OFFICER EMPATHY
Background makes recruit ideal communicator
Every day after class, Jennifer Beamon was running. The 30-year-old mother of two looped around the Milwaukee Police Academy on the city’s northwest side or pounded on a treadmill inside the building. Each step was another closer to her goal: Becoming a Milwaukee police officer.
Beamon, a native of Milwaukee, has overcome childhood abuse, teen pregnancy, homelessness and depression.
Two years ago, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where one university official highlighted her personal story during his speech. In a following profile in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Beamon shared her dream of becoming a police officer. On Thursday, it will become a reality. “My biggest thing is being able to use my experiences and my knowledge and share those things while serving other people,” Beamon said in a recent interview.
During the six-month academy, Beamon has stood out for her compassion, empathy and motivation, her instructors said.
“She has the ability to listen to what people are saying and not speak over them,” Officer Lori Schneider said.
Officer Nicole Miller, another instructor, recalled Beamon pushing herself to meet and maintain the physical fitness requirements and her calmness in training scenarios, particularly those related to domestic violence.
Beamon previously interned at District 7 in the domestic unit, which is when she first applied to become an officer.
“She’s a beautiful person on the inside and out,” Miller said.
Beamon will take her oath at a time when policing has been under intense scrutiny for several years following high-profile police shootings nationwide. In Milwaukee, a fatal police shooting sparked two nights of violent unrest last August in the city’s Sherman Park neighborhood.
“I was thinking, plain and simple, how do I help? How can I be part of the solution?” Beamon said of watching the news coverage last year.
“Seeing stuff like that is hard because I live here,” she said.
Beamon herself is part of the solution because she has the rare quality of being able to communicate with all people, said her mentor, Sgt. Sheronda Grant.
“She’ll actually listen to people regardless of what background they have and what neighborhood they live in,” Grant said.
“She’s not going to look down on people who may not have what she has and that in itself is a great quality.”
Grant serves as president of the League of Martin, an organization of African-American police officers that promotes the hiring and retaining of minority officers in the department. The Milwaukee Police Department is about 83% male and two-thirds white in a city where whites only account for about 36% of the population.
“I’ve told her to never count herself out for being a woman or for being African-American,” Grant said. “There are going to be people who think she shouldn’t be on the job because she’s a woman or a minority, and I told her never to doubt that she’s supposed to be here.”
Beamon has asked Grant to pin her badge on during graduation. After commencement, the recruits will be assigned to a police district for 14 weeks of field training, where they will work different shifts with several officers.
In the future, Beamon hopes to serve as a district liaison officer, a position that involves lots of communication with residents and attending community events. She also is interested in continuing to work with domestic violence victims and youth.
And she wants to continue to share her story to show others what is possible.
“People on a daily basis are dealing with all types of things — poverty, mental health — and it may be easier to say now in this seat, but that person, you can definitely make it,” she said.
For a long time, Beamon says, she didn’t believe that for herself. She thought she couldn’t be a police officer because she wasn’t fast enough or because she didn’t have a “strong face” and smiled a lot.
“But if you really want something and you’re willing to put the work in to get it, it will happen,” she said.