Detective in Homicide Unit
His mother and his religion taught him to tell the truth. He did and suffered the consequences, but justice was served, and some progress was made in one city to reform the bad conduct he refused to condone.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
OB was born in New Orleans. His parents had divergent experiences with the law – his father died in police custody when OB was young, while his mother was the first Black woman in the New Orleans police department.
CHILDHOOD INTERESTS TOWARD AN ADULT CAREER
Looking back, OB recalled no specific plan, as a child, to become a policeman but although his father’s experience involving police was negative, his mother’s experience – with which he lived longer during his formative years – was positive toward police work.
OB’s mother attended church regularly, bringing OB along for Sunday school participation, where he supplemented learning about morality through Bible stories, in addition to his mother’s lessons on ‘right and wrong.’
EDUCATION
OB’s mother encouraged him to be a good student throughout elementary and high school so he could qualify to attend college and create more opportunities for himself.
Following his high school graduation, OB enrolled in college, majoring in criminal justice. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
Editor – A typical college / university student majoring in criminal justice will have the opportunity to take courses (some of which are required) in the fields of introduction to criminal justice, social deviance, juvenile delinquency, criminal justice ethics, criminal law procedures (arrest, arraignment, plea, negotiations to admit guilt and for a recommended sentence and trial testimony), research techniques and data analysis, introduction to psychology, forensic science (e.g. fingerprints, DNA), ethnicity and race in urban history, multiculturalism in justice, history of American immigration, child protection agencies, constitutional law and civil liberties, homicide investigation and prosecution, gender crime and justice, victimology, family law.
CAREER COMMENCES
After a few years as a police patrolman, OB asked to be assigned to the city police’s homicide unit, even though his father had died in police custody several decades earlier.
CAREER CHALLENGE – UNETHICAL AND ILLEGAL CONDUCT BY CO-WORKERS
Within the first six months of OB joining the homicide unit, the body of a young, White police officer was found in a ditch in a predominantly Black neighborhood across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. Even though witnesses said two White men had been seen running from the scene of the murder, the police flooded the Black sections of the town where the body had been found, kicking down doors and hauling in witnesses, including two young Black men, RD and BJ. According to later developed evidence, the police wanted RD and BJ to identify a pair of Black men, JH and RM, as the suspects but RD and BJ refused.
OB was on homicide division duty that evening and watched as police officers tied RD to a chair with cloth bandages and beat him. They then placed a plastic bag over his head and held it tight so he couldn’t breathe.
Before the interrogation started, another officer had taken OB aside and told him that the other detectives didn’t trust him. Not only was he Black, the other officer said, but he had only yelled at witnesses; he never beat them. Now, the implication went, was his chance to prove himself.
And so, during the questioning, OB approached RD, still seated, and slapped him hard across the face.
OB immediately felt remorse, even disgust, he later said, and when the other officers resumed beating RD, OB tried to stop them. They told him to leave the room, which he did.
Leaving OB behind, the officers involved in the interrogations took RD and BJ to a swampy area outside the city. They hung them over a bridge and fired shotgun blasts around their heads until both men agreed to identify JH and RM as the two who had murdered the police officer friend of the homicide detectives.
A few hours later, dozens of police officers descended on the homes of JH and RM. OB was assigned to stand in the back of RM’s house in case RM or his pregnant girlfriend, SS, tried to run. OB later testified in court that when he heard officers burst into the home, immediately he heard gun shots, saw SS running naked (apparently, she had first tried to hide in the bathroom). One officer followed and shot her with a shotgun blast to the stomach and a pistol shot to her head, killing her.
Other police officers killed other civilians who had been in the other house broken into. OB never drew his weapon.
Local prosecutors contacted OB, who initially declined to discuss what he had witnessed. But a few days later, a friend of OB contacted the local District Attorney’s office to advise that OB was willing to testify against his fellow police officers. The D.A. offered OB immunity from prosecution in exchange for his honest and complete testimony so OB proceeded to recount all the facts he could recall, which he later repeated to a Grand Jury assembled in the city to consider whether to bring charges against the police involved.
Despite OB’s testimony, the majority white grand jury in New Orleans twice refused to recommend homicide indictments. Later, OB said “In any other scenario, those police officers would have easily been indicted for murder. But you’re talking about 1980 in the South.” (Editor – Fast forward to 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee where 5 Black police officers have – at the time this story was prepared – just been charged with murdering a Black adult male after a traffic stop for no apparently lawful reason. So, illegal / immoral conduct by co-workers remains a serious problem, not just with police but in many businesses.)
Eventually (within the Statue of Limitations), a federal Grand Jury indicted seven police officers for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of those who were killed by the police. (Editor – there is no Federal crime of ‘murder’ so civil rights violations were the only applicable criminal charges available to the federal prosecutors.)
At the Federal trial of the police officers, OB’s testimony was persuasive, despite defense lawyers suggesting that his account was unreliable given his own participation. But the jurors convicted three of the seven officers, each of whom received a five-year sentence and was fired from the police force.
Editor – A five-year prison sentence and losing a job is not sufficient accountability or justice for murder but sometimes the law and its enforcement are inadequate; prosecutors have to deal with the available facts and applicable law. As many observers have noted: “We don’t live in a perfect world.”
As a further result of OB’s trial testimony, lawyers for all the victims of that evening’s violence and damages to their property filed a series of civil lawsuits against multiple defendants, including the police and the City of New Orleans, resulting in a $2.8 million settlement, the largest payout by the city at that time.
CHALLENGE – DISRESPECT AND THREATS AFTER SPEAKING THE TRUTH
OB suffered for his decision to testify against his fellow police officers. He was ostracized by his colleagues. He received death threats. He was demoted from homicide detective to traffic cop. Though he was finally promoted to sergeant fifteen years later, his career in law enforcement was effectively over when he spoke out against his fellow officers.
CAREER SATISFACTION
After OB retired from the police force, he was ordained as a Baptist minister. Later, OB and his family moved to a different city, where OB taught criminal justice at a community college.
Following OB’s death at age 70, the Louisiana State Senate unanimously passed a resolution honoring OB’s decision to testify against other police officers: “Despite an awareness of what it would mean for him personally, in one of the most pivotal moments of his life, he honored his oath as a law enforcement officer to uphold the Constitution and as a witness to testify honestly, and for his actions, he and his family paid a heavy price.”
This career story was based on an obituary written by Clay Risen and published in 2022 by the NY Times.
