Free Cop Town by Karin Slaughter

around the Butler Street YMCA until they were called out. They were not allowed to wear their uniforms unless they were on the job. Most of them didn’t have squad cars. They were only allowed to arrest other blacks and could not take statements from or interview white people.
    All of that had changed, of course, but men like Terry embraced change only when it suited their needs.
    The first thing Commissioner Eaves did was clean house. In the span of a month, six assistant chiefs and over a hundred supervisory personnel were demoted to the lower ranks. Eaves handpicked the men who replaced them. A lot of new bosses want their own people, but because the old structure was entirely white and the new one was entirely black, people had problems.
    Lawsuits followed, but none of them had yet been settled.
    Next, Eaves implemented a new testing system to formalize promotions. Before it was all about who you knew, but Eaves wanted to make it about what you knew. It was a good idea, but when no black officers could pass the test, Eaves appointed a board of examiners to give oral tests. No white officers were able to pass the oral test.
    Lawsuits followed. No one knew what the outcome would be.
    Other than the color of his skin, the biggest complaint that Maggie heard about Eaves was the color of his blood: he didn’t bleed blue. The mayor had met him when the two were in law school. Eaves had never been a real cop. He’d never worked the streets. Outside of headquarters, no one saw the commissioner unless they were watching the news or spotted his fancy Cadillac rolling down to the Commerce Club for lunch.
    Primarily, he communicated through daily bulletins that were read during roll call. Which created another reason to hate the new boss: Eaves was obsessed with paperwork. He implemented new rules about appearance, how to address the public, when to use force, and, most importantly, how to fill out the forms required by the federal government in order to keep the grant money rolling in.
    This part was especially important for the female officers. The only reason they were in uniform was because the federal government had bribed the city with grants to hire them. The women weren’t exactly told to lie about their duties, but the grants dictated certain guidelines that the Atlanta Police Department was not going to follow—mixed assignments being primary among them.
    No white woman would ride with a black man. The white men really wanted to ride with the black women, but the black women weren’t stupid enough to get in a car with them. And there was no way in hell a black man and a white man would ride together.
    Maybe there was a reason Atlanta was statistically one of the most violent, criminal cities in America. As far as Maggie could tell, the only thing the black and white male officers could agree on was that none of them thought women should be allowed in uniform.
    Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss .
    Maggie climbed the twenty-one steps to the headquarters building. The brass doors were a tarnished green. The thin sliver of glass was oily from smoke and sweat. She took one last whiff of fresh air before entering the lobby. As it was outside, the place was packed with men. There was no joking or jive talking. The weight of Don Wesley’s murder blanketed the room as palpably as the cigarette smoke that fogged the air.
    Even in their grief, they were true to form. None of them moved outof Maggie’s way as she pushed through the packed squad room. A shoulder bumped hers. A hand brushed across her ass. She kept her expression neutral, her eyes straight ahead, as she headed to the back of the room.
    “Hey, doll.” Chuck Hammond was short for a man. He came up to around Maggie’s breasts, which seemed to suit him just fine. “Jimmy okay?”
    Maggie kept walking. “He’ll be here soon. You can see for yourself.”
    “Listen, if you need to talk about—”
    Rick Anderson saved her. “Hey, Maggie, you got a