIE HAGERMAN: Thank you.

LL: Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and a forthcoming book called, Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream. He joined us from New York. Maggie Hagerman is a sociology professor at Mississippi State University and she joined us from Seattle, Washington. And Sarah Adjekum is a Canadian activist, social worker and PhD student at McMaster University in Health and Society. She joined us from Hamilton, Ontario.

One Bullet: Waiting for a Witness

LL: Still to come, Echoes of a Single Bullet. Our series, One Bullet, begins with the unsolved murder of a young basketball player. But first.

SOUNDCLIP

Sound of killer whales.

LL: The eerie underwater language of a majestic killer whale. With their distinctive black and white markings, orcas are one of the most recognizable species of whale. But off the coast of BC, the numbers of one population of orcas called J pod are dropping, while others thrive. Off the southern coast of BC, orcas from one distinct group are dying threatening their survival. Wednesday on The Current guest host Anthony Jermaine speaks with one of the journalists behind a new CBC British Columbia podcast, killers J pod on the Brink delves into the mystery of what's killing the endangered southern resident killer whales of J pod. In Episode 1, host Gloria Macarenko tracks the drama of the latest births and deaths and what some call an extraordinary act of grief in this family of orcas.

SOUNDCLIP

Clip of J pod on the Brink

LL: Tune in Wednesday to hear more about the southern resident killer whales struggle for survival and how it has become a matter of international significance.

[Music]

LL: Though many of us like to think gun violence isn't a serious issue in Canada, compared to our neighbours to the south, the numbers in this country reveal a growing problem and it's one that's making some uneasy. In Toronto, 2018 was a record year for gun violence. There were more than 400 shootings, including a mass shooting one year ago today on the Danforth that left two people dead. Today, we begin rebroadcasting our One Bullet series ,which first aired back in January with a two part documentary about an unsolved murder in Toronto. This story and our series was produced by The Current's Jessica Linzey and Joan Weber. This is "Waiting for a Witness," Part 1.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: Moving to that place you know, ruined our life.

VOICE 2: Did it, did it hurt? Did he try to call me? Did it, you know did he try to get up when he fell?

VOICE 1: I was in jail when another friend, when I got the news and we just begin to cry.

VOICE 2: The people who did it, do they ever feel affected by that?

VOICE 1: I didn't know who you could trust. So I live my life on the edge, not knowing when it's my time.

[Music]

PETER SLOLY: So I was an inspector during the midnight shift when a call came in for sound of gunshots, possibly someone shot in the area of Sherbourne and Bloor.

JESSICA LINZEY: Toronto, June 23rd, 2001. Peter Sloly is a cop rising through the ranks.

PETER SLOLY: It's a very hot, hot night and kind of quiet night. So there's a lot of cars buzzing around, trying to find any signs of a crime scene or any evidence of shots being fired. For whatever reason I decided to head down on to Rosedale Valley Road and had pulled my car over to the side of the road trying to figure out, you know was this a legitimate call. And as I was sitting, I remember hearing a couple of drops hit my windshield. At first I wasn't particularly concerned because I thought it's a hot humid night, maybe we're about to get some rain or maybe it's just some condensation. But then I realized, I looked up and realized that the drops were actually blood.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I never knew you could love somebody that much until you know Justin came around. Justin was my only child and he was the best thing that ever happened in my life. That was my, that was my everything.

JESSICA LINZEY: Earlier on that same evening, just blocks from where Peter Sloly would report a possible injured person, Audette Shephard is at home in the apartment she shares with her 19-year-old son Justin. His girlfriend, Latanya Langford, impatient to get their night under way, is waiting to go to the movies. But then Justin gets a call.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I heard his phone ring and then he says mom I'll be back in 10 minutes.

LATANYA LANGFORD: He was agitated. He's like no, you're staying here. I'll be right back.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And he left and then my phone rang and when I picked up, I saw unknown name, unknown number. So I said, oh that must be Justin and I picked up the phone, I didn't any. Noone was on the phone. So I kept calling back again and he wouldn't answer.

LATANYA LANGFORD: So we get in our car and we start driving around.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Nobody knew where he was.

JESSICA LINZEY: By now Inspector Peters Sloly has made his way to a footbridge. It's about 1:00 in the morning. It's a dark heavily treed area above a busy Toronto road and it has become apparent that this is a crime scene.

PETER SLOLY: I was able to see a body on the bridge.

JESSICA LINZEY: Eventually Audette and Latanya give up their search and head home. They're hoping Justin will turn up later that morning. But when that doesn't happen, Latanya contacts police.

LATANYA LANGFORD: And they told me that they were coming to me and that was odd.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette is leaving Sunday church service when Latanya calls and says.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Oh Audette someone got killed at the bridge.

JESSICA LINZEY: And that the police need to speak to her.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So I got into my car and I just I was just bawling. I said not my child, not my child.

VOICE 2: Three shootings in Toronto over the weekend. The most recent came last night.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I heard on the news that they said someone was shot. I just kept saying it can't, it's not him. It's not him.

VOICE 2: On Saturday the body of a promising young basketball player was found not far from his St. Jamestown home. He'd been shot in the head.

LATANYA LANGFORD: I broke down. I went down to my knees, I'm crying and I'm thinking how do I tell his mom. Like how, how do you tell a mother her only child is gone.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So by the time I got home, she came with to two police officers and then I realized, you know what, it was him.

VOICE 2: 19-year-old, Justin Shephard, had planned to go to the U.S. in the fall on a basketball scholarship. Shephard's older half brother, Jamaal Magloire, plays in the NBA. Shepherd's mother plans to make a public appeal today for witnesses to her son's shooting.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Come forward and the people who did it, if you have any kind of love in your heart, just think of your mother.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: It was hard to say the least and even to this day, it's a challenge. At that point I was playing in the NBA, so a lot of attention was brought on to what has happened and you know having to answer questions that I didn't have the answers to and at the same time trying to help solve the case.

JESSICA LINZEY: In his tiny condo in downtown Toronto, Jamaal sits on his couch. His 6'11 frame is accentuated by the size of this room. In 2001, Jamaal was playing with the Charlotte Hornets in North Carolina. He'd just undergone surgery for a shoulder injury.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: When I woke up, that's when the team told me.

JESSICA LINZEY: My producer Joan and I meet Carlton Cohen out front of his modest apartment in a leafy neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city. We walked to the curb where he's being dropped off by a woman and her son, a small boy, he looks about 11 or 12, leans eagerly out the backseat window. Carlton works with kids with special needs. Carlton was a close friend of Justin Shephard. He invites us into his apartment. Joan asks if she can shift a pile of Bibles down the sofa, so she has room to sit. Carlton tells us he was behind bars when he got the news about Justin and it seems hard to square with the man we're meeting today.

CARLTON COHEN: I was in jail with another friend when I called his mom and his mom was just going crazy. She was just crying, crying and I'm like mom what's wrong and right away, we just begin to cry.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hundreds of people turned out for the funeral.

CARLTON COHEN: What is the hardest thing that happened, the day that they buried Justin, you know I called his mom just to see how she's doing. And she said to me Carlton, the school because he was supposed to go away and she said to me the school just called and asked why Justin had not checked in and she said I have just buried him.

VOICE 3: Myself and the other officers involved in this investigation are disappointed by the lack of response from people in the area who knew this popular.

JESSICA LINZEY: Nearly 18 years later, that frustration lingers. Detective Sergeant Stacy Gallant is with the Toronto Police cold case unit.

STACY GALLANT: We had people that saw a car parked on the road near the pathway where this happened, reported seeing a car fleeing, reported somebody coming, running, jumping in it.

JESSICA LINZEY: Maybe beige, maybe not, maybe an SUV, maybe something smaller. The descriptions were vague. So maybe it's not surprising that Justin's killer has never been found. That is until we learned this.

STACY GALLANT: Well the belief is that he was with people when this happened, at the time it happened or shortly before. And they ought to have known what happened as well and are very likely eyewitnesses or key witnesses.

JESSICA LINZEY: As we piece together the story, we learned Justin was with three people that night. Friends we're told, teenagers who presumably would be able to help paint a picture of what went on in the time leading up to Justin's death. But none of them has ever spoken with police.

STACY GALLANT: Unfortunately we cannot force people to tell us things. That's within their rights not to say anything to the police or telling us the truth.

JESSICA LINZEY: Stacy Gallant thinks the only way this case will be solved is if someone wants to unburden themselves and so police wait for that someone to come forward.

[Sounds of dribbling basketballs]

JESSICA LINZEY: It's a bright Saturday afternoon, a bunch of kids crowd a basketball court in this inner city Toronto neighbourhood, dribbling, faking passes, shooting baskets, they look as young as 8 up to about 20. And across from where we're standing, family and friends have gathered around a barbecue. This the court where Justin spent much of his time before someone shot him dead.

CARLTON COHEN: Sky was the limit. His talent was unique. He was a gift from God. He would have gone far, gone far, but life was not fair for him.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I envisioned you know him being a professional athlete. I envisioned him going to college and being a star. I knew that eventually, if he didn't pass, that would have been the inevitable.

JESSICA LINZEY: Jamaal is now an assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors. At a practice, I watch him running drills. He gives a friendly wave in the court. It's easy to picture how Justin would have fit in here. By 13, he was already 6'6, ambidextrous, a rare skill on the court I'm told.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Justin had this heart. He had this determination. You know it didn't matter how big you were, he was going to go to the basket. And I remember one time he went up for a layup.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: He you know hit me accidentally obviously, so hard.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I think Jamaal tried to block him.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: You know I thought my nose was broken.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: His nose. [Laughs]

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: That was a testament to him that he did not give in to his big brother and that he wanted to do bigger and better things.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I loved that boy more than life itself. You know I would do anything for Justin.

JESSICA LINZEY: And she did. Justin was in his mid teens when Audette moved them from the suburbs to downtown for the basketball program at a local high school where Jamaal had also played. And it was in this new neighbourhood that Justin met Carlton.

CARLTON COHEN: Everybody just fall in love with him. Everyone who knows him just, man, the biggest mistake is moving to that place.

JESSICA LINZEY: That place is St. Jamestown. In 2001, this was Canada's densest neighbourhood. 15,000 people jammed into a four block radius. Forty percent of its residents had emigrated to Canada after 1996. It was a tough place and though it's changing, it still is.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: When we lived in Mississauga I knew all his friends and they you know, they'd call me mom. It was just like a big family. So when we moved downtown and he would bring people to the house and I would kind of say Jus, like who are these? And mom don't worry, mom these are my boys.

CARLTON COHEN: It's the project, so you know what's happening in the project, a lot of hustling, partying. That was my life, so that was the life that all who hang around me, we just play ball all the time. We never lose.

JESSICA LINZEY: We'd heard Justin and Carlton played for money. We thought 25 bucks here, 50 bucks there, but when Carlton describes one particular game, it's striking the amount of cash they gambled with. Remember Justin was still in high school.

CARLTON COHEN: I think about $2000 within that game, but Justin and I, we'd give a good spanking. After that we just split the money and he left and he went and get junk and we were just laughing.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: If they were going somewhere, I would you know be okay because Carlton would tell me. He says, don't worry, he's safe with me. You know I'll keep him safe. Took him at his word.

CARLTON COHEN: I was big in the game. So I'm out now, thank God, but I was big in the game. And when you're big in the game, people do respect you and they fear you, sometimes they want to kill you.

JESSICA LINZEY: Do you think Justin was involved with gangs and drugs as well?

CARLTON COHEN: Can I play the fifth amendment on that one?

JESSICA LINZEY: 18 months after Justin's death, Audette left St. Jamestown and settled at this townhouse in Scarborough. Audette leads up to the top floor, to a room where she comes to find peace. It's a shrine to Justin. Here there are old jerseys.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Jamaal's old 21 from Eastern Commerce.

JESSICA LINZEY: Ribbons and trophies and plaques, too many to count. And then there are the pictures, action shots of Justin flying through the air towards the basket.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He was dunking when he was in grade 8.

JESSICA LINZEY: Posed with teammates with Audette. Audette's favourite picture though is from a calendar. Each month displays another picture of her son and in this one, June, Justin is just a boy of five or six, in a bright red sweater, crisp white collar arranged just so, gazing into the camera, a smile playing on his lips.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: This is at Eastern.

JESSICA LINZEY: But a later photo of Justin, hanging on the wall downstairs, shows an unsmiling young man.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Grade 12, his last school picture.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hair and tight braids, wearing a heavy coat with a fur collar.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He just seemed you know like he was getting rougher.

JESSICA LINZEY: But none of that answers the question of who killed him and why.

CARLTON COHEN: I tried my best to figure it out because I hear so many conflicting stories. I was inside, but I think they went to meet somebody for some type of exchange between weapon and drugs.

JESSICA LINZEY: In many ways Justin's death has altered the course of Carlton's life and I'll tell you more about that later, but for now I'll say this, what he knew immediately when Justin was killed was that he should get out of the game as he calls it. But he says he couldn't, not until years later. He admits he wanted revenge.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: One of these buildings used to be that Jamaican restaurant I told you about.

JESSICA LINZEY: In St. James Town, Audette was leading us to where Justin was last seen alive.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: My stomach just feels so weird.

JESSICA LINZEY: She hasn't been back here in a long time and she's nervous.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So the restaurant used to be, right over there, by the, oh no it was right here.

JESSICA LINZEY: She points to a storefront. It used to be a Jamaican restaurant.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He came in there with three people, they had patties and pop and they were joking and laughing around.

JESSICA LINZEY: They were reportedly the last customers to leave, after which the worker closed up the shop.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And by the time she went to her car to leave, the ambulance and stuff was coming.

JESSICA LINZEY: From where we're standing, I can see the entrance to a pedestrian tunnel. It empties onto the footbridge where Justin was shot. We had that way. Audette is shaking.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: It was a lot of anger with the community. The same guys that I had asked Justin about, they were with him and they wouldn't talk. I spoke to one of the mothers and she says oh that's not fair you know because if he knows anything, I'm going to make him talk to the police and I gave her the detective's number. The next day the detective told me a lawyer called him and said his client is not interested in talking. So you know I sort of, you're 19, how did you become a client you know to something like that. So I realized they're no winners. They have one mother who's worried her son might be implicated . I've already lost my son. I think it was about here. I think I want to go now.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: People don't say anything out of fear, but me as a brother that's going through you know a very hard time, I expected you know some more answers than maybe say the police would have got.

JESSICA LINZEY: So as the years have ticked by in silence, Audette has sought purpose elsewhere, in advocacy. She works with Toronto Police to help families whose kids have died in violent ways and she's motivated by her faith. Audette began volunteering to lead prayer groups for young men in prison. She tells of one visit that was so surprising that would renew her hope that maybe her son's murder can still be solved.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: When I was finished the prayer, one young man I remember him saying to me, miss can you pray for me.

JESSICA LINZEY: The man wanted her to pray for him. He had an upcoming court appearance. And as they spoke, Audette noticed out of the corner of her eye that another inmate had picked up her pen and was writing something on a piece of paper.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And then all of a sudden, he puts my pen down and I looked at him, he says Miss take this. He said Miss take this and I said I'm sorry, I can't and he says Miss just read it then.

JESSICA LINZEY: Scrawled on that piece of paper was a name and a message so compelling, she broke the prison's rule and took the note with her.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I expected you know some more answers than maybe say the police would have got.

CARLTON COHEN: That's the code and it is serious. You can't talk. If they knew that you snitched, they're coming for you. They are coming for you.

PETER SLOLY: Unsolved homicides can enable and embolden the perpetrator or perpetrators to commit other acts and victimize other people.

CARLTON COHEN: The minute I said who is it [imitates gunshots] the first one hit me, you could feel, you see the blood. It's just my turn. This is my turn.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette Shephard is sitting in an empty board room at the bank where she works in downtown Toronto. She taps the table with a carefully polished nail. She has just revealed to my producer Joan and I, that a little more than a year ago, she was slipped a piece of paper containing possible information about who killed her son, Justin. Audette remembers the face, but not the identity of the inmate she met while volunteering at the East Detention Centre.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I know exactly what he looks like.

JESSICA LINZEY: She recalls taking the paper from him.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And then I read it and it says the man who killed your son was and he gave me a name and then at the bottom he said he was also killed and of course I took it.

JESSICA LINZEY: Do you still have the note?

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Yeah, it's in pieces though. It's in my purse, I kept it in the back of my purse. I could show it to you now, it's in pieces.

JESSICA LINZEY: When she returns she pulls the pieces from her wallet and arranges them on the table like a puzzle. Sixteen years after Justin's murder, a possible clue. The sections worn through where it's been folded and refolded. We asked Audette, if police have seen it.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I saw Chief Saunders and I gave him the information and I asked if he could get back to me. As of this time you know he hasn't, so.

JESSICA LINZEY: But is this tip credible? Audette doesn't recognize the name. She's googled him and she doesn't know his face either, but Carlton does.

CARLTON COHEN: I know him. No, not a friend at all. Not a friend. He's from Regent Park, we're at Bleecker. So that's why up to this day, I'm surprised what he was doing there. I'm still surprised. He is so brutal and so cold. So malicious.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton believes it's entirely possible this person pulled the trigger.

CARLTON COHEN: I don't mind stalking the gentleman's name because I know he's dead. But if he wasn't dead, I couldn't say his name.

JESSICA LINZEY: So was blaming Justin's murder on a dead man a little too convenient? As Carlton suggests there's no real danger in pointing the finger at him. Yet could it be the truth, one that someone felt a grieving mother should know about. The man was 21-years-old when he was shot a little more than a year after Justin.

VOICE 4: Toronto Police responding to reports of gunshots early this morning at the Dufferin and Eglinton area, discovered the body of a young male.

JESSICA LINZEY: We tracked down the man's sister to see what we could find out about him.

[Phone dialing]

VOICE 5: Good morning.

JESSICA LINZEY: How are you? It's Jessica calling from CBC.

VOICE 5: I'm well, how are you?

JESSICA LINZEY: She wasn't naive about what her brother was up to back then.

VOICE 5: I mean I know that he was involved in street, I don't know violence maybe, street activities or whatever.

JESSICA LINZEY: But whether she could imagine him firing the bullets that killed Justin.

VOICE 5: I mean I watch a lot of movies and you know TV shows, you know there are a million stories. I personally can't, I can't see or picture my brother you know pulling the trigger and taking another person's life. But again I couldn't say for sure because it's obvious that he was involved in street life or making decisions that brought him to the place where he ended up. So you know there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle missing for me.

JESSICA LINZEY: Her brother's case, like Justin's, has never been solved. But remember, there were three other people with Justin that night. Three people who never spoke to police. Latanya Langford recalls him as a constant presence in her boyfriend Justin's life from the time Carlton was sent to jail and she wasn't comfortable with it.

LATANYA LANGFORD: You know bad company from bad company and they were just the young bucks that were just always seemed like they were up to no good.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton remembers them too.

CARLTON COHEN: They're serious.

JESSICA LINZEY: And it's clear to him why not one of them ever spoke to police.

CARLTON COHEN: You can't talk. Even me, I got to be careful too, right. I know I'm not careful, but that's the code. And it is serious because if they know that you snitched, they're coming for you. They are coming for you.

LATANYA LANGFORD: And that's the problem in this society, period. You don't want to snitch because you don't know if those people are going to show up at your door. You don't know what, who they're affiliated with. You don't know if they're going to meet your kid at the school. You don't know if they're coming for you. So people keep quiet.

CARLTON COHEN: I wanted to get out, but the game have a grip on me. I loved the money, I loved the limelight, I loved the party, I loved the drinking, I kind of loved that, but I still had something deep within me that said get out, you know death is knocking at your door.

VOICE 6: And CNN can now project that Barack Obama, 47-years-old, will become the president-elect of the United States.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton describes the evening of November 4th, 2008, the historic night Barack Obama was elected US president for the first time.

BARACK OBAMA: If there are, is anyone out there, who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, tonight is your answer.

CARLTON COHEN: That night I was home and I was watching the election. There's a knock on my door and the people was black and that there's a sign that to show me that was my friend and I went to open it and a voice was saying to me, don't open it and I live alone. I'm like who's talking to me, who's saying to me don't open this door. So I went back and I sit down watching the election. Five minutes pass, the door knock again. The people was black and I went to open it and a voice said don't open it. So I said who is it and when I said who is it? [Imitates gun shots] Three shots through my door. And the first one hit right here.

JESSICA LINZEY: He lifts his shirt to reveal a scar that runs from his sternum to below his belly button.

CARLTON COHEN: And when I went back into my room, I call my mom. I said mom and when I said mom, she said to me what me son? In Jamaican that means, how are you do my son? She's Jamaican, so she said what me son. And she's like how are you doin my son? I'm like mom, I'm shot. And she just begin to weep. Just begin to weep cry. Yeah.

JESSICA LINZEY: Why did you call your mom, before calling 9-1-1?

CARLTON COHEN: Because my mom is a Christian lady and she always telling me that you know to come to church and to give up that life and all I could hear and all I wanted to hear was her voice cause I thought I was going to die. I was looking at my stomach and the blood was just like turn on the pipe and the blood was just gushing out.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton does call 9-1-1, using a second phone. He keeps his mom on the other line until help arrives.

CARLTON COHEN: God allowed me to feel the pain of a mother, when she was crying. She couldn’t cry. When she couldn’t cry, she begin to moan. There was no tears left in her eyes, so she began to moan. Moan like she's, I don't know. I don't explain it. But that one bullet can have done so much.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton is slipping in and out of consciousness as he's transported to the hospital, but there are few things he can't forget.

CARLTON COHEN: I heard the nurse said that the bullet was travelling and then I heard the nurse say that we're losing him. I'm grasping for air and I just said God give me a second chance and that's what I remember.

PETER SLOLY: It was a bit of a strange period because we had spent it in the city and I think in Canada, the most of the 90s, kind of dismissing US-based gang violence and that we didn't have a gang problem. You know in retrospect, we were wrong.

JESSICA LINZEY: That's Peter Sloly, the former police inspector who worked the night of Justin's death. By 2001, young black men are dying by gunfire in ever increasing numbers in Toronto and those homicides aren't being solved.

PETER SLOLY: Unsolved homicides, unsolved crimes of any sort, but particularly shooting homicides, can enable and embolden the perpetrator or perpetrators to commit other acts and victimize other people and it can disable communities feeling that they're disempowered to address the single crime and that becomes a vicious self-fulfilling cycle.

JESSICA LINZEY: And he stresses that many of those cases, which are unsolved.

PETER SLOLY: Are not necessary because we don't know who did it, but we can't bring the right evidence to court and in many cases, the evidence is the human being, the witness. And in many cases the witness is also the victim.

JESSICA LINZEY: Peter Sloly is keenly aware of the dangers for people coming forward with information. For Sloly there's one particular case that embodies that risk. Kenneth Mark was a young man who saw someone from his neighbourhood being threatened. He then became the witness.

PETER SLOLY: The witness in the case against this group of young members, some of whom were gang members and ultimately was targeted and executed himself, the victim of a homicide, a firearm homicide.

JESSICA LINZEY: Sloly calls Mark a hero. He's also a cautionary tale. And his death pushed Sloly to try to find ways to better protect witnesses.

PETER SLOLY: Now I don't want to say that you know I raised the bar significantly and changed the dynamic that I just talked about it, but you know that's a type of influence, positive influence, that these unfortunate tragedies can have as a ripple effect on people in the system and outside of the system.

JESSICA LINZEY: But for people like Carlton, those efforts mean very little. No one was ever arrested for shooting him.

CARLTON COHEN: Police don't really care, like I don't think that they've done much investigation. Nah. Nah. I'm not innocent myself. So probably I deserve it.

JESSICA LINZEY: To be fair, Carlton says even if he'd seen who'd shot him, he wouldn't have told police. The relationship between police and young black men in the city is a damaged one, but Carlton gets why. He understands what police were walking into that night. The officers could still smell gunpowder in the hallway.

CARLTON COHEN: When I called the police and the police arrived on the scene, they knocked my door and when they knocked my door and I open it, the two cops that came first, they were so nervous, they almost shoot me. And when I opened the door, he was, the officer was like shut the f'up. And I'm like officer, I'm a victim. Shut up and he was swearing at me and I'm bleeding. He almost shoot me.

JESSICA LINZEY: That Carlton survived was for him, a sign from God to get out of the so-called game, but he didn't.

CARLTON COHEN: I want revenge. I want revenge. I wanted to go and kill the kid who shot me. I was bitter. My heart was cold.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette has no appetite for that kind of retribution, but she knows it's possible. That that's the justice has already been meted out for Shepp or Sheep as Justin was known.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: One young guy I spoke to, he said to me, Miss.

JESSICA LINZEY: He offered Audette what he thought would be comfort.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: If we find out who did this to Shep, I said no, no, I don't want that kind of stuff. I don't want blood on anybody's hand.

JESSICA LINZEY: It was some time later that a family member was approached by a stranger who said.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Tell your family not to worry because what happened to Sheep was not fair or something like that and tell them it's taking care of or some craziness like that and the guy just walked away.

JESSICA LINZEY: In many ways, Audette has become weary of all the theories. And while she holds out hope that one day she'll know what happened, for now her focus is elsewhere. She works with police, goes to schools, prisons. She talks about Justin, about retaliation and about finding a way to let go of anger.

PETER SLOLY: I'm not sure what Audette's life would have been, what direction she would have gone in, but as a result of the tragedy, she propelled herself and many others in a very, very productive and enabling, widely enabling way and would she have had such a positive impact through her own life and mission in life post the tragedy of Justin, absent the tragedy. So it's hard to tell whether the you know which way the scales would have balanced out with the loss of potential of one life and the impact from the passion of the other life.

JESSICA LINZEY: Sometimes when Audette wonders if her work makes the difference, she reminds herself of one inmate in particular, who heard her story and was moved to talk to her.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And the young man looked at me and he says Miss, you know how God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts? And I'm like yeah OK and he says you know, you know how we look at justice as arresting somebody, putting them in jail for life and we think that is justice. He says you know what God's justice could be, he says for your son, he says all the good you do, what the enemy meant for bad, God has turned it around for good because I see you on TV all the time and I see and you're doing good for someone else. So that could be the justice and I just looked at him and I said young man I came in here to try and inspire you, I said you just inspired me today.

VOICE 7: With it, a special guest, one who's 6'11, to be exact.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I'm no different than each and every one of you boys and girls.

JESSICA LINZEY: Justin's brother, Jamaal, has cut a similar path. His foundation that bears his name, tries to help kids at risk and he tells them what it means to lose a brother.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: It's very tough and that's another reason what drives me and motivates me to come out and talk to the youth each and every day and each and every week.

VOICE 8: I found it very inspirationable.

VOICE 9: Stop being in gangs and listen to your parents and get a good education. You wouldn't get hurt or have to go to police station and get arrested.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: Yeah, I think about violence and how tough it is for not only the person that is in the act of doing it, but to the family that is affected or families.

JESSICA LINZEY: Back in 2008, Carlton still wanted to kill the man who shot him.

CARLTON COHEN: And then the Lord begin to speak to me and said, if I do this, I will never get to know him. The Lord began to speak to me then, but I'm like no, I don't want to hear that. I want to do it myself. I'm going to kill him. And what happened that my mother, she's a believer, she's a Christian lady, nice Christian lady. So she had called my pastor and my pastor now and a few church brethren they came by and they pray for me and I just begin to cry. And I said I forgive him. I don't walk with that fear no more. I walk with confidence now. I'm living, my life belongs to God right now and that fear is long gone and I'm an advocate for gun violence now. I went back and share my testimony with other people, letting these young men know that the game breathe evil, Jessica. Because all we do is plant evil and if you plant evil, you're going to reap evil.

JESSICA LINZEY: So what we know is this, a 21-year-old gunned down, a year after Audette's son is named by an inmate as Justin's killer. This in a chance meeting years after his death. If anyone could shed light on this, it would be those three young men, the ones who were seen with Justin the night he was shot. Joan and I have been looking for them. Our search for two of them has come up empty, but what we have learned is that one of them recently spent time in prison. In fact between 2001 and 2012, he had 70 interactions with police. In 2013, he was found guilty of trafficking cocaine and for being in possession of a banned firearm, which was loaded. At the time, he was on social assistance and living with his mother.

[Phone dialing]

JESSICA LINZEY: The phone at his mom's place has been disconnected and calls to neighbours in her apartment building yielded nothing.

[The number you are calling cannot receive incoming calls. This is a recording.]

JESSICA LINZEY: We had also contacted his lawyer and after a number of weeks, he got back to us to tell us that his client had respectfully declined our requests to speak with him. Police maintain they cannot compel any of the three of them to talk.

CARLTON COHEN: Since I lose Justin it's like, they're not really play after that. It hurt too much, you know. That was it.

LATANYA LANGFORD: Ah man, I think about him all the time. I have some stuff at the house with his name on it from when he used to play basketball and I have, I currently now have four children and my oldest son is going to be 19 and I fear for his life every single day.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette knows Justin would be proud of the work she's done since his death, but her grief is always right there at the surface.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Did it, did it hurt? Did he try to call me. Did you know did he try to get up when he fell and you know, I don't have any answers because they ran away and left him there. And do they ever feel affected by that? Do they just go home, wash their hands and go to bed? Do they live in peace?

JESSICA LINZEY: After Justin's death, this cemetery is where Audette and Jamaal would meet every Sunday. Though Jamal is not her son, he shared a father with Justin. She's come to know him well.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: We've come so close together. He sort of tries to step in where he thinks Justin would have been. You know do you need anything? You want it? You know like and I admire him for that because he could have just sort of.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette pauses. She's trying to find the right words. He could have gone his own way, she says. Disappeared.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I think a lot of people in Canada wonder if he is my son.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: You know even though I can't replace Justin, I, you know I love her dearly and it's heart-breaking because she's such a good person and just try to be there for her whenever I can.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I just love him for who he is and for just sticking with me all this time.

[Music]

LL: You've been listening to the documentary, Waiting for a Witness. It was written and produced by The Current's Jessica Linzey and John Webber. Our series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country continues all week. Well that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Tom Power is talking to the actor Jaleel White, best known for playing Steve Urkel on the sitcom Family Matters. For now though we'll leave you with some smooth sounds from the past. 60 years ago today, Canada held its first major jazz festival. It took place in Toronto at the CNE grandstand, also known as Exhibition Stadium. The line-up included Canadian jazz royalty Oscar Peterson and Maynard Ferguson, but the biggest buzz was around a special American guest, Louis Armstrong. DJ Phil MacKellar attended the festival for the CBC show, Assignment. And we're going to leave you with him trying to get the scoop on Satchmo from jazz producer George Waden. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

The Current Transcript for July 22, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

'Far too many commonalities': Trump's tweets serve as reminder Canada and U.S. need to combat racism

One Bullet: Waiting for a Witness

July 22, 2019 episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode