Black Officer Has Powerful Message For Racist Cops

“If you are white and you’re working in a black community and you are racist, you need to be ashamed of yourself,” says officer Nakia Jones.

An Ohio police officer’s impassioned response to the fatal police shooting of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Louisiana has gone viral.

The video of Nakia Jones, an officer in the Warrensville Police Department in Ohio, went live on Facebook Wednesday afternoon ― mere hours before the deadly shooting of 32-year-old Philando Castile in Minnesota. As of Thursday morning, it had over 2 million views.

Jones, a police officer since 1996 and the first black female officer in Warrensville Heights, says she “became a police officer to make a difference in people’s lives.” She shares in the video how upset she is over the footage of Sterling’s killing.

For the first time, she says, she was able to see police violence through the eyes of non-police officers.

“It bothers me when I hear people say, ‘Y’all police officers this, y’all police officers that. They put us in this negative category when I’m saying to myself, ‘I’m not that type of police officer.’ I know officers that are like me that would give their life for other people,” Jones says in the video.

“So I’m looking at it, and it tore me up because I got to see what you all see. If I wasn’t a police officer and I wasn’t on the inside, I would be saying, ‘Look at this racist stuff. Look at this.’ And it hurt me.”

A snippet of Jones’ speech, which was shared on Twitter, currently has nearly 20,000 retweets, and the response on social media to her words has been overwhelming. She did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

In the 7-minute video, Jones discusses gun violence and the criticism police officers receive, and denounces racist officers who work in black communities.

“If you are white and you’re working in a black community and you are racist, you need to be ashamed of yourself,” she says. “You stood up there and took an oath. If this is not where you want to work, then you need to take your behind somewhere else.”

She also calls for unity in the black community.

“Put these guns down because we’re killing each other,” she said. “And the reason why all this racist stuff keeps going on is because we’re divided. We’re killing each other, not standing together.”

Jones is in tears by the end. “Be smart. I am my brothers’ and my sisters’ keeper. That’s why I’m going to keep this uniform on.”

Jones ends the video by saying, “These are my thoughts. If you get upset, delete me. This is my Facebook page. God bless.”

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