Cops have to put up with a lot. Disgruntled motorists, obnoxious drunks and Monday morning quarterbacks (newspaper columnists prominently among them) are all part of the job. And Al Patterson put up with even more than the average cop. Racial slurs. References to Uncle Tom. A lighted cigarette flicked in his face. (More on than later).
That’s the price he paid for being about the only African-American to wear a police uniform in the Upper Valley for the last 22 years.
The high degree of professionalism that Patterson exhibited in the face of unnerving bigotry helped earn him the respect of law enforcement officers throughout the Upper Valley. Which probably explains why so many of them showed up in Hanover last Tuesday afternoon for his retirement ceremony.
A shoulder injury, suffered during an on-duty fall, cut Patterson’s career short. It wasn’t the way that Patterson, 50, envisioned going out. But having 80 people take time out of their work day to publicly thank him for a job well done had to bring some satisfaction.
Along with Patterson’s colleagues from Hanover, where he worked for the last 15 years, I saw officers from Claremont, Hartford, Lebanon, Norwich and Thetford. The turnout was a “reflection on how well-liked Al is,” said Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin, who attended the event. “He’s a thoughtful, level-headed guy. In all the years he was here, I never heard about Al losing his cool, and there were times when he certainly had reason to be offended.”
One incident immediately came to mind for retired Hanover Police Chief Nick Giaccone. Dartmouth College’s infirmary, Dick’s House, had called police on a weekday morning to help with an unruly, intoxicated male student.
As Patterson was leading him out of the building, the student, who was white, fired off the N-word. Giaccone and a Dartmouth administrator, who both heard it, were incensed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Patterson told them. “It’s talk.”
I didn’t hear about the incident from Patterson. Giaccone, who because of health struggles is now at Genesis, a skilled nursing facility in Lebanon, told me the story. But when I brought it up to Patterson, he shrugged it off.
“I can’t control what some people think,” he said. “I don’t care that people dislike me, but I do care whether people think I treated them fairly.”
Patterson once questioned a black student about his possible involvement in a sexual assault. No arrest was made, and Patterson said the student later thanked him for the way he handled the situation. But a group of black students was still upset. During a meeting with Hanover police, students called Patterson an Uncle Tom and Hanover’s token black police officer. “They were just trying to get under my skin,” he told me. “I don’t let that talk bother me.”
Probably because he’s dealt with much worse. In the last 10 years, he’s survived two bouts with cancer. He’s endured “tragedies that break other people,” said Hanover Deputy Fire Chief Michael Hinsley.
Looking at Patterson, you’d never know of his health battles. He’s 6-3 and 265 pounds. There was a time, before his shoulder gave out, that he could bench press nearly 400 pounds.
He’s still a regular at the Witherell Recreation Center in Lebanon, which is where I know him from. Although we often disagree on politics — he’s on the conservative side — and police tactics, I’ve found Patterson to be someone I could have healthy discussions with without it becoming personal.
Patterson, a 1984 Hanover High School graduate, got his first police job in Windsor. By 1999, he’d become a patrol officer in Hartford, where a middle-of-the-night traffic stop turned ugly. A white female passenger in the pickup used racial epithets and flicked a cigarette into Patterson’s face.
The Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office charged the woman with a hate crime, but it was later dropped in a plea deal.
The incident was front-page news for a while. Patterson wondered whether others in the law enforcement community would see him as something of a lightning rod.
He got his answer in 2001, when he applied for a job with the Hanover police. “We wanted Al here,” Griffin said. “I’m not sure the Hartford community appreciated what it had, but we sure did.”
On Tuesday, there was much talk about the police brotherhood. A Lebanon officer referred to his brethren as warriors.
I’m not sure that I’d put Patterson in that category. I preferred Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis’ description. Patterson has a “guardian mindset,” Dennis said. “He saw himself taking caring of the community. He exemplified the true professionalism of a law enforcement officer.”
An example: While working in Hartford, Patterson was headed back to the station shortly before his shift ended at 11 p.m., when he encountered a swerving car traveling in the opposite direction.
Patterson swung his cruiser around and stopped the female driver. “I thought she might have been intoxicated, but she wasn’t,” he said.
The woman, in her mid-20s, was crying. With her marriage on the rocks, she had left a suicide note at home. Before Patterson pulled her over, she was headed to the Quechee Gorge.
Patterson persuaded her to ride back to the station with him. Patterson and the EMTs working next door talked the woman into taking an ambulance to the hospital to seek mental health treatment.
A few weeks later, then-Chief Joe Estey showed Patterson a letter. The woman wrote to say that she was now getting help for her depression. She thanked Patterson for saving her life.
A reward for putting up with all that other stuff.