Justice Has a Memory

The Knock on the Door

I still remember the sound of it. Sharp, hesitant, echoing through the hallway. I was just a kid, peeking through the peephole, when I saw my father standing there. His face was thinner, his eyes tired, but alive. For months, we hadn’t heard a word. His attempt to escape Communist Poland had failed. He’d been caught in Canada and deported back. That knock on the door was the sound of both relief and fear because in our world, the knock at the door didn’t always mean someone coming home. I grew up in a country where fear was the background noise of life. In Poland during the 1970s and ’80s, people didn’t just fear the police. They feared what the police represented. The Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service) and the Milicja Obywatelska (Uniformed Police) weren’t protectors. They were instruments of the state, trained to enforce silence. My father lived most of his young life defying that silence.

My Father’s War with Silence

My father, born in 1949 in Kolno, Poland, was raised in a working-class family that never bowed to the regime. His father, my grandfather, had already paid the price for loyalty to Poland, spending six years in a Russian prison camp simply for serving in the Polish Army during World War II. Freedom, in my family, was not an abstract idea; it was a debt passed from one generation to the next.

In 1968, my father and his coworkers protested discrimination at the chemical plant where they worked. The plant paid foreign communist workers double the wages of Poles while housing them in high-end apartments. When the Polish workers protested, they were all fired the same day. That’s how the system worked: obedience bought survival, defiance brought ruin.

The punishment didn’t stop there. After he helped build a church in Łomża, he was blacklisted, interrogated, and beaten by the Security Services — the SB. He watched neighbors dragged away for questioning and saw priests arrested for “anti-state activity.” Yet, he kept helping. He collected funds, passed along leaflets, and refused to sign away his conscience.

Food was scarce, and corruption was the norm. I remember the stories. My father trading on the black market for bread, cold cuts, or fish. Not luxury items, just what we needed to survive. My grandparents lived by a river but couldn’t fish in it. The thought of being caught by authorities was terrifying. In that kind of world, survival itself was an act of rebellion. He raised us to question quietly, to stand tall even if our voices couldn’t be loud. “Stand up for yourself,” he’d say. “And for those who can’t.” That lesson stayed with me. It’s what shaped my idea of justice long before I ever put on a badge.

Crossing Oceans and Learning Freedom

In 1985, my father decided he couldn’t take it anymore. The harassment, the interrogations, the constant threat of arrest. It had to end. He escaped Poland and we followed. I was eight years old when we came to the United States. We didn’t have much, but we had what my father had risked everything for: freedom.

As the only one in the family who spoke any English, I became the translator; at immigration offices, attorneys’ meetings, doctor’s visits. I listened to stories from other Polish refugees about being beaten, imprisoned, or losing jobs because they dared to believe in God or in free speech. I was just a kid, but I was absorbing lessons about power and fear that most adults never see.

One day, I saw something that stuck with me: my father being pulled over by American police for speeding. I’d never seen him afraid like that. His hands trembled. His voice cracked when he spoke. He wasn’t afraid of a ticket; he was afraid of being taken. Of being sent back. That image never left me. My father, who had fought entire regimes, reduced to silence by a flashing blue light. That’s the day I started to understand that freedom isn’t just about living in a different country. It’s about what authority means in that country.

Becoming What He Feared

Years later, when I told my father I wanted to become a police officer, he laughed the way Eastern European fathers do; in half amusement, half disbelief. “After everything I went through to get you here,” he’d say, shaking his head, “you became a cop.” He’d tell my siblings, “And the rest of you? Nurses!” It was his way of joking, but beneath it I sensed the struggle. I had chosen to become what he once feared. What I didn’t fully understand then was that I wasn’t joining to enforce power. I was joining to redefine it. I wanted to be the kind of police officer my father never met. One who protects instead of persecutes, one who listens instead of silences. He never said it outright, but I know he was proud. He saw in my work the America he had dreamed of. A country where law is accountable, where truth has a chance. And though he never lost that old wariness, he respected the difference between the system that broke him and the one I swore to uphold.

Defining Justice

When I first joined the department, I already understood the weight of injustice. I had grown up translating it. I’d seen fear behind my father’s eyes, and it made me determined to be the kind of cop who replaced fear with trust. Over the years, working in Major Crimes, I’ve learned that justice is not a simple word. It’s not a sentence handed down or a case closed. It’s the process, the pursuit, the relentless effort to do what’s right within the framework of law, ethics, and morality.

Justice isn’t always clean or satisfying. Victims and families rarely feel that any verdict or outcome truly balances their loss. But to me, justice means doing everything possible (the long hours, the endless reports, the sleepless nights) to make sure truth is not buried. It means standing on the line where law meets humanity and refusing to let one erase the other. That philosophy didn’t just make me a detective; it shaped my approach to leadership and training. Whether mentoring a new officer or briefing a case, I remind people that what we do isn’t about power. It’s about service that is measured not by arrests or accolades, but by the integrity we maintain when no one is watching.

In my city, I meet people every day who were raised to fear the police. Some of them come from countries like my father’s. Some grew up in neighborhoods where trust in authority has long been broken. I recognize that look, the guarded eyes, the nervous tone, and I know where it comes from.

That’s why I try to be the cop who does the unexpected. The one who treats people with respect, even when they don’t expect it. Maybe I can plant a seed. Maybe they’re not all bad. Maybe I can change the narrative one interaction at a time. Because for me, the badge isn’t a symbol of authority. It’s a test. S daily choice between arrogance and humility, between power and purpose. My father’s world had plenty of men with power. What it lacked were men with conscience. That’s the difference I vowed to live.

I believe the true measure of leadership is memory. The ability to remember what power can do when it loses its conscience, and the courage to use that memory as a compass. Whether in policing, business, or life, the moment will come when doing what’s right costs more than doing what’s easy. That’s your Kairos moment.

Justice has a memory.

So should leadership.