Boston police officer says law enforcement and faith drew him out of troubled childhood
BOSTON – Josh De La Rosa looked up at his old apartment on Devon Street in Dorchester and smiled.
"There's a lot of memories. I love this place. If once my kids get older, if I could come back and retire here, I would," he said.
The memories are bittersweet. It was Dorchester in the 1990s and De La Rosa's childhood seesawed between childhood ingenuity and survival. When he was very young, his father was deported to the Dominican Republic for drug trafficking. His mother sought comfort in abusive relationships.
De La Rosa and his brother spent their days playing basketball in the back alley behind their apartment complex. The local basketball courts were too dangerous with gang activity to play there, De La Rosa recalls.
By night, De La Rosa and his brother would pry door handles on cars or sell marijuana. At the same time, his street was at the crossroads of gun violence.
"Down the street you had the Devon Street Latin Kings, they called them D5K. Towards Columbia road you had Magnolia Intervale Columbia Road. That was the gang called MIC. To the left of me you had Stanwood," De La Rosa said, pointing to all the gangs that frequented his neighborhood.
Three decades later, De La Rosa is a Boston Police officer and a pastor, but he says it took a long, and winding road to get here. As community leaders call for action in the wake of incidents of gun violence in Boston in recent weeks, Josh's story offers a hopeful roadmap for change.
"There's no such thing as coincidences. That's basically God winking saying 'I got your back. I'm here. I'm here for you,'" Josh said.
His path towards law enforcement started when a Boston police officer and his family moved into the apartment next to De La Rosa's. The officer invited Josh and his brother to come boxing with them.
"In the boxing gym I fell in love with the sport of boxing," De La Rosa said. "In a boxing gym, you beat each other up and at the end of the day, you hug each other."
When the officer moved, De La Rosa said his life seemed to spiral again. He prepared for his own gang initiation.
Before De La Rosa could join a gang, another caring adult walked into his life. He was invited by a local pastor to come to a service. De La Rosa said he skeptically accepted the invitation.
"He said 'What is your river that's blocking you from your blessing, from crossing over to your blessing?'" Josh said.
De La Rosa describes what happened next as a turning point in his life. He was 16 years old.
"I prayed and for some reason I just couldn't stop crying and I just felt so much relief. I felt like all that anger, that hate, immediately left me," he said.
After that, there were more caring adults. A Boston police officer brought a pamphlet to De La Rosa's school, inviting him to join the force.
Now, De La Rosa wants to be the same instrument of change for young kids in the community he grew up in. He's hoping to raise money to open a free boxing gym.
"If there was a free gym in the inner city it would keep a lot of kids out of trouble," he said
