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From the newsroom of the Washington Post.

It's Robert Samuels from The Washington Post.

Post is Sarah Kaplan. Hi, this is Elaheiz Ali with The Washington Post.

This is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers.

It's Friday, July 24th.

Today, the unique challenges of being a black police officer and how movie theaters are trying to adjust to the pandemic.

My name is Marti Gilliam. I'm currently co-founder and the founding trainer at Braw Studio, which is a boxing yoga studio.

I currently live in Maplewood, New Jersey. I'm an ex-police officer for the Plainfield Police Department in New Jersey.

We wanted to talk to Marti's because he's dealt with something that you don't hear about very often.

What it's like to straddle the line between being a black police officer and also experiencing brutality at the hands of police.

Growing up, you know, my friends and look at police as being people that really served our community.

What was your first experience with police?

First experience with police was when I was a young kid and my father became a police officer and I was really young as well.

I looked at him as a hero in my eyes. He was that officer that everybody knew their name and felt like he knew everybody's name in town.

And that was where I wanted to go in my career.

And from your interaction with police officers, where you were living, but also with the fact that your dad was a police officer, how did you feel about police as a kid?

Well, it was a little conflicted because as a kid, my mom and rest of my family pretty much raised me to be respectful of police, make sure that you're non-threatening because of what police may do because of being a black male.

But I also see my father as a police officer and being a dare officer and being of service in this community.

And so from that kind of conflicted view about who police officers were and how do you decide that you wanted to become a police officer?

Seeing my dad and also my uncle as a police officer and seeing their friends in law enforcement, I looked at them as being kind of like the hometown heroes.

And I always wanted to be of service. So I thought that this had to be one way of the opportunity I presented itself and it be one way that I can be of service.

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