Transcript for Neli!

[eumelia]

Finally, finally, finally, I got it done! It took way longer than I thought, but yay! Listening to the same descriptions over and over again is quite harrowing - I cannot begin to imagine how it must have felt to be in Neli's shoes that day.

Any way, here's the video again, and under the cut is the transcript:

Autism and Racial Injustice: Neli Finally Tells His Story

Neli's Voice Transcript


Lisa (Neli's Mother, off-screen):
Okay Neli, um, can you please explain to me what happened to you the day that you were arrested.

Neli:
The day I was arrested I was walking to the library, in the morning, I was waiting for it to open. It wasn't opening, so I went somewhere to wait for it open. I was going to a friend's house, walking past the woods and a police officer came and approached me and he starts, you know, to harass me and lay these allegations on me saying I have a gun, you know. I know he didn't think I really had a gun, 'cause if he thought I had a gun, then he would have brought more than one person and he wouldn't have approached me cruising down the highway. He was riding slow in his car and he was acting very casual, he was not acting as if, you know, it was an intense, you know, serious situation. So, that's how I knew that he was just there to harass me. So, he starts talking about my grandma, "what is she a hundred years old", "I bet she hasn't found her Baby-Daddy yet". He says: "Don't worry, champ, she'll find him, keep hope alive" and he put his fist in the air. He starts talking about my mom, hasn't found my Baby-Daddy yet. He said, "maybe she should call Tyrone and find out". So, then he saying these things about Barak Obama, turning the White House into a strip club, call it the Nigger House and paint it black. He starts, you know, saying all these things, you know, talking about my sister, you know, said maybe, she probably already knocked up already and she got paid, you know, child support. He said a lot of things, made me angry and I was scared at the same time, 'cause you know, he's a police officer and whatever he say, goes. That's one of the scariest things, that somebody who's supposed to an officer of the law and he's carrying himself, you know, in that manner. You know, you gotta sit there and take it. So, I wasn't taking it no more.

Lisa:
So, let me ask you this, um, before he started saying these things to you, did you allow him to search you for a weapon?

Neli:
Yes, I allowed him to search me for a weapon, even though he didn't have any probable cause to search me for a weapon, I still allowed him to do it anyway.

Lisa:
Okay, so after he found a weapon on you and he started saying all these dirty, nasty, negative and racial things to you, please pick up from there.

Neli:
After that I told him, you know he's a racist, you don't deserve to be a police officer and you know, I will report him to the police department. You know, I told him I don't have to stay here and take this harassment, you know, I don't have to sit here and be, you know, tormented. And he cannot - I don't know…. I don't know how you got your badge, you know, I just said, I don't know how to deal with this, I don't wanna write this, please do not – don't ask me anymore questions and I walked away basically. Told him to please don't bother and grasped me, and you know, starts choking me, hitting me, tasering me, hitting me with a night-stick and pepper sprayed me in my eyes. He knows, you know, I couldn't even see, I could barely see. So, I took him – I grabbed him and threw it away. And then he, you know, he did a lot of things and we got in a fight and, you know, he just got outta here and overall, just a very bad situation , you know, that I didn't want to be a part of.

Lisa:
When you were finally able to get away from him, what happened next when you ran off into the woods?

Neli:
I was in the woods, I heard a lot of police sirens for about thirty minutes, you know. And all of a sudden they come, ambushed me in the woods, with dogs, you know, basically they sent the whole FBI team, you know, out for one person and they're after me like I'm in some kind of gang, I don't do that. I'm not in any gang, you know. I'm not that kind of person. I wouldn't do something like that, or have a gun, I've never, I don't even know how to use a gun if I tried. And then, you know, they caught me, you know, and beat me. And then, you know, I was in the police car and said –

Lisa:
What else happened while you were in the woods? You need to be very specific about you told me, what they did to you.

Neli:
They kicked me in my ribs, you know, they beat me, they stick me face, they did, you know…

Lisa:
What did they say to you?

Neli:
They asked me how many are there of me, they saying I make them sick, they call me "nigger", they said: "I will blow your fucking head off", threatening me, you know, holding me at gun point, it was hard. Very hard. I was very scared, you know, thinking why is this happening to me, you know, I'm a good –

Lisa:
What about, when you told them, when they had you down on the ground like you told me and they were kicking you said you haven’t done anything wrong, "I haven't done anything wrong", what did they say to you at that time?

Neli:
They say, you don't have to do anything wrong but stand there.

Lisa: (by terajk)
Okay. So once they got you down to the police station, then what did they try to do?

Neli:
They wanted to interrogate me. They wanted to ask me if I had a gun. They kept repeating themselves: "Where is the gun?" I told them: "I don't have a gun." They were trying to get me to say I had a gun, changing the story, changing the words: "We didn't say you had a gun. We said: "Where is the gun?'" They're saying maybe I just told the crossguard I had a gun when I didn't really have one. I said: "No, I didn't say anything to the crossguard. I think the police officer made the whole thing up about me having a gun. I don't think he even talked to the crossguard."

Lisa:
Yeah. And from that point you were placed in isolation in a jail for how long?

Neli:
I was in jail for 11 days.

Lisa:
How was that for you? How was that ordeal?

Neli:
Very hard. Just... I can't even explain it. I was isolated from society without no reason. I don't think I deserved to be in there. I don't think they had a reason to put me in there. I couldn't do anything about it. I was buck-naked in there in isolation. I had the same thing every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, I got baloney sandwiches, maybe now and then something different. But nobody listened to me. I tried knocking on the door and they just ignored me, basically. When I was in there, they were pepper-spraying me, they were beating me.

Lisa:
Even while you were already jailed?

Neli:
Yes. They were slamming my face against the door. They were doing a lot of things, trying to get me to confess. They had me in the interrogation room. I thought they were gonna...I didn't know what they were gonna do. But I knew it wasn't anything good. I thought they were still trying to get me to say I had a gun. That's what they were doing, and I was right.

Lisa:
Okay, Neli. I know that was really hard for you. Thanks for sharing this. I'm gonna share this with the world. I have to share your story. I know that was very hard for you. I love you, son. Good job.

I didn't transcript the whole thing, in the end. I looked for others who began to transcript it and thanks to trouble who contacted me earlier this week regarding the DW comm called transcripts I managed to finish this task by copying and pasting a segment from terajk's transcript here - the part that zie wrote begins at "Okay. So once they got you down to the police station, then what did they try to do?", thank you very much terajk, *hat/tip*.

Comments

here via network

[torachan]

Thank you for writing this up.

Re: here via network

[eumelia]

You're welcome. Pity it had to be done.

[ironed_orchid]

Thanks so much for transcribing this. It's just so awful.

[eumelia]

Yeah, it really is :(

[onceamy]

And they give these fucking barbarians guns and call them the law.

No wonder I'm fucking terrified of cops.

Thank you though for transcribing the video - it was a help for me, who can't always watch videos.

[eumelia]

Cops scare me too. I only like the ones in books and television, they seem okay, sometimes.

[silveradept]

What sort of thing does it say about the police in this country when I'm more inclined to believe this than whatever official report the police department files or puts out? I can see all of it happening without having to strain my brain.

[eumelia]

Generally speaking I take official police reports with a grain of salt. I don't trust them to protect me, I don't trust them to believe me and I don't trust them not to hurt me... so you know, so much for "serving and protecting".

[silveradept]

No kidding. If they'll use a stun gun and step on the oxygen tube of an 86 year-old woman because she looked aggressive in her bed, there's really no reason to believe they will exercise restraint or anything else on me.

[moonbathe_skin]

This is shocking and upsetting but thanks so much for doing this.

[eumelia]

It is upsetting. Shocking, I wish I could say that it was :(

[ajnabi]

thank you so, so, so much for writing this up! i really appreciate it, and i'm sorry it was so difficult.

it is really, really harrowing. yes

[eumelia]

Yeah, it was harder than I thought, straining and repeating the sentences all the time - it was just hearing the story over and over again. I just wanted to get it over with, hence using another person's work as well.

I mean, it's nothing compared to what he went through, but it was just... harrowing.

[less_star]

Thank you for writing this up. What a harrowing read. Poor guy!

[bell]

Oh god that's just awful.

Thank you for sharing.