April 16, 2009 - Instatutional Racism Documented In The Greenwich Police Department

Over Fifty Years Later Institutional Racism In The Greenwich Police Department Still Has A Bitter Sting

Another chapter complete in oral history project

Greenwich Post

.....Eugene Moye, a current Cos Cob resident who was the first African American police officer in town. Born in 1922, Mr. Moye, who moved to Greenwich in 1933 and married his wife Jeanette, a white woman, in the late 1940s, was educated in Greenwich public schools, was a veteran of World War II and later a teacher at Western Junior High School.

Initially unsuccessful at getting a teacher’s job in town, Mr. Moye applied to the police department in late 1950 because he needed a job.

“Often times the officers I rode with would not speak. So that was their way of censuring me. Then another guy I rode with did converse with me,” Mr. Moye said of the discrimination he faced there.

“There was one officer who was a pretty decent guy, Hilbert Heberling, a pretty decent guy,” he added. “He said that he was getting tired of people asking him, ‘What is he like?’ Meaning me. Now I’m sure I didn’t come from Mars. I’m sure I was brought up here in the United States.”....