Rueben Morris Greenberg was born in 1943 in Houston, Texas, the start of a long life of helping others. After earning his Bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University and a Master’s from the University of California, Berkeley, Greenberg went on to graduate from the FBI Academy in Virginia.

After teaching Sociology at California State University and Political Science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Greenberg formally began his law enforcement career in Florida. He served as Chief of Police in Opa-Locka county and Chief Deputy Sheriff of Orange County, eventually rising to Deputy Director of the Florida Law Department. Greenberg was brought to Charleston as the new Chief of Police in 1982, the first African-American police chief in our city’s history.

Greenberg brought a new mindset to the Charleston Police Department, telling his officers that their job was not to punish the people, but to simply make arrests. In order to do this, the officers needed to be on good terms with the citizens, so Greenberg put the cops on the streets and made them more accessible to the citizens of the Holy City. Cops rode bikes and horses, patrolled the streets on foot, and had a team of officers devoted directly to taking down graffiti, showing that the city belonged to the law, not to vandals. Greenberg innovated the Charleston Police Department, making cops attain Bachelor’s degree before joining the force, adding a K9 bomb and drug sniffing unit, harbor patrol, and a crime lab.

Both the people of Charleston and the nation-wide media loved Reuben Greenberg, the LA Times headlining an article on him “A Black, Jewish, Roller-Skating Cop Brings A New Way to Fight Crime to the Old South”, while Greenberg also appeared on TV in shows such as 60 Minutes, the Today Show, and Larry King Live. During his 23 years in office as Charleston’s Police Chief, crime in Charleston decreased by 11%, while the population increased by 64%. Greenberg retired in 2005 and passed away due to illness in 2014, at the age of 71.