According to a September, 1957, article in Life magazine, many of the larger cities in America were dealing with major problems in their law enforcement agencies at that time: graft, kickbacks, racketeering of different kinds—the list goes on. In Miami, for instance, some members of a special squad assigned to investigate burglaries were suspended for—guess what? Committing burglaries.
Cincinnati, a city of slightly over a half million people
in 1957, was a city with considerably less crime than many larger cities.
Herbert Brean of Life profiled the Cincinnati Police Department in his lengthy,
in-depth 1957 article entitled “A Really Good Police Force.” A major reason for
the success of the CPD, and why it was considered possibly the best police
force in the country, was its remarkable police chief, Stanley Schrotel, who
served in that capacity from 1951-1967.
My “Augusta McKee Mystery Series” takes place in
Cincinnati during the 1960s, a period during which I lived in that city. Not
having any run-ins with the law, I knew very little about the Cincinnati Police
Department until I began to write the books, at which time I came in contact
with Lt. Stephen Kramer (ret.), who, when I started writing the series, was
President of the Greater Cincinnati Police Historical Society and Museum.
Thanks to him I have learned a lot in the past two and a half years, gaining a
profound appreciation for Chief Schrotel, whose name comes up in many of my
books in the series since one of my main characters is a homicide detective for the CPD.
In his Life article, Brean suggested that even
some law enforcement officers don’t understand what the basic purpose of police
work is: first, by constant surveillance to discourage misconduct by
individuals, and second, to further discourage the potential wrongdoer with the
knowledge that there will be swift and sure retaliation if he is apprehended.
Going one step further, the policeman’s job is to not
simply “to help obtain a conviction, but to gather all facts, whether they incriminate
or exonerate.” It is as much a cop’s duty to be sure that a suspect is not
deprived of his rights as it is to obtain a conviction against him. “The
policeman is the guardian of everybody’s rights, including the criminal.” This
philosophy was successfully put into practice in Chief Schrotel’s Cincinnati. (Quotes
from Brean’s article.)
It appears one reason this worked was because the
community supported and cooperated with their police officers because they
trusted them. It wasn’t unusual for an alert citizen to tip off the police
about a crime in progress with the expected outcome the arrest of the
perpetrators. It didn’t hurt that at that time in the city’s history, there was
surprisingly little criminal activity. No organized crime, gambling, or houses
of prostitution. (Note: all of that was available in Newport, Kentucky,
just across the Ohio River, but that’s another story. You can read about that
in my novels The Case of the Disappearing Director and The Case of
the Purloined Professor.) As I remember Cincinnati, it was a place I never
felt unsafe as both a college student and later, a young wife and mother.
Remember, we’re talking decades ago.
One of Schrotel’s top priorities was described by Brean
as “policing the citizen without arousing his antagonism.” According to the Life
article, Schrotel was sensitive to any hint of police brutality, because he
believed those most affected by it were the officers themselves. When a member
of the CPD used force of any kind, he had to fill out a complete report,
countersigned by his superior, as to the reasons for the incident. The
perpetrator would also be taken to General Hospital for an examination if that
was deemed appropriate, and photographs might be taken for use by a defense
attorney. Schrotel wanted to avoid any sense of the “bully boy” authoritarian
figure among his force. He himself was a quiet-spoken, erudite, and unfailingly
polite man, addressing everyone as “sir” and “ma’am.”
Who was this remarkable “Top Cop,” anyway? A
native Cincinnatian, he joined the force before he was twenty-one in 1934,
during the Depression. He rose quickly through the ranks, eventually becoming a
colonel, much to the consternation of the “old guard” members (Brean described
them as “thick-necked, tobacco-chewing district captains and lieutenants who
believed in toughness”), who viewed with suspicion the young man who set
records with every exam he took. His grade on the Chief’s exam was 99.33. In
1951, at the age of 38 he became the youngest chief in CPD history.
Colonel Schrotel also proved himself capable in the
field, solving a difficult murder and robbery case and later cleaning house in
the department itself by putting an end to graft involving towing details. He
suspended 45 police officers on his first day in office. He believed the
effectiveness of a police force is dependent on the quality of its officers,
not on heavy-handed tactics.
In addition, Chief Schrotel was known for his keen
attention to detail, working tirelessly to improve procedures as much as
possible in order to avoid wasted or duplicated effort.
A biography provided by Lt. Kramer has this to say about
Chief Schrotel: “[He] wanted Cincinnati Police Officers to view themselves as
the best in the nation. Over a period of
a few years, he did everything in his power to assure there was no better
educated, trained, equipped, and dressed law enforcement agency in the
country.
“Furthermore, he treated individual officers as valuable
assets. Once he met an officer, he would remember his name forever. Patrol personnel
would often find him lurking, at any hour of the day or night, when they were
responding to calls for service or initiating vehicle stops and the like.
Sometimes he would watch from a block away and would call up the officer’s
captain the next day with a report that the officer needed counseling or that
he had done a good job. He read every
report and seemingly knew every detail about every incident, offense, or
policeman.”
Over the years of his time as chief, many new practices
were adopted, all to the betterment of the force. Chief Schrotel earned his law
degree from Chase College of Law in Cincinnati in 1950, while he was working in
the CPD. He was considered one of the finest police officers in the country,
and a number of cities attempted to hire him. But Cincinnati was his home and
he never left.
When he retired in 1967, after fifteen and a half years,
one of his legacies was the importance of education for police officers. By
1978, over 60% of the force had some college, and 22% held master’s degrees.
This is my favorite story provided by Lt. Kramer about
Colonel Schrotel, and what kind of police officer and man he was. Keep in mind,
this was in the early 1950s-late 1960s.
“Colonel Schrotel altered the practice, or at least the
tradition, of black officers being assigned to only black neighborhoods and
expected to interact only with black violators. Lillian Grigsby, a black female
hired as a Policewoman in 1947, was assigned to a black neighborhood one day
and looking for truants and wayward children. She ventured into the downtown
area and spotted three white Northern Kentucky boys coming from a movie theater
and rounded them up. One of their fathers complained to the Chief and Colonel
Schrotel asked him to come to his office. Before he arrived, he also asked
Policewoman Grigsby to sit in on the meeting. Policewoman Grigsby feared that
she would be made to apologize to the boy’s father—or worse. When the father
arrived, registered his complaint, including that she was a female and black
and should not be arresting his son, Colonel Schrotel looked at her and then at
the man and simply told him that she was not a black officer, or a female
officer. She was a Cincinnati police officer, trained as a Cincinnati officer,
and paid to locate violators such as his son, regardless of the neighborhood or
color of their skin. Thereafter, black officers were assigned to all
neighborhoods. And, still later, he directed that districts deploy mixed race
double-cars.”
There are good men and women out there, many of them
already serving as police officers in this country. They need to be given the
opportunity to “protect and serve” in the right way. They need our support and
appreciation. And they need professional, respected leadership to guide them. The
history of Chief Schrotel and the Cincinnati Police Department is proof that
policing can be the vocation it should be.
