| The story of Arthur Jones, Milwaukee's First Black Top Cop And still I rise By Jonathan Gramling Part 1 of 3 |
| struck up the brass band. Instead of a honeymoon period, the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recounted Jones' controversial past in less than glowing terms and was hardly a vote of confidence. Perhaps it was a sign of how Jones' career would unfold in 1967 during the height of the open housing marches led by Father James Groppi. Jones, who graduated from Marquette University with an associates degree in criminal justice and a B.A. in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was working a $2.02 per hour job with General Electric X-Ray with a wife and child at home. He was also marching with Father Groppi down the 16th Street Viaduct over the Menominee River Valley that separates the south side of Milwaukee from the north side. "I saw the police who were with the marchers," Jones recalled. "I saw the police who were against the marchers. I found it interesting as a result of growing up here and observing the police in action for really the first time during the marches. There were those who were against us marching and there were those who even if they didn't agree with the marchers, they knew that their job was to protect us. And that's what they did. They made sure we made it from the south side back to the north side safely. And there were those who assisted the people who felt we had no right to be on the south side of the city of Milwaukee. There were those who felt that no matter what the social climate was that their job was to do their job whatever it is at the time. At that time, for me, their job was to protect us from the real violence that we met as we crossed over the 16th viaduct." It was during these formidable days that MPS was in the midst of a recruitment drive. Jones took notice. "There was a shortage of police officers then," Jones recalled. "At the time, I recall, they were 150 police officers short. The riots were going on across America. And they were recruiting and raised the pay of police officers by $5,000. It was certainly a lot more money than I was making at General Electric. The benefits were excellent. So I decided that is what I would do." Jones joined MPS during the early years of MPS Chief Harold Breier's administration. It's almost ironic that Jones, a fair housing demonstrator, would get a position in Breier's often accused racist department. "In a real sense, we were part of the first wave of integration of the police department," Jones observed. "It was interesting when I interviewed with the Fire and Police Commission - at the time Chief Breier was a part of that interview -- I either left a march and went to the meeting or left the meeting and went to a march. That's where I was at the time. When I joined the police department, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 African American police officers in the entire department at every level." Jones was assigned to District Five. African American officers were assigned to only four districts and in two of those districts; there was only one African American officer. To say that MPS was segregated was an understatement. District Five was the central city district at the time, located on Fourth Street and Locust. Even then, it was a rarity to see another African American officer. "While that district was heavily African American, you were fortunate if at roll call -- over time when more African Americans joined the police department, they were all assigned to the north side districts - on a daily basis you would see 1-2 African Americans," Jones said. "There were no Hispanics and no women. Women were not allowed to be police officers at the time." During those days, the racism in the department was pretty blatant, an intricate part of the police -- and Milwaukee's -- culture. One instance was how retirement parties were held. "Everybody was invited to the retirement party except the African American officers," Jones said. "You would be sitting in the squad with a White partner and they would drive up to the squad and remind him or collect the money from your partner like you weren't even sitting there. You see the climate that was condoned by the sergeants and the captains in the way that people were treated. You understood and the best you could do was to say this type of treatment would not occur while I'm present. You're not going to exhibit that behavior to my partner." Jones was not someone who would stand for the separate and unequal treatment forever in silence. "In District Five, at first, the Black officers were not assigned to cars," Jones said. "We had to walk the beat and then on weekends when they thought they were going to get more activity, then they would put us on the squads to work with White officers. Theoretically at the time, we had beat officers. They said we would probably have to walk a beat for at least a year and then we would be assigned a squad. Well there were Black officers that were there for 9-11 years and had never been assigned to a car in District Five." "White officers would come out of the academy and say 'Well, in a year, I'm going to be assigned to the detective bureau,'" Jones continued. "They would be there for a year and they would be gone to the detective bureau. They would get assigned to a squad within months of getting to the district. And there were literally African American officers that were not assigned to squads. Then they had officers who worked in plainclothes for the captain. There was never an African American who was assigned to work plainclothes in the district until I went in to the captain to complain and asked him why. And even when I was doing that, some of the Black officers asked me why I was making waves and making it harder on the other African American officers. As a result of all this, I was denied an assignment within the district." One time, in order to punish him, Jones was reassigned east of the Milwaukee River to get him out of the African American community. "I was the first Black officer assigned to work the east side of Milwaukee and I was the first officer to get a one-man car because they thought they were punishing me," Jones said with a smile. "So my experience east of the river was entirely different in the same district than the officers who worked in district five west of the river in terms of the number of assignments and in terms of the types of assignments. I could go a whole day without an assignment. They thought they were punishing me." A pattern was emerging in Jones' career. He would often times become the first African American to reach some new assignment or rank only after being an activist or filing a complaint. Things were never handed to Jones on a silver platter. Next issue: Rising through the ranks to chief |
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| As we sit in his living room on Milwaukee's northwest side, it's hard to think of former Milwaukee Police Chief Arthur Jones as a controversial figure. Jones is mild-mannered and very polite and talks freely about his tenure as Milwaukee's first African American police chief from 1996 until 2003. And yet, a simple Google of his name shows that he has been a central figure in the mix of race relations in the Milwaukee Police Department from his successful suit through the League of Martin to fully integrate the Milwaukee Police Department (MPS) in the late 1970s to the federal lawsuit of 17 White police officers who claimed that Jones practiced "reverse discrimination" n his promotions of police officers to the rank of captain, a suit that went against Jones in 2005. When he was appointed Milwaukee Police Chief in 1996, the local media hardly |
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