I could have been Floyd: Ex-police chief
As the police beat me, I vowed to become a cop
George Floyd could have been me. That was my first thought when I saw the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin choking the life out of George Floyd.
In 1957, I was a freshman in high school. As I walked home, four white police officers jumped out of their cruiser, threw me against it and beat me severely. I hadn’t done anything wrong. The more I screamed, the more they beat me. Time seemed to stand still as I saw the anger on their faces and the horror on the faces of African American people who gathered around us, yelling for the police to stop.
After what felt like hours, they told me to get my ass out of there. I ran home crying but did not tell my parents, fearful that it would endanger them. I was 14, the same age as Emmett Till when he was killed in Mississippi two years earlier. I was scared, angry and confused. Why did they hurt me? That day, I promised myself that I would become a Detroit police officer and change the Detroit police force from the inside.
After graduating and serving four years in the Air Force, including a deployment to Vietnam, I joined the Detroit Police Department on Aug. 2, 1965.
As a rookie officer, I encountered overt and casual bigotry and routine denigration and brutality. Many white officers refused to ride with African American officers. Some made cardboard dividers in patrol cars — designating the “white” section from the “colored.” Others used Lysol to “disinfect” seats where African American officers sat. Some of my white colleagues refused to speak with me during shifts, dared not eat near or with me, and frequently used the N-word to describe me and the African American citizens they were sworn to protect.
Two years later, I felt the sting of betrayal during the 1967 rebellion. One night, after a grueling shift, two white DPD officers pulled me over. I was still in uniform, badge affixed to my chest and a #2 pin on my collar, indicating that I worked in the 2nd Precinct. I identified myself as a fellow officer, thinking they would see me as an equal. Instead, one pointed his gun at me and said, “Tonight you’re going to die, n-----,” before discharging his weapon. I dove back into my vehicle and miraculously escaped.
I realized then that not even our shared uniform could save me from their racism. And I wondered, if they were willing to shoot and kill an African American police officer, what were they willing to do to Black civilians?
As a supervisor a few years later, I stopped a group of officers from beating three African American teens. I was finally in a position to hold them accountable for their excessive use of force. But my precinct commander yelled at me for attempting to “ruin the lives of those good officers.” I witnessed this kind of complicity repeatedly. When other officers reported abuse, as they should, they were ostracized, transferred to lesser assignments and treated so poorly that many quit.
During these years, my mental salvation was education. I earned three degrees, including a master’s degree and Ph.D. When I became chief of police in 1994, it was important for me to root out the bad officers — like those who beat me as a teenager and tried to kill me in 1967. I also worked to rebuild trust with the community, which for too long felt like it was at the mercy of a violent and indifferent police force.
It was incredibly difficult, however, to eradicate implicit biases and systemic racism in the department. When I was chief, a white DPD officer pulled me over one night. He approached my unmarked vehicle and without looking at me, asked for my license and registration. Wanting to see how far this would go, I said, “Yes officer.” At some point, he recognized me and immediately apologized. My question to him was, “Why did you stop me?” He said, “I thought it was a stolen car.” The officer was reprimanded.
If my uniform, badge and education cannot protect me from anti-Black violence, what can? Now is the time to get to the heart of the matter: We must fundamentally restructure police departments so they fulfill their promise to serve and protect all people.
This should include a change at all levels. Here’s how to get started:
❚ Require higher aptitude and fitness standards for incoming recruits.
❚ Require regular mental health checkups to deal with the stress and challenges of law enforcement.
❚ Develop a nationwide database of all officers to prevent bad officers from jumping departments to avoid marks on their permanent record.
❚ Stop promoting officers to become supervisors who have multiple disciplinary complaints, particularly to positions of first-line leaders like sergeants and lieutenants.
❚ Rehabilitation within police unions. Their intransigence makes it almost impossible to fire and hold officers accountable for breaking the law and the public’s trust.
Police departments should be at the forefront of a transformative model of public safety. The arrest of Derek Chauvin and three other officers in the death ofGeorge Floyd is a move in the right direction. As people worldwide demand accountability, now is the time for a meaningful change so that no one, especially African American men and women, has to ever again think “that could have been me.”