WHATRYADOIN’ – Major David Hughes

The Well

Anson Mount & Branan Edgens

Society & Culture, Comedy

4.9 • 821 Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Major David Hughes serves as Chief of Professional Standards at the Newport News Sheriff's Office in Virginia. After nearly falling victim to his own local police culture, and then spending years considering its systemic issues, Major Hughes simply was not willing to keep silent after the killing of George Floyd. He sat down and penned a stunning op-ed for the New York Times entitled, "I'm a Black Police Officer. Here's How to Change the System." After we read it, we knew we had to speak to him.

You can find Major Hughes' op-ed here.

Reverend Freakchild's cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" is provided courtesy of KBOO Community Radio in Portland, Oregon via a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives International 4.0 licence. For more information about KBOO you can visit their website here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it was a good idea, and it doesn't mean that it was necessary.
0:23.9	And nobody asks, is it necessary?
0:27.7	And that's the way we teach police officers.
0:36.4	Major David Hughes has been a police officer for over 30 years.
0:38.2	He currently serves as the Chief of Professional Standards at the Newport News Sheriff's Office, a post he's had since
0:42.4	2013. He recently authored an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, I'm a black
0:47.9	police officer. Here's how to change the system. Major Hughes, welcome to the well.
0:53.4	Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
0:56.3	And to remind our listeners, this is a between-season segment we call What Are You Doing,
1:01.1	in which we call various creative people to see how they've been staying creative during the current
1:05.2	lockdown. And Major Hughes, I have to say your piece in the New York Times was both well-written and a refreshing perspective.
1:13.5	Well, thank you very much.
1:14.9	And we're going to get into your op-ed in a moment, but I wondered if you could help us to get to know you a little more first.
1:19.6	Could you tell us where you're from and maybe a little bit about your childhood?
1:23.3	Okay. Well, I was born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia.
1:27.3	Same general area as Newport News, is Hampton Roads, Virginia area.
1:31.8	I had a part-time job in a grocery store while I was in high school,
1:36.1	and there were police officers that worked in there in security.
1:40.1	And it's probably the first time of my life I ever really had the opportunity to meet and talk
1:47.7	with a police officer that was, you know, not professional. I didn't have a lot of interacting
1:53.9	with police anyway. But I kind of got to enormous people. And the couple that I met, I thought they were really nice. And that was
2:02.9	probably the first indication that I think that I would have gone into policing. And probably
	...

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