What it's like to be a Black officer policing Portland protests

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

 

 

 

See the whole thing, but I transcribed the parts I found relevant, it starts at 2:30.

 

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Interviewer: Can you tell us a little about the rapid response team? That's one of the crowd management teams. That's been the capacity you've been out in, in recent weeks, at the demonstrations. So, what was it like in that capacity in the first few weeks when the fence was up around the justice center for that RRT response?

 

Jakhary Jackson (JJ): I'll say this. I got to see folks that really do want change like the rest of us that's been impacted by racism, and then I got to see those people get faded out by people that had no idea what racism is all about. Never experienced racism. They don't even know that the tactics they are using are the same tactics that were used against my people, and they don't even know the history, they don't know what they're saying, coming from someone who graduated from PSU with a history degree.. it's actually frightening on how they say if you don't know your history if you repeat it, and watching people do that to other people, just because of what they decided to do with their life. 

 

 

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Interviewer: What are some of those interactions?

 

JJ: A lot of times someone of color, black, hispanic, asian, will come up to the fence and directly want to talk to me.. "Hey, what do you think of George Floyd? What do you think about what happened about this?" I go up to the fence, someone white comes up, "Eff the police, don't talk to him." That was the most bizarre thing because I could see it coming, I even had a young African American girl tell me "Why is it you guys aren't talking to us?", I'm like "Honestly this is now the 23rd day of doing it, every time I try and have a conversation with someone that looks like me, someone white comes up and blocks them and tells them not to talk", and then right when I said that, this white girl popped right in front of her and she [the black girl] said, "He just said that was gonna happen", I said "Told you, I told you." She looks at the girl and was like "Why did you do that?" I said straight up, said "I've been called the n-word, she's been called the n-word, why are you talking to me this way, why do you feel that she can't speak for herself to me? Why is it you feel you need to speak for her when we're having a conversation?" And she couldn't answer my question, all she said was "Someone told me to do it." So that has been a very strange thing to watch. I'm cool with people feeling like they want to help a movement, but then when you go to a gentrified community, and one of the first pictures I saw of one of the business was looted was a black owned business, I'm like "They're not even from here. They don't even know what they're doing." So, that to me was very angering watching a business that was looted and that business is across the street from a Safeway where before my father became a police officer here in Portland, he worked security at that Safeway. Talk about history and roots. And these folks don't even know what they're doing. It's divisive, it's hurting the community, I saw that press conference, clearly the community was not happy with that, and they even asked for the violence to stop. And they're still coming out having these violent interactions with other citizens, the police, at some point you just go "What is the end goal?", you know, "Bloody Sunday, Selma, those folks marched because they want the right to vote. They legitimately were beaten in the street for civil rights, to have rights that they were told they couldn't have because they were not even human." And then having folks screaming and yelled that they're being peaceful protests but you're not peaceful because it is violent and I actually had a cousin who went to one of the marches and he left and he said "This has turned into something else. This is weird", so having an African American male marching and then leaving, like I said, it's been eye opening.

 

 

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Interviewer: So there's been highs and lows, I know you and I were talking the other day and you were sharing just some of the hateful and racist things that you and other officers of color have been subject to, and I was just floored. I think that's some of the stuff that people haven't been seeing or hearing, and we work very hard within our agency to train, recruit, and retain a diverse population of officers, can you share a little about that, the experience?

 

JJ: It says something when you're at a "Black Lives Matter" protest, you have more minorities on the police side than you have in a violent crowd, and you have white people screaming at black officers, you have the biggest nose I've ever seen. You hear these things, and you go "Are these people gonna say something to this person? Naw." That's just one example. Having people tell you what to do with your life, that you need to quit your job, that you're hurting your community but they're not even part of the community. Once again, you as a privileged white person telling a person of color what to do with their life, and you don't even know what I've dealt with, what these white officers that you're screaming at, you don't know them, you don't know a thing about them. There are racist people out in the world, absolutely, there are bad cops out there in the world, we don't associate with those people, they make us all look bad, that's not something that I stand for, that's not something that my coworkers stand for, and I've been called the n-word, I can't even count. In the time I've been a police officer and having white officers jump in and defend me and me telling them ignore it, and them being absolutely shocked, and they get to see it. When you're standing on the line and they're getting called those names, they're being accused of being racist, when you've seen those officers helping people of color getting blood on them, trying to save someone's life that's been shot, gang violence, domestic violence, and you see them and they're truly trying to help save someone's life, and they turn around and are called a racist by people that have never seen anything like that, never had to put themselves out there. It's disgusting. 

 

 

All it takes is one catalyst to wake people up, and if you wonder why the left are trying to burn history books and such, it's because people with any semblance of reason and understanding of history know their tactics are the very thing people of freedom and conscience reject. 

[TBoneTX 45,539]

Thanks for your intrepid, impressive, surely time-consuming transcription work of this enlightening dialogue.