Boston also had a larger extended family where she and some of her cousins were born around the same time and they all grew up close.

“The pressure was always on me to excel,” Boston said. “There were a couple who were older than me. But for whatever reason at times because of their maturity levels compared to mine, I was up in the front to be the example.”

Boston graduated from Rufus King High School, a public college-prep high school and then went on to attend Carroll College — now Carroll University — to get away from the street life that many of her peers engaged in. But a private college costs money.

“I wanted to go away to college and figure out my life without being part of Milwaukee because I was in the inner-city there and there were a lot of things that I did not like and I didn’t see,” Boston recalled. And my cousins were all dope dealers. So I had a family that was not always legal and on the up and up. And I was just really trying to get away from that. I did, but when I went back for my sophomore year, I left with a bill. It was like $1,200. $1,200 isn’t a big deal now, but in 1990, that was huge when I made $3.18 an hour at Arby’s. By the time my sophomore year of college started, I didn’t have my last semester paid off, so I couldn’t return.”

Boston returned to the Milwaukee inner-city and ended up becoming pregnant and then trying to raise a child on a fast food salary. Her father pushed her to do better.

“My dad was a city worker,” Boston said. “And with my family in my environment, it was like, ‘Hey if you get a city job, you have arrived.’ If you get a city job, you get stability. You’ll have dental and health insurance, all of the benefits you don’t get from my $3.18 per hour job at Arby’s.’ My dad was like, ‘Hey, the police department is hiring. You should go apply.’ ‘No dad, I don’t like the police. I don’t want to apply.’ He said, ‘You have a baby who needs benefits.’ I said, ‘Okay you’re right.’ So I went in and applied because I needed a job to raise my son. And that is how I got in law enforcement.”

Boston actually applied for a position at the post office at the same time she applied to join the Milwaukee Police Department. And when the postal job was offered first, she took it.

“I worked at the post office in the summer in Brookfield, which I loved because it was mailbox to mailbox,” Boston said. “I did not have to walk, so I was in my mail truck delivering mail. And I had benefits and things there. But I just wasn’t feeling it.”

An opportunity opened up for Boston to join the MPD and she took it.

“Milwaukee at the time — they don’t do it now — hired off of lists,” Boston said. “And they did their lists by your gender and your race. That had a Black female list, and a white male list because they wanted to make sure they would take so many percentage in our class. In my class when I was hired, there were 4-5 Black females, 4-5 Black males. There were Hispanics. There were white males and females. They made the classes very diverse. At the time, I believe I was number two on the Black female list. When I was talking to the background investigator, they were, ‘You listed high, more than likely. When the next class comes, you will be in it.” I took the tests in December 1994 and I started on December 4, 1995.”

It was kind of a contradiction for Boston to join the police force. She had plenty of time to see how the police treated people in the inner-city — a community suffering from the loss of manufacturing jobs and with barriers thrown in the way to white collar opportunities — and so she didn’t like the police. But she liked the possibility of what they could be.

“The work that we do was something that I always liked to do,” Boston said. “My major, before I dropped out, was pre-med biology. I always wanted to be in a type of career or environment where I was helping people. Once I got into the police academy and started learning about the laws and how important our role was in the community, my interest was really piqued. And so by the time I got on the street, in my field training, I knew that was something I was destined to do. I knew that I had made the right decision. I was so grateful that my dad had pushed me to do it. Although it started off because I needed benefits, once I went into the training, it was something that I wanted to do.”

While enforcement is usually the image that people bring to the police, for Boston, it was going to be different because she did not like that version of a police officer.

“For me, it has never been about enforcement,” Boston said. “Enforcement is something I do because I have to do it. But for me, it was always about impact. I always went to a call because I had to go to the call. It might not be the best call. But at the end of the call, I always tried to leave something different there because I always had at the forefront that I am not like police in the uniform because I didn’t like the police.”