shootdontshoot

Before I started in law enforcement nearly 17 years ago, I was told that the department I was applying for had a lot of "race" problems. I never understood what that officer meant until I started working there. The department I worked at was about half black and half white. However, I could careless if it was a 1/3 green, 1/8 purple, etc. I had good friends of all colors and grew up in a multi-cultural area so I pretty much blew off his information.

After I started working there, it only took about a year to start realizing that some of the hard workers that were "white" were being labeled as racists by some of the black officers. These officers were always making gun arrests, dope arrests, etc. When a white officer heard of what someone had said about them (racist), they would simply counter with "They're only saying that because they're lazy." And from what I could see on the face, it appeared that the officers accusing them of being racists didn't seem to work as hard as the officers being labeled. But the point is, the officer that told me the department had race problems was right.

So how would I deal this situation

As a brand new police officer I wasn't sure how to deal with this. I was excited to finally be in police work, and I wanted to work. But I knew I wasn't a racist, yet knew that the harder I worked, or more arrests I made, the more chance I would be labeled as a racist. So I ignored it and simply "did my job." I would patrol in mostly high drug areas, I would run plates and stop cars that turned down side streets quickly after seeing me, I would watch prostitutes and stop the cars that picked them up, I would stop cars that made hand-to-hand transactions with guys that stood on corners for hours on end. I did everything I could to put myself in positions where crime was factually more prevalent.

And then it happened

I was finally labeled a racist. Not by anyone at my work (as of yet), but by the media. One day while training an officer I tried to stop a car in a high drug area that had an improper plate on it (I had checked the plate, which was partially hanging off of the car by one bolt, and it came back to a different vehicle which is sometimes indicative of a stolen car). When I tried to initiate a traffic stop, the driver simply kept driving until reaching their residence. Now keep something in mind; while trying to stop this vehicle, I couldn't see the race of the occupants due to the tint on the windows from the manufacturer. I could only tell that there were two occupants. Anyway, after making the stop, the driver began screaming at my partner and myself asking us "Why the f**k" we stopped them. I had experienced this type of attitude before and was very calm, telling the lady (who was about 6'0", 300 lbs) that I stopped her because the plate wasn't registered to the vehicle. I explained that I needed to see her license and registration, and we would be on our way. She refused and continued to scream at us, causing several neighbors to come out including her own family. She then began walking away and I even walked with her telling her I would be arresting her if she didn't show me her license, and finally said "just show me the registration," and she still refused, still screaming. Finally I grabbed on to her, and the fight was on.

The next day my partner and I (both white) were labeled as "racists" and "police brutality" in the news

My phone started ringing off the hook from friends telling me I better turn on the news. For two days straight, morning, lunch, evening and night time news was all about the incident I just described. It was the 'BIG STORY," literally. I can remember the news showing the graphics to big story with each letter of the words coming out one by one, and big, to finally form the two words (the point is, you can see how much it affected me). The lady had went to the media and said she was beat up and stopped simply because she was black. I was in shock. I was accused of something I hadn't remotely done. The media made a frenzy of it, even asking the second day on the lady's behalf why "leaders of the department" were not taking action to remove my partner and I from the force. Of course they never said our names, but everyone on the department knew who they were talking about.

I was exonerated by our Internal Affairs as doing nothing wrong

After the reports went through and IA interviewed myself, the witnesses, suspect, etc., it was determined that my partner nor I did anything wrong. And life went on, but that one incident changed the way I looked at police work. I found myself hesitant to stop vehicles as much, didn't patrol the same areas as I did prior, and basically found myself scared a bit to do my job. In fact, I started writing more tickets on the freeways and simply got away from a lot of what drew me to the job in the first place. That was going after the "real criminals," at least in my eyes.

Conclusion

Let me just say first that I realize there are real situations out there where racism and police brutality are real. I'm just saying, in my opinion, media blows a lot of things out of proportion and twists and dramatizes incidents that have no business making the news in the way that they are presenting it. When media twists or exaggerates the truth, they only fuel the fire of tension by causing more doubt, and I believe make it worse for whites and blacks to come together when it comes to police work. Now I can only speak for me and some of the officers I work with, and what I've seen them go through. But when the media, fellow officers, etc. start breaking you down as an officer by calling you a racist, it can change your attitude after awhile. One incident of course won't do it, but repeated incidents can. This goes for what the officer sees in the headlines as well because one incident across the country still impacts the local officer. After seeing so much of this, you start questioning yourself saying things like "Is it worth it?", "Do I really need all this heat?" I can remember thinking at times "Screw it, if they don't want my help then I'm out of here." But you know in the back of your mind that the good people in those areas DO need your help.