This week we present a story from our back-catalogue that speaks to this current moment in time.

As a medical school student Roger Mitchell Jr. sees a patient that makes him reflect on violence and police in the Black community.

Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr. is the Chief Medical Examiner of Washington, DC and is uniquely positioned to understand the social determinants that lead to the violence affecting our most vulnerable communities. He has a great interest in Violence as a public health issue. He is board certified in Anatomic and Forensic Pathology by the American Board of Pathology. Dr. Mitchell is also a licensed minister serving as a mentor in his local community. He often shares how drugs and violence have shaped his own life. He is a husband to his wife of 17 years and a father to his three children. Dr. Mitchell has pledged his professional career and personal time to the service of others.

Episode Transcript

I remember when I was a third year medical student in Newark, New Jersey, and I was on call for emergency medicine rotation. And when I was there, any anytime you're on call as a medical student you feel like a real physician, and so we started at 9:00 p.m. and we would go to 9:00 a.m. and it was a Friday night and it wasn't that busy. We were excited that it wasn’t busy. So about 12:00 midnight, we all went to bed and about 2:00 in the morning the pagers went off. I got up and wiped the cold out of my eyes and brushed my teeth, and then met with my chief resident. The chief resident told us we had two African-American men that had multiple gunshot wounds, but this was an opportunity to work with our chief surgeon, and so we were to learn about these cases.

And so we went down. And you've all been to an emergency room before. It's set up in these bays with these curtains. And you can see that there was some work happening behind the curtains and they opened the curtain up. And it was my friend Mark. I could tell it was Mark, I didn't have to see his face, but I could tell it was him, I saw his jeans and his boots and he was bleeding.

And so I push past. I pushed past the nurse, I think I pushed a doctor, and then I got to him and and I remember grabbing his hand and looking down at his face, and he smiled at, and he whispered. I said, “What's going on? What happened?” He said. “They shot me. Yo Rog, they shot me.”

And all I could do, all I could do was say, “Somebody help him! Somebody help!”

My chief resident, she grabbed me, she moved me out the way and she said, “Listen, you can't be here. You know him.”

I had met Mark, we'll call him Mark. I met him about six months ago before this happened. Good guy, teacher. We lived in the same neighborhood. But in Newark at that time, the gangs were doing initiations where they were doing random shootings. And he was in a McDonald's parking lot and they chased him out of the McDonald's parking lot and through the streets of East Orange, and he finally got to his home where he thought he had lost them and he jumped out the car and they quickly got up close to him and was able to shoot him while he was going up the steps. He had multiple gunshot wounds up his legs into his pelvis.

You see, I had been exposed to violence before, but not that close. That was my friend.

I went to Howard University just right up the street. I was a biology major and I wanted to be a doctor. My grandfather was a physician. One of the first black physicians in New Jersey in the 1930s. I wanted to be like him. And so I decided I didn't want to go to medical school anymore. During my junior year, I got exposed to forensic science, to the O.J. Simpson trial. I think people old enough to remember that one. O.J. Simpson trial made forensics front page news. And right then I knew I want to be a forensic scientist, so I was able to become a forensic scientist for the FBI. I was the first black man in FBI laboratories in 1997. And during that time I got exposed to these stories of violence. Story after story on the evidence of violent crime. It could have been a Rainbow Brite panties that I was looking for semen on, or a gun that was used in an armed robbery that I would look for blood on. These were the violent stories that I would hear on a regular basis. So while I was there I made the decision that I didn't want to stay a forensic scientist, I wanted to go to medical school to study violence. To study violence as a public health issue. And the best way I thought to do it is to become a forensic pathologist so that I could understand violence as a public health issue. So let me tell you: this was not the first time I was exposed to violence. But let me tell you, Mark; he changed my life.

A couple years before Mark got shot I was a first year medical student, it was 1999. I was a first year, it was February and I came home inbetween my studies. If anybody is a physician or been a medical student, you know that you don't get much time to do anything besides eat, sleep, and study. Especially that first year. And so in between I came home and made something to eat. I lived in this big brownstone in Newark New Jersey, I had a family friend that meant I had the whole second floor - I was ballin’.

I like to watch the news while I eat. And I hear: “Breaking news, twenty three year old unarmed Black man gets shot and killed by NYPD.” Wait, I was 23 years old. You may remember the story, his name was Amadou Diallo. Amadou Diallo was a African immigrant. He was a street hustler, street peddler - little cds, little games that he sold on the street. He was on his way home, and the New York Police Department was following him. He fit the description. So when he got home, they said, “Hey, listen, freeze, put your hands up. Let me see your identification.” So he grabbed for his wallet. To show them his wallet. He was shot at 42 times, hit 19. He had entrance wounds in the soles of his feet. He was laying on his back when he got shot. Amadou Diallo and Mark exemplified what that type of violence that black men see in their communities. Interpersonal violence and police sponsored violence.

I've been a medical examiner in New York City, in Houston, Texas, and Newark, New Jersey and JerseyCity, and now the chief medical examiner of the nation's capital. And I've written multiple journal articles on the epidemic of African-American violence in community and just wrote a piece on deaths in custody.

But, tipping point. Somehow I feel it's not enough. Somehow I feel that I need to be doing more. It's not enough to just count bodies. See, I've been a faithful man all my life. I wear my faith on my sleeve. There are people that still believe that there's a Jesus Christ. And so I'm faithful. And because of that faith, I felt like the only way to serve again is to serve through my faith. And so I've just been accepted to Theological Seminary for my master of divinity, and I'll be concentrating on urban ministry because I believe reconciliation or restoration is the preventative side of the work that I see and receive.

But I'm selfish. Y'all might be looking at me and saying, “oh, you're a giver.” No, I'm selfish. Because the reality of it is, is that I don't do it for myself. I'm Roger A Mitchell, Jr. I'm a physician, and you just heard I’m a minister. But let me tell you the most important thing I am is a husband to that wife over there, Angelique, and in a father to that son, Nathaniel, and a father to his sister Nina and his brother Matthew. Thank you so much