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17. Herman B. Short
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191 17 Herman B. Short A s a member of the Houston City Council, Louie Welch had a vision of the type of police chief he wanted if he ever became mayor. Welch didn’t want an academician or a nice guy. He preferred a squeaky clean, non-political veteran unafraid to strongly enforce laws for all Houstonians.1 By the mid-1960s, Welch had support from minority groups, mainly stemming from his strong stand against refusals to serve African-American customers in the City Hall cafeteria. One day in 1961, Councilman Welch became the first Houston public official to sit down with blacks in a public place to share a cup of coffee with them amid booing and catcalls of a crowd outside still favoring Jim Crow laws. Scared by hearing the N-word loudly voiced, the cafeteria’s cashier called Welch when she couldn’t get an answer from the mayor’s telephone to ask him what to do. Not surprisingly, Welch got the vast majority of black votes in the 1961 mayoral election, but lost to incumbent Louis Cutrer.2 Welch solidified his instinctive feeling within the next two years that the sixties were going to be a transitional decade for blacks in America. Once elected mayor over Cutrer in 1963, he knew his police chief must be someone who enforced laws without regard to color. In October 1964, the mayor conducted ten days of interviews with six candidates for chief and picked Inspector Herman B. Short, by far the squeakiest and least political of the bunch, a man never involved in anything deemed questionable. Forty years later, Welch said, “Herman was clearly the guy for the job.”3 Officially appointed October 6, 1964, the forty-six-year-old inspector was described as “a coolly efficient professional” with a personnel file full of commendations and hard-to-get “outstanding performance ratings.” One highly respected officer told The Houston Post, “If the mayor wants a man to run the police department in finest form, then Short is the man. If the mayor wants a puppet, he’s made the wrong choice.”4 192 Houston Blue A native of Morgantown, West Virginia, Short came to Houston with his family when he was junior high-aged. He graduated from Milby High School at age sixteen, served in the U. S. Coast Guard for three years as a security officer and became a Houston police officer on December 11, 1945. When Houston swore in Short as its new chief, he only lacked fourteen months to get in the twenty years of service that made him eligible for retirement. Unlike predecessors Heard, Morrison and Shuptrine, Short lacked higher education . Yet everyone knew he was smart and had plenty of common sense. Short was promoted to detective less than four years after he joined the force. Coincidentally, every time he was promoted to a higher rank, another significant event would soon follow. He got married one day after his promotion to detective (1949) and five years later (1954) when he was promoted to lieutenant, his son Robert was born. He soon became a captain, and on July 16, 1959, he made inspector, the forerunning title to deputy chief. Thrown into this career mix was Short’s activism in the Houston Police Officers Association as a supporter of the successful movement to put officers under state civil service laws. Like other officers, Short wanted to be free of the politics that filled police jobs “without much regard for capability or the best man for the best job.” As a captain, Short hob-knobbed with some of those P C H B. S, O , – D , (L T C HPD H) (HPD A) [54.144.233.198] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:17 GMT) Herman B. Short 193 politicians, serving on the HPOA’s City Hall Committee, always one of the most influential groups in city politics.5 Short spent four years in Patrol before serving as detective, lieutenant and captain at various points in the Burglary and Theft and Robbery divisions. He also was burglary and theft investigations instructor at the Police Academy . When he made chief, he was serving as the inspector in charge of the technical services bureau. Herman Short ran the police department; Louie Welch didn’t. Short confirmed as much on June 22, 1976—two and a half years after retiring as chief—in an oral history interview with a Houston Public Library historian. Short said he and Welch had...