On Apr. 27, 2022, Houston police officer Shane Privetteshot and killedJalen Randle within seconds of pulling him over. Body camera footage clearly shows that Jalen was shot before he had an opportunity to raise his hands in surrender. Jalen had a warrant out for his arrest at the time, but he was unarmed and made no threats to the arresting officers.

For months, city officials made no public moves regarding Jalen’s case. But the Randle family was determined not to allow their son’s death to be swept under the rug. Aftermonths of protests, a Grand Jury served an indictment against Officer Shane Privette. As of Apr. 26, 2023, the case is being handed over to anew Grand Juryafter the previous one decided to take no action.

Jalen’s parents, Warren Randle and Tiffany Rachal, speak with The Real News about their son’s life and unjust death. They remember a young man whose caring spirit was evident from childhood, and reinforced in adulthood after becoming a father. This interview was recorded prior to the Apr. 26th announcement of no action from the Grand Jury.

Transcript

Warren Randle: My name is Warren Randle. I’m the father of Jalen Randle, an unarmed Black man who was killed on April 27 by Houston police officer Shane Privette. I’m here to tell a story about my son, what happened to him, and to let people know what type of person he was and what character he possessed.

Tiffany Rachal: My name is Tiffany Rachal. I’m the mother of Jalen Randle. Basically, like Warren said, we want to get the story out to people so that they are aware of what’s going on in our city, which is Houston, Texas. And we want to tell you about our son. We want to tell the greatness of him, and to give people the idea of what has happened here.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, Warren, Tiffany, thank you both so much for sitting down and chatting with us at The Real News. I really appreciate it and I can’t begin to express how sorry I am for your loss, but we are all with you and we know our audience is sending nothing but love and solidarity to you and your family in your fight for justice.

As you said, we’re here in Houston, about a week out from the anniversary of your son’s death at the hands of Houston police. And I know that it’s been an incredibly devastating time for y’all, and the fight for justice, it’s never easy, and hasn’t been easy in this case. So we want to talk about that. We want to talk about what folks watching and listening can do to support y’all and your family.

But as you said, I really want to make some space to get to know more about Jalen and share his story with folks. And, of course, you two knew him best. So I was wondering if we could start there? If we could talk a little more about who Jalen was, what you remember most about him, what you want people to know about him?

Warren Randle: Jalen was a loving, caring individual. He was a very outgoing, athletic, kindhearted kid. He was a giver. He was the kind of kid who would always open the door for elderly people. He would see homeless people and give them money. Or, I had seen Jalen purchase diapers for mothers who couldn’t afford to get Pampers. He would take on a lot of people. I would say, Jalen, why are you doing this? And he was like, I have to do it.

But also, he was not perfect. Jalen had a semi-temper at times, depending on what the occasion was. But, overall, he was a loving and caring son. Very giving. In a lot of ways, I wish I could have been more like him. He was very giving and passive to individuals, more so than I would be. And he was a wonderful son. I just wish he would have had more time to actually evolve and become the man he was supposed to be.

Tiffany Rachal: I had Jalen on December 2, 1992. I was probably into my seventh month. He came at a time where I was sick. He could have died, but God saw differently. He was 2lbs, 19oz. I can tell you as an adult how my child was, but I think I’m going to go back to when he was a baby. When he came out, it was as if he’d been here before. He would cry with a loud voice. He was very strong. 2lbs, 19 oz.

Maximillian Alvarez: A little thing.

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Tiffany Rachal: He was very little and he was very strong. It seemed as though he was caring at that point. As Jalen grew up, he showed a lot of emotions. You would know if he didn’t like something. You would know if he was happy. You would know the mood that he was in at that particular time.

As he grew up into a young man he always wanted to teach somebody something. That was his thing. [He would say] I want to teach you how to have dogs. He never held back the information that some people would. He loved animals. As a matter of fact, we got his first iguana, this long lizard, I got it from a friend. And I can almost see him now. He nourished this pet, to where this pet was just spoiled. I’ve never seen it in my life.

Jalen was a person that would help you get to the next level with anything that you were doing. I remember him throwing a baseball and my middle son could not catch the ball. So they both went to the backyard. I could see Jalen throwing the ball and my other son would let the ball hit the fence. Well, we had several holes in the fence and you had to, at some point, learn how to catch the ball because he’s going to keep throwing it until you get it. And that’s what he did with his brother; he made his brother better by throwing the ball. And that’s how he has been throughout his life.

He wanted to make people better. He would go up to somebody if they were on the street and say, you don’t have to be like this. You can change your life by doing this and this and this. So I miss that part about him. Because, like Warren said, it’s almost like that wants to embed in you to be that person.

Now, I always say he wasn’t perfect. But to me, he was my child. Together Warren and myself, we see that he was taken unnecessarily. So that’s the part of Jalen that we loved and we cared about so deeply.

Maximillian Alvarez: I can picture it now, especially. My older brothers did that for me as well. We were basketball players. You might not know it because I’m a short, squat, Mexican guy. But I was this height in junior high, so I was like a center, bodying people up. But before that, my brothers were doing that to me. So they taught me everything I know about playing basketball, and just about being a person. And I think that’s a really, really special bond that you share with your family that other people don’t really ever get to see. And it sounds like you’re saying that this was just a part of who Jalen was. I have to imagine you guys had something to do with that.

Warren Randle: One thing I can say, to reiterate what Tiffany said, he made people better. Even through his death, he’s making me a better person. As far as the things I advocate for, the things that I actually cherish now and don’t take for granted, my son has made me a better person even in his death. So, he’s made my life more purposeful and taken on better, bigger endeavors right now, and so he’s still working.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and you both said something that caught my ear, that he wasn’t perfect. Who is?

Warren Randle: No one is.

Maximillian Alvarez: Right? No one is. I just wanted to pause on that for a second, because we’re also here, we were all brought together thanks to the folks at the University of Houston. We were brought for the 2023 George Floyd memorial lecture delivered by Robin D.G. Kelly. And we are about a 20-minute walk from Cuney Homes where George Floyd and his family grew up. And this is something that people were talking about in the wake of George’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police; that he wasn’t perfect. There’s always something that people may use to justify the unjustifiable death of Black children and Black adults at the hands of the police. And making mistakes isn’t a death sentence.

Warren Randle: No, no, not at all. Everyone’s a work in progress, and as far as I know, the last perfect man that walked the earth was Jesus. And so I would say the purpose of evolving as a man, everybody learns through their mistakes, this, that, and the other. But when you consider one mistake is worse than the next person’s mistake, that a mistake is a mistake, you should get time to learn from lessons.We’re not even saying anything about what happened in this situation. We’re talking about just growing up as a young man, people make mistakes. We’re not talking about anything but that. We just wish he could have become the man he was supposed to be. But at 29 years old, you’re still learning. You’re coming into manhood and also exiting the state of being a young man.

So now, also, I would like to say we forgot to mention, he was a wonderful father.

Tiffany Rachal: Yes, he was.

Warren Randle: And he spent time with his daughter every single weekend. They were going somewhere. They were going to the urban area, they were going to the beach, they were going to the park. He left a five-year-old daughter here. She was five when he died. And so, he was a wonderful, caring father. Every day he called her princess. It just made her feel special. He was a wonderful father, oh my God. A much better father than I was. He poured everything into his daughter. I forgot to mention that when we said we wanted to talk about him.

Maximillian Alvarez: Oh, I’m glad that you did.

Warren Randle: Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah. Tiffany, what did you think of seeing your son grow into a father?

Tiffany Rachal: I thought that, well, Jalen always loved kids. That was a part of our family. We love babies, we love kids, period. That’s just the way we are as a family. So before Jalen had Jayla, he was taking care of other people’s kids. He would go buy Pampers for this single mother. He would take the child, and I was like, Jalen, why are you bringing all these kids to my house? He’d say, because, mama, we going here, we going there. He would literally take these kids to the park. He would take them all over. He would do things with kids that did not even belong to him. But he would find a place and time to take these kids places. I’m not kidding you. Jalen loved kids.

So when he finally had his own, he nourished his child. He did everything that he possibly could before his death. And she is literally just like him. She thinks like him, she talks like him, and she says things that Jalen would say. Just yesterday she said something to me like, Nina, I’m at school I cannot kiss you. He did the same exact thing. And I’m like, what are you talking about? You kiss me all the time. So, yeah, like don’t embarrass me, stop at school.

But it’s like God made us in our own image and when I tell you, she is just like her father, and she has that caring spirit as well. And I remember when Jayla was little, I was telling him how to hold her. He’d say, mama, I don’t need you to tell me how to hold her. I’d say, but you’re holding her differently. Just hold her like this here. And he was like, mom, I’m just going to hold her in my arms to where nothing can ever happen to her and she will be protected by me at all times. And I’d say, wow. Okay, you got it. I don’t need to interrupt.

So that was amazing to me, and he loved his daughter so very much. He called her “Sunshine.” She’d say, I’m golden. And I’d say, you’re golden? What does that mean? I’m golden because my daddy said that I’m golden. And that touched my heart. So she has to go with no father at this point, and it’s pretty much Warren and my son raising her making sure she has a father figure in her life. And that I can forever appreciate; them standing in the gap for Jalen.

Maximillian Alvarez: Those gaps that you said, those absences, those losses are so unbearably common in this country. And we all recognize the problem. So many of us join the marches, join the calls, and it just keeps happening. And it’s for that reason that some of us live in a different world where we have to do what we can to educate our kids about what could happen if they are confronted by the police. Did you guys have to have a talk with Jalen at any point about the police?

Warren Randle: Well, of course, growing up in a Black community or being a Black man, you do have these kinds of conversations with your child. Or how to act if you’ve been pulled over, or how to talk or things that you shouldn’t have to do. Or you may tell your son, don’t ride with more than this amount of people in the car. Don’t ride with hoodies on your head or things of that nature. Or be careful if you’re going through this part of town because it’s always other standards that you are held up to, or some type of scrutinizing or criteria that you have to be aware of at all times.

Which is actually bad in this country. Everyone is supposed to be held under the same rules and regulations, which they’re totally not. It’s esoteric martial law, as we know, that’s being imposed. And deep in our minds, in our community, we know you can’t do this. But they say, oh you’re free. Free speech. Nah, that’s not the actual truth.

And so, yes, we did have those conversations about that, but not to the point where we wanted to bring fear to him. And then, he was brought up in schools that were diversified, so he knew how to associate, because the problem is not with the children; the problem is with the adults. Racism and things of this nature are taught. So, the kids love each other, and it comes to be a problem once they’re taught this way of thinking.

We didn’t want to confuse or cloud his way of thinking where he would become the same as… We wouldn’t be the same as the [type of] people who brought racism. We wanted to let our child know, these are the factors of what’s going on, but love everyone. We let him be aware. But we didn’t want him to be discriminatory towards other people as they would instill into their children. That would be hypocritical. So yes, we did have a minute conversation about that.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know that you’ve been asked to do this before, and we can talk about as much as you’re comfortable doing. And in the description for this interview, we’ll link to some of the local coverage.

Warren Randle: A lot of it’s been blatantly x-ed out.

Maximillian Alvarez: That’s why I’m hesitant, I think, to share much of it, because a lot of it feels like it’s just written from the police point of view.

Warren Randle: I think there are some clear links. Well, one thing about what happened in the event, you can’t erase the facts. You can’t erase the truth. And no matter what narrative that these people try to create, you still shot an unarmed man. I don’t care what happened, you can’t get around that fact. Which, it’s not a great thing, but a good thing that happened is it happened in daylight. It was in the middle of the day. So you couldn’t say, I felt threatened in daylight. You can’t say all of us felt threatened, because most of the time when an individual is shot, more than one cop shoots the person.

Jalen was only shot by one individual, who made a couple of statements on his mic. His mic was hot and he wasn’t aware of that. He said some very incriminating things, and those things you really can’t get around. And so, he would have to answer what made him say these things, why he said these things, and why was anything said in the first place? Talking about ending someone’s life, shit, in three seconds, like you knew you were going to do it.

But the events that happened, they can’t be erased. There is still enough footage. Why did you even have to handcuff a man that’s been shot in the back of his neck and drag him? These are events and things that, no matter what they try to erase, you’d have to erase everything that happened in total. And there’s no way to do that because this is the event that happened.

Maximillian Alvarez: Right. And to make sure that anyone watching who maybe hasn’t heard about this story until now, we’re talking about the timeline of events leading up to Officer Shane Privette shooting your son within three seconds of getting out of his car.

Warren Randle: Yes.

Maximillian Alvarez: So could we walk viewers and listeners through the timeline here, so that they know those facts of the story?

Warren Randle: Of the shooting?

Maximillian Alvarez: Yes.

Warren Randle: Well, before Jalen had time to comply with any commands, as he was exiting the car, before he even had time to say, put your hands up, he already shot Jalen. And shit, the time limit is three seconds. And so, there’s no way. It’s not like we have a whole lot to talk about, about three seconds. These are the things that happened in three seconds. And we can’t say he ran, we can’t say he did anything. All we can say is he exited his car and he was shot. That’s basically as simple and as truthful as what happened.

But beforehand, in the ongoing pursuit of Jalen to be apprehended on some warrants, they actually brought a militia type police team out to apprehend Jalen. Jalen had never been convicted of any violent crimes or anything like that, so it was just a simple apprehension on warrants. So there was no need for that type of tactical team to even be out there to apprehend him.

But on the way to apprehend Jalen, Shane Privette didn’t know his mic was hot, and he actually was heard saying he would never leave this neighborhood alive. So that in itself is stating, these are my premeditated motives. So as they do a pit maneuver and hit the car, Jalen gets out of the car. And before Shane Privette can say, raise your hands up, he fired the fatal shot that killed my son.

And so, there wasn’t much Jalen could do. There’s nothing you could do within three seconds. You can’t raise your hands up. It was too late. I think out of maybe nine or ten police officers, he’s the only one who shot. He already said this premeditated statement. And then after he shoots, he says, oh, shit. And so, it’s like you were trying to cover what you did. You already knew what you were going to do.

And this same officer’s already beat up another Black guy, broke his orbital bone. He was acquitted through a grand jury twice. The first one he was convicted. They brought it back again, they kicked it out. His case is still in the civil court system right now. So in saying that, the Houston Police Department put these kinds of people back on there when you knew the history of this individual or what he’s capable of. So, there’s not much we can say about what happened in three seconds, because three seconds is so small of a window. Just, this is what happened and led up to that situation.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, thank you for breaking that down for our viewers and listeners, because you’re right. Again, folks can watch the video, they can listen to that audio, they can see how quickly it happens that Officer Privette gets out of the car, shouts, shoots. Within the blink of an eye, your son is shot. And I know there’s been a back and forth with the police department trying to refute what your independent autopsy determined: that your son was shot in the back of the neck versus the front of the neck. And of course, your family’s demands and the community’s demands for answers and accountability have been met with a long, drawn out, shitty process – Pardon my French.

Warren Randle: Sure.

Maximillian Alvarez: I was wondering if you could talk to us a bit about that, about afterwards, what it’s been like for you all? What has the community response been? And also what is the state of the struggle for justice is to get accountability from the Houston police?

Warren Randle: You want me to take this?

Tiffany Rachal: Yeah, you can start and I’ll reiterate.

Warren Randle: Really, we haven’t got any response from the Houston Police Department. It seems like the police chief, Chief Finn, has his hands tied by the police union, which really is dictating that the wheels towards justice are not being turned. And of course, now we are also dealing with the legal system. The advocate on our side now is supposed to be the district attorney, which is normally the one who prosecutes people other than the police. And so, we have to pray and hope that these people do what’s right. It’s been a fight for them to do that, to actually aggressively attack the situation.

Because if me and Tiffany and her husband Tony hadn’t really done this grassroot thing ourselves, we wouldn’t have gotten any help from any politicians or anybody like that. Because guess what? If it’s not media worthy, you’re not going to get any help. So we are not getting that motivation, that drive and pull. But also, the two times that we were getting a driving motivation, some mass shootings happened in America which involved kids. Which, we understand they overshadowed what happened with Jalen. But by the same token, this is the fourth largest city in America, and these types of things shouldn’t go on here. They shouldn’t go on anywhere.

And not even the NAACP local chapter has been involved with anything. But on the national or worldwide news, you have every politician: Sheila Jackson Lee, you got Al Green, all the people that are senators in the area. They are advocating for these other countries or other people, where they don’t really have to put their hands on it because they don’t want to offend any type of their constituents. So they stand for upstanding office. And myself, I think people should stand up for what’s right and wrong and not for, hey, I’m in office, I’m a politician. Because the politicians are supposed to represent the needs of the people instead of their own personal needs. And so, these people just want to stay in office and stay their tenure there and be a media horse.

And so, this is what’s going on, and so we’ve been doing everything ourselves with help from advocates like Selena Charles, Dr. David McNally, people who don’t care about money or power, they care about right and wrong. And so, meeting you guys and having us do this interview is all because of these people, not because of politicians. We hadn’t heard from the mayor. He’s never acknowledged, I’m sorry for what happened to your kid, but we’re going to find out what’s right and wrong. You didn’t even have to say which side you’re on. But it’s his last tour in office, so I guess he wants to go out like this.

We just went to a city council meeting maybe two or three weeks ago, and everybody’s saying yeah, we’re going to help y’all, leave your numbers. Listen, these people don’t really care. And we were just talking to Dr. Kell a moment ago outside and I brought up, a student asked a question: why is it that we’re not getting the help or the energy needed to move? Not just talking about our case, he was talking about racial inequalities and injustice period. It’s because no one has a purpose anymore. See, my purpose every day is not for money. It’s about leaving a good legacy for my child and to help others. And that’s a purpose, and that’s my drive and dedication and motivation to do what’s right and wrong. These other people, politicians, have no purpose. And most people, to be honest, have no purpose because it hasn’t happened to them yet. And most people are not open-minded enough to say, if it can happen to you, it can happen to me also.

And so, anyway, I just feel like I’m talking a whole lot. I’m sorry.

Tiffany Rachal: You’re fine. You’re doing good.

Maximillian Alvarez: I appreciate it. I really appreciate it, I do.

Warren Randle: Yeah, so this is where we’re at.

Maximillian Alvarez: And Tiffany, I was wondering if you had anything you wanted to add, in terms of where you may have gotten support from the community, or anything you wanted to add to that?

Tiffany Rachal: When we had Jalen’s funeral, Jalen had about over 600 people at his funeral.

Warren Randle: Yes.

Tiffany Rachal: It is very discouraging that I can sit and say, where are these 600 people that came to his funeral? We didn’t have City Council, we didn’t have Al Sharpton, we didn’t have all the big dogs come in and say anything at Jaylen’s funeral. Sheila Jackson Lee didn’t even come in and say anything at Jaylen’s funeral. And all the pastors in Houston, Texas. I have sung at so many churches, and I do praise and worship, and I can tell you three by name, as of today, have called me and said, Tiffany, we are praying for you and your family.

And that right there is very upsetting to me. My father is a pastor, by the way, and I have brothers [who are] pastors, uncles and grandfathers [who are] pastors. And one thing I can say, my father always used to tell us, the church is the hospital, and whenever you have issues healing, anything that’s going on in your life that you need to share or you need to get to God, this is the place where you come. And to me, the church has changed. It’s changed as far as running a business. And that’s how I feel like everything is.

Maximillian Alvarez: Right.

Tiffany Rachal: Everything is about business and what we can do to make a dime. And to me, they are missing what’s going on right here. They’re missing the point that this didn’t just happen to Jalen. You know Tyre Nichols, you know about the swift movement with the Black officers that were indicted and charged and fired from the police department. They didn’t need a grand jury. So why are we going through this? If you see the film and you see what happened, why do we have to wait the time that we wait before anything ever happens?

So this is accountability that I feel like our community leaders should be involved in. They should be involved in the marching. They should be calling Warren and myself asking, what can we do? What can we do to assist you guys in making the reality that it is? We haven’t had that. We haven’t had accountability from councilmen, councilwomen, nobody. Really, we are doing this ourselves. We are trying to take every outlet to tell the story of Jalen Randle. And it has not been easy.

Maximillian Alvarez: I can’t imagine.

Tiffany Rachal: Because it’s like, every time we get it on TV, something happens. Just like this recent thing that happened, the little boy that went to the wrong house, and he got killed by a white guy. By all means, my heart goes out to the family, my condolences to the family, and we want to stand in solidarity with this family as well, as we do for every family that has been killed by the force of discrimination. We are here. But at the same time, it just seems like things keep drowning out the story and the story is not being told. A lot of people still don’t know about Jalen Randle. So we’ve got to go out of town, different cities, to get people to come here to help with the movement. And that right there, to me, is an issue. It’s an issue.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, this hits very close to home as someone in the media. Because I feel like, as a news network that does our best with the team that we have to try to cover as many stories like your son’s as we can, we deal with the same issue of trying to get people to care. Not just for a moment when the story breaks, but to commit and to keep committing until we see the story through and get some sort of justice.

So, normally I interview workers about unionizing on the job, or maybe they were unjustly fired and they’re trying to get their job back, or something like that. And it’s like I’m trying to get people to care about this story, but then Starbucks closes another store that was trying to unionize, or Amazon fires another Chris Smalls-type organizer. And it’s like you’re being buried in sand and trying to climb your way out and trying to get people to still care, but the news cycle just never stops, and this country just never stops killing people and breaking the law and hurting poor and working people, that, I don’t know. It does feel like a deluge that you can never really get on top of.

But we’re going to do everything that we can to help get your story out, get your son’s story out. And I want to finish by asking what people can do to stand in solidarity with y’all. But I would be remiss if we didn’t really underline this for people watching and listening, because we cover this every week on a show called the Police Accountability Report. And my colleagues Stephen Janis and Taya Graham show, week in and week out, how police use things like traffic stops to take away all of our rights. Because a traffic stop is a death sentence for way too many people in this damn country.

Warren Randle: Yes.

Maximillian Alvarez: Or even like running from a cop. So I know people will say, they’re just like, oh, well, if they ran, they got what they deserve. It’s like no, running from a cop is not a death sentence. We do not have capital punishment for that. Yeah, it makes the police’s job a little bit harder. Tough shit. That does not mean that a person’s life should be taken away that quickly. And I don’t know why that’s such a hard thing for people to wrap their heads around. You don’t have to be a perfect person to not deserve to be killed by the police for a minor infraction or a traffic stop. You do not deserve to be killed for running away, or not even running away. Like in the case of your son, three seconds. There was nothing he could do in that time.

Warren Randle: Or, even ask yourself, why is it those individuals that are always shot are people of color? You could have mass murderers that are white and they walk right in and shoot 20, 18 people, they’re handcuffed and apprehended and walked out. And so, we can continuously say this, but the problem is the disproportionate number of Blacks compared to whites. If white people get pulled over, they’re not shot. White people could spit in the police’s face, they can do all kinds of things. And it’s a shame that you have to even have this type of conversation, because it’s not even a color of Black and white. It’s right and wrong only, and right and wrong is the only thing that really matters in life, because if it was reversed, it wouldn’t be right to do it to a white person, a Spanish person, anybody. But the conversation needs to be held: Why is it always the Black person? And so, that’s the big question at hand.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and I know we’re not going to fully answer that question here, but I really, really hope everyone watching and listening sits with that question and listens to your story.

Tiffany Rachal: And can I say one more thing?

Maximillian Alvarez: Please.

Tiffany Rachal: I wanted to bring this up because it has been tugging on me. I try to stay away from social media. I try to stay away from what the people have to say about certain things, because you’re always going to find somebody saying something negative. But it was one thing that I felt like I had to speak on, and that thing was what we talked about at the beginning where we tried to set the narrative on certain situations. And a person stated that if he wouldn’t have ran, and if he would have complied, if he wouldn’t have had warrants.

So I asked this person, let’s think about this situation – And I’m not going to be disrespectful, because I don’t know who you are – But let’s think about this. So I put it in an outline and I asked the first question: so if you had a warrant for a ticket that you did not pay and you did not go to court, and then the officer decided to stop you and use excessive force, did you deserve it? If you would have ran and the officer would have come behind you and used the stun gun, would you have deserved that? If the officer would have shot you because of a traffic ticket that you didn’t get a chance to go to court for, regardless of if it is you forgot or you just didn’t go, whatever the situation, did you deserve to get shot?

We have to find solutions here. And to me, going into a community of Black people, it’s mixed. It’s pretty much mixed. And going into that community and using that type of excessive force is crazy to me. It’s unnecessary. Did you have a vision of how you were going to approach this situation? Did you have a plan of how you were going to approach this situation?

I was always told, if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And to me, you were a part of a problem that you already had in your mind that you were getting ready to go and make this thing happen. So when he made the statement that Jalen will not leave this neighborhood and he switched it up. He said, live, and then he said leave. So he switched it up. So we don’t know what he thought, but to me that’s premeditated.

So I just wanted to say that no matter what we think or how we think about an issue, stop trying to get on social media to make people feel uncomfortable and try to justify what this officer did to my son. Make it right. Because it’s not right. It’s not right. It was wrong from the word go, because they didn’t have a plan. They had a motive, but they didn’t have a plan.

Maximillian Alvarez: I think that’s very powerfully put. Man, I really hope people take that message to heart, and I’m sorry that you’ve had to see and deal with crap like that when you’re dealing with the worst tragedy that parents could deal with.

And to round things out, I’m so grateful to both of you for sitting down and sharing this with us and our audience. I wanted to ask what folks can do to support y’all and your family, what they can do to stand in solidarity with you and to join the fight to get justice for your son?

Warren Randle: Well, for me, I think vote. Get these politicians out of office. They’re not doing anything to help the constituents. Guys, you have to be engaged and you have to stand for something. Not even talking about the politicians. I’m talking about people as a whole. Things are changing very rapidly in our country, and if we are not looking at what’s going on, it may soon happen to you. So becoming unified in a cause of some sort. It doesn’t even have to be for my son, but just a cause of standing behind people wanting justice and tired of the injustices that have been happening to people, period. Whether it be gay rights, whether it be Black, Hispanic rights, whatever, stand for something. Just don’t walk around like everything is perfect in life, because the world is steadily evolving and changing to a worse place.

And it won’t change unless we change. We hold the power to change the world. We can’t let people dictate how we live in the world. We dictate how we live and it’s by our actions. And we have to stand together in solidarity, because guess what? The only thing that’s true in the world is love. And once you change, you either could love or you could hate. There’s no in between. And so, if you don’t choose to love each other, guess what? The hatred will kill us.

Tiffany Rachal: And I feel as though we need our own people to commit. Just because it did not happen to you does not mean that it will never happen to you. So don’t wait to deal with that situation at hand. Do something now. Get up, do something now. Like he said, voting. Voting is very necessary. I hear often that it doesn’t matter if we vote, it doesn’t count. Not true. Get out and vote and stop these people from getting into office that just don’t do nothing at all. And don’t reelect them. Get them out of the office. Why continue to recycle people that don’t even look at the matter as a problem? So I think that voting is one of the things, and two, we need to start collectively coming together and making things move.

We have a protest on Saturday, this weekend, April 22, and we are asking everybody to get involved with the movement, because the more you have out there, the more they’re going to see, oh, they’re really serious. We have had beautiful protests in the past. But this particular protest, it has to be big. It has to be in numbers, because of the simple fact we are coming up on a year of Jaylen’s death date and still yet today, we don’t have accountability. And that right there is very disheartening to us.

So we are asking everybody to join the movement. Join the movement and come in. There is nothing that we can do about Jalen. Jalen is not here anymore, but we have other kids. Warren has a baby son. I have two sons and they have kids. So we are fighting for the future of our children, and we ask everybody to join in.