Inside One Police Plaza, Black history isn\u2019t just being honored. It\u2019s being carried forward during a Black History Month event held by the NYPD Guardians Association.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
According to officials, Black officers now account for 17% of the NYPD, about 5,800 members
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The department said there are more Black assistant chiefs now than at any point in history
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In the 1940s, Black officers formed the NYPD Guardians Association, which later helped protect marchers at the historic March on Washington<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think about Black history and the progress we\u2019ve made. I think about the courage, the resilience, the sacrifice that it\u2019s taken for us to be standing here today,\u201d NYPD Assistant Chief Aaron Edwards said.<\/p>\n
That courage traces back more than a century to 1911, when Samuel Battle became the NYPD\u2019s first Black officer.<\/p>\n
In the 1940s, Black officers formed the NYPD Guardians Association, which later helped protect marchers at the historic March on Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal of the fraternal organization … is recruitment, it\u2019s retention, it\u2019s mentorship and it\u2019s building those community partnerships,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n
Now, Black officers account for 17% of the NYPD, about 5,800 members, according to officials.<\/p>\n
The department said there are more Black assistant chiefs now than at any point in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started off in the 112 Precinct and I was one of few African Americans,\u201d First Deputy Commissioner Tania Kinsella said.<\/p>\n
Kinsella is the highest-ranking Black officer in the department.<\/p>\n
She said the point of progress is not a headline. It\u2019s a pipeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about breaking barriers and thinking about who\u2019s coming behind us and pulling them up,\u201d Kinsella said.<\/p>\n
From the first to wear the uniform to the leaders shaping what the badge looks like now, Black leaders in the department said the event wasn\u2019t just a commemoration, but a promise to the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside One Police Plaza, Black history isn\u2019t just being honored. It\u2019s being carried forward during a Black History…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[25,388,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,58207,27],"class_list":["post-136968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-top-stories","tag-louis-finley","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-on-air-ticker-article","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}