A Female Police Officer Calls Out Racist Cops in Heartbreaking, Furious Facebook Video

In the days after Baton Rouge police officers shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling, a black female officer from Cleveland felt compelled to address the murder on a public platform. In a Facebook Live video, Nakia Jones sounds off on other cops who, she says, live with a “God complex.”

Jones talks about being torn between her oath to serve and protect and the fact that she’s a part of the community police are slaughtering.

“If you’re that officer that know 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,” she says. “Take it off.”

The roughly seven-minute video posted on Wednesday starts with Jones’ recounting of what happens in many households now: her son coming home from work and showing her video of a black man’s death at the hands of the police, in this case the shooting of Alton Sterling.

“I watched the video over and over and over and over and over again, so that I wouldn’t become judgmental,” says Jones. “Because not only am I a mother of two African American sons, and I have African American nephews and I have brothers, I am also a person that wears the uniform with the blue. I’m also the one that puts their lives in danger. I wear blue.”

Jones says she became a police officer in 1996 and grew up in the hoods of Cleveland, which is also the community she chose to serve. This is where the video starts to hit on the familiar, frustrating idea of “good cops.” You feel yourself wanting to turn it off. “I’m looking at it and I became so furious and so hurt because it bothers me when I hear people say, y’all police officers this, y’all police officers that. And they put us in this negative category when I’m saying to myself, I’m not that type of police officer,” says Jones. “I know officers like me that would give their life for other people. So I’m looking at it and it tore me up because I got to see what you all see. If I wasn’t a police officer and I wasn’t on the inside, I would be saying look at this racist stuff.”