BONUS: Race, Trust, and the Chicago Police — The Investigation of Courtney Copeland’s Murder
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The new podcast Somebody documents Shapearl Wells’s quest to find out what happened to Courtney Copeland, her 22-year-old son who wound up with a bullet in his back outside a Chicago police station in 2016 and died soon after.
On April 30, Topic Studios, The Intercept, and Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Invisible Institute presented a live conversation and listening session focused on Shapearl’s experiences confronting Chicago Police and challenging the city’s long-standing racial disparities. The event was hosted by Intercept co-founding editor Jeremy Scahill and featured Somebody co-hosts Shapearl and Alison Flowers, a journalist at the Invisible Institute.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jeremy Scayhill, one of the founders of the Intercept and the |
| 0:13.1 | host of the Interceptive Podcast. I'm really honored to be here today to talk about an incredible |
| 0:20.3 | devastating and brilliantly-produced podcast that's co-produced by Topic Studios, The Intercept, |
| 0:28.1 | the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit, the Invisible Institute, as well as I Heart Radio in |
| 0:33.8 | Association with Tenderfoot TV. The podcast is called Somebody, and it's a seven-part series |
| 0:41.2 | that documents the quest of a woman named Shapiro Wells to investigate and discover what happened |
| 0:48.9 | to her 22-year-old son, Courtney Copeland, who was found with a bullet in his back or ended up with |
| 0:57.2 | a bullet in his back outside of a Chicago police station in 2016, and he died shortly thereafter. |
| 1:05.2 | And before I bring our guests on for today, I just want to say as an investigative journalist, |
| 1:12.0 | watching the work that Shapiro Wells has done as a mother who is trying to discover |
| 1:20.1 | who murdered her son, and also producing such a vibrant and devastatingly beautiful piece |
| 1:27.2 | of investigative journalism. I've never seen something like this or witnessed a character |
| 1:34.4 | quite like Shapiro Wells, and we're very honored to have her join us on this program right now, |
| 1:42.7 | as well as Alice in Flowers, who is the producer of this four of this podcast, |
| 1:48.2 | with Shapiro and the team at the Invisible Institute. Shapiro is a mother of six. She is |
| 1:55.6 | lives in Cicero, Illinois, and she is the vice president of the Courtney Copeland Memorial |
| 2:00.8 | Foundation. Alice in, as I said, is an investigative journalist and producer at the Invisible |
| 2:06.1 | Institute in Chicago. I want to welcome both of you here. Shapiro, thanks so much for the incredible |
| 2:12.2 | bravery and the remarkable journalism that you've done, and you're doing it in the service of trying |
| 2:18.8 | to find your son's murderer. So thank you so much for being with us, Shapiro. |
| 2:23.6 | Thank you for having me, and thank you for agreeing to do this. I really appreciate it. |
| 2:28.8 | Well, I hope everyone listens to this podcast series. You can look it up while we're talking. |
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