‘I wanted to quit when I saw that video’: Black officer on Alton Sterling shooting

Nakia Jones is a black woman who is the mother of six children. She grew up in the ghetto and she saw the world of drugs and gangs and decided she wanted to be a police officer to make the world a better place. She’s been an officer for 20 years.

And now she’s angry at some of her fellow officers.

Jones posted a Facebook live video Wednesday after she saw the videos that depicted the killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. She said the video “tore (her) up” because she saw “what you all see.”

“How dare you stand next to me in the same uniform and murder somebody?” she asked in the video.

A bystander video shows Sterling restrained by two police officers on the ground when one pulls out a gun and points it at his chest. The video turns away when the police officer starts shooting Sterling, but you can hear the gunshots. Sterling died from the gunshot wounds to his chest and back, according to the coroner, spurring protests and a federal investigation into his death.

Jones said she knows many officers who would die to protect others in their community, and called on officers who know they feel prejudice against minorities to leave their profession.

“If you’re that officer who knows good and well you’ve got a God complex, if you’re afraid of people who don’t look like you, you have no business in that uniform. Take it off,” Jones said. “You have no business being a police officer.”

She said she wanted to quit when she saw the video, but that people needed to “stand together and be smart” to solve this problem.

Jones also said she had taken guns away from young men who were 15, 14 and 13 years old, and that young black men needed to stop the violence against one another. She said any young men who feel police are treating them unfairly should talk to the police chiefs and mayors of their towns.

“The most powerful, feared person in the world is an intelligent, black man,” Jones said.

Another video of a black man who was fatally shot by a police officer surfaced Wednesday night. The girlfriend of Philando Castile shot a video on Facebook live that began soon after Castile was shot by a police officer in Minnesota.

The woman, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, said Castile was stopped for a broken taillight and had a legal gun on his person. She said Castile told the police officer this while reaching for his wallet to get out his ID and the officer shot him. Castile, 32, reportedly died at a hospital later that night.

This story was originally published July 7, 2016 at 12:38 PM with the headline "‘I wanted to quit when I saw that video’: Black officer on Alton Sterling shooting."