ExclusiveIn a Tough Los Angeles Neighborhood, a Police Officer Rebuilds Community Trust | Deon Joseph

We were all, as young African-Americans, indoctrinated to hate law enforcement. We were basically, if you're black, you're just supposed to hate cops. When I actually joined the police department, 90 percent of everything I was told about law enforcement was absolutely false. And I ended up working with an incredible police officer named William Snowden. He works in a black community. And I heard he was this big-time legend who arrested 2,300 people, so I'm thinking, oh my God. And I was like, they're going to put me with this guy? Oh, they're going to hate me? They're going to hate him? We ended up working together, and it was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw. He's driving down the street, and I'm expecting to get shot at, and all I hear is, hey, what's up, Snowden? Hey, love you, Snowden. Hey, thanks for helping my mom, Snowden. And I was like, what the heck is going on here? It was like, I couldn't believe it. And as he could sense it, and he pulls the car over, and he says, look like you got something on your mind here, man. I said, why do these people love you so much, sir? You arrested half the people in this block, in this community. He says, no matter what you do, the people here understand that this is a crime-ridden area. Whether you're arresting them, whether you're counseling them, whether you're taking them to a mental health facility, whatever you're doing, as long as you treat them with human beings, they'll respect you. And as long as you're working with me, young man, you will treat everybody we contact with dignity and respect. And he did that. I watched him treat the drug dealers with dignity and respect. Oh, he arrested him. He was the best at that. But he treated them with respect. Dion, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. Oh, so glad to be back. Dion, you have an amazing story. You started kind of not liking the police as much, but then you became a police officer, and you have been serving in one of the most difficult areas in LA, Skid Row. We want to hear from you. How did you grow up? How did you start getting into this? Every aspect of my life made me what I am today as a police officer, from my parents, how they raised me, to my own negative contacts with law enforcement. Every one of those things shaped me. And I want to start with my parents, because I always like to give them honor because of who they are and what they were to me. My parents were two of the most incredible human beings on the planet. My mother and father raised 41 foster children across their 41-year marriage. And I watched them take in kids who were sexually abused, homeless, neglected, beaten, you name it. We even had a son of a neo-Nazi in our house. And this kid slept with knives under his pillow because his dad told him that the N-words were going to stab him and kill him in the middle of the night. And he told him not to eat our food. And then one day he got hungry and we caught him in the middle of the night eating collard greens and he actually enjoyed it. So it kind of changed his life a little bit. We watched him fall in love with us because the way my parents loved was not a patronizing style of love. If I got a hug, they got a hug. If I got in trouble, they got in trouble. It was an unconditional, non-patronizing style of love. And I watched them change these kids' life, whether they were staying with us for two weeks or two years. And what I loved about my parents is on the down-low, though they weren't supposed to, they would actually work with the parents of the children so they can reunite faster and become healthy families. That was amazing. Then my father, he had a construction company, a real estate business. What I loved about my dad was he looked at his own life. He was a victim of real, tangible, palpable racism. Not what these young kids are talking about today. They have no idea what real, palpable, cross-burning racism is. But that's what my dad grew up in. And because of that, he turned to crime as a young man. And he turned his life around one night while robbing a preacher in the middle of the night. He turned the guy over, was going to hit him in the head with a brick, and it turns out to be the pastor of the town. And the pastor looks at him and says, OK, Milton, you got two choices. You come to my church every day, every Sunday for two months, or I call the law and you'll never see the light of day again. And thank God my dad chose wisely, because I wouldn't be here, right? So my dad found the Lord, met my mother later on, and she became a devout Christian herself. And he said, I will never harm anybody to get what I need again. And what he also did was when he became successful, he reached back and hired individuals who were like him, passed over because of racism, discriminated against, couldn't get jobs anywhere else. That's how you give back. But if they were ready for work, he didn't just give hands out, hand out. He didn't believe in that. He believes in hands up, giving people a hand up. And he never called those individuals my employees. He always called them my friends. You'll never hear me call the people of Skid Row homeless, hobos, moms. You'll never hear that transience. I always call them my friends. And then lastly, my mom and dad fed the homeless in a responsible way. I can give a whole presentation on irresponsible giving of the homeless in a very responsible way that met their needs, their heart, their spiritual need and real needs for 10 years until my mom passed away. And it was just incredible to watch. And all that was in me. I didn't realize that that was so deeply ingrained in me until I actually ended up in Skid Row, a place I never wanted to be, you know, because it was so filthy and nasty. But after about three months of being in Skid Row and being afraid of it, I realized I was home. I'll never forget. I go home to my mom and I said, Mom, I work in chaos. Mom, I work in Hades, Dante's Inferno. Mom, why am I so comfortable? And she looked at me and said, Son, if you're ever comfortable in chaos, you're probably where God prepared you to be. And she was right. And I never left Skid Row, except for the one year to work with kids. But I stayed in Skid Row for about 27 years to try to be a champion for them, myself and my fellow officers. Yes. We are honored to be sponsored by Shen Yun. Shen Yun Performing Arts is reviving 5000 years of lost Chinese traditional culture. It takes you back in time to the magical world of ancient China with a unique blend of brilliant dancing, beautiful costumes and legends coming to life. The show choreography and production values are top notch. However, it isn't just a technical ability of the dancers. It's the inner beauty and the devotion of the artist that will stir your soul to move you to tears. Make sure to go see it this year. Go to ShenYun.com and book your tickets today. It was spectacular. So beautiful. Gosh, I thought I was going to heaven. Oh, it was electric. I'm getting chills talking about it. It gets a 10 from me. That's for sure. It was that good. Absolutely marvelous. Hands down the best show I've ever seen. So then how did you become a police officer? Well, that was a crazy story. I hated cops, you know, and I hated cops based on indoctrinations. We were all as young African-Americans indoctrinated to hate law enforcement. Basically, if you're black, you're just supposed to hate cops. Just like if you're black, you're supposed to be a Democrat and this and this and that. My favorite rap groups were Public Enemy, NWA, F the Police was always playing on my radio stations, you know. And then add in the fact that I ran into the negative exception of law enforcement in my life. I was racially profiled three times. I remember as a small child, my dad driving to Louisiana in his brand new Cadillac, getting stopped by the same agency three times within five miles. And he wasn't doing anything wrong. I remember that. So those things kind of stick with you on top of the indoctrination or the steady indoctrination that the cops hate you. So I had no choice but to be a police officer because my dad's business crashed. And as it crashed, I was out of work for three or four months. And I was like, put my name in so many hats. And I got told no. Multiple occasions. Finally, a friend and my uncle, who was a police officer, said, hey, the this department is hiring. Why don't you join him? That department, the Rodney King Department. Oh, hell no. That was me. I'm not doing that because I was always worried about what would black people think of me if I did this? Would I lose my black card? You know, as we like to say. And I had no choice. I met my wife. I wanted to provide for her. So I said, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to join that old police department. And I'm going to do it for like a year or two. Put myself in college. I'm going to leave. When I actually joined the police department, 90 percent of everything I was told about law enforcement was absolutely false. And the police department actually helped me erase many of my own prejudices. I fully admit that I had a prejudice, not a hatred, but a prejudice towards white people based on trauma that I experienced with them throughout my life. So I had that kind of prejudice going in. And I ended up working with an incredible police officer named William Snowden. And as we're on patrol, he works in a black community. And I heard he was this big time legend who arrested 2,300 people. So I'm thinking, oh, my God, this guy is going to be 2,300 people in one area. What area was it? In Oakwood, in a black community. And I was like, they're going to put me with this guy? Oh, they're going to hate me. They're going to hate him. We ended up working together. And it was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw. He's driving down the street and I'm expecting to get shot at. And all I hear is, hey, what's up, Snowden? Hey, love you, Snowden. Hey, thanks for helping my mom, Snowden. And I was like, what the heck is going on here? It was like, I couldn't believe it. And he could sense it. And he pulls the car over and he says, look like you got something on your mind here, man. I said, why do these people love you so much, sir? You arrested half the people in this block, in this community. He says, no matter what you do, the people here understand that this is a crime-ridden area. Whether you're arresting them, whether you're counseling them, whether you're taking to a mental health facility, whatever you're doing, as long as you treat them with human beings, they'll respect you. And as long as you're working with me, young man, you will treat everybody we contact with dignity and respect. And he did that. I watched him treat the drug dealers with dignity and respect. Oh, he arrested him. He was the best at that. But he treated them with respect. And not that I needed somebody to teach me that, because my mom and dad taught me that. But he affirmed everything I actually wanted to be as a police officer. The six foot four, blonde hair, blue eyed, big mustache, white cop, stereotypical look of a white cop, affirmed in me that you didn't have to be a jerk to be a police officer. You didn't have to be hard-boiled to be a police officer. And he helped me end that prejudice that I had more people I'd met, another officer, another white officer I worked with. And I worked with officers from all walks of life, black, white, Hispanic, gay, and they were all great. But since the focus has always been on white officers, as far as the negative, I have to tell these stories so the public knows that, no, it's not like that in most cases. Her name was Vicky. And I'll never forget, we went to a house where a 300 pound black woman was threatening to kill herself with a knife. And this 90 pound officer, when the woman grabs the knife to kill herself, jumps up, grabs the knife and is struggling with this 300 pound black woman to keep her from killing herself. And now I'm worried about my partner getting killed. So I draw down and my partner looks at me and says, don't, don't, don't. And she was able to wrestle the knife out of her hand. And she comes to me at the side after it was over. And she says, you would have had every right to do what you do, what you did, what you did. I understand why you pulled your gun out. He said, but I'm all about preservation of life. And I was like, man, it was so refreshing to hear that, that there were police officers who thought like this because I had every right. I thought my partner was going to die. But she saved a woman's life who may have been trying to take her. So things like that, you know, really changed my worldview about police officers. And meeting some really great cops from all walks of life helped me erase some of the trauma, hurt, and that produced biases in my heart towards other people. Did you have personal experiences that caused those biases? How did you develop those biases? Absolutely. I could start when I was a small child. I talked about the time my dad was pulled over by a white cop multiple times in Louisiana. But I remember my mother taking me to a restaurant at seven years old and we were hungry. And when she ordered the burger, I remember the manager having a real attitude with her. And when the burger was ordered and I bit into my burger, there were staples inside of it. I bit into staples, you know, things like that. I remember in junior high school, I went to a junior high school where kind of like they integrated a lot of black kids in, but it was mostly a white school. And I'll never forget, they had these white stoner Nazi guys. And I'm sitting here in the bathroom going to this restaurant and they cornered me. And I had to fight off four white guys who were trying to dunk my head in the toilet because I was black. I won. But these things were really, really traumatizing for me. Like someone actually hated me because of my skin color and other things, being racially profiled three times as a young man. And it really didn't help the stereotype that I bought into about people as a whole, certain groups of people as a whole. So those are what shaped me. But I thank God that I was shaken from that by meeting. I always say this, in the absence of meaningful contacts, we tragically, and that's all of us, black people, white people, gay people, whoever, we tragically rely on stereotypes of one another. And that's the most dangerous thing you could do. You have to step outside of your comfort zone. You've got to step outside of your bubble and force yourself to meet people and dialogue with people different to you. And that's how we can put a cap on racism, shaking our fists at each other, blaming each other, saying someone is guilty of being a racist based on the skin they're in. These things do not help in this country. Actually, they're dividing us like never before. And I'm glad I learned that lesson, surprisingly, as a police officer. Yes. Now, Dion, you mentioned your partner managed to arrest these drug dealers. But with respect, what did it look like? Well, it looked like this. It was funny. He did it so much to where they wouldn't even run from him. Like he would pull up. He'd go, hey, you run. You holding? Oh, man. And he said, hey, look, don't run. I got you. And he would get out and handcuff him. And he says, what's in your mouth? And he'd spit it out into his hand. And he said, come on, Snowden said, look, can you at least let me call my this? And he would let them call his family and whatever. Just really cool. I remember there was a seven six foot ten mentally ill guy. He had to be about three hundred fifty pounds. Terrifying looking man. But he and he was mentally ill, too. And he was losing it. And Snowden walks up to him and he says, hey, called him by his first name. He tried to calm him down by talking about his parents. And he said, listen, I don't want you to get hurt. Can you turn up with your hands? And he did. Snowden was the only officer he listened to. Only one. And I watched Snowden treat him with such kindness. And I'm terrified because this guy, if we would have pissed him off, we would have had to shoot this guy. But he handcuffs him. And I remember I handcuffed him and I pinched his wrist on accident. And he goes, oh, and I'm like, oh, I freak it out. And so it was like, calm down. Never forget. Some officers responded because we put out a backup. And one officer pulled out a baton and started running towards the guy. And Snowden tells him, hey, knock it off. Knock it off. You hit him with that thing. We're going to end up shooting this man. And man, he was just breaking down every stereotype I had about police. I remember as a young black man, I was told by Ice Cube and Easy E that they're going to shoot us on sight. That's that wasn't happening. He was trying to save this man's life. So those are things that really shaped my views and shaped how I ended up policing. And I work with a couple more officers like that who are just the same way. And that's what that's what it was. That's what it was. How long did it take you to change your opinion of being a police and be happy with? It was my probationary period. Once again, it was working with so many different people who cared in different ways. Now, I'm not one to sit here and sell to people that all police officers are perfect. It's not true. Police officers are a microcosm of society. And I want to say this because it's so important because we've gotten such a bad rap over here. We're a microcosm of society out of 330 million people in the United States of America. How many of them do we believe are decent people, whether they're black, white, gay, straight? Do we believe that most of them are decent people? I do. And if you don't get off social media right now, OK, in that same context, out of 330 million people, is there a negative exception of all those groups? Absolutely. And those are the ones that get all the ratings. They get all the likes. They get all the clicks. They get all the shares. That makes the whole world makes all of America think that America is a rolling dumpster fire in a dry forest. Where do law enforcement agencies select their people from the American public? So it's going to match the American public. You're going to end up selecting individuals who are decent people. And then, unfortunately, you're going to end up selecting a negative exception. And when they rear their ugly heads, it affects us all. It disappoints us all, even police officers. So that's what I tell people. And I also tell people, you've got to give police officers the same grace you give doctors, teachers and the military. Let me explain. Doctors have killed 450,000 people in one year. Doctors. Many of the people they killed through malpractice, malfeasance, negligence and accidents were people of color. And there were witnesses right there who saw them do it. None of them get charged. And we still send our go to the doctor if we get sick. We still send our kids to the doctor. I love doctors. Teachers. Teachers have the hearts and minds of our kids in their hands. But let's not pretend that two or three times a week, we don't hear a story of a teacher molesting a five-year-old or a teacher, you know, with kiddie porn or a teacher sleeping with her 17-year-old daughter or son. Yet, we respect teachers and we should. And of course, we know they deserve more pay and more support. But let's not pretend that that doesn't happen. And we still send our kids to school. We still hail teachers as wonderful individuals as we should. Military. Anyone who puts on a uniform to defend this country, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force, whatever you're on. God bless you. I love you. I support you. Let's not pretend that during war, that horrible, horrible acts that should never have happened did not occur at the hands of American soldiers. Yet, we still honor the American military. So let's give law enforcement officers the same grace you give doctors in the military because we've killed far less. Like literally out of 330 million people, we only kill like a thousand a year on average. So that means no matter what color you are, you have a 0.0006 chance of losing your life at the hands of police officers. So you can still trust the police that most of us are going to do the right thing. Yes. Now, Dion, you managed to get involved in the most difficult neighborhood of LA, you know, Skid Row. How was it for you to get involved there? It was culture shock. And the primary reason is when I first joined the department, I worked Venice Beach. And Venice Beach was palm trees, beautiful ladies on Sunday afternoons. If you're into that sort of thing, I know I was. Great eating spots. You had Norm's, Versailles, great Cuban food. And then when I put my wish list in to go past my probation, my training officer said, hey, what areas did you pick? And I said, oh, I think I picked Southwest, Harbor, Central. And he goes, you chose Central? And he pulled the car over. And he said, you chose Central? I said, yeah. He said, oh, man, that's Skid Row. I said, dude, you got to wear a body count on the work there, man. Everybody has herpes, hepatitis. You're going to stick your hand in somebody's pocket and get stuck with a needle and give your wife a disease. Oh, man, Joseph, the cops are fat and lazy. It's dirty over there. Oh, and there's no place to eat. So three things you need to know about me. First, I was a germaphobe at the time. I like wore like 10 gloves to search people. It was like, that was me. Second thing is I'm a big dude. So, you know, I love to eat. And then the third, I'm a man of faith. Because when I heard the first two, I went home and got on my knees and said, Lord, you've always answered my prayers. Please don't send me to this godforsaken place called Skid Row. And this is the first time he never answered my prayer. I got the transfer. I was like, Central, like, oh, no, right? So this is me, my first day driving to downtown Los Angeles, Central. Northbound on 110 Freeway. And I'm looking at a beautiful, picturesque LA skyline. It's the West Coast symbol of America's economic might and power. And I said, what are you talking about? There's money there. This can't be that bad. I get off on 6th Street and I'm at the basin of America's economic might and power. And I see people drinking coffee, people in business suits, people smoking cigarettes. And I'm like, oh, that's not good for you. But hey, this is pretty good. You know how you get to some bad places in America? There's like a mile and a half stretch of territory that warns you first. You are now entering Hoodville. Get ready, right? There was no warning. As soon as I crossed one street, Spring Street, it's like I tripped and fell into Dante's Inferno, Mad Max Thunderdome, Waterworld, any natural disaster you could think about. Just about everything my training officer said was right. This is what I saw. And it's heartbreaking. I saw trash piled up to people's knees, tents. Some of them were on fire. I saw people having relations on the sidewalk. Not the kind of porn people want to see, but it was happening right in front of your face. But you had no choice but to watch it. People injecting themselves with heroin and crack cocaine. Mentally ill people who clearly were kicked out of hospitals, ambling down the streets with wristbands and hospital gowns. The saddest part for me was 80% of the people at the time looked like me. They were African-American. And I know the number one question I get when I speak across the country is, why is that? Here's why. The 1980s. Crack epidemic. It hurt low-income communities more than it hurt more affluent communities who could hide their addictions. And when these people in Compton, Watts, Carson, LA fell, they had a shorter path to fall and ended up in Skid Row quicker. And that's why Skid Row became 80% African-American. And I said to myself, I can't fix this. I get to the front desk. Because that was my first gig. The watch commander says, Joseph, you're first too much. You're going to work the front desk. I was like, thank you, Jesus. Front desk. I don't have to deal with this crap. I was wrong. You didn't have to go in the streets, right? No. First too much. Front desk. And the front desk was worse than the streets. Because it was in the heart of Skid Row. And I'm telling you, every 5 to 10 to 15 minutes, somebody would walk in from Skid Row. This was 1997. Missing teeth from getting assaulted. One guy walked in with his arm broken where he could swing it 45 degrees the other way. Another man came in with his hand over his stomach. I said, sir, what's wrong? He moves his hand and his intestines fall out. And the common thread with all of these people were this. They wanted help, but not police help. I said, sir, you want a police report? No, no, no. No, please. I can't snitch. I got to live here. Just give me an ambulance and get me out of here. Here's what changed me. When I first got my first patrol car, I got Chinatown. It's like Chinatown. Yes. Culture. People in the park stretching. Slippery shrimp on Broadway. You know. But I never got to spend any time there. Because no sooner than I parked my car, I get a call to go to Skid Row. Doo-doo. 181. Go to 7th and St. Julian for the attack in progress. That was rape. We get there and there's a bunch of people surrounding a woman sitting and rocking with her legs crossed, crying. I get out of the car. This is 1998. I get out of the car and I'm trying to help this woman. And she wouldn't tell me who hurt her. And you could hear these people say, oh, you must be new. She ain't gonna say nothing. You ain't gonna say nothing, right, girl? You're not gonna say nothing, right? Yeah, she didn't say anything. I had to take a Jane Doe assault report and have her sent to a hospital. We go back to Chinatown. We say, we're not going back there. Doo-doo. 181 respond to 5th and St. Julian. There was a man sitting on the sidewalk holding his chest. He had been stabbed. I said, sir, who did this to you? And there was a bald-headed gang member calmly walking down the street. You would think he would run. He didn't run. And I said, I called the ambulance for a guy. We go to arrest him. I said, sir, you're under arrest. He looked at me and says, why are you so, why are you being so gung-ho? You know, I'm going to be out in two days. They don't care about this. I was livid. I went to the station and wrote, in my mind, the world's greatest police report. Why? Because I came from a unified school district. So in my mind, it was the first time I dotted T's and dotted, crossed T's and dotted I's and did everything right. And I turned in a report and the watchman looks at the report and says, Deion, this is one of the best reports I've ever seen. This guy's going to jail. I came back from two days off and guess who I saw walking down the street? Him. The DA rejected the case. I go to detectives and I say, why was this case rejected? Deion, this was a great report. But the DA rejected the case because the person is on drugs and he's homeless. At that moment, it reminded me of the need to champion or be a champion for people. Why? Because when I was a kid, I had been victimized and nobody stood up for me. Nobody stood up for me. So it was time for me to stand up for these people. And that's when I said, you know what? I'm going to hold my nose. I'm going to get used to the smell. But I'm going to try and be a warrior and a champion for the people of Skid Row. And I did that for 27 years and I never, ever left. How I began to relate to them was this. My first seven years hooking and booking and arresting all the bad guys didn't turn out too well because I had a perception problem. 80% of the population was black and I'm black. So what did that look like to the community? That I'm just targeting black people. I wasn't targeting anybody. This is just the demographic of the community. Very important for people to understand. I cared about Skid Row then just as much as I do now. But I was going about it the wrong way. A noble way, but the wrong way for the time. And what happened when I became a senior lead officer, I tried the same thing and it didn't work. I arrested so many people and nothing was changing. Why would they come back out? They've come back out because I was once again, I wasn't working in a system that supported me in fighting crime in Skid Row. Because even at the DA's office back then, the mentality was it's just Skid Row. So all the bad guys we arrest, we get right back out. So when I became a senior lead officer, and I parked my car on a block out of frustration. Man, there was drug dealers and gang members everywhere. And I stayed on that block and I was praying and I was talking to God. I was like, what can I do here? And the answer was right there. As I stayed, all the criminals started to leave. And what I loved about the third hour, we had people coming from their residence. One guy with his little puppy dog and he says, brother, don't you ever leave this block. Don't you ever leave. Thank you for what you're doing. And that inspired me to do it again and again. Just standing there. And then you find, you discover the silent majority. You discover the real community. The community that was afraid to speak up because there was a figurative and sometimes literal gun to their head. Who are now brave enough to talk to you because the streets are clean. And I want to do more. So I picked a block after block after block. And we brought down crime down 18%. And then in 2005, we got the Safer Cities Initiative. And this one of 40 officers, 50 officers, undercover officers. And we brought crime down 40%, death down 33%. And I loved it because the real community came out. A lot of people read in the paper that we were just rousting homeless people. No, it's not true. I was trying to create an environment conducive to change so that the influence of the service providers there, the drug programs, the shelters, could be stronger than that other criminal element. Myself and 50 incredible officers. And in a period of five or six years, we did that. We turned Skid Row to a real community. People are graduating from drug programs faster. Less people were dying on the streets. Less women getting raped. It bothers me so much that in Skid Row, women make up 40% of the population. And two thirds of them have been victims of sexual assault twice. And what bothers me so much are the advocates who fight so hard. Say they're for women, but they fight so hard to keep an environment that puts women in constant danger. That helps pimps and human traffickers thrive. That helps the drug dealers thrive. You want to fight to keep tents up, blocking the sidewalk that you know gang members are using for nefarious purposes. So that's what I was up against. And the average person I know would have left. But let me tell you something. Once I got to know the people of Skid Row and know their story, I learned this. And I need all of America to hear me. Because when you hear about homelessness and policing, two sides get demonized. The police and the homeless. Let's talk about the homeless first. There are four kinds of people in Skid Row, like anywhere else in the United States of America. I discovered the first group was good people. The vast majority of people in Skid Row are wonderful. They're just disenfranchised. And there's no other place in the county will help them but Skid Row. Then you have good people who do bad things. These are your drug addicts. When you're able to get them clean and on their feet, guess what? You find out they're talented. You find out they're educated. They're smart. You know, they used to be athletes. One guy used to be an attorney I talked to. Then you have people who've made mistakes with redemptive qualities. These are ex-convicts who, unfortunately, due to a broken system, their parole officer gives them $221 a month and then sends them into Skid Row and says, don't get into any trouble. There's nothing but trouble waiting for you, right? And then you have, for lack of a better term, evil, evil people. That's the fourth group who descend upon Skid Row. This is what it looks like juxtaposed to anywhere else in the country. Because Skid Row is so tight and condensed, there's this constant and frequent cross-contamination of those four groups. And this is what it looks like. The good people often have to look the other way when they see something bad, even if it happens to them. Even if it happens to them. The good person who does bad things, the drug addict. When the environment is insane, they fall off the wagon and the same person you might see in a video hugging me and telling me they love me will go right around the corner and bust somebody's head to the white meat to get what they want. You ever want to want to get the drugs, get the drugs, they'll just do whatever. They'll do whatever when they're binging. But if the environment's not right, they're going to stay that way. For the person with redemptive qualities, the ex-convict. Oftentimes they recidivize because the temptation is too great. You're not making enough money. You're looking out the window. You're seeing thousands of dollars being passed between drug dealers and you want to get what we call put on. Or in Skid Row, they call it work. So you end up being an enforcer, a dealer, or letting your tent be used for criminal activity. And the evil people, the last group, pulls all the strings and even works with advocates or goes to advocates to tie our hands and stop us by using any legal means necessary to curb the activity. They pull all the strings and continue to intimidate the aforementioned three groups. That's Skid Row. And I like to think of ourselves, myself, and I'm not the only one, some other incredible officers as cycle breakers. We're trying to break the cycle in people's lives using reality, not leftist ideology, not progressivism, not conservatism, but based on what we see, based on what we know, using the law to break the cycle in people's lives and create the environment conducive to change. So these wonderful programs, and the programs in Skid Row are really good. I used to think they were a scam. But the vast majority of programs in Skid Row, they actually want to put themselves out of business. They just don't have the environment. So that's how I see our role in Skid Row. If they just take the handcuffs off of us, let us clean the streets, and you'll see a very vibrant, thriving community of people in recovery in Skid Row. Now, Dion, you were in the middle of all of this. Was there a point where you thought, what am I doing here? That was when I first got there. It was too much. Every societal failure from the crack epidemic to the war on drugs, every systemic failure, and I always tell people, cops are not the systemic failure. They're not. We're human beings responding to systemic failures, and they make us the tip of the spear. No matter how much they talk about social workers, it ain't happening. They're still calling me. So while I'm there, you're thinking, I'm wearing all these hats, and I'm just supposed to enforce the law. But the wonderful thing about that is, look, I'll take all that on. Because in this capacity, I get to know the people. I know what services they need. I know Johnny is a stone cold alcoholic. He needs an alcohol program. If I could just arrest him enough and get him into mandatory treatment. I know this lady is a meth addict. I got to save my friend, Raquel, because I know if I don't get to her, she's going to die of fentanyl. And my hope is that we partner with these programs that decided after the George Floyd death that we don't need the police. We need to partner again. We need to work together again. Because when we were working together before, it was having a wonderful impact on the community, and that's gone. But yeah, absolutely. It was a big challenge, but it was one that my parents, once again, my wonderful parents prepared me for. Because I saw them deal with some tough situations, and they turned people's lives around. So if they didn't quit, in the Joseph tradition, I can't quit either. Yeah. And you mentioned that somehow when George Floyd's situation happened, it actually changed things the way you partner up in the community. Can you tell us what happened? Well, the good news is in Skid Row, because I have such a wonderful relationship, and I've treated them like family, and they've accepted me, many of them. I'm not saying I don't have haters in Skid Row, but many of them have accepted me as part of the community. I was good. It's just when I stepped out of Skid Row, that's when the conflict, when I went to the historic core or Toy Town, that's when it was like, oh. And then we had these advocates coming in who were saying, oh, no, no. Based on our studies, police shouldn't be involved in anything. Get them out of the park. Get them out of the programs. And that was wrong, because we were already showing that it did work. Let me give you an example. In 2014, there was a program created called Operation Healthy Streets. How did that program get started? You're looking at it. How did I do that? I wrote an article. You can look it up, called Skid Row, A Mental Health State of Emergency. And man, people were upset at me for writing that, but it was the truth. Somebody said, hey, what he's saying is true. We need to get our service providers, social workers, out of their cubicles, walking the streets. So they created this program. 29 different agencies walking the streets to get people off the streets, but they said we don't want the police involved, because per our studies, people don't want the police helping them. So they went out and tried to do it all by themselves. Guess how many people they got off the streets? Two. When I heard that, because I didn't want it to fail. I mean, how long did it take them to do that? What? It was one day. They were out there, the first day. First day they were out there with 29 people combing the streets. And they only got two? Two people off the streets. So I found two other officers that I know the community loved and respected, just like me. And we went and said, we're going to Bogart. We're going in there, whether they like it or not. We went in there, worked with those service providers, and we got 17 people off the streets in one day. Why? We're first responders. We're first. We're the first one to contact these people in their worst states. We're the ones who arrest them, whether we like it or not. We're the ones who have to take them to contract hospital, or sometimes find them dead or dying in their tents. Why wouldn't you want us, pardon? Why wouldn't you want us helping you to guide us, guide you to these individuals? We've got to get back to that, because the current format is not working very, very well. I'm not saying it's not working at all, but it's not working as fast as we'd like. We want to be a partner in helping change people's lives. Now, do some of these people, do they think you're racist, because you're being arrested, because you're police, and you've been arresting mostly black people? Years ago, yeah, they thought I was Uncle Tom. All the names were pretty creative. Bootlicking, white man's lapdog. These names were really creative, but at the end of the day, once I showed them who I was, they don't think at all. They know I'm doing what I'm doing for them, not to them. See, the tough thing about being a cop is sometimes, depending on where you work, you only have time to show what you do. That was the first seven years of my career. I don't have time to explain myself. The latter part of my career, I had time to show them who I was, and when I showed them who I was, they understood what I do. Now, when I arrest somebody, it's like, oh, that dude must have had to go to jail, or if I get into a use of force, oh, if Joseph had to put his hands on you, you had that coming. I love when I hear that, because the people know I care. I'm part of the family. I'm part of the fabric, so they know I'm not trying to hurt them. But in other parts of the country, I feel bad that there are still agencies that are still struggling with that, which is why my second gig, my second act, hopefully, is to go around the country and talk to police officers across the country and agencies and community groups about how I was able to function in a complex adaptive system. What is a complex adaptive system? It's chaos. But you can function in chaos. You can have functional relations in chaos, relationships in chaos, if you do the work, and I want to show how I did the work to American law enforcement agencies, social workers, whatever. It's a labor of love. You got to have patience. You got to have gentleness. You got to have kindness, self-control. You got to have all those things, what we call the fruits of the spirit. But you'll get there in time. You'll get there. So what about the relationship with others? Do those service providers and the people that are advocates for homelessness in those areas, do they look at you guys as racist? Most of them, they don't. There are maybe one or two that no matter what we do, I could be saving a child with a Heimlich maneuver, and they'll write that I'm choking them or trying to break their ribs. Because their worldview of police officers, and it's in their bylaws, we can never think positively of law enforcement. They hate law enforcement that much that there's just one or two groups that no matter what we do, they're going to work together to tie our hands. And in my opinion, it's because somehow they benefit from the chaos. And anytime we try to bring order, that's when they show up to kind of like pull us back. But for the most part, what people don't know is we've had a wonderful relationship with some of the major shelters there. Great partnerships. I do community meetings there. They've helped me create awareness for women regarding rape and domestic violence. They invite me to all their events. You'll see me sometimes on Easter and Christmas with a red thing on, giving out turkeys and stuff like that. It's just a wonderful relationship we had. I just want to get back to the synergetic part where we all work together with PATH and other groups in our station for individuals we bring in who are chronic problems to get them connected to services while we have a, for lack of a better term, captive audience. We need that back. We had a program like that back in 2008 called SOS, where we had caseworkers from all across the county in our station. And when we brought in these rows of people for drug addiction and alcohol addiction, we'd sign them up for a 21-day program. And if they completed the program, their charges were dropped. That was an incredibly effective program. In 2009, we got 2,229 individuals signed up for the program. I would guess, based on looking at the area, about 30 to 35% of those people actually took us up on those programs. And you saw a decrease in the population. You saw more people graduating for the programs. And you saw people going home because I tell people, in my estimate, 35% of the people in Skid Row aren't homeless. They're just there because their loved ones couldn't handle them while they're in their state of addiction. And once you get them clean, I would find them in Englewood, Watts, Compton, Long Beach, my old stomping grounds. And I was like, wow, you're home. He said, yeah, I went home. I got cleaned up, and my wife took me back, or my mom took me back, you know, or my kids took me back. That's what I want to see again. I want to see it again. Because that synergetic effort by the police and service providers putting down their walls, putting down their stereotypes of each other and saying, you know what, we can work together. And we proved that it works. Why can't we go back to that? So, Dion, it seems like people know you in the Skid Row, in that community, and know the work you're doing. What about the rest of the country? Do you think you guys, the police is, how is the police viewed? Probably extremely in the negative. I believe slowly coming around because they're realizing that the narrative about police officers was basically false due to crime raising. But due to the BLM, this whole anti-police movement, it created a wide chasm between law enforcement and their communities that they serve. They love using terms like you're criminalizing people or you're over-policing. I don't think there's anything like such thing as over-policing in Chicago when you have 500 people get shot in a year. You need more police. They say we were over-policing Skid Row. But if you take away just two pairs of cops in Skid Row, people die. People die. You have to understand, when we respond to these communities, their skin is not their sin at all, at all. It's the level of criminality in the area. And if you work in a community where the demographic is mostly Hispanic or Asian, and there's a negative exception to that community, without fail, not because of racism or bias, you're going to end up arresting people that look like match the community. You know, so disparity doesn't equal bias. But we have to understand that the negative exception in some communities are so dangerous that we're forced to be there. And unfortunately, we're going to make those arrests. But BLM and folks like that were masters at painting a narrative that based on the numbers, this proves, because we've arrested more people of this color, that this is the proof of racism. But you don't tell the stories behind the number. You don't tell the stories behind it on purpose. And that's what causes the divide between black people and the police, white people versus black, once again, because these narratives are so strong. And what they do is they emotionally hijack people. Once you emotionally hijack someone, even the most intelligent person will lose the ability to reason. I was emotionally hijacked. I can say that because I'm a black male. If you would have told me about white people in the early 90s, I wouldn't have had a very nice things to say. If you would have told me about the police, I wouldn't have had very nice things to say because I relied on the stereotypes for the most part. And that's what a lot of these groups do. They thrive off the division. Every time police and the community start to come together, they send these people in to drive them apart. And that's how they benefit, unfortunately. But I'm praying, and I think it's starting to happen, that America is starting to wake up to this. I mean, just look, who benefited from Black Lives Matter? Let's be real. Their organizers. They raised a lot of money. They got a lot of mansions. But what changed in our community? Things got worse. Did shootings decrease? No, they increased because you purposely put fight or flight primers in the minds of young black people, telling them that they were going to get killed just for running a stop sign because you didn't tell the whole story. No, we didn't shoot that guy because he ran a stop sign. We shot him because he ran a stop sign. And then when we approached the vehicle, he reached for a gun. But you don't tell that part. You just put these cartoons of, oh, killed for jaywalking or killed for this, killed for that. And you emotionally hijack people. And that's what I'm hoping as time goes on. And I'm not saying that people aren't intelligent. We're some of the most intelligent people on the planet. But I'll confess that for me, myself as well, we've become intellectually lazy. We want to go with the first story that satisfies our stereotypes, our beliefs, instead of really digging a bit deeper, we become headline thinkers. Whatever the headline says, that's what I believe. White cop kills black 18-year-old baby. Now I'm upset. But then down in the fine print, the kid had AK-47. But by the time we read the headline, we don't want to read the rest. And our news agencies are guilty of this as well. They become activists themselves, where they're only telling part of the story or they're racializing the story and not putting the facts out and let people decide for themselves. Instead, they're guiding people to a thought that an officer did it because of racism. But studies have been done already that shows that in most shootings, racism had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it. So we've got to get back to critical thinking and less emotionalized thinking. And we've got to stop listening to these groups who thrive on division. In my opinion, I don't care if I get flack for it or not. I'm tired. I'm tired of the hate. I believe racism is just as bad now as it was back in the 60s. Minus the cross burnings, the lynching. But the feelings of hate and division towards each other is worse because there's this psychological damage being done to all of us. To where you got black people scared of white folks. White folks now hating themselves. You ever see the white person? I apologize for my privilege. I'm like, will you stop? Did you own a slave? Now, if you own a slave, we can fight right now. No, I didn't own a slave. Okay, good. Have you ever mistreated a black person? No, I haven't done that. Okay, you're not a racist. Let's talk about the meaning of racism. Racism, the original definition was when you see your race as superior, which in itself is not racism, but use that sense of superiority to hurt, devalue and harm others. That's racism. If you haven't done that in your life, I absolve you of racism. Okay, treat me like you treat anybody else. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and we're good. We're good. We got to get back to that. Now, to get back to that, what can Californians do? We got to start talking to each other. We got to stop showing up. We got to show up with open-ended questions. How do you feel about this? Or rather than coming to say, so you're a racist, so how do you feel about this? Right now, the way they ask questions, the way college students have been taught to ask questions is to put the person on the defensive first. So now they got it. Instead of answering the question from a rational place, they got to defend themselves and then defending themselves. Oh, but if you defend yourself, you're more of a race that proves you're a racist. It's ridiculous. We got to reach out to each other with open-ended questions. How do you feel about this? How do you feel about me as a black person? Okay, you know, some people aren't racist. They're ignorant. I've discovered that in life that a lot of white folks that I encountered, they weren't racist. They just don't know. Ignorance is not a put down. It just means you don't know. You've never been exposed, so you don't know. So there's some, you don't have to point fingers at them, bash, just educate them. So no, what you said wasn't right, but I know where it's coming from, you know, and vice versa. You know, we just got to get past the point of being so emotionally charged that we put people on a defensive when we're trying to talk to each other and connect. That has to be intentional. That has to be on purpose now. You know, I had to on purpose when I was a young officer, put down my prejudgments based on my traumas and say, let me get to know this white person. Let me get to know this, this gang member. I don't like gang members, but guess what? I mean, I don't like what they do, but I don't hate gang members. And when you talk to these gang members, they've had trauma themselves. It's forcing yourself to go beyond the stereotype that satisfies your narrative. And if we can do that in the state of California and ignore all the people that have us at each other's throats on purpose, they're doing it on purpose. They benefit from it really just based on the hatred in the world. I want everybody to stop relying on stereotypes. Stop it. It's killing us as a country. You got Democrats demonizing Republicans, Republicans demonizing Democrats. You got blacks against whites. And it's crazy. And really, if we sit down and talk, we have more in common than we don't. We really do. We all just want peace. We want to live our lives. And I think somewhere deep down inside, we do want to come together. It's just we got to resist the puppet masters trying to keep us apart. So yeah, stop relying on stereotypes and be open to understanding people. And I think if we do that, we'll be okay. Officer Dion Joseph, it was great to have you on California Insider. Yeah, thank you.