- How do you feel about the Blue Lives Matter Movement,
in response to the Black Lives Matter Movement?
- I think they're both stupid.
- Both of them?
- Both of them.
- [Presenter] Some topics are hard to approach.
- [Newscaster] Growing outrage over a brutal police troupe.
- [Presenter] Either the subjects are inaccessible.
- Emotional reaction, after the acquittal
of George Zimmerman.
[Presenter] Where people are uncomfortable discussing them.
So we found those subjects in person.
Rented a space in Los Angeles.
And invited our audience and strangers to come in
and ask them anything.
- Hello, my name is Dorian.
I'm a Deputy Sheriff for a local Sheriff's department.
And I'm here to answer some questions.
- Hi, I'm Emily.
Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. I'm Dorian.
Let's jump right into it.
- Okay, jump right into it.
- Let's do it. - Um.
- Have you ever driven with your lights on,
because you had to use the bathroom?
(Dorian laughs)
- No.
- Come on.
- No, I've never done that.
- Okay. - I have the
ability to go in, anywhere and say,
Hey can I use your bathroom?
10 times outta 10, somebody's gonna say yes.
I've never, I've never had to do that.
- What do you think is the biggest stereotype
that you just really dislike?
- I think the biggest stereotype that makes me upset is that
every police officer is aggressive, wants to fight
and doesn't really care about what people are talking about.
Like, I am a person who loves Star Wars.
I play video games.
I have a kid.
We're not robots.
I have feelings and desires.
I have every, I have all emotions.
Just like everybody else.
- Was being a police officer,
like your childhood, like dream job?
- It's funny.
When I was a teenager? Hell no.
But when I was 17, I got robbed.
The first person I called was 911,
and they didn't come.
I grew up in Compton.
I grew up in an area where, you know
police weren't that, the response times weren't that great.
So I said, at that point in time,
I'm gonna try to become a cop,
so I can help somebody not feel the way I felt that day
when I got robbed.
- What's the most bizarre thing you found
in someone's trunk?
- A dead body.
- What! Wow.
Okay. - I guess you can
call that bizarre.
- What is a call that you'll remember
for the rest of your life?
- The one that I remember the most
that has the biggest impact ever,
is the call of an officer down in Palm Springs.
Where two officers were killed.
One was shot and wounded.
But one of the ones that were killed,
was the wife to one of the buddies
that I went to the academy with.
- How long ago was that?
- In 2017.
- Dang. I'm sorry.
- Do you ever get scared to do your job?
I wouldn't say scared.
I would say it's more of a,
I don't wanna die.
I have a little one at home.
I have a girlfriend at home.
I don't want to die.
I wouldn't say it's a fear.
It's an understanding that it's a possibility
that I may get shot and killed, on the job.
It's just a caution.
- The way that police are kind of held
to the whole protect and serve model.
Do you feel like police are keeping that mentality
as far as when there's corruption in your work environment?
- Absolutely.
A lot of people don't see when police officers get fired.
- Mm.
- I know the high profile cases
people want the people fired immediately.
I want this, 'cause we're in a type of environment nowadays
that it needs stuff to happen now,
regardless of what, you know,
any type of investigation needs to happen.
But we get in trouble all the time.
Police officers get fired all the time.
We are held to a high standard.
Just people don't see it.
- Do you ever encounter any moral conflict doing your job
- All the time?
- Yeah?
- All the time, yeah.
Sometimes I'm forced to do something
that I don't want to.
'Cause I'm bound by law.
Now, there have been times where I've taken
mothers to jail because they've hit their child
being that I have to do my job,
I have to arrest them.
I had that recently.
That was one of a moral conflictual that I had,
'Cause I really didn't want to arrest her.
- How do you feel about the Blue Lives Matter Movement,
in response to the Black Lives Matter Movement?
When being blue is an occupation that someone chooses
and being Black is not a choice?
- I think they're both stupid.
- Both of them?
- Both of them.
I don't like group think.
I don't like belonging to one group
and having to think about only what that group thinks.
- Mm.
- I think that's interesting.
I mean personally, okay, I'm black.
So, I feel like since being a police officer
is an occupation, like at the end of the day can go home
and take your vest and your badge off.
And you don't, you're not a police officer.
But I'm Black all the time.
Like, I don't get to take off my skin
and say I'm done being Black for the day, so.
- So you asked me that question.
You said that you're black.
I am also black.
I, I, like I said, thought is not monolithic.
You, you can't just agree with everything that you see
based on the group.
So that's why I say both of them are stupid.
Including all those groups, All Lives Matter.
This, that, it doesn't really matter.
To me, I just wanna be respected as a human being.
I will respect everybody that respects me.
Once you cross that line of disrespect,
I can't say what I want to do at that point in time.
- So in instances of like
let's say Eric Garner is the very prominent example.
Do you think situations like that,
which happen very often,
are created by a structure of policing?
Like fear based training?
Or do you feel like these things are just
a part of what bad cops do or
if you even believe in bad cops.
- Well, I'm gonna have to push back
and you say that they happen very often.
I think they're highlighted, now.
But I don't think that they happen very often.
But what I see sometimes,
are bad tactics, bad training.
I don't necessarily see bad officers until I,
you know it's like, I think that, that cop,
that shot that guy in the back in South Carolina.
Like, watching that that was entirely wrong.
But if you're talking about a situation like Eric Garner,
if that is against good policy to use a choke hold?
Then he was in the wrong.
A man lost his life.
That person should have been reprimanded.
It shouldn't have took five years.
I don't know their process in New York.
- Right. - But,
I take what I see on a situation by situation basis.
And then I also need to have all the facts in,
before I can make a, an opinion about it.
Because our job is to enforce laws.
It's not to have a.
I don't really have a personal opinion
when I'm on the job.
- You're a human being.
I mean it's gonna happen regard,
implicit bias is still there.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And, I understand that implicit bias,
sometimes turns into fear.
Where sometimes turns into negative consequences.
- But that, that's on both sides.
- I'm assuming this.
But I think sometimes when police like, pull people over
or stop people or just like are interacting with people.
They oftentimes perceive the person as a threat.
But I think they sometimes forget
that those people are also scared the same way.
You're kind of wary of we,
of the people you're pulling over or stopping
or interacting with.
We're wary of you, in the same way.
- But what are you wary of?
- If I'm gonna make it out of this interaction alive?
Like.
- Yeah, okay. I hear that so often.
I don't know where that comes from.
- There are racist cops.
There are cops that are afraid of black people.
Are you aware of that? Or
- Am I aware of that?
No, because the people that I work around, aren't like that.
And if they are, they've never shown me.
I absolutely believe that there are,
there are racist cops, in certain places.
I've never come across them.
- It might hurt for somebody who is a person of color,
Black person, Latino person to hear officers say that,
ah, maybe, or you know, or it doesn't exist
or it's not real.
- But who said that?
- I mean, officer in San Bernardino county
explicitly believes that, intrinsically, Black people,
poor Black people to be specific,
are intrinsically more violent
and more privy to crime than anyone else.
- Well, he's fucking wrong.
- Right? - Black people,
white people, Hispanic, all people commit crime.
And it's not about policing.
It's about economics.
It has, it's just where you grew up.
I've had somebody, one of my partners tell me
that he thought that Black people were
is how they were on TV.
- Right? Yeah. - That's negative.
And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
- Yeah.
- So I get that, but that's,
I wouldn't say that's the majority of us.
That's, like I said, even that's,
you're saying two people, you know?
- Yeah. - And two people,
sometimes they're gonna have to have their mind changed.
Sometimes they're not
- With respect to police brutality.
I personally have had two experiences
that have been, let's just say less than favorable.
In Arkansas, I was beat up in handcuffs and I was 16.
- No disrespect to your situation.
But you would have to tell me everything that happened.
- Yeah. So, so it was a fight, a brawl.
I believe it was called.
There was, I think there was five of us fighting each other.
Somebody called the cops, situation died down.
They arrived on the scene.
Everybody was in handcuffs.
You know, they told us we were all going to jail.
We understood. Sat down on the curb.
We were still talking to each other.
And officer looks at me, tells me to shut up.
I, then I then turned my focus on the officer.
At the time, I'm still all adrenaline pumped.
Still riled up.
And then I start talking about the officer.
Like talking about him, personally, like attacks.
And then with those attacks,
he began to get more and more angry.
He got on my face.
He told me to shut up, again.
I said, no.
And then he punched me in the chest and I,
I said you hit like a bitch.
And he punched me in the face.
To which I fell on the ground, all in handcuffs.
From then he became like the like,
yeah, now we're not talking anymore, huh?
Yeah. Now, now we're quiet. Now we shut up.
At the time, I thought, okay,
I shouldn't have said anything, this is my fault.
Only later to learn that that was police brutality.
And it doesn't matter what I said.
It doesn't matter if I was guilty or innocent,
that shouldn't have happened.
- This will. I don't want you to get upset.
- No, you're fine. Yeah, you're good.
- But what I dislike is when people on handcuffs
and they're talking so much crap.
When you're in the wrong, dude,
just take the shit that you took.
- Right.
- That's why I got here.
You're in handcuffs. Just take the lick.
Does that mean that you saying something,
I should put my hands on you?
Absolutely fucking not.
People can talk all the time.
I've been called coon.
I've been called uncle Tom.
I've been called a nigger by both Black and whites.
And I've had my blackness stripped from me.
I've I've heard it all.
And like I said, the majority of the time.
Nine times outta 10, it goes in one year and not the other.
- Right, yeah.
- So yeah, that officer is extremely wrong.
Should he, should he have gotten fired for that?
Absolutely.
- I didn't necessarily learn anything.
But I'm exceedingly glad that there is somebody
who is at the same capacity of understanding that I am.
Because a lot of times,
these conversations come to a dead end.
The fact that you are able to reciprocate
and understand and like kind of, you know
have a conversation in general.
I am definitely appreciative of.
And I appreciate you for being here.
- No problem.
What I want people to do.
Is I want people to treat people as individuals
and then you get to know that person,
and then you make a decision about that person.
That's not being a cop.
That's just people in general.
They need to do that.
- Absolutely agree, yeah.
- Thank you guys for watching.
- Please remember to like, subscribe, comment below
any other episodes you wanna see, and have a good one.
(calm music)