{"id":460225,"date":"2021-04-27T18:20:23","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T22:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=460225"},"modified":"2021-04-27T18:20:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T22:20:25","slug":"angel-cop-speaks-out-after-viral-lebron-letter-i-was-lebron-james-before-i-became-a-police-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/angel-cop-speaks-out-after-viral-lebron-letter-i-was-lebron-james-before-i-became-a-police-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Angel Cop\u2019 Speaks Out After Viral LeBron Letter: \u2018I Was Lebron James Before I Became A Police Officer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">36<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fangel-cop-speaks-out-after-viral-lebron-letter-i-was-lebron-james-before-i-became-a-police-officer%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=460225&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1145.jpeg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p><span>Los Angeles Police Officer Deon Joseph, who wrote a viral letter to LeBron James asking to meet after the NBA star targeted a police officer on social media, spoke out Tuesday explaining the reason he decided to reach out to James and request a sit-down talk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Joseph, who is known by some on Skid Row as \u201cAngel Cop,\u201d told <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/lebron-james-la-police-officer-deon-joseph-interview\"><span>Fox News<\/span><\/a><span> in an interview that everybody is hurting and separated right now, and the last thing that we need is to widen the chasm between people. So in a letter that went viral, Joseph requested a sit-down meeting with LeBron James to talk with him about the realities of police work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI don\u2019t want to call him irrational,\u201d James told Fox. \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t a police officer, and all I saw 24\/7 on social media and on the radio was that the police are out to get black people, police hate people of color \u2014 and they\u2019re repeating that over and over again \u2014 I\u2019d probably feel the same way. So I was LeBron James before I became a police officer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Joseph said that he doesn\u2019t want people to think of him as \u201ccalling out\u201d James.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI\u2019m about hoping that we can sit down like men and have a civil conversation, and understand and humanize each other. That\u2019s the main reason that I reached out the way that I did,\u201d said Joseph, who was notably surrounded by L.A. Lakers gear. \u201cI think he\u2019s a good human being. The things he\u2019s done for children I think is incredible, and man, when people were giving him flack, I was like, \u2018Dude, this is a good dude right here.\u2019\u201d<\/span><span><br \/><\/span><span><br \/><\/span><span>\u201cNow of course I didn\u2019t like what he said,\u201d added Joseph. \u201cBut I feel like, in my heart, that there\u2019s hope \u2014 if not he and I \u2014 maybe what I\u2019ve done can spark dialogue across the nation where cops and communities can start sitting down again and humanize each other once again. That\u2019s so important.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Growing up, Joseph hated police officers. In an interview with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.liberty.edu\/news\/2020\/10\/14\/angel-cop-deon-joseph-describes-his-guardian-mentality-as-officer-in-skid-row\/\"><span>Liberty University<\/span><\/a><span> last year, Joseph said that before joining the force, he was \u201cindoctrinated to hate, fear, and loathe law enforcement.\u201d His perspective, he recalled, was influenced by what was around him, by \u201cwatching the Rodney King incident\u201d on loop, by listening to \u201cF*** the police\u201d in his Nissan Sentra, and just hanging out with an anti-police activist crowd.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cEvery day was this steady indoctrination that the police were our enemies,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But after the L.A. riots, when Joseph said he couldn\u2019t find work anywhere else, he decided to give the police department a chance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI discovered that 90% of what was told to me by friends and family was not true,\u201d Joseph told Liberty last year. \u201cI was able to freely express how African Americans felt to my white and Hispanic classmates, and they were open and receptive. My whole idea of police work changed after that, and I became addicted to serving, watching my fellow officers from all walks of life help people, rescue people, and save lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Over his more than two decades in law enforcement, Joseph developed a reputation for his compassion for the people of Skid Row, an area with rampant homelessness. After what he termed \u201can officer-involved shooting\u201d in the area, and after \u201cagitators\u201d began spreading rumors about the incident, Joseph told Liberty University that he visited the area to talk to people about what had happened.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI didn\u2019t run away. I became like family to this community, so I\u2019m going to go out there to my family, and I\u2019m going to walk and I\u2019m going to talk with them,\u201d said Joseph. \u201cAnd as I did this, I discovered that 75% of the people I talked to were like, \u2018We understand what you did. That guy was crazy\u2019\u2026They understood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cAnd the ones that didn\u2019t, I stood tall, ten-toes down, and I had dialogue with them, and I said, \u2018Hey, if you were in this situation what would you do?\u2019 And eventually, they all agreed, \u2018You know what, yeah, we probably would have done the same thing.\u2019 And it completely stopped that Ferguson Effect. So that\u2019s what I do. You become like family, they\u2019re willing to listen to you, and that\u2019s what I encourage a lot of law enforcement officers to do. Don\u2019t run, I know it\u2019s hard, I know you feel like a beast at every feast, but we can\u2019t give up in showing who we are in our heart,\u201d said Joseph.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><i><span>member<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles Police Officer Deon Joseph, who wrote a viral letter to LeBron James asking to meet after the NBA star targeted a police officer on social media, spoke out &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2276867,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1145.jpeg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"\u2018Angel Cop\u2019 Speaks Out After Viral LeBron Letter: \u2018I Was Lebron James Before I Became A Police Officer\u2019","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1145.jpeg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"\u2018Angel Cop\u2019 Speaks Out After Viral LeBron Letter: \u2018I Was Lebron James Before I Became A Police Officer\u2019","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}