An LAPD detective reflects on Dallas shootings

LAPD Detective Brent Hopkins was finishing up some reports late Thursday night, writing up why some of the suspects taken into custody should be exonerated and kept out of jail, when he could hear sniper fire and panicked voices.

Inside the West LA Area police station where he works, he saw the images flash across a television screen. Officers were down in Dallas. Someone was purposely shooting at them.

Just then, a call came into the station. A robbery. A bad person doing something to a good person, Hopkins thought.

“When that robbery call went out, everyone still went out to that,” Hopkins, 37, said. “Even with this very heated atmosphere, I still see all of my coworkers showing up for work. I still see them working incredibly hard. It’s not like they’re just cowering behind their desks, afraid to go into public.”

Despite the passionate debates across the country about racism and police brutality, most officers still want to protect and serve, Hopkins said. But it’s not always easy. Last week’s fatal police shooting of two men, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday, and Philando Castile, near St. Paul, Miesota, on Wednesday renewed a deep resentment between African Americans and law enforcement. Then on Thursday night, a 25-year-old Army veteran who told police he wanted to kill white people, gued down five police officers and injured nine others.

As he drove into work Thursday moing, Hopkins listened to the way a host from a local radio program framed the Miesota shooting as “the latest victim of police.”

It was a description that didn’t sit well with Hopkins, an eight-year veteran of the LAPD who is also a delegate with the Los Angeles Police Protective League and a former Los Angeles Daily News reporter.

“When terms like that are carelessly tossed around and the narrative is all police officers are out to kill people, that can really stir people up,” Hopkins said. “Every time one of these shootings comes up, I always think it’s unfortunate because they all get lumped together as yet another example of police killing another man, usually another black man, as if it’s one nebulous national police group.”

Hopkins called the shootings of Sterling and Castile tragic, and said law enforcement need to acknowledge when police officers make mistakes. But he also reiterated what President Obama said earlier in the day: that most police officers put their lives on the line, so the public can have a normal quality of life. In a department as diverse as the LAPD, Hopkins added, police officers are “not just for one race. They’re there for all races, and they are of all races.”

On Friday moing, rappers the Game and Snoop Dogg led a march to a graduation ceremony for the LAPD’s newest officers to call for more dialogue. Hopkins agreed with the men’s message.

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“I think rather than yelling about the same things over and over again, everyone needs to take a deep breath,” Hopkins said. “We need to think about the same situation. I say this all the time: The community is our best partner, because we can’t do our jobs unless we talk to each other.”

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