Detroit '67: 'The shotguns were loaded,' rookie cop recalls

Editor's note: Over the coming days, the Free Press will publish daily profiles of people from different walks of life talking about their experiences 50 years during the 1967 riot. The profiles were drawn from the Detroit Historical Museum's Oral History Project. You can listen to and read a transcript of Felton Rogers Jr.'s oral history at http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/items/show/51

On a Sunday morning 50 years ago, rookie cop Felton Rogers Jr. reported for the day shift in the Detroit Police Department's 5th Precinct. Rogers remembers that day -- July 23, 1967 -- as being very hot.

Read our full coverage of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riot

The 26-year-old officer, one of only a few hundred African Americans on the Detroit police force at the time, was told during roll call he was being sent to the 10th Precinct on the city's near west side where that had been some problems.

“They sent five of us over there, " Rogers recalled recently. "The lieutenant over there said there’s a problem on 12th Street. They had officers from different precincts and we were the first group there. It was about 9 o’clock in the morning.’’

The officers were issued shotguns and riot helmets.

“There was looting going on and they said, 'Don’t shoot at the looters,'’’ he recalled. “The shotguns were loaded.’’

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Rogers said about 15 officers in riot gear were put on a Blue Bird bus and taken to 12th and Clairmount, where an overnight police raid on an after hours bar had sparked what would turn into five days of rioting, leaving 43 people dead (most of them African Americans) and 1,189 injured.

"As we approached, we could hear the burglar alarms going off constantly. We pulled up and it was a scene that you just couldn’t imagine. Windows were shattered and glass was out in the street. Merchandise from people looting was everywhere. There were tons of people just milling around.’’

Despite the police presence, Rogers said, looters went about their business with no fear of being arrested.

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“My squad was assigned to guard the area just south of Clairmount to prevent obviously the spillover from moving further south towards downtown,’’ said Rogers. “We did a scrimmage line right across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk.’’

Rogers said he and his fellow officers watched the people, and the people watched them as they walked away with stolen merchandise. An apartment building above a paint store caught fire and eventually exploded.

The officers stood there all day, keeping guard but taking no action.

"There was no relief.  We didn’t have any relief, or food or water or anything at that time." 

Day turned into night.

“I was out there 21 hours straight,’’ said Rogers. “It got dark and people started going into their homes and we could see smoke in certain areas. We moved into a looted grocery store on Clairmount. There was nothing in there. Some shooting started south of us and it got closer.’’

Not knowing if they would get attacked, one of the officers shot out the streetlight to conceal themselves from a potential mob.

“We stayed there and then about 1 o’clock in the morning we heard a rumbling coming down the street,’’ said Rogers. “It got closer and closer and we couldn’t tell what it was. We stepped out and looked north, and coming towards us was a convoy; two state police vehicles, side by side, with their lights on, and behind them were Jeeps with National Guardsmen and trucks and tanks.’’

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Rogers said they were relieved until 7 o'clock the next morning. He was told to go home, get some sleep and then report back for a 12-hour shift.

The most harrowing moment for Rogers came a couple of days later when he heard gunfire as he was getting refreshments from a Salvation Army truck parked outside the 5th Precinct station.

"Officers started saying 'Duck, get down, get down,' and  the firing was very close."

Rogers said a sniper was on the top of a tall storage building  across the street from the precinct.

"So we were taking cover, and there was ‘pings, pings,'" he remembered.  "I distinctly know something like a bee went by, fairly close, and I don’t know there’s a bee in the area, I’m sure I knew what that was. And I distinctly saw one of our sergeant’s cars took a bullet hole right in the middle of his windshield."

He said the sniping continued for 10 or 15 minutes, until a National Guard Jeep pulled up and opened fire on the building with a .50-caliber machine gun, "just chipping away at it, you know." Eventually, some officers  rushed the building and got to the rooftop where they found shell casings, but the sniper had fled. 

"That, ah, shook us off for sure," he said.

Other than the riot, Rogers recalls his six years on the police force as good ones. He got involved in recruiting and then with the Police Athletic League program when in started in 1969, working with the city's youth.

"When I worked in the precinct, I know some guys had problems with white officers that didn’t want to work with them," Rogers said. "I never experienced that. I was assigned a regular partner and when he was off I worked with another officer or officers. There was one black guy before me, then another two about 18 months to two years after I got there.’’

At the time, only about 5% of the 4,380-member police force was African American, although the city's population was about 40% black. 

Rogers said the only discrimination he ran into as a police officer was when he was working a one-man patrol car and dispatched to take a report from a resident who he described as an older white guy.

"I went up on his porch, and I knocked on his door, he opened the door and said, 'Oh, hell no. Get off my porch,' And I said, 'Ah, what sir?' and he said, 'Get off my porch, I don’t want your ass on my porch, and I’m going to call the precinct.'”

Rogers said he left without taking the report.

Rogers attended Eastern High School in Detroit, where he was a star athlete, and played college football at Iowa for three years before returning home and eventually enlisting in the Army. He quit the police force after six years when he wasn’t allowed to take a leave of absence to finish his college degree.

He went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in sociology at Eastern Michigan University and a master’s degree in counseling. He retired as a counselor from the Michigan Department of Corrections and now lives in Ypsilanti.