Family
Fancy was married to a woman named Lillian (played by Tamara Tunie) with two daughters and a son. He loved his wife dearly but was overprotective of her when learning of her last pregnancy (his son, Art Jr.) because of her diabetes, and it took some time for him to apologize to her. He had a younger brother, a hotheaded uniformed officer named Reggie (played by Michael Jai White) who was distrustful of whites. Reggie's combatitive behavior drew the ire of his sergeant, a bigoted officer named McNamara who came through the academy with Arthur. McNamara would claim that Reggie was in the wrong line of work with his attitudes towards white bosses, and would later help a black gypsy cab driver file a harassment claim against Reggie in the hopes of having Reggie's badge. McNamara blamed the harassment claim on the NYPD's programs that were developed to assist minority citizens, claiming that it was department procedure to take any harassment complaint from a minority citizen seriously, even if it was a minority officer such as Reggie who was being accused of the harassment. Arthur however saw both McNamara's racism and his helping of the cabbie to write the complaint (Arthur noted the "textbook language" on the complaint) and had the 15th's detectives investigate the cabbie to squash the harassment claim. After resolving the cabbie situation, Arthur recognizing that Reggie's troubles with McNamara wouldn't go away and told Reggie to immediately get a transfer away from McNamara—but not before pointing out that none of the detectives who reached out for him (Medavoy, Martinez, and Simone) to squash the complaint were African-American, thus finally teaching Reggie a serious lesson in trust. It was revealed in Season 6 that Fancy's father was an alcoholic who stole his mother's hard-earned money and died a broken man in the streets. Fancy took in a foster child named Maceo in Season 1, and was devastated when Maceo's mom, a reformed drug abuser, returned to claim custody of her son. The story took a sad turn in Season 4 when Maceo was arrested for running drugs for his off-the-wagon mom, and Fancy had to convince him to cooperate with the NYPD in a sting against her dealer cohorts. Later, the mom blamed Maceo and said prison might do him some good—as Maceo watched from an observation window. Fancy put together a plea deal with the D.A.'s office, where Maceo would spend a few years in a work farm instead of many years in jail and consoled his former foster son about how he could still make something of his life.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Fancy
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“In former times and in less complex societies, children could find their way into the adult world by watching workers and perhaps giving them a hand; by lingering at the general store long enough to chat with, and overhear conversations of, adults...; by sharing and participating in the tasks of family and community that were necessary to survival. They were in, and of, the adult world while yet sensing themselves apart as children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Because it’s not only that a child is inseparable from the family in which he lives, but that the lives of families are determined by the community in which they live and the cultural tradition from which they come.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“Family lore can be a bore, but only when you are hearing it, never when you are relating it to the ones who will be carrying it on for you. A family without a storyteller or two has no way to make sense out of their past and no way to get a sense of themselves.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)