Oral history interview with Wayne Bolt, 2018

Biographical Note

Wayne Bolt was born in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY and grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He served in the United States Air Force and was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. He was a police officer for 22 years with the New York City Police Department, including serving as an instructor at the police academy

Scope and Contents

Wayne Bolt discusses his military service during the Vietnam War. He also discusses his early days with the NYPD in the 1980s, being one of the very few Black police officers in his precinct. He talks about the role race has played throughout his career in different precincts. He shares several stories about high-profile individuals he has run-ins with while on the police force (including Assata Shakur and John Gotti), encounters he had with the community, and experiences he had being a Black police officer in Brooklyn. He discusses issues such as immigration and drug trafficking as they intersect with law enforcement

Subjects

• Black Liberation Army.
• Bolt, Wayne--Interviews.
• Boone, Kurt B., interviewer.
• Communities--Effect of drugs on.
• Families, Black--Effect of imprisonment on.
• Interviews.
• Mass incarceration--United States.
• New York (N.Y.). Police Department.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Police, Black--United States.
• Police--Interviews.
• Police-community relations--New York.
• Poverty--United States.
• Racial profiling in law enforcement--United States.
• Violence--Firearms--United States.

Access Conditions

Copyright by Wayne Bolt. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York hold a non-exclusive license to enable library activities