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 When an old person
dies, a library is lost. Information sometimes pertinent may be gone or
misconstrued by future writers or historians. The Best Suit in Town was
written for posterity. This book tells the story of a great generation
of cops who policed a mid-sized, Midwestern industrial city after World
War II through the time of the conflict in Vietnam. It was a time of change
and turmoil that included the civil rights movement and society's general
rebellion against authority.
The stories are
not those of historians but rather the unadulterated truths coming from
old street cops, letting you know first-hand what it was like to walk
a beat during this time when the criminal justice system was about to
explode.
These police
officers had a lot in common with each other. They had come from blue-collar
working families and had served their country in the war where they had
seen both the best and the worst of mankind. They knew right from wrong
and treated everyone with respect, until shown otherwise. As new officers
they all got to know the "night people" during their assignment
to the graveyard shift. These men called Mansfield, Ohio their home. Mansfield
was also the home of the Rev. Joel King, uncle of the Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr., Shirley Rhodes, secretary and manager to Sammy Davis, Jr.,
and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Louis Bromfield. Their stories figure
prominently in ours.
Our story's newly-appointed
officers, which included Mansfield's first black officer, policed a very
diverse society. Italians, Poles, Jews, Hungarians, Greeks, Irish and
blacks had answered the call to work in the area's factories. As in most
cities, they grouped together based upon their ethnic origin. The
uptown people at times looked upon them as foreigners. And so it was,
when our story begins. Armed with a nightstick and a .38 caliber revolver,
the new policeman went to work in the street. Their job changed rapidly
in their lifetime. It was a roller-coaster ride of good and bad, the vibration
from which can still be felt today. There is a message in every chapter
taken from the point
of view of the cop who worked the street or from the people who lived
the story.
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