May 13, 2026 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Deon Joseph grew up believing police officers were the enemy. Influenced by personal experiences, the Rodney King beating, and the culture around him, he never imagined joining law enforcement himself. But after becoming an LAPD officer, Joseph found his calling serving the people of Los Angeles’ notorious Skid Row, where he spent decades trying to bring order, dignity, and hope to one of America’s toughest neighborhoods. Be sure to check out Deon's book Stepping Across The Line: A Skid Row Cop's Story for more.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Our next storyteller is a law enforcement consultant, author, an
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, let him introduce himself. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm a Dion Joseph. I am a twenty seven year
veteran of law enforcement. My primary assignment is working in
the Skidar area of downtown Los Angeles, working with the homeless.
Been doing so for about twenty five years. It's ended
up being my calling. The reason it became my calling
was kind of weird. I a never wanted to be
(00:49):
a police officer. I was raised who not raised or
indoctrinated by friends and activist groups that I ran with
that the police were basically my natural mortal enemy, and
a couple of times I was racially profile didn't help
when I was a civilian. Then came the Rodney King
incident and Rodney King incident, on top of the insult
(01:11):
and injury of those officers getting off for doing that
horrible act that they engaged in really really had a
negative impact on me. So I suffered from what's called
availability bias. The only thing that was being shown or
told to me about police officers was negative. My favorite
rap groups were a public Enemy n waks one and
(01:32):
everything they said was either af the police or the
police were beast. They were monsters who were trying to
exterminate black people. And I bought into it. I bought
into it. And what happened was my father and mother
they founded the first black owned restaurant in the city
of Long Beach. Literally there were history makers, and their
goal was to try to employ in the power the community.
(01:54):
And it worked. He had a successful construction business. He
was giving guys second chances who couldn't get changed is
because their criminal record and whatnot. And when we started
that restaurant in that shopping center, it was pretty successful.
And then the riots hit. And after the riots, our
construction company suffered because not a lot of people wanted
to hire a black owned company as one of the
(02:15):
fallouts of the so called rebellion, and I was out
of work for about I want to say, about three
or four months no paycheck, and I had just met
the most beautiful woman in the world, my beautiful wife, Tasha.
And of course you don't want to be a deadbeat.
You want to be able to support and take care
of her, your future wife. So I put my name
(02:36):
in it. Had so many jobs, many jobs, and not
one called me. And then I had a friend and
an uncle, an uncle who was on the police force,
and he says, hey, our department is hiring. Want to
put your name in that hat. And I was like
that police force. I just I saw what they did
the right the king. I'm not going to do this.
I will never be with that department. And things got
(02:57):
worse for me, and finally I just said, you know what,
go ahead and put your name in hat and see
what happens. And if they called me, I felt like
I was going to do like three years and quit
and go finish college or something like that and or
do something else. So anyway, I was praying and praying
and praying for other jobs to call me, and the
only one that called me was my current agency. And
I'll never forget. When I got the letter, I was
in my mom's restaurant and three of my childhood friends,
(03:21):
people who've known me for years, sitting at a table
eating some short ribs and chicken, and I sold my mom.
I said, mom My, past. I made it, and she
started celebrating, and she was saying, my son's going to
be a police officer. All three of my friends looked
at me. I won't call them friends, I'll call them associates.
(03:41):
Looked at my friends, would never desert me, looked at me,
stood up, walked out of the restaurant, and wanted nothing
to do with me anymore. And I couldn't believe it.
I hadn't even put on the badge yet, but it
was affecting my quote unquote blackness so to speak. You know,
as we're in the age of identity politics, you know,
there's a certain way you have to ident it suppy
yourself as a black man. And I guess they didn't
(04:02):
see me as a black man anymore. They saw me
as the enemy. And I hadn't even put on a
uniform yet. So nonetheless, I was raised not to really
care about what people thought about me. I had a goal.
I wanted to take care of my wife, and I
wanted to get married and be a good supporter. And
I joined and I was before joining. I'll never forget
(04:22):
my wife's side of the family. They didn't have a
very good relationship with the police. In fact, it was horrendous.
You know, you're talking about police officers back in the
seventies kidnapping my mother in law and driving around the
block threatening a hurt her. You know, cousins of theirs
who were shot, you know, unarmed and things of that nature.
They were not fans of the police. So I kept
(04:45):
getting it from all sides, you know, from my mother
in law's side, it was, don't let those quote unquote
white boys change you. Don't let those white boys change you.
Here's what they did to me back in nineteen sixty.
This everything was past tense. Everything was past tense, and
it was scaring me. It was scaring me, and of
course my dad he was a little disappointed at first
that I joined, because of course every father wants his
son to continue the legacy of the business. But that
(05:07):
just wasn't for me. So he was telling me, you know,
you know about all the horror stories that my uncle
saw on the job, and all these things were swirling
on my mind. So I'll never forget. It was the
Christmas night I proposed to my wife. She said yes,
thank God, And the next morning, December twenty sixth, nineteen
(05:27):
ninety five, I was standing in what's called the black line.
It was a tradition in the police academy that when
you're on your first DAID academy, all applicants have to
stand on a black line. And basically what happens is
they're testing your will, They're testing you. You have your
instructors yelling at you and barking at you, seeing if
you had the temperament or the or you know, to
be a police officer. And I think we had several
(05:48):
of my classmates quit and the whole time, I'm thinking,
I know, these guys are about to call me the
N word. It never happened. Never happened. In the academy.
Ninety percent of what we learned was more about human
relations in Spanish than how to keep our heads from
being blown off our shoulders. That's how crazy it was.
It's like it was complete opposite or juxtaposed to what
(06:10):
my family and friends were telling me. And I was
surprised at how open they allowed me to be. I
was able to share how many African Americans felt about
the police and my experiences with the police, and no
one shunned me. They listened, and it was really a
great experience. I actually helped. It actually helped me break
down stereotypes that I had of my white classmates and
(06:33):
the other classmates I had so but that didn't cure
me yet.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And you're listening to Dion Joseph, a senior lead officer
in Los Angeles, share his story his early resentment and
partially well learned of the police. He had had encounters
that weren't good, but my goodness, what he was learning
as he was becoming an officer about his friends and
himself and his fellow officers, well, it was a learning
(06:58):
experience for everyone. When we come back more of Dion
Joseph's story here on Our American Stories liehbib here, and
(07:31):
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American
Stories on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever
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subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple podcasts,
(07:51):
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
continue with our American Stories and with senior lead officer
(08:14):
in Los Angeles, Dean Joseph, Let's continue where we last
left off.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Then I ended up graduating from the academy and I
ended up in the field in Venice Beach, and I'll
never forget my first training officer was basically abusive to me.
He was very, very cruel. His whole mantra was it's
my job not to hire you, to get you fired,
And basically I was just cuppose to getting fired. And
(08:41):
my second training officer was a department legend. His name
was Bill Snowden, and they told me to study up
on him, and I pulled some of his police reports
and I'm looking at this guy. He made twenty three
hundred arrest in a black neighborhood called Oakwood. I'm like,
oh my god, I'm about to work with this guy,
a white guy who was arrested twenty three hundred black people,
small part of Vennis Beach. And I was like, all
(09:05):
the things my family was telling me and all the
things they put in my heart, you know, was like
swelling up inside me. And I was scared. So finally
I meet the man and we get in the car
and I work with him, and I couldn't. He drove
me over to Oakwood where he patrols. And it was
the strangest thing. I'm driving through the area and with
this six foot four, blonde haired, blue eyed, white guy
(09:25):
with a big old mustache, right the stereotypical vision of
what people would think a racist cop would look like.
And as he's driving through the community, I'm hearing this, Hey,
snow Hey, God bless you, snowed In. Hey, thanks for
helping my cousin snowd In. Oh my god, hey, thanks
for helping my cousin while he was in jail.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Snoton.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'm sitting here like, what the hell is this? You know,
is this guy scaring the community so bad that they
just smile away? I thought I was in an episode
of The Godfather or something like that. It was weird.
And he saw the look on my face and he
said he pulled the car over. He says, you got
something on your mind. I was like, sir, I don't
understand it. You're in a black community. You arrested half
(10:04):
the people here and their mother. Why did these people
love you? And he said this, He said, Dionn, this
is Oakwood. It's one of the most violent areas in
the city. You know, I'm not here because these people
are black. I'm here because I'm not. People die. These
people understand why we're here. But what they also want
you to do is whether you're arresting them or counseling
(10:25):
them or whatever, you make sure you treat them with
dignity and respect. That's all they want from us. And
he said, as long as you work for me, young man,
you will treat everyone we contact with dignity and respect.
And I was like, who, Thank god, another stereotype was
completely broken down that my family was feeding me. And
it really really helped me break my tunnel vision about
(10:47):
you know, groups of people, you know, especially white police officers.
So and it wasn't that he was giving me permission
to do that. I already knew that that was a
cop I wanted to be. It was just good to
know that an officer of his staff, this legend, this
department Ledgered, believed in the same thing I believed in.
And it was a pleasure working with this man. And
(11:07):
after my probation was up, he literally saved my career.
I graduated from probation and ended up at Central Division
and Central Division is where skid Row is now. I
wasn't really excited about going to skid row at all.
I remember one of my training offers telling me said, Dion,
you have to wear a body kind of in the
work there. The people have hepatitis age HIV. They got
(11:31):
needles in their pocket. You're gonna get in their use
of force and get stuck with the needle and give
your wife the herpes. And I was like, oh my god.
At the time, I was a German phobe. I would
like wear five gloves and search people. You know, That's
just who I was. And it really scared me. And
then he also said the cops they are also fat
and lazy. They just let people do anything they want
to do over there. I was like, what, oh, man.
(11:53):
So i get on a freeway and I'm driving and
it's a hot summer day, I think it's in June
or July, and I'm looking at the beautiful picturesque La
Skyline and I'm like, this can't be that bad. Look
the Bank tower's over there. Look at all these skyscrapers,
and can't be that bad. I get off on Sixth
Street and as I get off on Sixth Street, I'm
(12:14):
at the basin of the West Coast, symbol of America's
economic might in power, and I'm seeing people in business suits.
I'm seeing people drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, getting ready to
go for work. And I said, what is my training
officer talking about? This is great? Now, you know, if
you get to some bad places, there's like about a
mile and a half stretch of territory that kind of
(12:35):
warned you first. You are now entering Hoodville. Get ready.
This did not happen here. As soon as I crossed
Spring Street, I'll never forget. It was like I tripped
and fell into Dante's Inferno, Mad Max's Thunderdome, Water World.
You any natural disaster move I think an airplane fell
from the sky.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It was.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
They're really that bad. I'll never forget the smells. I
remember seeing people having sex on the sidewalk. I remember
seeing people shooting up and hooking crack right two blocks
from a police station in broad daylight. I remember trash
piled so high that it came up to your knees,
tense rocking, people arguing in the street, And I remember
(13:12):
the saddest thing I saw was a young man in
a hospital gown walking in the middle of the street,
talking to himself. Clearly he was mentally ill and had
been thrown away, and I said to myself, God, I
can't fix this. I'm gonna put my transfer as soon
as i get into the station. I get into the station,
and sure enough, it was the same thing, The same
(13:33):
things I smelled and saw on the outside was inside,
sitting on the bench waiting to get transported to jail.
I'm seeing Parolie gang members, homeless people, mentally ill people
handcuffed the bench, yelling, screaming, headbutting each other, set tripping,
and I'm like wow, and I'm noticing the officers are
just typing like nothing's happening. And I look at one
of my class bands, I'm like, do you see what
the hell is happening here? And she just let some
(13:54):
incense and kept on talking. I was like, what were
what happened? You know? I did upstairs on a light
and go put my transfer in. Go put my transfer in.
And there was a sergeant who used to call us
all hermano or brother in Spanish. He said, hey, Hermino,
your officer, Joseph, Hey, your first two months is going
to be spent working the front desk of Central station.
And I was like, oh, thank God, God answered my prayer.
(14:17):
So I was like, oh, I don't have to deal
with this crap. Two months breaking the front desk, I
was wrong at the front desk, and it was the
first of the month, and every five, ten to twenty minutes,
somebody came in from skid Row with their arm broken
backwards where they could swing it forty five degrees the
other way. One lady came in with her cheeks lacerated
(14:37):
so like she had a second mouth, you could see
her teeth. Another man walked into the station holding his
stomach and moves his hand and his intentions fill up,
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And the
common thread with all of these people were I don't
want a police report. I just want an ambulance to
take me to the hospital. I have to live here,
because what I didn't realize, or what I did realize,
was the station was in the heart of where skid row.
(15:00):
I also discovered the cops there weren't fat and lazy.
They were just working in a time where the justice
system didn't support their efforts, kind of what we're living
in right now. So I'm like, man, get me off
this front desk. I can't take it. And then I
get my first basic patrol car and it was Chinatown
like Chinatown. Yes, culture people in the park, stretching and
(15:23):
doing taichie and great eating spots. And I'm telling you
it was beautiful. Your blood pressure went down just parking there, right,
And I'm about to write my first ticket. I was
there only five minutes, about to write my first ticket
at Alpine and yaff I remember correctly, and we get
a call one A one respond to seventh and San
Julian for the attack in progress. Back then, attack meant rape,
(15:44):
sexual assault. So we're driving like bats out of hill
to get down there, and sure enough we get there
and there's a woman sitting with her legs crossed, rocking
back and forth. She was literally torn to shreds, face
messed up, bleeding, skirt torn. People were standing around her
mocking her. And I got out of the car and
I tried to talk to her, and she would and
(16:04):
talk to me, and all I hear these gang members
excuse my friends saying, oh that ain't gonna talk to you.
Oh you you want you must be new here, Get
your back in the car. Man. She ain't gonna tell
you nothing. And literally she told me nothing. I had
to take a Jane Dole assault report, caught her in
ambudence and that was that. And I couldn't believe what
I saw. So my partner says, let's not go back
here today.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And you're listening to active senior lead officer in Los
Angeles Dion Joseph share the story of his life and
his work in Los Angeles as a police officer and
that first assignment in Venice Beach Boy. I can only
describe that neighborhood as sketchy. I was there at around
the same time he was. I was living there and
it's much different now, but it was sketchy and dangerous
(16:47):
and still can be late at night.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And there was that training.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Officer who he reported to, Well, we've all had people
we've had to report to that were, let's just say,
people we hoped to never Porto again. And then came
his training officer in Oakwood, who fit the stereotype of
what he thought well, white racist cops looked like tall, blonde,
blue eyes and a mustache. Only the black people he
(17:13):
was serving in that neighborhood loved him, and I loved
him for a simple reason. He was there to serve them.
He kept telling him again and again that he wasn't
just there to treat the people with dignity who didn't
commit crimes, but to even commit to the principle that
the purpose and the suspects themselves deserved to be treated
with dignity and respect. And then came skid Row and Chinatown.
(17:37):
When we come back more of the story of Dion
Joseph here on our American story, and we continue with
(18:11):
our American stories and with law enforcement consultant, author, and
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles, Dion Joseph.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
We get back to Chinatown and once again we get
the Fifth and San Julian for ad w in progress.
We get there and first we're wondering where the basic
car for that area is and they're tied up with
three people they arrested. It's kind of a picture how
dangerous it was down there. We get to Fifth in
Sant Julian and I see a man sitting holding his
(18:45):
chest on the sidewalk, and sure enough, somebody stabbed him
and punctured his lawn. And he points down the street
to the man who did it, and I was like,
the guy was walking like he wasn't running away. So
I call a ambulance form to go to detain this guy,
and I'll never forget him saying to me, Oh, why
you're so hard up. I'm going to be out in
about two days. DA's going to reject this case. And
(19:06):
I'm like, no, he's not. I went to this station
because one thing I can't stand is when you hurt
people who are poor or downtrodden. You know, it's part
of my DNA. So I went to this station and
I wrote the world's greatest police report. And I struggled
because I was from a unified school district that really
didn't give us crap about me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I literally had an English teacher that said, yeahn all
you got to do is put your name on the
paper and we'll give you a c And I did that,
taking the easy way out. So to this day, I
still struggle with danglin participles and antecedents, and you know,
as a result of not trying, that's my fault, that is. Anyway,
I sat down and wrote the greatest police report in
(19:43):
the world, dotted every eye, crossed every te polan's everywhere,
quotations in the right place. It was beautiful. Give him
to the watch commander. In his watch commander, we called
him a red pin and he would keep a red
pin and for new officers he would just completely rip
up their reports because he was an English major. And
I think I saw a tear in his eye. He said,
if this is the world's greatest police report, I'm exaggerating
airport and I was like, thank you, sir. I took
(20:06):
the guy to jail, and I just knew that I
was going to get a victim, a homeless victim, some justice.
I came back two days later, I'm driving down the
street and I guess who. I see the ballhead guy
who stabbed him. And he looked at me and says,
as I told you, I was upset. I was livid.
I went into the detective's office and I said, hey,
I wrote the hell out of that report. And the
detective say, you sure did, Officer Joseph. It was a
(20:27):
great report. And she showed me the disposition of the
District Attorney's office and it says, DA reject because the
victim is a drug addict and because they're homeless. I
would ask anybody, does that sound fair to you? And
The answer is absolutely not. You know, justice should not
be dealt to people who we believe are perfect people.
(20:48):
You know, it's for everybody. And that was a moment
that changed my life. You always find a catalyst, and
that was my catalyst for why I decided to kind
of stay and be a champion auto top of my DNA.
The reason why people thought I was crazy for being
in skid row enthusiastically right, was because my parents. My
(21:09):
parents were engaged in outreach their entire life. Their forty
seven year marriage, they helped raise forty one foster children
on top of their four children and three grandchildren. So
I was around for about seventeen of those kids. And
you would think I would have a little resentment for
not getting one hundred percent of my parents' love, but no,
(21:30):
it was actually wonderful to see my parents changed these kids' lives,
whether they were with us for two weeks or for
two years. And the cool thing about my parents, it
wasn't just about the kids. They would often sneak and
counsel the parents, so the parents would end up being
better parents when the kids finding went back to them.
And I'll never forget we took in kids who are
(21:52):
sexually assaulted, homeless, neglected, malnourished. We even took home with
neo Nazi and this kid's father told them, don't eat
the n words food. I'm going to come sneak a
big mac to you. And I couldn't believe it, right,
So the father never came with that big mach. So
after about the third or fourth day, I think the
kid got hungry and we caught him in a refrigerator
sneaking some collar greens and black eyed peas and and
(22:15):
it was delicious, and he didn't buy. He realized that
the inwards foods, it's not going to kill you, right.
And after about another month with us, he saw he
thought he was black. He was like, man, you know,
we got pulled over by the police and this kid
was like you just stopped just caning here black and
bro like, no, no, no, kid, no do that. I'll
(22:37):
never forget that. It was a road trip to Louisiana,
that was It was hilarious, and he didn't want to
go back to his own dad. He ended up thankfully
being sent to his mother, who wasn't a neo Nazi.
And uh, just watching my parents change the life of
these kids was incredible to me. Then my dad, he
was a self made man, grew up in the Jim
Crow South, dealt with real tangible racism, not this tansferred
(23:00):
racism that we're dealing with today. We got kids today
acting like they've lived through Jim Crow and they don't.
They have no idea what real tangible, palpable cross burning
you sit on the back of the bus racism was like,
my dad grew up in that and because of being
so poor and so broke, being abandoned by his family
at times, he turned to crying, and of course he
(23:24):
changed his life. Found the Lord. Met my mom in church,
or it actually fell in love with my mom in church.
They met at a hospital and basically he said, I
was never going to hurt anybody again to get what
I needed. So when he became a successful businessman, he
would always reach back and hire individuals who reminded him
of himself. And I didn't know this. I was going
(23:46):
through my background investigations with the department, and they, of
course one of the questions they ask is have you
ever associated with any known felons? And of course I
was telling the truth. No, squeaky clean. You guys checked
me out. You guys. Talked to my fourth grade teacher,
what the hell you know this right? And my dad says, sorry, son,
you did. I said, what are you talking about? He said,
you remember Cowboy the framer? Yeah, oh he is an
(24:09):
ex murderer. What you remember Andre, the guy you dig
ditches with. I was like, yeah, he was a drug dealer.
And I was like what. But I calmed down when
I realized the beauty of what my dad did. He
gave people a second chance who reminded him of himself,
and if they wanted that second chance, he was going
to help them. He believed in hands up, not hands outs.
(24:30):
He believed in the hands up giving people a hand up.
So watching this inspired me and I loved he never
called his employees his employees. He always called him his friends.
And I was amazed by this. And you'll never hear
me call a person in skid roll bum, a hobo,
a transient. I will always call them my friends, even
if they're cussing me out, I will always call them
(24:50):
my friends. And then lastly, my mother and father fed
the homeless religiously every Saturday, cooking fresh, home cooked meals
as if she was cooking for her family and taking
it down to parks and helping families. And she did
that up until she got sick and passed away. So
after about three months of being in skid Row, all
(25:10):
fears went away, and I realized that I was home.
This is what my parents were preparing me for, and
all I was doing was in my own way, carrying
out their mission. And I fell in love with trying
to help and change the culture of skid Row. As
a patrol cop, I loved the community then just as
much as I did now. I just went about it differently.
(25:31):
Arrested everybody and their mother. That's what I did. If
you were selling crack, if you were assaulting people, if
you murdered somebody, I'm going to drive up and I'm
going to stuff you in the back of my car
with several of your friends if I can. And that's
a noble effort. There's nothing wrong with that, nothing racist
or cold about that. You know, you break the law,
you got to do the time. But what it did
was it kind of left. It gave me a perception
(25:53):
problem to the community because I didn't have time to
stop and say what I was doing or why so busy.
It was just like I'm just here to arrest black people.
So I ended up getting one of many names at
the time, RoboCop. I have had many names. So the
first name was Uncle Tom, a house Negro white man's
boot licking lap dog. I heard that one, right, Yeah, yeah.
(26:16):
The combinations were just incredible. Then came RoboCop because they
I walked like a robot. I had all this gear
on me, and it's like you couldn't get away from me.
I knew every crevice of the area.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And you're listening to Dion Joseph tell one heck of
his story, not just about himself, not just about the
people he defends and calls his friends, those people on
skid row, but also the model that his family provided
for him, adopting so many people whose society would cast off.
And you know, here on this show we tell stories
(26:48):
about people whose society casts off, but great people, particularly
people of faith, well, give a second chance, and give
a real second chance. I hand up, not a handout,
And there are very different things. And you could hear
it in Dion Joseph's voice and even a chuckle explaining
the difference between a hand up and a handout. When
(27:10):
we come back more of this remarkable story. It's a
story about so many things, but in the end, about
grace and love behind a badge. The story of Dion
Joseph continues here on our American Stories, and we continue
(27:38):
with our American stories and law enforcement consultant, author and
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles, Dion Joseph, Let's
continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So then, after about seven years in the street and
two years undercovered, I got the opportunity to become a
senior lead officer, another job I didn't want. So I
became a senior lead officer, and you know, I didn't
want to smile away and kiss babies. I wanted to
go back to doing what I was usually doing, fighting
bad crime and getting bad guys off the street. But
I was doing the same thing and expecting the same results,
(28:12):
different results. And I looked back on all the arrest
I made and all the actions I took to try
to make the community better, and nothing changed, because that
once again the justice system. For every bad guy put
in jail, they were out the next day and they
were replaced by two more. So something I'll never forget.
And I don't mean to preach, but I'm sitting on
Main Street, frustrated. Main Street was one of the most
(28:35):
dangerous streets at the time, and I parked there and
I'm seeing drug dealers had drug deals happening all over
the place, right in front of my face. And I said,
I just parked my car and said a prayer. I said, God,
how can I fix this? You know these people were suffering.
What can I do? And all I heard in my
spirit was stay here, okay. I parked my car there
(28:55):
for six hours, and what happened was the drug there
is what they expected me to do his park a
few minutes and leave. But I stayed there for six hours.
And it was so funny because drug dealers kept coming
up to my car, going hey, anytime for you to
go do something else, anytime for you to go home?
And something told me I said I am home, and
they were like wow. So I left and it's about
(29:18):
three quarters of them came back. I came back, parked
for another hour. They left, now was a half. I
kept doing it until it was like no drug dealers
on the block. And I did this for a week.
I called it the sit down technique. And about seven
days after doing it, I saw this man come up
to me. There's something called a silent majority in any community.
(29:38):
These are the people who they support police, they support
law and order, but they have a figure it of
a literal gun to their head telling him not to
talk to the police, even if you get stabbed, raped
or shot. And this man knocks out my window and
I think he's going to be an another drug dealer,
asking me to leave. And I rolled down the window
and he says, hey, I don't know who you are,
but don't you ever leave this block. This is the
(29:59):
first time I've been able to walk down their street
in about fifteen years. It worked, and I said, Okay,
it's working on this block, so let me switch to
the next block. So I called it the CID down technique,
and it started to reduce crime. I was reducing crime
by myself, and I reduced crime eighteen percent with no resources.
And people couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe that Main
Street was clean, Winston Street was clean, some parts of
(30:22):
Fifth Street were getting clean. It was crazy, but I
couldn't do it for long. A lot of people focus
on me, but I couldn't do it myself. So as
I was starting to lose ground. God sent some incredible
officers to help me hold down Main Street in the
streets that I took care of until the Safer Cities initiative,
and that's when fifty incredible officers were brought to the
division to focus on skid row and help reduce crime.
(30:45):
And while they went on the offensive, I went on
the defensive and tried to build relationships to let the
community know that we're not doing this to you, We're
doing this for you. Because we had activists in the
area who were actively telling them that we were trying
to get rid of them, we wanted to criminalize them,
and none of that was true. What are the police
supposed to do when ninety five human beings die from
(31:07):
non homicidal deaths in one year in the fifty block radius,
what are we supposed to do let it happen. That's
the cruelty. The cruelty is not enforcing the law. The
cruelty is not enforcing the law. What are we supposed
to do about that? Sit on our hands because it's not.
The optics aren't friendly. No, we refuse to do that.
We recognize a skid row account for like fifty percent
of all the crime in the area and we went
(31:29):
in and it wasn't just enforcement, it was enhancements, outreach,
and we were arresting people for the sake of getting
them to programs that they normally would refuse without a push.
But now, for the first time in my career, we
had the justice system, working with US Parole Probation, the
(31:50):
DA's office. Everybody was on board. We have to fix
skid Row. It's a disaster. And during that time, I
always say, if you want somebody to change, you have
to create anronment conducers to that. That's common sense, that's
not political, that's not left or right, And I'll never
forget during the time where we created the environment through enforcement,
enhancement and outreach, it made certain individuals ready for help.
(32:15):
So as a senior lead officer, I began networking with
housing agencies inside skid Row and outside of skied Row.
I did that on my own because I know there
were individuals who are desperately wanting to get off the street.
Not everybody, but I house about one hundred and fifty
people in ten years who were ready because of our push.
Now that's nothing. In skied rollers about two thousand people
(32:37):
on average whose choose to sleep in the street. There's
very few people who aren't there by choice. Okay, I
would say about thirty five percent of the individuals are
there because the party, because this is the place they
can go and do their thing. Many people aren't homeless.
But why didn't those other two thousand come for help?
Because they weren't ready. They weren't ready. But by the
(32:59):
grace of God, due to the push, we got one
hundred and fifty people off the streets. And then through
the initiative, we got a lot twy two d and
twenty five individuals signed up for programs. Now, I'm not
saying everybody completed the program, but about thirty percent of
them in my estimation, did. And people were going home,
people were reuniting with family members, we were finding missing people, murderers.
It was a beautiful time. And then I used my
(33:20):
resources to build bridges with the community. Community members that
normally wouldn't talk to the police. Of course, you had
your extreme activist groups. There's no talking to them. They
don't want to sit at the table. They say they
want to sit at the table. No, they want to
completely turn it over just to feel a sense of power.
That ends up doing more damage to the people that
(33:40):
claim they're trying to help and than anything else. It
just made me realize that community policing, grassroots community policing,
does work, but you got to put the work in.
You can't be scared. And I helped this group get
paint trash cans to beautify the community. They literally clean
the community up better than the city did. No shot
at the city. It's just these folks were more passionate
(34:03):
about it. They painted murals saying these are black people, right,
saying we want clean, safe, healthy streets black people. You know,
but the news never reported this stuff. Skid Row was
relatively safe and they did it all purpose. You know,
they only want one narrative about the police, right. But
the reality is, during two thousand and five and tw
twenty eleven, skid Row was a relatively safe place to live.
(34:26):
Here are the effects of it, and it was just
a beautiful time. I have no regrets. I've saved more
lives than anybody who criticizes me for being a police officer.
And everyone who criticized me, they either turned their head
and look the other way. I would not change this
career or the path that I've taken for anything in
the world. I'm still going to continue to try to
(34:47):
be a light in a dark place for the I
remember every time I go on vacation. If I'm going
thirty days and I come back, it's like their long
lost father just came home. Damn, Roba God where you're
been managedment crazy out here? I'm like you. Remember I
was telling me about Bill's you know, him driving down
the street and people screaming his name from the rooftop.
The same thing happens to me. People don't understand why
I'm so passionate. You can call me crazy, you can
(35:08):
call it whatever you want. I touch these things, and
until you touch it, you will never ever understand why
I'm so passionate about bringing in a sense of order
to skid Row. Yes, law enforcement is such an important
component anything you want to do, whether it's a noble
cause such as get people safe and clean or have
(35:28):
a concert, if it's not safe, no one's gonna go.
If you want to run a school, if it's not safe,
kids aren't gonna learn. And I'll be public safety as
a cornerstone of all of that. I believe in crime control.
And when you say that, people start shaking, you know.
But the truth is I also believe in due process,
and we need to stop builifying the concept of law
enforcement because places like skied Row needs order. If we're
(35:49):
gonna save lives down there, if we're gonna get people
into these programs, we need the justice system to work
again in a matter where they before. Where if I
brought a drug addict to you, you put them in
a mandatory drug program that doesn't exist anymore. So all
I can do right now is is be visible and
try to deter people from getting hurt. But that's the system.
I'm not saying this because I hate the homeless. I'm
(36:11):
saying this because I care about them. This is not
a police perspective. It's coming from a perspective of a
human man who cares, who just happens to be a cop.
And that's me in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and story
gathering by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks
to Dion Joseph for sharing his story. And it's a
heck of a story where all of us can learn
from that moment he was on main Street watching drug dealers.
As he said, everywhere around him, and he offered up
that prayer to God, Lord, how can I help this?
(36:45):
He heard two words from God, stay here, and it's
what he did. And he did what he called the
sit down technique, and that is just sit down.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And what do you know?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Just by his presence, well, the drug dealers slowly started
to fade away. In fact, one of them even walked
up to him and sort of said, hey, when are
you going home? Ain't it time for you to go home?
His rebuttal was I am home. And then that knock
on the window. I don't know who you are, but
don't leave the block. Don't leave the block. By the way,
(37:19):
this is a call to arms for so many men
and women who can well sit and be present on
a block that might have problems.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Just your presence can make the difference.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You don't have to be a law enforcement officer to
make a difference by doing the sit This story was
about so many things, public safety being a cornerstone, but
due process too, and compassion and mercy and love for the.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Least of these.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The story of RoboCop RoboCop Dion Joseph no robot at
all here on our American stories e
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Our next storyteller is a law enforcement consultant, author, an
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, let him introduce himself. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm a Dion Joseph. I am a twenty seven year
veteran of law enforcement. My primary assignment is working in
the Skidar area of downtown Los Angeles, working with the homeless.
Been doing so for about twenty five years. It's ended
up being my calling. The reason it became my calling
was kind of weird. I a never wanted to be
(00:49):
a police officer. I was raised who not raised or
indoctrinated by friends and activist groups that I ran with
that the police were basically my natural mortal enemy, and
a couple of times I was racially profile didn't help
when I was a civilian. Then came the Rodney King
incident and Rodney King incident, on top of the insult
(01:11):
and injury of those officers getting off for doing that
horrible act that they engaged in really really had a
negative impact on me. So I suffered from what's called
availability bias. The only thing that was being shown or
told to me about police officers was negative. My favorite
rap groups were a public Enemy n waks one and
(01:32):
everything they said was either af the police or the
police were beast. They were monsters who were trying to
exterminate black people. And I bought into it. I bought
into it. And what happened was my father and mother
they founded the first black owned restaurant in the city
of Long Beach. Literally there were history makers, and their
goal was to try to employ in the power the community.
(01:54):
And it worked. He had a successful construction business. He
was giving guys second chances who couldn't get changed is
because their criminal record and whatnot. And when we started
that restaurant in that shopping center, it was pretty successful.
And then the riots hit. And after the riots, our
construction company suffered because not a lot of people wanted
to hire a black owned company as one of the
(02:15):
fallouts of the so called rebellion, and I was out
of work for about I want to say, about three
or four months no paycheck, and I had just met
the most beautiful woman in the world, my beautiful wife, Tasha.
And of course you don't want to be a deadbeat.
You want to be able to support and take care
of her, your future wife. So I put my name
(02:36):
in it. Had so many jobs, many jobs, and not
one called me. And then I had a friend and
an uncle, an uncle who was on the police force,
and he says, hey, our department is hiring. Want to
put your name in that hat. And I was like
that police force. I just I saw what they did
the right the king. I'm not going to do this.
I will never be with that department. And things got
(02:57):
worse for me, and finally I just said, you know what,
go ahead and put your name in hat and see
what happens. And if they called me, I felt like
I was going to do like three years and quit
and go finish college or something like that and or
do something else. So anyway, I was praying and praying
and praying for other jobs to call me, and the
only one that called me was my current agency. And
I'll never forget. When I got the letter, I was
in my mom's restaurant and three of my childhood friends,
(03:21):
people who've known me for years, sitting at a table
eating some short ribs and chicken, and I sold my mom.
I said, mom My, past. I made it, and she
started celebrating, and she was saying, my son's going to
be a police officer. All three of my friends looked
at me. I won't call them friends, I'll call them associates.
(03:41):
Looked at my friends, would never desert me, looked at me,
stood up, walked out of the restaurant, and wanted nothing
to do with me anymore. And I couldn't believe it.
I hadn't even put on the badge yet, but it
was affecting my quote unquote blackness so to speak. You know,
as we're in the age of identity politics, you know,
there's a certain way you have to ident it suppy
yourself as a black man. And I guess they didn't
(04:02):
see me as a black man anymore. They saw me
as the enemy. And I hadn't even put on a
uniform yet. So nonetheless, I was raised not to really
care about what people thought about me. I had a goal.
I wanted to take care of my wife, and I
wanted to get married and be a good supporter. And
I joined and I was before joining. I'll never forget
(04:22):
my wife's side of the family. They didn't have a
very good relationship with the police. In fact, it was horrendous.
You know, you're talking about police officers back in the
seventies kidnapping my mother in law and driving around the
block threatening a hurt her. You know, cousins of theirs
who were shot, you know, unarmed and things of that nature.
They were not fans of the police. So I kept
(04:45):
getting it from all sides, you know, from my mother
in law's side, it was, don't let those quote unquote
white boys change you. Don't let those white boys change you.
Here's what they did to me back in nineteen sixty.
This everything was past tense. Everything was past tense, and
it was scaring me. It was scaring me, and of
course my dad he was a little disappointed at first
that I joined, because of course every father wants his
son to continue the legacy of the business. But that
(05:07):
just wasn't for me. So he was telling me, you know,
you know about all the horror stories that my uncle
saw on the job, and all these things were swirling
on my mind. So I'll never forget. It was the
Christmas night I proposed to my wife. She said yes,
thank God, And the next morning, December twenty sixth, nineteen
(05:27):
ninety five, I was standing in what's called the black line.
It was a tradition in the police academy that when
you're on your first DAID academy, all applicants have to
stand on a black line. And basically what happens is
they're testing your will, They're testing you. You have your
instructors yelling at you and barking at you, seeing if
you had the temperament or the or you know, to
be a police officer. And I think we had several
(05:48):
of my classmates quit and the whole time, I'm thinking,
I know, these guys are about to call me the
N word. It never happened. Never happened. In the academy.
Ninety percent of what we learned was more about human
relations in Spanish than how to keep our heads from
being blown off our shoulders. That's how crazy it was.
It's like it was complete opposite or juxtaposed to what
(06:10):
my family and friends were telling me. And I was
surprised at how open they allowed me to be. I
was able to share how many African Americans felt about
the police and my experiences with the police, and no
one shunned me. They listened, and it was really a
great experience. I actually helped. It actually helped me break
down stereotypes that I had of my white classmates and
(06:33):
the other classmates I had so but that didn't cure
me yet.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And you're listening to Dion Joseph, a senior lead officer
in Los Angeles, share his story his early resentment and
partially well learned of the police. He had had encounters
that weren't good, but my goodness, what he was learning
as he was becoming an officer about his friends and
himself and his fellow officers, well, it was a learning
(06:58):
experience for everyone. When we come back more of Dion
Joseph's story here on Our American Stories liehbib here, and
(07:31):
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American
Stories on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever
you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want
to hear again can be found there daily again. Please
subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple podcasts,
(07:51):
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
continue with our American Stories and with senior lead officer
(08:14):
in Los Angeles, Dean Joseph, Let's continue where we last
left off.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Then I ended up graduating from the academy and I
ended up in the field in Venice Beach, and I'll
never forget my first training officer was basically abusive to me.
He was very, very cruel. His whole mantra was it's
my job not to hire you, to get you fired,
And basically I was just cuppose to getting fired. And
(08:41):
my second training officer was a department legend. His name
was Bill Snowden, and they told me to study up
on him, and I pulled some of his police reports
and I'm looking at this guy. He made twenty three
hundred arrest in a black neighborhood called Oakwood. I'm like,
oh my god, I'm about to work with this guy,
a white guy who was arrested twenty three hundred black people,
small part of Vennis Beach. And I was like, all
(09:05):
the things my family was telling me and all the
things they put in my heart, you know, was like
swelling up inside me. And I was scared. So finally
I meet the man and we get in the car
and I work with him, and I couldn't. He drove
me over to Oakwood where he patrols. And it was
the strangest thing. I'm driving through the area and with
this six foot four, blonde haired, blue eyed, white guy
(09:25):
with a big old mustache, right the stereotypical vision of
what people would think a racist cop would look like.
And as he's driving through the community, I'm hearing this, Hey,
snow Hey, God bless you, snowed In. Hey, thanks for
helping my cousin snowd In. Oh my god, hey, thanks
for helping my cousin while he was in jail.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Snoton.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'm sitting here like, what the hell is this? You know,
is this guy scaring the community so bad that they
just smile away? I thought I was in an episode
of The Godfather or something like that. It was weird.
And he saw the look on my face and he
said he pulled the car over. He says, you got
something on your mind. I was like, sir, I don't
understand it. You're in a black community. You arrested half
(10:04):
the people here and their mother. Why did these people
love you? And he said this, He said, Dionn, this
is Oakwood. It's one of the most violent areas in
the city. You know, I'm not here because these people
are black. I'm here because I'm not. People die. These
people understand why we're here. But what they also want
you to do is whether you're arresting them or counseling
(10:25):
them or whatever, you make sure you treat them with
dignity and respect. That's all they want from us. And
he said, as long as you work for me, young man,
you will treat everyone we contact with dignity and respect.
And I was like, who, Thank god, another stereotype was
completely broken down that my family was feeding me. And
it really really helped me break my tunnel vision about
(10:47):
you know, groups of people, you know, especially white police officers.
So and it wasn't that he was giving me permission
to do that. I already knew that that was a
cop I wanted to be. It was just good to
know that an officer of his staff, this legend, this
department Ledgered, believed in the same thing I believed in.
And it was a pleasure working with this man. And
(11:07):
after my probation was up, he literally saved my career.
I graduated from probation and ended up at Central Division
and Central Division is where skid Row is now. I
wasn't really excited about going to skid row at all.
I remember one of my training offers telling me said, Dion,
you have to wear a body kind of in the
work there. The people have hepatitis age HIV. They got
(11:31):
needles in their pocket. You're gonna get in their use
of force and get stuck with the needle and give
your wife the herpes. And I was like, oh my god.
At the time, I was a German phobe. I would
like wear five gloves and search people. You know, That's
just who I was. And it really scared me. And
then he also said the cops they are also fat
and lazy. They just let people do anything they want
to do over there. I was like, what, oh, man.
(11:53):
So i get on a freeway and I'm driving and
it's a hot summer day, I think it's in June
or July, and I'm looking at the beautiful picturesque La
Skyline and I'm like, this can't be that bad. Look
the Bank tower's over there. Look at all these skyscrapers,
and can't be that bad. I get off on Sixth
Street and as I get off on Sixth Street, I'm
(12:14):
at the basin of the West Coast, symbol of America's
economic might in power, and I'm seeing people in business suits.
I'm seeing people drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, getting ready to
go for work. And I said, what is my training
officer talking about? This is great? Now, you know, if
you get to some bad places, there's like about a
mile and a half stretch of territory that kind of
(12:35):
warned you first. You are now entering Hoodville. Get ready.
This did not happen here. As soon as I crossed
Spring Street, I'll never forget. It was like I tripped
and fell into Dante's Inferno, Mad Max's Thunderdome, Water World.
You any natural disaster move I think an airplane fell
from the sky.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It was.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
They're really that bad. I'll never forget the smells. I
remember seeing people having sex on the sidewalk. I remember
seeing people shooting up and hooking crack right two blocks
from a police station in broad daylight. I remember trash
piled so high that it came up to your knees,
tense rocking, people arguing in the street, And I remember
(13:12):
the saddest thing I saw was a young man in
a hospital gown walking in the middle of the street,
talking to himself. Clearly he was mentally ill and had
been thrown away, and I said to myself, God, I
can't fix this. I'm gonna put my transfer as soon
as i get into the station. I get into the station,
and sure enough, it was the same thing, The same
(13:33):
things I smelled and saw on the outside was inside,
sitting on the bench waiting to get transported to jail.
I'm seeing Parolie gang members, homeless people, mentally ill people
handcuffed the bench, yelling, screaming, headbutting each other, set tripping,
and I'm like wow, and I'm noticing the officers are
just typing like nothing's happening. And I look at one
of my class bands, I'm like, do you see what
the hell is happening here? And she just let some
(13:54):
incense and kept on talking. I was like, what were
what happened? You know? I did upstairs on a light
and go put my transfer in. Go put my transfer in.
And there was a sergeant who used to call us
all hermano or brother in Spanish. He said, hey, Hermino,
your officer, Joseph, Hey, your first two months is going
to be spent working the front desk of Central station.
And I was like, oh, thank God, God answered my prayer.
(14:17):
So I was like, oh, I don't have to deal
with this crap. Two months breaking the front desk, I
was wrong at the front desk, and it was the
first of the month, and every five, ten to twenty minutes,
somebody came in from skid Row with their arm broken
backwards where they could swing it forty five degrees the
other way. One lady came in with her cheeks lacerated
(14:37):
so like she had a second mouth, you could see
her teeth. Another man walked into the station holding his
stomach and moves his hand and his intentions fill up,
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And the
common thread with all of these people were I don't
want a police report. I just want an ambulance to
take me to the hospital. I have to live here,
because what I didn't realize, or what I did realize,
was the station was in the heart of where skid row.
(15:00):
I also discovered the cops there weren't fat and lazy.
They were just working in a time where the justice
system didn't support their efforts, kind of what we're living
in right now. So I'm like, man, get me off
this front desk. I can't take it. And then I
get my first basic patrol car and it was Chinatown
like Chinatown. Yes, culture people in the park, stretching and
(15:23):
doing taichie and great eating spots. And I'm telling you
it was beautiful. Your blood pressure went down just parking there, right,
And I'm about to write my first ticket. I was
there only five minutes, about to write my first ticket
at Alpine and yaff I remember correctly, and we get
a call one A one respond to seventh and San
Julian for the attack in progress. Back then, attack meant rape,
(15:44):
sexual assault. So we're driving like bats out of hill
to get down there, and sure enough we get there
and there's a woman sitting with her legs crossed, rocking
back and forth. She was literally torn to shreds, face
messed up, bleeding, skirt torn. People were standing around her
mocking her. And I got out of the car and
I tried to talk to her, and she would and
(16:04):
talk to me, and all I hear these gang members
excuse my friends saying, oh that ain't gonna talk to you.
Oh you you want you must be new here, Get
your back in the car. Man. She ain't gonna tell
you nothing. And literally she told me nothing. I had
to take a Jane Dole assault report, caught her in
ambudence and that was that. And I couldn't believe what
I saw. So my partner says, let's not go back
here today.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And you're listening to active senior lead officer in Los
Angeles Dion Joseph share the story of his life and
his work in Los Angeles as a police officer and
that first assignment in Venice Beach Boy. I can only
describe that neighborhood as sketchy. I was there at around
the same time he was. I was living there and
it's much different now, but it was sketchy and dangerous
(16:47):
and still can be late at night.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And there was that training.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Officer who he reported to, Well, we've all had people
we've had to report to that were, let's just say,
people we hoped to never Porto again. And then came
his training officer in Oakwood, who fit the stereotype of
what he thought well, white racist cops looked like tall, blonde,
blue eyes and a mustache. Only the black people he
(17:13):
was serving in that neighborhood loved him, and I loved
him for a simple reason. He was there to serve them.
He kept telling him again and again that he wasn't
just there to treat the people with dignity who didn't
commit crimes, but to even commit to the principle that
the purpose and the suspects themselves deserved to be treated
with dignity and respect. And then came skid Row and Chinatown.
(17:37):
When we come back more of the story of Dion
Joseph here on our American story, and we continue with
(18:11):
our American stories and with law enforcement consultant, author, and
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles, Dion Joseph.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
We get back to Chinatown and once again we get
the Fifth and San Julian for ad w in progress.
We get there and first we're wondering where the basic
car for that area is and they're tied up with
three people they arrested. It's kind of a picture how
dangerous it was down there. We get to Fifth in
Sant Julian and I see a man sitting holding his
(18:45):
chest on the sidewalk, and sure enough, somebody stabbed him
and punctured his lawn. And he points down the street
to the man who did it, and I was like,
the guy was walking like he wasn't running away. So
I call a ambulance form to go to detain this guy,
and I'll never forget him saying to me, Oh, why
you're so hard up. I'm going to be out in
about two days. DA's going to reject this case. And
(19:06):
I'm like, no, he's not. I went to this station
because one thing I can't stand is when you hurt
people who are poor or downtrodden. You know, it's part
of my DNA. So I went to this station and
I wrote the world's greatest police report. And I struggled
because I was from a unified school district that really
didn't give us crap about me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I literally had an English teacher that said, yeahn all
you got to do is put your name on the
paper and we'll give you a c And I did that,
taking the easy way out. So to this day, I
still struggle with danglin participles and antecedents, and you know,
as a result of not trying, that's my fault, that is. Anyway,
I sat down and wrote the greatest police report in
(19:43):
the world, dotted every eye, crossed every te polan's everywhere,
quotations in the right place. It was beautiful. Give him
to the watch commander. In his watch commander, we called
him a red pin and he would keep a red
pin and for new officers he would just completely rip
up their reports because he was an English major. And
I think I saw a tear in his eye. He said,
if this is the world's greatest police report, I'm exaggerating
airport and I was like, thank you, sir. I took
(20:06):
the guy to jail, and I just knew that I
was going to get a victim, a homeless victim, some justice.
I came back two days later, I'm driving down the
street and I guess who. I see the ballhead guy
who stabbed him. And he looked at me and says,
as I told you, I was upset. I was livid.
I went into the detective's office and I said, hey,
I wrote the hell out of that report. And the
detective say, you sure did, Officer Joseph. It was a
(20:27):
great report. And she showed me the disposition of the
District Attorney's office and it says, DA reject because the
victim is a drug addict and because they're homeless. I
would ask anybody, does that sound fair to you? And
The answer is absolutely not. You know, justice should not
be dealt to people who we believe are perfect people.
(20:48):
You know, it's for everybody. And that was a moment
that changed my life. You always find a catalyst, and
that was my catalyst for why I decided to kind
of stay and be a champion auto top of my DNA.
The reason why people thought I was crazy for being
in skid row enthusiastically right, was because my parents. My
(21:09):
parents were engaged in outreach their entire life. Their forty
seven year marriage, they helped raise forty one foster children
on top of their four children and three grandchildren. So
I was around for about seventeen of those kids. And
you would think I would have a little resentment for
not getting one hundred percent of my parents' love, but no,
(21:30):
it was actually wonderful to see my parents changed these kids' lives,
whether they were with us for two weeks or for
two years. And the cool thing about my parents, it
wasn't just about the kids. They would often sneak and
counsel the parents, so the parents would end up being
better parents when the kids finding went back to them.
And I'll never forget we took in kids who are
(21:52):
sexually assaulted, homeless, neglected, malnourished. We even took home with
neo Nazi and this kid's father told them, don't eat
the n words food. I'm going to come sneak a
big mac to you. And I couldn't believe it, right,
So the father never came with that big mach. So
after about the third or fourth day, I think the
kid got hungry and we caught him in a refrigerator
sneaking some collar greens and black eyed peas and and
(22:15):
it was delicious, and he didn't buy. He realized that
the inwards foods, it's not going to kill you, right.
And after about another month with us, he saw he
thought he was black. He was like, man, you know,
we got pulled over by the police and this kid
was like you just stopped just caning here black and
bro like, no, no, no, kid, no do that. I'll
(22:37):
never forget that. It was a road trip to Louisiana,
that was It was hilarious, and he didn't want to
go back to his own dad. He ended up thankfully
being sent to his mother, who wasn't a neo Nazi.
And uh, just watching my parents change the life of
these kids was incredible to me. Then my dad, he
was a self made man, grew up in the Jim
Crow South, dealt with real tangible racism, not this tansferred
(23:00):
racism that we're dealing with today. We got kids today
acting like they've lived through Jim Crow and they don't.
They have no idea what real tangible, palpable cross burning
you sit on the back of the bus racism was like,
my dad grew up in that and because of being
so poor and so broke, being abandoned by his family
at times, he turned to crying, and of course he
(23:24):
changed his life. Found the Lord. Met my mom in church,
or it actually fell in love with my mom in church.
They met at a hospital and basically he said, I
was never going to hurt anybody again to get what
I needed. So when he became a successful businessman, he
would always reach back and hire individuals who reminded him
of himself. And I didn't know this. I was going
(23:46):
through my background investigations with the department, and they, of
course one of the questions they ask is have you
ever associated with any known felons? And of course I
was telling the truth. No, squeaky clean. You guys checked
me out. You guys. Talked to my fourth grade teacher,
what the hell you know this right? And my dad says, sorry, son,
you did. I said, what are you talking about? He said,
you remember Cowboy the framer? Yeah, oh he is an
(24:09):
ex murderer. What you remember Andre, the guy you dig
ditches with. I was like, yeah, he was a drug dealer.
And I was like what. But I calmed down when
I realized the beauty of what my dad did. He
gave people a second chance who reminded him of himself,
and if they wanted that second chance, he was going
to help them. He believed in hands up, not hands outs.
(24:30):
He believed in the hands up giving people a hand up.
So watching this inspired me and I loved he never
called his employees his employees. He always called him his friends.
And I was amazed by this. And you'll never hear
me call a person in skid roll bum, a hobo,
a transient. I will always call them my friends, even
if they're cussing me out, I will always call them
(24:50):
my friends. And then lastly, my mother and father fed
the homeless religiously every Saturday, cooking fresh, home cooked meals
as if she was cooking for her family and taking
it down to parks and helping families. And she did
that up until she got sick and passed away. So
after about three months of being in skid Row, all
(25:10):
fears went away, and I realized that I was home.
This is what my parents were preparing me for, and
all I was doing was in my own way, carrying
out their mission. And I fell in love with trying
to help and change the culture of skid Row. As
a patrol cop, I loved the community then just as
much as I did now. I just went about it differently.
(25:31):
Arrested everybody and their mother. That's what I did. If
you were selling crack, if you were assaulting people, if
you murdered somebody, I'm going to drive up and I'm
going to stuff you in the back of my car
with several of your friends if I can. And that's
a noble effort. There's nothing wrong with that, nothing racist
or cold about that. You know, you break the law,
you got to do the time. But what it did
was it kind of left. It gave me a perception
(25:53):
problem to the community because I didn't have time to
stop and say what I was doing or why so busy.
It was just like I'm just here to arrest black people.
So I ended up getting one of many names at
the time, RoboCop. I have had many names. So the
first name was Uncle Tom, a house Negro white man's
boot licking lap dog. I heard that one, right, Yeah, yeah.
(26:16):
The combinations were just incredible. Then came RoboCop because they
I walked like a robot. I had all this gear
on me, and it's like you couldn't get away from me.
I knew every crevice of the area.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And you're listening to Dion Joseph tell one heck of
his story, not just about himself, not just about the
people he defends and calls his friends, those people on
skid row, but also the model that his family provided
for him, adopting so many people whose society would cast off.
And you know, here on this show we tell stories
(26:48):
about people whose society casts off, but great people, particularly
people of faith, well, give a second chance, and give
a real second chance. I hand up, not a handout,
And there are very different things. And you could hear
it in Dion Joseph's voice and even a chuckle explaining
the difference between a hand up and a handout. When
(27:10):
we come back more of this remarkable story. It's a
story about so many things, but in the end, about
grace and love behind a badge. The story of Dion
Joseph continues here on our American Stories, and we continue
(27:38):
with our American stories and law enforcement consultant, author and
active senior lead officer in Los Angeles, Dion Joseph, Let's
continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So then, after about seven years in the street and
two years undercovered, I got the opportunity to become a
senior lead officer, another job I didn't want. So I
became a senior lead officer, and you know, I didn't
want to smile away and kiss babies. I wanted to
go back to doing what I was usually doing, fighting
bad crime and getting bad guys off the street. But
I was doing the same thing and expecting the same results,
(28:12):
different results. And I looked back on all the arrest
I made and all the actions I took to try
to make the community better, and nothing changed, because that
once again the justice system. For every bad guy put
in jail, they were out the next day and they
were replaced by two more. So something I'll never forget.
And I don't mean to preach, but I'm sitting on
Main Street, frustrated. Main Street was one of the most
(28:35):
dangerous streets at the time, and I parked there and
I'm seeing drug dealers had drug deals happening all over
the place, right in front of my face. And I said,
I just parked my car and said a prayer. I said, God,
how can I fix this? You know these people were suffering.
What can I do? And all I heard in my
spirit was stay here, okay. I parked my car there
(28:55):
for six hours, and what happened was the drug there
is what they expected me to do his park a
few minutes and leave. But I stayed there for six hours.
And it was so funny because drug dealers kept coming
up to my car, going hey, anytime for you to
go do something else, anytime for you to go home?
And something told me I said I am home, and
they were like wow. So I left and it's about
(29:18):
three quarters of them came back. I came back, parked
for another hour. They left, now was a half. I
kept doing it until it was like no drug dealers
on the block. And I did this for a week.
I called it the sit down technique. And about seven
days after doing it, I saw this man come up
to me. There's something called a silent majority in any community.
(29:38):
These are the people who they support police, they support
law and order, but they have a figure it of
a literal gun to their head telling him not to
talk to the police, even if you get stabbed, raped
or shot. And this man knocks out my window and
I think he's going to be an another drug dealer,
asking me to leave. And I rolled down the window
and he says, hey, I don't know who you are,
but don't you ever leave this block. This is the
(29:59):
first time I've been able to walk down their street
in about fifteen years. It worked, and I said, Okay,
it's working on this block, so let me switch to
the next block. So I called it the CID down technique,
and it started to reduce crime. I was reducing crime
by myself, and I reduced crime eighteen percent with no resources.
And people couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe that Main
Street was clean, Winston Street was clean, some parts of
(30:22):
Fifth Street were getting clean. It was crazy, but I
couldn't do it for long. A lot of people focus
on me, but I couldn't do it myself. So as
I was starting to lose ground. God sent some incredible
officers to help me hold down Main Street in the
streets that I took care of until the Safer Cities initiative,
and that's when fifty incredible officers were brought to the
division to focus on skid row and help reduce crime.
(30:45):
And while they went on the offensive, I went on
the defensive and tried to build relationships to let the
community know that we're not doing this to you, We're
doing this for you. Because we had activists in the
area who were actively telling them that we were trying
to get rid of them, we wanted to criminalize them,
and none of that was true. What are the police
supposed to do when ninety five human beings die from
(31:07):
non homicidal deaths in one year in the fifty block radius,
what are we supposed to do let it happen. That's
the cruelty. The cruelty is not enforcing the law. The
cruelty is not enforcing the law. What are we supposed
to do about that? Sit on our hands because it's not.
The optics aren't friendly. No, we refuse to do that.
We recognize a skid row account for like fifty percent
of all the crime in the area and we went
(31:29):
in and it wasn't just enforcement, it was enhancements, outreach,
and we were arresting people for the sake of getting
them to programs that they normally would refuse without a push.
But now, for the first time in my career, we
had the justice system, working with US Parole Probation, the
(31:50):
DA's office. Everybody was on board. We have to fix
skid Row. It's a disaster. And during that time, I
always say, if you want somebody to change, you have
to create anronment conducers to that. That's common sense, that's
not political, that's not left or right, And I'll never
forget during the time where we created the environment through enforcement,
enhancement and outreach, it made certain individuals ready for help.
(32:15):
So as a senior lead officer, I began networking with
housing agencies inside skid Row and outside of skied Row.
I did that on my own because I know there
were individuals who are desperately wanting to get off the street.
Not everybody, but I house about one hundred and fifty
people in ten years who were ready because of our push.
Now that's nothing. In skied rollers about two thousand people
(32:37):
on average whose choose to sleep in the street. There's
very few people who aren't there by choice. Okay, I
would say about thirty five percent of the individuals are
there because the party, because this is the place they
can go and do their thing. Many people aren't homeless.
But why didn't those other two thousand come for help?
Because they weren't ready. They weren't ready. But by the
(32:59):
grace of God, due to the push, we got one
hundred and fifty people off the streets. And then through
the initiative, we got a lot twy two d and
twenty five individuals signed up for programs. Now, I'm not
saying everybody completed the program, but about thirty percent of
them in my estimation, did. And people were going home,
people were reuniting with family members, we were finding missing people, murderers.
It was a beautiful time. And then I used my
(33:20):
resources to build bridges with the community. Community members that
normally wouldn't talk to the police. Of course, you had
your extreme activist groups. There's no talking to them. They
don't want to sit at the table. They say they
want to sit at the table. No, they want to
completely turn it over just to feel a sense of power.
That ends up doing more damage to the people that
(33:40):
claim they're trying to help and than anything else. It
just made me realize that community policing, grassroots community policing,
does work, but you got to put the work in.
You can't be scared. And I helped this group get
paint trash cans to beautify the community. They literally clean
the community up better than the city did. No shot
at the city. It's just these folks were more passionate
(34:03):
about it. They painted murals saying these are black people, right,
saying we want clean, safe, healthy streets black people. You know,
but the news never reported this stuff. Skid Row was
relatively safe and they did it all purpose. You know,
they only want one narrative about the police, right. But
the reality is, during two thousand and five and tw
twenty eleven, skid Row was a relatively safe place to live.
(34:26):
Here are the effects of it, and it was just
a beautiful time. I have no regrets. I've saved more
lives than anybody who criticizes me for being a police officer.
And everyone who criticized me, they either turned their head
and look the other way. I would not change this
career or the path that I've taken for anything in
the world. I'm still going to continue to try to
(34:47):
be a light in a dark place for the I
remember every time I go on vacation. If I'm going
thirty days and I come back, it's like their long
lost father just came home. Damn, Roba God where you're
been managedment crazy out here? I'm like you. Remember I
was telling me about Bill's you know, him driving down
the street and people screaming his name from the rooftop.
The same thing happens to me. People don't understand why
I'm so passionate. You can call me crazy, you can
(35:08):
call it whatever you want. I touch these things, and
until you touch it, you will never ever understand why
I'm so passionate about bringing in a sense of order
to skid Row. Yes, law enforcement is such an important
component anything you want to do, whether it's a noble
cause such as get people safe and clean or have
(35:28):
a concert, if it's not safe, no one's gonna go.
If you want to run a school, if it's not safe,
kids aren't gonna learn. And I'll be public safety as
a cornerstone of all of that. I believe in crime control.
And when you say that, people start shaking, you know.
But the truth is I also believe in due process,
and we need to stop builifying the concept of law
enforcement because places like skied Row needs order. If we're
(35:49):
gonna save lives down there, if we're gonna get people
into these programs, we need the justice system to work
again in a matter where they before. Where if I
brought a drug addict to you, you put them in
a mandatory drug program that doesn't exist anymore. So all
I can do right now is is be visible and
try to deter people from getting hurt. But that's the system.
I'm not saying this because I hate the homeless. I'm
(36:11):
saying this because I care about them. This is not
a police perspective. It's coming from a perspective of a
human man who cares, who just happens to be a cop.
And that's me in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and story
gathering by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks
to Dion Joseph for sharing his story. And it's a
heck of a story where all of us can learn
from that moment he was on main Street watching drug dealers.
As he said, everywhere around him, and he offered up
that prayer to God, Lord, how can I help this?
(36:45):
He heard two words from God, stay here, and it's
what he did. And he did what he called the
sit down technique, and that is just sit down.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And what do you know?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Just by his presence, well, the drug dealers slowly started
to fade away. In fact, one of them even walked
up to him and sort of said, hey, when are
you going home? Ain't it time for you to go home?
His rebuttal was I am home. And then that knock
on the window. I don't know who you are, but
don't leave the block. Don't leave the block. By the way,
(37:19):
this is a call to arms for so many men
and women who can well sit and be present on
a block that might have problems.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Just your presence can make the difference.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You don't have to be a law enforcement officer to
make a difference by doing the sit This story was
about so many things, public safety being a cornerstone, but
due process too, and compassion and mercy and love for the.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Least of these.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The story of RoboCop RoboCop Dion Joseph no robot at
all here on our American stories e
Host
Lee Habeeb
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