In the wake of the continued, unjustified police killings of African Americans, one important majority whom we haven’t heard very much from are the thousands of police officers across the country who aren’t involved in the shootings.
The practice of holding your peers accountable for blatant wrongdoings seems to be a foreign one that’s not strong enough to break through the unspoken “code” of loyalty all too familiar among police forces in America, but one Black female officer is breaking the mold. Officer Nakia Jones of Cleveland, Ohio took to social media on Wednesday to call out racist, classist and disgraceful police officers in a brutally honest video that has sent shockwaves across the Internet.
“If you are White and you work in a Black community and you are racist, you need to be ashamed of yourself! You sat up there and took a oath,” Officer Jones says boldly. “If this is not where you want to work at, then you need to take your behind somewhere else. I decided to work in an African-American community because I’m African American and I wanted to make a difference.”
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Given the increasingly negative perception of police officers in general that continues to spread as more and more unarmed or unthreatening Black civilians are killed by police, it would seem logical that all officers who take pride in honoring their commitments to the communities they vowed to serve and protect would come forward to hold their crooked peers accountable, but that has not been the case. Officer Jones, however, didn’t hesitate in the least to specifically speak against officers who are murdering Black citizens. “How dare you stand next to me in the same uniform and MURDER somebody? HOW DARE YOU? You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she continued.
So why don’t we just keep it real? If you’re that officer that knows good and well you got a God complex, you’re afraid of people that don’t look like you, you have no BUSINESS in that uniform. Take it off!”
Watch the full version of Officer Jones’ emotional message to her fellow police officers below.
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