Photo: TikTok / Facebook
She grew up thinking he was innocent until she learned more.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Jun 18, 2022
One woman is speaking out about being the daughter of a "bad cop" who abused his power while on the job and was involved in a 1992 murder case.
In a slew of TikTok videos, Kelsey explained that her father is now a retired police officer who worked in Cleveland, Ohio.
"What side of TikTok is for the family members and children of bad cops because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one ready to talk," Kelsey said in her video.
In the first part of her video, she explained that her father was accused of abusing his power many times while working as a cop.
She learned that her police officer father had killed a man while on duty.
"Throughout my whole life, I knew that my dad was a police officer that wasn't liked. I knew that he was home because he was in trouble for killing somebody," she said, adding that he was on trial and on leave from work for about nine years.
When her father was first accused of killing someone while in the line of duty, Kelsey had only been a year old.
However, while growing up, the story of the incident involving her father and the person he killed had "changed many times."
"I spent the last two years [of my life] asking a lot of questions, including to [her father]," she continued, noting that she hasn't spoken to her dad in two years.
Kelsey explained that when she was younger, her understanding of the story was that her father had to kill someone while on duty because the victim had killed his partner.
"My dad, many times, would boast about having been on the force for 26 years or whatever," she said, before pointing out that nine of those years were spent at home because he was accused of killing someone.
She added that her father would constantly talk about how he "doesn't need guns" because he has "killed people with his bare hands" and "he's not afraid of anyone."
It wasn't until after the George Floyd murder in the summer of 2020 that Kelsey began questioning her father and his time on the police force, saying, "Just thinking back to some of the things my dad has said over the years, I started looking more into the case of Michael Pipkins."
Her father's victim, Michael Pipkins, was killed in Cleveland in 1992.
She revealed that her father was one of the officers involved in the killing of Pipkins, a Black man who died after being placed in a chokehold by former Officer Michael Tankersley.
After reading some of the press coverage of the case, Kelsey realized that the story she'd heard growing up about why her father killed Pipkins had been a lie.
In the second part of her story, she continued, saying that her father has never shown remorse for killing someone and has often bragged about doing it "with his bare hands."
"So I asked my dad his side of the story because I know that the media can skew things," she said. "His side of the story is nothing, at all, like what has been reported and not in any of the things I've seen from court [documents]."
She compared her father's recount of the murder to the recounts she received from other people she spoke to about Pipkins' murder, which she noted matched up fairly well with what the media had reported.
"He told me that Michael Pipkins stole a car, they had a hard time apprehending him. [My father] ended up eventually catching him, and arresting him," she shared of her father's recount of the murder.
"[He told me] Michael Pipkins had some kind of heart condition or something. They took him [to be] booked, and [while] they were standing at the booking counter, Michael Pipkins passed out. My dad rendered CPR and he couldn't save him."
Kelsey continued, saying that the story her father had told her was a complete lie "according to [the] other court documents that I've seen, [the] other people that I know that were in [Pipkins] life at that time, or were a part of that whole story."
"I just want to understand why the stories are so different," she concluded. "But there is a common theme between [my father] and the stories of everyone else in his life."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter.