Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Harold Saffold

Now, in 1968, you were a relatively new officer on the force, and that was a black policeman. What were some of the things about police community relations that were beginning to concern it? What were you seeing? What did you feel? 1968 was about my third year on the job. I had been assigned as a recruit coming out of the training academy to a predominantly white community. And I was the only black officer that worked on the shift that I worked on. And it was an experience that sort of introduced me to the Chicago Police Department, probably in a fashion that most blacks don't get introduced to it under normal circumstances, because they don't basically send us to white communities when we first come out of the academy.

Because of the numbers, basically, there's not enough of us to go around. But I had worked in a district where there was a small community of Hispanics that lived in that particular area of the city. And I recall very vividly one incident where I watched a young Hispanic kid that had stolen an automobile, be subjected to probably one of the most brutal physical beatings a person could ever endure. And he was only about 17 years old at the time. And I was like about four weeks on the street, and it was rather horrifying. As a matter of fact, when I looked around, and I saw some police supervisor personnel looking at the incident, et cetera, it made me wonder, what did they do when there's nobody here? Consequently, I ended up, or subsequently, I ended up coming back to the south side of Chicago after several rather interesting experiences in that predominantly white community. As a black officer, what was the reaction of your own community to your being on campus? How did that happen?

What was the response of the people from your own community to the job choice you made and what you were doing and what you could do to help in the community? Initially, from just a personal friend, family perspective, people sort of looked upon it with favor. They said, oh, you're finally going to make something out of yourself. You stopped gang banging. You actually joined the ranks of the servers and the protectors. It was accepted rather positively in the first instance. But all around the 68s, pressure from the black community began to be applied to black officers because police brutality was rampant. It was not uncommon for black women who were out after dark to be treated as if they were prostitutes. Black men driving big cars legitimately, ministers, business people, stopped and searched as if there was no constraints, no distinction between them and the criminal.

People had begun to ask, what are you part of? What is that institution about really? Are you just pawns? Are you part of the oppressive South African type army? Are you part of an occupant army? The peer pressure was beginning to set in. Black police officers across the country were being used to infiltrate civil rights organizations as spies, etc. Then we had some characters, black police officers who had reputations that had preceded me, that had reputations for being just absolute groups. We had a choice of fitting into a stigma or challenging an institution that we swore to be a part of. I think that was the beginning of the turning point when it was just very clear to us that you don't really have a choice at this point.

Even if you walk away from the job, you're going to have to deal with the institution as a black man. When Fred Hampton and Bobby Rush started organizing the Panthers, it started speaking out. What was your reaction? I think basically, although we couldn't buy into the total rhetoric, we felt that they had a right to exist. We felt that they were a human cry that was really a part of the community sentiment saying, give us some relief. Let me live. Let me exist. They were sort of like, well, Bobby Rush and Fred Hampton were, in my opinion, very intelligent young black men who could sense the urgency of speaking out against police abuse. That's basically what they were doing. It was very easy for them to be disliked by certain elements of the police department.

You are doing great. We have just run out of our first, we only had a short roll of fail because we used the first half of the plan. Morgan. And if you can repeat people's names, or if you can say a lot of questions, how do you feel when Bobby Rush and Fred Hampton started speaking out? Both Bobby, Rush and Fred Hampton, in my opinion, were very serious, very intelligent individuals. Young, I thought that their commitment was a very sincere commitment. And the slogans of off the pig and stuff like that, if you stripped the rhetoric, they were basically saying, you know, we're part of this society, we have a right to exist. We have a right to be protected. We have a right to not be abused by police powers.

I think much of the activities that they found themselves involved in was more or less a learning process and a teaching process for them at the same time. I think they found themselves thrust into leadership roles because of where they were located and the limited amount of potential leaders or existing leaders in this area of the country. And they sort of just took the responsibility on head on. And the interesting part about our coexistence was that most of them went to Malcolm X College where a lot of us had part time jobs during that time. And we had a chance to talk to them when they weren't trying to impress the media, when they weren't making bizarre public statements. And you could tell that this was a movement that was very meaningful to them. And none of them were suicidal, so it wasn't like they were out there trying to figure out a way to get killed. But they did, honestly, truly believe in power to the people. I mean, that was their slogan. And it was a respectful relationship. Let me put it that way. White police officers had started to refer to us as the black panther police because we didn't have any reservations about saying,

and if they commit in criminal acts, be the police, but you can't be the judge, the jury, and the executioner. And that was basically our philosophy towards the panthers and their movement. You were on the gang intelligence unit. Yes, I went to the gang intelligence unit at about January of 1969. And you saw some very interesting dynamics. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I was in the task force prior to that. And the task force had been used during the 1968 Democratic Convention to sort of beat down young white protesters. That was the first time Chicago, I don't know about the rest of America, but I was watching Chicago. That was the first time white people in Chicago realized that the police were actually brutal. They could be very, very brutal. And our human cry for relief in terms of black victims was sort of vindicated as a result of the 1968 Democratic Convention.

After that convention turmoil and a few reports that came out, et cetera, the police department started to shift personnel around. So I was moved from the task force I was given an opportunity to go into the gang crimes unit. That's what it was called in the gang intelligence unit. And basically, the initial purpose for going into the unit, they were bringing black guys in because young black gangs had started to spring up and were getting rather rambunctious in terms of committing crimes against each other, committing crimes against businesses in the black community, et cetera. My intent was to be a part of curtailing that and trying to bring some safety back to my own respective community. But at the same time, the Panthers were pursuing an ideology that said, we need to take these young minds, this young energy and turn it into part of our movement in terms of black liberation and the rest of it.

I saw a very purposeful intentional effort on the police department to keep that head from hooking up to that body. It was like, do not let this thing become a part of what could ultimately be a political movement because that's exactly what it was. And so consequently, yes, I was put into a unit that went from the gang intelligence unit to what they call me a member of the Panthers squad. And what that was was to go to the public meetings. They didn't actually infiltrate the organization but go to the public meetings and see if you could come back with a report because they were piecing together 50 or 60 different pieces of information to try to figure out what was really going on within that community. Needless to say, it got to be a joke after a while because the Panthers would start a one of the whoever was conducting the meeting would say, would the pigs please leave? You know, it didn't have to rule would get up and walk out because they got that bad.

Everybody was in the Panthers. So that was probably the only humorous part of it because there were some black police officers who seriously wanted to make a distinction between the criminal element and our young men who were trying to find themselves in terms of, you know, what role do I play in this, this rather complex society. And I think that my own outspokeness and being a part of an organization such as the Afro-American Police League made it very easy for them to say, well, we don't think you're very happy here. I'm sure they didn't trust me. I'm sure I wouldn't have been told any secrets that they didn't want anybody to know and I wasn't trying to be any kind of double agent. It was just a matter of principle for us.

Now, if I remember correctly, you told me about a raid on the Panthers office. I believe it was October. There was a raid early, early 1969. It may have been summer or might have been the changing of the season. It wasn't icy cold. It was prior to December because I very vividly remember that the raid on the Panthers house on December 4 was a few months after this. Well, basically, what had happened, they had taken a group of us and prepared us to serve what they call some John Doe Warrants that evening on certain paths of known Panther members and several aliases and et cetera. And they had targeted some suburban communities, some Chicago communities, and specifically Panther Headquarters there on Madison and Western. And although I wasn't part of the group that went to the Panther Headquarters on Madison, obviously there was much discussion about it after it aborted. It fell through.

It seems that they had planned to the police, had planned to follow one of the cooks, one of the ladies that volunteered for the Panther Breakfast Program. Into the headquarters as they allowed her in that morning to start preparing breakfast, they were to go in behind her rather than try to beat down this barricade fortress that they described as being the headquarters. And subsequently, they went into this building. They were very selective about who was going to be allowed to be at that site and who wasn't going to be at that site in terms of the police personnel. And they expected to catch certain people there. And it seems as though they were disappointed because the intelligence information that they had received gave them some names that weren't physically on the site there. And out of frustration, they ended up destroying several pounds of food. They took some files, they threw some stuff in the streets.

There was a typical police response of frustration back in those days. I mean, it was not uncommon for the police to behave in a fashion like that when they got disappointed when they felt as though they had been made fools of them, which they had. Because the person who was coordinating that had made several notifications and he had a lot of people standing by waiting for the big show. And it never came about. There was no need to physically go in there. Once the police left, the office was secured. What we had then was people like Bobby and others describing what had happened there. And they did several press releases and had several public meetings in terms of what the pigs had perpetrated or attempted to perpetrate at that particular location. So they were very much aware that the police community was on their case.

How does that kind of behavior on the police make you feel? Well, again, the frustration comes in. Then as it does now, when the police cannot make a distinction between the criminal element and a social movement, I would, I suspect that there were some Panthers that under the guise of the Panthers were committing criminal acts. I know that because the records will show that some of them were actual double agents, some of them were people with known criminal records and et cetera. And I'm not not even enough to think that some of those people had not infiltrated that particular organization. But the fact that the police felt comfortable about lumping everybody with a black tam and everybody with combat boots was a Panther. And even that was a fad in those days. Some kids just won because they thought it looked macho. Every kid that had a tam on was a gang bank, a member of a gang every every bit of information that they could gather that identified a particular group, then they would just forcefully cause people to react as if they were part of the group because they treated them that way.

Our attitude back then was the police department was the greatest gang recruiting tool in Chicago because they treated everybody as if they were gang bangers anyway. So the kids first reaction was we might as well join because we can slam against the wall and shut down and et cetera stopped in our cars and et cetera. So, I just need to just stop and change film one more time. You're doing well. Mark. How did you ultimately chose to leave the gang intelligence unit? How did that come back? Well, first of all, I was more than familiar with the type of individuals that were being utilized to pursue the Panthers and the gang element in Chicago. Many of them had been in the task force with me and I knew their general attitude, not just towards blacks, but specifically towards blacks who talked about being part of some kind of movement such as the Panthers.

And on this one particular even when they carried out a template to carry out a raid that didn't materialize, the aftermath of it, the discussion of they knew first of all that there were going to be civilians, non-Pathom members inside that headquarters that were there specifically to prepare and serve breakfast to people in that area of the city. It didn't matter to them. The plan was if there's any shots at all fired, we just open up on the headquarters. Well, I know I've been around long enough to know that if any police offers a happens to fire shot, that opens up the floodgate and the insensitivity of how that particular and I mean they had physically followed a female from the south side to the west side. And they knew in terms of all the intelligence that they had done that she was not a part of any kind of armed resistance in America.

And they were willing to take a chance on taking a lady like that life, a life like that in pursuit of stamping out the Panthers. And I'm saying this was a little bit too vicious and it was most definitely something that could not be left unattended. So I went to my commander who was a black guy and explaining him that I didn't have the stomach to stay in this particular unit because it had varied away from what I thought it was. I thought it was going to actually try to separate the criminal element from these young individuals that had been classified as gang bangers and prosecute them according to law and try to turn the rest of them away from the criminal justice system, but obviously somebody else had a different plan. And so once I did that, it was a declaration for them that I was not one of the boys. I most definitely couldn't be part of the team and that I wasn't to be trusted at that point. And the Afro-American police league.

Yeah, that was that thing I wanted. Paul, what it was that he said, how he characterized the Panthers and the impact that had on the Chicago police force. They had about six guns, half of them didn't work. We had all kinds of clan movements going all over this country. And he decided to set the tone for how the Panthers were going to be dealt with in America. I don't know what his motivation was. I don't know whether he was actually personally afraid or whether he thought in fact that his statement would be the binding fiber for police conduct. And I think it was. We're in the police community as sort of a built-in reward and punishment system of its own. And you get a lot of rewards when you go after who the boss says is the bad guy and you get him.

But Jager Hoover was able to do was to give police officers the impression that it was okay. It was open season. You didn't have to worry about the law. You didn't have to worry about the difference in the executive branch of government and the judicial branch of government. I think what he in effect said is it's our ballgame guys. We've got the authority. We have the capacity. Let's question. And I think that that that caused the kind of reaction that that was very easily perpetrated here in Chicago. The sad part about that because it lends itself to what we confronted with right today. The vast majority of police officers white or black are not really prone to break the law. There's just a small percentage of them that would take it on themselves to steal, to murder in the name of the law.

But the real problem is that the vast, excuse me, the vast majority of them have bought into a code of silence that allows them to be apathetic and different when that kind of conduct is being perpetrated by members of this particular profession. I got a phone call or it must have been about five, five o'clock in the morning. And the call had been placed by police officers who was assigned to that district that had happened there. And obviously a bunch of network calling right after that and everybody was up and out of bed and moving in a very few minutes. And it was total shock. It was obvious to us at this point that the police department was very, very serious and determined to be a part of what we thought was a conspiracy to destroy that group.

There was some one particular guy from the organization that was in on the raid. He was the first person we call. And his story changed a couple of times between the debriefings and the debriefing and the debriefing. But it was obvious to us that the long, long of the law had reached out and taken it upon themselves to literally, in my opinion, murder Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. You can't Monday morning, quarter back the entire scenario, but I'm of the opinion that they had infiltrators that had helped them clearly identify where people were located in that apartment, who they were after. And I think they selected the people that they know didn't have any problem carrying it out. And I'll always believe that.

Oh, yes, we went through the apartment several times, several times. The police didn't really decide to place any kind of protection on the crime scene till several days later, ironically enough. Similarly, you would expect them to seal it off, but they sort of wanted it looked as if the evidence needed to be contaminated. I mean, they, I think they were scrambling around at that point trying to figure out how to explain that very bizarre activity. And I don't know that they ever really found out who the real conspirators were. I think the local states attorney here and the chief of police found out some things that rather unsuspectingly was going on, even that they weren't being made privileged during. That's not the excuse them for responsibility, but I'm saying that I think the people who carried out that raid had been very carefully selected. And I think the objective was very plain way before they carried it out my personal opinion. Now, down on the road street, what was the kind of sense of the response of the community? People who normally, and we did a lot of talking, a lot of young people around there were students at Malcolm X several police brutality complaints that come from that area.

I didn't live that far from that area. People were like saying they didn't have to murder them. A lot of the people that didn't even sympathize with the Panthers originally, who said, you know, they kind of looked at them with a jaundice eye. What is this? I mean, who are these guys? I don't want to be a part of that. It's two militants, et cetera, et cetera. They found a lot of sympathy for them at that point because it was rather obvious that we Chicago was known for unexplained police killings anyway. And so it wasn't like this is something that never happened, but when they said this particular incident is out and out murder. And I think that was the sentiment. People were saying, what can we do to prevent this from happening again? What safeguards do we have that preclude the police from being in a position to police themselves? Because that's essentially what they were doing at that point.

White people who considered themselves part of America's true patriot addict, you know, we're all one cloth. Even those people who would normally be considered right wing supporters of law and order couldn't stand for that. And subsequently, I think the kind of public scrutiny that came as a result of that was the beginning of the end of this open and notorious vicious conduct on the police officers being perpetrated because of a person's ideology. Did you actually get posted outside? Yeah, yeah.

That's great. That's a good place to stop. I just have to change it. Now, after the raid during that time when the apartment was still over, I guess, you were assigned to guard the front? Yeah, I was one of the several police officers. I was working. I had been transferred during that whole so-called investigation in a matter of weeks. I had been transferred twice. I ended up being detailed to the front door of that apartment right during the mid-December, standing outside in a sub-zero weather. And it was kind of ironic. Our whole position was wide guarded now. It should have been protected on the night of the incident if you were serious. So now it was just a publicity stunt. And it was rather appalling to think that we were still playing the facade even several weeks after the incident. So you saw lots of people go through and you heard lots of responses. Lots of responses. And like I said, there was nobody that was doubtful about whether or not this person had been killed while lying and dead. That was obvious.

It was very obvious that the described- I was seeing seven-take-eight. Mark. Okay, now you saw a lot of people coming through seeing that scene. What were they saying? The people who had just come purely out of curiosity was saying this is atrocious. This even low on all the people was saying this is unlawful and it's disorderly. And it's obviously not part of what I want to condone in terms of my law enforcement or my taxes to be protected. This is not the police function. People realize that there had been a trial, a conviction, and an execution in that house.

Right after that rape, you and Ronald Robinson got it felt that Bobby Rush might also be. Well Bobby, he reached out. He called several community organization people. He called a few elected officials. People were concerned about him. He called Father Clemens, who was the chaplain of the Afro-American Police League. And we arranged to have Bobby surrender to some police officers, members of the Afro-American Police League, and turn him over to the police department. But it was not without an attorney president and several witnesses. And that was essentially what was the whole purpose of it. What happened? What did you do for that? Well, we arranged to meet him along with Bobby Rush at a specified location with our attorney, Carmen Cohen, with several elected officials, community organization people. And we surrendered him to the police department with all those people being witness to his condition when he was surrendering, so that there couldn't be any hanky-panky in terms of something that may happen after he turned himself in.

Safety precaution on our part. And we all felt that he was in jeopardy at that point.