African-American Officers Discuss Life Behind The Badge And Being Black In America
Black cops are speaking out after racial tension between Blacks and officers have reached a fever pitch according to LA Times:
Many black officers say they understand the conditions that brought young people to the streets to protest harsh treatment by police, white and black. But they bristle at attacks on cops at a time when violent crime in their city is a national topic.
“There are good and bad in every profession, any profession, and I don’t deny we have bad cops,” said a black veteran patrol officer assigned to a majority-black police district on the South Side, who asked not to be identified. “But what offends me the most is the protests like they’re doing now. A possibly bad shooting happens somewhere else in the country — where is your protest over the 4-year-old who was just shot?”
Chris Fletcher, a 30-year veteran with the Chicago police before taking the police chief’s job in suburban Calumet City, knows all too well the duality of the job. “I’m on both sides of the fence depending on what day it is,” he said.
Fletcher can still recall the heated exchange with a close friend over the death of LaTanya Haggerty, an unarmed African American woman who was shot and killed in the summer of 1999 by a Chicago police officer who mistook her cellphone for a weapon.
“One of my nonpolice friends,” Fletcher began, “he’s like, ‘Man, how can you stand up behind that? Because they just killed that girl and she just had a cellphone. That could have been you or me, your sister, your little cousin.’
So, how does the conflict impact Black cops?
“The public doesn’t look at the other end. What if it wasn’t a cellphone?” he said. “What if it was a gun? And police officers have to make that split [-second] decision, because you say I can wait to see if it’s a cellphone and be killed.… The average officer isn’t willing to take that chance with their life.”
Black cops know how volatile things can be at a crime scene. But while they may face the same dangers as white officers, some black residents — be they witnesses, victims or even the accused — may open up more freely to an African American officer than to his or her white counterpart, some black cops say.
Read the entire article HERE.
