Brian Willingham is a police officer with the Flint
Police Department (Michigan). In addition to being former U.S. Army Sergeant, husband and father of three,
Brian Willingham is an accomplished public speaker and the author of Soul of a Black Cop.
According to Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Boston
University, “Brian Willingham ’s extraordinary day-by-day account of his life as a cop reminds us that behind
at least one of those forbidding police badges is someone with compassion and a profound understanding of the human condition.
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to sit beside a policeman in his cruiser and follow him through the day? As
we read Willingham ’s carefully crafted memoir, we are brought close to the scenes he describes: the beaten women, the
desperate shoplifters, the crack victims, the raped children, the mentally disturbed. But there are moments which save him
and us from despair: the smile of a child reminds him that "children are born happy. The world makes them sad."
Willingham sees beyond the cruelties of everyday life to the deeper sickness of a society that doesn't realize its own
addiction to war is reproduced in the violence on its city streets. He writes gracefully, with a generous spirit.”
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According to one reader of Soul of
a Black Cop, “This work is a powerful, thoughtful look at the social collapse of a society
we most often ignore. Mr Willingham has created a provoking picture of America through his words; words of a cop, words of
a father, words of a son, and a neighbor. This book is moving, often heart breaking, but always sincere.”
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