NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — A Newport News woman turned family tragedy into a quest to devote her life to helping others.
Tiffany Williams has been a Newport News Police officer for two years and became an officer at 43, but her journey to reach this point started when she was a child.
“When I was 12 years old, my mom was found deceased,” Williams said. “During that traumatic time, it was the ambulance, the police, the first responders, and it was at that time when the police came into our home. I have five siblings total, and we were all distraught, but when they came in, they had empathy, they had compassion and they showed us that they cared and during that crisis, that traumatic moment.”
She said the police treated her and her siblings with respect and compassion.
“They make sure that we were OK,” Williams said. “They put us all together. They didn’t separate us. They didn’t come in like a whirlwind. They came in very calm, because it was already traumatic. So, they came in a very calm. They gathered us together. They they made sure there was nothing that we needed. … Even after the whole process, they made sure, like, ‘Is there anything we can do, any services or resources that we can give you to go through this process?’
“So that was the pivotal moment that I remember. They didn’t just then say, ‘OK, my job is over. Let me go do another call.’ They made sure they stayed with us. They gave us resources. They made sure that we was OK. They made sure that we stayed together, even through the CPS process. They also made sure that we could stay together.”
Williams said that response opened her eyes to the important work done by police officers.
“It was then that I said, ‘you know what? I could see myself doing that for someone,'” she said.
Williams moved in with her aunt, who eventually put her in a police explorer program.
“The police explorer program is like a junior police officer in training,” Williams said. “You do ride alongs. You can pick the days that you want to do the ride alongs. You go on to observe what police officers do day in and day out. It was literally just like a police officer in training.”
After she graduated from the program in Florida, Williams went to college to study criminal justice. She became a mother. She married a military man, and she put her degree on hold while her family grew, and then they moved for the service. Eventually they settled in Virginia, and she got her degree from Old Dominion University.
“I always knew I wanted to be a police officer, but then, I was like, you know, I’m too old at this point,” Williams said.
Williams started volunteering with the Newport News Police Department, where mentors assured her she was not too old. So, she joined the police academy, and in 2023, she graduated a Newport News Police Officer. At graduation, her fellow cadets selected her to be the class speaker.
“I’m not an eloquent speaker,” Williams said. “I get so nervous. I’m very shy, but, you know, they thought enough of me to be like, ‘OK, we want her to represent our class for graduation to speak for our class.’ I guess they could see the passion that I have for policing because I was almost the oldest one in the class.”
Williams serves in the South Precinct of Newport News as a patrol officer. Now, this 45-year-old woman reflects on what she would tell that 12-year-old girl facing one of the most traumatic moments of her life.
“I would tell myself that no matter what it feels like, no matter what it looks like,” she said, “that it works for the good, because even during that traumatic event, that set back, it was for a major comeback.”