In August 2014, I was serving as a captain in the Forest Park Police Department in Metro Atlanta, Georgia. I had been in that role for over two years and was just beginning to find my footing and understand what it took to make a meaningful impact as part of the department’s command staff. At that point in my career, biweekly CompStat meetings were the bane of my existence. But on August 9, everything shifted. The fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited protests, civil unrest, and a large-scale reckoning on race, policing, and justice. That day marked a seismic shift—not only for the Ferguson Police Department, but for policing in the United States as a whole. And for me, it marked a turning point that would ultimately redefine the trajectory of my career.

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