Consider This from NPR - 'It's Top-Down': Three Generations Of Black Officers On Racism And Police Brutality

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Three officers, each from a different generation, weigh in on Derek Chauvin's murder conviction and other recent acts of police violence. Isaiah McKinnon became a police officer for the city of Detroit in the 1960s, and eventually became chief of police. He also served two years as the city's deputy mayor starting in 2014.Cheryl Dorsey is a retired Los Angeles Police Department sergeant who first joined the force in the 1980s. Vincent Montague is president of the Black Shield Police Association, which supports officers serving in the Greater Cleveland area. He's been in law enforcement for 13 years. To take a short, anonymous survey about Consider This, please visit npr.org/springsurvey. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, before we get to the show, we're trying to make this podcast better, and we'd love some feedback from you about how we can do that. To help us out, you can find a short, anonymous survey at npr.org slash spring survey. That link is in our episode notes. It only takes a few minutes, and it's a big help. Again, npr.org slash spring survey. And thanks! Growing up in Detroit, Ike McKinnon remembers a group of police officers known as the Big Four. They patrolled his neighborhood. Usually four very large white officers.

One day in 1957, when Ike was leaving school... These four officers grabbed me, threw me up against the car and proceeded to brutally beat me. And then at some point told me to get my ass out of there and I ran home. The beating he got that day wasn't exactly a shock. Because I had seen these officers beat up so many people in my neighborhood. But it did shock him into a decision about what he would do with his life. So I made a decision that evening I was going to become a police officer. Ike McKinnon didn't just become a police officer. He became the chief of police in his hometown of Detroit and the deputy mayor.

Even now, retired at the age of 77, he remembers his first night on the job as a young cop. And the supervisors, the sergeant and lieutenant came into the room and they announced roll call. McKinnon heard his name called and then the name of his patrol partner for the night, a white officer. And this officer said, Jesus effing Christ, I'm working with thee. And he said the racial derogatory term. This is my welcome to the Detroit Police Department. Yes. Yeah. And so I rode with him for eight hours and he never said a word to me. And it's just interesting because when I went out to the street, the black people didn't want to talk to me either because I was a turncoat. Consider this. Black police officers have a unique perspective on law enforcement in America. Today, we are asking three generations of Black cops whether they think a year of protests over police violence has created real change.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, May 11th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Today, it seems like everybody's got a bone to pick with the news. So it happens when somebody stops talking smack and just decides to

wage all-out war. First thing you do in an evasion, you eliminate the communications of the enemy. And what happens if they win? Visit Stockton, California for a story about a revolt against the mainstream media that's shaken up a city from NPR's Invisibilia. It's Consider This from NPR. By now, it's a familiar pattern. First, police kill or injure a Black person. Then a video comes out. People protest and debate accountability.

Right now, we're at different points on that timeline in different cases. In North Carolina, there's the case of Andrew Brown Jr. This week on Tuesday, police let his family and their lawyers view body cam footage of his death. 19 minutes of video. It's a fraction of the nearly two hours recorded on April 21st. And in Minnesota, former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter apparently mistook her gun for a taser. She shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Investigators say the mistake was avoidable. She faces second-degree manslaughter charges, and her next court date is next week. If convicted,

Potter could face up to 10 years in prison, plus a $20,000 fine. And of course, also in Minnesota, there's the case of Derek Chauvin. He was convicted of murdering George Floyd in state court last month. And last week, a federal grand jury leveled new criminal charges against him and the three other former Minneapolis officers who were present for George Floyd's death. The Department of Justice will argue that they violated federal civil rights laws with their excessive use of force. Like so many of you, I have closely watched the events in Minnesota. Also in recent weeks, Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a Justice Department investigation into possible patterns of discrimination and excessive force within the Minneapolis Police Department.

A week after this announcement, Garland announced a similar investigation into the Louisville Police Department. Officers in Louisville shot and killed Breonna Taylor just over a year ago. Most of our nation's law enforcement officers do their difficult jobs honorably and lawfully. I strongly believe that good officers do not want to work in systems that allow bad practices. Outside of those recent moves by the Justice Department, there's a police reform bill named after George Floyd that passed the House in March. Right now, it's stalled in the Senate. So we're asking how three generations of Black police officers are processing these events.

It's a question we've asked these three officers before, around this time last year. Oh, I'm optimistic because we have young white people that's involved. That's Isaiah McKinnon, who goes by Ike. He's the former Detroit police chief you heard from earlier. In Los Angeles, Cheryl Dorsey was less optimistic about change when we spoke last year. She joined the LAPD in 1980 and retired after a long career there. I think that these police chiefs are being disingenuous. You know, they say what they need to in the moment to kind of calm folks down.

And finally, Vincent Montague is president of the Black Shield Police Association, which supports officers serving in the greater Cleveland area. He's been in law enforcement 13 years. In the past, if a black woman stepped up, she's the angry black woman. A black man steps up, he's just angry. But now, black officers are having more of a voice and are not as afraid to say what needs to be said. So that was a year ago.

This week, we invited all three of those officers back to check in with them. Here's our conversation. Welcome. It's great to have you here. It's great to be back. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Will you start by reflecting on what we just heard, your voices from one year ago almost? How did what we've seen in the last year compare with what you expected? I'll go first. This is Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey. I'm right where I thought we would be. You know, there have been very few changes, and I think that's evidenced by what we continue to see occurring. I mean, even while all of that

was going on with the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, officers still don't seem to be able to control themselves and give pause when they decide to use deadly force, in my belief, as a first resort, rather than the absolute last thing you should use, having exhausted all other tools and opportunities when dealing with a suspect. Well, this is Ike McKinnon, and I think I'm eternally optimistic to a certain extent, but let's go back to the trial of Chauvin. For the first time in my long history, literally, I saw a police department that is the chief and there's a commander. There are other people who stood up or they went to trial and literally said that the officer and officers were wrong.

I've never seen that. And hopefully, when these other people are brought to trial, their fellow officers will come forward and say, that's wrong. That's not something that we in law enforcement do. That's why I'm optimistic to a certain extent. Interesting. So we've got kind of the glass half full and the glass half empty. Vincent, when you look at this, what do you see? I was optimistic last time. And the culture of policing, officers don't want that culture to change. And the officers that I deal with, they're afraid other cultures are changing.

And they don't like to be held accountable. And you can see them saying that at work. Like, gosh, guys at work now are getting terminated. Like, Caucasian men are getting terminated for things they would not have gotten terminated for in the past. And they're scared. You mean like racist words and actions? Yes. That kind of stuff? Yes.

Like this one white guy pulled this black male by his dreads out the garbage can. He was a suspect. He found him. He was hiding in the garbage can, pulled him out, dragged him on the ground,

put his foot on his neck at gunpoint to make an arrest. He was terminated. These things did not happen in the past. And just to clarify, did that incident you described happen in Cleveland? It did happen in Cleveland. And I think I'm happy for that we have cameras now and social media.

But like the sergeant said, is that officers are still committing these actions, though. I'm curious, Cheryl, when you hear about this, I mean, that officers who do racist things are getting fired, that violent officers in the case of Derek Chauvin are getting convicted of murder. The incidents you're describing are still happening. How do you weigh those things, right? That there is some measure of accountability, but it hasn't fixed the system. There's some measure of accountability, but there's still so much more to be done. And let me just double back to what the chief had to say about, you know, for the first time in many of our histories, we've seen police officers testify against another. There was much being said about the blue wall finally shattering. But listen, let's be clear. That's a police chief. That was his commander. I don't give Chief Arradondo any brownie points for doing that because, listen, he's in damage control mode still. He knew exactly who Derek Chauvin was. Derek Chauvin had 18 personnel complaints. And but for Mr. Floyd dying, we would see him well on his way to complaint 25, 27, I don't know how many more he could have amassed. And I'm curious, when these sorts of incidents happen, Vincent, what is the conversation like among officers?

And has it changed since the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer? Well, amongst African-American officers, the conversation in regards to the Chauvin trial were hopeful. And because we're in this environment, when you go into an office, this Fox News is on. And so these officers are repeating what they say. So they don't agree with the verdict. They don't think that he should have been found guilty. They don't think that he's going to get a lot of time. And so you're saying the white officers or the black officers don't think he should? The white officers. They think like that. So it's hard going into a work environment when you're hurting with the community and you're going to a work environment where people are

seeing these things. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised after talking to Cheryl and Isaiah, but I am surprised to hear that in the year 2021, the officers you serve with who are white are saying Derek Chauvin should not have been convicted. But do you see it's the mindset of these officers? It's not going to change. I mean, here we are. I joined in 65, 20 years later or so. 20 years later, Vincent joined. We talked about the same problems. That change isn't going to happen unless the community says, look, enough is enough. And that is most difficult when you have people, the systemic racism that exists in this country that people are denying, because some politicians said one last week or the week before that America is not a racist society. And we know that based upon everything that we've experienced from different locations, from different times, that that is not the case.

Cheryl, Vincent? Well, let me say this, because I don't want to give the impression that there's not anything possible, right? Certainly every police chief serves at the pleasure of a mayor who is an elected official, and elected officials understand one thing, and that's votes. People need to also join on these police departments. I encourage anybody who looks like me, black, to get on a police department because part of the change has to come from the inside. You need someone like me and Vincent and the chief present during the George Floyd nine minute and 29 second murder to pull Chauvin off of him because bystanders didn't feel they had the ability to do that. You need to be on those police departments and getting on is not going to be easy. I understand that if it were easy, everyone would do this, but we've

got to be as a people, as a black people ready to roll up our sleeves and do that very difficult work. But what's not difficult is taking a Derek Chauvin out of patrol. Working patrol is not a right. And so there are things that can be done, but the community, the community, the community must get involved and get engaged and demand it. Cheryl Dorsey is a retired sergeant in the L.A. Police Department, and her latest book is Black and Blue, the Creation of a Social Advocate. Vincent Montague is president of the Black Shield Police Association, which supports officers serving in the greater Cleveland area. And Isaiah McKinnon is a retired police chief with the Detroit Police Department, and he was also Detroit's deputy mayor. Just a reminder, we're asking for some feedback on this podcast from you. To help us out, visit the link in our episode notes to take a short anonymous survey. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.