“Two Pictures:
May 25th, 2020 was my 10-year anniversary of becoming a cop. In the first picture I posted, my wife is surprising me with a cake and my son is helping me blow out the candles. It was an important day for me, because – as most of you know – I’ve always wanted to be a police officer.
As soon as professional hockey player and R& B singer were no longer options, there was no other choice for me. I went to college, joined the army, served in Kuwait/Iraq, all to be better prepared for becoming a police officer. When I moved back to Minneapolis, I was certain I would be a cop for MPD, but due to the financial crisis this wasn’t really a possibility. Not many places were hiring so I applied anywhere I could. When Columbia Heights gave me the job, I was thrilled. Not only was I working for a diverse city, but I was literally working on the border of Minneapolis. For the next ten years I learned what it was to truly become a police officer. It wasn’t about the tickets and the arrests, it was about the partnerships you made. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action of the job but it’s not what fuels me to make this world a better place.
On same day as my 10-year anniversary, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd. There’s no other way to put this; this was a murder. I’ve watched the video so many times now, just trying to find some justification for the actions these men took, but I can assure you there are none. I watch this video and I get angry and I get sad and I clench my teeth and I hold back my tears and I ask, “Why!?” I say this not only as a police officer, but as a white man in America. I understand the pain it causes me even if I don’t understand the reason for this violence. What I don’t understand is the pain and fear it must cause all people of color, especially black men. We live in two different worlds and no matter what I’ve done while I’ve worn this uniform, this has not changed. I may have changed moments but I have not changed the world like I thought I would.
I’m not writing this to tell you, “I support you” or “I understand.” I do and I don’t, respectively, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to just tell you that I love you and that I’m sorry. I’m sorry George Floyd is dead. I’m sorry Philando Castille is dead. I’m sorry Eric Garner is dead. I’m sorry Sandra Bland is dead. I’m sorry Tamir Rice is dead. I want to tell you that I wish I was the cop who encountered them, because maybe they’d be alive today. I want to tell you that there are good police officers out there, trying to make this world a better place. I want to tell you everything I have done over the last 10 years to make people’s lives better, but I know right now none of that matters. Right now I just want to tell you that I’m listening.
Today was my first day back since this incident occurred. Last night, as my wife and I laid in bed, I could hear the flash bangs going off at the 3rd precinct, less than a mile from my house. Today I got out of bed at the last possible second and barely made it to work on time. I was dreading putting on my uniform but I did it, because that’s what I do. I’m a police officer, in good times and bad. We watched the video again as a shift and every one of my officers was upset. One of my officers came up to me several hours later and told me that he had never watched the full video and now that he has, he still felt sick 6 hours later. We talked about George Floyd and his cries for help. We talked about George Floyd and his limp body. We talked about George Floyd in the past tense because police officers had suffocated his present tense. And as a shift we mourned an unnecessary death.
