Watch the Body

I arrived as a freshman at the University of Buffalo in the fall of 1971. When I walked into my dorm room (the only triple in the entire dorm) I immediately noticed the stain on the dorm wall over my bed and opposite the main window in the room. I quickly found out that the previous spring the university had student riots that dwarfed those at Kent State but fortunately no one was killed. However, a teargas grenade was shoot through the window of my dorm and permanently stained the wall. Every year for the three years I lived in the room they painted the wall shortly after we left in the spring and by the day we moved in the stain burned through the new paint.

Because of the riots the relationship between students and police was very rocky so the School of Management started the Pilot 100 program:

12. Pilot 100: Improving Relations With College Students
(Buffalo, New York)

Goals: To allow "Longhairs" to ride along with police to see problems police encounter and to allow "pigs" to learn many students are serious about their academic work.

Strategies: The School of Management/ SUNY Buffalo, through a liaison with Marine Midland Bank, secured cooperation of Amherst Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, and SUNY-Buffalo campus police. All program participants were screened and female students could ride only if accompanied by a male student. The pilot program anticipated 100 students, but in two and a half months, 250 students had participated. Both sides called the program a success, except that students expressed interest in riding only with City of Buffalo police.

I as a freshman rode more then any other student, riding over 75 times. I rode about one third of the time with a female senior sociology student Gretchen. I and Gretchen were featured in a series of news stories carried in both the Buffalo News and the Amherst paper. The headline was "No Those Students in The Back of the Police Car are not Under Arrest".

The rules were such that the police precincts were divided into five levels of crime level. You had to ride in each level once to go onto the next level, with the tactical patrol being the highest. In the next to highest level I actually enjoyed riding with two police officers. I unfortunately do not remember their names. They were a black and white team and the Black officer took home his car on a new innovative from the federal government. They were involved in a car accident while responding to a call and were critically injured. I could have been in the car with them since I rode with them almost weekly. With them I was involved in three episodes that I will write about in this blog. There were two other episodes with the tactical unit that I will also write about. The relationships I developed that year really came in handy both during my volunteer work with the FAST team and the Red Cross Disaster service.

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and I arrived at the police precinc,t on Main Street about a half mile from Downtown, at 3:45 as ussual to ride with my favorite pair of police officers. They were walking down the stairs from their daily briefing session. They waved and I followed them to their squad car. I got into the back as usual. We drove around for about 45 minutes and it was pretty quite when the call came across the radio for silent alarm going off. With lights and sirens blaring we tore down Main Street and turned the corner to see a body lying on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry store and someone about a block down running. They pulled up and told me to jump out and watch the body. They took 0ff at about 100 miles an hour burning rubber and going after the person running away. When I got out of the car I immediately noticed the man laying there was not moving. I went over and realized he was dead. He was what in those days I would have called old (I was only 18 and anyone over 30 was old) he had a mustache and graying hair. There was a gun laying on the ground a few inches from his hand. Immediately a crowd was starting to form around the body. I did my best for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 2 or 3 minutes, until several more police units arrived and took over the scene. The perp got away.

Nothing like a nice quite spring day in Buffalo.