*At a press conference Monday morning, Dallas Police Chief David Brown was asked several questions about how he personally reconciles being an African American man and a cop.
“I’ve been black all my life,” Brown told reporters to laughter, adding that he’s had to reconcile the two for his entire career.
He described first wanting to join the police after returning home from college during the crack cocaine influx of the early 80s and finding his childhood friends caught up in the streets.
“We’re in a much better place in the world than when I was a young man here, but we have much work to do, particularly in our profession. And leaders in my position need to put their careers on the line to make sure we do things right, and not be so worried about keeping their jobs,” said Brown.
Asked what police can do to address improve relations with the black community, Chief Brown said cops have to hold fellow cops accountable. “When the one percent or two percent of officers don’t do the job in the right ways, say it. If that means separating them from employment, that’s just what it means. You can’t risk that one or two percent defining the 90 percent, or defining the profession by their mistakes.”
Brown said he is “running on fumes” after losing five of his officers from racially-motivated sniper fire during protests of the recent fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The chief was asked what he would tell young black men who have a distrust of police because of these repeated incidents.
“Become a part of the solution,” he said. “Serve your communities. Don’t be a part of the problem. We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”
Watch the entire press conference below:
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