Locked Up Inside

But plenty of times, the black -- the man, the experience of the '60s and '70s when he was cutting his eyeteeth on the streets of Washington, the reality of what he calls "this visibility jacket," his skin -- has burdened the soul of Isaac Fulwood Jr.

"I can't take the jacket off. Ever," he says.

Fulwood grieves. Over black crime feeding black recidivism feeding, at times, black stereotype. "Some way, we've got to figure all this out," he says, the voice an edgy, police station staccato.

He spent 28 years wearing a badge, rising through the ranks. At one point during his tenure, the city was called the murder capital of the nation. It was loaded with staggering news: a crack-cocaine epidemic, a mayor arrested on drug charges. And all those awful murders.

Sometimes it seemed the sheer number of crimes numbed everyone -- politicians, experts, the media -- even the police.

In 1992, after only three years as chief, Fulwood resigned. The murdered kids chilled him. All those bodies at the morgue.

He did some teaching. He added pictures on the wall of the den at home. There was more time for summer cookouts. His first grandchild was born.

Last year the White House nominated Fulwood to serve a six-year term on the U.S. Parole Commission, which deals with federal and District offenders. The Senate approved his nomination, and Fulwood, now 65, began commuting to a grand office in Chevy Chase.

And then, one afternoon, it all came tumbling back -- the long nightmare of crime and punishment, the questions about racial justice, a cry for the victims -- all of it wedged into a brown folder detailing the case of Veronza Bowers. He's a former Black Panther and self-proclaimed "political prisoner" who has been behind bars more than 30 years for killing a white law enforcement officer. A 59-year-old inmate who was eligible for release, his freedom papers waiting to be stamped by the five members of the Parole Commission.

The case stirred something in Fulwood, surfacing all those questions about race and crime that had plagued him for decades. While he was studying Veronza Bowers, he was also studying himself. For the first time, he agreed to talk publicly and at length about what it means -- really means -- to be a black man who put other black men in a cell.

"The Bowers case, to me, is the whole ballgame," Fulwood says. "You have to ask yourself the question: Do you ever forgive a black person when they do something wrong? That's why the issue -- rehabilitation and reform -- can turn on the issue of race. Would Bowers still be locked up if he had killed me -- a black man?"

Yet again, Fulwood began the struggle: Keep the uniform on, or try to take it off. View the Bowers debate with a just-the-facts-ma'am approach -- or through his own peregrinations. "I am who I am," Fulwood says.