UNTIL the spring of 1968, Renault Robinson was considered a model policeman. After four years on the Chicago force, he had a 97% efficiency rating and had won more than 50 citations for outstanding work. Then Robinson and seven other black policemen formed the Afro-American Patrolmen's League, an organization aimed at improving police service to the black community and at getting more blacks into policymaking positions in the department. Robinson has been suspended five times since; anonymous telephone callers have repeatedly threatened his life and those of his wife and three children. He is now up before the five-man civilian police board on charges ranging from sleeping on duty to insubordination, with a decision expected perhaps this week. Robinson believes firmly that he will be dismissed from the force.
Renault Robinson's case is an extreme example of the difficulties that confront black cops around the U.S. They often face the hostility of their white comrades-in-arms and the enmity of black militants, who consider them Uncle Toms, plus the indifference of other blacks who regard only white cops as "reel police." Says Octave Richard, a black patrolman on Chicago's South Side: "We're in the middle."
James Smith, a black Omaha policeman, puts it this way: "The whites say we don't enforce the law, that we let everybody go. The blacks say we're just doing the white man's dirty work." Adds one veteran black policeman, now a federal official: "The black cop is being told to choose between the department and the black community. He is choosing the community." But the pattern is mixed. While many black cops feel they must fight for their black fellow citizens against what they often see as the incomprehension and aggression of white cops, they are also trying to develop new and healing approaches to ghetto problems of law and justice.
Obscene Captions. Black cops in many U.S. cities are now creating activist organizations of their own. The Afro-American Patrolmen's League claims 1,000 members, nearly half the blacks on the 13,000-man Chicago force, though one department spokesman says he has heard that the dues-paying cops in Robinson's group number no more than 50. In San Francisco, which has 1,800 policemen, all 85 of the blacks belong to Officers for Justice, founded two years ago to redress black grievances. Among them: the regular police organization refused legal aid to black cops charged with off-duty offenses, but hired Jake Ehrlicha well-known California criminal lawyerto defend a white cop accused of manslaughter. The Guardians, once only a social organization of black patrolmen, but now increasingly militant, have chapters in many cities. In New York City, for example, they count 75% of the 2,400 black cops on a force of 32,000. The Chicago group has a store-front office on the city's South Side to help residents who have problems with the police. All the organizations defend black cops accused of violating departmental regulations and work at increasing black police recruiting.