By Alicia Lee, CNN
Updated 12:04 PM ET, Mon June 8, 2020
(CNN)De Lacy Davis remembers the moment vividly.
The New Jersey officer and a fellow officer were patrolling the streets of East Orange when a black woman and her daughter accidentally stepped in front of their police cruiser.
The other officer, who was white, rolled down his window.
“What the hell are you doing, you effin’ ns?” Davis recalled him saying, while censoring out the racial slur.
Davis, who is black, is now retired from the force. But that moment 30-something years ago was just one of the many times he realized how some of his white colleagues viewed his community.
“The ‘few bad apples’ theory is a theory that I think is postulated by my colleagues and politicians to minimize the impact of this racism that is baked into the culture of policing,” Davis said.
As the nation erupts in protests around the death of George Floyd and the greater issue of police brutality, African-American police officers are finding themselves navigating two worlds that are often at odds, and sometimes even at war, with each other: The black and the blue.
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