Brandon Dawkins, a friend of mine, Oaklander, and long-time Oakland Raiders Fan, gave me permission to share this great Facebook post tribute to an Oakland Police Officer named Mike. Here’s what Brandon Dawkins wrote, followed by some comments by others (names removed):
This is Mike. Mike is an Oakland Police officer. I met Mike 10 years ago in Section 102 of the Oakland Coliseum during a RAIDERS game. Mike is also one of the officers who patrols in West Oakland. When Mike sees me in the hood, he stops, gives me a hug, ask about my family, my kids, ask if we need anything. We talk football, he ask about the health and well being of everyone who sat in that section as we’ve sat there for years. Mike has become family to a lot of us. But he’s like that with EVERYBODY he encounters. Knows people on a first name basis. When he was at RAIDERS games, he was the same way. Everybody he encountered loved him and he loves us. He puts on that uniform for all the right reasons. He’s not gonna come into the hood and profile folks, he gets out of his car and makes human connections with people on the streets and treats everyone with dignity and respect.
For you trigger happy officers that come into our communities and shoot our people out of fear of our people, you make it hard for good dudes like my brother Mike. Yes, there needs to be police reform, yes, some cities like Oakland do give officers way too much money and the community suffers because we miss services that we use to fund police. But there’s real genuine dudes like Mike who does policing the way it’s supposed to be done, with dignity and respect.
With that being said, not all police officers are racist, bad human beings. But the ones who are, those cops should never be allowed to wear a badge.
Here are some of the comments left on the post page:
Mike is absolutely one of the best law enforcement officers I’ve ever known.
I went to Elementary School & 2 years of Highschool with Mikey.
You are so true with this Brandon Dawkins
. I always felt well respected when i met Mike, he even told me a few times that he even felt safe and well respected when i was in stadium (insidejoke). The counrty need more Officer Mike’s to nake this world a better to live.
In this rush to “defund the police” in the middle of The Pandemic, the real job should be to get rid of bad cops. We need a reset to do just that.
Stay tuned.
P.S.
Brandon added this:
and not saying that police shouldn’t be defunded, they should. I don’t want folks to take my words out of context. Oakland spends close to 50% on police overtime which is way too much. Oakland is in desperate need for community programs to be restored. That doesn’t take away from what Mike does in the community which is treat folks as human beings. Just wanted to put that out there Zennie
because my position on policing isn’t stated in your vlog