True Allegiance

The media embraced Levon’s new standards as groundbreaking. Racial sensitivity, they said, had never been used as an actual policing criterion, but nowhere was that criterion more necessary than Detroit. “Had Ricky O’Sullivan been taught and held accountable under these standards,” Levon said, Regina standing beside him, “perhaps Kendrick would still be alive today. Showing attitude to police officers is something a Detroit cop should have understood, had he been properly trained. Don’t call our kids thugs just because you don’t understand the experiences they’ve had growing up. They’ve seen cops pull over their dads, drag them off to jail. We have an entire generation of missing men in our community. Sensitivity is the key.”

More officers dropped out.

And Levon began to build his force. He began with those nearest to him. At first, he thought to use only men and women with no criminal record. That would prevent anyone from claiming that he wanted to undermine the nature of the force. But he soon realized that too many young black men had spent time behind bars. He quickly changed the rules, with the mayor’s approval: now anyone who had been convicted of a nonviolent felony—most of these were drug crimes—could be considered for employment.

“Policing only works,” Levon told CNN, “if the police reflect the community. It just isn’t effective to say that our law enforcement ought to be clean as the driven snow. Given the amount of racism against our community, and the disproportionate imprisonment of young black men, we cannot insist that everyone have a clean record. It’s just not realistic. We’ve ensured that nobody with a violent criminal past can join the force, but as our country becomes more tolerant of marijuana, and as we reexamine the legacy of the failed war on drugs that has robbed so many black sons and daughters of their fathers, we see this program as a way of both rehabilitating young black men and strengthening law enforcement. Think of it as converting people from criminality to standard-bearers for a new, more tolerant America.”

More plaudits. More resignations.

The final blow to the police enrollment standards came in the area of education. The standard for the department had always been a high school degree or an equivalent. Now, with the applications pouring in, Levon had to face the fact that not enough applicants had graduated from high school—many had dropped out. Again, he cited racial disparities in changing the policy, explaining that every trainee would be given remedial education necessary to do the job. “How can you expect people to work their way up the ladder if we don’t give them the chance to get on the first rung?” he asked.

Within a week of the new policies going into effect, the constituency of the police academy had turned over by 40 percent. The old department had been more than 60 percent black; now it was nearly 90 percent black. It had also grown younger by approximately ten years on average. It would take a few months to siphon in the new recruits, but the force would change dramatically.

When Levon made the cover of Time, his picture emblazoned over the headline “THE NEW FACE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT,” he knew the time had come to make the next move.

That move came against Detroit Energy, which supplied most of the power to the entire southeastern Michigan area. For years, thousands of Detroit customers had failed to pay their bills. They simply assumed that the city would pick up the tab—which, for years, the city did. But as the tax base shrunk, DTE took it on the nose, and began enforcing its own rules, cutting off the power to some 25,000 customers per month, many of them in the Detroit metropolitan area.

The mayor understood his new role now. Levon knew that. The mayor knew that. He had become a rubber stamp, content to receive media paeans for pushing Levon’s prescriptions into law. When Levon told the mayor that the next step would have to come in the form of energy fairness, with winter approaching, the mayor acquiesced.

Mayor Burns held a press conference, Levon at his side. “Detroit Energy,” the mayor said, “has been defrauding its customers for years. Leaving them at nature’s whim instead of working with them to help them through tough times. For years, the people of Detroit have paid their taxes and their bills, and the money has made its way north of Eight Mile, outside the Detroit city limits. We’ve got thousands of kids here getting ready to bunk down in freezing homes, just because a hard-working single mother can’t afford the bills this month. Who are we as a society? Are we going to give each other a hand up? Or are we going to give way to our baser natures, our greed?”