Police officer Rob Williams was ordered by his commander to cut off his braids. He didn’t, and so the highly decorated 29-year-old south-side patrolman was suspended. “I was aware that I ran the risk of being labeled a troublemaker,” he says. “But I didn’t think it would go this far.”
Around that time Williams started to let his hair grow. “I wanted to have braids,” he says. “In the early stage of growing it I wore twists. If you wear it in twists for a while it will lock on its own–it just naturally locks. Then it grows and grows that way until you cut it.”
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He ties his braids in a ponytail and sweeps them up under his hat when he’s on the job. “You wouldn’t even know I had braids if you saw me on the job,” he says. “I get it trimmed regularly. I brush it. I shampoo it. What can I say? It’s my hair.”
The next day Commander Williams ordered Williams to come to his office again and told him that the department’s personal-appearance code states that “neck hair will not extend below the top edge of the uniform shirt collar, nor cover any part of the ears,” and that the hair “not be sculpted” in “any kind of radical fashion” such as “a Mohawk or Dreadlocks.”
When Williams returned for his next workday Boone again sent him home without pay. He also wrote Williams up, in what the department calls a complaint register, for “failure to comply with the provisions of the General Order entitled uniform/Citizen’s dress and personal equipment.” According to the register, “Officer Williams reported for duty on 20 Aug 02 with his hair styled in Dreadlocks which is not permitted.” Boone also recommended that Williams be suspended without pay for 20 days.
While the appeal was pending Williams was allowed to go back to work. Then on May 31, 2003, Boone wrote him up in another complaint register, following an incident at a public-housing complex. “We had been directed to a building to cover a call regarding narcotics,” says Williams. “But when we got there we didn’t see anything going on. We were leaving the building when my partner saw someone he knew. He stayed behind to talk to him while I went outside to the car. Well, Boone drove up and noticed I’d left the building without my partner. He wrote me up for leaving my partner alone in the building. It’s ridiculous. He was just looking for something to get at me with. He might as well have written me up for not tying my shoe.”
Williams won a partial reprieve in November, when the Police Board voted not to sustain his 20-day suspension for violating the department’s personal-appearance code. And last summer he filed a racial discrimination complaint against the department with the state’s Department of Human Rights. “I contend this is racial discrimination,” he says, “because I know of a white police officer with a ponytail, and he’s never been ordered to cut his hair.” But Williams still faces punishment for leaving a building without his partner.
