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Rupert Crittenden, who has heard them testify in municipal court over the past five years, was moved to an expression of praise that is rare when courts talk about cops. "They present their cases cleanly and they're one hundred percent honest. I've seen them lose cases because they didn't want to fudge."
"He Knows." The Berkeley police face other problems with equal skill. The fact that courts are constantly changing, redefining and liberalizing the rights of prisoners has brought gripes from cops across the country. Fording is relatively unbothered. "Certainly court decisions have imposed increasing limitations," he admits. "Our job now is to live within the framework that the court has set up." To help do just that, he distributes a monthly reading list that covers recent legal changes as well as advances in investigative methods. The instruction works. In the difficult area of proving narcotics offenses, 198 arrests were made in Berkeley last year, and a mere 14 were thrown out because police had violated the tricky and changing search and seizure laws.
At a time when police forces from
New York to Los Angeles are fighting off the imposition of civilian review boards, the Berkeley force gets few complaints and already has a broadly based Citizens Committee for Public Safety, which the force itself was instrumental in founding. Says Mrs.
Frankie Jones, local N.A.A.C.P. leader:
"I have seen police at work all over, and there's not a police department in the United States that excels this one."
Far from distrusting and failing to co operate with the police, Berkeley residents actively support them; three times in recent months local citizens helped to foil crimes in progress and even leaped in to aid a lone patrolman under attack by young toughs. The force's able handling of the massive Vietnik marches last October earned them a hearty three cheers from the peace marchers them selves. In court it is not even unusual for a bemused defendant to call the accusing officer by his first name and shruggingly tell the judge: "Ask him.
He knows what happened."