After 28 years, Goodwin looks forward to finishing his police career as a school resource officer.
By JEFFREY WAITKEVICH
USFSP Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG — Police Officer Christopher J. Goodwin has seen it all.
He raised two daughters by himself. He beat a cancerous tumor near his intestines in 2006. And he persevered when a fellow officer shot and killed a black man after a traffic stop in 1996, a controversial decision that led to riots.
So when high school girls engage in fisticuffs in a drive-by fight or when a homeless person breaks into an abandoned car, he doesn’t blink.
His father and sister have always supported him, said Goodwin, 52, and that’s what has gotten him through 28 years as an African-American police officer in a city and police department long marked by racial division.
“Your friends know who you are. Your family knows who you are. You kind of fall back on that,” he said.
After 28 years as an officer, Goodwin looks forward to finishing his police career with a stint as a school resource officer at an elementary school.
During his career, he has worked in community policing, narcotics, street crime, a special detail task force and the SWAT team for 15 years. He now works patrol.
His favorite role is as a grandpa, though. He wants to spend more time with his 4-year-old grandson, Noah, whom he calls his “little buddy” and “road dog.”
Goodwin keeps several photos of his grandson in his cruiser and can’t talk about him without a little smile. He is also writing and illustrating a children’s book for Noah.
Goodwin was born in Maryland but grew up in St. Petersburg. He attended middle school at St. Paul Catholic School before graduating from Pinellas Park High School in 1983.
He then attended the police academy at St. Petersburg Junior College, spent seven years in the Army and joined St. Petersburg police in 1990.
He said he always felt policing was the right job for him – growing up as a comic book geek who regularly played cops and robbers.
Once a week he gives back to the community by spending an hour with troubled children at Northwest Elementary, helping them focus on setting goals and planning how to achieve them.
He said that there is nothing he would rather do.
There was a time when black officers were second-class citizens in the Police Department.
They could only patrol black neighborhoods and arrest only black people. If they caught a white suspect, they had to wait for a white officer to come and make the arrest.
That changed in 1968, when a federal appeals court upheld a lawsuit by 12 black officers – now called the “Courageous 12” – and ruled that black officers should have the same authority as white officers.
Being a black officer in St. Petersburg wasn’t as hard as he first thought it might be, Goodwin said, adding that officers in the department “don’t see color, creed or race.”
For him, the department is a brotherhood. He knew the three white St. Petersburg officers – David Crawford, Jeffrey Yaslowitz and Thomas Baitinger – who were fatally shot in the line of duty in early 2011.
Losing fellow officers is one of the toughest parts of the job, he said, and he “takes it to heart every time (an officer) is shot anywhere.”