Three Black police force veterans sounded off on the current divide between police and the African-American community during a Thursday night “The Story with Martha MacCallum” segment.
Rodney Parks, Brandon Tatum and Doug Barrett, all longtime police force veterans, joined Fox News host Martha MacCallum to react to the contention put forth by a Black Lives Matter activist that Black people are no longer black, but blue, when they join a police force.
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“That is ridiculous,” said Parks. “I look in the mirror every day and see that I am black. When I put on the uniform, I am a police officer with a job to do, but I am still black. I don’t know where he got that from or what basis that would have for anything of what we do as police officers out there. We do our job. We enforce the law. And color does not come into it, but we do not forget our identity and who we are.”
“You have to separate your personal feelings and do the job,” Barrett said. “The job is to uphold the law, do your job first and to go home safely, but at the same time you are still a human being. You still have personal feelings. You still have emotions. Your job at that time is to keep yourself safe, keep your brothers and sisters to your left and to your right safe, and to ultimately go home. But at the same time, you can’t help but understand where these people are coming from.”
Tatum told MacCallum that he believes “taking a knee” is “disrespecting the country.”
“I don’t believe in disrespecting the country. I don’t believe in disrespecting my flag,” he said. “I love America, America has been good to me. I understand that we have had some things in the past that have gone astray, but we have corrected it, we are united. There is no more Jim Crow, there is no slavery. If people would come together and focus on the things that we have been able to accomplish moving forward, we can be a united country, but I will never, and I hope the world can hear me, I will never disrespect my flag. I will never disrespect my country.” (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Breaks Down Every Police Shooting Of Unarmed Black Suspects In 2019)
The group ended the segment by discussing the value of both proper training and making sure the right people become police officers when it comes to preventing future incidents of police brutality.