Military and Police Experience
Drafted into the Army after graduating Brooklyn Automotive Trades High School in 1944, he served as an military policeman and a criminal investigator with the Army in Europe for two years.
Ward entered the NYPD on June 1, 1951 as a patrolman, becoming the first black officer assigned to Brooklyn's 80th Precinct, where he faced resentment from both white residents and white fellow cops. He wasn't assigned a locker at the precinct, forcing him to dress at home and ride the subway to work in his uniform for three years.
During the next 15 years in uniform, he rose through the ranks to Lieutenant, serving in the Patrol Division, Juvenile Aide Division, Detective Division, and Legal Bureau. His rise was aided, in part, by his after-work studies at Brooklyn College and Brooklyn Law School that earned him undergraduate and law degrees—invariably with top honors.
He eventually served as special legal counsel to Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary. Ben left the uniformed ranks to become executive director of NYPD's Civilian Complaint Review Board in 1966.
Two years later he was named a Deputy Police Commissioner of Trials, serving as chief hearing officer in all departmental disciplinary matters.
Later he became Deputy Commissioner of Community Affairs with responsibilities for the Youth Aid Division and the Auxiliary Forces Section.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Ward
Famous quotes containing the words military and, military, police and/or experience:
“The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
““My ancestors were all famous for military genius.”
My Lady smiled graciously. “It often runs in families,” she remarked: “just as a love for pastry does.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession of a police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.”
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980)