Trey's Story - Family over Everything

Trey's Story - Chapter 11 (Protect and Serve)

When I went through the police academy, we were constantly bombarded with protect and serve. Protect the citizens of the community, serve the public. Every police academy in America echoed that phrase, and drilled it into the recruits head. Protect and serve.

How ironic. Protect and serve was a phrase started by the Los Angeles Police Department, the most corrupt and violent department in all of America. And yet, everyone adopted their motto to frame what should be the foundation of every other police station.

A foundation that was built on lies made it hard to do better when the entire foundation was a lie. The LAPD didn't protect black people in LA, They were the biggest gang in LA, they beat and harassed black people all over the city.

They didn't serve the community. They used their power and authority to take advantage of those in the community, whether they were criminals or hard working citizens.

And yet, that was the foundation for which we started our most basic and fundamental premise, Protect and Serve.

Well, I took those words to heart. I knew that there were people, both good and bad, that needed the police to protect them. Those people needed to feel the security of a cop showing up to help them when they are in fear of their life, or of their property.

They want to feel the security of a cop being there to serve the neighborhood, being visible so those with bad intentions would think twice before bothering somebody else, or committing a crime.

But, who am I fooling here, this was the New Orleans Police Department, the NOPD didn't just emulate the LAPD, they may have exceeded the level of corruption of the LAPD. And yep, I was working in it, trying to do good and live right by the badge.

What they never told me in the academy was that NOPD was one of the most corrupt police departments in America. Federal authorities suspected that about fifteen percent of the New Orleans Police Department was corrupt.

The NOPD solved less than forty percent of the murders in the city, which was not even half of the national average. The rate was probably so low, because the NOPD was more than likely involved in many of the unsolved murders.

The pay for NOPD was so low, officers made more money working security and nightclubs, bars and strip clubs. Often those places were owned by drug dealers or members of organized crime, and officers quickly became more loyal to the criminal elements than protecting the citizens; They became the organized criminal element.

NOPD officers who got arrested for murder and other crimes were not an uncommon thing here in the city. They didn't tell new recruits that, in fear of running them off.

One of NOPD's finest was moonlighting at a restaurant like most officers do. Officer Park even got her partner a job moonlighting at the same restaurant. Citizens were supposed to trust the officers they hired to protect them.

Officer Park knew the workings of the restaurant, where they kept the money and what nights they had the most cash. Who would have thought that the officer they hired to protect them, would return late at night to rob them.

Not only did Officer Park allegedly rob the same establishment she worked for, she and the second robber shot and killed her NOPD partner who was working security that night; As well as every person there working the restaurant at that time, to get rid of all the witnesses.

That was NOPD. They didn't teach you about any of that. But, I always tried to blaze my own trail. I was never going to be another statistic for the NOPD, just like I fought like hell to not be another statistic from Calliope.

I wanted to give kids like me in the hood some hope, and a figure of authority they could trust. How could the kids grow up thinking they had a fair chance in life, when the people who were supposed to be protecting them were robbing and beating them.