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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – In celebration of Black History Month, CBS4 puts the spotlight on two living legends of Miami law enforcement.
While the current debate about policing is about defunding forces, especially in the Black community, there was a time when that same community celebrated law enforcement.
More than sixty years after they patrolled these very streets, two of the first Black police officers in Miami returned to Overtown and reflected on their legacy and the role of the first Black police precinct in the city.
“There were a lot of lives saved by having Black officers there,” said 90-year-old Otis Davis, the Miami police department’s first Black homicide detective.
In the midst of the Jim Crow era in Miami, the city gave in to public pressure and finally opened a Black police precinct and hired its first Black officers.
Miami’s Black population at the time was roughly 40 thousand residents.
Davis said officers in the white percent policed like cowboys.
He said white officers often rounded up residents on bogus charges and abused the residents and their powers. Understandably, those first Black officers and this precinct were greeted as heroes.
“When they opened this building, there was a Black parade saying welcome to the Black police officers because they had really been mistreated by the white police,” said Clarence Dickinson, the Miami police department’s first Black Police Chief.
These two policing legends got their start in the halls of the Black precinct.
Dickson was the first Black person to attend the police academy.
“The police chief at the time had said publicly that when they were trying to get Blacks in the academy if you want Black police officers you have to get them off the streets and give them different training because they can’t cut my academy,” he recalled.
Dickson not only made the academy’s cut, but he also soared through the ranks, first at the Black precinct and then through the entire department eventually becoming chief.
The Black precinct is now a museum and has an entire section devoted to Dickson, one of his trademark hats on prominent display.
A number of the self-taught tactics practiced in the Black precinct are now part of the training for all Miami police officers.
CBS4’s Kendis Gibson asked Dickson if he thought George Floyd or Breonna Taylor would be alive today if there were more Black precincts.
“The frank truth, maybe. The chances would be increased that they would be alive. It worked then,” said Dickinson.
The lessons of generations ago, offer a potential solution to today’s problem.