A Prince George’s County native was the first — and only, to date — police officer to arrest a president, a long-forgotten historical moment that has lately become relevant.

Born into slavery in September of 1842, William Henry West fought in the Civil War before becoming one of two Black police officers in the D.C. police department during the Reconstruction era.

About a year after he was hired in 1871, Private West was on patrol at 13th and M Street NW, near Thomas Circle, watching for people driving at excessive speeds, as a mother and child had recently been injured.

He spotted a horse-drawn carriage going too fast and ordered the driver to stop, only to realize that he had pulled over President Ulysses S. Grant, the former general who led the North to victory.

“Gen. Grant was an ardent admirer of a good horse and loved nothing better than to sit behind a pair of spirited animals,” reported the Washington Evening Star in a 1908 story on the arrest. “He was a good driver, and sometimes ‘let them out’ to try their mettle.”

He gave Grant a warning, but the very next day he spotted him speeding again and chased him for a block to stop him.

“I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest,” he supposedly told Grant.

Grant, who reportedly admitted that he had been speeding, was taken to the D.C. police station and released on a $20 bond, the equivalent of more than $400 in today’s dollars, which he forfeited when he didn’t show up the next day for a trial. He was cited at least two other times for speeding while president.

West retired in 1901. He died in 1915 and was buried at Columbian Harmony, a prominent Black cemetery at the current site of the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station that was later tragically destroyed.

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