Hillard, Terry 1954–

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Terry Hillard 1954–

Chicago police chief

A Marine in Vietnam

Era of Ill Will

Nation’s Highest-Ranking Black Cop

The Harris Case

Acted Swiftly to Restore Faith

Sources

When Terry Hillard became superintendent of Chicago’s police force in 1998, he took over the public-safety department of the third-largest city in the United States. With the promotion, he also became the nation’s highest-ranking African American law-enforcement officer. Hillard, however, was promoted to the superintendent’s job amidst a time of turmoil and trouble. Charges of police brutality, corruption, and injudicious arrests had plagued the city in recent years, and he replaced an outgoing chief who was forced to step down after ethics questions were raised by the local media.

It was Hillard’s quiet demeanor and spotless career record on the force that made him the mayor’s top choice. “In the 1990s, a police superintendent in a big city must be able to juggle many responsibilities, not all of them directly related to fighting crime,” remarked a Chicago Tribune report by Steve Mills and Andrew Martin. “The job often entails dealing with often-conflicting constituencies, including minority communities, the police union and City Hall. All can cut into a superintendent’s popularity.”

A Marine in Vietnam

Hillard was born in South Fulton, Tennessee, where his father was a cook for a railroad line, and the family eventually moved north to Chicago. After high school, he joined the Marines in 1963, and spent 13 months in Vietnam. When Hillard returned home, he planned to become a state police officer, but conceding to his mother’s wishes—she wanted him to stay closer to home, since he had been away for so long in the service—he applied and was accepted into the officer training program for the Chicago Police Department (CPD). After completing the course, Hillard’s first assignment as a patrol officer was in a rough section of Chicago’s South Side called East Chicago in 1968.

In 1975, Hillard was injured in the line of duty when he was struck by two bullets. The incident earned him the Superintendent’s Award of Valor, the CPD’s highest award for courage under fire. For many years, he served in the mayoral bodyguard detachments, and worked for Chicago’s first female mayor, Jane Byrne, in the early 1980s, and for its popular African American

At a Glance…

Born c. 1944, in South Fulton, TN; son of a railroad cook; married to Dorothy Brown (a school counselor); children: one son, one daughter. Military service: Served in the U.S. Marine Corps beginning in 1963.

Career: joined Chicago Police Department as patrol officer, 1968; wounded in the line of duty, 1975; served in the mayoral bodyguard contingent, 1980s; became district commander, then chief of detectives, 1995; named superintendent of police, 1998-.

Awards: Superintendent’s Award of Valor, Chicago Police Department, 1975.

Addresses: Office— Chicago Police Department, 1121 S. State St., Chicago, IL 60605.

can mayor, Harold Washington, who died in office in 1987. Hillard became district commander, and then the CPD’s first African American chief of detectives.

Era of Ill Will

As he rose through the ranks Hillard, who still spoke with a Southern drawl, earned a reputation as a calm negotiator and fair supervisor. He emerged as an unlikely candidate, however, for the police superintendent’s job when it suddenly became vacant at the end of 1997. The post is a high-profile one. The chief must often confront a barrage of media microphones and cameras during hastily called press conferences after a particularly heinous crime, or incident of police brutality. Moreover, the CPD itself was experiencing a troubled moment in its history. Its superintendent since 1992, Matt Rodriguez, had just resigned after a Chicago newspaper reported that he had maintained a friendship with a convicted felon. There had also been several incidents of police brutality and revelations of corruption among its ranks in recent months.

As a candidate for the post, Hillard had to fill out an extensive questionnaire, which ended with eight essay questions. One of the questions concerned community policing, and another offered a chance to speculate on the significant drop in crime in New York City in recent years. Hillard, to the surprise of some, was named superintendent in February of 1998 by Mayor Richard Daley, who admitted it had been a tough decision among a field filled with qualified candidates. In a Chicago Tribune account about the competition for the job, a colleague “described Hillard as a firm but fair manager,” noted Martin and Mills. “It’s a joy to work for the guy,” the source told the paper. “After he’s told you you’re wrong about something, that’s it. You move on … There’s no finer gentleman.” It seems Hillard’s tranquil personality worked in his favor: two other leading candidates, deputy superintendent Charles Ramsey and Raymond Risley, who headed the CPD’s organized crime division, “both favored more sweeping changes for the department than Hillard,” the Chicago Tribune report observed.

Nation’s Highest-Ranking Black Cop

Hillard became Chicago’s first African American chief of police, heading a vital city department with 17,000 employees—among them 13, 500 officers—and a budget of 923 million. Yet he also headed a force that is predominantly white—only 26 percent of the CPD’s officers are African American, and just 12 percent are Latino. Overall, the force is responsible for maintaining order and solving crimes in a city that is almost evenly divided among whites, who predominantly live on the city’s north side, and blacks and Hispanics, residents of its south and west sections. “Without a doubt, Hillard’s job is one of the most difficult in city government,” noted another Chicago Tribune article by Mills and reporter Todd Lighty. “He has more employees than any other city department head. And his job is such that the mistakes can be counted in human lives.”

As the new superintendent, Hillard immediately began working to upgrade the CPD’s recruiting and training programs for new officers. He also pledged to improve community relations. Among the new measures Hillard, he announced a plan to send the top brass—himself included—out of its South Loop headquarters more often and into the precincts in order to meet with patrol officers, and learn more about the concerns of the community.

The Harris Case

Some changes that Hillard made during his first year on the job were not widely accepted among the CPD’s rank-and-file officers, however. One faction objected to a plan to install video cameras in patrol cars, and others voiced concern about a new policy to videotape murder confessions. Furthermore, Hillard’s first year on the job was marked by criticism directed at the CPD for the handling of a terrible crime that received national media attention. During the summer of 1998, an 11-year-old girl named Ryan Harris was found murdered in a rough neighborhood of the city, and two boys, ages 7 and 8, were taken into custody as suspects. The arrests evoked an outcry of shock and disbelief, but the boys were released after it became apparent that detectives had little evidence to convict them.

Inside the department itself, more trouble surfaced for Hillard when a Chicago gang-unit officer was suspected of running a drug-trafficking ring. Then, on a single night in June of 1999, two unarmed African Americans were killed by Chicago police officers. One of the victims was a Northwestern University football player. A 26-year-old African American woman was shot by an officer while sitting in a car that had been pulled over. “What happened next isn’t clear, but it’s possible that the officer who shot [LaTanya] Haggerty mistook her cell phone for a pistol,” noted Newsweek’s John McCormick. In the death of Bobby Russ, the Northwestern athlete, the officer broke Russ’s car window and shoved his service revolver inside. Russ grabbed the revolver, and was shot during a struggle.

Acted Swiftly to Restore Faith

Public outcry against the CPD reached a crisis point over the next few days, with daily rallies outside City Hall during which community groups and minority activists denounced the CPD as a bastion of brutality and injustice. There were even accusations that Chicago’s African American officers conducted themselves less honorably than their white counterparts. Hillard acted quickly to ease tensions, however. He reviewed the tapes made of the incidents, chose an African American prosecutor to handle the matter, and met with local ministers and African American media executives. “Something went very terribly wrong in both these incidents,” Newsweek quoted Hillard as saying. “Mistakes were made.” Calling for peace and calm, he spoke at community meetings during which angry residents jeered at him.

Over the course of that contentious summer of 1999, Hillard became frustrated when tensions over the matter had failed to subside. He felt that some in the community were attempting to use the uproar for their own political gain: “[They] don’t want a thorough, impartial and just investigation,” Newsweek quoted Hillard as saying about some of the CPD’s most vociferous critics. “[They] want these officers’ heads.” Both incidents prompted him to launch a series of new initiatives. “Hillard will draft reforms, including a review of police procedures by law professors,” wrote McCormick in Newsweek. “He’s also ordered his top brass to re-educate officers about the use of deadly force—and the need to respect every citizen.” Hillard won praise from many corners for his cool-headed decisiveness. “The superintendent has responded quickly and has shown a willingness to answer the tough questions,” one African American minister, Rev. James Meeks, told the Chicago Tribune’s Mills and Todd Lighty. “The problems of the Chicago Police Department did not start in one day. They cannot be fixed in one day.”

Hillard, who makes $127,000 a year as Chicago’s top cop, is married to a guidance counselor, Dorothy Brown Hillard. She is the sister of Jesse Brown, President Bill Clinton’s onetime cabinet secretary for Veterans Affairs. Since the late 1970s, Hillard and his family have lived in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood. Chatham, located on the city’s South Side, is also home to many prominent Chicagoans of color, such as former mayor Eugene Sawyer. It remains part of a tight-knit, extremely stable African American community inside what is called the city’s Black Bungalow Belt. Chicago Tribune writer Patrick T. Reardon asked Hillard if he ever thought of moving elsewhere. “I’m perfectly satisfied with Chatham,” Hillard told the newspaper. “That’s where we raised our kids. Folks, when they move up in the world, they go from one house to another house. I just added on to my house.”