The barrier-breakers in uniform — the police firsts

1913–2016 · WOMEN AND BLACK OFFICERS OF THE FWPD

Arthur Williams, 1917: The Marsha Smiley Collection at the Allen County Public Library — the county's gathered record of African American firsts — names Arthur Williams as the Fort Wayne Police Department's first African American officer, in 1917. He served a force that would not have another Black chief for ninety-seven years, and almost nothing else of his service survives in the sources reached here; the name and the date are printed as the collection gives them, and the thinness of the file is itself part of the record.

The policewomen: The first woman associated with the department was Fannie Winch, appointed the city's first police matron in 1913. In 1921 the City Council authorized the hiring of three policewomen "with the same pay and authority as other police officers" — an early and, on its face, equal footing, recorded in the department's own official history; a policewoman's uniform of the early 1950s, worn by Officer Velma Moser with a purse fitted with pouches for a gun and handcuffs, is preserved by the History Center. The department's women of that era worked the matron's and the policewoman's beats — prisoners, juveniles, the missing and the runaway — inside a force whose patrol ranks stayed male for decades longer.

Calland and Jackson, printed together: Two authorities name two different women as the department's first Black policewoman, and both are printed, as the record gives them. The department itself, in its Black History Month post of 15 February 2019, honors Officer Lora Calland as "the first female black officer hired by the Fort Wayne Police Department": commissioned in April 1952, resigned August 1954, rehired as a records clerk in January 1959, transferred to the Investigative Division as a secretary in 1968, and retired from the department in 1981 — twenty-nine years of connection to the force, only the first two of them in uniform. The Smiley Collection names Laura Jackson as the first African American FWPD policewoman. The two statements stand unreconciled in the sources reached; no third source settles between them, and the difference is left exactly where the record leaves it.

Coleman and Hamilton: David Coleman, commissioned 26 December 1975, rose through sergeant (1980) and deputy chief (1987) to become the department's first Black assistant chief in October 1997, retiring in September 2000 as a graduate of the FBI National Academy. Garry Hamilton completed the line: commissioned 26 August 1994, a robbery and homicide detective who rose through sergeant and captain, he was sworn in as chief on 2 January 2014 — the first Black chief in the department's history, chosen by Mayor Tom Henry in a year when the city had tied its record of forty-four homicides. He served until August 2016, stepped down to deputy chief, received the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council's law enforcement award in December 2018, and retired in June 2019 after twenty-five years. In retirement he sued the Fort Wayne Community Schools in federal court, alleging that he had been passed over for a school security position in favor of less-qualified white candidates; the suit is a matter of court record and is noted here as such.

Sources:

1. Allen County Public Library, Marsha Smiley Collection, "Crossing Opportunity's Threshold" (genealogycenter.info) — Arthur Williams (1917); Laura Jackson; Tim Davie and Richard Ridley (fire entries, below).
2. Fort Wayne Police Department, "Mission and History," as reproduced by the Allen County Genealogical Society — Fannie Winch, 1913; the policewomen of 1921; Velma Moser's uniform.
3. Fort Wayne Police Department post of 15 February 2019, via ACGSI, C surnames — Lora Calland's commissions and service dates; department post via ACGSI, C surnames — David Coleman's promotions.
4. Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, awards release, 11 December 2018 (in.gov) — Hamilton's career and the 2014 first; News-Sentinel via Police1, 17 December 2013; NNPA News wire, 2022 — the retirement and the federal suit.