On the afternoon of Friday, May 8, 2020, Sacramento Fire Capt. Gary Loesch received a call from an assistant city manager urging him to attend an unplanned meeting at Old City Hall—one he hadn’t been formally invited to, but suspected was about a recent incident involving his department.

Two months earlier, five firefighters had responded to a medical call in south Sacramento for a man acting erratically due to a diabetic episode. Police were called for backup and handcuffed the man in the prone position as firefighters attempted to treat him. He lost consciousness, slipped into a coma, and died a week later after being removed from life support.

Loesch had launched an internal investigation, but he knew city officials were conducting their own. When he arrived at the meeting, he found city attorneys and staff reviewing police body cam footage showing Reggie Payne struggling while restrained on his parents’ living room floor. A city official quickly demanded the immediate termination of all five firefighters—a move that shocked Loesch, who questioned the lack of due process and the absence of any accountability for the police officers involved. While he agreed discipline was necessary, firing the firefighters felt extreme and unjustified. Something wasn't right. And it was only the beginning.

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Reggie Payne was rushed by ambulance to Sutter Medical Center, four miles north from the family’s home in Sacramento. This was February 25, 2020. He arrived at the hospital at 8:22 p.m., and was wheeled into the emergency room—clinging to life.

At around 10 p.m., Reggie could no longer breathe on his own. He was intubated.

Reggie’s family raced to the hospital and arrived to find him in an emergency room cubicle — comatose and on life support. They were stunned. Harriet’s hope faded as she prayed at Reggie’s side in the ER. It didn’t look good.

Meanwhile, the City of Sacramento and the police department were looking for someone to blame.

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On the evening of February 25, 2020, Harriett Jefferson became alarmed as her son, Reggie Payne, lapsed into a bad diabetic reaction. He hadn’t eaten all day and had sat through four hours of dialysis. Now, he was acting strange. Wobbling back and forth. Speaking incoherently. Harriett was growing increasingly concerned. She needed help. So, she did what a lot of people in her situation would: She dialed 911.

Just four months earlier, Reggie had had a similar episode. Harriett had called 911 then and paramedics arrived at the home and helped him replenish his glucose levels. They were professional and courteous, and Reggie was fine after that. There was no reason to think this call would go any differently.

This time, however, things would go differently. In fact, things would go stunningly, irreversibly, tragically wrong. Reggie would end up on the floor of the home, face down, hands cuffed behind his back, pleading to breathe.

This podcast episode contains discussions of police brutality and features audio of traumatic events. Listener discretion is advised.

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In 2019, Reggie and his sister Janine went to a high school reunion. It was going great...until it wasn't. Janine had to pull him off the dance floor when she started to see the paranoia and aggression signaling a bipolar episode.

That’s how it was with Reggie: a few hours of him being happy, calm, collected – followed by a steep slide into paranoia and distrust. That’s when Dark Reggie would emerge. And increasingly, Dark Reggie was running the show.

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Reggie's time as a sports editor at the Grambling student newspaper suggested he had it all in front of him. He was a gifted rider with a ton of talent and street smarts. But after a violent encounter at the school, Reggie got on a bus, which was a two-day ride home, and something in his head snapped.

When he got to Oakland, his family met him at the bus station. And the person who walked off the bus left them stunned.

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In 1989, Reggie Payne became a local hero when he overcame the hardships of Oakland’s 69 Village to attend Grambling State University. Yet college life some 3,000 miles away is anything but easy. While he dives into journalism as an editor at the student newspaper, Reggie becomes a first-time father and endures an alleged beatdown via a fleet of Tiger football players that changes his outlook—and messes with his mind.

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In 1971, Harriet Jefferson gives birth to her first child, a baby boy. Reggie Damone Payne is born in San Leandro, just south of Oakland, the oldest of four children.

Reggie Payne's biological father was out of the picture and Harriet moved in with her future husband, Rufus Jefferson, shortly after her son was born. That created a close lifetime relationship Reggie had with his mother and stepfather of growing up in Oakland's inner city and learning from them how to navigate away from the distractions of the streets and focus on things that truly mattered. Education, family, love.

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In the summer of 1993, Rick Jervis and Jeff Pearlman—two college journalists at the time—arrived in Nashville for a summer internship at the daily newspaper, The Tennessean. It was a dream come true, and to their surprise and delight, they were accompanied by an aspiring Oakland rapper/Grambling student named Reggie Payne. His hip-hop moniker: Sexy Sweat. Over the next eight weeks, the young men developed a bond that, Rick and Jeff believed, would last for decades. Instead, Reggie vanished from their lives—and left behind a gaping mystery. Where did he go? What did he do? In short, what became of Sexy Sweat. Thirty years later, Rick and Jeff decided to find him—and were shocked and devastated by what they uncovered.

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