Anita Van Buren

Anita Van Buren was a fictional character on NBC's long-running police procedural and legal drama television series Law & Order, portrayed by S. Epatha Merkerson. The character of Van Buren was an "authoritative lieutenant" in the New York Police Department, who supervised teams of detectives who worked out in the field, and originally served as "commander of the 27th Precinct Detective Squad." The fictional Van Buren achieved the rank of NYPD lieutenant before any actual policewoman in New York did so, creating a "dissonance" with reality. Van Buren appeared in 390 episodes of Law & Order. When she crossed the 300-episode mark in 2008, Lt. Van Buren became the longest-running African-American character in television history. In 1997 it was noted that "Van Buren was one of the first and is still one of the few female African-American characters in network television to hold a position of power standing over the desks of white professional men telling them how to do their jobs." The Associated Press once described Van Buren as a character with typically "limited screen time...whose practical function is to point her detectives in the story's next direction." After many years on the procedural drama, Merkerson was "rewarded with a personal crisis for her character—a life-threatening bout with cervical cancer—that gave her some fine, if fleeting, opportunities to show Van Buren's rarely glimpsed vulnerability." Van Buren's role in the franchise is considered a precursor to Olivia Benson's centrality in the SVU series. By episode count, she was the longest-running character on the original show during its original run; Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) surpassed her during its revival.