The Friendliest Town

In 2011, Pocomoke City a small town on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore hired Kelvin Sewell, its first African-American police chief. Sewell, a former Baltimore city homicide investigator and narcotics officer had grown tired of the aggressive tactics used by the Baltimore Police Department…particularly those targeting black communities. Determined to deploy a different approach to law enforcement, Sewell implemented an intensive community policing plan. He and his officers parked their cars and walked the streets. Sewell’s system worked: crime plummeted. Residents both black and white became ardent supporters of Sewell’s new paradigm of policing. But a conflict was brewing; an ongoing dispute over racial discrimination engulfed Sewell and his officers in a battle that would not only cost them their jobs and professional reputations, but would thrust them into an emotional legal battle that would touch all segments of the community.