By Jeremy Redmon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Dwan Peterson is piloting her blue and red police cruiser toward a family fight in gritty Southwest Atlanta on a recent shift when she recalls the night she was dispatched to a raucous protest against the fatal police shootings of black men. Amid the “black lives matter” chants and flashing blue police lights outside the governor’s mansion in Buckhead, a demonstrator shouted at Peterson to remember that she is “black first.”

Troy Cosby — a friend and fellow Atlanta Police Department officer who is white — is patrolling in his hulking blue and red Ford Explorer along Ponce De Leon Avenue in Northeast Atlanta, where some property owners are complaining about a strange man cussing and drinking in their parking lot. His rifle sitting upright in its stand beside him, Cosby is hoping he never has to fire it at anyone, particularly a black person.

Cosby and Peterson recently provided a window into how fraught life on the beat has become following the fatal ambushes of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shadowed them on patrol across the city and found that both are taking extra precautions. Both are experiencing up close the raw feelings their uniforms provoke following the fatal police shootings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. And both are feeling different sorts of pressure based on the color of their skin.

Cosby and Peterson are young, ambitious and driven. He’s just 26. She is 32. They studied criminal justice in college, completed police training in Atlanta together and started patrolling four years ago. They love their jobs and both aspire to advance through their department’s ranks. Each is engaged to be married. And they both rely on their Christian faith to guide them through their dangerous work.

But the new tensions have taken a toll. Lately, Some of Peterson’s relatives have been asking her whether she wants to quit. Cosby’s fiancée wants him to find a new line of work.

They are two officers among 865 patrolling a sprawling and diverse city of more than 450,000.

“Lord forbid, I actually have to shoot”

Most of us hear about police when something dramatic happens — a gun is fired or a murder investigated. But the majority of their work is far more mundane and requires the skills of a social worker or therapist.

While patrolling a long stretch of Campbellton Road, Peterson is dispatched to a house alarm, a fight between a mother and daughter and a report of bank fraud — all before lunchtime. Her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, Peterson also wears flamingo pink nail polish.

In between stops, she fondly recalls the well-wishers who keep bringing barbecue food and cakes to her precinct office. She shares her disgust at the man who gave her the middle finger as he drove by her cruiser in a grocery store parking lot. She is certain that vulgar gesture was connected to Castile and Sterling’s deaths. Peterson’s voice is edged with frustration as she talks about the pressure she faces as a black police officer.

“Some black folks have a problem with me being an officer just because of everything that is going on and, two, because I am black,” she says as she heads to her first call. “I have even had family members ask me, ‘Are you sure you still want to be an officer?’”

Over the course of his day, Cosby patrols through and around the Atkins Park, Virginia-Highland and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods, warning a stranger to stop loitering on private property, chasing down a shoplifting suspect and directing traffic around a hissing and smelly gas leak. As he scans his beat for trouble, he remembers the stranger who recently hugged and thanked him for doing his job. He also discloses a nagging fear.

“I think we could all agree,” he says between responding to 911 calls, “the worst thing in the world right now would be if I have to pull my gun — and, Lord forbid, I actually have to shoot — I really hope it is somebody who is not black.”

Someone to listen

Peterson and Cosby are reminded of the mortal danger they face every day they go to work. Cosby’s Zone 6 precinct office sits just off Hosea L. Williams Drive. The first thing he sees coming in the front door is a black and white framed photo of the late Officer Gregory Davis, who was shot and killed in 1988 while questioning a man about a series of burglaries. Davis appears young in the photo. A slight smile plays across his lips.

Baby-faced and exceedingly polite, Cosby grew up in Powder Springs and graduated from McEachern High School, where he played the saxophone on the school marching band. His father is in the pest control industry and his mother works for an insurance company. He’s wanted to be a police officer ever since he was a kid playing cops and robbers. He and his fiancée, a physical therapist, routinely talk to each other on the phone several times a day. She worries about his safety.

As he starts out on his beat, a dispatcher radios a report to him about a man loitering on private property off Ponce De Leon Avenue. When he arrives, Cosby finds a woman waiting for him in the parking lot of drab gray apartment complex.

The woman complains to Cosby: “I just feel like maybe sometimes if you all could come and park in our parking lot or whatever — because it is getting bad… They woke me up. He is just out here in the parking lot. They are drinking.”

Cosby listens intently: “Yes, OK. Do you want me to go and talk to him?”

Joined by another Atlanta officer, Cosby strides down the sidewalk, his expression conveying a mixture of wariness and focus. He finds the man sitting outside a soup kitchen, mumbling and agitated. He doesn’t rise to talk to the officers. When Cosby speaks with people, like this man, he studies their body language and stands with his holstered gun away from them. That makes it harder for anyone to grab it.

Many other men are milling around the mulched front yard, silently watching the tense scene unfolding before them. A sign in front of the soup kitchen pleads, “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” Calmly, Cosby tells the man there won’t be any problems if he doesn’t return to the apartment complex on the corner. And then Cosby heads off to his next call.

“You have to be willing to talk to people,” he says. “Ninety percent of this job is just talking to folks.”

Peterson works in Southwest Atlanta out of the Zone 4 precinct office, a squat brick building on Cascade Circle. High on a wall inside the locker room hangs a photo of the late Officer Joseph Davis, who was gunned down in 1989 while he was arresting a suspected thief.

An affable Philadelphia native with a radiant smile, Peterson is the daughter of an ex-Marine and a retired Internal Revenue Service worker. Following in the footsteps of several of her relatives who are police officers, she moved South in 2012 when she learned Atlanta was hiring. Her fiancé is also an Atlanta cop. They worry about each other’s safety, so they routinely scan their department’s radio traffic for each other.

Early in her shift she receives a call about a fight between a mom and her 15-year-old daughter off Campbellton Road. Pulling into the parking lot, she immediately spots the girl. She is sobbing so hard she can barely get her story out. Peterson’s tone turns tender as she speaks with her. She learns the two got into a scuffle after the mother accused her of spending all of their food stamps. It’s blazing hot and cicadas are buzzing around them.

Half-crying, the girl complains: “She kept coming at me!”

The mother sounds worn out. She wants her daughter gone: “We just had a little altercation.”

The girl’s sisters are coming to pick her up. Peterson advises them: “Sometimes stuff happens. I get into disagreements with my mom all the time, to this day. Sometimes it is best to separate for the moment and let it be.”

Peterson grew up in a bleak part of North Philadelphia among abandoned buildings, so she identifies with the impoverished people she helps in parts of Southwest Atlanta. She routinely responds to domestic disputes and other situations that require her to be more than a police officer. Some people, she says, just need someone to listen.

“I was born and raised in the ‘hood, so I can relate to people’s situations that go on out here in Zone 4,” she says. “A lot of folks out here — they feel as though they can’t count on us and they can’t trust us, but that is just not the case for all of us.”