As NY1 marks Black History Month , we turn our focus to African-American Members of the NYPD. NY1's Cheryl Wills caught up with a retired 64-year-old trailblazer who has concerns about the current state of affairs within the sea of blue. She filed this report.

Alicia Parker retired from the NYPD in 1995 after 22 years on the job and she now lives quietly in Queens, but she has a powerful story. She was one of the first two African-American female police officers on patrol back in 1973 assigned to the 41 precinct in the Bronx.

"No one wanted to work with me. It was quite an experience. I just saw my name on the roll call and it just kept getting scratched off," says retired NYPD Officer Alicia Parker.

Parker says her early years in the department were some of the toughest.

"The first instance of racism that was actually directed at me came when I was a rookie in the police department. A white police officer came up to me and began to speak to me in Spanish and I said 'I'm not Hispanic' and he said well what are you and I said, 'I'm black' and he says, 'You're a pickaninny?!'  I said, ‘Oh my God.’ I didn't know how to react to that.  I had been sheltered all my life and I did not know how to react. I knew what that terminology meant, but I had never had racism directed at me," Parker says.

Parker persevered and quickly rose through the ranks, however, to Lieutenant Detective Commander. During her career, she witnessed many racially-charged police involved incidents—especially during the Koch and Dinkins years—but she says the Eric Garner case deeply disturbed her.

"Mr. Garner was indicating that he couldn't breathe and with all of the people that were standing around, no one said, 'Hey, Let's let him have a little air. Let's move away from him a little bit.' I think that bothered me more than anything else," says Parker. "I think that tactics are important. I think that once a person is down on the ground though, there are certain things a person shouldn't do and I think compressing their chest to the point where they can't breathe is one of the things you shouldn't do. And there was a supervisor there who probably should have taken charge."

Parker comes from a long line of police officers. Her father, brother, sister and uncle all served in the NYPD. She says she's troubled by the outrage surrounding Mayor Bill de Blasio's remarks that he has counseled his son about how to deal with the police.

"I've had that conversation with my son and millions of other black families have had that conversation with their children," Parker says. "My son has been stopped unjustly by the police. My father, when he was 60 years old, was stopped—he was a detective—was stopped unjustly by police and handcuffed and hauled off to a precinct because they said his shield looked like a phony shield. I can't tell you how many times black police officers are handcuffed and assaulted because police have said to them it looks like a phony shield," Parker says.

The retired commander also takes issue with Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch's criticism of  de Blasio.

"I thought it was a very knee-jerk reaction to a very horrible situation and I think people of his stature need to think about what they say and the consequences of what they say before they say them,” Parker says. “I think the mayor was telling the truth—and isn't that what we want from our politicians? We want our politicians to tell the truth.  And when he tells the truth, does he mean we can't handle the truth?"

Parker says there are still many good officers of all racial backgrounds who don't get the credit they deserve, and she hopes that officials can come together and help heal the racial divide not only in the city, but in the NYPD.

"I think the police commissioner and the mayor have to bring the right people in the room—the people who want to solve the problem. Not the people who just want to have rhetoric, but the people who want to solve the problem—get them all into the room to see how we can solve this issue," says Parker.