Houston Blue: The Story of the Houston Police Department

19. The Successor

219 19 The Successor T he man succeeding the legendary Herman Short as police chief of Houston found it impossible to fill the larger-than-life shoes. One particularly clever HPD soldier said, “You could have chosen Dick Tracy and it wouldn’t have worked.”1 “The man Short elected mayor” picked a flawed successor ill-prepared for the big job on the third floor of 61 Riesner. Mayor Fred Hofheinz was a social liberal whose friends in the department were a few reliable old hands he got to know when his father Roy Hofheinz served two years as mayor in 1954 and 1955 between Oscar Holcombe terms. The second Mayor Hofheinz sincerely wanted to see positive changes in HPD, getting out of the Short school of hiring and moving away from the tough-country-boy approach to policing the growing minority community. To find the person he thought could create these changes, Hofheinz selected three men to screen any candidate they thought would fit the profile in philosophy and temperament. They were retired Inspectors Buddy McGill and C. D. Taylor and current HPD Lieutenant Joe Singleton. Singleton had chauffeured Hofheinz to campaign speaking events and served as his bodyguard . The new mayor felt none of the three men was interested in the job and all could ably screen possible choices.2 The empowered triumvirate brought forth the name of Carrol Lynn, who started with three strikes against him. If a modern-day Dick Tracy couldn’t ably succeed Herman Short, a captain who had worked under the inspectors his appointment bypassed surely couldn’t. To make matters more difficult, Lynn didn’t socialize within the department, preferring to go home to a wife and family. Unlike Short, he never played any significant role with the Houston Police Officers Association and wasn’t a street cop. The new chief’s efforts to make changes weren’t well received. He served eighteen months and never got the full support of the men he was promoted over. He formed SWAT and succeeded in seeing the promotion of the first 220 Houston Blue two black sergeants in the department’s history; he also took baby steps toward better communications with the African-American and Hispanic communities and oversaw the hiring of more policewomen. These strides weren’t enough to make persons of color forget Short, the TSU confrontation and other race-related episodes. But they got HPD headed in a more inclusive direction. Lynn’s lack of support from the inspectors made him appear indecisive , and the normal course of human policing dropped him into a fire of controversy. Carrol Lynn was living proof that if you were a good test taker with the right mentor, you could go all the way to the top. Lynn was a carpenter’s son born in a log cabin outside of Pottor, Arkansas, during the Great Depression. He volunteered for the U.S. Air Force and served in the Korean Conflict before joining his father and mother in Houston, where the economy was far better than in rural Arkansas and the demand for master carpenters was far greater. When the radio said you could make three hundred dollars a month as a Houston officer, Lynn applied and graduated the academy in the fall of 1956. He felt it was a temporary job since he really wanted to be a lawyer.3 After spending duties on a three-wheeler and on patrol his first twentyseven months as an officer, Lynn received a call from the lieutenant at the P C C L, J , –J ,  (HPD A) The Successor 221 training academy asking if he would come over temporarily to help conduct personnel investigations of the latest applicants. Little did the lieutenant realize at the time that this move would aim Lynn in the direction of the chief’s office . The lieutenant was C. D. Taylor. Lynn liked working under Taylor, and it wasn’t long before his temporary assignment became permanent. He picked up the fact that Taylor felt HPD needed more African-American and female officers at a time when many in the department felt differently, a lingering Herman Short legacy. Blacks frequently washed out of the academy, while the 5-foot-10 height requirement still prevented most Hispanic entries. The trend reflected recruiting requirements of the times in most departments in the nation: a police officer needed to be big enough to stop...