‘It changed my perception about police officers’: How an HBCU football game inspired RPD Deputy Chief Keith Stith

Deanna Dewberry News10NBC

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — City leaders are calling it the “Weekend of Hope.” In just three days, Rochester will host its first Frederick Douglass HBCU Football Classic. It’s the brainchild of RPD’s Deputy Chief of Community Engagement, Keith Stith.

“Originally, I had no interest in law enforcement,” Deputy Chief Keith Stith said.

That seems hard to believe, considering his long-storied career. Before taking a leadership position for the Rochester Police Department, he was the Chief Detective for the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey.

One might say his long road to law enforcement began during a chance meeting with local police in 1979. Deputy Stith was just a kid.

“They asked my brothers and I did we want to go to a football game, and we said, ‘Sure.’ It was a football game. We all love football,” he said.

This was something he’d never experienced. It was a football game between two HBCUs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

“It was that Black culture and people unapologetically expressing that Black culture,” Stith said.

A culture that continues today as evidenced by this Labor Day performance by the Bethune Cookman University Wildcats. The dauntless drama of the drum majors, the carefully choreographed majorettes, all radiating the richness of Black university traditions. Young Keith was inspired.

“It was who’s who out there at that stadium. So for me, if I could see it, I could be it,” Stith said. Including a man who could bear the blue, something that before that game he’d never thought possible.

“It changed my perception about police officers,” he said.

And set the stage for the officer he’d become. As an officer in New Jersey, he began building bridges with the same tools that had connected him to cops so long ago.

“I realized what worked for me, so we used the HBCU classic at MetLife Stadium as a community engagement event,” Stith said.

Now he’s doing the same thing here in Rochester, transforming the Rochester Community Sports Complex into a window through which Rochester youngsters can envision what’s possible.

“I think I got the responsibility as a public servant to deliver hope, so that’s the purpose,” Deputy Chief Stith said.

Not only will you be able to attend a football game, tailgate party, and battle of the bands, you’ll also get the chance to learn all about Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Want to get in on the action? To buy tickets, click here. The game is on September 21, and starts at 1 p.m.

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