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cops can sometimes make bad things worse and cops know this as well you know there's some cops that I wouldn't want
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to ride with they ratchet things up and can't de-escalate things say things to make everybody angry again
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or just start people to go going at it with you causing you to be the villain when they're fighting each other because
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they have no control over their temperament so there are bad cops yes without question cops will tell you that as well
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and I would say not bad cops people who should not be police officers this is former Dallas police chief David
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Brown he was born in 1960 in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas a predominantly African-American Community
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where his family had lived for three generations his father was in and out of the picture
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his mother did most of the parenting of David Brown and his two brothers Calvin and Ricky I was unaware that I was
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growing up in the poor parts of town and that it was segregated but it was very much segregated I was very much in the
00:01:08
you know underserved part of Dallas at the time you remember about police when you're
00:01:15
yeah I mean I think I have this idea of what I used to think about cops when I was a little girl I wonder what your
00:01:22
first thoughts of the police were you wanted to avoid the police at all costs just based on the perceptions from
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the adults the adults didn't care for the police and how they treated them this and my
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the adults in my life when I was a young child grew up in Jim Crow uh separate but equal so they had the most negative
00:01:46
views of police and and I caught on to their reactions to police they just tried to avoid him and I I did the same
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when you were growing up were the police in your community all white yes I very rarely ever saw
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an African-American Or Hispanic police officer and and the record reflects that after becoming a cop
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they're just it's just a long history of it being predominantly a white male profession
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his family had warned him to stay away from the police since he was a little boy so when he told me he was going to
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leave college early and apply to the police academy they couldn't believe it his father said cops mistreat people in
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the community still in July of 1983 he showed up at the Dallas Police Headquarters and
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filled out an application he was accepted and began the 17-week training during the day he'd attend lectures and
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Firearm Training and at night change diapers and feed his infant son at the police academy he made good
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friends with a fellow trainee a military veteran who was much older his name was
00:03:01
Walter Williams Walter Williams and David Brown graduated from the police academy at the
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same time just before the holidays they were given batches and guns and both assigned to the Oak Cliff neighborhood
00:03:15
of Dallas which meant David Brown ended up patrolling the streets where he grew up and sometimes arresting people he had
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gone to school with my neighborhood was was particularly hit really hard by the crack cocaine
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epidemic of young kids experimenting with crack cocaine becoming addicted and subsequent violence and that was your
00:03:38
hope is that you'd make your neighborhood safer I was so naive I was actually on side of the crackling
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epidemic I was that naive I was going to come in swoop in like Superman in a couple years make my whole neighborhood
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safe and it wasn't just the neighborhood it was my mother lived there all of my friends live there and their parents
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lived there these were people I knew this this is you know more personal than just coming back to
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uh quote-unquote neighborhood it was people that I was trying to protect were you hoping in in some way that you
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could change the perception African-American teenagers and also I guess your father had about the police
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the most honest answer is no I I was intent on putting drug dealers in jail and I had the view of let's put them all
00:04:30
in jail like God sort them out I was complicit with the mass incarceration failures in this country and and did not
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look beyond the booking the person in jail so short-sighted 21 years old 22 years
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old with no thoughts that there wouldn't be enough jail bad space to arrest your
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way out of crime David Brown and Walter Williams often rode together as partners in those early
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days their shift was 2 30 in the afternoon to 10 30 at night when they didn't ride together they'd
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check in the next morning and brag about who'd arrested more people they'd talk about how to get promoted within the
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department one of us needs to be Chief Walter Williams said Thirty Years Later David Brown would go
00:05:23
on to become chief of the Dallas Police and six weeks after that his son would shoot and kill a police officer I'm
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Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] back in 1988 David Brown was promoted to Crime Scene investigator at a time when
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the crime rate in Dallas was at an all-time high the third highest in the country
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do you remember those early calls and would your heart start beating fast would you get nervous walking up to that
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door not knowing what was on the other side yes and and it's it's addictive that
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what you described that that that's an adrenaline rush it's not only our heart being fast but
00:06:17
it's you get a dry mouth uh your sensory is overloaded and you just get wide-eyed and you your your
00:06:24
head's on a swivel and you get attached to that feeling and and most cops love being in that environment because
00:06:34
they're able to [Music] um like an athletic event do it over and over you get really good
00:06:41
at it and you know not knowing what's going to happen is the attraction to the job particularly for many uh young cops
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as a crime scene investigator he worked the graveyard shift One Night in August of 1988 he got a call for assistance at
00:06:58
an apartment complex in Oak Cliff when he got there he learned from Patrol officers that a domestic violence call
00:07:05
had gone wrong and a man hiding in the bushes had shot a police officer I was taking pictures I was collecting
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fragments of evidence on the on the ground you know looking at blood splatter on the ground and just trying
00:07:21
to figure out what happened based on the evidence and I saw a pair of glasses and they looked familiar and I asked who
00:07:31
had been involved in this police involved shooting and the sergeant there says oh a guy named Walter Williams
00:07:38
and uh the the ground shook under me my heart dropped I could not believe it and
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I raced to the hospital and what did you find when you got there he had been shot in the head
00:07:52
and officers had gotten his wife Joanne Williams and brought her to the hospital
00:07:56
and were there he wasn't expected to make it and and so I did what Joanne wanted me to do
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and set with uh her two teenage kids and one very minor child all night until she called
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and said that the doctor says he's brain dead and wanted me to get permission to basically
00:08:18
pull the plug and and one of my advice on what to do I'm 28 years old I don't know what to
00:08:24
tell her and I tell her what I think is right I said don't do it just give Walter every chance to make it
00:08:29
you'd regret it for the rest of your life and she didn't give that permission but by the time she
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got off the phone with me and walked back to check on Walter he had passed [Music]
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it devastated me to my core in all of my belief systems just I didn't know what to believe but I didn't understand as a
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20 year old how bad things happen to good people I did not understand that at all and it didn't seem fair I would
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learn much later that that's that are our faith or our goodness doesn't protect us from tragedy I
00:09:02
learned that much later I did not know that at 28. and I I wanted to quit the department and I was unable to
00:09:10
function and I was torn with how to go on but he didn't quit the department two years later he took and passed the
00:09:22
Sergeant's exam and was assigned to the 9-1-1 in dispatch centers in the basement of City Hall managing 9-1-1
00:09:30
operators and this was 1991. the same year that Dallas set a homicide record with more
00:09:37
than 500 murders many were drug-related I had demonized those people I had no compassion form at all
00:09:46
actually I had this name for him I wanted them in jail out of my neighborhood I blame them
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for the deterioration of my neighborhood the drug user and the drug dealer I made
00:09:55
no distinction at all and I was wrong I was so wrong and only through my brother's death that I
00:10:02
realized will you tell me what happened to him uh I heard that my brother who was a truck driver
00:10:12
had made a stop in Phoenix Arizona and went to purchase some crack and smoked it and it wasn't it was fake
00:10:23
apparently went back to either get his money back or get the the drug got in a fight and the drug didn't shot
00:10:32
and killed him I never called the police department to find out the details I didn't want to
00:10:40
know I I didn't see how it would bring him back and I can imagine that you having seen yourself as the guy who
00:10:50
was going to come in and clean up all this drug stuff and make everything better
00:10:55
that must have been a hard blow to hear to hear about your brother and what had happened yes yes
00:11:03
definitely and made me humble it it Stripped Away my judgmental attitude toward people who use drugs
00:11:16
because I came into the profession as a police officer and I condemn them as people that need to be put in jail who
00:11:22
had no compassion for me no empathy for me at all and when drug addiction hits close to
00:11:29
home it will make you reconsider your your holy and denial attitude toward people and uh I was no better than them
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I just didn't have that experience I didn't have the experimentation David Brown says that in a strange way
00:11:46
working at the 911 dispatch Center helped him cope with the death of his brother a constant flow of emergencies
00:11:54
he says puts your grief and perspective but after 18 months there he was ready to work outside again he took the SWAT
00:12:03
Sergeant exam and soon after he had a new position the most competitive and physically demanding in the department
00:12:11
in 1993 Bill Clinton visited Dallas and SWAT officers were part of the president's Protection Team
00:12:18
by now David Brown's son DJ was 11 years old and when he heard his father might meet the president he asked if he could
00:12:26
come too DJ shook hands with both Bill and Hillary Clinton and then Hillary Clinton
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invited DJ on board Air Force One to look around [Music] David Brown was promoted to Lieutenant
00:12:45
and was assigned to community policing he wasn't happy about that at all it seems to me that SWAT and community
00:12:54
policing are about as opposite ends of the spectrum as you could possibly be yes what is special weapons and tactics
00:13:01
and and the line that best describes SWAT is that when Citizens need the police they call 9-1-1 when the police
00:13:07
need help they call SWAT that's the best line I can give on what SWAT is in the policing culture and we're lacking no
00:13:15
self-esteem at all we're pretty pretty arrogant folks but when you get held hostage that's who you want coming
00:13:21
someone with that kind of arrogance that that we're going to be able to save the hostage and and in this
00:13:28
Siege without uh problems so that's why and so that's that's in contrast to community policing where you're making
00:13:36
means in the community and trying to establish a relationship a lot of sit Downs uh over uh Kool-Aid and cookies
00:13:47
and a lot of playing with kids in the park and very little probably no traditional policing no writing tickets
00:13:55
no answering calls just creating interactions with the public that are positive how long did it take you to stop being
00:14:02
mad about this new reassignment I talked to a grandmother looked like my great grandmother Mabel Henderson who
00:14:09
who was the matriarch of my family and she looked like her had mannerism like her and I stopped and talked with her
00:14:16
and we we could have talked all night and uh I felt like this is why I came into policing and how
00:14:27
did I get so distracted with self-serving you know adrenaline rushing activities
00:14:35
that did not meet the needs of the citizens that I loved and that that grandmother in the Housing
00:14:42
Development there at West Allis reminded me of what public service was all about it
00:14:48
was about serving the public not serving yourself even gave out his personal cell phone
00:14:53
number to residents he'd been so successful in every role he was assigned at the department people
00:15:00
started to take notice he was promoted to second in command and finally to Chief he was 50 years old
00:15:08
when he heard the news he immediately called his mother she told them to be careful just as she
00:15:15
had back in 1983 when he told her he was going to become an officer Ed is swearing-in ceremony he says he
00:15:22
kept thinking of his friend Walter Williams he was sworn in on May 5th 2010. six weeks later on Father's Day David
00:15:34
Brown was in church when his phone rang he didn't answer the caller was a police chief from a
00:15:41
suburb of Dallas he left a voicemail saying that his son DJ had gotten into an argument with his girlfriend and that
00:15:49
officers had been called to the scene but everything was fine the girlfriend had decided to go stay with her parents
00:15:55
for the night he said I just wanted to let you know give you a heads up so I didn't try to call DJ on us on his
00:16:03
cell phone and it wrote over to his voicemail and I just told him to call me I didn't mention the phone call I had
00:16:09
gotten I wanted him to tell me exactly what was going on without me being accusatory I just wanted to hear from
00:16:14
him and I was hoping it to give him some relationship advice uh and to go apologize to his girlfriend
00:16:21
and say you're sorry no matter what happened you just uh you take the first steps to say say
00:16:27
you're sorry the next phone call I get is from detectives at the scene there at his
00:16:34
apartment describing something that I just could not believe I could not believe
00:16:43
DJ had shot and killed a man he didn't know in the parking lot of his apartment complex neighbors called the police and
00:16:51
when an officer arrived DJ shot and killed the officer many more officers arrived and DJ was killed by police
00:17:00
gunfire he was 27 years old the pain was unbearable the same type of unyielding pain
00:17:09
take the breath away it darkens the room and it isolates you from your reality I mean you just don't think
00:17:21
it's real [Music] PCP was found in his system which David Brown says may have triggered a bipolar
00:17:30
episode he didn't know his son was struggling with bipolar disorder until it was too late
00:17:37
after that every time he dealt with cases involving mental illness David Brown says the thought of DJ
00:17:46
how do you square being a police officer a police chief and a father in a situation like that
00:17:55
you don't there's no squaring no there's no squaring There's no practical way there's no step do this on the first
00:18:04
step and do this on the side this is what you got to do there's no advice that helps the ease is the pain there's
00:18:12
there's no logical way to approach that particular incident that happening in my
00:18:18
life is it's that small taking a deep breath and okay thank you Lord thank you for
00:18:28
helping me and here's the strangest thing about it is everything that you know about yourself
00:18:38
and life is Stripped Away to its core it is what's ever there helps you get through
00:18:52
he returned to his work as Chief weeks later and threw himself in head first he immediately began expanding the
00:19:00
community policing program in Dallas he partnered with the University of North Texas at Dallas to study what
00:19:06
wasn't working in his Department as chief he changed the way the department disciplined officers if an
00:19:14
officer used excessive force Chief Brown fired them he says he wanted to send the message
00:19:21
that officers can't abuse the very people they're supposed to protect and then on July 5th 2016 in Baton Rouge
00:19:31
Louisiana two white police officers were arresting a 37-year-old African-American
00:19:37
man named Alton Sterling he was pinned to the ground whom at least one of the officers shot him
00:19:45
the very next day in Falcon Heights Minnesota a police officer fatally shot 32-year-old philando Castile in his car
00:19:55
his girlfriend filmed and live streamed the shooting on Facebook he just shot his arm off
00:20:01
we got pulled over on larpenter told Dr Reed's friend I told him to get his hand
00:20:06
out he had you told him to get his ID sir and his driver's license oh my God please don't tell me he's dead
00:20:14
please don't tell me my boyfriend just went like that yes I will sir I'll keep my hands where they are on July 7th
00:20:22
people in cities all over the country gathered to protest the shootings of Alton Sterling and philando Castile
00:20:29
they were two of 963 people killed by police officers in 2016. according to the Washington Post database
00:20:40
a protest was planned in Downtown Dallas and organizers had been in communication
00:20:46
with the Dallas Police so everyone would know what to expect from everyone else and at 7 pm more than 800 people
00:20:54
gathered I was at work that whole day until the protests began to disperse and they begin to disperse and I I began
00:21:07
to tell the second in command their Police Department that well I'm headed home let me know when the last protester
00:21:13
leaves at 8 58 PM someone opened fire at first no one knew where the bullets were coming from protesters began
00:21:23
running it became clear that the shooter was not aiming for civilians but specifically aiming at police officers
00:21:34
get back protesters scattering in panic as their peaceful March against officer-involved shootings wound down I
00:21:40
would say probably about 20 gunshots rapid succession I think they might have got somebody one witness catching the
00:21:46
standoff unfolding from the ground police exchanging gunfire for over 45 minutes while trying to negotiate and
00:21:54
there's somebody else down over there an officer trying to catch the shooter off
00:21:58
guard I was having conversations with people and watching social media people were
00:22:02
just saying the world seems like it's going upside down yes and I was I couldn't afford to be distracted
00:22:10
on all the scenarios or what could go wrong I could only afford to be focused on
00:22:17
making the right decisions what's what's the right decision what's the best decision what protects life I only
00:22:24
focused on was I was clear-headed enough to know how critical the decision making would be
00:22:34
so this is a person of interest as you can see they're in camouflage and they have a rifle strap slung with a rifle
00:22:42
but sticking up and so if anyone knows or recognizes this picture please immediately call 9-1-1 do not approach
00:22:53
this suspect uh we'll bring them to justice the shooter was a 25 year old army veteran named Micah Johnson
00:23:03
high-powered assault rifle and killed five officers seven more officers and two civilians were wounded
00:23:11
Johnson made his way to the El Centro Community College where he took cover at the end of a long hallway and he's
00:23:18
continuing to threaten to kill more officers he's laughing about having killed the officers that he had had shot
00:23:29
and he's threatening that he has Bombs all over downtown that he's placed bombs everywhere downtown
00:23:37
and we negotiate with him for near is nearing four hours of negotiation most of the solutions the police would
00:23:46
normally employ had the potential to harm another officer and even if that potential was small David Brown wouldn't
00:23:54
take the risk there had already been too many wounded he told his team that he wanted to hear as many new ideas as
00:24:02
possible the commander Bill Humphrey explains to me this idea of using the bomb robot
00:24:08
in a way that had never been used in American policing to basically weaponize the bomb robot
00:24:15
rap wrap a pound of C4 on the extension arms of the robot and distract Michael Johnson through uh
00:24:28
negotiations you know get into talking and and get them agitated so he doesn't hear the humming noise
00:24:35
because the robot makes a humming noise down the hallway and that we can get it close enough because he would be ranting
00:24:41
which is exactly what happened uh The Negotiator asked him so why why are you killing officers and that get
00:24:48
sent him into a rant and while he was ranting the robot gets close enough to him
00:24:55
to be detonated and it kills him and the season is over and if I had to do it all over again
00:25:04
I will make the same decision your job is not only to control the city but also you're kind of
00:25:12
the you're the head the ceremonial head and also the real head of of the department what was it like for you to
00:25:18
have to deal with the families of these police officers who had died and uh those trips to the hospital I imagine
00:25:24
you you were there around the wounded officers yes it was and still is hard to imagine
00:25:35
their wives and girlfriends and mothers and fathers and brothers and cousins I mean just everyone just
00:25:43
torn that this happened to someone they love they taught I mean just really ripped
00:25:48
apart the hearts of people that love them particularly the widows and many of these officers had young kids
00:25:58
but old enough to know what was happening and you and you know at least I knew having set with Walter Williams
00:26:07
two teenagers and uh his his third child was uh 10 years old I knew specifically how I felt
00:26:20
I sat there at 28 years old when Walter I I don't know what to say to his wife Joanne I
00:26:26
don't know what to say to his kids I'm sitting there just mumbling and fumbling and stumbling and
00:26:31
I'm I I'm I'm I'm as grieved as they are I can't function they looked at me for support and I don't I don't know what to
00:26:40
say at 28. when July 7 happens because I had lived through that I knew that this family
00:26:46
could make it that it would be hard and I know that some families were blame the chief and the police department for
00:26:54
what happened and that that you just don't defend yourself just take the blame [Music]
00:27:07
eight weeks later he announced his retirement it surprised a lot of people he was 55
00:27:14
years old and had been a police officer for 33 years we don't get to hear the police speak
00:27:22
too often maybe sound bites here or there press releases vetted all the way up the chain of command
00:27:28
so we were glad to spend some time talking with Chief Brown to hear what he believes
00:27:34
and all those things that he used to believe that he's lost along the way [Music]
00:27:55
thank you [Music] criminal is produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob
00:28:06
Byers and Johnny Vince Evans special thanks to Mary Helen Montgomery Julian Alexander makes original
00:28:13
illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this iscriminal.com where we've got a link to
00:28:20
David Brown's book called to rise say hi to us on Facebook Instagram or Twitter and we have a newsletter which
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website criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia
00:28:43
from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around shows like The Illusionist hosted by our friend Helen
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zoltzman in it she explores the wild meanings behind words and phrases and comes up with things you would never
00:28:58
imagine in our latest episode she speaks to a woman who woke up after brain surgery
00:29:04
only able to remember 40 words I was 27 and there was absolutely no warning I mean I was actually performing on stage
00:29:14
when it happened I was I went on stage to perform a karaoke duet what was the song it was a total eclipse
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of the heart go listen radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation and thanks to adserc
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for providing their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
00:29:43
[Music]