"We're not killer cops": Officer speaks out about controversial police shootings
Days before the one-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray - a 25-year-old man who died while in police custody in Baltimore - the city of Cleveland agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Rice was fatally shot by a police officer in November 2014 while holding a toy pellet gun. As part of the deal, the city made no admission of wrongdoing in his death.
High-profile police killings like the cases of Gray and Rice have increased scrutiny on police practices across America. Relations between police and some African-American communities are particularly tense, and recent studies have shown that black men account for a disproportionate number of unarmed people shot by police.
CBS News sat down with a veteran beat cop who's been on the job for more than 20 years, to discuss the current state of police-community relations.
On whether the law favors police officers:
"When police are wrong and commit crimes, we are prosecuted. We are held to a higher standard and we are prosecuted."
On what needs to be done to prevent unnecessary police violence:
"[The] problems come in when the officer doesn't take the effort or the time to get to understand the community, and when the community doesn't take the time to get to know the officer and who he is, and that he's a human being too."
On the Black Lives Matter movement:
Every life matters. I think that [Black Lives Matter activists]- they're putting people against the police almost (...) The relationship between police and race is a tough relationship.
On whether training for police is the problem:
"No - the training is good, but police work, it's not an exact science (...) our reaction time is a split second. Nobody calls the police because the day is going great, nobody is calling me over to the house to say 'Hey things are great today.' They're calling me because there's a problem. I always say that in police work, you need to have a healthy fear - a healthy fear. You need to know what can happen, but you can't always assume that it is."
On whether the new generation of police officers is more trigger happy than veteran officers:
"I don't think cops are killer cops, and I don't think they're trigger-happy. I think if we could get away from those words, we can then begin to talk about "Okay, why are these things happening?"
On whether he regrets becoming a police officer:
"Sometimes I look at my brothers in the corporate sector and I say: "Well, you know, it may be easier to go to work there," [rather] than being under this microscope all the time. But I've never regretted becoming a cop. We're not perfect, we're not the enemy, and we're trying to do the best we can."