McKinnon, Isaiah 1943–

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Isaiah McKinnon 1943–

Law enforcement officer, chief of police, educator

Detroit Police chief Isaiah “Ike” McKinnon became mayor-elect Dennis Archer’s first major appointment in a new city administration; the decision was made even before Archer was formally sworn in as Detroit’s mayor in January of 1994. At the time of his appointment to Detroit’s top law enforcement position, McKinnon—a 19-year retired veteran of the Detroit Police Department—was serving as the director of security at Detroit’s Renaissance Center and was openly critical of the department politics he had experienced as a Detroit police officer. McKinnon, who earned his new position of responsibility after serving as a close adviser to the new mayor and director of security during Archer’s mayoral campaign, has moved quickly to improve relations between officers on the streets and the citizens they serve.

It has been a long professional climb for McKinnon, one of the first African American officers in the Detroit Police Department. When he jointed the department in 1965, he was the only black officer—and one of the first blacks ever—to work in the 2nd (Vernor) Precinct of the racially diverse southwest side of Detroit. In the 1960s and 1970s, McKinnon was the “poster officer” for a campaign to help recruit more minorities to the department. McKinnon’s picture appeared on billboards and posters all around Detroit, with the slogan, “There’s never enough big men to go around,” according to reports in the Detroit Free Press.

“[McKinnon] looked exactly like a police officer should look,” said retired inspector Richard Boutin, who supervised McKinnon in the department’s Public Information Office. “He was extremely articulate and pursuing a higher education. He was just a jewel that you couldn’t overlook,” Boutin commented to Jack Kresnak of the Detroit Free Press. That “jewel” is once again a “poster officer” of sorts as he represents the vast Detroit police force before the media and the eyes of the world.

McKinnon, one of five children born to Lula and Cota McKinnon, moved with his family from Montgomery, Alabama, to Detroit in 1953, spending much of his childhood in the St. Antoine and Superior area of the city. McKinnon told the Detroit Free Press that his father “taught him the values and rewards of hard work, education, and honesty,” as well as a gift of gab. “My childhood relationship with my father seemed to center on the stories he told,” McKinnon wrote in the Detroit Free Press in 1991.

At a Glance…

Born June 21, 1943, in Montgomery, AL; son of Cota (a laborer, carpenter, and former Negro Baseball League catcher) and Lula (a housewife) McKinnon; married Patrice, October 18, 1975; children: Jeffrey, Jason. Education: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Academy, Quantico, VA, 1967; Mercy College of Detroit, B.A., 1976; University of Detroit, M.A., 1978; Michigan State University, Ph.D., 1981. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1961-65.

Detroit Police Department, 1965-84, served in 10 positions, including patrol operations, supervisory, administrative, command and executive functions; chief of police, 1994—. Director of Public Safety, University of Detroit, 1984-89; Director of Security, Renaissance Center, Detroit, 1989-93. Author, “Big League Dad,” Detroit Free Press and “Child Pornography,” F.B.i. Magazine; guest columnist, Michigan Chronicle.

Member: Leadership and Management Advisory Board (LAMPS), FBI; National Academy Graduates; Dad’s Club.

Selected awards: Received 22 citations during his 19-year tenure with the Detroit Police Department.

Addresses: Office —1300 Beaubien, Room 303, Detroit, Mi 48226.

McKinnon told Detroit Free Press reporter Jack Kresnak that at times he had doubted the truth of some of the stories his father would tell about playing in the old Negro Baseball League and catching for legendary pitcher Satchel Paige in the 1920s. Then one night in the mid-1960s, McKinnon was working security for a Harlem Globetrotters basketball exhibition at Olympia Stadium, where Paige made a special appearance. McKinnon introduced himself and mentioned his father. “Didn’t your daddy catch for a pitcher by the name of Booker T. Brunion?” Paige said to McKinnon. “Oh, your daddy used to talk a lot to the batters from behind the plate. We called him ‘Motor Mouth.’ Son, if the color barrier had been broken sooner, a whole bunch of us, including your daddy, would have been in the big leagues.” McKinnon told the Free Press that he never felt prouder of his father than after that conversation.

McKinnon joined the U.S. Air Force in 1961, serving one year in Vietnam as a mechanic. When he returned to Detroit in 1965, he signed on at the police department. At that time, McKinnon was the only black officer, and one of the first blacks ever, to work in the 2nd (Vernor) Precinct. In interviews with the Detroit Free Press, McKinnon recalled what it was like to be a member of the department at that time. His first night, McKinnon patrolled with a white partner who never spoke a word to him, who even left McKinnon in the patrol car while stopping at a coffee shop for lunch. “I had to laugh,” said McKinnon. “If it was this miserable for me, it had to be twice as miserable for this guy.”

Victimized by Racist Individuals

It wasn’t the first or last time McKinnon faced overt racism. As a 14-year-old at Cass Technical High School, McKinnon was stopped, frisked, and humiliated one day by a white officer known throughout the neighborhood as “Rotation Slim.” Kresnak noted that this officer “slapped [McKinnon] hard and used a racial slur” when McKinnon asked why he was being stopped.

Then, years later, during the 1967 Detroit riots, when McKinnon himself was an officer, he was driving home in uniform from an 18-hour shift when a white officer, gun drawn, stopped him and ordered him out of his car. McKinnon told Kresnak that he tried to show his badge, but the other officer opened fire, “so I stomped on the gas and got out of there. That guy must have thought that every black person in Detroit was somehow responsible for the rioting. He didn’t think of me as an individual. He thought of me and other blacks as one large group of lawless, lazy people. He was blind. And that is wrong.”

In his 19 years with the department, McKinnon walked a beat, worked street patrol, and worked in Recruiting, Public Information, and Internal Affairs. He was assigned to the security details of mayors Jerome Cavanagh and Roman Gribbs and was a supervisor in the Sex Crimes Unit, Special Crime Section, 4th (Fort Street) Precinct patrol, and Tactical Services Section. Along the way, McKinnon—a black belt karate expert and winner of several Police Olympics gold medals in track events—earned his master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Detroit and a doctorate in philosophy at Michigan State University.

In October of 1984, McKinnon served his last day in the department by commanding officers trying to control the crowds that had overturned and set fire to police cars after the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. He told reporters that he retired in part because he “was unhappy with the cronyism and politicization of the department” under Mayor Coleman Young. While speaking to a group of students at Wayne County Community College, McKinnon said he found it particularly “distasteful” to be asked to sell tickets to Young’s fund-raisers. His comments were subsequently reported in the Detroit Free Press.

Immediately after leaving the department, McKinnon became director of the Public Safety Department at the University of Detroit. In this position, he was responsible for the recruitment, training, and commissioning of all security personnel. The focus on program development included managing the campus police as well as maintaining fire safety equipment, alarm systems, disaster procedures, and communications systems. A major contribution was McKinnon’s idea to enlist the help of students in preventing crime and the hiring of minority students as part-time security officers and parking guards. At the same time, McKinnon taught and lectured in his capacity as an adjunct professor of criminal justice at the University of Detroit. “He instituted a safety policy on campus that’s still going quite well today,” George Clarkson, University of Detroit associate director of marketing and public affairs, told the Free Press.

In 1989, McKinnon went to the Renaissance Center, a complex of the most high profile office buildings and shopping centers in Detroit. As head of security for a complex that hosts some 7,000 workers and 10,000 visitors daily, Renaissance Center president Stephen Horn told the Detroit Free Press that McKinnon did a wonderful job in keeping the peace while training the security force to be helpful goodwill ambassadors to visitors. “I know he’s up to the task of police chief,” Horn said. “I’m pretty tough when it comes to employees, but I think Ike McKinnon is one of the best personnel decisions I’ve ever made.”

Appointed New Police Chief

McKinnon’s relationship with Detroit mayor Dennis Archer began in 1991, when Archer, a former State Supreme Court justice, was exploring the idea of running for mayor. For much of the ensuing campaign, McKinnon served as Archer’s driver and bodyguard. He also recruited a corps of volunteer officers to work on campaign security.

At the formal news conference announcing McKinnon’s appointment to chief of police at the Bates Academy grade school in northwest Detroit, then mayor-elect Archer promised Detroit students “enough protection so you can have your childhood back,” the Detroit Free Press reported. McKinnon promised that police officers or reserve officers would patrol school grounds. He also spoke of the need for community policing, a concept that he said includes getting officers into neighborhoods and re-establishing trust with residents. “If we can put… more police officers on the street, we’re going to do it,” he stressed.

In an extensive interview with the Detroit Free Press held prior to his taking office, McKinnon described himself as “the eternal optimist,” adding that “there’s some good in everybody…. We can hopefully turn or change everybody around.” He spoke of trying to bring officers back to the department’s youth section and the gang squad, both of which had fallen victim to budget cuts in the 1980s. “You cannot deny the fact that a great percentage of the crime in the city is occurring with young people,” he said. “If that is the case, then we’d better assign people to work in those particular areas.”

Scrutinized by National Media

McKinnon spoke in the Free Press article of making more training available to officers, “making sure that training is first-rate and up-to-date.” He also talked of making the department one that citizens could trust and respect. “The crime is going to be there, and most of those instances in which crime occurs is beyond our control as law enforcement officers, but how we respond and how we treat the people of the community will dictate how they treat us, how they respond to us. The example I use is the officers who worked over in the Jeffries Projects [public housing] back in the 1960s. We treated people with dignity and respect. They did the same to us. Everybody’s not a criminal. Everybody you stop is not a bad person. Saying ‘Good Morning’ is one of those things.” McKinnon added: “We have officers who do that now, but they just aren’t recognized.”

Within days of being sworn in as chief of police, McKinnon unveiled a plan to put 308 more officers on the Detroit streets and give more responsibility and autonomy to local precincts to help them achieve the goal of bringing the department closer to the community. Then the national spotlight turned on Detroit, as the city hosted the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, a pre-Olympic event. McKinnon and the department were instrumental in working with federal investigators to find the group of individuals who attacked skater Nancy Kerrigan, eliminating her from the competition and almost from the 1994 Winter Olympic Games.

While the investigation distracted McKinnon momentarily, by early February of 1994, other changes had been made, such as arranging for more than 100 officers to learn introductory conversational Spanish in order to better communicate with citizens in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods; downsizing the number of leased cars; computerizing the inventory of confiscated property and money, and removing the policy of having police executives wear blue shirts and $400 braided uniforms for ceremonial functions. McKinnon also laid the groundwork for gun buy-back programs.

One such program, a cooperative effort with the Foot Locker athletic retail chain, awarded $100 gift certificates for Foot Locker merchandise in exchange for weapons. “This is a gigantic effort that’s being made to turn this tide and get the guns off the streets,” McKinnon told the Detroit Free Press. “Let’s look at it this way: If there are two guns that are turned in, we turned in two potential weapons that can be potentially dangerous to people in our community.” McKinnon also took steps to keep his promise to help keep schools safe, tapping reserve officers to volunteer at schools to help reduce the “fear and violence” that keeps students from learning.

Many of the principles of good police work that McKinnon felt were important to the community were being implemented early on in his tenure as Detroit’s chief of police. Still, he was quick to remind visitors that he is “appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the mayor.” His position demands not only that he serve the best interests of the Detroit Police Department but that he meets the needs of the citizens of Detroit as well.

Sources

Detroit Free Press, December 9,1993, p. Al; December 10, 1993, p. Al; December 20, 1993, p. Al; December 23,1993, p. A10; January 6,1994, p. B3; January 7, 1994, p. A1; January 9, 1994, p. F2; January 18, 1994, p. A10; January 22, 1994, p. A1; January 27, 1994, p. B5; January 29, 1994, pp. A1, A3; February 4, 1994, p. B3; February 23, 1994, p. A10; February 25, 1994, p. A1; March 10, 1994, p. B7; March 23, 1994, p. B7; March 24, 1994, p. B1; March 27, 1994, p. F4.

Jet, January 10, 1994, p. 46.

Additional material obtained from resume and an official biography supplied by Isaiah McKinnon.

—Laurie Freeman

Contemporary Black Biography