Judge in a City of Fear

Detroit is a city of black crime and white fear--a paradigm of the urban tragedy in America. Blacks, who make up almost 40% of the population, commit 85% of all reported crimes, which jumped 14% last year. Almost every white claims to know someone who has been mugged or robbed by young black thugs; karate and gun clubs thrive in the white suburbs. White commuters call the city "Indian country," never argue with black motorists and avoid walking downtown except in broad daylight. During the Christmas shopping season, police loudspeakers warned: "Walk in twos after dark, keep your hands on your purse, stay away from alleys, and have a merry Christmas."

The white trauma in Detroit goes back to the devastating 1967 black riot, in which 43 people died. It is worsened by inadequate police, inefficient courts, poor schools, a $60 million city deficit and a mindless urban-renewal program that has razed blocks of ghetto homes without replacing them. It is compounded by lagging auto sales that slash black jobs, the prejudice of many white Detroiters who came originally from the South--and a massive failure of most of the city's leadership.

Urgent Need. No one doubts that Detroit's whites have reason to fear black crime; yet few grasp the complexities of the problem or the possible solutions. In fact, half the city's black robbery victims are black. Roughly 80% of all black murder and rape victims are also black. Moreover, the city's law enforcers alone cannot cure the social breakdown that is Detroit. To cope with crime realistically, Detroit needs an urgent infusion of better urban planning, civic reform and economic development.

What the city's police and courts can do, though, is to restore black respect for law--not only by more efficient enforcement but also by fairer administration of justice. Few Detroiters are striving harder in that regard than George Crockett--a black judge.

As black militants met in Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church one night last year, shooting began outside. Seven bullets tore into a white policeman and killed him. Soon 50 white officers shot their way into the church, leaving 100 bullet scars on its walls and pews, and corralled 142 people including several small children. Judge Crockett, 60, rushed to police headquarters, legally created an impromptu courtroom and began releasing prisoners on their own recognizance. Within hours, the prosecutor agreed to let all but twelve go home. Over his objections, Crockett freed all but two.

Typically, Crockett enraged many whites. For weeks afterward, he was attacked for "releasing killers" and trying to "run the police department." Hate calls forced him to get an unlisted number. Automobile bumper stickers urged SOCK IT TO CROCKETT.

Cooler heads on two investigating commissions later found Judge Crockett's rulings within the law. Many citizens admitted that he had kept an explosive situation from erupting into a repeat of the 1967 riot. But Crockett was proudest of the fact that his actions had given many embittered blacks a renewed trust in courts instead of more reason to revile them. Here was a judge who pointedly asked: "Can anyone imagine the police invading an all-white church, rounding up everybody in sight and busing them to a wholesale lockup in a police garage?"

Crockett freed most of the suspects because the evidence being used to hold them was inadmissible. Reason: the police ignored their right to counsel while requiring them to submit to gunpowder tests. Of the two defendants that Crockett did hold, one was later acquitted of assault charges; the other is now on trial for murder, along with another prime suspect.

A respected constitutional expert, Crockett is the most visible of the six black judges on the 16-man Recorder's Court that handles all criminal cases in Detroit. He can be tough on blacks if they plead for his sympathy with nothing more than a "soul brother" ploy. Last summer a black motorist claimed that a white policeman had roughed him up after handing out a ticket. The driver kept repeating "police brutality," but a black witness confirmed that the driver had done the assaulting. Crockett gave the driver the maximum sentence of 30 days. "You think you can treat policemen like dirt?" he snapped. "Well, you can't, because they aren't."

Crockett's major concern is to guarantee fair trials for all defendants, regardless of race. He is rigorous about making policemen and prosecutors base their work on documented facts and admissible evidence. In his court, a policeman's testimony is given no more--and no less--weight than that of any other witness. Although uniformed officers waiting to testify lounge in the empty jury box at most nonjury trials, Crockett puts them in the spectator seats, thus reducing the impression that judges are chummy with cops.

Crockett has repeatedly used his judicial powers to show policemen that brutality does not pay. A year ago, police nabbed a white youth during a hippie "love-in," apparently beat him brutally, and then charged him with resisting arrest. Crockett found the charge a transparent attempt to disguise police misbehavior. He acquitted the boy and urged him to bring a civil suit against the police for damages.

Rare Record. The high standards to which Crockett holds law-enforcement officers have convinced many people that he is soft on criminals. Most observers, however, think that he raises hackles chiefly because of his personality. He has a thorough legal mind, limitless self-assurance, and militant sympathies. As a result, says one observer, "he can be both charming and an arrogant son of a bitch."

Along with his concern for racial justice, Crockett has another reason to respect due process--he is one of the few judges who ever spent time in jail. The son of a Florida carpenter, he graduated from Atlanta's Morehouse College and the University of Michigan Law School. After brief stints with the New Deal's Committee on Fair Employment Practices and an anti-discrimination unit of the United Auto Workers, he loudly defended one of the eleven Communists in the famous Smith Act trial of 1949. Result: he got four months in prison for contempt of court. In 1964, Crockett temporarily left his successful Detroit law practice and went south to run one of several programs providing legal assistance for the Mississippi civil rights summer project. Two years later, he was elected to the Detroit court.

White Votes. Crockett is "just about the most together brother on the bench," says Ken Cockrell, a black activist lawyer in Detroit. In fact, Crockett disagrees with most black militants' deep cynicism about the law. He expects the number of black judges to nearly double in the next three years, and argues that "if the election of black public officials continues, racism in the administration of our laws will soon be a thing of the past."

Ironically, Crockett may not be re-elected himself. Courts in other metropolitan areas of Michigan were recently merged to serve both core cities and suburbs, and a move is afoot to do the same in Detroit. Crockett opposes the plan, but if it goes through, he will need white votes to stay on the bench when his term expires in 1972. He is not, he concedes, likely to get many.

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