Ramsey County probation officer Darrell Pridgen listens during a session with repeat offenders in St. Paul on April 22, 2009. (Pioneer Press: Sherri LaRose-Chiglo)
In 1960s Germantown, the Philadelphia neighborhood where Darrell Pridgen grew up, gangs were rampant, street crime the norm and gunshots an everyday event.
Several of his cousins were locked in the penitentiary, and Pridgen said he might have joined them if he hadn’t found a creative outlet. Instead, he graduated from college, started a family and had a long career.
Pridgen, 61, retired last month from Ramsey County after 37 years in Community Corrections. Colleagues called him a “trailblazer,” the first African-American man to hold many of his positions and an officer who pushed for more minority hires.