When William Muse served in the Gulf War, his step brother, Andre Lamar had been murdered in Tacoma. Crime was high in the city and so was resistance to police from his community. These were some of the reasons that prompted him to decide to join the Tacoma Police Department .
Muse told The News Tribune that at one point his grandfather, an activist during the Civil Rights Movement in Tacoma, wanted to become a police officer, but believed he wasn’t allowed to because of his skin color. Now, 31 years after Muse himself joined in 1995, he has gone through the ranks from being a police officer to a member of the SWAT team and a detective.
“For me, it wasn’t because I looked up one day and I saw an African American police officer and said ‘I’m gonna be like that guy,” he told The News Tribune in an interview. “For me, it was the fact that I saw somebody in uniform, a person of color, help out my family.”
Muse said before applying to the department, he saw his family members and community not having faith in law enforcement…