[liberationtech] A Cop's Confession

[Yosem Companys]

Sharing this post on the Truman Scholarship Foundation list with
Liberationtech and with friends and family who might be interested in
reading Renae's story and potentially lending a helping hand.

>From the liberationtech perspective, there is no app for solving this
wicked problem our society confronts, but perhaps someone enterprising out
there can figure out how to use technology to amplify voices like Renae's.

*****

From: Renae Griggs <colorfulcoach at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:35 AM

Dear Trufam,

I’ve been contemplating this email for a couple of weeks, sort of hoping
that the urge to send it would go away.  But this morning, I’m compelled to
disclose my dilemma in all of its selfishness, and open myself up to an
opportunity that is disruptive to my own agenda.  Sometimes there is a need
so urgent, we have to lay down our scripted plans to step up to a higher
calling.

For those of you who don’t know me, I was selected as a Truman in 2000,
following - from some points of view - an exceedingly successful police
career in South Florida.  The impetus of my being chosen as a member of
this extraordinary community was, at its core, because twenty years ago I
saw the impending certainty of what has been exposed to the public since
2012 when Trayvon Martin was killed and thereafter, in the senseless deaths
of black men and women at the hands of cops and self-appointed law
enforcement proxies, with impunity. In 1999 I created a national
organization to try to prevent it.  Clearly, I was not successful.


I left my police career after a little over a decade because of what the
cop culture had done to me, because of what I myself had done and not done
as a member of that culture, and what I had seen other cops do that was
condoned and concealed by the culture draped in sovereign immunity for
unconscionable acts of brutality, bias, and blatant injustice carried out
in various places from their own homes to the streets to the courts and so
on. Though my career was short comparatively speaking, many veterans of the
profession have commented that I crammed a thirty-year career into ten.
That resonates with me. I felt it in the damaging internal consequences of
my exposure.

As a caucasian female in a police department led by and significantly
populated by known KKK members, I know what is true about the influence of
white supremacy on policing and the price being paid by people of color,
particularly African-Americans, because of the perpetuation of an
institutional culture that has not changed.  On the night of March 31,
1988, I witnessed the murder of an eighteen-year-old white Rabbinical
student by a seventeen-year-old black kid while on patrol.  Upon chasing
him and catching him with the help of an old school K-9 cop, after I had
handcuffed the juvenile who was proned out on the ground and compliant, I
did what for me I would have believed impossible after only fifteen months
on the job.  Instead of standing him up and calling for a squad car to pick
him up, I stuck my gun to the back of his head and screamed at him to tell
me where the gun was.  When I turned to the K-9 officer, expecting a
reprimand for a completely unwarranted use of force, instead he nodded his
head giving me the go-ahead to execute the teenager as we were cloaked in
the darkness and isolation of a thick-brushed ravine along the highway
where the foot pursuit took place.  This was my day of reckoning as to the
difference between what I thought I was signing on to as a police officer
who truly wanted to help people, and the culture of my environment which
was the antithesis of my true character. I didn’t pull the trigger, but in
counting the cost of telling the truth about what had happened, I erred on
the side of silence.  A decision that weighed me down for years, until I
started doing something about it.

And yet, what I’ve done thus far has been in the safety of the shadows of
the background.  Then in 2018, as a result of meeting Truman Scholar, Lynn
Boughey, at the TSA National Reunion, I’ve been working on a book that
tells the whole story about my police career and how I’ve tried to redeem
myself since.  That book is my agenda as I continue to push through its
composition.  When my job at a nonprofit organization dried up in April
this year, having not secured another job before COVID took over, I thought
I’d use the pandemic restrictions as a time to write as much as possible.
And I have.  However…

I’ve become extremely uncomfortable sitting back outside of the
conversation about what is by all accounts, both in my experience and in my
very purposely focused advanced education, my field of expertise.  I have
an “inside-full” perspective about the construct and context of the law
enforcement culture that I cannot keep to myself.  Being silent at a time
like this is comparable to never telling anyone that as a rookie cop I was
directed by a veteran white officer to shoot a handcuffed, compliant black
teenager in the head thirty-two years ago.  That being said, I’m not
interested in simply getting involved for the sake of making myself feel
better.  I want to be an integral part of how we make the changes I knew
needed to happen twenty years ago.  I did try to provoke those changes, but
law enforcement pushed back and after several years I gave up.  Actually
since then I’ve been advocating for men and women in prison and coming out,
because by and large, they are much more receptive and eager to become
better versions of themselves than any cop I ever met.  My encounters with
this population of talented, resilient, resourceful, and determined folks
has changed me for the better and transformed my life for good.  In my
selfishness, I’d rather keep working with them and leave this police thing
to someone else.  But we’re Trumans.  We do the right thing.  Not the easy
thing.

I’ve shared all of that to say that I know some of you exist in orbits of
access to decision makers in various aspects of city, county, state, and
federal governments where my background can be of particular value for such
a time as this.  I’m asking you to open a door if you feel prompted to do
so, enabling me to step into the destiny of changemaking I was born for.
Thank God I’m not the same person I was the first go ‘round.  I’m ready to
dig in until we actually get something done - together.  The status quo has
been undisturbed for decades and decades and decades.  I’m ready to be
disruptive.  I just need to know how and where.


God Bless,

Renae Griggs
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