Amber Guyger – Racism vs. Justice

There could be cash waiting for you at findmassmoney .gov. You might have checked before, but they're always updating names.

So check again. The Mass State Treasury has over $3 billion in unclaimed property.

Maybe it's a long lost bank account, forgotten shares of a stock, or an old paycheck you somehow forgot to pick up.

Some of it might be yours. There's a lot of money that could be yours, but you'll never know until you go.

So go to findmassmoney .gov. That's findmassmoney .gov.

Manchester Boston Regional Airport has always made travel easier than other airports. And now we have even more low fares.

So all that's left is to pack your bags. Avoid the traffic and long lines at other airports.

Whether it's just Girls Weekend, the Kids First theme park, that long -awaited trip, or just quiet time on the beach.

Book your trip today at flymanchester .com. That's flymanchester .com.

Okay, today we are going to be discussing a topic that has been in the news.

Some surprising feedback from folks that we have been seeing. We are going to talk about this police officer from Dallas who shot a person in his own apartment.

She thought she was in her apartment. And the really interesting thing is that the brother of this person offers forgiveness and people are upset with him.

That's right. There are people who are upset with him because he's not being woke enough.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rapoport. Where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is the ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Okay, if you have not heard about this, this is a case, and there's been a number of people, and I'm going to give you some links to some podcasts for you to listen to.

But a lot of people have been dealing with this issue. And I may or may not pronounce people's names right.

But I have a brother on that's going to correct me if I get it wrong. So we're going to trust him a lot better than me because, well, he's probably wrong less than me.

But Just Thinking podcasts, those guys did a great job going through this issue with this

Dallas police officer, Amber Geyer. She walks in.

She's a 31 -year -old female, white, Dallas police officer at the time. She walks into, she's on the wrong floor of the apartment building.

She walks in there, and she ends up shooting 26 -year -old

Botham Jean. And I hope

I'm not mispronouncing that name. And what you end up seeing there is as she goes and does this, she said she thought that someone broke into her apartment.

She's afraid for her life. She is in uniform. She kills him.

She's off the police force. She's sentenced to 10 years in prison. And then

I want to play a clip of what happened in the courtroom, and I'm going to tell you up front. I was speaking with Virgil of Just Thinking podcast, and I told him

I have a very different take than anybody else I've heard on this.

And when I told him my take on it, he was like, wow, brother, I didn't even think about it from that perspective.

And so we're going to cover that. We're going to cover it with none other than the doctor himself.

The doctor is in the house prescribing truth. We're going to call him from now on Doctor Jamal Bandy from Prescribed Truth podcast because that's what the doctor prescribes.

It's a podcast you got to listen to. And I'm going to link his episode on this in as well because I think he did one of, sorry, you're going to have to listen to me brag about you for a moment, but I think you did one of the most balanced views of this whole issue.

I think that you presented both sides very well. I'm sure you're going to get heat from both sides of the aisle on it because that's the way social media is.

It was interesting, we'll get to this, but I tagged you. I don't know if you saw it. Someone had put a post out and I basically dropped your podcast and I said to this person, she should really listen to your episode because you did one of the most balanced views of this.

However, she removed my comment. I'll share my comment here. So let's get into this.

I want to play a clip of what happened at this court hearing.

It's three minutes long. I want to play this. This is Botham Jean's brother when he is standing in front of Amber at the trial.

Unless you've had your head in the ground, you've already seen this video, you've already heard this, but I do want to discuss this with Jamal and go through this and then give a little bit of a different perspective.

So let me play the clip itself. If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself.

I forgive you. And I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you.

And I don't think anyone could say it. Again, I'm speaking for myself, not even bad for my family.

But I love you just like anyone else. And I'm not going to say

I hope you rot and die just like my brother did, but I personally want the best for you.

And I wasn't going to ever say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail.

I want the best for you because I know that's exactly what both of them would want you to do.

And the best would be give your life to Christ. Again, I love you as a person.

And I don't wish anything bad on you. I don't know if this is possible, but can

I give her a hug, please? Please?

Yes. Okay, and then he goes and gives her the hug. Now, you know, it's interesting.

The actual clip, it was hard for me to find a clip that had the original because he shared the gospel with her.

Now, all the media clipped that out when they did it on YouTube. Right. But, you know, here is a

Christian man, at least professing to be. I don't know him. He claims his brother

Botham, I guess is how he pronounced it. So is, you know, his family all professing believers from what

I understand. And Jamal, I know you've kept up on this a bit more than me. I knew of the incident.

But what got me here, okay, you have a Christian man offering forgiveness.

And I thought this is great. I mean. I mean, right.

I mean, why wouldn't we? Yeah. Christians should be like applauding this man.

And I think back to that shooting that happened.

A guy, a white guy, walked into an African -American church, sat there in a midweek service for 45 minutes, and pulls out a gun and starts shooting people.

And the media made a big deal. I mean, they were having a special, before the hearing or anything, they were going to have everyone from the church come forward.

And it was a big media thing. I mean, anytime the media is going to not play commercials, they think this is important, right?

They're going to do a full hour or two, however long it was, to have every person come up and share with this killer what they think.

And person after person after person walked up and said,

Christ forgave me, I forgive you. And the media just, I mean, after that, it was just a media blackout.

No one wanted to discuss that. It's almost the same thing here, almost.

Because it hasn't really been a blackout. We haven't seen where it went silent.

We had this go viral. We saw the forgiveness being offered. And then we see people going after this gentleman.

And basically saying, almost as if he saw one comment, this man needs to turn in his black card.

Oh, man. Wow. And the issue that I'm seeing is that,

I think it was interesting the way Just Thinking Podcast titled their episode, when forgiveness isn't woke enough.

That's really what it comes down to. People feel like somehow this has to be a black on white issue, or white on black issue, technically.

And somehow this guy was wrong for offering forgiveness to someone.

It's like stuff like that you expect from the secular world. But it's from professing

Christians that we're getting this from as well. And that's what's boggling my mind. It's like, that's what

Jesus said himself. We should be able to forgive others, not trespass just as our father has forgiven us.

And that's what Brent Jean said on the stand. He said, I've been forgiven. I've been forgiven of sin.

And if you're truly sorry, I forgive you. Yeah, he was looking to hear her say that she was remorseful, repentant.

And he wanted to offer forgiveness to her. And getting up and giving a hug.

And when you've watched the video, you see that there's a police officer that walks over with her, like not sure what's going to happen there.

Just be safe. Okay, I understand. But the reaction I have seen against this has been mind boggling to me.

And there is a professing Christian who put out a post and basically made this an issue of justice not being served.

And basically this post that they put out said that it's intellectually dishonest for people to say black people hate

Botham's family hate that Botham's family forgave

Amber. That's not what's being lamented. The injustice is the issue.

The two cannot exist together. The two can exist together, intention albeit, but they can.

I don't think people are against them forgiving as Christians.

I know I'm not. I'm against their forgiveness being leveraged to validate injustice around her sentence.

And this person went on to say that she received a slap on the wrist.

Now, I mean, my comment was deleted. But I've seen this on a couple people and it's interesting.

I've been saying almost the same thing on all of them. And people are removing my comments because I had one person who put up a post and had a picture of Amber and this black woman.

And it just said, you know, is this just? And then Amber sentenced 10 years for killing an unarmed man in his own apartment.

And then the black woman who didn't say who it was, 20 years for firing warning shots.

And the question was, is this just? Now, one issue that I ended up seeing, and I posted it with both of these comments, was you cannot compare these two as if they're identical because there's so many variables in these cases.

Now, if people are going to say, is this just? And I'm going to get so much hate email for this,

Jamal, what I'm about to say. I'm sure this is why my comments keep getting deleted. If you want to do a comparison as if you're just going to grab two examples and put them together and say, this is a slap on the wrist.

Well, in her case, she got 10 years in prison. And when she gets out, if she gets out, because remember, police officers don't always survive in prison.

There's a bunch of criminals there that don't like police officers. So they don't always get treated very well.

So if she survives 10 years in prison, she's got no career either. That's right.

She can't go work as a security guard. She starts all over.

And this is supposedly a slap on the wrist. Well, let's compare this to a different case. Now, Jamal, I know you're a little bit too young to remember this, but there was this football player, very well known,

O .J. Simpson. He literally got away with murder, not once, twice. He got away with double murder.

And it was because the reason the jury found him innocent was not because they thought he was innocent.

It was because they were writing wrongs. It was because of the color of his skin.

They said that because police do arrest blacks or treat blacks unfairly, they were letting him off.

So you want to do a comparison, why not compare there? Compare against O .J. Simpson. Is that going to be fair?

I mean, he literally got away with double murder. Oh, yeah, you get some hate mail behind that one.

Because you're not supposed to point this out. But you know what? It's unfair.

It would be unjust to compare O .J. Simpson's trial with all that went on with that and what happened with Amber Geyer.

There's a lot of different variables. And it's the same as going to be with any case that you compare against. Yeah, I've seen one.

I mean, it's mean. Talking about her sentencing was, you know, Amber Geyer gets 10 years for shooting a black man in his own apartment.

And then there's a guy, a man who served 36 years in prison for stealing $50 from a store.

And it's like, you know, I was talking to a couple of my friends about this. It's like when you look into it, like you said, you can't compare the two.

There's a back story and there's context to both situations. You know, when you look at the context of the case where the man who stole $50 ended up getting served in 36 years, the reality was, actually, he was supposed to spend life in prison.

But it wasn't his first offense. It was his fourth offense. And back then, that was in 1980s.

Back then, the law was, because it was his fourth offense, the judge had no choice but to sentence him to life.

No other choice because of the law. But the law had changed in 2000s, but nobody retried his case.

And this white judge, mind you, this is a black man who spent 36 years behind prison.

But it was a white judge who saw this case and decided to take it upon himself to go out of his way to get him out of prison because he said, you know, he shouldn't be in jail for this long for stealing $50.

And you had a really interesting point on Prescribed Truth podcast that you did on this subject because you pointed out that, you know, in this case,

Amber was convicted not by the judge, but she was sentenced by her peers.

The jury of her peers. And it was an interesting thing about that too, Andrew. Now, they claim this is racial injustice, right?

But you have a black judge and a jury made up of five black people, five

Hispanic people, and two white people. Well, here becomes an interesting thing, right?

So you have all that, okay, because there it's how could this be, as you're pointing out, how can this be racist if it's mostly

African -Americans that sentenced her? But this judge also got in trouble, didn't she?

Oh, the judge got heat. What did she do that got her in so much trouble?

She did the most wicked thing that anybody on the face of the earth could ever do as a judge.

She not only gave Amber Giger a Bible, not only did she pray for her, not only did she read a scripture to her, but she hugged her.

Yeah, and gave the gospel to her. Yeah. So this is what

I think is really upsetting everybody, is that they hate the fact that Christians will forgive even what they want to put as racism.

I don't think, and I didn't listen to the trial, but I don't see from what

I heard that she did what she did because Botham was black. All right, yeah,

I don't see that. I mean, they brought out some text messages of hers. You know, it's funny when people, just like they do the same thing across the boards, when you do something wrong, they go look at your history.

So they put up some text messages of hers between her and Officer Rivera, and they were pretty close.

I guess they supposedly had an affair and everything else, but they put up some texts of hers that seemed as if she was making racist comments.

And a couple of them were very problematic. I'll be real about it. I think I mentioned on my podcast, the text messages on the surface would seem problematic.

There was one text message where she was at a MLK celebration, and I guess it was there as being on guard duty.

And the text message was from one person, man, when will this be over? And then her reply was, well,

MLK dies. Oh, wait, he is. You know, something like that. And so supposedly that was her mocking

MLK's assassination, which makes her racist. And then another one where a friend of hers was warning her about a dog in someone's yard, and the friend warned her and said, the dog is racist.

And she said, and this one to me is the most problematic one. She's like, I'm not worried about that.

I am too. So saying that she's racist too. Now, it could have been sarcastic. It could have been real.

But either way, even if she, and I mentioned this on my podcast, even if she is racist, even if she was racist during that time, there's no evidence to show that's conclusive to say she entered his apartment solely because he was a black man.

Just like you said. Yeah. And the thing is, is that here you have a judge that is offering a

Bible and they, I mean, she's being sued. I don't know if you heard that the judge is being sued by the freedom from religion group because she is a judge gave this woman her personal

Bible and she's not allowed to, to mix religion there. So this is, this is where we've gotten to.

This is in my mind, just insanity. And there's, I want to, I'm going to end up dealing with some issues.

I think that have a very different perspective when dealing with this with from Amber's side that I want to get to.

But before we do, I want to, after this commercial, I want you and I to discuss some of the issues that you brought up on your, your podcast, the issues of the reaction people are having to to what, you know,

Botham's brother did by offering forgiveness. So let's, let's do that right after this commercial break.

Ephesians chapter four, verse 25, therefore laying aside falsehood, speak truth.

Each one of you with his neighbor for we are members of one another for his namesake.

What's up everybody. I'm Jamal Bandy, the host of the prescribed truth podcast, where I seek to distribute the truth that the doctor prescribes to the church and the world today.

The Lord graciously brought me out of a cold in 2010, saved me in 2013 and 2017 prescribed truth began.

My mission has been to spread the truth of God's word while refuting dangerous lies, affecting most churches and the culture at large from a biblical and reform perspective.

Join me on Sundays at 6 p .m. Eastern time for the live recording of the podcast on YouTube and download the audio version, wherever podcasts can be found, including the

Christian podcast community. If you would like to know more about prescribed truth, please visit my website at prescribed truth .com.

And remember this world is full of errors, but the only thing that the doctor prescribes is truth blessings.

Well, you knew we had to promote one of our fellow Christian podcast community podcasts. They're the doctors in the house here prescribing truth.

And let's get to some of that truth because there has been a reaction against this gentleman for what he had the nerve to do.

And I want to, I want to go into this because this is where I say what we have here is the way many are viewing this as an issue of injustice.

So this is like I mentioned from the post of a friend of mine, this is something about forgiveness versus injustice.

And they think that there's an injustice that occurred. And I'm going to say, if I haven't gotten myself enough trouble already,

I'm going to get myself in more trouble right now. Get those, get those hate mails ready.

Info at striving for eternity .org. There you go. Shoot me all your hate mail. But the reality is

I believe that there are some professing Christians that make an idol of their racism.

And I'm not talking white racism. There are people who are making an idol and have set up an idol of their tribalism of their color of their amount of melanin in their skin.

And they see that before they see Christ, they read everything that comes in that they observe in life is coming through a grid of their racism.

And they're seeing everything through that lens. Instead of seeing it through the lens of the scripture, through the lens of God's word, through this, the

Bible. And this is where we have a major, major issue because I think they've set up an idol.

They have made a false idol, a God of their, call it culture, call it tribe, whatever you want to call it.

Okay. You were on a podcast, Jamal with Phil and those guys over it.

Stop and think about it. I had to stop and think about it. When you have a podcast like that, it's kind of like, you know, what are we even doing here?

You got to ask that question when you're. So you were with Phil and Steven, those guys, you did an excellent job with that.

And you were dealing with some of these issues and these issues that I think we have to deal with is there is a case where some people are making this upbringing or whatever, more important almost than anything.

And you brought up the issue in talking about reparations and all that. You brought up the issue. I always bring up, you know, why don't we talk about reparations for those that supported or did nothing to stop

Hitler killing all those Jewish people? My, my, I should get, I mean, Jamal, you should be paying my education and things so that, you know, as reparations, because you only going to get 1 % of that coming from me.

I mean, you should be asking my forgiveness for, for, for not stepping up, even though it was long after you were born or long before you were born.

Right. I mean, no one makes that argument because it's ridiculous.

Yeah. And you brought that up when you were with the stop and think about it guys. And I think that's, that is puts it in a perspective.

Now let's deal with the, you know, the issues that you've been seeing. I've been seeing a lot of us have been seeing the reaction against him for having the nerve to give her a hug.

Why was that so wrong in so many people's eyes? Well, it's a couple of things

I'm hearing. And one, I do, I do got to say real quick, when you take a concept, a godly concept like forgiveness and put black forgiveness in front of it, like black forgiveness, like that's, that's, that's, that's beyond the line.

Like you have, like that's, that's, you are, you are definitely making an idol of your skin color, of your racism, of your issue.

You know, like forgiveness is forgiveness. It's not black forgiveness. It's not white forgiveness. It's not

Asian forgiveness. It's forgiveness, you know? And so what I'm saying, what

I've heard concerning brand jeans, um, wanting to forgive her and the judge, I think her name was

Tammy Kemp, wanting to also share the gospel, her and feel the need to hug her. And all of this is centered around the hugs that was given.

In fact, they felt like they had to hug her. I think it was like a video clip of the, of the officer, um, that was inside the courtroom, stroking

Amber's hair, you know, or like, uh, pulling the hair to the back, whatever, just straighten her hair or whatever.

And people call that slavery conditioning, slave conditioning that's been, that's been passed down from generations.

So, so the, the, the hug that Brent Jean gave to Amber, the hug that Tammy Kemp gave and the officer being shown some, uh, showing an act of kindness is all slave conditioning.

Okay. Explain that for folks who, cause you, you explained this on, on, uh, stop and think about it.

And I was, that was the first I had heard that was like, what? I mean, it just,

I, I was like, you gotta be kidding me because in my mind, like to be conditioned, you would have had to grow up actually in slavery or be trained, you know, like, you know, having your parents condition you from theirs.

But we've been so far removed from that. Where in the world is this coming from? Exactly.

And you, but you're exactly right. And that's what they're trying to say. They're trying to say that these people have been subconsciously trained and conditioned to pander to white people, like to be in a position of automatically wanting to forgive white people when they do wrong and the brush it off to the side.

And I'm like, that is so insulting. I like Brent, Brent and bottoms jeans, mother and father should be insulted by a statement like that to assume that they, that they raised their children to not be able to stand up for, to set up on their own two feet and having to just pander to people just because of the skin color.

And that's insulting for the judge as well. And for the officer, the woman officer is like, that's insulting.

It's like, they could not just be showing an act of kindness. They could not just be being compassionate or in the stance of Tammy camp and Brent Jean, could they not have just been showing godly compassion, showing mercy, kindness.

Isn't that wonderful to the spirit, kindness, gentleness, like, like what's the issue here as, as professing

Christians, that's exactly how we'd expect them to behave. Correct. Right. I mean, you know, it's like we're forgetting that they profess to be forgiven people by Christ for their sin and therefore should be forgiving others.

And they're displaying exactly that. And there's even professing

Christians who are upset with them saying how somehow he's wrong. He's doing, he's doing a discredit to the

African -American race or the, you know, the two African -Americans. It blows me away.

But let's, but let's tell him it's like, okay. And my thing is Brent should not be the one that they should be targeting.

They should be finding those jurors and targeting them. Well, if it's going to, if they're going to be saying about the injustice of the sentencing.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, that's, we see that's where all the uproar comes from because he, if she was, let's, let's be, let's be frank about this.

If she was sentenced to life, I wonder if people will still be that upset about that. If she had got life in prison or the death penalty and he gave, he forgave her and then offered to give her a hug, said the things he said,

I believe he would get some pushback because of saying that he wished that she would get no jail time. And saying that, you know, he wants to hug her.

And that's, that's his brother's killer. You know what I'm saying? yeah, I believe you get some pushback, but it wouldn't be as tough.

The same thing with a judge, you know what I'm saying? But the fact that she got 10 years, that's, that is what people are most upset about.

That's what all the uproar is about. and let's be clear how much of an uproar is, is going on.

Okay. Uh, for folks who may not have heard this, there was a key witness in this trial, uh,

Joshua Brown. And he was found shot in the back. Today.

Wow. At the time of us reporting this or recording this. So you have, you have a key witness that, you know, is, it was defending from what

I gather, you know, a white woman and he's African American. And that's just not right.

So, you know, the question I think a lot of people are now asking is, was he killed because of his testimony in court?

So in other words, and if this is the case, we don't know yet until, until we find out who killed him.

But if they did kill him because of his testimony, it can, it be said that there are a bunch of people that don't want anybody speaking out against the tribalism.

Hmm. That would be a fair assumption. If that's the case. Yeah. That would be a fair assumption.

It is, it is so wild because it's like, now it could be just an act.

It could be, let's be honest. It could be someone driving down the street. They shot. They didn't know it was him.

It could be a lot of different things until the facts come in. But that's a strong coincidence though.

Like, that's the thing. It's a strong coincidence. And so it makes people wonder. And I think that as Christians, look,

I, I'm not going to expect unbelievers to, to act like they're believers to, to follow

God's word. God will hold them accountable for that. Not me. But, what bothers me the most is seeing this from professing believers, that instead of seeing this as, this is a great act of, of one man offering forgiveness to someone who, who wronged him, you know, his family.

They're seeing this as an injustice. No, but it was beautiful that does wanting to the display of forgiveness and then him even going the extra mile and wanting to show that by giving her a hug, that he had an interview on good morning,

America a couple of days after that. And, and Michael Strahan was talking to him about the situation and asking him, why did he feel the need to give her a hug?

Like, you know, why did he do that gesture? And he said that many people in murder cases like this, people say they forgive them the killer, but he wanted to go beyond and wanted to actually show her that he truly meant it.

He wouldn't do something different. So it was all of him. You know, there's several cases

I think of, um, where you've had, and I don't remember all the details and names, but there was one where a police officer set up white police officer set up an

African -American guy, uh, for a crime the officer actually did. And this guy went to jail for years and,

I finally came clean and the officer ended up going to jail and they actually became friends.

I know of a case where I remember a case where, uh, there was a African -American gentleman who shot and killed a white man.

And the father not only offered forgiveness, but visited the guy all the years he was in prison.

And when he got out, he came and stayed in this guy's house. And the guy actually adopted him as a son.

That's how close they had come. Now that kind of forgiveness is only going to come through Christ.

Amen to that. Wow. And as Christians, this is what we are to be.

We are to be about reconciliation. I mean, you know, the, the, the hatred that I am seeing in our culture, white on black hatred, black on white hatred.

I mean, it's just there. Let's be honest. There's plenty of white supremacists out there who have, we need to stop that racism as much as the black on white racism.

Okay. It, the way you solve racism is by ending all racism. You're never going to solve racism by allowing some racism to make up for a previous wrong.

True wrongs never make a right. The, the reaction to a reverse racism and attempt to correct racism of another generation will always lead to the rising of a group that feels they're being suppressed and they're going to rise up.

And that's why you're seeing all the white supremacists. This is not anything that anyone that studies history couldn't have predicted.

And it's going to continue. But for Christians, we have to go to Ephesians chapter two.

And what you see, we see this Jew Gentile distinction that was there in the first century.

I mean, Gentiles, you know, Jews had nothing to do with Gentiles. There was a hatred there.

And yet what, what we see Paul saying in verse 14, it says for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

You see, that is what Christ does. Christ breaks down that, that wall of hostility so that we can have reconciliation.

That's actually what he says. When Paul says in second Corinthians chapter five, he ends up saying that you and I as believers have a ministry of reconciliation that what, because Christ reconciled us to himself, that should so compel us.

So control us. It says in verse 14 for the love of Christ controls us or compels us because we have concluded this, that one died for all.

Therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

We live for Christ, not for the amount of melon in our skin. I don't live for my

Jewish people. You don't live for African Americans, even though both our groups, both of our,

I'm trying to think of the best word ethnicities. Yeah, we have suffered slavery.

Now, by the way, the Jews suffered it a lot more recent, but we've both gone through generations of, of slavery, of abuse of killing.

But the thing is, is as Christians, we should not be sitting here and going back to those things and saying,

Oh no, I got to keep that wall up. I got to, I have to have that wall of hostility.

No, Christ came to demolish that wall of hostility. And that is what, as Christians, we shouldn't be looking at this and saying,

Oh, we need to promote a certain side. No, the only thing we should be promoting is reconciliation with Christ.

What this guy did was amazing to, to get up in a courtroom and do that.

You can tell if you watch that video, you see how uncomfortable he is. I mean, he he's constantly playing with his collar.

He is uncomfortable. Yeah. He's shaking. He's, he's getting his, you know, his hands are filling with his hands and everything is in the way his speech is.

You could tell like he's trying to find the words and he's maybe nervous about the, he, he can tell he knows the pushback don't come from what he's saying.

he doesn't have notes either. No, he's doing this off the cuff. Yeah. Everything's genuine.

And, and he even said, I'm not speaking. He said, my, he said, I'm not saying this. He said, he said, I would have said this.

He said, I wanted to say this with my parents, not around my family, not around. And the people, because he knew he can know how uncomfortable that makes it makes it feel in the room.

Yeah. He's, he's, he's just been like, I just want to forgive you. And he knows his family may push back cause they, they, they may want to say, as he said,

I'm not going to say, I wish you were dead and rot. That's what, that's what people are expected to say. So I want to take a different tact with this.

Now, um, after this break, I want to cover this in a different way because I think there's an aspect of this whole case that I have not heard anybody address.

So I want to deal with that just after this ding dong Jehovah's witnesses ding dong

Mormons Christian. Are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will, if you get Andrew Rappaport's book, what do they believe?

When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at what do they believe .com. The good news is striving for eternity.

Would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

That's right. The art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

Jeremiah 29, 11 should not be their life. First to learn more, go to striving for eternity .org

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area.

Okay. So I want to deal with this from a different angle and I first need to back up and give some history here.

Jamal, before we go, I want to try to give a somewhat maybe of a defensive

Amber. Now I, whether she did this knowingly that she was in the wrong apartment, you know, she's given some argumentation that,

I mean, I had some questions. How do you enter? Like, okay, his door wasn't locked. How do you enter an apartment?

And like, you realize the doors open, you know, and she, and you had said to me off air, you had told me that she claimed that they were having problems and locks weren't working.

So she put her key in and the door opened and she heard voices. And she knew someone was in the apartment.

And so she, she walks in, she is dressed in uniform.

She had pulled a double shift, pulled, you know, worked extra hours. And this is the thing that I don't hear anybody addressing.

Now I go back here in, in New Jersey, in Newark, New Jersey years ago, we had a guy,

Joe, he's a police officer up in New York. And he basically had a situation where with basically what would happen is he was in involved in every time he'd arrest someone that's

African American, they would claim racism and there'd have to be investigation.

And I guess after three investigations that, you know, the, you'd be suspended while they investigate it.

And after three of them, you're suspended without pay. Now he got, he had a partner who, and it was really interesting.

He had told me he refused to have a white partner anymore. He had told me this.

He's like, I will only partner with someone who's African American because I will not arrest anybody who's

African American because he kept getting, you know, having to answer for it every time.

And so he didn't want to deal with it. Now his partner was at the, at that this time was white. And he had, so they arrested a guy.

This guy, and I call him a knucklehead cause this is a knucklehead thing to do. Here's a police officer.

He's enters a scene and this kid pulled out a BB gun on an officer and aimed it at him.

And the officer drew his weapon. Now the officer was so upset.

I mean, he could have taken this kid's life. I mean, it's a split second decision.

Well, they, the officer didn't shoot. Good thing. They arrest them. Good thing.

Here's where the officer, my friend, my friend's partner did wrong. He was so angry with this kid cause he's like,

I could have killed you. You pulled a BB gun on me. Well, he went into where the guy was and is explained this to him and shot the kid in the butt with the

BB gun. Oh, okay. So there was an investigation that had to be done, but the kid said both officers were there.

Now it had been proven that, you know, my friend wasn't there, but they suspended him without pay.

Well, now what's he going to do? So the union helping these guys out, they get them jobs.

So my friend was working 40 hours a week at the Pathmark as security. Then he's working a double shift at the hospital 40 hours a week.

And now he gets his job back and he's back on duty. But the problem is, he hasn't been paid for several months.

He still has all these bills he's got to pay and he's now in back pay. Well, he's keeping these two side jobs.

He told me he loved the job at the hospital because they'd let him sleep until they'd wake him when they needed him.

And I'm like, Joe, this is nuts. You, you carry a weapon.

You have to make split second decisions and you're working on sleep deprivation. I mean, we no longer allow people to drive a truck.

If you have, if you drive an 18 wheeler truck, you're only allowed to drive a certain number of hours and then you must get a certain number of hours sleep before you can get back on the road.

That's a requirement. Now you can't fly a plane without having six to eight hours sleep.

That's a requirement. But a police officer who is got to make split second decisions, that could be life or death decisions for somebody.

No, they should be working off sleep deprivation. They, we don't care whether they're sleep deprived.

We don't care whether they're not getting, making enough money that they have to get two or three jobs to make ends meet and have to be like my, my friend

Joe's case, he lives down an hour from where he worked. So he would stay up North away from his family.

So he's, he was away from his family. He's sleep deprived and he's got to make split second decisions.

And I remember saying this to him back then. And I've been saying it ever since when you put police officers in this precarious situation, you are asking for accidents to happen.

And what happens when we have an accident, man, we are on top of those officers so quick.

I mean, the media is pulling everything they can out on those people. As you said, with this case with Amber going through all her text messages and everything, trying to find what they can get on her.

And we're going to be on them so quick. You know, when they had the black lives matter, when the, when the guys that, that founded that the, the police did,

I think a brilliant thing. They took him out for a training day with them and he had to go and decide whether he was going to shoot a perpetrator or a hostage or an innocent person.

And in the split second decisions he had to make half the time, he shot an innocent person. Wow. And he, it gave him a different perspective on what a police officer had to decide.

Now, here's the thing I'm thinking. Let me, let me take, let me assume for the sake of argument, her, her claim is true.

Okay. I can't say that it was, but let's work through this.

Police officers are trained to be able to spot details. I remember once when my alarm sounded in my house, the police can't had, you know, the alarm system was sent for the police right away.

The police came. We, I had my wife on the phone with, with nine one one. We explained that, uh, you know, that actually,

I don't remember if she told them that I was armed. And so the police, I remember when, when they came in, the officer told me, he said, next time you must inform the dispatch that you are armed.

And he said, I quickly looked when I saw you standing at the top of the stairs, I quickly looked at the photographs over your shoulder and realized you're the homeowner.

Now he's trained to find small details like that. Right? Okay. They have to be trained that way.

So if she went to the wrong floor, walked into an apartment and didn't notice that none of the effects there are hers.

And this is the thing everyone's asking, like, how could this happen? Right? Well, if you are that exhausted,

I don't know if people, everyone's experienced that kind of exhaustion. When you are so exhausted, you can't think straight.

Yeah, you don't. And if, if this is the case, she would have been so exhausted from working a very stressful double shift and you end up having something like this.

I think that the issue that is not being addressed in all of this is that we need to require that police officers can get paid enough that they don't need side jobs.

Okay. To that, there should be a requirement that they are, they must have sleep.

We do it for other fields. I mean, we do it for pilots because they could, there's lives at stake.

Well, exactly. I mean, how many times has an officer accidentally shot or killed somebody because they make a move?

I remember watching a video of a guy, the, an officer, it's at a gas station.

The officer asked the guy for ID and the guy just litter.

I mean, I was thinking something bad was happening because the guy jumps into his car really quick.

Never make quick actions with, with people that, you know, this guy got nervous and pulled out his weapon and this guy was, you know, came out really quick with a wallet, but the officer didn't realize it was a wallet and shot the guy in the leg.

And soon as he saw it was a wallet, I mean, this guy was calling emergency. He was apologizing. He couldn't, you know, he was like, you know, and he's saying, sir, stop, stop.

Do, do not move. You know, because he, he didn't know what this guy was doing. The guy made it more quick actions.

This officer felt horrible, but he had a split second. This is one thing most people don't understand.

The majority of police officers have one thing in mind when they go to work in the morning. They want to come home that night.

Yeah. Their, their life is on the line as well. You have, you're making decisions that could affect in this case, she made a decision off when she was off work that affected the rest of her life.

Her life is, is ruined. Hey, I can, yeah. Keep in mind is her coming home. This she's off duty.

So this isn't like a distress call to another address. She's off duty thinking that she's, that she just want to go home and this is her apartment.

And she hears someone on the inside of what she thinks is her apartment, you know, and you imagine adrenaline rush, you know, even if this, if you've given her the story to saying this, she's telling the truth, then imagine the fear, you know,

I, and people, when I'm, when I'm saying this, people will say, well, what about, what about Bo? You know, he, what about him?

I said, well, like we all know that that was wrong. Like we all know he didn't deserve to die in that sense. We all know that, but we tried, like you got to look at it from another perspective because there's two people involved here.

It was, it's Bo and it's Amber. Yeah. I mean, look, if, if, if I'm in Bo's situation, your

Botham situation, right. I'll be honest with you. Um, I'm like, what are you doing here?

Right. It's, this is my apartment. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to sit there and, and you know,

I would, yeah, I would be like, you don't belong here. And I, you know, it, he might not, he might not have been as, as calm as he wished he was, right?

No, no, I can make this all up. I, I remember once I, I was renting from my landlord.

I, we live, had an apartment over my landlord's house. And, uh, he told the police that he was on vacation.

He forgot to tell the police that he's got two tenants that live above the house. So the police were doing a walk around just to make sure everything's good.

And they noticed footprints in the snow going up the back deck. Well, that's how I got into my apartment.

I'm sitting there with my, a laptop on my, on my lap. I was so glad that I wasn't cleaning my gun at that moment.

Um, but I had a laptop on my lap and I saw a flash of light.

Well, he just, he's taking a flashlight. He sees me watching TV. I jumped over.

I literally jumped up, dropped the laptop in the seat, jumped over the back of the chair and was immediately in an, an offensive position to attack.

And I moved so quick. The officer actually backed up and he took his flashlight and flashed it against his badge.

Oh, well, you know, which was smart because I know had, had I been cleaning my weapon, can you picture me sitting there with an

AK 47? That really turned out bad. Wouldn't it? Because to be honest with you, when, at that moment, if I had that in my lap,

I would have aimed it. There's, there's, I wouldn't have hesitated because you know that I would have been protecting and, and Botham would have done the same thing and he would have been right for doing so.

She was in the wrong. She knows that it, you know, she says it was an accident. Um, but you, you have to realize that there's two sides to this and the side,

I don't hear anybody speaking about is what was her state and why in the world are we allowing police officers to be this sleep deprived?

That's the injustice. Yeah. No one talks about that injustice. And it's crazy.

It's like they, they, they cry as if they cry out as if she had to do this on purpose, but there's nothing conclusive to show that she did any of this on purpose.

the family didn't know her, you know, they know nothing about her. The only thing that her and Botham had in common is they lived in the same apartment complex with a floor above or below each other.

And it's like, why his apartment? I mean, just, it's like, she just, she's so racist that she just chooses a random person's apartment and goes into it because it's just black.

Happens to get inside and all this shouting going on and just shoot some. And then what?

They have to spend, you have to go to go to prison, lose her job, face danger in prison. Like you was talking about earlier and then lose her livelihood when she gets out.

Like why do the awful conspiracy? Yeah. And see, that's the part that doesn't make sense because you know, if, if she was doing it the way that's you laid out that scenario, she would have bolted.

Oh yeah, but what kind of officer would do that? If you think about it, what kind of officer would do that in her own apartment complex where everyone's going to know her face?

Exactly. Hello. I mean, she's got to be the dumbest person in the world to do that.

So, you know, I, I think, you know, when you look at this, did she do wrong? Absolutely.

Yes. Uh, was there an injustice, you know, done to Botham Jean?

Absolutely. But was there an injustice that officers across this country are constantly in this situation where they have to make split second decisions where their life, they fear for their life and they are doing this while sleep deprived.

I mean, I remember once going into, I, I just have a habit. I, I, this son I've always done.

Uh, I see anyone that's military or police, uh, and they're going buying coffee or whatever.

Uh, I will always buy them that coffee. I do that all the time.

They're, they are serving and protecting me and I will always show them that respect.

There's one time where I was nervous. We went in, I was on my way to work. I go in with a buddy, we go to get some coffee and, uh, there, there's an officer, he's in line, he's going to, to pay for his coffee.

And I just, I literally just put my hand on his shoulder as I put a $20 bill down and I, and I said,

I got, I got your coffee. Thank you for, you know, and I was, I didn't even finish saying, you know, thank you for serving and protecting this guy just from me touching him.

He jumped back and reached for a weapon. He didn't pull it out, but he had his hand on it.

And I mean, everybody in that place was like, what in the world is going on?

And, and then he tried to make up for it. And I said, I'm just trying to, I said, I'm just trying to bless you and, you know, get your, buy you coffee.

And I went back to, I left the $20 there. I went back, you know, to where I was standing and figured

I'd get the change later, you know? And he wouldn't, he wouldn't, you know, he, he handed me the $20 back.

He took it. He's like, don't ever do that. You know, don't ever do that. You should never, no ever do.

And he was like, really, he realized he overreacted to something. Yeah.

Okay. And there's two things that made me nervous. One, that guy could overreact on something as simple as that.

And he's got a weapon. Okay. He's a human being as well.

I don't know what he went through. He might've had a, you know, huge fight with his wife on the way to work. Who knows?

His wife could have handed him divorce papers. He got, you know, you never, you have no idea, but he's a human being as well.

And just like you and I get stressed when we go to work, but you know what difference is?

Jamal, when you and I go to work, there's no one else's lives typically on the line. That's right.

You know, but when an officer goes to work, a life is on the line. There could be a life on the line.

And I, I really think if one thing that should come out of this whole thing with Amber Geiger, I think there should be some, some requirements that say that police officers can't be working two jobs.

They can't be working without sleep. They cannot ever be in a position where they are this sleep deprived.

Because like you said, she's off of work. It's finally, I can relax and you just shut down.

I've, I've gotten that. I've experienced that where I've worked really, really hard. I'm completely exhausted. And I mean, my whole body just shuts down and you're not thinking straight.

You're just like bed, bed. That's all I want. There should never be a time that a police officer is at that point.

While they're like on duty. And that needs to change. Yeah, that needs to change.

But you know, somebody, and it was so sad about this situation. Somebody goes, somebody's going to listen to this and they're going to say, look at you.

Just, you know, just all her side of things. This and third is like, even though we clearly said that it was wrong for both of them to be killed in his own apartment, it was injustice.

Like all that was wrong. But we have to look at both sides of this thing. It was somebody, somebody's going to be biased in the opinion, but we can't help what other people think about stuff.

But it's just, it's so sad. It was like people, it's like truth doesn't matter to people and having understanding doesn't matter, especially from people who profess to be

Christians. Well, this is the thing I loved about your episode on this. When you did your podcast on this, because quite simply you, you did a fair and balanced,

I hate to bring Fox news language into this, but you, you, you did a fair balanced discussion on this.

You, you, your episode, by the way, I'll link it, but your episode was called Amber Geiger controversy and dangerous hugs.

But you gave both sides, you gave that. And that's, that's what we're doing here. I mean, look,

I said very clearly that I believe she was wrong.

She killed a person who did not deserve to be killed. He wasn't doing anything that we know of.

Now, if, if he started acting aggressively toward her, you could say, okay, but it was his apartment.

Anyone's going to do that. Even though she's an officer, look, some officer comes into my house and I don't know why.

I would hope that I'm not going to act aggressive, but you know what?

Look, we cannot ignore the fact that there are a number of African Americans who see an officer in their house when there's no reason for the officer to be in their house.

And they may be thinking, what are you doing here? You shouldn't be here. And you know, you're going to, you're looking to do something unjust and I'm going to protect myself, you know, and that is a case as well.

You have to realize what could be his, his mindset. And I would say he's perfectly just in.

And if an officer is coming in and unjustly going to be arresting him or something,

I think he has the right to say, no, I'm going to defend myself. you know, I see, I see,

I see, she coming through the door, like, you keep mine. She didn't come through the door, like in a calm fashion, like just, just strolling in like,

Hey, what do you know? She came in defensive. She came in ready and drawn. Yeah. You know, ready, you know, and you know, this is how he was, you know, like, you know, they say, they say he was sitting down when she came in, you know, he was sitting down eating ice cream and, you know, and I mentioned this on the podcast, like in your mind, you will want to think like, man, like how do you not see this man looking comfortable in your, if I, if this was your apartment, like why is he sitting there looking comfortable, you know, like why is he?

Yeah. But how did she not notice that it wasn't her effects all over the, the apartment, right?

That if she was sleep deprived. Yeah. That explains these things.

so the, the thing though is that, so, you know, was, was he killed unjustly?

Yes. Could he have reacted in a way that only escalated it?

Yes. But I kind of would think that, you know, I might have to side on that, on him, with him on this one, right?

Oh yeah. But the one thing no one's addressing is, was the, was there something that could be prevent her from being in a state where she could make this mistake?

Nobody's addressing that. This is what I think is also an injustice is that we put people in a, in a, where a position where they have to make this very quick decision, split second decision where lies are on the line.

And not only do they make that decision, but if they make a mistake, we are all over them.

And we're going to say it's unjust if we don't, if they don't go to life, you know, life in prison. You know, there's a lot of factors to this.

I think that we've tried to be fair and balanced, try to give both sides and give some things I think that should be thought through on this.

And I think there are some things that we as a nation, who is a country should deal with and resolve when it comes to this situation.

We need to do something to be preventing police officers from being in this situation.

You know, yeah, true. Cause to me, stuff like this wouldn't happen if that's the case that he gets no sleep. Like, I mean, she would have noticed, okay, wait a minute.

Oh, I'm aware enough to know this isn't my rug in front of the door. Like this isn't, this isn't my apartment. I'm on, I must be on the wrong floor, but she's so tired.

You know, it's maybe distracted by our phone or because I'd be, but she's tired. And I had a friend of mine asked me, and I said as much, and I'll be finished with this.

And it's like, he asks, he's like, okay, well, how can she be? So if she is that deprived of sleep or she's that off, how could she pitch this?

Look at her phone and be texting whoever she was texting and stuff like that. And I was like, well, man, I was like, I can be,

I'm not a police officer. I said, but I know I can be, I know I can get more rest than I do. Yeah.

When I'm exhausted, I mean, I can still be driving. I can still function, certain things, but something is going to slip my mind.

Something, something is going to be left out. You know, I can be driving and I'll miss a turn. I miss a couple of turns.

You know, I can be driving. My wife will say something to me and like, it'd be as if I, as if she never said it, I'll ask her.

She's like, you're not listening to me. I've never heard that before. I'm telling you, man, it's like,

I could be that tired. It's something like that to happen, you know? And it's like, but it's, but you still function in other areas.

So it's, it's possible, you know, it is possible. Yeah. And, and this is the thing that I think we, you know, needs to be addressed as well, is to prevent these accidents.

These accidents are going to continue to happen and they're going to continue because we, we're in a situation where we're putting, we have police officers that are being attacked by people.

They're being, you know, they're being targeted. They're, they're tired. And I think we, you know, these are the issues that have to be figured out.

So with that, I just want to give a quick shout out. for folks who listen,

I'm going to have links to some of the podcasts I mentioned in the show notes, but the issue that I, that I would see here is

I want to mention, give a shout out to our friend here,

Chris Honholz from the Voice of Reason radio podcast. If you listen to that, it's great podcast, recommend

Voice of Reason radio, check them out. But for folks who know that podcast, know that Chris Honholz, like enters every single book contest he can, except for ours when we do giveaways.

And so he's always entering and he's saying he never wins. He says he never ever wins. Well, he just won this really nice readers

Bible, you know, calf skin or gold goat skin and really soft.

It's coming to him. He, you know, he's really looking forward to a six volume set. I've told him he really should be giving it to me since he claims he never wins anything.

But, but he went onto a show and said that he, he, he says he never, you know, he never wins.

And you know, he was just about to give up on, on it. And so what I decided to do is do a book giveaway.

I haven't announced it to anybody because I decided to enter Chris Honholz into the book giveaway.

And then I closed the, the entries. So therefore Chris Honholz wins a copy of the marriage pyramid by Danny Purvis, because I had an extra copy here and this is my way of saying that he just won a book giveaway.

I'm going to get in so much trouble on his podcast for this. They rip me all the time.

And I, I always have to find a way to return the favor. So this is my way. Chris Honholz is the winner of the book giveaway for the marriage pyramid.

And he was the only entry because I never announced it and only allowed his entry and put it in myself.

So Chris, congratulations. I know your address. I'll be sending you the book. And now we'll know if the, if he actually listens, because if he calls me up and says,

Hey, I got this book from you. Why we know he doesn't listen. Hey, until next time

I could tell you already what next week is going to be about. I may even want to drop this early.

I don't know. I will be out at the truth matters conference at the time this drops.

So I'll be very busy. Actually, when this drops, I will be heading over to living waters.

We're doing some filming with them. They have a new online equip academy they're working on and I'll be in studio with them doing some filming and then

Tuesday going through a tour of grace to you. And then Wednesday starts truth matters. So we're going to be doing that, but I will probably be recording with my good friends,

Justin Peters and Jim Osmond, because we just had something that just came out and I couldn't believe it.

I sent this over to them and said, we got to address this Beth Moore at a conference asking, does complementarianism cause abuse?

That is what's on this, on the docket for the next episode of the rap report.

You will not want to miss this. Please share this with your friends. If you like this subscribe, so you don't miss an episode.

Check out all the podcasts at the Christian podcast community. Just go to Christian podcast, community dot O R G.

Glad you came and remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

This podcast is part of the striving for eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to Simon for eternity .org.

Hey Jamal, thanks for coming on. And thank you for having me, Andrew. It was great. Thank you so much. You to doctor.

I am not the doctor. Yeah. Well, I'm spreading it around.

You're the doctor since 1981. Unbound is connected people like you with families worldwide on their self directed paths out of poverty.

A brighter future is possible for these families. When we all walk together, sponsor a child today and you'll help a family take the first steps on their path, change their future in just one click.

Start walking with your new friend today at unbound .org slash walk.

There could be cash waiting for you at fine mass money .gov. You might have checked before, but they're always updating the names.

So check again. The mass state treasury has over $3 billion in unclean property.

Maybe it's a long lost bank account, forgetting shares of stock or an old paycheck. You somehow forget to pick up.

Some of it might be yours. There's a lot of money that could be yours. You will never know until you go.