At the time Finney joined the department, there was an intense distrust between the black community and the police force. Just the prior May, officer James Sackett had been gunned down while responding to a call in the Selby-Dale neighborhood. The men responsible for his death, fledgling Black Panthers Ronald Reed and Larry Clark, were finally convicted of first-degree murder earlier this year. "Brothers were killing each other, cutting each other, beating each other up—and the police looked the other way," says Nathaniel Khaliq, who grew up in Rondo and is now president of St. Paul chapter of the NAACP. "Those were very treacherous times back then."
"They didn't like the police," Finney recalls of the black community. "They didn't trust the police. They thought that anybody who was African American and wanted to be a police officer was a sellout. They knew that I wasn't a sellout, but they couldn't figure out why in the world I wanted to be a cop."
Adam Turman
Related Content
More About
Finney sought to emulate certain characteristics of the two black cops that he knew growing up, James Griffin and Jimmy Mann. Griffin was a conservative, hard-working man who tried not to rock the boat. "He just believed in trying to work through the system to get things done," Finney avers. "He wasn't asleep at the switch." Mann was more volatile, unwilling to overlook any acts of racist behavior. "When he was confronted with race stuff, he hit it head on," the former chief notes. "He wouldn't tolerate much."
Finney's first post was patrolling West Seventh Street, then a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood. In the ensuing years he was detailed to Selby-Dale, Como Park, and the downtown skyway system. He was promoted to sergeant in 1978 and then lieutenant in 1982. The latter promotion, however, was not without controversy. The tradition in the SPPD had always been to promote the officer who scored highest on the lieutenant's test. At the time that Finney was tapped, however, there were two white officers higher up on the list of candidates. Many veteran officers felt that racial politics, rather than merit, guided the selection.
Not surprisingly, Finney's quick rise through the department elicited a backlash. He recalls being called into a deputy chief's office during the time he was being considered for promotion to lieutenant. "We've got a rumor," the deputy chief informed him, "that you're a cocaine user. And not only that, but that you're selling cocaine." Finney says his response was adamant. "I said, really?" he recalls. "Well, I'll tell you what we do. We're going to leave here right now and we're going to go right over to the hospital and I'm going to give you a urinalysis." Finney also says he offered to take a lie detector test. "I will voluntarily sit on the box and you can ask me anything about drugs you want to ask me," he says he told the deputy chief. "But I've got a caveat on this one. The guy making the complaint? He's got to sit on the box first." The rumor was put to rest. Finney was promoted to lieutenant.
When Bill McCutcheon announced that he wouldn't seek a third term as police chief in 1991, there was significant pressure on then-Mayor Jim Scheibel to appoint an African American to the post. The video of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles had recently surfaced, and cities across the country were leery of urban unrest. Locally, the issue of predominantly minority youth gangs was increasingly touted as a significant public safety threat. "People were wondering, can an African American guy handle all this?" Finney recalls. "So I got named and the spotlight's on [me]."
Khaliq, of the NAACP, says that the appointment was significant to the black community in St. Paul. "When Corky got the job, we figured now we're on our way," he recalls. "We got somebody down there we can relate to."
Bob Fletcher was born in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul, but moved to Maplewood as a toddler. He grew up just north of Lake Phalen, in the Gladstone neighborhood. A younger brother died shortly after birth. His parents subsequently adopted a daughter eight years his junior.
He attended Gladstone Elementary School, developing an early affinity for science. "I grew up in that era of science, moon missions," Fletcher recalls. "Science was really my first love. I came downtown as a young boy to the science museum every Saturday." He went on to John Glenn Junior High School and then North St. Paul High School. He was a lifeguard and became an Eagle Scout.
Sports were also a major part of Fletcher's life growing up. In high school he was a three-sport star—football, track and field, and wrestling. "I was a good wrestler, an all-conference wrester, but I was cautious, in that I never wanted to get pinned," Fletcher recalls. "What you learn there is you cannot live life being cautious all the time, because you'll be destined to mediocrity."
Fletcher is recounting this early history on a recent Saturday morning from a table at Key's Café in downtown St. Paul, where the entire waitstaff seems to know him. He's wearing a forest green sweater and jeans, and eating a late breakfast of grapefruit juice and oatmeal. His salt-and-pepper hair and raccoon eyes bring to mind the late Jerry Orbach, of Law & Order renown.
