Cop Under Fire

by David Clarke

  The front door of my house creaked behind me and out came my father, David Clarke Sr. He squinted in the afternoon sun as he assessed the situation, and my heart nearly stopped beating.

  My Dad, the Ranger

  My father joined the US Army when he was sixteen, just three years older than I was when I raised my fist in defiance. He was assigned to a tank battalion in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but he really wanted to be a paratrooper. Ranger training hadn’t even been offered to black soldiers before then, but he was able to go to Fort Benning, Georgia, to train with the Second Ranger Infantry Company—the army’s first, last, and only all-black Rangers. Since he was the only person in the Rangers to come from a tank battalion, they called him “Tank.”

  When war broke out in Korea, UN forces pushed the North Korean Army as far north as the Yalu River. But when Chinese troops poured over the border to help the North Koreans, America realized the South Koreans might face defeat if they didn’t fully utilize the skills of these black Rangers. Could black Rangers be elite? There were many differing opinions on that, but the army needed them. Consequently, members of the Second Ranger Infantry Company had two very divided lives.

  Stateside, they were black soldiers living under the inequity of segregation. In combat, however, they were well-respected members of a top-notch fighting force. Though the army was the last military branch to comply with Harry S. Truman’s 1948 executive order committing the government to integrating the armed services, the inefficiencies of separate hospitals or aid stations were unaffordable; combat troops of all ethnicities were mixed together. On March 23, 1951, the Second Ranger Infantry Company loaded onto a plane headed to Munsan-ni for a jump. One black Ranger, as he prepared to make history, observed, “It took the Chinese to integrate the American Army.”1

  Buffalo Soldiers. That’s what they called them. Though there are a few stories floating around about the origin of the nickname, apparently the Cheyenne saw black soldiers fighting in the plains back in 1870 and compared their curly hair and color to those of buffalos. In World War I, black soldiers adopted the nickname and wore a shoulder patch of a solitary black buffalo to indicate their division. In 1942, they even somehow got a live buffalo as a mascot. By the time my dad was in the army, the term was a sign of respect. Embracing the name helped the soldiers declare, “We are Rangers and we carry the tradition of earlier Buffalo soldiers. We are strong, we are resilient, and we are united to destroy the enemy.”

  But no matter how determined they were, they had no idea what they were getting into. The war was hard on the Second Ranger Infantry Company even before they got into battle. Frostbite was rampant since temperatures in Korea dipped below zero and bitter winds ripped through the combat clothing left over from World War II.

  One January morning, they headed out to meet the enemy. My dad was a First Platoon BAR runner. BAR stood for Browning Automatic Rifle. He carried his weapon and ammo for the 60mm mortar over an old, abandoned railroad track. Since they found it too difficult to reload in the mountainous terrain, the Rangers doubled the amount of ammunition they carried.

  That evening, they ate C rations and slept on the frozen ground. The next morning, they awakened stiff and cold and began making their way down the treacherous mountain. During their journey, they received enemy fire. One American soldier was shot while eating a can of beans. Within seconds another soldier was killed with several others wounded. My dad, his friend Corporal Lawrence “Poochie” Williams, and the others took cover behind a boulder, but they didn’t have a good line of sight to the enemy. “Put some fire on those hills,” my dad heard, an order he obeyed. Turns out, the boulder wasn’t as protective as they’d hoped, especially when they realized that some fire was coming from behind.

  “Sergeant Freeman, Poochie got hit in his head!” my dad heard just as his friend’s corpse nearly fell on him. Poochie had hated wearing his steel helmet and wasn’t wearing one on that fateful day—it’s not clear it would’ve saved his life. He got hit in the head, and the bullet came out of his eye. A bullet ripped open another Ranger’s chin, and another was hit twice and fatally in the neck. Private First Class Robert St. Thomas was near my father when a bullet went through his foot.

  “Is that a bullet hole?” he asked as he peeled back his shoe pack. It was so cold he could barely feel the wound.

  “You’ve been hit,” my dad confirmed.

  By that time, my dad had used all of his ammo but one magazine, and soldiers were getting shot all around him. “Everybody out!” he heard. As they retreated under a shower of enemy fire, many more Americans were killed or wounded. This included St. Thomas. The last time my dad saw him alive was when he was inspecting his bullet-pierced, frozen foot.

  “Come on out,” a soldier named Dude Walker with an M1 said. “I got you covered.”

  Because of his own bravery and the bravery of others—but most important by the hand of God—my dad survived that skirmish. But no matter how brave they were, it wasn’t enough for some people.

  The Second Ranger Infantry Company was attached to the X Corps, led by General Edward M. Almond. He was one of those people in the military who still didn’t support racial integration of the troops. “No white man wants to be accused of leaving the battle line. The Negro doesn’t care,” he said. “People think being from the South we don’t like Negroes. Not at all. But we understand his capabilities. And we don’t want to sit at the table with them.”2 He frequently discussed black soldiers’ incompetence, cowardly nature, and ignorance.

  No matter what the general said, the Second Ranger Infantry Company served with valor and courage. They received the Combat Infantry Streamer awarded to units that received more than 65 percent of casualties in a particular engagement.

  General Douglas MacArthur recognized the importance and historical significance of Dad’s company. “I have one criticism of negro troops who fought under my command in the Korean War,” he said. “They didn’t send me enough of them.”

  My dad returned to Milwaukee as a sergeant with a chest full of medals. There, he married Geraldine and worked for the post office. Together, they had five kids. I was the second-born but oldest son, and we had a peaceful life. When I was younger, we lived in a housing project on the north side called Berryland, but after I turned twelve, we moved to a compact house with white aluminum siding and wide awnings a few blocks away. My parents lived frugally, living simply so they could send all of their kids to Catholic school. We never had new cars or went on vacations. Well, to be clear, our idea of a vacation was piling in the car and visiting my grandmother in Beloit.

  Every morning, we’d get bundled up and walk about five blocks to St. Albert School, a large off-white brick building surrounded by an asphalt playground and a chain-link fence. The nuns at school held complete sway over our behavior, their raised rulers coming down hard on us when we strayed from the straight and narrow path. We knew not to cross them in the classroom, but our fear extended beyond the schoolhouse doors. Blocks away, we felt the lingering effects of their discipline. As soon as we got about three blocks from school, we knew to cross the road and walk double file down the sidewalk until we reached the intersection where the crossing guard would escort us across the street to school. Why double file? That configuration, the nuns told us, allowed two kids to be on the sidewalk without blocking the way for any adult pedestrians who might be coming our way. We never even dreamed of doing something as radical as walking in a group down the sidewalk as if we owned it, making anyone who walked toward us go around us … even outside their domain. There at St. Albert, I developed my love of learning and books, but I also loved sports.

  My hero was my dad’s brother Frank. Named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was a great athlete who was drafted out of the University of Colorado in the fifth round of the 1956 NFL draft by the Cleveland Browns. He played one season in Ohio before the Cowboys picked him up in the expansion draft. For Dallas, he became the first receiver with more than one thousand receivi
ng yards. He’s often described as the first black athlete who was a star, even though his host city was racially divided at the time. He held the Cowboys season touchdown reception record until a few years ago when Terrell Owens broke it. Terrell signed a football and sent it to my uncle when that happened. Frequently, people ask me where I got my affinity for my trademark cowboy hat and cowboy boots. It goes back to my love of my uncle and his success for Dallas.

  My dad’s other brother, Edwin Clarke, wrote for The Milwaukee Journal and hosted black public affairs programs on local television. My father had, I suppose, a less prominent job. Every Sunday, he’d get up and meticulously iron his postman’s uniform before the start of the week. The man could press a seam. My mother was a stay-at-home mom until we were school age. Then she worked as a secretary for Milwaukee Public Schools. Even though they were working parents, they kept a strict rein on us kids.

  My friends would go to a nearby train trestle, grocery store, or corner drugstore after school, but my dad allowed me to go only to our neighborhood park, which was just an empty field a few blocks from home. My father said, “No farther,” so the park was the unofficial boundary line of my life. I didn’t know how big the city was because I rarely left the neighborhood. My siblings and I weren’t out running the streets. My father didn’t go for that, nor did he go for hanging out. Everything that I did took place within a few steps of my home. When the streetlights went on at dusk, I’d better be at home. If not, my dad would drive through the streets looking for me. Once I got home, he hid my shoes to ensure I was not tempted to sneak out.

  “You have no business standing around doing nothing,” he always told me. “You’ll be at our house.”

  “How can I see my friends?”

  “If your friends want to see you so bad, they can come over here.” He didn’t add “where I can keep an eye on you,” but he didn’t have to. He had the reputation of being the strictest father on the block. He wouldn’t tolerate disrespect and definitely didn’t suffer fools. I bristled under his watchful eye, but I also knew he had my back.

  An Unforgettable Moment

  A few months before I raised my fist to the cops, I had been on our neighborhood playground, which was nothing more than an asphalt basketball court (with bases painted on it for baseball too) and a swing set. I was swinging with my buddies, all who were white, when some older kids came up. Back then, teenagers who were sixteen to eighteen were either “hood” or “college” (pronounced coleej). These guys were hoods.

  “Get off that swing, n—,” one of them said to me.

  Even though I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, it was the first time someone had called me that word publicly. I got off the swing and shuffled home, embarrassed and hurt not so much because of the name but because I’d been called it in front of my friends. I’d never seen myself as different, but there it was—the color of my skin pointed out in the most embarrassing fashion.

  “What’s wrong?” my mom asked when I walked in the house. I was bawling.

  “We were on the swings,” I cried, “and they kicked us off and one called me n—.”

  “David, you know what I always say. Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words can never hurt you.”

  I tried to find comfort in her singsongy advice, but it was cold comfort. That’s when my dad came in the room.

  “What’s going on?” As soon as my mother explained the situation, he started to head out the door.

  “Dave, don’t,” she said. “Stay.”

  But my dad pointed at me and said, “Come with me.”

  “Those guys?” my dad asked when we walked into the park. The hoods were still on the swings, slowly going back and forth as they talked. My dad went straight to them and with a raised voice said, “Get off those swings!”

  They obeyed more quickly than I had complied to their demand a few minutes earlier.

  “Which one of you called my son a n—?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me,” they all said. They knew my dad was a no-nonsense man, and they were rightfully afraid of him. He didn’t lay a hand on them, but he put the fear of God in them.

  My dad stuck up for me, and I knew I would never forget this moment. But he also was adamant that I was not a victim. He never encouraged the racial hypersensitivity seen too frequently today. Though he never talked to me about it outright, I knew he didn’t like identity politics and wouldn’t have his son participate in such nonsense.

  When I raised my fists to the police, as soon as my father appeared in the door, my friends’ curiosity over the impending interaction with the police disappeared. They grabbed their bikes and left—no words spoken. Even they respected my father.

  “What’s going on here?” my dad asked, his eyes squinting as he tried to adjust to the afternoon autumn sun. “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “Your son called us over,” one said. “We were driving by, and he raised his hand. We figured he needed us.”

  The other added, “Actually, he raised his fist.”

  I was a rule follower, so a raised fist was not typical behavior. On that day, this usually shy and reserved kid wanted to impress my friends; I wanted the cops to know I didn’t like them; I wanted to make a statement. Now that I’m older and fully appreciate all that my dad went through in the war—the segregation, the insults, the slander, the deaths around him—without complaining, I bet he couldn’t imagine that his kid had a reason in the world to be angry at those cops.

  My dad placed his hand on my shoulder and said—without changing his calm tone of voice—“I’ll take care of it.”

  The officers nodded, got back in their car, and drove away. I would’ve rather been handcuffed and dragged down to the station than be left there with my dad. When we got inside the house, he turned to me and asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew not to make excuses.

  “You never mess with the police,” he said. “Never.”

  There was something in the tone of his voice and his steady gaze. The police knew my dad would handle my attitude. My dad knew he could handle it. And I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would never do that again.

  And I didn’t.

  The Irony of Life

  In an ironic twist of fate, I actually became a Milwaukee police officer. For eleven years, I patrolled my beats on foot or in a car going through the streets of our city just like those two officers so many years earlier. In 1989, I was promoted to detective. Nine months later, I was selected for the specialized Homicide Division, where I helped investigate more than four hundred murders over a four-year span. In 1992, I was promoted to lieutenant of detectives and assigned to the Criminal Investigation Bureau as shift commander of the Crimes Against Property Division, the Violent Crimes Unit. In 1996, I was promoted again to become captain of police and soon became commander of the department’s First District (Milwaukee’s business and entertainment center) and ultimately the Department’s Intelligence Division. And all of that was before I became sheriff of Milwaukee County.

  Over the years, I’ve had a front-row seat to the staggering ways our nation has changed, and believe me, a great deal has changed, as life always does, but not always for the better.

  Here’s how my story would go in 2017:

  A black kid and his friends are hanging out on their front yard when they see a patrol car coming slowly through their neighborhood.

  One kid curses at the police officers, picks up a rock, and throws it at their car. His friends laugh and extend their middle fingers to the cops. The car stops, and the officers get out.

  “You can’t come over here, pig,” one yells. “This is private property!”

  “We’re on the sidewalk,” the officer says, his hand held up to calm the boys. “This is public property.”

  The door opens, and the mother of one boy runs down the steps as she shouts, “Get outta here! Why are you bothering these boys?”

&n
bsp; The situation escalates as one kid picks up a rock and hits a policeman square in the face.

  The other police officer drops the kid, putting him in handcuffs. The mother, wailing all the while, whips out her cell phone as the policeman tries to hold him down and keep the others from interfering with the arrest.

  “Quit brutalizing him!” she screams. “He’s a good kid!” The kid resists arrest, screaming, “We were just talking!” The dramatic footage leads the six o’clock news. For the next few days, Black Lives Matter protestors set up camp around the boy’s house. The officer is accused of racism and is put on leave. The YouTube video of the incident is seen more than a million times, #TalkingWhileBlack becomes a widely used hashtag, and political pundits on both sides of the aisle use this incident as a Rorschach test.

  When you watch this, do you see an out-of-control police force or an out-of-control kid? Your answer says a great deal about you. Fights on Facebook break out among the closest of friends, and the fabric of society tears just a little more.

  What has happened to America? It seems as though incidents such as these—and others far worse—happen across the nation with startling regularity.

  You probably picked up this book because you have seen me on television or heard me on the radio. But I have to admit: most handwringing pundits have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to “police brutality,” racial politics, and the intersection of law enforcement and some of the poorer people of America. I want to shed light on these topics—and more—to give Americans a better understanding of the scope of the problem, the challenges we’re facing, and—I hope—some solutions.

  Scratch that. Thomas Sowell is famous for saying, “There are no solutions, just tradeoffs.” I agree. As America becomes increasingly divided and polarized, there are no easy answers to what ails us, but it’s never too late to view our problems with open eyes, look to God for answers, stop blaming the wrong people, and realize that what has worked in the past might still work in the future.