Word: scotts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last year residents of Cicero, a Chicago-area community notorious for its racism, called the police to report that a black man was impersonating a police officer, wearing a police uniform and driving a squad car. That was patrolman Wesley Scott, the town's first and only black policeman. Almost ! daily, he endures racial insults and humiliation, not only from the people he has sworn to protect but also from some of his fellow officers upon whom his life may depend...
...March 1987, two days after Wesley Scott graduated from the police academy and joined the force in suburban Cicero, he discovered a photo of the Ku Klux Klan pasted to his locker. "Who's going to kill Wesley?" one of the robed Klansmen in the picture asked. Another replied, "I'm going to kill Wesley." Across the bottom was written "The Ku Klux Klan is going to kill you." Recalls Scott: "A few of the guys were shaking their heads, but a lot of the guys were laughing." Scott did not report the incident to his superiors, one of whom...
...Scott stands just under 6 ft., his granite biceps tattooed when he was eleven. He is the oldest of 16 children. A gentle man and a voracious reader, he rarely lets his guard down with his colleagues. He has taken a private oath that he will not allow himself to be goaded into any actions that might jeopardize his position. As a patrolman, he makes $22,500 annually. But his objective goes well beyond police work. "My purpose is to bridge the gap between those who espouse racism and those who are at least liberal enough to understand this...
...been easy. "There is not a day that I haven't gone through some kind of hell," says Scott. "Practically every day, someone calls me a nigger." He sits in his modest apartment in a suburb called Justice, about four miles southwest of Cicero, ironing his five-year-old son's jeans for school. On the wall hangs a prayer: "Lord, help me to realize that nothing can happen today that you and I can't handle." Scott's wife D'Andrea tries to comfort him after each racial incident by saying, "Don't worry about it, that person...
...student before dropping out of high school after his junior year, Scott spent long hours preparing for the statewide police exam. He was sick with chicken pox when he took the test. A few weeks after the exam, he received a letter on official letterhead from deputy superintendent Zalas telling him that he had failed. "I was heartbroken," said Scott. The next day he went to Zalas and asked if he could take the exam again. When Zalas asked why, Scott handed him the letter. Zalas said he never wrote the letter. "Someone was just clowning around with him," says...