How Identity Has Influenced A Police Officer's Career At UCLA Police Department

This is an amazing question, especially considering my identity. I'm a Black man, but also a police officer, a pastor, a parent, and a husband. My perspective helps me navigate these roles because I view everyone as equal.

One challenge is understanding how people perceive me. While it's 2023, not much has changed since my dad told me stories about the 1950s. Even my own experiences as a child in the 1980s shook me. I wondered why people felt a certain way about me based on my skin color.

This is compounded by being part of an institution that has harmed marginalized communities, especially Black communities. Policing itself has a history rooted in things like slave patrols. So, how do I navigate between these two realities?

I deal with this daily. When people see me, they might say, "You're a sellout. Why did you join this?" My answer is that I joined to make a change. I might not change the whole system, but I can make a difference in my sphere.

I still need to be a human with compassion and empathy for everyone. That's how I approach this work: by building community. I want people to see that there are individuals in law enforcement who are genuinely trying to dismantle a flawed system and build something new.

We can't do this alone. When people say they are abolitionists or about defunding policing, I understand, but I advocate for a middle ground where we can collaborate to ensure everyone's safety. Crime and people intent on harming others will always exist, and we still need protection.

Being a Black man in law enforcement has given me the opportunity to speak from both sides of the conversation, and I enjoy it. I want a world free of bias, where racism is gone in law enforcement, education, healthcare, and everywhere else. I want to be part of ending this harmful behavior.

People sometimes claim these issues are made up, or want to ban books, but that's not true. You have to engage with others' lived experiences to understand their perspectives. This relates to meeting people where they are, because you can't help them if you don't understand their situation.

As a nation and a world, we're often too focused on self-preservation to help others. I believe we should all be held accountable for building a better world and a better nation together. This means putting aside our biases and building relationships, understanding why people act the way they do.

Until we do that, we'll keep having these conversations and issues. People will continue to view me as unusual, a Black man in a police uniform. We'll keep fighting and dealing with problems.

The biggest culprit in all of this is fear—fear of the new, fear of being wrong about our perceptions of others. We don't want that to happen. This ties into self-preservation and the need to be right, to hold onto our views.

We constantly talk about building a better world, but I don't think the right people are in the necessary positions to achieve this. We're stuck with the status quo, with people who are only looking out for themselves.

For me, my goal is to always affect change, no matter what. I want to ensure that people, including myself, leave spaces different than how we found them, that things have changed.