A strong voice of condemnation emerged this week in Nakia Jones, a black female police officer from Ohio. In a scathing Facebook Live video, Jones cast shame on the police officers who shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.
“I’m so hurt, it bothers me when people say: ‘police officers this’ or ‘police officers that,’” says Jones . “They put us in this negative category, but I’m saying to myself, ‘I’m not that kind of police officer.’”
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Jones works in Warrensville Heights, a city of 13,000, but she makes plain in the video that she was born and raised in the rougher side of Cleveland, where she currently resides. Her words for the Baton Rouge officers were damning, at one point telling them to take off their uniform and put on a KKK hoodie.
“If you are white, and you work [as a police officer] in a black community, and you are racist, you need to be ashamed of yourself,” says Jones. “If you’re afraid to talk to an African American female or a Mexican male or female because they’re not white like you, take the uniform off. You have no business being a police officer,” she later continues.
A large portion of her message isn’t just condemnation, however; Jones expresses both sadness and rage over what these actions (and presumably those in Falcon Heights) do to tarnish the meaning of her badge.
“How dare you stand next to me in the same uniform and murder somebody?!” she demands.
