Over his 32-year police career in Dallas, Terrance Hopkins has seen tremendous changes in the profession. For rookie Black officers in a predominantly white and conservative field, he said, the prevailing feeling used to be that you were lucky to be allowed on the force.
Now, it is not unusual to see veteran Black officers in top leadership roles. But the issues that plague the profession’s reputation in Black communities — excessive uses of lethal force, racial profiling and routine brutality from officers — have not become relics of the past under diverse leadership. That reality has been laid bare by the beating death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, and the in-custody restraint death of Irvo Otieno that involved Virginia sheriff’s deputies.
