Church Hill honors policeman who helped keep neighborhood safe

The crime-fighting bedrock of Richmond's East End is back, and this time, it's for keeps.

John Henry Taylor, for years the mainstay of the Richmond police presence in the area, has taken up a prominent perch in Libby Hill Park -- sort of.

Church Hill residents, searching for a way to honor the retired sergeant who they say did so much to transform their neighborhood into a safe place, decided he deserved to have a park bench named after him.

"Awful nice people," said Taylor, who learned of the bench movement a few weeks ago and will attend this afternoon's dedication. "There's some really fine people up there in Church Hill."

The bench is actually a large chunk of rock that the Richmond Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities found at Ancarrow's Landing along the south bank of the James River and chiseled into the shape of a large, rectangular box.

Monument company AP Grappone & Sons Inc. engraved a Richmond Police Department shield, complete with "54," for Taylor's badge number, into the bench seat. On the front of the bench is a three-line inscription:

"SERGEANT JOHN HENRY TAYLOR'S BENCH

HONORING HIS 25 YEARS OF 'ABOVE & BEYOND' SERVICE

GIVEN IN GRATITUDE BY THE CHURCH HILL CRIME WATCH -- MAY 2009"

"It's a great honor," Taylor said. "But there were so many good policemen who have been with the city since it's been here -- and, of course, a lot of them have been killed in the line of duty -- I'm just very humbled that they would do this for me."

Shelby Long said Taylor helped her start Church Hill Crime Watch in 1986.

"In our first year, we had 134 home break-ins, three murders and two rapes," Long said. "In three years, we cut that to 20 break-ins, no rapes and no murders."

Long and Taylor said a basic component to reducing crime was getting the neighbors to cooperate with police. Both said the culture in the neighborhood had long dictated that residents would not talk to police because of fear of retaliation by criminals.

"When we found that the police officers would work with us," Long said, "we lost our fear."

For Taylor, it was a matter of putting in the time to listen to the residents. He also made sure anyone who wanted his after-hours contact numbers got them, and it wasn't unusual for him to return to Church Hill after his shifts ended and put in extra hours on his own time, Long said.

"It was just like the sun was coming up," Taylor said. "Before that, there was maybe no trust of the police. People would be scared to call the police or talk to the police. They were worried about retaliation and so forth, but when you work with these people, and they see you every day, after a while it's like the mailman. He's supposed to be here. And the criminals, they don't like that."

The residents of Church Hill and neighboring Fulton Hill didn't like it when then-Police Chief André Parker decided to transfer Taylor to a headquarters night-shift desk job in 2003. Residents wrote to Parker, urging him to reconsider; he declined.

Taylor retired in February 2006, ending a 28-year career in which he received more than 200 commendations and medals of excellence from his superiors and the communities he policed. Those awards included a 1986 letter in which 70 Church Hill residents cited him as "an officer and a gentleman" and "the best damn cop we know."

These days, Taylor, 62, pursues his love of history by doing volunteer genealogical research with a number of historical societies.

And, of course, he keeps in touch with a certain group of longtime acquaintances in Richmond's East End, a group that arranged for him to have a bench with a sweeping view of the city he helped protect for so long.

"It's just a neighborhood that pulls together," Taylor said. "They look out for each other. They enjoy each other's time together.

"Great people."

Contact Joe Macenka at (804) 649-6804 or .