Nation: POLICE: THE THIN BLUE LINE

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Probably no force could find more than lukewarm approval in the ghetto today—so deep are the enmities, so profound the suspicions of the fuzz or, sometimes, "Chuck,"* The very presence of cops in the slums, many Negro militants maintain, represents society's goal to protect the white man's property and suppress the black man's right.

More than Anything. One of the most damning facts about the L.A. department is that its force of 4,000 has only 220 blacks. Police departments have assiduously sought to recruit Negro officers in the past few years, but most of them have not had much success (Exceptions: Washington, 21% of the force; Philadelphia, 20%; Chicago, 17%). Negro policemen are often looked on as Judases when they put on the blue uniform. "More than anything," laments a black patrolman in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, "I want my people to like me. But they just don't like cops. This suit makes me an enemy to them just like any other cop."

The police station remains a place of fear. Precinct-house brutality is uncommon today but not unheard of. When he was Detroit Commissioner in the early '60s, relates U.S. Circuit Judge George Edwards, police sometimes told him that prisoners hurt themselves "falling on the precinct steps." He wondered how a handcuffed man, surrounded by four officers, could possibly suffer a "four-inch cut on the top of the head" in such a fashion and ordered his cops to tell him the facts. He never again received such a report—and, he adds, prisoners tended to "fall" less frequently. Oakland police were incredibly vicious during antidraft demonstrations last October; while Reddin defends the conduct of his men in the Century City melee, he has since issued orders that night sticks no longer be raised above the shoulder.

"Taking someone behind a door and beating hell out of him? Our officers wouldn't dare," says Reddin. "They know that if they did, they'd be prosecuted, and might just wind up in the joint." Undoubtedly, there are more subtle forms of physical abuse—an elbow in the back or a punch in the kidney. But the new worry, as Reddin readily admits, is psychological brutality—the condescending look, or the tone of voice that indicates to a man that he is a suspect merely because of his color, clothes or accent.

One innovation that might go a long way to ease community relations—as well as to disprove many charges of outright brutality—is a civilian board, a kind of ombudsman to review citizen complaints. But police everywhere look upon the notion with undisguised horror as an unwarranted invasion from the outside. "Today," says San Francisco's Chief Tom Cahill, "you cannot even look mean. That may be police brutality."

"Lawyers, doctors and judges all police their own," says Philadelphia's Commissioner Frank Rizzo. "Why does it have to be the policeman who is second-guessed? I don't enjoy being quarterbacked by nonprofessionals." Philadelphia, ironically, had a civilian review board for nearly ten years, examining more than 700 complaints and proving to the satisfaction of most outsiders that the concept does work. The police guild, however, succeeded in killing it in court last year.