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Pull No Wool. Another encouraging development is the effective use of all-black or white-black "mod squad" patrols in the ghettoas in New York and Detroit. But New York's Eldridge Waith was chastised by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association for allowing himself to be frisked when he entered a church held by the Puerto Rican Young Lords, though by doing so Waith managed to help defuse a potentially dangerous situation. "We are not saying we are going to work with them," Waith notes, "but there's no doubt that in terms of the community there are areas where our goals are the same."
John Grimes, a young black, has spent nearly eight years as a New York City cop and is now a student at Harvard Law School. Says Grimes: "It's really a matter of communication." If black citizens "know where your heart is and that you really want to talk to them and not pull some wool over their eyes, then there's no problem." Grimes, who has written a master's thesis on "The Black Man and Law Enforcement," argues that assignment to black districts should be voluntary duty for the best-trained officers, who would get extra pay. "The black officer must be someone that black youth can look up to instead of looking up to the dope pusher," says Grimes. Ironically, last week Grimes resigned from the N.Y.P.D. after a dispute over his taking an extra leave of absence to attend law school.
