How I Dealt With White Cops Spouting the N-Word at Work

The following is an excerpt from Black Cop: My 36 Years in Police Work, and My Career-Ending Experiences with Official Racism.

Back when I served with the Halifax Police Department, the rules were different regarding the use of what you might term “racist language.” We didn’t have what would now be referred to as a “third party rule.” There was no Human Rights Commission. There was no workplace code of conduct regarding racist behaviour. Back in those days, your locker, or your desk, was considered your property. You could put pin-ups of women on your desk, and that was considered your property.

Today people have rights and understandably feel offended when they are exposed to racism in the workplace. Now police departments have policies, a corporate mission, a corporate vision and a set of core values for employees. These are some of the checks and balances that are supposed to protect employees from harassment and discrimination. In my time, if I heard two white cops talking and they used the term “nigger”—and I definitely heard the term all the time—there was nothing I could do about it. They weren’t talking to me, so I couldn’t seek recourse based on language I had overheard them using among themselves. So I never complained about what I heard being said — and I heard a lot.

Talking to my supervisors about the use of racial slurs in the workplace would have been useless because I would have been taking my problem to the problem. Black cops were just coming on the scene, so there was no way to know whether management would be sympathetic to complaints about the use of the word “nigger” by white cops. Some inspectors would be sympathetic, of course. But I also knew that some would not. A lot of times my fellow officers also did stuff or said things to get a reaction from me. They were “race-baiting” me. And because I had no recourse—and they knew it—I had to deal with it myself. Primarily, I used deflection strategies. This is where my shit-taking ability honed over years of playing the dozens as a kid on the corner came in handy. I would come back at my tormentors the way they came at me. If they were being insulting, I’d be insulting. If they were going to insult Black people, then I’d insult white people.

Without a complaints commission or some similar third-party arbiter, I often had to let people say what they wanted to say, to see how far they’d go, to see if they really were racists or just trying words on for size. In my mind, I had no other choice but to approach it that way, because the minute you challenge somebody or label them a racist, then you have to watch out for them for the rest of your career. My allegations and complaints might have made an impact on their careers. And then I’d have made enemies for life, who would do whatever they could to screw me over. Sure, I also knew that I could have knocked any one of them out cold with my bare hands. But that’s aggression, and then I’d have been unemployed.

Instead, I had to be assertive, but covertly so. I had to play stupid to make them think I was subservient, so that I could get over on them if the time came when I truly had to. I had to let them think that none of it bothered me. To be clear, no police officer ever walked up to me and said, in the context of a serious conversation, “Calvin, you’re a nigger.” And so I had to pick away at the layers—“Is this offensive? Is this not offensive?” At the time, I just let it all slide.

That being said, there were several times when this type of behaviour crossed the line. For example, the Halifax Police Department had their own boat club at the end of South Street, where they’d installed a swimming pool. This was considered a big deal, and for a few weeks there was a poster on the wall at the central police station advertising that the new pool had been built. Someone had written on the poster, “Nigger Bath.” In the police station, we also had what we called the writing room, where we posted mugshots of people who had just been released or had warrants outstanding. And of course, these mugshots were of both Black and white individuals. One day when I went to the writing room, somebody had written “Nigger” and “Coon” and “Calvin Lawrence” over the Black mugshots. It was midday by the time I came into the writing room, and so I definitely wasn’t the first person to see these slurs written all over the place. To walk in there and know that nobody had said anything about it all morning was a big problem to me.

My co-workers’ silence on this signalled their complicity. I wrote a memo to management in which I said, “This is wrong. Not only are police officers seeing this, but people from the public are potentially going to see this. This is not professional.” There was quite a bit of noise made about it as a result of my complaint. Management was going to check handwriting samples to see who had done this, and certain supervisors were saying that whoever it was should be fired. In response, I said, “Look, I’m not interested in getting anybody fired. What I’m telling you is that what was written on that board was not professional. It’s insulting to all Black people, not just me. It’s insulting to the other Black members that work here. And it represents the adversarial relationship this force has to the Black community.”

I had no desire to be a crusader. I just saw something that I didn’t like, that was over the line. I didn’t overreact. I just brought it to the attention of management. What I’ve found, however, throughout the course of my policing career and my life as a Black man, is that posting anonymous racial expletives—either as graffiti or as derogatory posters—is one of the favourite tactics of the gutless masses who practice racist behaviour, but who are too afraid of the repercussions to openly express their racist views. It’s rare that they’ll ever approach you, one to one. Instead, they leave their little messages, or they gossip in their groups where there’s safety in numbers.

Black Cop: My 36 Years in Police Work, and My Career-Ending Experiences with Official Racism is available online.