Winner Kimberly Byrd gives struggling girls hope

PHILADELPHIA Police Chief of Staff Kimberly Byrd, who will be honored today with the 2007 George Fencl Award, remembers being a young, nervous cop securing the perimeter of a hostage situation when "an old guy in a sweat suit" tried to get past her.

"You can't come on to a hostage scene," Byrd told him.

Moving toward the action, the "old guy" replied, "Your hat is too big and you look really goofy," Byrd recalled.

That's when a fellow-officer informed her that the "old guy" was Inspector Sylvester Johnson, a high-ranking cop and experienced hostage-negotiator.

"I was really naive back then," Byrd said recently, smiling and shaking her head as she recalled the decade-old incident.

"But there was something about Sylvester Johnson that I trusted right away. So later that day, I told him about the sergeant in my district who was harassing me so much that I was almost afraid to come to work.

"Maybe you'd call it sexual harassment," Byrd said. "I'm not sure. But it was vicious."

Johnson brought the sergeant and Byrd into his office. The sergeant denied behaving improperly. Johnson arranged to have Byrd transferred to Civil Affairs.

When Johnson became deputy commissioner, Byrd moved to Narcotics. When he became commissioner, he transferred Byrd to run his office.

"People were already accusing me of going to bed with him," Byrd said of the long-married Johnson, 63.

"He could have given this appointment to a man, as usual. Nobody would be accusing me or him of anything if he had given the job to a man."

The internal gossip resurfaced big-time recently when Byrd won the coveted Fencl Award - named for the exemplary head of Civil Affairs during the stormy '60s, and given to an officer who exemplifies his qualities of "compassion, dedication, loyalty and fairness."

Johnson, a previous Fencl recipient, was one of 14 judges who selected this year's winners. Asked by a reporter if he had tried to influence the vote, he said, "That's definitely not true.

"Look, there are 13, 14 of us, and we go into a room. We look at everybody who's been nominated, and then there's a vote by secret ballot. I have only one vote," he said.

"I said nice things about all the nominees. Out of 14 people, maybe five or six voted for her. So there must be at least seven people I didn't influence."

Byrd said rumors about Johnson's helping her career because of a romantic interest "has always rolled off me because it's untrue.

"I can't worry about the gossip because Commissioner Johnson has always been a father figure to me," said Byrd, who grew up without a father.

"He's always treated me like a daughter, but even more than a father figure, he's been a teacher, a friend, a mentor.

"You cannot allow people to change who you are by gossiping about you," Byrd said. "For some reason, they feel that an older man cannot have a younger woman as a mentoree. That's stupid."

Byrd, 40, and the mother of a 17-year-old daughter, said she has had a steady, publicity-shy, cop boyfriend for almost 10 years.

Judging from the pile of nominating letters, the 14-year police veteran won the Fencl Award for her years of commitment to grassroots community groups like Mothers In Charge and Town Watch, and her years of personally mentoring young African-American women - many of them struggling to free themselves from poverty and hopelessness.

Byrd has been mentoring Erica Thompson, 17, an 11th-grader at Simon Gratz High School, for two years, ever since she met Erica at a Mothers In Charge meeting after the 2005 shooting death of the teenager's brother, Lamar Canada, 19, on 22nd Street near Somerset.

Erica had come to the meeting with her mother, Vanessa Thompson - both of them crushed by grief.

"My son had just graduated Gratz in June," Thompson said. "He was going to start working with his dad, Theodore Canada, at SEPTA. He was killed in July.

"He wasn't a corner boy," Thompson said. "He was on his way back from seeing a girl he knew. There was a turf war around 22nd Street. He got caught in the middle."

When Byrd addressed the meeting, Erica immediately wanted to meet her.

"The way she dressed," Erica said. "The way she spoke. I don't usually have people like that around me."

"My daughter said to me, 'She looks so nice. Mom, I want to be like her,'" Thompson remembered. "Ms. Byrd has been building up Erica's self-esteem ever since."

"Erica is poor just like I was," Byrd said. "I grew up poor around Germantown and Indiana [avenues], so I know how that feels and how hard it is to struggle out of it.

"I know that Erica is going to be a success story," Byrd said, flashing her huge smile. "I told her so when I met her. We've been partners ever since."

Erica and her mentor hugged with great affection.

"Her whole attitude has changed since she has been working with Ms. Kim at Police Headquarters every day before school," Thompson said. "Erica was about to be hanging out on the corners here with the guys, just sitting around.

"She didn't like getting up in the morning and going to school. Now, she looks forward every morning to getting up and she loves going down to [Police Headquarters at] 8th and Race.

"The loss of my son is so devastating to me, I've been living in seclusion ever since. Ms. Kim helps Erica get out in the world, get away from this neighborhood, see another side of life. She learns that you don't have to live like this."

Over the years, Byrd has mentored many young women - trying to free each one from their internal prisons of poverty and despair.

"Something has been lost when I see a young girl showing half of her behind, her boobs hanging out, earrings in her nose and chin," Byrd said. "That's her way of telling the world, 'F.U. I am angry because of the way I've been treated. I hate the police. Maybe I hate myself.' "

Before she was a police officer, Byrd said, she and her mother and her daughter were deeply involved in church work, including feeding the homeless.

"I've always been involved in helping the forgotten, the voiceless - first, the homeless, and now the young girls I mentor who, like the homeless, have no power, no voice. I want them to know, 'You can carry yourself in a dignified, respectful manner.'

"I want them to know I love them." *