Detective Yuseff Hamm, 49, is a 15-year veteran of the NYPD and president of the Guardians Association, the fraternal organization that represents African-American police officers in the city. Following the latest police slayings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and the massacre of cops in Dallas, Hamm spoke to The Post’s Dean Balsamini about being both a cop and potential victim in a tense time.
We can no longer hide behind “accidental shootings.” Everything cannot be an accidental shooting. We’ve been talking long enough. The time for talk is over. We need a game plan.
Police training is great, but can you train someone not to be a racist?
I’ve seen racism. Being a member of the Guardians, you are already labeled a militant. Sometimes that sentiment is racism in and of itself.
Historically, there has been a disconnect with African-Americans and the Police Department. We can’t expect that it’s just going to disappear. There’s always going to be tension.
The bottom line? We need more African-Americans and people of color in the Police Department.
The racial disparity in policing is nationwide. The latest statistics in the Criminal Justice Bureau show there are about 585,000 police officers, of which 16 percent are African-Americans. When you look at the NYPD, there are 5,400 African-American police officers — also 16 percent of a force of 34,500 officers. But African-Americans represent 23 percent of the city’s population of 8.4 million.
The latest incidents are alarming. Sad. African-Americans have been the victims of police brutality and police injustices for a long time.
It’s not easy being an African-American police officer. You can identify with both sides. And it’s even harder when you raise a family and your son is African-American. He has to go out and interact with the same police officers and you say, “Oh, my God, what would that outcome be?”
We need to teach our children how to interact with police. I tell my 22-year-old son: Be compliant.
As an African-American male and an NYPD detective, the irony is that I can be the victim or the cop involved in a shooting incident.
I could be stopped by the police — they may not know I’m a police officer and see my firearm — and I could be a victim. And there are times that people don’t respect me as an officer.
You have to work past the hostility and anger. Stopping someone or a simple interaction with police doesn’t have to be explosive.
If I happen to stop someone and see a firearm, I will react to seeing the firearm and not the person’s color.
Things will not change as long as we have people who refuse to acknowledge that racism exists in law enforcement.
At the same time, those who are not in law enforcement cannot place all officers in the same pot.
Police shootings are not always a matter of someone being at fault. You can train a police officer to be cautious, you can train a police officer how to tactically approach a situation, but can you really train a police officer not to allow their emotions to take over? Police officers are human. Emotions sometimes get the best of both officers and subject.
We need officers and the public to use that split second to take a breath, step back and analyze the situation.
When that doesn’t happen, we have police shootings and aggressions on police officers.
I’m going to call for an emergency meeting on July 21 with the 2,200 members of our organization and sit down and have a dialogue over the recent events, and then we are going to have a meeting with the community.
The public wants the good cops to stand up and point out the bad cops. Society focuses on that 1 percent which are bad and makes every other police officer the scapegoat.
Just because somebody is in the uniform doesn’t automatically make them the enemy. That’s what I’d like for the public to really know. Trust and believe. There are many of us who are doing a damn good job.