“He kicks the door down and tells the guy he’s not going to continue to beat her anymore,’’ said Linskey, now superintendent in chief. “Now, we would send a SWAT team, but in those days Willis was like a one-man SWAT team. He takes care of the bad guy. That was the tough side of Willis.’’
Ah, but there was more.
“After we made the arrest, I saw the other side of Willis,’’ Linskey continued. “He starts talking to the girl. He tells her ‘You don’t want to be with a man who puts his hands on you.’ He takes the phone, and has her call her mother. That was Willis, taking on the whole problem by himself.’’
Saunders died last Monday at 84. A native of Roxbury, he was one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen when he served during World War II.
He joined a Boston police force in 1956 that had only a handful of black officers. The few who made it onto the force were not encouraged to have great expectations for their careers. Certainly, they should never expect to command anybody.
Saunders shredded all of that, becoming a top-flight detective before being promoted to the command staff. For years, he was a night commander.
And he was a mentor, especially to the generations of black officers who followed him. People like James Claiborne, who rose to superintendent.
“Willis was a veteran and somewhat of a legend when I joined the department in 1979,’’ Claiborne said. “He was a practitioner of community policing long before the term was in vogue. I think everybody in Roxbury knew Willis.’’
Claiborne recalled that Saunders was eager to impart the history of black officers in the department and was ever a model of perseverance and professionalism.
“He carried himself with dignity,’’ Claiborne said. “He was respected not only for who he was, but because of his work ethic. If something was going on in the city, Willis was there. He was a living example of what we could be.’’
The Saunders fan club included his supposed superiors. Mickey Roache remembers studying Saunders in court as a young officer, learning how to testify.
When Roache became commissioner, he promoted Saunders to the command staff. When he ran the promotion by Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, the mayor asked who he was.
“I just told him, ‘He’s beloved,’ ’’ Roache said. “I never knew anyone who had such a relationship with the troops.’’
If there was a case that haunted Saunders, it was the 1991 murders of 15-year-old Korey Grant and 11-year-old Charles Copney, accidental victims of a gang shootout on Fort Hill. Charles was then the youngest homicide victim in Boston history. I remember Saunders that night, in his crisp white shirt and hat, taking charge of the scene. But he would later say those murders were devastating, that speaking to the boys’ mothers was the hardest thing he ever had to do as an officer.
A happier memory is of Saunders’ retirement party a year later. The crowd overflowed the ballroom it was held in, Claiborne said.
Claiborne attended the festivities with some other Saunders protégés. “Some of us were thinking, ‘When our time comes, we only hope people hold us in such high regard.’ ’’
