What it used to be like
When Dallas police Lt. Herbert Ashford was patrolling the streets of Dallas south of Interstate 30 in the late 1990s, he "didn't get a sense that somehow the community felt differently about me as a black officer compared to, say, my white counterparts.
"What they're looking for is help with their situation," said Ashford, 51, now a Watch Commander in Dallas' central business district. "There was not a racial component from my experience as an officer back in the 1980s and '90s."
Going farther back, he's heard stories from his parents, aunts and uncles "who knew people who were lynched in the South and how things were just crazy back then [with] the racial struggle that they went through ... I've not seen that.
"Now are there officers that have their own agenda? I can't get into the hearts of other officers. I don't know. I'm not seeing that. It's not overt."
The kind of discrimination described by Dallas police Lt. Thomas Glover, 58, has more to do with underlying and perhaps subconscious prejudices than KKK-style vendettas.
He gave what he called a "classic example": In drunken-driving accidents, "if one of the drivers is black, there's that assumption that the person driving drunk was black when it wasn't, it was the other race," said Glover, president of the Black Police Association of Greater Dallas, which has been pushing for police reforms.
"I used to drive an SUV with 22-inch after-market rims," he added. "I probably got stopped a half a dozen times. I've been pulled over for no reason at all by black and white officers, pulling me over just to see who I was. "
It's in traffic enforcement that latent bias comes out the most, Glover believes.
That enforcement disparity leaves black officers at the center of a tug-of-war.
"So co-workers will say, 'You're blue, you're a police officer now. ' Your community expects you to make a difference and your co-workers expect you to police the community in the same way that they do," he said.
In March, the black police association took the controversial position of asking the Chief Brown to step down — a black organization publicly dissing a black chief, something that would have been hard to imagine just a decade ago.
Earlier this month, the association, along with some community groups, pushed for reforms to curb police brutality, including seeking more civilian oversight. Glover said blacks within the department who complain about unequal treatment can pay a price.
"The people who make the sacrifices, who do the reporting, they don't normally benefit in terms of promotions," he said, counting himself in that group. "Your careers are probably stalled."
A police department spokesman did not comment on that charge but noted that 54 percent of the department's top command staff is black or Hispanic.
Coming together
Dallas police Sgt. Willie Ford is also a member of the Black Police Association.
One recent Saturday, Ford and other officers volunteered to spend time at a community block party at the low-income Estell Village Apartments in south Oak Cliff.
The whir of snow cones, flip-flops and blue and purple hair offered residents a good time at a place that has seen its share of shootings and drug-related crimes and the police activity that comes with them.
On this day, the agenda had more to do with free hot dogs, Cheetos and video games.
Erica Pickett, a resident since last year, knows there's "bad blood between black people and the police."
But she said she's teaching her 5-year-old son, Dionte, to "trust the police."
"I don't want him to grow up not liking the police," she said, as a DJ pumped up the crowd.
Pickett, who is black, said it helps that the officers who patrol the area look like her.
"The ones that always patrol here, I know them, they know my family, my dad and my grandmother. They give [Dionte] stickers. We have a good relationship with them, the ones that come over here."
Ford, 57, began his career with the department patrolling the area around Estell Village. Now he hopes that by fostering relationships within the community, police — especially black officers — can help ease the tension.
"Historically we've had negative relationships with the police officers," said the Detroit native, speaking of communities of color.
"Being an African-American male, I do understand the issues that we have to address. We're African-American first and then we're police officers. However, I think you can have a balance in that.
"When I take my uniform off, I know that I'm ... going to be treated pretty much the same as any other African-American male," Ford said as the crowd, mostly blacks, filed by. "So as a Dallas police supervisor, I try to make people understand that how you treat people is important."
