"I'm going to tell you to your face when you screw up," he added. "I think I gained respect from the people that way."
Parker said he had seen numerous changes in the department during his 15 years on the job. Chief among them has been the move toward civilian supervision of guards. When Parker became a supervisor, his colleagues included Sgt. Robert Sutherland and Sgt. Arthur Fitzhugh. Both sergeants, who are now employed elsewhere in the Harvard police, are Black.
Parker said he expects Dowling to make more changes in the security department. In a June 25, 1991 memo, Dowling said he was not going to retire until 1996.
Parker said he has had only two other problems during his career. In 1985 his boss, Lt. Nunn, called him a "god damn liar" after he complained to Johnson about a switch in shifts, according to Parker and documents. The switch, which was made because Nunn had wanted to discipline Fitzhugh, was eventually reversed.
In 1988, Lt. Herschell Russell, who ran the department with Dowling, gave Parker an ultimatum in response to a complaint about the student security service, according to a memo obtained by The Crimson. Parker was stripped of his responsibility as a supervisor, and he could choose between going back to being a guard or working as an assistant to Dowling.
Parker--who said he was not any point disciplined for the initial complaint about security--asked for a written explanation, but Russell never provided one. The supervisor accepted the post of assisting Dowling, but he was transferred back to his old job less than six months later.
Parker said he had no problem with the job performance of two of his colleagues--security supervisors Emmanuel Mango and Audeno Bavaro. But he said he wondered if a more assertive chief of police might have been able to resolve problems in the security department.
"I think if the chief had gotten involved more, a lot of things wouldn't have happened," said Parker "A lot of times I don't know if he was aware of what was going on."
'We seem to have come into an atmosphere within the office where you don't want to go in. I don't know how it started and I don't know how it is going to end.'
Andrew J. Parker
HUPD security supervisor