View source for Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement by Frederick Reynolds

{{infobox1
|title=Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
|author=Frederick Reynolds
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=An inspiring story of a man who turned his own life around and applied his beliefs to the benefit of his local community.  Highly recommended.
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=396
|publisher=Mindstir Media
|date=August 2021
|isbn=978-1638485216
|cover=1638485216
|aznuk=1638485216
|aznus=1638485216
}}
''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific.  It has everything to do with character. Period.''

''One more body just wouldn't matter''.

The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, in the US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the world.  We rarely see pictures of a murder taking place but Floyd's death was an exception.  The image of Chauvin kneeling on George's neck is not one which I'll ever forget and the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected.  There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the Chauvin brush.

Frederick Reynolds wrote ''Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement'' as a way of putting the other side of the story, of providing a more thoughtful response.  I'll confess that I was half expecting that there might be an attempt to justify the actions taken in restraining suspects but Reynolds is clear that what happened was deeply wrong.  He also believes that there's at least one Derek Chauvin in every law-enforcement agency and the stories he tells do support this.  This book is his personal story and the story of his life in policing.

Reynolds was born in Rocky Mount, Virginia in November 1961,  His father was an alcoholic but his cultural heritage reaches back to Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Toga and Mali.  The family moved to Detroit and Reynolds' interest in school diminished as his involvement with gangs increased.  Petty criminality was endemic: there was a lack of role models.  Reynolds and the other gang members didn't mix with doctors or lawyers, firefighters or cops: it's not hard to imagine who they did mix with.  The outcomes were unlikely to be good: as Reynolds says, ''yesterday's perpetrator often turned into today's victim''.

A degree of order came into Reynolds' life when he joined the infantry and he developed some insight into what caused him to act as he did: ''one needs to be seen, even in a negative light''.  Marriage would bring him to Compton where he would join the police.  It's an area of 10.1 square miles to the south side of Los Angeles with a population of 90,000 - and 1,000 gunshot victims and an average of 75 murders a year.  Policing was never going to be easy and the problems were exacerbated by the negativity which police officers joining from outside the area encountered.

The man who suffered casual racial abuse from police officers gives us a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at racism both inside and outside the police force.  The book could have been a superficial (and entertaining) series of anecdotes but Reynolds delves deeper and highlights what's behind the situation on the ground.  Even complicated situations - the local politics, the missing drugs - are brought vividly to life.  You get all the jargon but it's explained and there's a real feeling of being ''there''.  He's not afraid to name names, either.

There are a number of extremely sad stories, such as the unidentified teenage girl whose death in 1975 was never solved but Reynolds balances out the burden of the 1154 murders he encountered with a gentle, subtle sense of humour.  I still laugh at the thought of the scruffy officer who ''never met a can of shoe polish he liked''.

It's an exceptional story of a man who turned his life around and developed his own moral compass - then used it to benefit other people.  I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag.

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[[Category:Politics and Society]]