Dallas "black" officers torn between police work, communities of color…

Black and blue: Dallas black officers torn between police work, communities of color

Melvin Williams has been called a “? ,” an “uncle Tom,” and a "sell-out n-," all because of his job.

For 10 years, the former Southern Methodist University defensive end has worn another uniform, that of a Dallas police officer.

And in that time, Williams, 35, has had to face what many black cops face — the tension of a life at the intersection of the color line and the thin blue stripe.

Williams is one of nearly 900 black police officers working for DPD. The department, which is 50 percent white, has been led since 2010 by a black man, David Brown, who retired this week.

In a series of frank interviews, Williams and other black officers talked with The Dallas Morning News about their jobs and their lives and about escalating tensions between police and many communities of color over the killings of black men across the country.

It's a difficult and even painful balance they must strike, policing poor black communities where crime is often high and relationships with police start with suspicion and get worse from there.

"When dealing with most African-Americans, they automatically see you as an enemy rather than someone there to help solve a problem," Williams said.

He joined the force because he wanted to help those who could not defend themselves.
But it's not an easy job. And it can be even harder on a black officer, he said.

Sometimes, in black communities, they "view white cops as someone of authority, while we black officers are considered no better than the help," Williams said.

" And ... blacks want you to sympathize with them when they are wrong," he added. "It is tough."

They understand

For some black officers, easing that tension is as simple as saying "just comply."

But many black cops also have a deeper understanding of the frustration that black citizens feel when it comes to the police. They have personally experienced the anxiety that so many black communities describe regarding law enforcement.

Even as cops, they become uneasy when they or their black friends are pulled over.

"I still have apprehension when I'm pulled over in a different city," said lieutenant and watch commander Roy Alston. "That's because I'm a black man being pulled over in a different city.

"We exist in a state right between the two," he said. "Where does our loyalty lie? Does it lie with our community or does it lie with policing?"

Alston, 50, joined the Dallas Police Department in 2003. Seven years later, he earned his doctorate from Walden University with a dissertation on police misconduct.

In it, Alston concluded that "because of misconduct and misdeeds over time, police legitimacy and people's trust of police is getting lower."

He predicted there would come a flash point between black communities and police. "People would say, 'Enough is enough; we have to stand up against the police or even fight the police.' I knew there was going to be an issue of trust in communities of color," Alston said.

Like other officers, Alston sees the atmosphere in Dallas as better than that in other cities around the country. The credit goes, in large part, to a community policing strategy Brown embraced throughout his tenure.

That effort paid off. In early July, protests broke out across the country after the killings of two black men in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul.

In Dallas, on the night of July 7, a protest downtown remained calm, with white officers and black protesters even embracing one another.

That changed suddenly when gunman Micah Johnson opened fire, wounding nine officers and killing five. Johnson, a black man, told a police negotiator he was upset about recent killings of black men by police, according to Brown.

Alston said he has not felt compelled to participate in any of the demonstrations "but that doesn't mean that I don't understand it. And that most certainly doesn't mean that I don't understand the historical context and the significance of it."

There have been times in his own career when Alston has felt the need to step in, he said.

"I've been in situations where I had to stop officers from using more force than necessary. And those examples have always been with minorities," he said.

Williams, who works with the department's SWAT team, views the protests from a different angle.

He questions why there isn't more outcry from protesters when gunfire involves two members of the same community.

"Black people are shooting each other every day in this country and nobody is saying anything about it," he said. "This whole movement, Black Lives Matter and all these other people, they give black people a pass for shooting black people. As soon as someone else does it, all of a sudden it adds extra value to a black person's life."

An organizer with Black Lives Matter was recently quoted as saying that "inter-community crime happens in all communities across the country and it is a problem that the movement of Black Lives Matter is focusing on."

Brokering peace

On a recent overtime shift, Williams zipped through the streets of Pleasant Grove, heading directly from one call to another. At one stop, he helped broker inter-generational peace between a quiet, lanky 14-year-old, her mother and the child's grandmother. The dispute began with shouts and anger, and ended with Williams offering up a smile and a handshake.

At another stop, he helped explain to a young mom that allegations of custody violation must be backed up with proper paperwork.

One family was black, the other brown.

Williams acknowledges that his perspective on the increasingly tense police protests has earned him some scorn, both from fellow officers and "random people."

You could hear the angst in his voice when he rattled off the list of slurs sometimes hurled his way.

"When it comes from somebody who is close to me, say a family member, or even a frat brother ... someone I've been close to, it hurts — I'm not going to lie to you, it does," he said. "But from some random person that comes up to me at the gym, when they start to talk to me sideways, I just walk off."