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Coleman Beats DPOA: White Police Must Live in Detroit

Coleman Beats DPOA: White Police Must Live in Detroit image
Parent Issue
Day
1
Month
October
Year
1975
OCR Text

By Maureen McDonald

Detroit police will have to spend their nocturnal hours snoring away within the city limits or face immediate suspension, following a landmark ruling by a three-person arbitration panel charged with negotiating police residency.

The panel, in its September 5 decision, insisted that the 5100 members of the Detroit Police Officers Association (DPOA) must be subject to the same laws they enforce: they must live, as well as work, within the 139 square miles of Detroit proper.

Mayor Coleman Young has contended throughout the eight months of arbitration that city residency is crucial to the development of a police force which reflects Detroit's makeup and understands its problems.

"We won the whole baby. We didn't compromise anything," says George Edwards III, former special counsel to the Mayor, who negotiated for the City. Of Harry G. Platt, the chief arbitrator, Edwards says, "Platt couldn't cut the baby in half. He had to give it to somebody. We got it."

Edwards says the end is in sight to the bitter fight waged by the DPOA to destroy the 87-year-old residency clause. That would make the residency victory the latest victory in a series of bold strokes by the Young administration in its effortas promised in Young's campaignto revamp the Police Department.

Shortly after assuming office, Young disbanded STRESS (Stop the RobberiesEnjoy Safe Streets), the department's select paramilitary tactical unit. In its brief but colorful career, STRESS had become the object of numerous grievances by brutalized or harassed residents and the target of a massive protest movement.

Later, Young won a court order mandating increased hiring of blacks and women by the department. When budget problems threatened to bring major layoffs, and protesting white veterans of the force vamped on black colleagues and reporters in full public view. Young not only saved the jobs of the newly hired police but averted layoffs altogether.

The Young administration's defense of the age-old residency requirement can be seen as the most conservative aspect of his program for the police. All 26,000 municipal employees, including the Mayor, are subject to the same requirement with the exception of the Zoo director, employees of the Port Huron Waterworks, and members of the Police Department's Vice Squad. All the other city unions have allowed residency clauses in their contracts, including the firefighters and the Police Lieutenants and Sergeants Association.

The 80 per cent white DPOA has nevertheless tried for seven years to change the requirement. The argument

Continued on page 5.