Every Sunday, senior Destiny McNeil worships at Grace Missionary Baptist Church. Her stepfather, Pastor Maurice Floyd, stands tall behind his podium onstage. Warm morning light floods through the stained glass windows behind him as he addresses the congregation.

Piano rings throughout the church, harmoniously in tune with Floyd’s bellowing of prayer. Today is one of the many days he speaks on racial tensions in the nation.

“I know it looks bad in North Carolina,” Floyd said. “I know it looks bad in a lot of places. But if God allows it to happen, he has a purpose.”
His voice fills the room, booming through the pews.

“God is able,” Floyd said. “And he will fix it in due time.”

Before she goes to bed, McNeil thinks of her stepfather. He’s heading to the night shift at his job as a local law enforcement officer. And nights are so much scarier.

As she lays under the sheets in the pitch black darkness of her room, McNeil takes a breath. When she thinks of her stepfather before she falls asleep, she prays her stepdad has a good night. She prays she sees him the next morning.

“I ask God to cover him,” McNeil said. “Keep him safe, keep him alert, and not let any harm come towards him. Then I can rest easy knowing God has him.”

After the Dallas shooting of multiple police officers this summer, Floyd knows his family fears for his safety more than ever.

“When I leave at night, they really don’t know if I’m coming home,” Floyd said.

And with everything law enforcement officers go through in the line of duty, Floyd says, society has an incomplete view of police. Serving as an officer, he encounters difficult life or death situations every day.

“I believe when people are informed about what it’s really like inside the world of a police officer, I don’t think they’ll go and make the decisions… that they make,” Floyd said. “I’m in that world now. I have nothing but respect.”

When racial tensions seemed far away, it was easier to not think about. But once Dallas officers were targeted, McNeil was shocked. It could have just as easily been her stepdad.

“It became more real when it was in Dallas because it was closer to home,” McNeil said.

• • •

Even before he entered law enforcement, as a pastor, Floyd had connections with police. As a chaplain for a local department, he was involved with some of the most difficult parts of the job, including providing death notices to families and comforting people after the tragic loss of a loved one. This became his push to serve as an officer himself.

“That link became the driving source,” Floyd said. “It was again helping people and… being a public servant.”

In 2012, he decided to attend a police academy. With the support of McNeil and the rest of his family, he reached his goal of becoming a law enforcement officer.

“It’s something he’s always wanted to do,” McNeil said. “So I was proud of him.”

The whole family was excited at first. But after the nation’s outrage regarding Ferguson and police brutality, and with Floyd being a black male himself, the danger associated with his new career became a constant worry.

“Being a police officer, now especially, you kind of have a target on your back,” McNeil said. “That’s when I started praying for him.”

Though McNeil does fear for her stepfather from time to time, she says she appreciates how he can help people in their most trying times.

“I wouldn’t trade his job for anything else,” McNeil said.

Floyd acknowledges that his two careers may seem contradictory. But for him, doing both allows him to reach people on a deeper level.

“With me being a pastor, I know how to de-escalate individuals,” Floyd said. “I can identify the pain and the hurt. The crime is just a consequence, an after effect—but it’s not the root cause.”

From the church to the streets, Floyd said he always felt a calling to serve people.

“To me, it’s a ministry,” Floyd said.

• • •

It was 1974 in Stanley, North Carolina. Fifteen-year-old Floyd had always wanted to be a preacher, spreading the word of God throughout his community. He said he felt a calling to change people’s lives and show them God’s love. As a teen, he got this opportunity.

Floyd got his first job at a local grocery store in town. The owner of the store, he said, was the community’s head KKK member.

“[The owner] always said, ‘With your black hands, you’ll never touch the meat in this grocery store,’” Floyd said.

Every single day, the man put Floyd in the warehouse to rack bottles. Drenched in sweat, Floyd would labor in the 100 degree room for hours.

“He placed me in [the] warehouse room… with the hopes of breaking my will to work for him because I was a black young man,” Floyd said. “He did everything in the world to break my spirit.”

His boss even joked about it to others.

“Here’s one n—– I can’t break,” Floyd would hear him say.

But even through unfair treatment, Floyd wasn’t going to give up.

“You can’t beat me with that spirit of hatred,” he said.

Though everyone in town said Floyd was crazy for working for this man, he said he was determined to make a change.

“I said, ‘I can work around his issues, and show him the love of God,’” Floyd said. “And that’s what I did.”

Floyd worked with the man for years. Over time, the man gave him the nickname “Mo.” When Floyd graduated high school, the owner of the store even helped support him when he was entering college.

“Before he died, I basically became his best friend,” Floyd said. “He would call my mother and ask, ‘Where’s Mo?’”

Floyd says through his determination and love, he was able to change not only the man’s thinking, but others who were like him. Even other Klan members came to call him “Mo.”

“This man died without hatred in his heart,” Floyd said. “That’s not the way it began.”

Because he kept a persistent and positive attitude rather than negative hostility, Floyd says, he reached the man.

“I’ve seen it work, that’s why I preach it,” Floyd said. “I’ve seen it work and it never fails. And to this day as a black law enforcement officer, that’s what I use when I go into homes where I know they’ll basically say, we don’t want you here. The power of love is stronger than anything people will ever imagine.”

In regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, Floyd has the same ideology. He says instead of coming at each other with “vented frustration,” prejudice must be handled with understanding and patience.

“Black males are going to be treated differently until something changes on both sides,” Floyd said. “I think a lot of black males are going to have to turn around and show that we ain’t about trouble. And then I think the people on the opposing side have to [realize], maybe we need to back up and look at them differently.”

• • •

He remembers it was a Monday morning.

Floyd and his partner sat in their car outside a youth pastor’s home. They had a search warrant to seize that man’s laptop. They sat, waiting. Inside, a family was preparing for the day, unknowing.

They stormed the house and searched everything. The rest of the officers burst into the house before the man had any chance to wipe the computer of evidence. While the house was searched, Floyd approached the handcuffed youth pastor, who was under arrest for downloading child pornography. This was his chance to use his religious training to help save a life.

“You’re a pastor,” Floyd said to him, “I know what you want to do. I know you want to commit suicide.”

The man hung his head in shame.

“I really do,” he said.

“Don’t do that, Floyd said. “You’re going to have to work through this issue. But please don’t go out like that.”

Floyd decided to speak to the man through scripture. He gave him a character out of the Bible who he said, “made great mistakes and fell from grace”—King David.

“Suicide is not the way out,” Floyd said. “It may be the way out to spare yourself of embarrassment. But to be quite frank… the way out is to work through your shame.”

The man looked up at Floyd.

“Thank God you’re here,” he said. “Because we both know the Bible, know those who have fallen, and… what pathways they took to be reformed. Thank you for reminding me of that.”

The man is still alive today.

“So when people tell me being a pastor and being a cop doesn’t link, I beg to differ,” Floyd said. “I beg to differ.”