Trying to figure out why Black people become police officers can be… confusing. What's even more confusing is why, after everything he’s been through, an officer like Michael Morrison would stay in the force. To find out, Seren Jones goes back to where it all started: Newark.

Stricken by neglect, crime and crack cocaine, the city didn’t have much to offer young Black boys like Michael. And Maplewood, an affluent sleepy suburb next door, was off limits. The town didn’t want outsiders coming in. But then Michael became a cop…

Contact:

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: @BlanchardHouseStories

Instagram: @BlanchardHouseStories

X (formerly Twitter): @BlanchardTweets

Blanchard House website: blanchard-house.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s 1986 and Michael Morrison is offered the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to leave his life of poverty in Newark and start afresh. It’s a job offer he can’t afford to refuse. Michael has no idea what this new job has in store. But he soon realizes: he’s just joined ‘the biggest gang in America’. Join Seren Jones to hear Michael’s story and find out what it means to be both Black and Blue.

Contact:

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: @BlanchardHouseStories

Instagram: @BlanchardHouseStories

X (formerly Twitter): @BlanchardTweets

Blanchard House website: blanchard-house.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Michael Morrison, the police badge is his future: his ambition, his way out of poverty, his ‘American dream’. But once he puts on his uniform, the badge starts to mean something very different. Michael takes on a new identity – but not the one he expects. Inside the force, he faces racism and violence, and on the streets he’s surrounded by hostility. Michael is stuck in the middle, between being Black and being a police officer. And when a routine day at work goes wrong and his career is thrown into crisis, Michael is forced to pick a side.

Black and Blue: Behind the Badge begins October 17

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices