THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407090081
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
He walked a Downtown beat when Crawford Street was lined with taverns and brimming with the sailors who poured in from the shipyard.
He worked in the vice squad in the days when police officers were concerned with bootleggers and bookies rather than drug dealers.
Howard K. Darden watched all those things change - the face of Portsmouth, the nature of crime and the professional development of his vocation.
And he changed along with it, becoming assistant police chief by the time he retired July 1.
Now after a lifetime of fighting urban crime, the 55-year-old and his wife, Pearl, have packed it up for a more peaceful existence on Lake Gaston in Bracey, Va.
They will have their grandchildren with them for six weeks and then the Dardens will take an eight-week tour of the West and other parts of the country.
But there's a part of Darden that is still adjusting to weekends that do not end with the knowledge that he will be returning to his place in the police department.
``I've always been happy since the first day I came on,'' he said. ``I can't think really of a more rewarding career to be involved in.
``Every day is different. Every hour is different.''
Darden joined the department in December 1959 along with more than 30 new officers needed because of Portsmouth's annexation of a large portion of Norfolk County.
It was an exciting time for the city, Darden recalled. And police work was where he wanted to be.
He had lived in Prentis Park in a time when the neighborhood boasted more law and order than crime.
It was home to the city's police chief, two police captains and a detective - role models that led Darden and many of his young neighbors into law enforcement.
He had taken the civil service exam just after he turned 21, the required age to join the department.
Even the test was much different then.
They asked him where the Richard Dale Monument was, which streets were one-way and who were the City Council members.
``It was just to see if you were familiar with the city you were trying to be a police officer in.''
Other than a few police cars with radios, police technology was mostly knowing how to unlock the call box on the corner.
But that wasn't necessarily the fastest way to call for backup.
``We relied on the taxi cabs to call in,'' Darden said. ``We carried night sticks, and we would hit the stick on the street real hard.''
The cab drivers would stop, offer their assistance and call their dispatcher, who would in turn notify the police dispatcher. It worked surprisingly well.
``You'd get immediate response if you could get a taxi cab driver,'' he laughed.
About six or seven police beats ran from the waterfront all the way down to the old Dixie Drive-In on High Street.
While walking a Downtown beat, Darden remembers he faced one of his most terror-filled nights.
He had to deliver a baby.
All police officers had to be trained to assist in deliveries in those days, when many people didn't have phones and the medic was the officer who took the injured to the hospital in a station wagon.
That night a boy ran to him for help, then led him to an apartment over a Chestnut Street grocery store. There he found the boy's mother in labor and realized he was going to have to put to practice what he had watched in a training movie.
``I was frightened to death,'' he said. ``That was probably one of the worst calls you could go on, a woman having a child. We would do our dead-level best to get them to the hospital.''
Since those days, Darden has spent time in every area of police work but crime prevention. He's been a patrolman, a motorcycle traffic cop and even a booking officer.
His career spanned 35 years and nine police chiefs.
``My favorite, I guess was (Henry P.) Crowe,'' he said of the police chief who served the department from 1960 to 1969. ``He came in as a spit-and-polish former colonel with the Marine Corps, and he brought a new sense of pride to the department.
That professional pride would be needed in the years to come. Darden considers the early 1970s, when a grand jury probed alleged police corruption in the department, the darkest that he witnessed during his career.
``A number of officers got into trouble and lost their jobs,'' Darden recalled. ``It was hard to overcome. The public places all that trust in you .
But Darden said the investigation led to policies that made the department more professional. One of the most important changes, he said, was that police officers would be allowed to enforce the law anywhere in the city rather than certain officers being given territories.
Darden was in the detective bureau when he was promoted to sergeant in 1968. He was promoted to lieutenant and moved to vice and narcotics in 1975.
By then, the crackdown on nip joints and bootleggers had given way to the heroin and cocaine dealers.
Darden stayed in that department until he was promoted to captain in 1979 and made shift commander for the areas of Churchland, Glensheallah and part of Port Norfolk.
He was named a field operations commander in 1987. In 1991, he was named a major and put in charge of administration.
But his best days, he says, were in the detective bureau.
He worked homicide cases in the days when no one expected to get away with murder, he recalled.
``A lot of people would kill people, hand you the weapon as you came up and admit it.''
Today's criminals, he said, ``even when they know they're guilty, they just try to use the system to get away with whatever they're trying to do.''
And today's system is filled with technicalities about the admission of evidence, he said.
But staying current is one of the challenges that made police work interesting to Darden.
``I guess the big change now is the mentality of the officers who are coming on now,'' he said.
``They're sharper. They're more intelligent. They're more educated. I won't necessarily say they're more dedicated, but they're looking on a job in law enforcement as a career rather than a job.''
Darden likes that attitude. MEMO: Related stories on pages 14-17.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo illustration by MARK MITCHELL
In all, 52 police officers and firefighters turned in their
equipment, taking advantage of the revised retirement plan.
Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Howard K. Darden saw many changes and changed with the times.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY RETIREMENT PORTSMOUTH POLICE
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