"Dad got his gun from the City of Cleveland. That’s where Mom got hers, too. Both are tools of policing, the Cooper family business." In our excerpt from THE BLACK SHIELD, Wilbert L. Cooper recounts how his mother Gayle joined the police force: https://longreads.com/2026/08/25/the-black-shield-wilbert-l-cooper/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #Longreads #Reading #Books #Cleveland #Police #Memoir #Policing