A former police department leader who has vast personal and professional experience with race relations spoke to WTOP about what’s needed to create systemic societal change and ways to revamp police departments.

A former police department leader who has vast personal and professional experience with race relations spoke to WTOP about what’s needed to create systemic societal change and ways to revamp police departments.

Former Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook, who became the first African American to lead the city’s law enforcement, was also part of T.C. Williams High School’s first integrated football team in 1971 depicted in the 2000 movie “Remember the Titans.”

Looking over the past several decades, Cook said violence against African Americans, like the lynchings of the 1950s, “has lessened, but the fierceness of that violence … is the same”

As far as change for a better future, Cook senses the key is with young people

“[They] have a little bit less difficulty assimilating if they’re allowed to,” said Cooke.

Cook said cops were “immediately overwhelmed” after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protesting, getting “a little heavy-handed” but credits D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham and Mayor Muriel Bowser for being flexible as the situation warranted.

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