AADL Talks to Doug Harvey

Tue, 06/26/2012 - 1:58pm

In this episode, former Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey shares his memories of the turbulent 1960s in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. He recalls some of the personal, political, and law enforcement challenges he encountered during his years as sheriff - from the 1966 UFO sightings and the South University Riots, to the Coed murders and the John Norman Collins case. He also responds to some of the controversy surrounding his reputation and he speaks candidly about the community leaders and colleagues he admired during these years - and those he did not.

Transcript

[00:00:07.23] AMY: Hi, this is Amy.
[00:00:08.36] ANDREW: And this is Andrew. And in this episode, AADL talks to Doug Harvey.
[00:00:15.58] AMY: In this episode former Washtenaw County Sheriff Doug Harvey shares his memories of the turbulent 1960s in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Harvey recalls the many personal, political, and law enforcement challenges he encountered during his years as Sheriff, from the UFO sightings in 1966 and the South University Riots, to the Co-Ed Murders and the John Norman Collins case. He also responds to some of the criticism surrounding his reputation, and speaks candidly about the community leaders and colleagues he admired during these years, and those who did not.
[00:00:46.55] DOUG HARVEY: We'll never go through an era again like we did in the '60s, never in Washtenaw County. I can recall that we were on national television. My friends were in California said, I seen you on television on the Cronkite show. And I used to think, when I'd come to work and, a lot of times I would stay right at the jail, I'd come to work and here it'd be Channel 4, 2, and 7.
[00:01:13.43] So it was just a real turmoil. And I happened to see, there was a movie yesterday, The Boston Strangler, and I was watching that. And he strangled ten women. And they called in Peter Hurkos, as did Ann Arbor Police Chief, called in Peter Hurkos. Anyway, when Peter Hurkos come there, I was not a believer. Please believe me, I was-- we're going to solve this case with good old-fashioned police work, not with some psychic saying, I see this happening.
[00:01:55.60] Anyway, they brought him to the scene here on River Drive. And I can't remember what victim it was, but anyway. We had stationed people around, with the prosecutor's authority and with the theory that a murderer always comes back to scene, OK?
[00:02:16.79] Unfortunately my poor men were in the woods and stationed around. And there was mosquitoes and they were just being eaten alive, them poor guys. And then finally one of them shouted, I think he's here. And somebody ran and I don't know if they did that just to get the devil out of there, saying this is not working. No, so I'll never know. But anyway, the Chief brought Peter Hurkos to that scene. And he said this is Peter Hurkos, introduced him and so on. I says, OK. He wants to go down and examine the scene where the body was laying. I said he can't go down there now, we got State Police Crime Lab in here. So when all the investigation is done, we're all through with the scene, let him do what he wants.
[00:03:06.98] So I watched him. I got down. And he went down and he put his hand like this. And he just kept going like this where the body was laying. And I'm sitting there saying, oh my god, what a show this.
[00:03:20.16] That night he held a press conference. I did not go, wouldn't go. There was no question, I wasn't going. Channel 4 and them were all there, and he told them, "I see a young man who will have foreign money in his wallet. He was not born in this country." Now these are supposed to be clues, OK? "And I see a homemade ladder."
[00:03:52.73] Wow, I thought to myself, that's really weird. I mean, what's that going to do with us? When we arrested John Norman Collins, he had five Canadian dollars in his wallet. He was born in Canada. And the house that he was babysitting for his uncle-- who was a Michigan State Trooper if you remember-- when we went down to that basement, up against the wall was a homemade ladder.
[00:04:21.06] But, at the time you can understand my theory, I got detectives, state police and everything. And all of us got together and says, what do you make of it? And I says nothing, absolutely nothing. What are we going to go out and look for a young man with foreign money in his wallet and not born here in the country? And look for a homemade ladder? But it was just very odd.
[00:04:46.06] And then, of course, as you know Mr. Ralph Keyes came here and wrote The Michigan Murders. And I don't know if you read that book or not but Mr. Keyes also wrote The French Connection. And when he came here, he had me on the phone from New York at one time for over 3 and 1/2 hours on the phone. On the phone, you know? And he really glamorized that story. And there's a couple things in there that he put in that I said, but I really didn't say that. My grandchildren are reading this book. Grandpa did you really say this? No, I really didn't.
[00:05:28.80] AMY: What were they? What were the things?
[00:05:29.84] DOUG HARVEY: Well, it said regarding Peter Hurkos that I would not urinate in his ear if his brains were on fire. I never said anything like that in my life you know that. I used a lot of foul language at various times but I never said anything like that. But again, he just blew a lot of things up. And he did a pretty good job on it as far as the actual scene and so on, so he did a lot of research. But he had to glorify it like they did The French Connection, he did something. And then of course when he came here he was on the-- he told me when he left, "When the book comes out, I will make sure you get an autographed copy." I said I would really appreciate that.
[00:06:19.15] And he was on The Ted Heusel Show and we were talking, people were calling in, so I called in. I said, "Mr. Keyes," and of course Ted Heusel recognizes my voice right away. He said, "well this is Sheriff Harvey." I said "where's my book?" And he says, "I am going to give it to you personally, tomorrow." And he did.
[00:06:40.27] The turmoil that we had during the '60s was just unreal, it was just unreal. We had the welfare mothers, we had the Vietnam War protesters, we had the Michigan Murders, and then we had the campus riots. And all that going on daily. It was always something, daily. We got a call over at Eastern Michigan, which was normally a quiet university. And we got over there, and at that time Mr. Sponberg was the president. What a fabulous guy he was. He was just a dynamic individual, I really liked him. He was just my kind of people.
[00:07:29.04] And when we got over there, the students had barricaded themselves in one of the buildings. Chained it, barricaded themselves. And Sponberg met me as I come over there. And I says what you would like to do, Mr. Sponberg? He says you're the Sheriff, that's my building, get them out there. And we did.
[00:07:51.02] And the same thing happened when we had some protesters on his campus and they were having a big meeting. In fact, Humphrey was here. That's what it was. And I had to go in the backstage and the president was there. And I said, psss, psss, like this. He came out and I said you got a big ado going on on your campus. He says, are they my students? I said, I don't know. I said there's some U of M. He said them U of M students, arrest them. The other ones, get their names because they're all through with this school. And he meant it. He was-- [LAUGHTER]
[00:08:27.33] AMY: You felt differently about Robben Fleming, right? Can you talk a little about the conflict with Robben Fleming?
[00:08:31.80] DOUG HARVEY: Oh yes. I didn't like him. Plain and simple. I thought he was a jerk. Robben Fleming was never for law enforcement, several times we had a clash. Where the students took over the building and here we lined up and he made a comment, "I don't want the brown shirts on my campus." Made that comment several times. And I informed him, this is still Washtenaw County and that we will do as we see fit in order to maintain the peace and tranquility. And one particular scene was on East U, when students were really coming. And we had, at that time, we had Oakland County Sheriff Department, we had Livingston County Sheriff Department, we had the Michigan State Police, but we were leading basically the surge as far as moving the students down. So they were breaking windows and they were doing things in the streets and so on. And Fleming met us right there where all the streets are, I forget.
[00:09:39.20] But anyway, Bill Delhey was there, with the prosecutor. Chief Walt Krasny was there and I was there. And Mr. Fleming says, "if you people would stop pushing, I will get my students out of here. And especially you." And he pointed at me. And I said to him, in uncertain words, I said to him, "Mr. Fleming, one more rock, one more brick comes towards my men, and I'll clean them up myself."
[00:10:12.23] No sooner said that, and here come the bricks. So, I mean, they were really coming. And some of my men talk about this and they laugh. Because as we were going down East U, I was in front of them, my men basically. My arm was broken, and I had a tear gas gun in my hand. And you could just uncock it easy. And I had a deputy there, I said so we're going to tear gas bomb. Well, we didn't want any lights. We told the television cameras, keep them cameras off us, we don't want all these lights on us, and we don't want us that vulnerable. And I told my deputy put a hand grenade in there, with tear gas. And he threw in a parachute hand grenade, so on I shot it up in the air, it lit the whole sky up. Oh my God, talk about dumb cops. We tell them television cameras don't do this, and he says oh gee sheriff, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So we had some humorous things after we got through and got through talking about some of the things that we did.
[00:11:33.19] And there was just some trying times. Then the other times when they came down Huron Street, right in front of the police department. And we had state police and everybody else down there. State Police were in the basement, they were political. If you need us, call. OK? So our men in the Ann Arbor Police lined the whole thing. And they were parading, they came around by the Ann Arbor News at that time and they start coming down. And there was probably 5,000, it didn't take much to get them riled up. And they were already riled because they'd already come down from the campus and they already did there destruction up there.
[00:12:22.24] And they were coming down, they were going down. What they were planned was to come down Huron Street and then go right up Main Street, cause more destruction. So our plan was, we're going to stop them. They are not going to go any further. And so I had given the order that, as soon as they made that turn to start coming down, start going up. Start breaking that crowd up.
[00:12:47.20] And we were going after these individuals, and grabbing them, and trying to put them in the bus and so on. So they were starting to spread out because we were making our move. One of my deputies came up to me, he says Sheriff, with all the commotion I lost my gun. I said, you lost your gun? What? I had it unstrapped, he said, on my holster. Fighting with these guys, my gun come out. I said oh my God, I hope nobody get-- And luckily we just happened to be looking around and right on the middle of the street, there that gun lay. And here were all these people.
[00:13:22.81] You remember the cleaners, it was across the street from the Ann Arbor Fire Department? There was a cleaners there. And there was an alley, but a dead end. A bunch of them ran into that alley. When they got there, I says oh my god, there's a brick wall. There's nowhere they could go. So we sealed them off, we had them contained right away. And of course the crowd busted up. So we were lucky, we got out of that one fairly lucky.
[00:13:54.12] It was just a different era. And I was a young aggressive police officer. And there was just no way they were going to run our county. And sometimes I look back, could it've been done another way? I don't know. You look at hindsight, you look back and say oh gee, could we have done something different? How could we have prevented this? There was no way. State police, they did same thing. No way we're going to prevent-- and we had documentation from a group of radicals that were in Berkeley that were also here at the U of M stirring them up. That same group, and we had a photographer that saw them, was also at Eastern Michigan.
[00:14:38.77] I guess a humorous part, too-- when Eastern Michigan, they were a whole bunch, during the day. They were really starting to gather, OK? And they were of coming up a cross street, not causing any destruction, just gathering. Just blocking the whole street, and so on. So we wanted to really see if that group from Berkeley, or any of the other were in that.
[00:15:00.47] So I had my photographer Harold Kerr, a detective, in the backseat of my car. And I had my under-sheriff with me, and we were going down slowly. And I wanted him to take pictures, film, movie film, OK? Also video. And he's taking these pictures-- and I probably shouldn't say, but one of the humorous parts, OK? And evidently he spotted a young woman who was well-endowed, he made a comment about how endowed she was. That night, I took the film to the Board of Regents of Eastern Michigan, not knowing what was-- And we're playing the film and oh my God, that come out and they all bust out laughing. And I was so embarrassed. He zoomed right in on her.
[00:16:01.44] AMY: You started in 1965, and the SDS, the Students For a Democratic Society were already on campus, and a couple years later were the Detroit Riots, and then some of the folks, the White Panthers came to Ann Arbor. Were you are aware in '65 that Ann Arbor was sort of a hotbed of counterculturalism, and was that something that you talked about in the Sheriff's Office?
[00:16:23.80] DOUG HARVEY: Yes, yes we knew it because of the University. And that's why we know this was a hotbed here. Like I say, we had the riots in Detroit, and the sheriff called me up and he says, I need some help, they Wayne County Sheriff. "I want to bring some prisoners up there and put them in your jail," he said, "because we got them at the field house, at the state fairgrounds." And he says, "we got some going to Jackson Prison, they're going to house some for us." And I says "gee, I've got a small jail." And I said, "how many you planning on bringing?" He says 100. I says, "Oh no, I cannot take 100." He says, "well, can you take a bus load? That's 55." I says "OK, we'll accept that, bring 55."
[00:17:17.72] And when they came over, those prisoners on that bus all the way from the fairgrounds, had to ride like this. And there was a deputy in front with a shotgun, and a deputy in the back with a shotgun. Because I mean these were rioters, and the majority were black, naturally. And when we got them to the jail, they smelled. They were terrible, because they hadn't bathed in days and they were sitting on the cold ground. And you know where the state fairgrounds are? That's dirt in there, that's where they were housed.
[00:17:51.41] So as soon as we got up there, I put them in one of our big cells which normally would hold 20, OK? So we put them in there and we gave them soap and so on. Hey, let's shower up and clean up. And we gave them a prison garb. And I told them, let them get cleaned up, and so on. As fate would have it, the next day I called Booker Williams who was a Black prosecutor, if you remember, at that time. And I called the mayor of Ann Arbor and got him there, because I knew there was going to be a big blast about how we were treating-- and I said I want them three to come here and I want them to go through the jail and show them how we treated these individuals. Because we knew we was going to get a black eye for it, just sure as---
[00:18:38.46] I called them, told them to meet us for example, at 10 o'clock and they said OK. In the meantime, my captain came downstairs and he says, "Sheriff, we've got a problem." And I says, what? He says, well those Detroit prisoners-- I said, "are they raising the devil?" And he says, "no, one's dead." And I says, "you got to be kiddin'" He says no. Went up to that cell block and he was on the table. And, just ice cold. No pulse, no nothing. And he was dead.
[00:19:08.70] So we had to call the coroner in right away. And what it was, he died of pneumonia which he had contacted from that-- But, can you imagine, I mean here I'm trying to show them how we got these guys all cleaned up, and I gave them toothpaste and all that good things. And the one's then passed away. So that was a trying time, that was a scary time that those things happened. So I call the sheriff and said, get these guys out of here. You brought them here, you come out and get them, get them into court and so on.
[00:19:43.24] ANDREW: Was there any fear during the Detroit Riots that it would spread or that it would spark something further out?
[00:19:48.99] DOUG HARVEY: Yes. We were on 24-hour alert, primarily. I had a tactical mobile unit that we adapted after Oakland County, and these men were specially trained in riots. And there wasn't a single deputy who was on that squad, a squad of 18, it was under six foot. And they wore special uniforms, OK? It was blue, tactical mobile unit, on the side and they were on a 24-hour alert. And a lot of times, we had the guy stay right there at the jail because you could just feel the tension. You just knew it was going to go on, and just praying like the devil that it didn't spread to the Ann Arbor area.
[00:20:34.28] Some of the blacks on Ann Street got a little rambunctious, OK? But nothing that really got carried away. Ann Arbor Police handled that pretty good. They came in there and kind of squashed that before it really got started. They came down in front of the jail with a group, just hollering and shouting and not doing much of anything. And this is when we had Oakland County come in, and they come in and park their cars in front of the jail. And they all got out, in their black uniforms, and they got out in regimental with their shotguns. And here's a group of black across the street, and they're shouting and so on. And then I'm watching this, and this sergeant says lock and load. [GUN NOISE] Oh! Scared me!
[00:21:25.75] But then all of a sudden everybody just left. No interference or nothing. So that worked out. Power. It showed the strength, and I think that kind of squashed it. We were all pretty much aware that something might-- hopefully not.
[00:21:46.04] AMY: The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover felt that John Sinclair and the White Panthers were a serious threat. And I'm just curious, did you agree then, and then do you agree now? How do you feel about that now?
[00:21:57.58] DOUG HARVEY: Now I don't think so. They were mostly talk, really. And John Sinclair-- that's when marijuana, and in those-- boy, you smoke marijuana, you're going to jail. I mean boom, boom. And he got nailed for, I think, two cigarettes. And he got two years in prison. God, you wouldn't even hear about it today. He writes you a ticket and you pay a fine. And he was profiled, there was no question about it. But they made a lot of noise, but I really didn't have-- we were constantly aware of them. And keeping close eye on them. Of course Ann Arbor Police had undercover people working with them, and in that group. So we really had some real good tabs on them. And just mostly talk, about all they ever did.
[00:22:53.65] And today they would be not worth worrying about, really. I don't think, anyway. It's just a group of radicals that try to get together and try to do some things. They were for the marijuana, and they were for free love and all that kind of stuff.
[00:23:12.90] ANDREW: Was there a need during this time for increased cooperation between the different law enforcement bodies, to figure out new ways that you would work together and coordinate in order to keep everything peaceful?
[00:23:27.63] DOUG HARVEY: Yes. And I hope I'm answering it right. But I got great cooperation, from Livingston County, Oakland County-- Oakland County was the best. When I called for their help, my God they sent us, I think it was eight squad cars full of people and a big truck. And they sent me something like 35 to 40 men. Boy, when you call for that kind of help-- Livingston County says I can send you two deputies. OK, that's two more than we got in some of the smaller departments.
[00:24:01.48] And we had the departments, Ann Arbor Police, the cooperation was great. State Police was great. It was really great. But they were political, and they were told don't get involved in it unless they absolutely are needed. They did not get involved on the crowd up on East U. Parked their cars all up and down Washtenaw Avenue. Bunch of police cars, but no presence of them. I mean they were there if we needed them. But I already had Oakland County, I had Monroe County sent me something like 20, 25 deputies.
[00:24:42.00] So the cooperation was great, when you look back and see all the counties that cooperated. And basically we had a command post but I was sitting there being in command of all these units. So it was really a coordinated effort. And I really was kind of proud to think that we could muster that many people, and trained officers.
[00:25:05.85] Then you've got some that get carried away, and you're sitting there trying to watch 200 men, you can't do it. And especially with-- I heard some group of guys said that they were sitting on their porch, off in the area, and some of these deputies come by threw some tear gas at them. Whether it was true or not, I don't know. But again, I try to find out who these deputies were. Well, Monroe County was down in that area, that was their assigned area. OK, so it was just an unfortunate-- whether it was true or not, I don't know-- but there was some unfortunate incidents where some of your deputies.
[00:25:44.99] And some of them would get-- how would you word it? Over-exuberant. "I'm a police officer, I'm a veteran"-- I always try to instruct in my men, don't ever let that badge do your talking. Represent yourself as a law enforcement officer. How you would want to be treated if you were on the other side of that guy.
[00:26:09.44] And, didn't reach all of them. There was a lot of times I had to take some disciplinary action against deputies who I found out-- For example, there was one deputy, he was going to Ypsilanti in a patrol car, full uniform broad daylight. Huron Street Campus and several students are up there shouted, hey pig. He heard it. It was a nice afternoon. He stopped a patrol car, grabbed two of them by the back of the neck, threw them on the back of the trunk and roughed them up. Didn't arrest them, roughed them up. And then said, don't you ever call me a pig again. Naturally that phone of mine rang, and I said oh my god.
[00:26:55.11] So, right away I knew who the deputy was. I just knew who it was. And I says, bring him in. So he come in, and I said did this happen? He said, yup it did. He said, "I just couldn't take anymore of it." An experienced law enforcement officer, this officer came from the Ann Arbor Police Department, came on to my department, so he had years of experience.
[00:27:16.64] And I said, "do you realize what you did? He said, "Yes, I do." I said, "I've got to take disciplinary action against you, you know that?" And he said, "yup, and I'm willing to take it." So I says, "OK, I'm going to suspend you for two weeks without pay." He says, "You know, I got a cabin up north. Good time to go up and do some work"
[00:27:35.96] I didn't reach him, other than he lost pay for two weeks. But he didn't ever do that kind of situation again. I think he put on a big show, and really was-- I said why didn't you arrest them for disorderly person or [INAUDIBLE] rather than just rough them up? And, after I get roughed up you, they'll sew you back and say goodbye. And I'm going to dispatch situation. But we didn't have many situations like that, that I could ever remember, that I've got involved in.
[00:28:05.41] ANDREW: Well, that actually makes me kind of wonder about how the attitudes of the men in your department changed over the period of time that you were the Sheriff. Did you see as your men would get increasingly frustrated with how things were going and how they were regarded by particularly the younger generation, or did you have young officers coming in who were sympathetic to some of the beliefs of the countercultural people were starting a lot of the things that you we're dealing with?
[00:28:33.71] DOUG HARVEY: No. To answer your question. For example, up on University, when we were up there, we stood in a line, by the quad building there, standing there in line. And I told my men don't make any action, the Ann Arbor Police are handling this right now. We have some lock-ins and so on. And these students were gone by and calling them pigs, spitting at my officers and they were told not to move. That hurt. And a lot of the boys really took offense to that. And it's something hard to see. Boy, I remember when you did that. I remember you doing that to me. And sheriff, when can we move? How much are we to take? And then pretty soon I said, I'm going to take you guys out of here. We're not going to continuing taking this abuse unless the Ann Arbor Police wanted us to be in there. And the Ann Arbor Police said, no we got it under control. So I immediately took my men and we left.
[00:29:29.40] The attitude, it hung on for quite a while. But then after things settled down and we got back to our normal, everyday police work-- but then we had the Michigan Murders going on. These guys were working tremendous hours. And then we had our governor at that time says, well, we're going to send in the state police because you can't solve the crime. We already had state police in there. I had already called for help. Hey, I need some help here. I need your investigative experience. I need the state police crime lab because we weren't capable of doing the things that the State police crime lab was capable of doing.
[00:30:11.33] So he just have a big grandstand for that. That was Milliken, I'll never forget him. But anyway, so we was under a tremendous lot of strain. All of them were. Working over hours, our overtime was killing us. It was hard to keep these guys, keep them down to what regular police work. And so on.
[00:30:37.90] And I think they did a pretty good job. Yea, I could see the attitudes changing. And to try to keep them in toe was a difficult job, very definitely. And I may have gotten you to settle down, but her I couldn't. And then the next day you would go on. And it was just one of these things that would happen. The guys would talk, I could hear them talking in the squad room and so on. And I'd go down and talk to him and I could hear, how much abuse are we to take?
[00:31:10.04] AMY: You had some differences of opinion with Ann Arbor Police Chief Krasny, can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:31:16.96] DOUG HARVEY: No, Walt and I got along famously. Oh yeah, I loved Walt Krasny. Walt Krasny gave me my driver's license when I was 14 years old. Now I'm telling you, 14 years old and patrolman Walt Krasny gave me my road test. If you can imagine a kid 14 years old getting his license-- now you've got to be 16-- 14 years old, drive my dad's '40 Ford, straight stick, OK? And here's a uniformed policeman sitting over there with the badge and the gun on. You've got a straight stick. Going up by the high school, going up on Huron Street and State. I'll never forget it, the light turned red and I stopped, nervous, scared to death. And the light turned green and I left out that clutch and [CAR NOISES] this is sure I failed. No, Walt Krasny and I had a good working relationship. Walt, if you remember, was governed by the Council. A lot of things Walt Krasny couldn't do. I mean, he's a true policeman, believe me, and a graduate of the FBI Academy. And I have a lot of respect for Walt Krasny.
[00:32:29.00] And yet his hands were tied on numerous occasions. And that's when between him and I, behind closed doors, he says, "remember Doug, you're the Sheriff. And you have control of this whole county, including the city of Ann Arbor." He says keep that in mind.
[00:32:49.65] I knew what he was saying, I can't do this right now. I've got to back up, pour a little water on it where I could. For example, when they sat at the county building. Ann Arbor Police came down there, and Walt says, "I can't help you." He says, "that's county property, you got to take care of it." I says, OK. They were students, so we thought maybe the Ann Arbor Police should come down. Well, they came down with their cameras and so on, but made no arrests. So we had to make all the arrests in the county building.
[00:33:23.79] And there was a situation there where they were sitting in the hall. And Judge Breakey was there at that time, and Judge Breakey said, I want them out of my hallways. I want them out. So we start dragging them out there.
[00:33:36.50] Now my deputies, at that time, were using a lot of vigilance. They were two on this arm, and two on the leg, using four deputies, carrying one at a time. And I got up there, and I said stop that. You're not going to treat them like your babies. I said drag them out of there, by their feet if they won't stand up and walk out. And they weren't. They were gonna sit right there.
[00:33:57.83] Well, they were on the second floor. And if you remember, them steps going down were cement. Now, once they hit about the second or third cement, they said stop, we'll walk. They stopped it. So, that ended that. We were able to get everybody out of there. And that was, when I seen them carrying them, I said no, we're not going to do that.
[00:34:17.14] I pulled them off, and the deputies loved that. You don't grab their foot. But that was [INAUDIBLE]. Nobody got hurt. It's just their feelings got hurt, and their back got hurt but other than that, no.
[00:34:31.30] No, I don't think Walt and I never had any disagreements that I could ever recall. I really can't. I don't whatever came from because the cooperation we got-- when I would have a departmental meeting, I would want all my men at the departmental meeting. Well, it's kind of hard when you've got three shifts going. And so I asked Walt, could you patrol the county for me, deputize your men in our cars, because their radio was with our radio anyway, and while I have a meeting. He says, yeah.
[00:35:04.64] And the Ann Arbor Police loved it. Get to go outside the county, go outside the city of Ann Arbor, to be a County Sheriff. So those things were that we did together.
[00:35:17.84] ANDREW: Your department and your reputation was also used by the Ann Arbor Police and other police forces as a threat at times. You were, I read somewhere about at West Park they said to them, do you want us to call the Sheriff? And that calmed them right down.
[00:35:36.99] DOUG HARVEY: Oh, I never heard that.
[00:35:38.29] ANDREW: Oh yeah?
[00:35:38.79] DOUG HARVEY: No, I never heard that.
[00:35:39.83] ANDREW: Yeah, I read that somewhere.
[00:35:40.65] DOUG HARVEY: I like it, but I never-- [LAUGHS] This is like I say, we had lot of the groups that were meeting. And they met with the Ann Arbor Police on numerous occasions. We're going to have an group meet, it's going to be peaceful and so on, some of them may get carried away. Now, they met with the Ann Arbor Police and told them this. But please, don't call the Sheriff. We want just you guys, you know, we just want you guys there.
[00:36:14.34] That's when Krasny said, "I can't guarantee this, OK? As long as you keep it peaceful and we can handle this and contain it, and so on, we will go along with this. But once it gets carried away, and if he moves"-- meaning me-- "I have no control over him. Nor can I stop him." And that was the same thing that the prosecutor told Fleming. Fleming made his comment up there, and the prosecutor says, "he is the Sheriff, the chief law enforcement officer of this county. And he acts on his own authority."
[00:36:48.61] ANDREW: Over the course of the '60s, did you ever feel like you were losing the support of the people of the county? Or is it just that the vocal minority who didn't like what you were doing were getting louder?
[00:36:59.15] DOUG HARVEY: No, I thought I had strong support of the company and let me tell why. When I was invited-- and I was a Democrat, as you know. First Democrat to be elected Washtenaw County's history. And I was the second youngest Sheriff in the State of Michigan, like 32 years old, and former police officer of Ypsi. But I was invited to the Jack Daniels Supper Republican dinner.
[00:37:35.24] Now, when this certain individual asked me to come to the dinner, I says, "well, that's all Republicans." He says,"we really want you there." I got a standing ovation when I went there. That to me says, oh my gosh. Politics be darned. Yeah, the support I had at the county was just great.
[00:37:58.28] But I think it just got the betterment of me, I was young. And to the point where I was getting some advice from people, getting bad advice. For example, my second term, changing parties? OK? Because Democratic the Democratic Party in Ann Arbor-- somewhat radical, OK? And the Democratic Party in Ypsilanti, poof. Completely different. Put them in jail, lock them up, and so on. Ann Arbor, no, no let's don't do this.
[00:38:35.78] Why are your men wearing helmets? We think that's offensive. Democratic Party in Ann Arbor. I said, because of safety. We had roll bars put in there and they had helmets put on for the officers' safety. Well, they didn't want that.
[00:38:51.17] Then they didn't want the jail where we had housed prisoners that you couldn't control, which we called, at that time, it was the hole. And it was a bad-- but we didn't have any place else to put these people, who were such that we had no control over them. We couldn't put them in a cell, because of injuring themselves and so on.
[00:39:16.49] And one guy-- and I keep getting to myself we need to get away from that but. One guy, we couldn't control him at all. He was just a bad actor. So we put a straitjacket on him and we put them in there. And I said,"now this will calm you down." I did this, OK? I said, "this will calm you down." I personally put that jacket on him. "You get out of that jacket, and I'll let you out of there." We put him in that hole.
[00:39:48.88] We start going up the steps, and we heard [KNOCKING] on the cell door. I says, can't be. Went back down there, opened that cell block and he hand me the straitjacket. Honest to god. I says, oh boy, you're really trying my patience now So, this guy was a real mental, and at that time we had a hard time getting them out to the Ypsi State Hospital.
[00:40:17.19] We had a big black fella, [? Alex Poughton. ?] He was six foot six, 240 pounds. Big. And he would go really bonkers, so we put them in the-- we called it a metal cell, it was wire caged and so on. It only housed one person. We put them in there hoping to calm him down. And he had worked that metal cage, he had worked a piece of that metal off. Had it in his hand.
[00:40:50.63] Now, the next day we're going to transport him to the Ypsi State Hospital, we finally got the OK. So my captain come up, and he says, "you better give us some help, because this is a big man and he ain't going peacefully." So we had three deputies and myself, and I said I know Alex real well, let me talk to him, OK?
[00:41:10.29] And there's a opening in the hole where you pass the food and so on. So I got down there and I had a pair of handcuffs sitting in my pocket, had my shirt on, shirt and tie. "Alex," I said, "look I'm going to take you to the hospital." I says, "give me your hand, let's shake hands on it." "OK Sheriff," he said, and he put that big 'ole paw out there, and I mean man it was coming at me like this. And when he did, I slapped that handcuff on him. And then I grabbed the other cuff, and I said, "OK open the door. "
[00:41:42.84] Boy, when they opened that door, he come out with his other hand he slashed my shirt right there with that piece of wire. Them guys finally grabbed him. Now, it took five of us to get him down and to put cuffs on him and cuff his feet and so on. And my deputies took him to the state hospital. And when we got there they said, OK take the stuff off. He says, "hey, it took five of us to put him in this thing, you give him a shot first."
[00:42:08.23] So these are some of the things that we had to go through. And I had to agree with them, you know? But what was I to do? I was in a position where I had a bad actor prisoner and I had no other conveniences. None whatsoever. What to do with them? We didn't keep them in there for a long because the majority of the people would just calm right down. So we had fights and that.
[00:42:29.31] So then I got some people telling me well, you know you ought to change parties. Get rid of that Democratic Party because they're just not doing you any favors, and so on. And I said OK. Because I was the biggest vote-getter in the county. I was bigger than anybody. I thought, well heck if I change people are going to do this. They're not. People are used to the two-party system.
[00:42:57.16] No matter what you say or what you do or how strong you are. I know it now, after the years. They are not going to look in an independent or write-in or anything like that. This is why they can't get that many parties. And they're going to go. And I had many people tell me, hey I'm a Republican but I switched for you. It just didn't work. It which was just a bad deal. I was kind of relieved at the time because I was really getting to my point where I was getting wore out. It really was. So that was the end of that story.
[00:43:38.15] ANDREW: The Democratic candidate in 1972 was your under-sheriff, Harold Owings. Did you have a difference of opinion with Harold Owings? What made him decide to run against you?
[00:43:50.15] DOUG HARVEY: Let me tell you, Harold Owings was-- and I tell them to this day-- was a rat. I never knew this. And everybody kept trying to tell me, you've got the wrong man in there. He's stabbing you in the back. I couldn't believe it, not my second in command. No way in the world. So we had a meeting, and I says, "Harold, I got an idea. Why don't you run for Sheriff. And then you run in the Republican Party and I'll run in the Democratic Party. Irregardless of which one of us get elected, the other one will be the under-sheriff." He says, good idea. He says, we'll do that. I says, "that way we can keep our same regime going, we can keep this thing intact and we don't have to change anything."
[00:44:32.90] Because, as soon as you change Sheriffs, things change. The personnel change, the attitudes change. And it did when I first took office, too. And I made some real basic changes, I had to, right away. But anyway, then I had one of my men who did it on his own. He went to Eastern Michigan where Harold Owings gave a speech to the young students down there.
[00:44:59.91] And one of the questions was, one of the students raised her hand and said, " what are you going to do with Harvey? Are you going to keep him?" And he said, under no condition am I ever going to keep that man. It got back to me right away. And I was home sick at the time. I remember this, and I get on the phone and I told Harold, come out to the house. In the meantime I told my captain, you bring him out.
[00:45:26.72] So he come out to my house. And I says, "you're fired." I says, "you're a rat. Why did you turn against me?" "I didn't do that." I said, "Harold, yes you did." And so then on, he just-- it was never found out. And it seemed like every under-sheriff that I had wanted to be Sheriff. They wanted that second spot.
[00:45:53.60] The first guy I had, I took [? Don Bobo, ?] who was an ex-state trooper. And Don didn't have no animosity or anything, but he wan't really well. And Don only lasted about six months. Then he said, "Doug I gotta go. I can't--" He was my real true, trustworthy, under-sheriff, as you can imagine, a second-in-command.
[00:46:22.33] And so I appointed a good friend of mine, a man that I worked for when I a deputy. He was a Sergeant. Clare Laferier made him my under-sheriff. And Lo and behold, after a year in there or whatever, he turned against me too. Because he kept telling one of my deputies-- I think it was at a funeral, one of my deputies had gotten killed. And he made the comment to some of the people that I'm the one that set up this thing. And Harvey can't never do things like this, in other words really knocking me down.
[00:46:59.99] So I call him into my office, and I said, "did you say these things?" And he says, "well, give me a chance to resign." I said, "OK, you resign now. Effective immediately." He wanted to be Sheriff. Come from Sergeant to an under-sheriff. Boy, boom. From Sergeant to captain and then to under-sheriff. Then the next guy, same thing. I kept thinking, "what do these guys want? You want the seat so bad, go ahead and run for it." But you always want to have your second-in-command as a trustworthy individual.
[00:47:39.91] ANDREW: Looking just at your career, as the Sheriff you have to deal with the politics on all the different levels. You have to deal with the press. You have to deal with all kinds of different people in the community. I've got to ask, "why would anyone ever want to be Sheriff?"
[00:47:55.65] DOUG HARVEY: I don't know. [LAUGHS] I wish I could tell you. That's true. Because you're in a hell of a spot, you really are. You've got the politics, you got the parties-- the Republican Party, the Democratic Party. You've got the press. When we had the Michigan Murders, boy the Detroit Free Press hammered us. Oh boy. We were keystone cops, and one thing after another.
[00:48:22.57] So when I would have a press conference, I barred the Free Press. Oh boy, that made them mad. I mean, they came to the jail and I had the Ann Arbor News in there and we had all the rest of them. And here's the two guys from the Free Press. And my deputy was at our door in my office. He says, you can't go in, it's full. He says, "well we're the Free Press." He says, "you especially, you can't go in."
[00:48:47.48] And so one guy says, "you can't do that." And I said, "I just did." I got a lot of flack [LAUGHS] but I did things my way. I made a statement that I was probably the worst politician in the world but the best Sheriff. And politics, I didn't play. I wouldn't play politics because in the old days, when I was a deputy, if you arrested somebody-- for example they arrested you and you were a good friend Sheriff Peterson. You didn't go to jail. I had to release you.
[00:49:27.24] And I remember an incident when my deputy and I, Tom Hill, we arrested of this Frank DePalma. He owned, at that time, a dairy, over in Ypsilanti. Big contributor to Peterson. Drunk. He had called us at this bar. So we got there and Al Hill says, "we've got to take him home." I said, "he's drunk, and he's raising Caine in this bar. He's a disorderly person, and I'm going to arrest him." He says, ain't going to work. I says, yes it is.
[00:49:57.97] I arrested him, put him in that patrol car, took him all the way to Ann Arbor Jail, OK? 'Cause we was in Ypsilanti. Two hours he was out. I said, I'll never do that again. So from then on, we had a different attitude. We may want to arrest you, or maybe we didn't want to. If he told me was a Sheriff's friend, I said OK, go on. Why go through with it? Why do the embarrassment?
[00:50:21.10] And I vowed when I got in the Sheriff's office, that would never happen. Never, ever happen. And there was a couple of incidents where some contributors to my campaign was arrested in Ypsilanti. This is about 11 o'clock at night, they were drunk. My deputies arrested them. And they said, call the Sheriff. So they called me at 11 o'clock at night, and I came out went down and met my deputies.
[00:50:47.70] They told me what happened, the guy was drunk and so on. And they didn't know right then, I was pretty new, OK? I think they were really trying to feel me out. What is this guy going to do? We heard what he said, but is he going to do it? So I says, "look gentlemen. You arrested him, you go ahead and go through with it, OK? If you want to, turn him over to me. I'll take him home. But, I said you can probably take his car in, because he's drunk. And if you want to follow through with the charges, you can go ahead and do so. Or if you want to go over to the jail, go ahead and book him. Go ahead and do it.
[00:51:29.94] And he says, "you know, we'll decide. We're going to talk about it." And I liked that, I really did. You aren't telling us, we're going-- And consequently, they says, "we're going to impound his car, and we're going to give him a ticket for speeding. And we'll let you take him home. But the guy's standing right there, he says, "don't ever, ever do this again." The deputies. So we put them in the car, and I took him home. But the next day, he called me up, and he says, " you know it's going to cost me $60 to get my car out?" I says, "you're lucky you aren't in jail."
[00:52:04.11] AMY: I want to follow up on Andrew saying who would want to be Sheriff. I have a question, I've read you grew up in Observatory Lodge, here in Ann Arbor.
[00:52:12.15] DOUG HARVEY: Yes I did.
[00:52:13.36] AMY: I'm curious about you childhood, your young years. And is there a point at which you knew you wanted to go into a law enforcement, do you do you recall?
[00:52:22.26] DOUG HARVEY: I went into the service. Let me tell you real quickly, my folks moved to California, OK? At the age of 15 I was going to high school and me and this other fellow decided we wanted to go into the Navy. "You can't go into the Navy, you've got to be 17." And he says, "no, I got a friend who will give us phoney birth certificates." At 15 years old, we joined the Navy. Went to boot camp. Went to boot camp in San Diego.
[00:52:51.32] My folks were--didn't want it, but I said, I'm going to do it or else I'll run away. I was just that kind of a kid at that time. And as soon as boot camp got over, 16 weeks, chief called me in and says, "hey, how old are you?" And I said, 17. He says, "no you're not, you're 15. I got your record. We're going to discharge you."
[00:53:17.49] Now in that days, they were discharging the people, and they were given the given gold eagle on their shoulder showing that you were a veteran, OK? And they gave me one of these. When I went back to high school, I was allowed to carry cigarettes because I was a veteran. So I carried cigarettes for the other guys.
[00:53:40.19] So anyway, I had to decide, "well I've got to get through school. I'm going to go back in the Navy when I get old enough." And I did, I rejoined the Navy when I got out of high school. And then when I came back out of the Navy, I got a job at King's Ceiling.
[00:53:58.68] That wasn't for me. Boy, being in that factory, we were doing scopes for the military. Proceduric stuff. I just couldn't handle this. I think I worked about a week. I told them, I said I can't stand coming into this plant and checking in with the clock and so on. I got to do something else.
[00:54:18.78] So I come out and luckily I got on the Ann Arbor Fire Department. I was a fireman, made $4,300 a year. But we all worked part-time on our day off, OK? After the fire department, there was an ad in the paper where the Ypsilanti Police wanted police officers. I said, that's what I want to be. That's what I was going to do. So I went down there and applied, got hired and became a police officer.
[00:54:53.09] And again, back in those days-- this is in the '50s. No education, no training. And you know how they trained me? Reading police reports while I'm waiting for my uniform to come. After a week my uniforms came. Didn't ask me if I knew how to shoot a gun or nothing. Never showed me how to use handcuffs, no. And I strapped thing on, and this. And I said, this is ridiculous. I taught myself, OK?
[00:55:27.04] After I was a police officer for one year, they sent me to Michigan State University to the police administration course, which was a month course teaching you how to do things, and crime scene. And I thought, god I'm already indoctrinated into this. And I already knew this, but I just loved it. So I got myself a set of law books. And I studied, and I studied, and I studied.
[00:55:56.62] And I can't remember the Sergeant one day called me in off the road-- I was just a patrolman, he's a Sergeant. Called me in off the road, he said, "we've got a situation here Doug, I want to know what you think. These two guys were having booze and they did this and did that and so on. Do we have enough to charge them with minor possession? They were in a car, we didn't see him but they got the booze there."
[00:56:20.13] I says you got enough evidence there, you got the booze? Yeah. Enough evidence to charge them. Used to call me in all the time, wanting to know about this, and about that, as far as what the law was. So the city attorney and I became a real close friends. Ken Bronson, I'll never forget him as long as I live. In his first two days, we had to go to circuit court.
[00:56:44.15] Ken Bronson, being an attorney in Judge Breakey's court, put his leg under his chair and sit on his leg. And I says, "Ken, don't do that. Put your legs down." "Oh, OK." [LAUGHS] I had to instruct him on how to act in a court. This was no kidding. And so then, people called me up. And I was not in the Democratic Party, didn't go to no meetings or anything.
[00:57:17.12] But a friend of mine, Chuck Gray, who was running for state representative, remember? OK. And he called me up, and says, "Doug, we're putting together a real good party. And we got Wes Vivian, Congress" And who else was it? But anyway. "We want you to run for Sheriff." I says, what? I said, my God I can't. There's no way in the world I can--
[00:57:43.64] "Yes you can, he can be beat." I said, "well if I do it, I'm going to go all the way, I'm going to go hog wild with it." And I did. I did a lot of investigating. And the proof is in the pudding, I beat my old boss, George Peterson. And I remember the day before the election, Peterson came out with a spread in the Ann Arbor News, "do you want a race driver for your sheriff?" Because I was racing cars. "And here's his police record." Well, I think I had two traffic tickets and he made sure he blasted them.
[00:58:17.60] But those days, like I said, I had just vowed that if I was going to do this-- and like I said, I did some study of the law. And one thing I made sure of, I said, when I get into that Sheriff department, and I vowed to everybody that I was going to change it, drastically. There was patrol cars that they had to take handcuffs and put it around the doors to keep the door from flying open. They would never get new cars.
[00:58:41.95] So as soon as I got in there, three of the cars we junked immediately. Just had to junk them immediately. And I got emergency funding to get police cars. But then I started the first recruit school in Washtenaw County's history, training deputies. They were going to know how to use a gun. They were going to go out to a firing range. They were going to know when to use a pair of handcuffs, and how to put a pair of handcuffs on so that it didn't cut into their skin, and so on. There's a lot to it. And they were going to study law.
[00:59:12.50] And I put together-- the prosecutor come down and conducted a couple of classes. I had Michigan State troopers coming in, conducting some classes. So I got vast people coming in and helping me out. So we did real well with it. And then I got, naturally, new cars and new concepts. It was going good, I was getting very proud.
[00:59:35.88] We had to change the records, for one thing. The way the records were, they would just put it in a regular file. You may look in the assault file and see some rapes, or you may see attempted murder, all in one file. You can't have that. Ypsilanti Police taught me that. They had everything filed separately, rapes the assaults, and so on. You have to do that. You're going to do some checking. So they helped me develop a new record system.
[01:00:07.09] ANDREW: Well I wanted to ask about-- there was some talk, I think it was in 1970-- about you running for Congress. And then you opted to not do that. Why did you make that decision?
[01:00:19.59] DOUG HARVEY: I didn't want that, no part of that. That's politics. I hated politics. I hated it with a passion. I didn't mind going out and giving speeches, I didn't mind that. I didn't mind going out and talking and so on. And I talked to Wes Vivian and I knew what he went through. And you're going to go to Washington, and that type of thing.
[01:00:41.90] And number one, I didn't think I could never make it. I didn't think I had the educational background for it, I really didn't. Because you've got to be a little more smarter than I was, just high school education, to be a congressman. And I thought it would just make a fool myself, and again didn't want no part of it. Because I know, you're going to be deeply involved in politics. Like I say, I hated politics. I really, really did hate politics.
[01:01:08.29] It was just so many times when politics would try to intervene with me. And I would balk, just don't tell me what to do. Don't dare tell me what to do, I'm obeying the law, I'm going to do my duties as I see fit. But when you come in there, and start saying you are going to do this-- not will you, you are going to do this.
[01:01:30.84] The only time I think I played politics was when I had those prisoners. That time I played politics, I said boy, I'm going to get blasted, sure. So I want these three influential people, Black, to see what was going on. Then unfortunately I had a death.
[01:01:48.20] AMY: I wanted to ask you about the incident or the incidents with the students that sued you for cutting their hair. Can you talk about that?
[01:01:58.69] DOUG HARVEY: Oh my god, you would do that. You would do that. [LAUGHS] As you know, the long hair was in. Hair as long as you, all the men did. And to me that was not cool. I just always associated them with the hippie movement, OK? And so these three individuals got arrested, OK? And when they came into the jail.
[01:02:38.30] They were coming down for-- I forget what it was now, but anyway-- they were coming down, I think, to bail somebody out or do something in there, or whatever it was. But they were causing such a commotion. And one of them had the American flag sewed on his butt, upside-down. So when I come out of my office and I spotted that, I said throw him in the jail. Lock him up.
[01:03:01.28] And the other two start causing trouble, disorderly. Throw them in too, lock them up too. OK. So, I went over to the prosecutor, and again-- knowing the law a lot as I did. And don't get me wrong, Bill Delhey was probably one of the best prosecutors this county ever had. Anyway, I got over there and I told him what I did, he says, "what are you getting them on?"
[01:03:24.01] I says, "got to be a law on that, Bill." He says, "boy, I don't know what is." I says, disgracing the flag. And he says, "I think you're right." Well, when they got to the jail and had them arraigned and they were given four days, five days in jail or whatever it was, on my recommendation to the judge. "What do you want?" I said, "give them five days."
[01:03:48.19] They were getting haircuts. Now, I did not have a barber. And this one guy said he was a barber. Come to find out he was not a barber, OK? So he took them, and I mean the dandruff was higher than their hair, believe me. I mean he just-- And then they found out that this guy who did the haircut was convicted murderer going to Jackson Prison. He was awaiting transfer to Jackson Prison.
[01:04:18.23] So they took us to Federal court. I was a crew cut, always wore a crew cut. The prosecutor-- boy, I didn't think I'd ever forget his name. Loved him. I loved him. Another crew cut, here are two crew-cut guys who are in the Federal court. Now, these guys their hair has grown out now, about the same.
[01:04:40.31] And the thing come out was, in the paper, was the fact that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is only three days. And I made that comment. The Michigan Barbers Association got together and gave me a plaque as a honorary barber of the year. But anyway that cost the county $600 apiece. Very expensive haircut. But, since then, after that, I obtained a barber, a licensed, regular barber. And we had a barber because everybody got a haircut.
[01:05:20.10] And Louisell-- I'll never forget him-- Louisell was the attorney. Louisell represented a lot of the-- who were the radicals? I can't think. The subversive individuals? And when he got up there, got me on the stand he says, "why do you do this?" I said, "this is for sanitary reasons. We want to make sure they don't bring in lice and so on for our jail, and so on."
[01:05:50.06] And I'll never forget this-- he said, "if the Lord came into your jail, would you shave his head?" And I said I don't expect the Lord to ever be coming to my jail. He made me answer that specifically, and the judge wouldn't do nothing about it. And I said, "well, if it were the case, which is stupid, yes. He would have his hair cut." Never forget that.
[01:06:20.09] ANDREW: What did you think of the argument that they made, that their hair was part of their expression of what they were and what they believed in?
[01:06:28.10] DOUG HARVEY: Oh, I didn't think much of it. I just shut that off. Just one of those things that I can recall. I didn't like them, for example, because of the way they dressed. I guess it seemed like everyone-- not all of them, there were some that were some decent individuals that decided to let their hair grow out.
[01:06:54.54] But still today. I still see some of them. So I think nothing about it but they look at them in a different way than I do with the way we are. But we were in downtown Ann Arbor, and they had a parade going by. And I was standing there, I forget where I was, but I'm standing in the corner of Washington and I think Main Street.
[01:07:16.27] And there was a young man, long-haired, standing with his buddy. And as the American flag went by, he give a finger. Ugh, I seen red. I grabbed them both, right by the collar. Arrested them. Again, don't know what I arrested them for. I took them down, but we let them go because I really didn't have any charge on them. But it always seemed like the ones that were causing us to problem were the long hairs.
[01:07:47.66] Like I say, there were some that we've seen it that were not it. So you couldn't really say every longhair was bad. And this is the thing we had to make sure that everybody understood. But we did look at them differently. I don't care who you were. You could have been in a suit and tie and so on and have long hair and I still look at you differently. That's just my bringing-up I guess. And the way we were taught. To be honest with you, you know?
[01:08:20.92] AMY: Can you just talk a little bit about the great UFO chase in 1966.
[01:08:25.57] DOUG HARVEY: Oh my god. I got a call from England. And it's hard to understand them, as you know. And he says, "Sheriff, I want to talk to you about the UFO's." And I says, my gosh. He says, we're doing a documentary on the UFO's. I says, OK. He says, the Mannor people. I says all right.
[01:08:46.39] We got a call that the Mannor's out in Dexter, seeing a UFO. So I went out there with a couple of-- and the grass was down flat in a round circle, a big way around, quite large. And they said they definitely seen an object come down and then lift off. These are respectable people, they're not nuts, they're not trying to make money or anything. They really didn't us to use their name because they didn't want the publicity.
[01:09:15.08] So as soon as we made the report-- and of course the news got a hold of that. Boy, that was just boom! Too bad, it was already out. A Professor Hynek came to our jail. And that he introduced himself, he said I'm Washington, and I've come down to inspect that site, the UFO. I said OK, so I drove him out there. And he looked at and he looked at it. And he talked to the Mannors.
[01:09:43.74] Then he got back in the car, and I said, what do you think? He said, I really don't know. I really don't know. Something was there. Got back to the jail and as soon as we got back to the jail he had a call from Washington. I said, well you could take it in my office. He said OK, so he went in to my office. 20 minutes later, he comes out of my office. He says-- and the press was there, OK? So when they come in office, he says, "we have definitely discovered that it was swamp gas." Washington.
[01:10:17.45] All the sudden coming up, I don't know what it is, but now all of a sudden it's swamp gas. And that's where it died. There was a fellow, I think up in Brighton, that had observed a flying object. And there was some articles in the paper, I'm sure, airplane pilots had seen this and seen various items and so on.
[01:10:43.89] So these fellows from England I guess are coming here, they're going to do a documentary. And they told me that they would be coming here and so on. And again, I have to believe the Mannors. I mean really, I really couldn't. And everyone said to me, "well, what do you think?" I don't know, I didn't see it. I know I did see the grass. And it was kind of hard to say why would that particular grass be in a circle? Swamp gas, how can this really be? So I'm very skeptical on that. [LAUGHS]
[01:11:16.75] ANDREW: You talked a little bit about John Norman Collins, but I'm wondering if you could walk us through that story a little bit more. And I'm particularly interested in a couple aspects of it, like when it became apparent that one person was committing these crimes. And also how it worked with all the different law enforcement agencies working together, and things happening in various jurisdictions and having to bring people in from outside.
[01:11:43.55] DOUG HARVEY: It basically happened all at Washtenaw County, so we were it. And then we asked State Police to come in. And we got two men from Ypsilanti Police Department, because we had the city of Ypsilanti. We had two men from the Ann Arbor Police Department. I assigned two deputies from the Sheriff Department. And then we had, I think, four from the Michigan State Police. And that was the squad.
[01:12:11.26] I'll tell you something about that in a minute, now that you brought that up. And it worked good, I mean they were really working together. And my two detectives were on John Norman Collins. His name came up, and boy they just kept ringing a bell. And all of a sudden--- and I forget how it was but anyway-- Bill Mulholland, one of my detectives, he said I think we got enough to bring this guy in and talk to them. That's when all of the hullabaloo broke.
[01:12:47.90] And then shortly after that we did arrest John Norman Collins. OK? And I took-- remember the beauty operator on Huron street-- who said that this young individual took this girl and put her on his motorcycle and drove off? That's when she was killed. It was the young girl. And I took pictures over to her, and I had John Norman Collins and five other ones, and she picked John Norman Collins right out of that. So we had a pretty good case going as far as it's going.
[01:13:23.65] Now, when we start gathering all the evidence that we had, OK? Primarily, we knew we had blood stains, OK? We had the motorcycle. We had some other evidence that we could not use in court. Basically, what we convicted him on was circumstantial evidence. But we knew in our hearts this was our man. Now, all of a sudden the murders stopped. Did the murderer move away, or what happened?
[01:13:59.99] This kid, I did a little background on him, and I went up to Doctor-- I can't think of his name out at Ypsi State Hospital-- and talked to him, a psychiatrist. He says, what kind of an individual are we looking for? I said, "boy I'm going crazy here. This guy is committing these murders, and it's always after a rainfall, OK?" And I don't know if you know this or not, every girl that we found would have either a twig or a screwdriver or something shoved up her vagina, slashes on her breasts, and each one had a long dangling pierced earring. Each single one. And each one was in their menstrual period.
[01:14:52.27] We had a young lady who went to Eastern Michigan University, we found her and she went out with John. "Very nice gentleman," she says, "except when he took me home." When we got to the doorstep, he says you don't have to go in right away, do you? She says, well I do because I got to study and whatever it may be. And she said, "he made the comment to me, you're in your menstrual period, aren't you? Because I can smell it." Weird kid.
[01:15:23.54] Now, again what does this mean? This doesn't make him a murderer. OK And so when we start talking to him, he was just wanting nothing to do with us. I called him down in my office, I was the Sheriff, up in my office. And I says, "John, I'm going to tell you something. Going to Jackson Prison is not going to be no treat for you. They're going to make a lady out to you in about 10 minutes as you get up there in prison."
[01:15:56.69] "We can help you, you're a sick individual. We can help you, get you to a mental hospital where you can get some psychiatric help. But I can't give it to you unless you cooperate with us." He started crying, and he says, "OK I'll tell you everything." And my heart was going 100 miles an hour. I says, "No, you wait right here." So I got on the phone, called the prosecutor. This is 10 o'clock at night.
[01:16:28.36] "Doug, you can't talk to him. You're in charge of the case." I said, yes I can, I'm the Sheriff. And he's in my jail. And he's got a problem, so I'm talking to him. And he wants to talk to me. He says, "OK, get a stenographer over there right away. In the meantime, call Louisell, the attorney." This took about an hour to get the prosecutor there, the stenographer, and Louisell.
[01:16:53.09] Louisell says, "I want to talk to my client." I says, go into my office. Let him into his office, he's in there 45 minutes. And he come out, he says, "go ahead and talk to him. I'll see you." Got in a car and left. We went in there, John was very composed and so on. We got the stenographer, Delhey and myself, and he says, "yes, we did steal that trailer." Because there was a trailer stolen, taken to California.
[01:17:20.73] I said, oh my God how they got him calmed right now. He was going to take a polygraph test before Louisell got into this. There was a guy called Smokey Ryan, Neil Ryan. Great attorney, just a heck of a nice guy. He was John's first attorney. So Smokey said, "can you set up a polygraph test, over in the courthouse?" We says yes. So we set up a polygraph test for the polygraph operator.
[01:17:50.99] We had guards all around, Stan Bordine and I took him across the street, we had to walk him across the street from the jail. It was raining that night, kind of a misty rain, like all the murders were committed. John was just shaking, he wasn't himself. We could just tell, something was really bothering him. We got him over to the courthouse, and Ryan was there with him, naturally. And he said, before my client takes the test I want to talk to him. So Ryan took him in this one room and they talked, and they talked, and they talked.
[01:18:29.04] Come out, Ryan says take him back. Not going to do the polygraph. I know for a fact John Norman Collins told him everything. Because the next day, Smokey Ryan was fired by his mother. Smokey Ryan was one of these guys, "I'm going to defend you, but you've got to be truthful with me." "If you did this, then you've got tell me and I'll work my best magic to get whatever we can." I know him that well.
[01:18:59.86] Smokey was a drinker. We used to take him out, pump booze into him. Said, "now hey, Smokey. Between us, what did he tell you?" Never would tell us, to this day. But that was one of the things that primarily happened that we just knew for a fact. And I had the chance to go on-- remember Channel 7, I think, with Marilyn Turner and her husband. Well anyway, doesn't matter, but anyway they had this program and they wanted me to come on down and talk about the Michigan Murders, Delhey didn't want to go, so he says, you go. I says, OK. So I went.
[01:19:43.89] So I was put in this little green room before going on the air, this is television now, and there was this lady sitting there. She says, you're the Sheriff. I says, yeah. She says, well I'm John Norman Collins's confidant. I says, OK that's nice. She says, you've got the wrong man. There's no way in God's creation he could have possibly committed these crimes. I says, "why did all the crime stop?" I said, "do you know what kind of a case they had in California on him?" She says, "that was bad, too." I said, "ma'am, John Norman Collins killed a girl in California. And then, when dumped her body, it was in Poison Ivy. He went to the hospital that night with the Poison Ivy. The sweater he was carrying had her pubic hairs in it."
[01:20:40.34] California had a better case, we was hoping California would take it. Because they had execution there, OK? So there was just no question about it. I hope I answered your things. But the things that we had on him, it was just-- he's a sick individual.
[01:20:58.36] I told you I did a little background on him. His mother was a prostitute. When she came into the courtroom-- Now, John Norman Collins, we took him over to the court. Shirt, and tie, clean-cut, a good looking kid. And you look at him, you'd say, geez I wouldn't mind my daughter going out with him. I mean just with his appearance alone.
[01:21:20.75] His mother walked in, long dangly earrings, miniskirt up to here. She was a knock-out. I mean, believe me, she was an attractive woman. And also his sister, who was with her, another beautiful girl. I mean she was beautiful. Everybody just looked, because both of them had their miniskirts, both of them had their long dangly ears.
[01:21:48.53] And through some of our studies, and some of the things that I learned, I found out that John had caught his mother with a John. And when I talked to the psychiatrist, he says, "we have an individual here who supposedly has a mother instinct that is driving him to kill." This was the psychiatrist told me.
[01:22:16.24] Still again, didn't give me any clues or anything, you know? But it did give me an idea what kind of an individual we're looking, with everything that this kid did. And then when you seen that mother that daughter. And both of them had that-- I don't know if its significant or not-- both of them had their earrings, their long dangly earrings.
[01:22:35.04] Of course, when he went to Jackson Prison, he tried to get transferred to Canada. We squashed that. They wouldn't let him out of Jacksonport. And he's made several attempts to escape.
[01:22:49.59] ANDREW: So you came in to the department, you instituted reforms, you did things like speaking to a psychiatrist when you're trying to track down a serial killer. Did you regard yourself at the time, and do you regard yourself now, were you a progressive law enforcement officer? Or did you regard what you did as traditional police work, like had been done for decades?
[01:23:12.51] DOUG HARVEY: No, I think I was progressive. I feel that way. Well, I want to think that, I really do. Things that were done before, I would do something differently because it didn't work. And there's something wrong here, so I thought well I'll explore some other avenues, there's got be something else.
[01:23:32.89] And I went to that psychiatrist, by myself. Gee, maybe he can show some light on me about what kind of an individual-- and I had an hour talk with him. And then I come back and shared it with the rest of the guys, and so on.
[01:23:46.88] But I'd say as far as after we got John arrested, and got the motorcycle, and the blood types, and all this type of thing, as we get him convicted, there was-- Oh, one thing about Louisell, they were going to get me on the stand. And word came back to me, he's going to really grill you. You're really going to get it. I had been in a motorcycle accident, I broke my leg. I was in a wheelchair.
[01:24:21.56] Louisell changed his mind because he said the sympathy from the jury of him sitting in that wheelchair wasn't going to work. So he didn't have me on very long at all. Got me right off. So his plan kind of backfired on him.
[01:24:34.81] Louisell was an attorney who defended a lot of Communist Party people. And him and his-- I can't think of his other attorney, the one that finally did the-- You remember his name? I can't think-- but anyway. They were in one of the restaurants in the club. And one of my deputies, who was also there, overheard him saying-- Louisell was in charge-- he says if you lose this case, which I think you're going to, if you lose this case, find another law firm. He lost it, and he did find another law firm. So that's what happened.
[01:25:22.29] AMY: Do you view yourself as, when you look at how you were as a Sheriff, do you feel that you were more interested in just maintaining law and order? Or did you actually feel that the hippies, for instance, were wrecking the moral fabric of our society? Did you feel like you had an obligation to do something at that level? Or were you mostly just concerned about maintaining--
[01:25:46.08] DOUG HARVEY: No, I was always about maintaining law enforcement, keeping a good department, keeping a clean department. And making sure that the things we did were within the realms of the law. I was really advocate about that. I was bound and determined.
[01:26:05.01] I used to go out on every fatal accident. That was my order. You call me on every fatal accident. I would make sure that I would go out on every fatal accident. Not that I didn't trust my deputies, but I wanted to see the scene myself, and see if there was some way that we could prevent something, some knowledge, OK?
[01:26:25.10] Don Hocking, University of Michigan, he was doing a study on fatal accidents. And he had a grant from the government. And I would go out with him, and this guy was fabulous. And we had the suicide by car, it was on Territorial Road. This man, him and his wife has gotten into a dispute, or argument, or whatever it was, he took off . And about a half a mile down, he picked out the biggest tree there was and hit it, head-on.
[01:26:59.32] How we proved it was-- how we proved? Don Hocking did, and I was with him. And I learned so many things. Number one, is he took his shoe, he said, I want to see this shoe. He never had the imprint of the brake pedal on that shoe. The other shoe had the imprint of the gas pedal. So he said, I'm telling you, he was gassing it.
[01:27:20.06] Now he took a light bulb out of the brake pipe. And he says, you see the filament here? Had he hit the brakes, that filament would be like this. The filament was like this, meaning it busted from the force.
[01:27:37.52] And so then he taught, he would have meetings with the law enforcement officers. And he would show all these films on fatal accidents. About locking your car doors. Now, of course, the cars lock automatically. How many people would not lock their door? The door, not being locked, would automatically fly open. And people would get tossed out.
[01:28:04.73] And then he would show us films where people who had seat belts. Seat belts were really coming in prevalent then. And had you not had your seat belt on-- we had one person who caterpillared in the car. And that caused the death. Had they had their seat belt on, he says, that care, there's plenty of room to live. They could have lived.
[01:28:23.02] And there was so much things that we learned by that guy, and I was always fascinated with him. So from the knowledge I picked up with him, I was gaining when going out to the fatal accidents.
[01:28:34.44] I recall an accident that I went to on Whitmore Lake Road. This lady had named Buckman. The emergency brake had gone through her leg. Right through her leg. And she sat there screaming, but she was alive. And the wrecker drivers were there, and they says, Jesus, we can't get her out of this car. I says, OK, and I did this. And I said, give me your wrecker. I got the cable and I hooked it around this thing.
[01:29:08.33] And I said, "now, I'm going to tell you something, driver. When I give you the signal, you make that thing go as fast as it can go." I said I want it to go as fast as heck. Because we're going to pull that thing right out of her leg. So then I told her, I said, "now, lady, this is going to hurt. And there was a stick, and I said bite on it. Seen that in a western. I says bite on it and grab ahold of me or the steering wheel. And she says, OK.
[01:29:39.29] When I give the signal, they [BREAKING NOISE] it popped right out. Ambulance drivers grabbed her right away, bandaged it up. And they says, man thank you. And away we went. Why I did that, I have no idea. It just came to me. Well, something's got to be done, she's sitting here bleeding. And the ambulance is there, we can get her out of the car. Well, we'll saw this thing. She's not going to take the pain, of you sawing that doggone-- because you haven't got enough room in there.
[01:30:03.77] So my idea was that wrecker driver. And when he got done, he says "never did that before in my life." He says look or something. So, no, I think to answer your question. I hate beating around the bush, but every time you ask me something, it reminds me of something.
[01:30:19.11] ANDREW: So you noted that you were a young Sheriff, so I'm just wondering-- it's 38, 39 years ago now that you stopped being Sheriff. If you were Sheriff now, if you were your age, the man you are now, at that time, would you have done anything differently?
[01:30:36.66] DOUG HARVEY: Yes, very definitely. I've been asked that question before. I think I did a lot of things impulsively. And now, with a little more background, a little more stability, rationalizing some things and thinking some things out. Yeah, I think it would have been. Not a lot, but I would think quite a bit of things there would be some different changes that probably I wouldn't have reacted the way I did, being now.
[01:31:06.63] For example the new Sheriff he's got the guys in black uniforms. Ugh, I'm so opposed to that. I was sitting in a restaurant two months ago, eating. And I looked over there, and here's a guy, had a squad car out there. And I did see the squad car, and he's typing some notes on a computer. And I looked, and he's got black on.
[01:31:33.03] We wore black for the tactical mobile unit, OK? For the helmets and so on. So I went over there, and I looked at the patch, it said Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department. I says, is this your field uniforms, or what? He says, well this is our new uniform. Wearing jump boots, black uniforms, no hats. It's ridiculous. And every time I see them, I get appalled.
[01:32:04.13] Because, let me tell you. I always maintain one thing about my deputies. I says, you're going to be in full uniform, you're going to have the respect of that badge and that uniform. And I want people to respect you in that uniform. They are going to respect somebody with a hat off, OK? Or a ball cap on. You'll wear your hat at all times, stopping a vehicle or being out in public. In the car, I didn't care. But when you're out in public, you put that hat on.
[01:32:32.95] And I always admired the Michigan State police. I wanted to be a trooper, I really wanted to be a trooper. And to tell you the truth, Stan Bordine, and I, when I was on Ypsi Police, Stan Bordine was on Ann Arbor Police, we failed the test. We thought we did. We come out of there, and we were told later on that we failed. Stan says, I didn't fail that test. I said I didn't either. I know this.
[01:33:00.54] But in those days, the city police were, "we don't want our men to go." We can prove it. But anyway, that's how we didn't get to become state troopers. But did you ever know a state trooper? Always neat, always got their hat on. Very sharp looking, always. Always. And, I would say you maintain that kind of a uniform, and you maintain the respect of it.
[01:33:25.81] And then this guy changes it into black, and they don't wear a hat. Half of them don't wear a hat. And I sit out there and I wonder. I says, my gosh what has happened to the Sheriff's department? And I've had a lot of people comment about it. They say, what are they doing? Are they trying to be ready for a riot? I say, I don't know what they're doing. I said I have no idea. Ann Arbor Police never changed theirs to all black. Michigan State Police never changed their to all black. Other Sheriff's departments throughout the county--
[01:33:55.88] When we first got in there, I changed the uniform. I changed the patch. I developed that patch, the Washtenaw County Sheriff's department. We went to the brown uniform, with the stripe. Pretty soon, other Sheriff's departments. And pretty soon we got Michigan Sheriff's Association all wore brown. OK, that was kind of a significance. State police wore all blue, we wore all brown.
[01:34:21.44] OK, remember when the blue lights come on? Sheriff's department come out with that first. State police says no, we will stay red. That way you'll know it's a state trooper. You see the blue, you're going to know it's the Sheriff's department. So there's a difference there. Then all of a sudden, things changed.
[01:34:40.45] Now, State police got blue and red. You don't see how things mold? And the Sheriff departments all went to black and white cars with the star. We became uniform, became statewide. And then this guy changes to black. And I've gone up through some of the other counties, and I get letters from some of the old sheriff's I've talked to. And they're are still in the brown. And they all ask me, what's happened down in Washtenaw? I say, don't talk to me about it. I don't have no idea. Very, very upset with them. Very.
[01:35:13.88] AMY: Looking back now, do you feel the student protesters and the hippies were maybe right about anything that they were fighting for and believing in then?
[01:35:23.29] DOUG HARVEY: I really don't know what they were fighting for. I honest to God don't. I can't recall any particular thing that they were really significantly-- like we want better education, or we want shorter hours. I don't know what they were fighting for. And the way that they did things was by strength and by force. This was their thing.
[01:35:50.12] Never a group sitting down, saying look, let's meet with the University, let's see if we can't dissolve this and find this out. No, we're going to lock ourself in a public building. And we'll form massive groups and we'll storm the city. And we will go down through South U, smashing business people's windows, smashing the Ann Arbor banks. This kind of destruction was--
[01:36:16.22] And again, you can understand. You get a couple of radicals and now those radicals get within a bunch of group. And now they start hollering, pretty soon, oh I'm with him. I'm going to holler, too. Oh, he's throwing bricks, so am I. Maybe you didn't intend to do it, but because you were in that group, and they were forming the group, and they got larger and they got louder. And louder, and louder. And the louder they got, the more violent they got.
[01:36:45.70] And that happens with any massive group. It only takes about four or five ringleaders, they get them riled up, you know? And all of a sudden, as a kid, boy just look at that crowd. Let's go. You're in the back of it, and there's a thousand people, you're back there with them. You don't know what the heck you're doing there. You're marching with them and having fun.
[01:37:07.12] We seen high school kids in there. They got no business in there, but because it was a crowd it was a thing to do. And they were taking over the street. See how those things happen? And that's too bad, it's unfortunate that those type of things happen. But that is just a massive crowd-- And it's still going on. Look at England, what has happened there when there were protests. Boy, bottles Molotov cocktails, and the police. And I'm looking at them saying, my God. I says back in the '60s, same thing happened, massive crowds take over.
[01:37:43.52] I got a army vehicle, I had a water cannon put on top of it. I got that from Germany. Germany used a water cannon to prevent anybody getting hurt. So when we turned that on, that was a hundred pounds of pressure. When we squirt them, take their feet right out from underneath them. That would end the crowd in a hurry. Eastern Michigan we did that, that broke the crowd up. They didn't want to get wet! [LAUGHS] But nobody got hurt, nobody got arrested.
[01:38:12.97] Why didn't we have that in Ann Arbor? Didn't have that in Ann Arbor til they seen Germany using this water gun. They says, we're going to get one. So, I got one.
[01:38:24.26] ANDREW: I just wanted to ask-- I had forgotten to ask this-- about the recall campaign against you. And you were really singled out, particularly by the whole group, the White Panthers. They really singled you out as the law enforcement officer who was their enemy.
[01:38:40.65] DOUG HARVEY: Yup.
[01:38:41.21] ANDREW: And how did you feel about that, how did you regard the recall campaign?
[01:38:46.74] DOUG HARVEY: I don't feel anything about it, tell you the truth. Because, again, I had known this was a small group. And I knew it was a small group. And I knew that-- again, not being cocky, or overconfidence-- I knew that I had the majority of the county. And I had the American Legion, I had the VFW, I had these strong groups that were saying you're our Sheriff, don't let these people fortifying me. And so on, so I never had much respect for them as far as being anything.
[01:39:24.95] If it was county-wide, might have been a little nervous, OK? But I wasn't. Because it was, again, a group. And yeah, they wanted me out of there. They wanted me out there bad. At one particular time, I took my car, my Buick, I took my car in to get serviced, OK? Now I was always going on fatal accidents, I would travel at high speeds and so. My siren, my red light, whenever I had to do it.
[01:39:57.66] And I remember going to a fatal accident and I picked up the coroner. And he was in the car with me. And I got the siren going, and the red light. And he says, Sheriff, slow down. He says, they're dead. We can't help them. Just slow down. [LAUGHS] We already got a report that they're dead. I thank the coroner, he said, just slow down. They're dead, we can't help them. [LAUGHS]
[01:40:26.47] Well, anyway, I was luckily not going fast. And I turned on to Liberty, off of Wagner Road, and my wheel fell off. Brand-new Buick. We got the wrecker-driver over there, and the wrecker picked it up, and he says, " someone sabotaged your front end. They sawed that. You see the saw marks in there?" And he says, had you been in a high speed chase, you'd have rolled this thing, just as sure as life.
[01:40:59.41] So then, and for that day on, every time my car would go in for service, I had to have a detective or deputy stand guard over the car, to make sure that [INAUDIBLE]. So we had some tragic things, too. I had in Washtenaw County's history three deputies that were killed. And I'm going to tell you something really ironic. Because the one deputy was killed coming to work, Jerry Russo. And he hit a tree, and he was killed.
[01:41:33.39] And then I had Frank Crampton and Harold Ewald. They were my transportation officers, and they were transferring this prisoner to Jackson Prison. And he had smuggled the handcuff key in his mouth. Undid the handcuffs. And he grabbed Crampton around the back of the neck, had his gun. And he shot Crampton.
[01:41:59.56] And so then while he Ewald-- he turned his gun on Ewald. Ewald pulled the patrol car over, and he shot Ewald. And then he's running down the expressway with a gun in his hand. A black man with a handcuff hanging off. And here's a young rookie policeman, off duty, in his car. And he sees this happening. And here Ewald is coming out in plainclothes, and he shoots at Ewald.
[01:42:25.21] Boy, I chewed that-- I said to him, "What in God's creation were you thinking? Here's a black man running down the expressway with handcuffs hanging off him, and with a gun. And you shoot a man because he's coming at him with a gun, and a white man?" I mean you've got to understand, what would a policeman do with a handcuff? So anyway, Ewald died after that.
[01:42:48.19] When we come down, we took the funeral procession, we come down and we come by. And his wife requested that Harold Ewald come by the jail, OK? They come down, they come down Main Street. Got by the jail, had all my deputies who were not in the procession lined up on Main Street. As the funeral procession got to Main Street, the hearse stalled for two solid minutes. They timed it, two solid minutes and then it started back up.
[01:43:26.19] Talked to Mr. Muehlig, he says, nothing has ever happened to my equipment, in my life, like that. And he took to the garage and they could not explain why that care stalled. Eerie, huh? That was one of our sad times, that we had with out two deputies.
[01:43:45.91] I forgot to tell you about, one we had Pontiac Trail. And I was out I was always out in my car. I mean, after I got through at night, I would just go in my car. Real quickly, my Captain and myself, Chester Wilson, I said let's-- him and I used to ride patrol cars together when we were deputies. Now he's my captain, and I'm the Sheriff.
[01:44:08.38] I says, let's get in the patrol car and go out patrolling. He says, you really want to do this? And I says, yeah. I'll wear my uniform with the gold on it and the stars on there. And you wear yours, with the captain's bars, OK? We went out in the patrol car. Now, the desk is going crazy. Everyone's all saying, better shut up, the captain and the old man are out. Keep it down, you know?
[01:44:32.52] And so we are all over the county, we can't find nothing. Nothing. We can't even find a red light. And he says, Jesus this isn't like the old days, is it? I says, no, did everybody know we were out and they all go on home?
[01:44:50.69] So on our way back, we're coming down Carpenter Road. We get to Washtenaw Avenue and this car run a red light, right dead in front of us. I says, there it is. Well, we put the red light on and we pull them over.
[01:45:06.46] Two young hippies, OK? And right away they says, "well it looks like we got some pigs out here." Chester and I are going to handcuff this guy. And we're fighting with him, we're arguing with him and so on. Chester put handcuffs on me. I says, Chester, you could see I was out there wrestling with this guy. I'm trying to put the handcuffs on him, and he handcuffs me. We laughed about that.
[01:45:35.02] So we finally got him to the jail, and this guy says-- he was still going on about-- he was drunk, going on about pigs this, pigs that. And my sergeant went up to him, I was standing over there. He said, "Mr., you just got arrested by the head hog."
[01:45:57.59] ANDREW: For more information on Doug Harvey, visit oldnews.AADL.org.
[01:46:05.20] AMY: Music for this episode was Flux, by Drop Trio, which you can find on the AADL catalog, by going to aadl.org/magnatune.
[01:46:17.21] ANDREW: AADL talks to Doug Harvey is a production of Ann Arbor District Library.

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Length: 1:36:42

Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)

Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library

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