I love this important story and appreciate Meeka so much for letting us publish it here. I also deeply regret that when we had to republish it, all the original comments and likes were lost. Because there was a lot of important discussion in there, and a lot more wisdom and information from Meeka, what I did was (in my non-efficient basically analog way) copied most of the comments from the old one so I can restate them here myself for people coming to this now who had not had a chance to read them. They are worth it! Stay tuned.
Thank you all for still being here and thank you Meeka most of all for giving this to all of us to learn from and talk about.
Since I first wrote this piece, the Louisiana State Police have released new video footage of their version of what happened that night. The video focuses almost entirely on Kyren’s car, alleging that he passed vehicles in a no-passing zone and entered the oncoming lane. What it doesn’t show, however, is the Kia Cadenza tailgating the pickup truck ahead of it, a detail that Kyren’s attorney says is central to understanding how the crash unfolded. Whether that moment was omitted, unseen, or downplayed, the omission is telling. Because even if every frame the state released is accurate, it still doesn’t absolve the driver whose reaction, swerving into oncoming traffic, caused the collision that killed 78-year-old Herman Hall.
Nor does any of this erase the core truth of this piece: the system itself remains corrupt, designed not to protect but to preserve itself.
While the identity of the Kia driver has not been made public, the defense has asserted, and some accounts appear to support, that this driver was following too closely before the crash. If that proves true, then under Louisiana law, their actions would be a contributing factor in Herman Hall’s death. Yet despite that possibility, the driver has faced no scrutiny. Kyren Lacy, a young Black man, was criminalized and condemned, while the other driver at the center of the same chain of events remains unnamed.
We’ve seen this pattern throughout history. When the accused is Black, the system moves quickly and mercilessly. When the accused is white, accountability stalls, names are withheld, and narratives soften. This country has always gone to extraordinary lengths to protect whiteness, sometimes through omission, sometimes through silence.
This same system was born to capture the fleeing enslaved, and it has been broken, violent, and deceitful since its inception. America’s justice system mirrors the nation that created it, built on exploitation, hypocrisy, and selective humanity. And for the Black men and women who enter law enforcement believing they can change it from the inside, I say this with love and clarity: the problem isn’t just the players. It’s the game itself.
This showed up in my feed. Yet another example of the criminal justice system killing a Black person. A postal worker, suffering a stroke, mistaken for being “impaired.” We can’t even have a stroke and be Black in this country without it becoming a death sentence.
Truth be told, we don’t go looking for these incidents. They happen so frequently that it’s constantly in our face so much so that we really do start forgetting names. A few weeks ago I went to the public library on 5th Ave (NYC) to get some books for my dissertation. It just so happened that there was an exhibit celebrating the New Yorker and there last 100 years. There was a visual display of a few covers that they have done over the years of Black people most of the murdered. Some of the murdered, I had actually “forgotten” about. This is the trauma overload that we speak about. If you can’t view the exhibit in person, I recorded it and you can view it here https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPG_fQcDu_B/?igsh=MWQwMjQyNG1jbzQ4MA==
I just watched and I'm so glad you shared that video. It's so heartbreakingly enraging to see those one after another after another – And know that there are so so many more. I'm going to go up to the library to see that in person too. But I hope everyone watches the video because it's affecting and important.
This is so eloquent and the last paragraph hits me like a ton of bricks. As it should.
Because I haven't kept up with it as closely, I wanted to find out what reason the authorities are giving for not releasing the Kia drivers name? To protect that person's identity? So now I'm deep in news coverage, message boards and videos and it's enraging. But you hit on an aspect of the case that I still haven't read elsewhere and that is way bigger than this case and I think it's so important that you did. Thank you again.
I wrote a whole response and it didn’t post. Of course I don’t remember exactly what I wrote but it was something to this affect…
This story pulled at my heartstrings for personal reasons which I will be sharing very soon. I got a story that is happening in realtime about how the criminal justice system is destroying Black people from the police officers to the judges.
The LEOs that I know who happen to be great people, their intentions was to be the change the wanted to see in the system. The thing is… it’s a noble intention however, it’s impossible with this current situation. The entire system is rotten with not one but several bad apples. The system must be burned down and started anew if we want any real change.
As for the driver, I have my suspicions about why their name wasn’t released but I will keep them to myself in case I’m wrong. If I am right, I am coming back to say, “I fuckin knew it!” And that would be another piece.
I really look forward to seeing what you write about your theory and what you're going through (if you do). There is an open invitation always for you to write that and anything else here.
This is just a dumb aside, but I know so little about cars that I first thought the name of the other driver was Kia Cadenza.
white fragility. What’re we going to do about it? I have not carved out dedicated time for looking at mine enough lately. White supremacy is a white people issue. We are constantly complicit unless explicitly doing work to dismantle it and sometimes still then. Pretty baked into the system itself, as the author says.
Constantly complicit exactly. And when confronted with outcomes like Kyren Lacy's death or what happened just the other day to Meeka's son, it feels unconscionable, which it is.
Wow, a brilliant, rough, gritty and uncomfortable yet deeply necessary read. Thank you Meeka, I'll be digesting this one for a bit and going to make my husband read it too.
At this stage in the game, there is no nice way to say the truth. The system is heavily flawed and the unfortunate truth is that some folks like it that way. That’s why it hasn’t been dismantled.
Thank you Jane for grabbing my last comment. I didn’t save it so I couldn’t help you and post it. Now that I have it, I reposted directly just in case anyone wanted to comment on my updated comment.
Perfect teamwork. Thanks for making the extra effort. I went to grab them before the posts were switched so we didn't lose those valuable comments from you and others. The immediate likes and comments to the piece show what an important conversation you've started here - and how great this community is too.
I love this important story and appreciate Meeka so much for letting us publish it here. I also deeply regret that when we had to republish it, all the original comments and likes were lost. Because there was a lot of important discussion in there, and a lot more wisdom and information from Meeka, what I did was (in my non-efficient basically analog way) copied most of the comments from the old one so I can restate them here myself for people coming to this now who had not had a chance to read them. They are worth it! Stay tuned.
Thank you all for still being here and thank you Meeka most of all for giving this to all of us to learn from and talk about.
Since I first wrote this piece, the Louisiana State Police have released new video footage of their version of what happened that night. The video focuses almost entirely on Kyren’s car, alleging that he passed vehicles in a no-passing zone and entered the oncoming lane. What it doesn’t show, however, is the Kia Cadenza tailgating the pickup truck ahead of it, a detail that Kyren’s attorney says is central to understanding how the crash unfolded. Whether that moment was omitted, unseen, or downplayed, the omission is telling. Because even if every frame the state released is accurate, it still doesn’t absolve the driver whose reaction, swerving into oncoming traffic, caused the collision that killed 78-year-old Herman Hall.
Nor does any of this erase the core truth of this piece: the system itself remains corrupt, designed not to protect but to preserve itself.
While the identity of the Kia driver has not been made public, the defense has asserted, and some accounts appear to support, that this driver was following too closely before the crash. If that proves true, then under Louisiana law, their actions would be a contributing factor in Herman Hall’s death. Yet despite that possibility, the driver has faced no scrutiny. Kyren Lacy, a young Black man, was criminalized and condemned, while the other driver at the center of the same chain of events remains unnamed.
We’ve seen this pattern throughout history. When the accused is Black, the system moves quickly and mercilessly. When the accused is white, accountability stalls, names are withheld, and narratives soften. This country has always gone to extraordinary lengths to protect whiteness, sometimes through omission, sometimes through silence.
This same system was born to capture the fleeing enslaved, and it has been broken, violent, and deceitful since its inception. America’s justice system mirrors the nation that created it, built on exploitation, hypocrisy, and selective humanity. And for the Black men and women who enter law enforcement believing they can change it from the inside, I say this with love and clarity: the problem isn’t just the players. It’s the game itself.
This showed up in my feed. Yet another example of the criminal justice system killing a Black person. A postal worker, suffering a stroke, mistaken for being “impaired.” We can’t even have a stroke and be Black in this country without it becoming a death sentence.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/nation-world/kare-11-investigates-postal-worker-died-after-police-mistook-stroke-for-drug-impairment/89-498afc7e-a924-4333-a150-826c3348eaf0?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_11Alive&fbclid=IwdGRleANY2JxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlTXnjrSFdTudglNMx0Fh5OaLFezLYqWcTvbBYm1LT_lGTW54XEzT382u9zs_aem_dApRiY9LE9vOSxokfFLILg
This is horrifying and I really appreciate you giving it more exposure here.
Truth be told, we don’t go looking for these incidents. They happen so frequently that it’s constantly in our face so much so that we really do start forgetting names. A few weeks ago I went to the public library on 5th Ave (NYC) to get some books for my dissertation. It just so happened that there was an exhibit celebrating the New Yorker and there last 100 years. There was a visual display of a few covers that they have done over the years of Black people most of the murdered. Some of the murdered, I had actually “forgotten” about. This is the trauma overload that we speak about. If you can’t view the exhibit in person, I recorded it and you can view it here https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPG_fQcDu_B/?igsh=MWQwMjQyNG1jbzQ4MA==
I just watched and I'm so glad you shared that video. It's so heartbreakingly enraging to see those one after another after another – And know that there are so so many more. I'm going to go up to the library to see that in person too. But I hope everyone watches the video because it's affecting and important.
This is so eloquent and the last paragraph hits me like a ton of bricks. As it should.
Because I haven't kept up with it as closely, I wanted to find out what reason the authorities are giving for not releasing the Kia drivers name? To protect that person's identity? So now I'm deep in news coverage, message boards and videos and it's enraging. But you hit on an aspect of the case that I still haven't read elsewhere and that is way bigger than this case and I think it's so important that you did. Thank you again.
I wrote a whole response and it didn’t post. Of course I don’t remember exactly what I wrote but it was something to this affect…
This story pulled at my heartstrings for personal reasons which I will be sharing very soon. I got a story that is happening in realtime about how the criminal justice system is destroying Black people from the police officers to the judges.
The LEOs that I know who happen to be great people, their intentions was to be the change the wanted to see in the system. The thing is… it’s a noble intention however, it’s impossible with this current situation. The entire system is rotten with not one but several bad apples. The system must be burned down and started anew if we want any real change.
As for the driver, I have my suspicions about why their name wasn’t released but I will keep them to myself in case I’m wrong. If I am right, I am coming back to say, “I fuckin knew it!” And that would be another piece.
I really look forward to seeing what you write about your theory and what you're going through (if you do). There is an open invitation always for you to write that and anything else here.
This is just a dumb aside, but I know so little about cars that I first thought the name of the other driver was Kia Cadenza.
I actually wrote this about police https://open.substack.com/pub/unquietmama/p/policing-hasnt-evolved?r=bhw3&utm_medium=ios
What an incredible piece. I encourage everyone here - and everywhere - to read it and learn.
Thank you for the invitation.
white fragility. What’re we going to do about it? I have not carved out dedicated time for looking at mine enough lately. White supremacy is a white people issue. We are constantly complicit unless explicitly doing work to dismantle it and sometimes still then. Pretty baked into the system itself, as the author says.
Constantly complicit exactly. And when confronted with outcomes like Kyren Lacy's death or what happened just the other day to Meeka's son, it feels unconscionable, which it is.
Wow, a brilliant, rough, gritty and uncomfortable yet deeply necessary read. Thank you Meeka, I'll be digesting this one for a bit and going to make my husband read it too.
Thanks, Shawna! That's great about passing it along to your husband. I sent it to two people I think would get something from it also.
At this stage in the game, there is no nice way to say the truth. The system is heavily flawed and the unfortunate truth is that some folks like it that way. That’s why it hasn’t been dismantled.
Thank you Jane for grabbing my last comment. I didn’t save it so I couldn’t help you and post it. Now that I have it, I reposted directly just in case anyone wanted to comment on my updated comment.
Perfect teamwork. Thanks for making the extra effort. I went to grab them before the posts were switched so we didn't lose those valuable comments from you and others. The immediate likes and comments to the piece show what an important conversation you've started here - and how great this community is too.