Many officers of color feel pressure to assimilate into the force, but are also seen as sellouts by their community
As a child in the early 1980s, LeRonne Armstrong spent much of the summer watching cartoons at his grandma’s apartment in west Oakland’s Acorn Projects. The public housing development would later become notorious as the site where Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton was killed in 1989, but for Armstrong’s mother, it was where she sent her three children for safekeeping as crack began menacing the city and violent crime was on the rise.
One morning while Armstrong sat around the TV with his siblings and cousins, Oakland police officers kicked in the door, guns drawn. They had a warrant for Armstrong’s uncle, who was allegedly involved in the drug trade. They pointed their weapons at the children, then proceeded to ransack the home, flipping over furniture and ripping the stuffing from the bottom of couches. Armstrong recalls the officers “going into cabinets and pouring cereal out”.
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