Anne Arundel County Police on Thursday honored the first 100 Black officers to join its ranks with a plaque that Police Chief Amal Awad said would remind the department not to “repeat the ills of the past.”

“All of their efforts paid dividends, paving the way for so many of us,” said Awad, who in 2020 became the department’s first Black female leader. “We are here today because of you.”

Since hiring its first two Black men in 1965 — the first Black woman officer would not be hired for eight more years — it has taken decades to reach triple digits in its African American staff. Awad said many of the people recognized Thursday were “quite surprised” to learn they were among the first.

The department’s new plaque, which will be displayed at a police training facility in Davidsonville, features officer names from 1965 to 2012, when the 100th Black officer was hired.

“I know it’s not been easy, but I’m confident we’ll continue to advance our efforts to create a police department that reflects the beautiful diversity of Anne Arundel County,” Awad told the crowd assembled for the honor at Anne Arundel County police headquarters in Millersville.

Held in recognition of Juneteenth, the outdoor ceremony was attended by past and present members of the department, including around 20 of the “First 100.” According to police spokesperson Marc Limansky, 28 of those initial hires are still active employees.

Officers Reggie Harris and Elinor Foote, the first Black man and woman to enter the county police force, took their place Thursday in a front row of chairs alongside Awad and Anne Arundel County Chief of Staff Jeff Amoros. The “exemplary trailblazers,” as the chief called them, helped unveil the plaque, a gift from the county’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 70.

Harris and Norfleet Barnes, who died in 2015, integrated the department in 1965. Black officers who followed them have said, in ceremonies and services, that their struggles eventually made the force a better and easier place to work.

“In ‘65, we would never think that something like this would be happening,” Harris said. “It was a different time, a different era. Everything was different.”

Though the first to join the county police force, the two men were not the first Black people to serve as law enforcement officers in Anne Arundel County.

George Phelps, from the time he was a boy, wanted to be a policeman and in 1950, after serving in World War II, became the county’s first officer able to make arrests when he was hired as a sheriff’s deputy. At the time, he was told he “need not apply” for the county and Annapolis police departments, Awad said, but he persevered in the other agency over a 25-year career that saw him atop a special deputies unit for Black officers and on a security detail for the 1963 March on Washington.

Phelps died in 2015.

Elinor Foote began her career in law enforcement in 1973 and has not stopped. Though retired as an officer, Foote still works as a civilian employee with the police department’s youth activities program.

On Thursday, she sat with Harris in her county-issued polo, appreciative of the moment. “I thought it would be a bit earlier than this, but I am happy that I’m still here to see it,” Foote said.

Although it took 75 years to hire the first 100 Black officers, since 2012, at least 78 Black officers have joined the department and now make up just over 14% of the police force, Awad said. In total, 106 Black officers are currently employed with the Anne Arundel Police Department, according to spokesperson Limansky.

These strides, the chief said, help mend ties with communities perhaps averse to policing or those historically disenfranchised by law enforcement.

“When we diversify staff to represent the community we serve, it brings a level of comfort,” Awad said after the ceremony. “Our community desires a police department that reflects the people that live here.”