After the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and other recent cases of fatal police encounters, the public clamor for changing the culture of policing is running up against powerful opposition in the form of police union leadership, according to NBC News.
But in cities like St. Louis, Miami and New York, some of the calls for significant reform are coming from another place: within police departments themselves, among smaller pockets of officers who don't necessarily feel heard by their police unions or the department brass, which are largely white.
While these mostly Black police officers' organizations aren't as big and so don't wield the same influence as unions and fraternal orders with bargaining power and political pull, they do exist in dozens of communities and often share the same views as the residents they serve on issues of racial discrimination, inequality and overaggressive policing.
"This is a new era in America, and we have to embrace the change," said Charles Billups, president of the Grand Council of Guardians, a Black law enforcement association in New York whose membership includes about 3,000 New York Police Department officers. "If you keep recycling those same people in leadership positions, you'll never get real change. We have to get out of the past and move into the future."
Read the full story at NBC News.com.
