Tampabay: The police badges that shield some sons

What might they have done differently? What did they miss? How could their quiet son, Ken Jr., the one with the learning disability, who had finished high school, who had never been in trouble, suddenly end up in prison?

You won't feel sorry for him, and I'm not asking you to. Not even the Jamisons are. The law is the law, and what's wrong is wrong, is the way his tall, muscular father sees it.

He ought to know. Ken Jamison Sr. is a St. Petersburg cop.

In August, his 20-year-old son, Ken Jr., pleaded no contest to being part of a team of four holdup men who struck auto parts stores and a fast-food restaurant in the summer of 1999.

Jamison Jr., or Keye, as his family calls him, was the safe man. He's the one who took the money. Sometimes he waved a BB gun. He is in prison now and will have to serve at least 81/2 years of his 10-year sentence.

He is the second oldest of four children. His baby pictures, high school prom pictures and photos of his siblings cover the walls of the Jamisons' den, where the cop and his wife sit on a sofa, their hands just touching.

There is love in this house.

And there is anger.

Officer Jamison and his wife don't understand why their son didn't get the princely treatment accorded Antron Peterson, the stepson of one of the police chief's closest friends, Sgt. Al White.

Peterson has admitted that on the night of the city's first outbreak of racial violence in October 1996, he took part in a car burglary in which one of his cohorts allegedly shot and killed a good Samaritan, Andre Miller, who was trying to stop the crime.

Two other men were charged with felony murder, a capital offense.

Peterson was charged with nothing.

"You have a person who has admitted to committing a burglary. In the process, a murder is committed. You're considered an accessory regardless of whether you pulled the trigger," Officer Jamison said.

Liza Jamison sits, listens, her eyes closed as if she is trying to shut out her emotion.

Her anger is aimed first at Sgt. White. He is her neighbor. He is in charge of the squad that arrested her son in July 1999, the very month Peterson was picked up.

"He covered up for his son, and look what he did to mine!"

Mrs. Jamison is unsure whether her son might have received better treatment if her husband had been part of the police department's good ol' boy system. There is one, she said. "That's what I've heard."

That phrase is usually hung on white cops. But in this case, the old boy network is made up of black cops. Officer Jamison, also black, isn't part of the in-crowd.

Mrs. Jamison identified the leadership as Chief Goliath Davis, Maj. Cedrick Gordon and Sgt. White.

"Is there justice for one, but not for others?" she asked.

I tried to reach Sgt. White. No luck. No surprise.

For months now, I've been told only white bigots are upset with Go Davis and the way he does business.

But the problem isn't racism.

It's cronyism.

For Ken Jamison Sr., opening his mouth is tantamount to running through a minefield without looking where he's putting his feet. But a moment sticks in his mind: when Sgt. White approached him, as Keye Jamison was going through the courts.

According to Jamison, Peterson's stepfather said: "I can sympathize with you, because I went through the same thing."

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