From the age of 12, Mike Colbert knew he wanted to be a police officer or a pilot. Eventually, he became both.
After volunteering as a teen Police Explorer in Huntington Beach, he joined the Long Beach Police Department in 1989 and went on to serve as the only Black helicopter pilot in the Air Support Unit’s 53-year history.
If a Long Beach resident heard the LBPD’s “Fox” helicopter buzzing above in the past two decades, there was a good chance it was Colbert up in the sky.
Colbert loved his job. Friendly and outgoing, he was a promotional face for the Air Support Unit and often took civilians and media along for helicopter rides. But behind the scenes, Colbert now says, his life in the elite unit was much darker.
Over the years, Colbert says he experienced frequent harassment, including racial slurs and jokes from his fellow officers that ranged from offhand comments on the color of his skin to overt and intentional acts of racism.
In one incident, he says his chief pilot supervisor displayed a hand-drawn “blackface” sketch called “Mr. POPO” in his office cubicle. In another incident, he says, someone placed bubble wrap around the headrest of a shared office chair to prevent Colbert’s hair from touching it.
By the time he retired in October 2019, Colbert was ready to start a new chapter, but he said the pain of what he had endured stuck with him and he had trouble sleeping.
In December, he filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Long Beach Police Department—a decision he says was one of the toughest of his life.
In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Dec. 28, Colbert alleges the department has a “widespread” and “deep-rooted” history of racial bias, including not promoting Black officers to management positions and failing to investigate and address incidents of harassment.
In his 30-year career with the department, Colbert says he was wrongfully demoted, unfairly targeted for performance reviews and passed up for promotions. He says he was often made the scapegoat for any problems with the helicopters.
In an interview with the Long Beach Post this week, Colbert, 54, said he was deeply conflicted over filing the lawsuit.
“I’ve never been someone who focuses on race and I’ve always believed you can succeed on your own merit,” he said. “But this wasn’t just water-cooler banter; these were overt things. And they certainly felt comfortable doing it, because it was built into the culture. I was ridiculed for things that I never should have been ridiculed for. And the constant demeaning, it tears you down.”
Although the lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages, Colbert’s lawyer, Richard Jorgensen, said the former pilot is hoping for a cultural shift within the department.
“He wants to make it better for the younger officers,” he said.
The LBPD in a statement said it is committed to “maintaining a discrimination-free workplace for all City employees and candidates for employment.” The department declined to comment on Colbert’s allegations due to the pending litigation.
“The LBPD is continuing to move forward, and we are committed to having a bias-free, inclusive and diverse workforce,” stated Chief of Police Wally Hebeish, who was sworn in as the new chief on Tuesday. Former Chief Robert Luna is running for Los Angeles County Sheriff.
Luna in recent years has said the department has struggled to recruit more Black officers. According to recent numbers in the Press-Telegram, about 6% of sworn LBPD officers are Black, while Black residents make up about 12% of the city’s population. The suit comes as the City Council this week discussed progress on its Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative, meant to address systemic racism in Long Beach.
The city in an initial response in court filings has denied the allegations and said that some of Colbert’s examples are beyond the statute of limitations because they took place many years earlier.
In his lawsuit, Colbert gives detailed examples of decades of racist comments and acts, dating back to his training days.
In one of the first incidents that gave him pause, Colbert says he was with a new training officer in Central Long Beach in 1990 when the officer said the neighborhood was rough and that they would be “driving through Ni—rVille.” According to the lawsuit, the officer then paused and told Colbert the term is only associated with people the officers deal with in certain neighborhoods.
While working patrol in the early ’90s, Colbert says he noticed that White officers would use the term “DND” to describe the relatives of victims at especially brutal and traumatic crime scenes. When he asked a group of officers about the meaning, they quickly changed the subject. Colbert’s lawsuit says one officer later took him aside and explained that DND stands for “Dead Ni—r Dance,” in a reference to relatives of Black victims who frantically mourn their dead loved ones.
Colbert said those comments and many others over the years left him feeling sad and ashamed of his department.
“You feel isolated,” he said. “You feel like you’re less-than when somebody is seen as less-than because of the pigment of their skin, and it’s the same pigment that you share.”
An avid ice hockey player since he was a kid, Colbert said the rink was his sanctuary where he could take out his frustrations, but even his hockey playing garnered racist comments from fellow officers.
While watching Colbert play with the LBPD’s ice hockey team one day, his supervisor commented on his style, saying “you’re everywhere, you’re just like a little black gnat,” according to the lawsuit. He continued to repeat the comment throughout the game and long after the game continued to refer to him as a “little gnat,” Colbert recalled.
In addition to the racist comments, Colbert says he experienced discrimination within the department and was the only member of Air Support who was randomly selected each time to submit a drug test, which is required in some units.
Colbert says he was often made to feel “lucky” to have his position and that it could be taken from him at any time.
In 2016, Colbert was assigned as acting sergeant for the Air Support Unit. While putting together a new training program for recruits, he received profanity-laced text messages from one of the newer pilots, accusing him of mishandling the selection process for recruits, according to the lawsuit.
Colbert maintained that the selection process was fair and that he had spent many hours putting together the new program. But the pilot was close friends with the unit’s field support commander, and Colbert says he feared the pilot would contact the commander to try to have him removed as the Air Support Unit supervisor.
Days later, the commander called Colbert into his office and demoted him from the acting sergeant position, using similar accusations that had come from the other pilot, according to the lawsuit.
The sergeant position remained open for two years while Colbert continued to perform the extra duties, even though he was officially demoted, but after he retired, the position was quickly filled, according to the lawsuit.
“That really irked me,” Colbert said.
He says the harassment grew worse in the time leading up to his retirement in 2019.
A few months before he retired, he went to use an unmarked police car in a lot accessible only to employees and found a yellow banana peel he says was strategically placed on the hood in front of the driver’s seat.
Colbert says he didn’t touch the peel and instead took a photo and returned to the office. When he returned later, it was gone.
While he sometimes reported incidents to management, he says he stopped after a while because nothing was ever done, and in some cases it prompted retaliation. Most of the time, Colbert says he kept quiet, not wanting to jeopardize his dream job or his family’s livelihood.
“These acts of harassment/retaliation were not only perpetuated by peer-level officers, but by Department Administration and Management,” the lawsuit says. “There was simply no level of authority where Plaintiff could find support or protection at the LBPD.”
Colbert said it’s painful to recall the years of racist comments and harassment, but it helps to talk about it. He hopes his lawsuit will send a strong message.
“I just want acknowledgment,” he said, choking back tears. “I want someone to say, ‘We’re sorry, Mike. This should not have happened to you. We shouldn’t have done this to you.”
A great-nephew of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, Colbert said he got through the years by taking pride in his strong work ethic.
As a father of three teenagers who lives with his family in Orange County, Colbert said he tells his kids that they can do anything, as long as they work hard.
His 16-year-old son wants to be a police officer.
“I want to feel comfortable knowing that if my children want to be police officers, they won’t have to deal with this, they won’t have to go into an environment where they will be demeaned because of the color of their skin or their background,” he said. “I want them to enter a profession that accepts them for their merits.”
*Editor’s Note: This story was updated with a statement from the Long Beach Police Department.
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