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Boston.com

Adrian Walker

Remembering Willis Saunders, an officer and a gentleman

  February 04, 2012

When Willis Saunders joined the Boston Police Department in 1956, he was told that black officers should never expect to advance. By the time he retired in 1992, he was a legend. Saunders, who died Monday at 84, was a Tuskegee Airman, a revered boss, and a lifelong booster of his native Roxbury, where he seemed to know everybody, and practiced community policing long before anybody had a name for it.

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