Teaneck, N.J., Integration Pioneer, Faces Racial Strife -- Black Teen Slain By Police; Protest Vigil Turns Violent

TEANECK, N.J. - This is a town that thought it had Done the Right Thing.

Teaneck voted to integrate its schools voluntarily back in 1964, years before other communities were ordered to do so by courts.

Teaneck was the quiet New York City suburb where people fought attempts at blockbusting by planting defiant ``Not For Sale'' signs on their front lawns. At Teaneck High School, black and white students ``played together; we danced together; we played sports together,'' said black resident Audra Jackson, 24, while having a manicure at Naomi's House of Beauty.

But on Tuesday, a veteran white police officer shot and killed a black teen-ager in a confrontation whose details remain disputed. The next evening, a march and vigil concluded with a spasm of violence during which small groups of young blacks shouting ``White pigs!'' overturned several police cars, smashed windshields and hurled rocks through windows of shops and the township library, which is in the same complex that houses the police station.

``When you look at the pictures, at the rioting, you think, `This can't be Teaneck','' said Lorraine Zywotow, who is white and whose family was involved in the integration struggle.

``You think it's Selma,'' said her husband Samuel.

Although rumors flew and police prepared for more trouble, with reinforcements called in from neighboring departments, Teaneck has since remained quiet. About 200 college students organized by the Union of African Student Organizations marched peacefully and without police escorts through the city yesterday in what they said was an effort to defuse tensions.

Union member Charles Webster, a Teaneck graduate now studying law at Rutgers University, said that ``the anger had been building up over years. It was directed not at individuals, but at police property, symbols of justice.''

A grand jury will begin hearing testimony next week about the role of police officer Gary Spath, 29, who has been suspended with pay. Spath's partner, Wayne Blanco, has been temporarily relieved of duties, according to acting Bergen County Prosecutor John Holl.

The funeral of 16-year-old Phillip Pannell, whose parents have announced plans to file a $30 million wrongful-death suit, is scheduled Monday.

In the aftermath - as the community holds ceaseless rounds of meetings involving youth and clergy, police and NAACP leaders, township council members and a Justice Department conciliator - residents of both races asked themselves whether Teaneck is the exemplar of race relations they thought it was.

The town of nearly 40,000 - 61 percent of the population is estimated to be white, 32 percent black, the remainder Hispanic and Asian - is integrated; its public schools are 48 percent white and 38 percent black. It had a black mayor for six years and elected two blacks to the current seven-member township council and two blacks to the nine-member School Board.

Residents boast of Teaneck's polyglot nature. In addition to a dozen or so synagogues and a spectrum of churches, it has a Bahai center, a mosque and a Korean church. A counterman at the Carvel ice cream store on Teaneck Road, one of more than about 15 small businesses where plate-glass companies were at work this week repairing shattered windows, said the shop was frequented by both Pannell, whom he described as ``a quiet kid'' who came by after school with his friends, and by Spath, ``not the prejudiced type,'' who is accused of shooting Pannell in the back.

But the Police Department remains disproportionately white, with only five black officers among a force of 83. And friction between the police and black youths seems to underlie some of the anger that surfaced so startlingly this week.

Outside the high school, parents waving goodbye to a group of students leaving on a European excursion called the killing an isolated incident. ``There is no racial tension,'' said a black mother, one of several who declined to give names. Adults of both races have charged that outsiders figured in Wednesday's disturbance.

But inside the school, black students, who also asked to remain nameless, voiced other opinions. ``The day after it happened, we heard white kids saying they hoped they got a half-day of school (off),'' a sophomore girl said. ``Most of the black kids were crying.''

The police, young blacks have been telling Teaneck's stunned adults, disperse them if they congregate on street corners, stop cars looking for drugs and sometimes question teen-agers walking down their own streets in integrated neighborhoods.

``They stopped my cousin because he's young, he's black and he's got a nice car,'' a sophomore boy said. ``They thought he was dealing drugs.''

Mayor Frank Hall, who is white, said his daughter was riding with a black friend whose car was also pulled over by police. ``It must have been humiliating,'' the mayor said.

Police Chief Bryan Burke, who has been praised for his restraint by community leaders, was unavailable to discuss the accusations of police harassment. But some Teaneck parents said they believe that drug trafficking, a contemporary fact of life here as in every suburban town, has influenced police attitudes.

As the town struggled to frame a response - the Township Council will mail a newsletter to every home next week, outlining its ideas - the mayor was resolutely upbeat. ``If we were a model of integration, now we should be a model of the way we confront our problems,'' he said.

Others thought racial harmony might prove a tougher goal than even Teaneck had expected. ``I kind of think we're sitting on a powder keg here,'' said a black father seeing his daughter off to Europe. ``It's just a feeling that everything's slightly changed.''