Good Apple Initiative in the News

The Marshall Project Q&A with Jaleel Stallings

Jamiles Lartey spoke with Jaleel about being referenced in a political attack by the Trump presidential campaign.

Below is a one-question excerpt from that exchange. The full Q&A can be read at this link, on the Web site for The Marshall Project.

JL: The Trump campaign is trying to tie Kamala Harris to the Minnesota bail fund that paid part of your bail. What is your sense of what would have happened to you without the bail fund?

JS: There’s no telling, but I imagine I would have been in jail quite a bit longer. Without what the Minnesota Freedom Fund did for me, there’s no way for me to continue to go to work. So now I lose my job, which, in turn, means I can’t pay my mortgage. I lose my home.

My truck that they’re holding for the entire year as evidence — I can’t make payments on that. So it would have basically led to a downward spiral of everything in my life. After losing my job, housing and transportation, I may have felt like I didn’t have the means or the time to fight this case, so I’d just want to plead out so I could be done with it and then start my life anew. But the Minnesota Freedom Fund doing what they did allowed me to get my bearings and really buckle down and prepare for what was to come.

And it’s not just me, there’s countless other people that the Minnesota Freedom Fund helped as well. And we have to take into account the fact that in the court of law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

KARE 11: Minnesota man targeted by Trump campaign tweet speaks out

A man who was beaten by police suddenly finds himself in the crosshairs of the presidential campaign.

…Jaleel Stallings never expected to be thrust into a political campaign. But then former President Trump’s campaign tweeted out his mug shot along with charges that he tried to kill cops. . . . But Stallings is not a criminal.

. . . He was found not guilty when video showed Minneapolis police fired at him first from an unmarked white van in the days following George Floyd’s murder. Stallings, a licensed gun owner and veteran, said he didn’t know they were police and fired back in self defense, and a jury acquitted him. In fact, it was an MPD officer who was later found guilty after the video showed he and others beating Stallings.

Minnesota Reformer: How the Trump campaign is distorting what happened to Jaleel Stallings to attack Kamala Harris

Stallings told the Reformer he was disappointed to see the Trump campaign distort what happened, especially because it undermines his work to launch a nonprofit called the Good Apple Initiative to encourage “good apples” in the criminal justice system to change the culture of Minnesota policing.

FULL ARTICLE BY DEENA WINTER can be READ AT THIS LINK ON mINNESOTA REFORMER SITE

The Marshall Project and The Washington Post: Profile on Jaleel Stallings

Even after he was released on bail, (Jaleel Stallings’) life was in limbo. His brand-new truck had been impounded as evidence in his criminal case.

He was also branded a “would-be cop-killer” on a social media account run by then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, in a post aimed at attacking bail funds like the one that got him out.

“You took my innocence away,” Stallings said of the tweet. “You put it so that every new person that I meet, I now have to fight past a stereotype or them thinking I’m the bad guy.”

. . . Now that the ordeal is over, Erica Kantola, Stallings’ mother, said her son still isn’t exactly his old self. He’s slower to trust people, she said, but “the biggest difference I see now is his drive to find a way to effect change.”

The main avenue for that is a fledgling nonprofit that Stallings named the Good Apple Initiative. For now, the organization is focused on setting up meetings with anyone open to sitting down, including police officers, to discuss how to change policing culture.

find Full feature by Jamiles Lartey at

The Marshall Project and The Washington Post

WCCO Profile: Jaleel Stallings Starts Good Apple Initiative

“After the murder of George Floyd, I went out to protest police brutality, and was actually met with the same thing I was out there to protest.

After going through my legal trials and the subsequent three years, I recognized a lot of systemic flaws within our legal system, and a lot of problems within the police department itself.

I was left with two options at that point – to be bitter and distrust all police officers, or to be the catalyst for the change I actually wanted to see.”

— Jaleel Stallings

segment can also be viewed on CBS News’ website.

Interview by photojournalist Tony Peterson;