end urban blight by providing necessary city utility infrastructure on the predominantly-black west side. Many western areas of the city are without utility infrastructure over 25 years later. A number of incidents involving his hard-line stances include long-time racial tensions between the police and black citizens which zeroed in on Folmar's leadership as the precursor; as mayor, he was known to be the true, de facto leader of the city's police force and he routinely furthered that image by getting proactive in on-the-scene police investigations and was known to carry a pistol. He instructed police on night-watch 3rd shift to start wearing SWAT-team, military-style black uniforms and baseball-style black caps. A notorious incident happened on Todd Rd. in 1983 when 2 white police detectives, Ed Spivey and Les Brown, allegedly barged into a home where black mourners had gathered after the funeral of a grandmother. The detectives were following up on a missing person case and observed a suspicious subject outside the residence. The detectives were held hostage and beaten by the black occupants and held until other police arrived, who subsequently arrested the mourners under allegations of assault & torture of the officers, with resulting claims by local black leaders of police abuse during questioning of the suspects. Folmar was quoted in 1997 using the word "queer" publicly in a derogatory fashion noting his disapproval of the lifestyles of gay and lesbian individuals. During Folmar's re-election bid in 1999, Samuel J. Caraway, a 19-year-old, openly gay resident of Montgomery, was beaten and jailed by two members of the Montgomery Police Department while attempting to erect a sign mocking Folmar's election slogan, "Folmar - Still The One." Caraway's sign said, "Folmar, Still A Bigot." Caraway would later cite Folmar's derogatory use of the word "queer" as an inspiration for his sign. His suit against the city resulted in a $20,000 settlement, negotiated by local attorney Julian L. McPhillips, Jr. Public transportation The Montgomery City Bus Transit System had a long historical past of serving the city and stepped to the forefront with the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 and the subsequent year-long Montgomery bus boycott thereafter, which still didn't destroy the transit system. It took a political decision by Folmar to selectively ban certain ads on buses, namely an anti-death penalty ad, to dismantle the bus system. When Folmar was told that he couldn't ban the ad as discriminatory,