COPS
by
MARK BAKER

PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK
Distributed in Canada by PaperJacks Ltd., a Licensee
of the trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.


POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020 In Canada distributed by PaperJacks Ltd.,
330 Steelcase Road, Markham, Ontario

 Copyright 0 1985 by Mark Baker Cover photograph copyright C 1986 Magic
 Image Studios, Ltd.

 Published by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, Inc.
 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-10706

 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
 portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon &
 Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY. 10020

 ISBN: 0-671-61446-0

 First Pocket Books printing May, 1986

 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

 Printed in Canada

 Fenway Cooey has been a friend of my family since before I was born. He has
 always been an example to me of what it means to be a gentleman, because he
 is a truly gentle man. This book is dedicated to Cooey, a good police
 officer and a fine human being.

 ~ Acknowledgments

 I WOULD LIKE to thank all the men and women who were willing to take the
 time to talk to me about their experiences. Obviously there would be no book
 at all without, their generous participation. I hope I have repaid their
 trust by presenting an honest account of the world they live and work in.
  I owe Bob Bender, my editor, many thanks for his hard work on this book and
  for making it as good as he believed it could be. My agent, Esther Newberg,
  is always there when I need her, which is usually when I run out of money
  or spirit. My friends Frank Fortunato and Gary Smolek, as well as my
  father, Bob Baker, read the manuscript. All three of them gave me their
  honest criticism and their suggestions, and that has made a positive
  difference in the book. Bruce Margolius kept asking me questions that made
  me think. Mark Dickerman reminded me that my initial impressions were
  probably the right ones.
  Special thanks go to John Davis, who taught me to operate his home computer
  and then let me use it to
 generate the final manuscript. Every evening as I finished for the day,
 John was there to read the chapter fresh out of the printer. He offered
 encouragement and a keen eye for what was important and what was not.
  David Lindzian and his Blues Patrol provided technical, ballistic and
  procedural information that was essential. Tom Trepcyck helped me get the
  proposal for Cops off the ground in the first place. Bob Leuci spent a
  lot of time and some of his best material helping me understand the way
  police officers think. Ed Donovan, president of the International Law
  Enforcement Stress Association and head of the Boston Police Stress Pro-
  gram, has been more than generous with his connections and his insights.
  As I collected these interviews and traveled around the country many
  people gave me a place to stay, an introduction to the local police or
  some other assistance. I'd like to mention them here and say thanks:
  David and Mary Ann Baker, Captain William Johnson, Andy and Irene
  Crichton, Tim and Cracker Conaway, Raoul Robino, Martin Perlman, Peggy
  Grossman, George Moon, Peter and Cathy O'Sullivan, Judy Collins, Judge
  Marvin Romanoff, John Morgan, Linda Roule, John and Cindy Davis, Joan
  O'Sullivan, Helen Pantzis, Hope Katcher, Stephanie Phelan, Anya
  Cvikevich, Eve Zeigler, Marvin Bevans, Kathy Pohl, and Cheryl Weinstein.
  I would like to thank my mother, Gloria Baker, for reading to me all
  those years of my childhood. She sparked my interest in language. Then
  she and my pop told me I could be anything I wanted to be and encouraged
  me in whatever I did.
  Veronica, my wife, imposes order and sensibility on the chaos of my life.
  Without her intelligence, foresight and vitality I'd never get a book
  finished. She manages our partnership with patience and grace and I love
  her very much.

 Contents

 Acknowledgments                 ix
 Introduction                   1
 Chapter 1 SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS    9
 Chapter 2 POLICE WORK           39
 Chapter 3 CRIMEBUSTERS         109
 Chapter 4 DEADLY FORCE         167
 Chapter 5 BLOOD BROTHERS       209
 Chapter 6 THE BORDERLINE, THE BAD
       AND THE UGLY             249
 Chapter 7 HARDENING OF THE HEART    297
 Chapter 8 CURTAINS             337
 Introduction

 "MY HUSBAND, the cop, Always has to be the big man. One of the neighbors
 gets a ticket, they show up on our doorstep. 'Hey, Jimmy, old buddy, can
 you fix this for me? I swear the light was yellow. Can you fix itT
  " 'Don't worry about it,' he says. 'No problem.' "
  The wife of a police officer, a thin, conservatively well-dressed woman
  in her fifties, was trying to explain to me the gulf between illusion and
  reality in her neighbors' perception of her husband, as well as in his
  perception of himself. He is a patrolman in a large metropolitan area and
  has worked in the same precinct on the same assignment for fifteen years.
  "Tbe big, important policeman. Do you know how he fixes tickets? He goes
  downtown and he pays them, that's how he fixes tickets."
  She was angry about his behavior, but in telling me this story she wasn't
  trying to belittle her husband. She wanted to give me a glimpse of the
  man inside the uniform-not a hero or a Fascist, a gunslinger or a
  centurion, just a mere mortal like everyone else.
                                     I
 Introduction

  Cops and crime are a national obsession these days. America has more
  police officers per capita than any other nation in the world; yet the
  specter of violent crime still terrorizes the public consciousness. Every
  evening at six o'clock we sit transfixed before our television sets
  waiting for the bad news. The day's police report is dramatized with
  videotapes of the sensational aftermath of the crimes: confiscated
  plastic bags of cocaine, a table laden with exotic automatic weapons,
  hand-cuffed youths hiding their faces in windbreakers, chalk outlines on
  the pavement splotched with dark stains. We shake our heads and lock our
  doors.
  Then, for the next few hours we try to relax and forget the jungle out
  there in the streets. We tune in to primetime television drama and watch
  cop shows-good cops, bad cops, private cops, secret cops, ex-con cops,
  jiggly and feminist cops, straight-arrow and rebel cops, fantasy and
  "real" cops. And it's not just television. American popular culture is
  permeated with images of the police as saviors or monsters, peace
  officers and pigs.
  Most Americans believe they know how a police officer does his job and
  lives his life because they read the newspapers and watch "Kojak" on TV.
  We see police officers riding around in their cars and we avert our eyes.
  Unless a cop is writing us a ticket, we never talk to the police, not
  even to say hello. In fact, we get very little realistic information on
  exactly what police work is like and even less insight into the
  day-to-day existence of police officers-the human beings, men and women,
  Sood, bad and mediocre.
  I wanted to go beyond the crime statistics and sociological studies,
  beyond the flat cardboard characters of most fiction, behind the stone
  wall of press releases police administrators pile between the public and
  the cops. I wanted to find out just who these people are, why they become
  cops and how they do their jobs. Does
 2
                              Introduction

 our image of the police square with their reality? How do they see
 themselves? How do they see us?
  I interviewed more than a hundred cops for this book. They work and live in
  a variety of settings-urban, suburban and rural--in a dozen states
  scattered all across the continent-the North and South, the Midwest and the
  West Coast. I traveled from communities with no more than a few hundred
  souls to sprawling cities with millions of residents.,
  I talked with police officers in locker rooms, briefing rooms and squad
  rooms. I took every available tour of holding cells and drunk tanks,
  helicopter hangars and communications centers. I visited the kids in the
  academies and saw the stiffs in the drawers of morgues. I walked with
  officers through red light districts and posh apartment complexes. I rode
  in police cars on patrol on different shifts around the clock, watching
  cops make car stops and settle family fights-and I felt that little grip of
  fear in my guts every time the radio blurted out the number of the unit I
  was riding in.
  Although I worked my way through official channels to get some of the
  interviews included here, most of my contacts were quietly unofficial,
  without the knowledge of or sanction from the bureaucrats and bosses. I met
  cops in their bars and in their homes. We talked in coffee shops, on front
  porches and standing around in parking lots. Sometimes an officer and I
  just found an interrogation room that no one was using in the back of the
  station house.
  I promised the men and women I talked to that I would not use their names
  regardless of the circumstances of our meeting. Police officers live in a
  closed society-"hermetically sealed" might be a more accurate
  description-under incredible pressures from their peers and their superior
  officers to conform. The consensus among them is that conversation with
  anyone outside the police department can only be trouble. In3
 Introduction

 terviewers with tape recorders remind them of prisoner interrogations and
 internal affairs investigations where anything the subject says may be
 used against him. They feel constantly vulnerable to recriminations from
 the public, the press, the department and their fellow officers.
  I wanted them to relax, to feel safe to talk frankly with me, as though
  I were a trusted partner. Further than that, in the relatively short time
  I spent with each officer, I hoped to establish a sort of neutral ground
  with this confidential, off-the-record approach. I wanted them to feel
  free to tell me things they might not discuss even with a partner or a
  spouse-things they might not ordinarily admit to themselves.
  This is not a very scientific approach. I had no control group with which
  to compare my interviews. I did no aggressive fact checking to
  authenticate the veracity of each story. I trusted my instincts and
  relied on the belief that the majority of people will not deliberately
  lie when they have so little at risk. It takes too much energy and
  concentration to lie consistently for no purpose. My experience has been
  that once a person makes up his mind to talk to me and takes the trouble
  to keep an appointment, he will usually be quite candid. People want to
  be understood. They want a chance to explain themselves to the rest of
  the world. Many of the cops I interviewed were hungry for a little
  recognition for the job they do.
  Of course no individual sees himself in a totally objective light. The
  reader must exercise some judgment, as though he were studying the
  conversation of someone he had just met. There are exaggerations,
  embellishments, perhaps even lies in these personal accounts. They do not
  contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But I do
  not believe there is anything here which would subvert the basic honesty
 4
                              Introduction

 of the book. Granting cops anonymity did more to reveal the truth than to
 disguise it.
  Even with a guarantee of anonymity some officers could not break the habit
  of John Wayne taciturnity. Some cops could not overcome their xenophobia
  for anyone outside the police department. They remained suspicious of my
  motives. I had limited contact with truly bad police officers. Lazy,
  criminal or rogue cops see anyone asking questions as a danger to them. And
  a few individuals who did agree to talk to me would only recite pro-police
  propaganda.
  However, the unwritten code of silence I had heard so much about was not
  the obstacle I had expected it to be. Maybe they were not entirely
  representative, but most of the cops who consented to be interviewed were
  gregarious. A number of them were downright charming. They seemed to enjoy
  talking. That's not to imply that they ever let their guard down
  completely. A cop could stand drinking with me at a bar, regaling me with
  one funny story after another, but he still kept one eye on the door and
  everyone who came and went. He wouldn't put his back to an aisle where
  strangers were passing back and forth. I realized this watchfulness carried
  over to the officers' relationship with me. A cop might be friendly and
  open, but that didn't mean that he really liked me or that I had been
  accepted. Even with. those men and women I felt closest to, there was
  always one more layer of suspicion cloaking their inner selves.
  This artless amiability coexisting with a skepticism that borders on
  paranoia is not the only contradiction I observed in the lives of police
  officers. They work in the middle of the raw, unadorned reality of the
  streets. It would seem that they should have a finger on the pulse of
  American society. Instead, they seem to be slightly out of touch with
  day-to-day existence. Like someone recently returned from a long ocean
  voyage,
                                     5
 Introduction
 police officers have missed many of the cultural points of reference the
 rest of us take for granted. They know what criminal activity is going on
 in what part of town; they can recal] license plate numbers of suspicious
 vehicles for months at a time. They are obsessed with their work, consumed
 by it, and it is fascinating to hear them tell about their experiences.
 But sometimes it is difficult to talk to them about anything else.
  Police officers deal with very adult situations. They are constantly
  bearing witness to birth, death and the full range of human passions. The
  job must be a sobering experience. Yet cops have an aura of adolescence
  about them, something youthful and slightly silly. They tease, bicker and
  pout, run in cliques and gossip behind each other's backs like high
  school kids. All police officers, no matter what their ages, refer to
  their job as "playing cops and robbers."
  Generally speaking, police officers lean to the right politicafly and
  moraBy. They advocate the straight and -narrow path to right living. They
  believe in the inviolability of the marriage vows, the importance of the
  family, the necessity of capital punishment. Some of them are
  unyieldingly dogmatic-right is right and wrong is wrong and they ave the
  arbiters of which is which. On the other hand, cops are masters of the
  compromise. It's a job requirement. Laws can't solve the complex human
  problems cops see every day. A police officer spends each shift
  negotiating lus way through one thorny situation after another. He's seen
  people literally get away with murder while the innocent cry vainly for
  justice. Sometimes his personal sense of right and wrong begins to warp.
  After a few years on the street, he may acknowledge a hierarchy of wrong:
  dead wrong, wrong but not bad, wrong but everybody does it.
  Even though a cop will hang onto his conservative dogmatism, he will
  apply situational ethics to his own behavior. At least 50 percent of the
  married male police 6
                              Introduction

 officers I interviewed had a mistress or a couple of girlfriends and had
 very little trouble making mental accommodation for the relationships. They
 reveled in the fact that they almost had to kill somebody to get in any real
 trouble on the job. Off duty, a cop's greatest joy is the freedom he has to
 live above the law in minor ways-ignoring red lights when no one is coming,
 never having to look at his speedometer, getting away with all kind of
 trivial offenses by flashing his badge.
  Similarly, cops are cynical people; yet they cling with tenacity to the
  ideals of Superman. Even though his sneering heart of hearts tells him
  there is only falsehood, iniquity and death in the world, a cop will still
  claim that he stands for truth, justice and the American Way.
  One last contradiction is that for all the mixed motives that draw men and
  women to the job and for all the personal and professional impediments they
  must contend with once they are police officers, there are some really good
  cops. I met people who are selfless, larger than life, honest-to-God
  heroes. And I met many average men and women who earned my profound respect
  for performing their duty, day in and day out, year after year, with
  honesty, integrity and imagination.
  I should admit that I like cops more than I thought I would when I started
  this book. Having tasted the casual violence and bone-numbing boredom they
  experience, I am better able to understand their point of view. I don't
  fear the police as a group as much as I used to, because I now know a good
  number of them as individuals. When I see a police officer today, I look at
  his face, not at his uniform.

                                    7
                  CHAPTER 1

 School of Hard Knocks

 "I KNOW iT sounds corny as hell, but I really thought I could help people.
 I wanted to do some good in the world, you know?" That's what every cop
 answers when asked why he became a police officer. He'll probably say it
 with a laugh or a touch of bitterness. That doesn't mean it isn't true. He
 just isn't a rookie any longer. Experience has kicked a lot of gray onto his
 black-andwhite, turned him cynical and suspicious. The naive egotist who was
 going to save the world may look pretty silly to him now.
  Here's how it begins for the typical young aspiring cop. A white male from
  a working-class family, he graduates from high school and serves in the
  military or spends a couple of years in junior college. When it is time to
  get a job, he forgoes the heroic and takes a position selling women's shoes
  or life insurance or auto parts. He might become a baggage handler, a Xerox
  machine repairman, the assistant manager of a fast food joint. If he has an
  inside connection he may join a construction or industrial union and learn
  a trade.
                                     9
 COPS
  He gets married. Within a year or two there is a child to feed. The most
  heroic thing he does is to put food on the table,three times a day. That's
  an accomplishment in itself, but there's not much of a thrill to it. This
  is the life he sees stretching before him for years and years-pulling the
  same lever, twisting the same screw, pushing the same papers from In box to
  Out box, forever and ever.
  One day he signs up to take the Civil Service Examination. He tells his
  wife, his family and himself that he's after higher salary, job security
  and better benefits. That's not the whole truth. He doesn't want to be a
  mailman or a garbageman or even a fireman. Those jobs are too much like the
  one he already has. He's looking for a little excitement with his
  opportunity of advancement. He wants some action as well as a good credit
  rating. He wants to be Superman with a pension plan. He wants to be a cop.
  Not every candidate approaches the job with a confusion of unrealistic
  expectations and noble impulses. Some calculating individuals hope to use
  the position for personal aggrandizement. The opportunist hopes to gain
  influence. The greedy choose police work thinking graft and bribery will
  make their fortunes. The power and authority of wearing a uniform and
  carrying a gun attract more than a fair share of bullies to the profession,
  men and women looking to get even with the world or to get a leg up on the
  rest of us.
  That these kinds of selfish motives exist among a percentage of the members
  of all police departments shouldn't be surprising. What is surprising is
  the honest idealism that the majority of the men and women who become
  police officers bring to the job. They really mean it when they say, "I
  thought I could help. I wanted to make a difference." I heard variations of
  those words over and over again. I came to believe them.
  Of course every police officer breaks this mold in one
 10
                       School of Hard Knocks

 way or another. There is the college graduate from a very wealthy family who
 had the world spread at his feet and decided to become a cop: "Being a cop
 was not one of the things you talked about over dinner while you were
 sipping your Beaujolais. It just was not an acceptable profession. The only
 one in my family who approved was the guy who really earned all the money in
 the first place. He was the only one who was not a snob. "
  There is the man who grew up in the ghetto with no options at all: "Most of
  the guys I grew up with in the barrio didn't do much but become drug
  addicts and go to jail. It was the luck of the draw that I ended up a cop
  and not a drug addict. Lo and behold, some of us just had to become cops.
  The job was held in some awe. You got respect. Hey, it meant a legal gun."
  And the jock who grew up in suburbia, got a sports scholarship, dropped out
  of college after three years because he couldn't see himself coaching
  basketball at the YMCA the rest of his life. This is the cop who started
  out as the small-town high school hood. He spent his educational career
  smoking in the boys' room and skipping class, but he did have the native
  intelligence to realize that his talent for getting into hot water would
  just boil over someday. He chose law enforcement over reform school.
  There is also the talented flautist who left her prestigious music school
  because she found the camaraderie of the police force more attractive than
  the competition in the concert hall. And the black woman from the inner
  city who saw her neighborhood burned down around her and decided that the
  only way io change the system is from the inside. She sued the government,
  forcing them to allow her to become a police officer.
  Once they've made it through the rituals of psychological questionnaires,
  polygraph tests and physical examinations, they spend approximately six
  months in the
                                    11
 COPS
 police academy. For many of them it is a less than memorable experience.
  "You have all the instructors up there teaching you the penal law, the
  study of minority groups. You dabble in a little psychology, a little
  sociology.
  "Then you got the guys downstairs in the gym who're telling you, 'That's
  all bullshit. It's either you or him out in the street. Go for the eyes.
  Kick them in the groin.'
  "You say to yourself, 'What the hell is going on?' It's the same thing
  as being in high school. The English teacher is telling you one thing and
  then you go downstairs to the gym and that teacher is saying, 'Well, the
  English teacher is a fag anyway.'
  Some trainees take their instruction more seriously than others, but most
  of them see the time spent in the academy as a formality they must put
  up with in order to get out on the streets where they can really find out
  what's going on: "I got in a lot of trouble while I was in the academy,
  clowning around and what. I wanted to study to know the laws and be a
  cop, but I didn't want to pick up all this other bullshit they give out.
  I never took it serious, the discipline part. For punish-ment like, they
  had you carry bricks. I used to carry three bricks in one hand and three
  bricks in the other hand.
  "One time the patrol chief came out to the academy after we'd been there
  for a few months to do an inspection of the cadets, as they called us.
  The chief would come down the line, ask each cadet a question-soinething
  about police work-and you had to give him an answer. Then they'd all
  eyeball you up and down to make sure that you looked sharp. I was
  standing in ranks with my six bricks. He come up to me and saw the three
  bricks in each hand and he said, 'What's your name?'
  " 'Cadet Johnson, sir.' 12
                       School of Hard Knocks

   'All right, Cadet Johnson, what's the definition for fornication?'
  " 'Sir, the definition for fornication is, uh, I guess that's two people of
  the opposite sexes in the backseat of a '57 Chevy having fun.'
  "He walked on and he had a big grin on his face. The lieutenant from the
  academy stopped and said to me, 'Johnson, that's why you're carrying six
  bricks.' "
  At graduation, they raise their right hands and they swear a solemn oath.
  Each one is presented a shiny metal badge, which is never quite as heavy as
  he expects it to be, and a pistol that drags down on his belt like Fate
  itself. They are congratulated by the mayor and the chief of police, their
  families and friends. Now they're cops.

 DIFFERENT FRATERNAL groups come by graduation day and talk to their ethnic
 group. So You have the black guy come in from the Guardians. He'd grab all
 the black guys on the side and tell them, "These are the problems that are
 pbculiar to the black cop." The Irish guys would come from the Emerald
 Society and Columbians talk to the Italians.
  When it was over, we all got together and said, "What'd your guy tell you?
  What'd your guy tell you?" It was hilarious.
  Clearly the Irish cop would say, "Our problem has been and continues to be
  that we can't get an Irish cop that doesn't drink. An Irish guy who.
  doesn't drink at all before he becomes a cop, becomes a cop and all of a
  sudden he's a major drinker. He gets all his drinks for nothing, so you
  can't get him to walk past the bars. We got alcoholics. We got guys with
  serious problems because of drink."
 I The black guy says, "The black cop could live in any middle-class mixed
 neighborhood in the city and has
                                    13
 COPS
 never been to Harlem, but as a recruit they'll send him to
 Bedford-Stuyvesant or Brownsville or Harlem for sure. He's there and all of
 a sudden he finds cousins everywhere. We can't keep you guys on the street.
 You're always running up in a building and getting laid all the time."
  The Italian guy's speech was pretty much the same thing. "You guys can't
  keep your pricks in your pants. You walk by the bars all right, but you're
  all looking to get laid. It's all right. We know you're going to do it. But
  be careful and try not to."
  Then you have -the chaplain coming in to tell you how important the
  marriage vows are. "Maintain a discipline for yourself. You're going to run
  into temptation."

 I was out with my training officer the first night. We'd been riding around
 about ten minutes when he slammed on the brakes, ran around the car, grabbed
 this guy and threw him up against the side of the car. He started shaking
 him down.
  I get out of the car and start practicing my pa techniques that they had
  taught me at the police academy, which consisted of watching my training
  officer while he's shaking down this guy and putting him in the backseat.
  When we'd sat back down in the car, I looked over very casually and said,
  "What'd we get him for?"
  "He just robbed that man over there."
  "Oh, really?"
  Talked to the man and, sure enough, that's what happened. "Yeah," the man
  said, "he held me up at knife point. Took my $26 1 had and put it in his
  left pocket." We felt in the guy's pocket and there was the $26. We
  arrested him and took him to jail.
  So that was what a trained eye will see and an untrained eye will not see.
  I thought I was looking around 14
                       School of Hard Knocks

 pretty good, but I didn't see him rob the guy. I began my real education
 in the department.

 My first night out on the street, I went out with a guy by the name of
 Charlie. Charlie had about twenty years on the job, maybe twenty-five. I
 don't know whether or not he resented the fact that I was with him. He
 said, "Come on, let's go." We had Tremont Street from Oxford Crossing down
 to Camden where Slade's Restaurant and Estelle's were located. They were
 places that a lot of people come to after the regular bars closed down.
  So we walked from the station to Slade's. After that we walked right to
  the firehouse which was right on Fremont Avenue. We went up to the third
  floor. Charlie opened a locker and began taking off his uniform.
  "What's this?" I said.
  "It's all right," he said. "You go over there and lie down. I'll wake you
  up when it's time to go." He took off his uniform and put on his pajamas,
  I had this' big, long overcoat on and I went over and
 I laid down on the bed at attention. I was so afraid of
 being caught in this situation, I laid there for six hours,
 eyes lik , e'silver dollars, waiting for something to happen.
  Come six o'clock or so, Charlie got up and said, "Come on, let's go." Put
  his uniform back on and went downstairs. We checked all our doors and
  windows on the beat, went back to the police station and checked out.
  ne next shift I worked I got the same beat again only by myself. I must
  have walked it 250 times. I would not get off the street.

 I found out early that there were some rough characters around Bay Street
 and Main Street. The first night they
                                    15
 COPS
 put me with an older fellow, one that had experience. He started to naming
 different men on the street who was real bad. He called one of them by
 name and he says, "Now, he's bad. He'll try to put a fellow in a damn
 trash can the first night."
  "Could he put three of us in there?" I asked this officer.
  "What do you mean by three?"
  "Me and Smith and Wesson."
  We hadn't walked three blocks before we saw the man. The man come up and
  the older officer introduces me and tells him, "He's going to be the new
  officer on the beat and this is his first night really. But you got to
  watch him, because he will give you trouble sometimes. "
  The man kind of sized me up and down. He was a pretty husky fellow, too.
  He says, "He looks to me like he would fit in a trash can."
  I just backed up one step and put my hand on Smith and Wesson. "You won't
  get all three of us in there," I said.
  "What would you do?" he says.
  "If you laid a hand on me, I'd kill you dead," I says.
  He looked at me and Jaen he looked at the older officer and he says, "By
  God, I believe he means that. After that I didn't have no trouble walking
  the beat.

 They made a big deal of it when I first started. The first day I got
 interviewed by the local newspaper. In the first four days, I was
 interviewed twice and photographed three times, which did not set well
 with the guys, of course. "How do you like being a female officer?"
  "Shoot, guys, I don't know. Give me a chance."
  One of my first duty shifts, I was partners with this guy whose first
  words to me on the way to the unit
 16
                       School of Hard Knocks

 were, "Don't even think about driving, because you're not going to." Other
 than that, he didn't speak to me. He was macho man and he refused to speak
 to me. He did not want this woman in a uniform, doing the job he was doing.
 For five hours we sat in the same car and didn't talk.

 You come brand spanking new out of the academy and you think you're going to
 save the world. You'll make the streets safe for everybody. There won't be
 any more crime out there after you get done. Takes about two weeks to burst
 your bubble.
  The first fellow I rode with said to me the first thing, "Have you ever
  ridden Midland before?" That's a black ghetto part of town.
  "No, sir," I said. "I don't even know where Midland is.~l
  He turned his head and rolled his eyes. I could see him thinking, "Oh, boy,
  that's just what I need. Not only is he a rookie, but he knows less than a
  rookie."
  We get out there on those calls and he says, "On this call, I want you to
  do all the talking."
  "Okay, okay." I'm chomping at the bit. I get in there and I start talking
  to these people like I was having a regular conversation. They look at me
  and look back at my training officer, and then they look back at me. They
  scratch their heads, lean over to the training officer and ask, "What'd he
  say?"
  He would translate for me: "He said that if you don't shut up, he's going
  to kick your fucking ass."
  "Yes, sir. We understand that."
  I looked at him kind of amazed and said, "Did I say that?"
  "You did that time."
  After a while you realize that you can't educate everybody you come in
  contact with, so there is only one
                                    17
 COPS

 other choice. Go down to their level as far as your verbalizing. You have
 to learn a whole new language.
  My first wife was a teacher. After a month or two, she looked at me and
  said, "Your English is really becoming atrocious." You begin to talk the
  same way all the time. You don't even realize you're doing4t.

 It happened to me. You go into the diner with your uniform on and all the
 girls are looking at you. All of a sudden I thought I got better-looking.
 People are starting to pay attention to you. They want to talk to you.
 There's a whole ego trip that goes with the job. You start saying to
 yourself, "Am I special? They have been telling me that I am."

 Walking down the street in tha * t uniform and seeing
 blue-haired old matrons turn to look at you like, "Thank
 God, you're here," it really is a wonderful feeling. It's
 like Dodge City and you're the sheriff. This street is
 mine and ain't nobody going to fuck with it. That's a
 great and professional feeling. You've done something,
 you're important. Up until then in your life you may
 have done absolutely nothing. Now all of a sudden, at
 the ripe old age of twenty-one, there's a whole lot of
 people looking to you to protect them from the mad
 house around them. That's a wonderful thing.

 I suddenly found myself standing on the streets, a thread still hanging
 out of the sleeve of my uniform, wondering what the fuck I'm doing in this
 blue suit. It's funny, I thought I knew a lot about the streets and about
 crime. Most of us, including a lot of policemen, are educated to think
 that we do. But we know about as much about crime and the streets as a
 fisherman knows about the
 18
                       School of Hard Knocks

 bottom of the ocean. We paddle around in the sea, but we are largely
 ignorant of what actually goes on down there.

 It's a shock to everybody when they first come on the job to find out that
 everybody does not think like you think. That's one thing that I learned.
 'Mat's what makes me crazy about the peace demonstrations that I see with
 "Ban This and Ban That because we're all Brothers," and all that stuff.
 Jesus, go down ten blocks from here and you won't find your brother down
 there. The whole world isn't your block and your neighborhood ball team
 and your bar. There's a million other people out there who think
 completely different from you.

 The street is very seductive and very sensual. You may take it home
 because you want to take it home.
  There used to be a place in Manhattan between First ana Second Avenue on
  100th Street that was like Bombay. Eighteen thousand people in one block
  and 17,500 had criminal records. The place was a zoo. Thousands and
  thousands of people were outdoors on the street. The one block had four
  cops. The guys who worked it regularly stayed on the corners. I came into
  the precinct and we were going to take over the patrol. I asked one
  old-timer, "You going on that block?"
  "I ain't going on that block," he says, "and I don't give a shit if they
  all kill each other."
  I had my partner and a couple of other guys I worked with and I said to
  them, "Come on. Let's go in there and see what's happening." I was very
  young.
  It was hysterical. What went on in that block in one night was more
  police work-if you wanted to participate in it-than most cops would
  experience in a lifetim tabbings, shootings, fighting, gambling, prosti19
 COPS
 tution-on one street. I came on post one night and they were having a
 cockfight in the middle of the street.
  I would go home at night and think to myself, "What a world! What a
  place! What an experience! It's really exciting. " The smells were even
  very special. It was smells I'd never smelled before, exotic.
  And the girls. If a guy is fairly good-looking and has anything
  going-anything at all-and he works in the ghetto, he can fuck himself to
  death if he wants to. That's no bullshit. It's just so available. It's
  so easy to get laid. Even the shy guys, guys who would never think of
  hitting on a certain type of woman in civilian clothes, would hit on a
  woman in a minute in uniform, because you can just walk up and say
  anything you want to her. She feels secure and she'll respond. You're not
  going to get turned off immediately. You have a shot. If you're ballsy
  and you've been around a little bit, you ran get laid as much as you can
  stand.
  This is a single man's job, because you meet literally thousands of
  women. And you meet them in unusually stressful situations. You come in
  as the knight in shining armor. Some guys will take advantage of that.
  There's this ethic that says you don't do it, but we all know that
  everyone does it. I don't think I locked up a guy the first year on the
  force without fucking his wife, girlfriend or mother.

 I got my first call to a domestic dispute. On the way over, I was thinking
 maybe I'm going to be a hero and save some woman,
  First, I bang on the door and this voice says to come in. I walk in and
  there is this guy sitting there, crying. Now what do I do? He's mumbling
  something. Now another guy walks into the room with his hair in curlers.
  I thought, "I'm in the wrong area here."
  The guy with his hair in curlers walks up to me and
 20
                       School of Hard Knocks

 puts his arm around me and says, "Trooper, I really love that guy. I don't
 know why we can't live together."
  Now, I'm destroyed, I don't know what to do. I took his hand off of my
  shoulder and slowly backed out the door.
  I found out later that every new trooper is sent to that house. I didn't
  do a thing, I didn't help them at all. Too weird.

 I was on my first post. A young fellow walked up to me-he had his load
 on-and made some snide remark to me. I deflected it. He came back again
 and made some very personal remark about my family and I started to ignore
 that, too. I looked around and I was aware that everybody was watching me.
 I realized that if I didn't take this situation in hand right away, there
 would be nothing I could accomplish.
  I pretended to walk past him, but before I had gotten by, I kneed him
  right in the balls and dropped him to the ground. I picked him up gently,
  very gently, sat him on the stoop and walked away.
  I never had a problem again on that post. I didn't beat him up or leave
  any scars. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't put myself in a situation where
  people would feel I was getting my rocks off. I just made my point. I had
  given him the opportunity to get his rocks off and leave. He didn't take
  it and that was that.

 The very first call I got as a patrolman was a head-on collision between
 a tractor trailer truck and a Datsun pickup. In the wreckage both the
 driver and the passenger in the Datsun were killed. The driver of the semi
 was not injured, but he was very shaken. He was b~eing treated for a heart
 attack by the rescue unit when we got there. The other people were totally
 destroyed. You
                                    21
 COPS    -
 didn't have to check for vital signs; you just had to pick up the pieces
 and load them on a rubber stretcher.
  As the wrecking crew and the other officers arrived to help clear the
  street, everyone was kicking the sharp glass and metal pieces to the curb
  of the road. The passenger had no identification on him so we were look-
  ing through any paper blowing around. It was raining. I picked up a piece
  of paper that was folded up and I unfolded it. It was a suicide note
  written by the driver. He was taking his buddy with him. That was a real
  freaky experience. I read it and then read it again not really putting
  two and two together. That really brought me down to earth.

 I'd just been on the job about eight months. I wanted as much activity as
 possible. I wanted to get my feet wet. They stick me with this older cop
 who had the glassy eyes and the ruddy complexion, you know what I mean.
 I'm a little perturbed. This guy, his glory days are long gone. They also
 gave me a sector where nothing is going on. I'm really disgusted.
  I'm driving the car and all of a sudden a job comes ovpr the air: "Youths
  in the water." This is the winter. Boom! I go down because it's our
  sector. There's a bunch of people standing on the pier and they're point-
  ing. It's maybe fifteen feet, twenty feet down to the water. I go out
  onto the pier and I see this guy floundering around. I hear yelling
  underneath the pilings of the pier. My brilliant mind said that this guy
  went in to save the kids. He's hurt.
  We open up the trunk. I don't know why, but we had life preservers.
  Generally, there's not even a spare tire in most of those cars. They're
  supposed to put life preservers in cars on patrol bordering on the water,
  but they were actually in there--I couldn't believe it. There was
  probably no jack.
 22
                       School of Hard Knocks

  I get to the end of the pier and I fling one of the life preservers to
  this guy. It lands near him, but he couldn't get to it. I think to
  myself, "Here's a chance for a rookie to get a little notoriety." So I
  strip off my coat, take my shoes off, take off my gun belt. The older guy
  is looking at me now like I'm probably nuts-. It was February, I jump
  off.
  I'd done some lifeguard work before and I'm thinking as I go off this
  pier that there could be anything stuck under the water that would impale
  me and that's the end of my career. So I take a shallow water dive. When
  I hit that water, I thought my heart was going to stop. I said to myself,
  "This was a mistake.-
  I swam up to this guy and got the life ring to him. I couldn't tell him
  what to do. If you've ever been in veiy, very cold water, you know that
  you can't talk, because you get very short of breath. In the meantime,
  another radio car came. I'm assuming that they called the harbor guys,
  which is what they're supposed to do. Yet there's no other cop in the
  water, just me, this jerky kid.
  While I'm down there with this guy, Emergency Services gets there and
  they throw a harness down and take him up. Then they drop the ring down
  again. I'm looking around and I see a guy holding on to a piling. There's
  ice on it. I go get him. He's in the harness and they hoist him up.
  They throw the ring down again. Now, I'm starting to hurt. I go
  underneath the pier looking for this other guy. I can hear him yelling,
  but I can't find him. This guy has climbed up a piling and got on a cross
  beam. I'm in the water trying to say, "Come on, come on. Get back in the
  water." He looks at me like I'm crazy. He just got out of the water. He's
  thinking, "It's too cold. I ain't going back in that water. This is
  safer." But there was no way you could get the guy where he
                                    23
 COPS

 was, unless you cut a big hole in the pier. The city- would never do that.
  I said to myself, "I went in for three, I'm going to come out with three."
  So I climbed up with this jerk, tried to talk to him and then threw him in
  the water. I got back in. They pulled him up.
  I'm getting scared, because I can tell I'm getting ready to go out. They
  throw the harness down to me and yank me up. Just as I get to the top, the
  harness breaks. I say, "They're trying to kill me." Finally they get me out
  and they take me to the hospital. The other three guys are screaming
  because they are cold. I was never so cold in my life.
  The embarrassing part comes when they take you in and they strip you down.
  There ain't nothing there, you know what I mean? It's gone. Not that I was
  hung to begin with, but you ain't nothing now. Some old sergeant comes in
  and he's throwing scotch down me. I was a young guy and I wasn't taking my
  scotch neat in those days, so he's almost killing me on the table with the
  scotch.
  Finally, the reporters and all come down. This guy, my "partner," has the
  moxie to say that he was in the water with me. I found this out when I read
  the papers. The captain was writing me up for a medal. He just wanted in on
  the medal. The guys in the command knew that this guy wasn't involved in
  it. I got a civilian award, dinner on the town and a $500 check. But that
  wised me up to a different personality on this job-a guy that didn't want
  to get in on the shit. But that's life. People are like that. I haven't
  seen the guy since.

 After three months on the street, I began to realize that it's not what I
 expected. The big thing that hit me is I'm a social worker. That just blew
 my mind. I was looking for car chases and shoot-'em-ups, all the things
 24
                       School of Hard Knocks

  saw on every cop show for twenty years of my life. Now I come on the
  street and they expect me to fill out a bunch of forms and mediate family
  fights, child abuse, people OD'ing on the street.
  You never see a guy handle an aid case on a cop show-pick up some psycho
  that's stepped in front of a bus and get him registered in the local
  hospital mental health ward-but you do that more than shoot your gun at
  people.
  At twenty I'd hung around with teenagers all my life. Now I'm dealing
  with forty- to fifty-year-old people who have problems which I didn't
  even know then what the problem was made of. I didn't know what a family
  fight was or a child abuser. I was brought up in an all-white
  neighborhood. Suddenly I'm in the ghetto and a woman comes up to me and
  says, "My husband took the check and the kids can't eat and he's going
  to come back and beat me up." People come up to you and explain things
  to you and you felt stupid. You wanted to help them, but you didn't
  really know what to say to them.

 I'd been a police officer for six days. Just got my uniform. I was riding
 with an experienced officer. He was actually a year younger than I was,
 but he had a whole year on the job.
  This was a Sunday afternoon, a real nice, sunny day. We get a call up in
  a very expensive residential neighborhood: "Crime against nature." What's
  that? Somebody chopping down a tree? We're looking in our penal code.
  It's some kind of sex crime, we figured out. We go driving up. There's
  another unit already there, so I walked up and said, "Hey, what's going
  on?"
  "You won't believe this," they said. "There's a naked lady up there
  fucking a dog."
  "Nah, you're kidding me. That can't be."
  "Well, go back and look for yourself."
                                    25
 Cops
  We go back behind this house which is a $200,000 home and there's this
  naked woman screwing a Great Dane. And it's not even her house. It was
  her dog as it turned out. The resident is saying, "There's this lady in
  my backyard and I don't know what she's doing there. Well, I know what
  she's doing, but I don't know why she picked my backyard."
  Obviously we had to do something. It was beginning to draw a crowd.
  People were coming around. All these little kids from the neighborhood
  are showing up. She was quite oblivious to what was going on. She was
  really into it, orally copulating this rather large Great Dane. So we
  decided we were going to separate her from the dog. They said to me, "All
  right, Dave, you grab the dog." I was the new guy.
  I didn't think that was a real good idea, but I come up to the dog and
  tried to grab him. Naturally, he tried to bite me, bared fangs, "Raw!
  Raw! Raw-raw!"
  "No, that's not going to work. Let's back off." We got on the radio and
  called up animal control. While we're waiting for the dogcatcher to show
  up, she's continuing with this thing. She was crazy.
  This man comes up to me. He was about forty. He says, "You know, I am a
  visitor to this country. I am from Denmark. We have nothing like this in
  Denmark."
  "I don't think we have much like this here in our country either, buddy."
  One of our guys runs back to his car and gets one of those little
  Instamatic cameras. He says, "I'm getting pictures of this." He's
  crawling up on hands and knees getting some crotch shots of this gal. She
  wasn't badlooking. She's chewing on this dog and sticking flowers up her
  twat. A few minutes later the animal control guy shows up. "Oh, yeah,"
  he says. "It's Jane. She's always with her dog."
  He put the noose thing on the end of a stick over the
 26
                       School of Hard Knocks

 dog's head and started pulling the Great Dane away. We got hold of her by
 the heels and we're dragging her the other way. Her point of connection
 with the dog is his testicles. We're pulling in both directions and the
 dog is going cross-eyed, yelping.
  Finally, we break her loose from the dog. She turns as we grab her and
  she wraps her arms around this one officer-it wasn't me-grabs him by the
  nuts and gives a big squeeze. He's yelping. We're calling, "You got her,
  Joe. You got her-. Hang on."
  We managed to get her down to the unit, wrapped her in a blanket and got
  under way to mental health to see if they knew what to do with her.
  As we're starting to drive down to mental health, she crawls up into the
  back window of the car and all you could see was this big, white butt
  sticking to the window. We drive her down the street laughing as hard as
  we can. She's mooning the entire city.
  I'd only been on a week and I thought, "This is really going to be
  strange."

 My first winter on the street, they sent me on a run for this death. If
 you can't get a doctor to sign a death certificate, you got to take them
 to the morgue. The call came from the Eastside where there's a row of rest
 homes. It was a real nice, prominent neighborhood at one time, but it kind
 of went down.
  It was some old lady. We had to haul her. My partner took the front of
  her and I took the back. We were going to pick her up, bedsheets and all,
  put her on the stretcher and take her to the morgue. I lifted her up and
  everything had let go, bowels, bladder and everything. She'd been dead
  for six or eight hours. I started heaving. I went to the window and the
  windows were nailed shut. I stood there, just swallowing it basically.
                                    27
 COPS
 It was bad. That was my first experience with a dead body.

 I was patrolling a desolate highway in a rural part of the state when I
 get a call that there's an accident. There's injuries involved, so
 naturally, being out of the academy not too long, your adrenaline gets
 pumping. You're going to try to do good and help people out.
  I get there relatively quickly within three or four minutes' time. It was
  a head-on collision right dead smack in the middle of the median in the
  middle of the highway. The cars weren't burning, but there was smoke and
  steam rising up from them because the engines had been compressed on both
  vehicles.
  I looked inside and I just stood there for a second. I'm looking at this
  woman who had no nose on her face. The nose had been severed off. This
  is shocking to me because without that appendage on the front of your
  face, you're really looking down the throat of the individual. I had my
  first-aid kit with me and the best thing for bleeding which we had in
  there was a Kotex. So I got that on her face and got her on the side of
  the highway.
  A couple of cars were coming by--do-gooders-but they were getting sick
  because as it turned out five people died in this accident. This woman
  was alive at least, but she was in shock. She was walking around, asking
  if anything was wrong with her. I'm trying to calm her down.'I'm hearing
  the moans and screams from other people. I get her down and get one of
  the passersby to help me out by holding direct pressure on her face.
  There was extensive bleeding.
  There was a small child in the front passenger seat of that car. I walked
  over and looked at the child. The child was not severely lacerated, but
  it was obvious that the child was dead. This young girl was two or three
 28
                       School of Hard Knocb

 years old and died of massive internal injuries caused by the impact of
 the collision. I could do nothing for her. That was all, in that one car.
  I walked over to the other car and there happened to be four people in
  that vehicle. I went up to the driver's side and realized that we had a
  problem here because the driver had no head. He was decapitated by a
  piece of flying metal from the car that he had struckI later found out
  it was a he. He was in his early thirties. That turned out to be somewhat
  humorous, because it took six troopers nearly two hours to find his head.
  His head had gone out through the front windshield and actually landed
  over three hundred feet from the point of impact.
  The driver's wife, who was sitting next to him, was killed. She bled to
  death before I even arrived. One child in the backseat was alive. He was
  a twelve-yearold boy. He had severe compound fractures. He had bones
  sticking out of the right side of his body. His right wrist wasyrotruding
  from his arm. But he was saved.
  There was another -child in the backseat who was about nine or ten and
  she was alive. She was talking to me. She was crying, asking me how her
  father and mother were doing. I went to her first because she was the
  only one conscious and that I could recognize as being alive. I brought
  her out of the car and was holding her and telling her she would be okay.
  She was going into shock. I was trying to keep her awake and keep her
  going. As I'm talking to her, she looks at me and said, "Oh, you're a
  policeman." I felt so good about that-that she recognized that I was
  there to help her.
  Then a little bit of blood began to come out of the right comer of her
  mouth and she died. I'll never forget that child dying in my arms as long
  as I live. I knew she was dead, because when she died she urinated. It
  sounds crazy to repeat this, but her warm urine, the 29
 COPS
 last warm part of her body, was dripping all over my uniform.
  The ambulance didn't arrive until about twenty minutes later. All this
  activity transpired within fifteen minutes. You experience death and do all
  these things you've been trained to do, and you say to yourself, "Wow, I'm
  here. "
  The cars are being towed away and I've called in some information and we're
  getting some feedback. Somebody had recognized the car that had been
  involved in the collision, but he didn't stop at the wreck. The family, in
  which everybody but the boy was killed, lived in the next town over and
  were coming from a relative's house. They were known in this area and had
  only traveled about five miles to the point of impact. This person who
  recognized the car went back and told the relatives. So the relatives
  showed up on the scene about twenty minutes later. They were in shock and
  they're saying, "Where's the baby?"
  "What baby? There's no baby here." The time of the accident was about nine
  o'clock. It was a winter's day and it had been dark since five o'clock. So
  we can't find the baby.
  We look around the whole area. We finally find the head three hundred feet
  away. So we figure the child was thrown from the vehicle, too. We start at
  a 300foot radius and work back into the area. We looked and we looked and
  we just couldn't find it. Then we went back and we went out a little bit
  further and looked and looked again. We realized that it would have been
  impossible for the child to have been thrown that far with the trees and
  everything.
  Right next to where the wreck had occurred, the road was forested on both
  sides, lot of pine trees and evergreens. They were actually sort of hanging
  over on both sides of the road. It was only a single lane each way and
  there was very little shoulder next to the highway.
 30
                       School of Hard Knocks

  I don't know why I did it, but I just turned -around and flashed my light
  up in the trees. There's this child, dead, impaled upon a pine tree
  branch about twenty feet up in the air. The child had been catapulted out
  of the vehicle and speared through the left side of his torso and was
  hanging like an ornament on a Christmas tree.
  What do we do now? I had to climb up there and cut this kid down. Take
  it off the branch. So now for the second time in a period of a couple of
  hours, I've got another dead kid in my arms.
  An adult death you can accept. We're programmed to accept that, but a
  child and an infant ...
  That was my first day I was - on my own and I faced
 that reality. I went back to the barracks and I thought
 I'd handled everything pretty professionally for being
 a brand new trooper. All of a sudden it hits you. I got
 sick to my stomach.

 I was working with this rookie. Officer, Pompano was a college graduate
 from the state university. The first night we worked together he said, "I
 believe in using handholds to restrain people. I don't believe in hitting
 people."
  "Well, son," I said, "if you are going to work out in this area, you're
  going to have to get used to using your fist and your nightstick, if not
  your gun."
  "No, I don't believe in that. There's other ways. You can talk to
  people."
  "Okay, you stick with that philosophy."
  We were cruising and we pull up on a black male subject who was trying
  to break into an old gas station on Main Street. The subject tried to get
  away. Officer Pompano grabbed him and tried to put an arm hold on him.
  He thought he had the guy real good. The guy flipped him. So Officer
  Pompano grabbed him again with his world-famous handhold. The guy twisted
  away
                                    31
 COPS
 again. I watched a few more seconds, then I went up and cracked the guy
 on the head with my nightstick and he went down. I handcuffed him.
  "Now there," I told Officer Pompano. "You can use your handholds if you
  want to dance with them. But you've got to realize that you just want to
  take this guy into custody. On the other hand, this guy doesn't want to
  go to jail. He's got more to lose than you've got to gain. You can lock
  all the handholds on him you want, but this son of a bitch is not going
  to stay around. You've got to get his attention first, because he wants
  to get the hell out of there no matter how he has to do it."
  After that he got the message.

 I get there and a trooper says to me, "We got a call. jt's a bar, a real
 shit-kicking bar. There's going to be a guy sitting by the jukebox. As
 soon. as he gets off the chair, he's going to get right in front of you.
 Hit him. Just hit him hard enough to make him double over. Make sure you
 give him a good whack, because he's going to try to hit you after you hit
 him. If he can muster up enough strength to knock you backwards, he gets
 drinks for the rest of the night from everybody at the bar. If you hit him
 so hard where he can't react and he doesn't come up after you, he has to
 buy the rest of the bar a drink. This has been going on since I've been
 stationed here. It's a game. You won't have a letter of complaint; nobody
 is going to say anything. It goes on here every Friday night. You're the
 new kid, so we'll put you through it."
  I thought, "You've got to be kidding me. I'm from a pretty big town and
  they don't hit people for no reason at all. "
  "Kid," he says, "I'm telling you, this is going to be important to your
  reputation. If you don't really whack this guy, the next time you get
  into a confrontation with 32
                       School of Hard Knocks

 one of these fellows, you're going to have problems. These are hillbillies,
 and these people have a different image of police work."
  I hit him. As soon as he stood up, I punched him. It was a very strange
  thing. He looked like an alcoholic, long hair, maybe thirty-nine years old.
  Luckily, he doesn't come back and hit me. Everybody in the bar starts
  clapping. The guy shakes my hand. It's a shit bar, nothing on the walls.
  The stench of the beer is terrible. I didn't even believe we were in the
  United States. This is like the Twilight Zone.

 I wasn't naive enough to believe there wasn't corruption on this job. It was
 no big deal to me. I might have been young, but I wasn't a fucking sick
 idealist expecting to go out there and lock up all the Mafia and stop all
 the narcotics and make everybody realize that they shouldn't kill each
 other.
  I got assigned to a precinct where there wasn't a guy that had less than
  fifteen years on the force, which is to say they were all hairbags and I
  was a rookie. I had the first case of corruption almost immediately. They
  assigned me to a Golden Gloves match at an Irish parish on the Upper West
  Side. It's three old hairbags and myself. They're already drunk when we
  come on duty. We have this wonderful job of watching the lads beat the shit
  out of each other in the ring and it's going to be a fun fucking night. No
  dealing with violent crime out there, w6 are going to drink beer and eat
  all night long. They're going to do this. I didn't.
  I get there and I'm pissed off because I'm being taken off the street. What
  is this hokey shit? What am I doing in a church watching guys fight? For
  Christ's sake, I want to get out there and Iock up bad guys. They thought
  they were doing me a favor.
  Well, it wasn't so much that as they wanted to use
                                    33
 COPS
 me. Somebody had to stay on duty and watch. I was the rookie. When we got
 there one of the guys says, .Lad, do you want a beer?"
  "No," I said, "I don't drink while I'm working."
  "That's very good, lad. You're going to go far in this job. Now, I'll tell
  you what you're going to do. You're going to go out there and just walk
  around the ring. You see, there's more fights that happen outside the ring
  than in. They're not bad boys; they really just get a bit carried away
  because there's a wee bit of drinking that goes on."
  All of them were seventy-year-old Irishmen and they call them boys. "And if
  there's a problem, lad, we'll be in that room over there. Feel free to come
  in and get a sandwich if you want one."
  I worked a straight eight, I never left the God damn nngside. My bladder's
  bursting. I figure I got to do it right.
  The end of the evening, these guys come out and they can't even walk now.
  The monsignor is a very outspoken and drunken monsignor. He is shaking all
  the cops' hands, "Goodnight. Thanks, lads, you did a fine job this year."
  These guys must get this post every year. He gets up to me and shakes my
  hand. I feel there ain't -something right in my hand. It's a twenty-dollar
  bill. A priest has just laid twenty bucks on me. He had paid me off to do
  my duty. So I turned around and I say, "What's this?"
  The old-timer looks at me and says, "It's a twentydollar bill, lad."
  "I know that. What's it for?"
  "Ah, the monsignor is a good guy. Every year he does this. It's just his
  way of thanking us for keeping the peace."
  "I don't want it."
  "You don't want it?" Whup, it was out of my hand so quick and he's
  splitting it with the other guys.
 34
                       School of Hard Knocks

  What that whole experience did for me was get me catching dead bodies
  almost every night of the week, because they didn't trust me. When
  somebody dies in an apartment or something, you got to guard the body
  until the medical examiner comes and says that it wasn't a homicide, it
  was just a normal death. This can go on sometimes for eight hours
  straight. He's a young cop and he didn't take the money. Better not have
  him exposed to too much shit.

 I was with a senior guy who'd been on the job for quite a while, but he'd
 been passed up for promotion, probably because he had a bad drinking
 habit. The guy drank a lot, but he was a good cop so they overlooked his
 weaknesses. But he was a drunkard.
  We got dispatched to a suburban setting. The houses were spaced on
  roughly 100-foot lots. We pulled up on the driveway. I got out of the
  car. We walk up toward the front of the house and he says, "No, let's go
  to the back of the house." We get to the bottom of the back steps and he
  said, "You got this one, kid."
  "What do you mean, I got this one?" What's this guy talking about?
  He stood at the bottom of the steps and he stayed there. He said, "Is the
  door open in the back?" It didn't appear to be open. It,was a screen door
  with one of those hook latches on it. "Break it," he says. "Just break
  the lock off." So I broke the screen door latch. He says, "Open the
  door." The wooden door was not locked, so I walked into the kitchen area.
  "Wow," I go. "Something doesn't smell right here."
  "You got it," he says again and he stays off the back porch at the bottom
  of the steps. "You'll find out," he says.
  There was nothing on the first floor. I walked up the steps and the odor
  is getting stronger and stronger. 1
                                    35
 COPS

 get to the second floor. There's a bathroom directly at the end of the
 hallway-and there's two other doors, off the right and left. I went into
 the bathroom-there's nothing there. I turned back. Went into the left door
 and there's nothing there either. So I opened the last door and-Oh, my
 God!-the odor was unbelievable. It was the odor of rotting flesh, decaying
 human bodies.
  It was a murder/suicide. This was a couple in their late fifties. The man
  had murdered his wife and then killed himself. But they had been dead for
  over a month. They were maggot-ridden. Maggots had eaten out the eyes.
  I just stood there and I shook. I forgot about the odor for a second and
  I shook. Then the odor hit me and I shook again, went out into the
  hallway and was gagging. This was early June and it had been warm. I
  looked again.
  I couldn't wait to beat my ass down there to tell the other guy. He's
  standing down at the bottom of the steps with a cigar in his mouth. I
  said, "How the fuck did you know?"
  "If there's one thing you never forget," he says, "it's the smell of
  rotten flesh."
  So we called the first-aid squad. They came, went upstairs and came
  immediately -back downstairs. "We're not going to touch it."
  We called the coroner's office. They came with their wagon and pulled the
  stretchers out of the back. One of them walked up to me and gave me two
  plastic bags. Bodybags. It was my responsibility to pile the bodies into
  them, close them with a twisty like a garbage bag, then pick them up,
  carry them downstairs and place them into the coroner's vehicle. They
  would not help me.
  How the fuck am I going to go up there and handle this situation? I know
  what's happened, so there's noth-
 36
                       School of Hard Knocks

 ing to be frightened about, but it's sickening. You say to yourself, "I
 don't care how much they're paying me, it ain't worth this." But then if you
 analyze it objectively, it's either going to be you or somebody else who has
 to do this thing. So I go up and I do it and I bring them down and put them
 in the van.

 37
 11.

 CHAPTER 2

 Police Work

 DR. RUTH Westheimer, a popular AM-radio sex therapist, was saving a
 marriage, instructing her first callin couple of the evening in the
 methods of combating vaginal odor and on the fine points of cunnilingus.
 As we pulled out of the department parking lot, the patrol officer I was
 riding with told me, "Nobody comes up on the air much the first hour of
 the night shift. Everybody's listening to Dr. Ruth." But that night was
 not an ordinary night. It was Mother's Day.
  "Mother's Day is always the same. A bunch of people who basically hate
  each other's guts get all dressed up, sit down, to a big meal and
  aggravate the hell out of each other pretending they're one big, happy
  family. Then they start drinking to take the edge off. Nine o'clock rolls
  around, they're all liquored up and the gloves come off. 'I don't like
  you. I never liked you. The only reason I'm in this house is because of
  your daughter. But if you think I'm going to sit here and take that,
  you're dumber than I thought, you were.' If
                                    39
 COPS they make enough noise long enough, somebody calls

 Us.91
  We drove almost immediately to the first family dispute of the evening. We
  were the back-up car on the call. No one was fighting. An inebriated
  Me3dcan woman, a very muscular matriarch, stood on the sidewalk in front of
  her home and demanded with operatic profanity that the ten other people
  living with her in that tiny tract house get out and stay out. Her sisters
  and female cousins, their children and their children's children stood
  around her wringing their hands. The overgrown lawn was full of mothers of
  all ages.
  One of those mothers-At was never'clear which onehad called the police. But
  they did not want their matriarch arrested. They only wanted a small
  miracle: They wanted everything to be okay again. They wanted
  someone--anyone-to say the words to this drunken, waspish, foul-mouthed
  woman that would mak47 her gentle, good and calm. Or at least make her shut
  up and go indoors.
  She cursed us all, especially the police. After being cajoled, shamed and
  threatened for about twenty minutes, she suddenly took it upon herself to
  perform the miracle. She released her grip on the chain-link fence, marched
  up the walk and disappeared inside tL r- house. All three patrol cars left
  the scene. In retrospect it was clear that she simply made the shrewd
  decision to go back inside where the liquor was. The stamina of that woman
  was remarkable. We were to return to her house and her screaming three more
  times before the night was over.
  The police department is a service organization, open for business
  twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Dial their number and somebody
  has to answer, no matter what it is you want. As one officer put it, "Peo-
  ple'll call us for everything. If their toilet runs over, they call the
  police before they call the plumber." A 40
                              Police Work

 police officer deals with the desperate, the disturbed and all those
 people out there who are just plain lonely in the middle of the night. His
 duties put him on intimate terms with the bizarre things people are doing
 to each other and to themselves behind all the closed doors and drawn
 shades in the community. While the rest of us look the other way, he carts
 away the societal offal we don't want to deal with--suicides, drunks, drug
 addicts and derelicts. We call it keeping the peace, but the policeman
 often thinks of himself as humanity's garbageman. Every smart cop carries
 a pair of rubber surgical gloves in his car for handling dirt, disease and
 death. He uses his gloves much more often than he uses his gun.
  A policeman on patrol does not solve crimes. For the most part he spends
  his time with victims, not criminals. Something bad happens and someone
  calls the police. By the time the police arrive, the incident is usually
  over and the officer at the scene can only try to pick up the pieces.
  It's not his job to put the jigsaw puzzle back together again. He is off
  to his next call, which could range from a misunderstanding to a major
  catastrophe.
  If a policeman actually catches a criminal it is usually when t;k cop is
  protecting property. He is a town's night watchman, answering burglar
  alarms, checking windows, rattling doors. An alert patrolman knows where
  the potential high crime areas are on his beat-the isolated all-night gas
  station, the poorly lighted parking lot, the rowdy bar. He also knows
  most of the petty criminals, thieves, dope peddlers and prostitutes. Ha-
  bitually, he will check these places and people between radio calls on
  the off chance that he may find someone in the act of breaking the law.
  This doesn't mean that patrolmen don't crack big cases. The fact that
  they are on the street in the places crimes are committed and with the
  people who commit 41
 COPS

 them means that they are the best sources of information on criminal
 activity. But they are rarely in a position to know where their information
 fits into the bigger picture. The lead that resulted in the arrest of David
 Berkowitz as the Son of Sam killer came from a cop on the beat where one of
 the murders was com-, mitted who remembered ticketing a car the night of the
 killing.
  A policeman on patrol mainly talks to people, and he writes. He writes
  tickets, fills out arrest forms, writes detailed descriptions of traffic
  accidents. He must make a note of everything he does on his activity chart
  or in his memo book. He writes reports on everything imaginable, from lost
  dogs to lost children to lost lives. His superiors judge his performance
  and productivity largely by the amount of paper that he chums out. The cop
  sees all this writing as bureaucratic rigmarole that prevents him from
  doing his "real" job, which he describes as "getting the bad guys off the
  street."
  After a while on the job a policeman will do just about anything to keep
  from putting pen to paper. So when he is called on a complaint or a
  disturbance where no clear evidence of a crime exists (he is sent to many
  more family fights than armed robberies)-, he talks to people, reasoning
  with them, browbeating them, cajoling them or berating them-whatever it
  takes to put things in order, if only temporarily. If he has a choice he'd
  rather use his mouth than his pen and he'd rather use his pen than his
  fists.
  Police work may be dull, monotonous and dirty, but that doesn't mean it
  isn't dangerous. Whether he's smart or stupid, kindly or mean, a cop has to
  sometimes use his body to enforce the law. A fight between family members
  always has the potential to be a life-threatening situation for an officer.
  "The woman who opened the door for me was just a medium-sized black female.
  The thing unique about
 42
                              Police Work

 her was that I could not see either one of her eyes. Her nose no longer
 existed. And she had a cavernous opening where there would have been a
 mouth and teeth. Her cheekbones were broken. In my entire career, I had
 never seen anybody who was so thoroughly battered. I asked her what the
 problem was and she said, 'My husband beat me up- 7
  " 'Well, what do you want me to do with your husbandT I said.
  " 'I want him in jail.'
  " 'If that is what you want, then that's what you'll get. As bad as
  you're beaten up, he needs to be in jail,' I told her. So I arrested him
  and I started to take him out and down the stairs. I'm holding him by his
  left arm, escorting him down in handcuffs. As we stepped through the
  front door of the building, she tried to bury a twelve-inch butcher knife
  right between my shoulder blades. Kachunk! She hit me right in the old
  bulletproof vest.
  "It's human nature. When I walked in there she was
 upset because he be ' at her up so bad. When she saw
 her true love going out the door with the big, bad police
 hauling him off, then no longer is he the villain. The
 police -is the villain. It just tears your mind up. In spite
 of all that damage he did to her, she still loved him so
 much that she wanted me dead as opposed to taking
 him away.
  "The end result was they both got to go to jail. He went for a
  misdemeanor for beating her up so bad. She went for a felony for trying
  to kill me."
  So it goes, each shift ticked off by one stomach-curdling cup of coffee
  after another, enlivened only by the knowledge that something hairy just
  might happen. In those dead hours on the underbelly of the night when the
  orange glare of streetlights slowly gives way to the dawn, when the worst
  bar brawler is home in bed or sleeping it off in a cell and the ugliest
  hooker has made
                                    43
 COPS
 her quota, the hardest part of the job is staying awake until quitting time.
 By then a cop is running on residual adrenaline alone, struggling to
 remember that the next wife beater might have a deer rifle, that the next
 empty warehouse might not be empty after all, that the next underaged driver
 he stops for speeding might just be crazy enough to poke a pistol in a
 policeman's face and pull the trigger.
  "Any policeman who says that he's not afraid is a fool. I've only met one
  or two policemen who have ever said out and out, 'I ain't afraid of
  nothing.' They were very foolish individuals. There is fear involved and it
  can't help but work on your mind. Police work is basically 99 percent pure
  bullshit, because there is just not that much going on. But it is
  punctuated by one percent of just sheer terror. And it happens just that
  quick. That's the reason a lot of policemen keel over from heart attacks,
  because of all that adrenaline pumping all of a sudden all of the time.
  Ulcers, too. You ride around for five or six shifts in utter boredom,
  worried to death about When that next time is going to happen. "
  When by chance or design something does happen and an officer has a clear
  opportunity to "get the bad guy," the maddening seesaw between boredom and
  terror engenders in him a burning enthusiasm. This is what he's been
  waiting for-good guy versus bad guy, hero against creep, right against
  wrong, a little action to offset all those hours spent wearing out his
  kidneys in the front seat of a patrol car. The pent-up energy bursts out.
  This is why he took the job. This is police work.
  When a cop apprehends someone especially after a chase, the satisfaction of
  a job well done lasts until he gets his prisoner back to the station. Then
  the man of action faces his greatest challenge-keeping his patience, his
  temper and his sanity during the hours and days of wrangling and waiting
  that precede the application of justice, such as it is.
 44
                              Police Work

  The prosecutor will berate him. The defending attomey will insult and
  embarrass him. His colleagues will treat him to a round of Monday morning
  quarterbacking. His superiors will grill him on his motivation and methods.
  There will be no recognition in most cases unless a citizen actually pipes
  up with a "thank you" at the scene of the crime. And that is rare indeed.
  At 2 A.M. when we made our final visit to the home of the elderly Mexican
  woman, an exasperated police officer sent the drunken firebrand to her room
  with a sizzling scolding as though she were a little child. As soon as she
  lay down, she passed out. As we left, the entire shift silently cursed the
  officer who had been the first on the scene for the original complaint
  because he did not arrest her while she was on the street and fair game for
  a charge of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

 I'VE LIVED in this area most of my life. Quite a few people here have, I
 guess. But people don't realize the things that are going on around them
 that a police officer sees. A district attorney was explaining to me once
 about jury trials and he said, "There are times when you're going to go to
 court to testify and the guy is stone cold guilty-no doubt about it-and the
 jury will return with an acquittal. It's not because people don't believe
 you. It's because they can't believe you. They can't believe that someone
 would go and do the stupid things that they do to each other."
  We've got a guy in jail right now, sewed up his wife's vagina for kicks. He
  sewed her breasts together.
  I mean, that's sick. But it's not really shocking. It doesn't just totally
  blow me away and make me stand with my mouth open. I've seen crap like that
  before. But you go up and pick sixteen people from those houses lighted up
  on the hills out there and they're not going
                                    45
 COPS
 to believe that somebody could actually do that. That they do that to
 their kids. The mother who's tired of the baby shitting his diapers, so
 she sews his asshole up. It's not frequent, but it happens. People amaze
 me sometimes, but they don't surprise me anymore.

 We're not a real big department. There's only five of us. One's the chief
 and one's the sergeant, so there's really only three of us.
  We only cover three square miles. Do you know how boring three square
  miles can get on a ten-hour shift? It's sick.
  Something you can do--one of the more conservative things-is to find a
  place and read a book. Perhaps more conservative still is to fall asleep.
  Or you can go find parked cars and sneak up on them. Shine the light in
  and everybody comes unglued.
  You can run up the dune roads and then wait till people walk by. Turn
  your PA on and make strange noises. If you key your two radios together
  at the same time, it'll make a squealing high frequency squawk. You do
  that for just a second. They hear it and get really hinky. Then you wait
  a minute and growl. When you growl, that's when they really haul ass.
  One night we couldn't find anything else to do, so three of us were
  racing up and down the beach at night. We had those low-powered BB gun
  rifles and we'd shoot at one another. Usually nothing happened. But this
  one time, I guess that little BB hit just right and one of our back
  windows just shattered.
  The station bought our story-they bought the story, but they didn't
  believe the story-that I'd been driving down the street, it was real hot
  and the back window just shattered. It's actually happened that way
  before. But usually it only happens in the daytime when the sun is
  beating down real hard, not late at night.
 46
                              Police Work

  Of course, we get to back up the county if they got a fight in progress,
  which in the summer happens with some regularity. Now at The Full Moon,
  it's a fight a night. Evening shift you could park your car there and
  wait for the call. We got so many calls there, we didn't even talk to
  them anymore. Usually fights would be between twelve and one in the
  morning-the good ones were. They'd really get worked up. Your basic
  cowboys were in there and they love to fight. If there. was only one of
  them, he'd beat on himself. They're going to beat on something.
  What we'd do is, we'd meet outside and get together, then walk in through
  the crowd milling around. The place was kind of small and when they
  fought it always seemed to be in this one area and there was a clear wall
  there. Each one of us would pick out the ones we figured we could gpt a
  good grip on, because there was usually three or four of them going at
  it. It was like routine. You grab one however you could grab him and
  throw him against the wall as hard as you can. They'd hit the wall,
  bounce off and fall down.
  That usually caught the attention of the others. Then they'd stop. By the
  time the two we'd thrown up against the wall hit the floor good, we'd
  have their hands behind them and have the cuffs on. We'd take them out
  to the car without saying anything.
  We'd put those in the car and then walk right back in. If they had gone
  back to fighting, we'd get two more. The more the merrier. We'd take as
  many as wanted to go. By the time we came back out the second time, the
  first ones we put in the car would be asking questions like, "What's
  going on?"
  "You're going to jail."
  "Why? What'd I do?" would be the first thing out of their mouth.
  "What do you mean, what did you do?" I'd just shake my head.
                                    47
 COPS

  "I wasn't fighting." They'll say that and expect you to believe it.

 So the mayor decided it was time once again to clean up Times Square, which
 means, "Arrest hookers." Which isn't such a bad idea. Street hookers have a
 tendency to bring crime. The danger is they'll fuck you or they'll fuck you.
 There are some very hard-core cases who go out with these girls and the
 girls are working for horrendous pimps. What they do to try and get out from
 under all of this is to earn the legitimate dollar from you, which they have
 to turn over to their pimps; then on the side they try to scam so the pimp
 doesn't know and they can keep the bucks for themselves. If they can fuck
 you out of your money without really fucking you, they prefer to do that,
 because they don't really dig what they're doing to begin with. They'll take
 you off, rip you off.
  We turn out on Forty-second Street, at least thirty cops just between
  Seventh and Eighth Avenue. We work in partners, so you're talking about two
  cops every eight to ten feet on both sides of the street. With all that,
  crime still took place. The crowd was so big, my back would be turned and
  a woman's purse would be stolen and I didn't even know it until she started
  screaming and the guy is booking.
  You can't of course arrest anyone for prostitution. There has to be a lot
  of things that take place to constitute a prostitution charge. What you're
  getting them for is loitering for the purpose of prostitution. That is a
  weak charge. You're supposed to say, "For X period of time, she was in the
  same area just walking up and down and chewing bubble gum, straightening
  her panty hose. On several occasions I saw her confront unknown males. I
  then had the opportunity to be within hearing distance and heard her, for
  a sum of money, offer this 48
                              Police Work

 man, you know, some gash." That's the true way you get loitering for
 prostitution.
  We were told, "You guys are cops. You look at a woman, you should be able
  to tell if she's a hooker." What a godforsaken, God damn deal. Who the fuck
  am I to be able to look at a woman and say she's selling her ass,
  constantly on the verge of getting my ass sued for false arrost.
  Then the powers that be go one step further and say, "Not only that, but
  don't think you guys are going to rack up a lot of overtime on this deal by
  bringing in one girl at the last minute. Minimum is three hookers per man."
  I couldn't just get one. I had to get three. Well, what do you do when you
  grab one and you don't have the other two?
  To add to the confusion, the mayor wants to increase the productivity of
  the cops. So along with our nightstick, our blackjack, our bullets and in
  some cases two guns, our radio-a big, antiquated radio that you have to
  have two hands to carry at that time-he bestows on each of us a fucking
  Polaroid camera, and he says, "We're going to build up a gallery of
  hookers; therefore you guys take pictures of hookers while you're out
  there."
  The average cop can't chew gum and walk at the same time around certain
  things. One of those things is taking pictures with a fucking Polaroid
  camera. You're supposed to press a button somewheres and the thing pops
  out. When it didn't, he started banging it and prying it and then he had a
  broken fucking Polaroid camera. The wise cops who figured out right away
  how to make the thing pop right out, like me, got bored and thought the
  whole idea was bullshit anyway, so I started taking pictures of my buddy.
  Like here's one of him standing in front of Nathan's, here's one on
  Forty-second Street for the wife to see how we are at work. Consequently,
  tourists from Minnesota would see us and say, "Isn't that nice. Could I
  take a picture with you?" So I got
                                    49
 COPS
 two little blue-haired old ladies on each side of me and my partner takes a
 picture of that. We take two-one for them and one for me. Now you're
 spending thousands of dollars on film and you don't have the first picture
 of a hooker yet.
  The truth of the matter is that to make this threehooker thing work you had
  to build up a rapport with the girls, which is what I did. They knew the
  name of the game and so did you. They're working girls. It's an old
  profession. It's going to be here long after I die. Don't fight the fucking
  thing. Control it, contain it. So you played the game with them.
  I would go out and stop Margie. I knew Margie was generally hanging around
  with about six other girls. They were buddies and they hooked together. I
  says, "Margie, we're working the six to two tonight. I need the bust. You
  got to play. Midnight, you be on the comer with two other girls. I got to
  have three to make the bust. If you fuck me and don't show, tomorrow night
  at five minutes after six, you're going in with three or four of your
  girlfriends. Plus me and my buddies are going to lock up the entire street,
  so nobody-will work at all, all night long. When you end up in court, we'll
  drag it out so you're fucked for the next day, too."
  So what did Margie say? She says, "That isn't a bad deal. The guy's giving
  us six hours to work. We make our bucks. I'm tired by then anyway. I get to
  go lay. down in a cell and shoot the shit with my girlfriends. The charge
  is bullshit, so there's no jail time other than. the overnighter. What's
  the big beef T'
  We also have to make out thousands of arrest cards. To make an arrest
  involves so much paperwork, it's unbelievable. When you're operating with
  the girls, they knew the name of the game with the cards, so you go to each
  one of them and say, "Okay, what's your name tonight?"
  "I think I'll be Janie tonight."
 50
                              Police Work

  "Janie, here's your arrest card. What are you going to be tonight?"
  "I'm going to be Hildegaard."
  "Okay, Hildegaard, but don't fuck up with the writing. If you don't know
  how to spell it, ask Janie. Don't make me look stupid filling out these
  cards." They filled out the date of birth and address for the new name
  and we worked hand in hand. But you say, "Now Margie, let me take your
  picture," and you run into some overt hostility. I mean, come on, they're
  human beings. Nobody likes their picture taken in a public place by some-
  one they don't really know. Celebrities are constantly throwing beer
  bottles at photographers. It's a personal aff-ront for someone to
  infringe on you with a camera.
  Then you come to the other end of the spectrum down to the Lower East
  Side in the Borscht Belt. All these really holy roller Hassids stop on
  Allen Street prior to going over the Williamsburg Bridge to get the
  nightly blowjob. It's the funniest sight you ever want to see. They do
  it in their cars. The streetlight casts a shadow and all you see is this
  set of side curls coming down from this funny felt hat and they've got
  this stupid grin on their faces. They're bouncing in the seat of the car
  because she's down there on the tube. It's like a twentybuck toll. They
  get their pipes cleaned and they go across the bridge.
  Now what are you going to do with that? Are you going to bust them? Are
  you crazy? It is one of the areas that is very heavily p4trolled by the
  police, not because of prostitution, but to protect the johns. Make sure
  the Hassidim gets his blowjob and gets across the bridge. What am 1, some
  kind of private guard?

 An officer is sitting along the highway watching speeders go by. It's
 called eyeballing. I've seen motorcycle cops who could stand on the side
 of the road and tell you
                                    51
 COPS

 how fast a guy is going within a mile an hour. He won't be off 5 miles an
 hour. Absolutely amazing. "That's 55*. That's 60." The guy may have a radar
 unit. He may have it off. He may even be out of his car, talking to some
 woman going into a shopping center. A car goes past him.
  "That guy's speeding." He's a speeder, what difference does it make how
  fast he's going? He stops him and gives him a ticket.
  They get to court. If the guy pleads not guilty, the cop has to testify.
  How long did you follow him? Was he caught on radar or not on radar? How
  fast was he driving?
  "I followed him for a mile and a half. Over that distance, I clocked him at
  speeds ranging from 62 to 68 miles an hour."
  If you read ten different testimonies from this guy, they're all exactly
  the same. It's a protective sort of thing. If he's forgotten any particular
  incident, he still knows what to say, because he always says the same
  thing.
  In-service training is important, no matter where you are. A guy that's
  been around awh1le will tell you how to testify. Most times it's a set rap
  that has been inherited from someone else. There's a history to it, almost
  a tradition.

 This woman came flying through the neighborhood at a high rate of speed,
 going through stop signs. So I started chasing her in the police car with
 the blue lights, the siren and all that. The lady wouldn't stop. She was
 waving for me to come on around like I was trying to pass her. I finally got
 her stopped.
  She jumped out of her car, ran back and grabbed me by the uniform. "You
  need to let me go. I've got this hurt animal in my car and I'm trying to
  rush it to the
 52
                              Police Work

 hospital," she says. Sure enough, I looked in the backseat and she had a dog
 in there that had been hit by a car.
  "Okay, fine. I'll let you take the dog to the hospital," and I told her
  where one was right around the comer. "I'll follow you around there, but
  when I get there I'm going to give you a ticket."
  The doctor at the animal hospital was a personal friend of mine. I played
  racquetball with him. We got in there and he's looking at the dog and
  treating it. He came out and told me, "Hey, this woman does this about
  every other week. She's always got some stray animal or other and she's
  always in hysterics wanting me to take care of it."
  "Well, when I get her out of here, I'm going to write her a ticket," I told
  him. I wrote her one for running a stop sign and one for speeding and she
  didn't have an inspection sticker on her car. So that was two moving
  violations and one equipment infraction. She was kind of upset about that.
  I went my way and she went hers.
  She got in touch with the news media. Since it was a holiday, there was no
  news. Nothing was going on, so a reporter shows up at the police department
  and wants to talk to the chief about this "incident." The chief makes me
  talk to him. The reporter said the woman called and complained and he
  wanted my version of it. I explained to him that taking care of animals was
  fine, but the woman was putting kids and everybody else in danger trying to
  get this animal to the hospital. The animal wasn't even her own pet,
  but-some stray that had been hit out on the road. I didn't know if she came
  to its aid or maybe she hit it, who knows? I just told the guy my feelings.
  The next day there was a big article on the front page: GOOD SAMARITAN Is
  GIVEN THREE TICKETS FOR TRYING TO SAVE AN ANIMAL. This went on for days in
  the papers. People were calling the vet and driving 53
 COPS
 him nuts trying to see how the dog was doing. The doctor was wondering who
 was going to pay for this since the dog was fairly messed up. He said,
 "Under any other circumstances, I'd just put the dog to sleep. But I can't
 do it because every concerned citizen in the city is watching me." He's
 performing all this intensive surgery in an attempt to save this dog's life.
  The story was picked up by the wire services. I started getting hate mail
  from all over the country. What killed me was that anybody else probably
  would have arrested her, as obnoxious as she had been, grabbing me and
  shaking me. I didn't think I'd been unreasonable. I got a big letter from
  a national organization signed by famous people who love animals. They
  didn't like me ~either. In fact, everybody hated me. Everyday I'd go out
  and get the paper and flinch before I could look at the front page. This
  went on for months. People are writing up to tell me I should be run over
  with a car. People are taking sides. There were editorials in the
  newspaper, pro and con.
  A couple of weeks after this happened I went to a party at a friend's
  house. There were about forty people there. I hadn't seen these friends in
  quite a while and most of the people there I didn't know anyway. The
  hostess pins this tag on me when I arrive that says, "I'm Bob." I just
  thought she'd had name tags made up for everybody so they wouldn't have to
  pay too much attention to introductions. I go in and start meeting people
  and everybody has a pin on, too, but I notice all of their pins say the
  same thing, which is: "Bob Kramer Hates Dogs."
  The woman ended up going to trial. She wanted her day in court. So I show
  up for my appearance. All the other policemen are patting me on the back
  telling me to go get her. Reporters roll up from the TV stations with the
  minicams to film this for the news. I'm sweating bullets. Before the woman
  goes in to court some people
 54
                              Police Work

 from the Huftiane Society have a big ceremony out in the lobby of the
 courthouse and give her a plaque telling what a good job she had done in the
 face of this ogre of a policeman.
  The woman goes into the courtroom and she gives her side of the story to
  the judge. He's not sure he knows what's going on and is very conscious of
  the cameras and everything. He hadn't realized it was a national cause he
  was being dragged into. The judge took my side and found her guilty on two
  of the charges and dropped one. He fined her fifty dollars. He then gave a
  lengthy explanation on camera. He didn't want to get his ass in the same
  sling as mine. He'd already seen what they did to me.

 We stopped a van for not having any taillights or brake lights or something
 like that-very minor. When we walked up to ask him for his driver's license,
 he rolled his window up, locked the door and wouldn't talk to us. So I
 walked around the front of his van to the right door to try to get it open
 to get the information from him. He reached over just before I got to that
 door and he locked it, too.
  I'm walking back around the van and he stomped the accelerator and tried to
  run over me with the van. I felt I had been assaulted with a motor vehicle
  with intent to do great bodily harm or kill me, which he had banged up my
  leg pretty good.
  "Shall we shoot him?" I said.
  "Yeah," Jack said, "shoot him." I shot both the rear tires off the van,
  which I thought was a handy bit of marksmanship, personally. Instead of
  stopping, he continued driving on the rims. We followed him with our blue
  lights and our siren yelping-whoo-whoo-whoowhoop-for about a mile and a
  half until he got back 55
 COPS
 to the local Muslim stronghold of a house they called their sanctuary.
  We got there and we went up to the van before he could get out. As we're
  standing there telling him we need his driver's license, a couple of
  Muslims came out and put flying tackles on me and Jack both. Then the guy
  jumped out of the van and ran into the house. They jumped up and ran in the
  house behind him, slammed the door and locked it.
  We called the world. Said, "Send us some help around here. We need a
  sergeant, a lieutenant and God." They send us half the world anyway and
  surrounded the house. The sergeant tried to negotiate with them to let us
  have the guy who tried to run over me with the car. They answered that this
  was a Muslim sanctuary and we could not come in and they weren't going to
  send him out.
  "But you don't understand," the sergeant said. "You've got to send him out
  or we've got to come in and get him."
  "We don't care what you've got to do," they said. "We don't believe in your
  laws. We believe in the laws of Mohammed and that's it. We don't respect
  any laws of the United States, this state or this city."
  We continued some discussion for about an hour until it became apparent
  that they were not going to send him out and we were not just going to walk
  in. So we walked up to the door and started banging on the door in an
  attempt to knock it loose.
  This gorilla answered the door, reached out and grabbed one of the fellows
  there with us by the front of his shirt, picked him up and threw him from
  one end of the carport to the other. He then said, "Get out of here, little
  boy."
  This was a mistake, because as he threw Cliff, we grabbed an arm each and
  passed him down a row of about twenty of us to the car, handcuffed him and
  in he went.
 56
                              Police Work

  After some discussion with them, and getting the guy we were after plus
  half the rest of them that were in there and putting them in the car, we
  ended up booking the gorilla for assault and we booked the guy who at-
  tempted to run over me with the van. We let everybody else go. The ultimate
  end of the whole thing was this: The reason the guy wouldn't show us his
  driver's license, rolled up the windows and ran from us was that he didn't
  have a driver's license. We would have written him a ticket and he would
  have been on his.. way. But he was scared and instead attempted to run me
  over.
  My relationship with the Muslims got to be kind of monotonous. I got a call
  to the Milky Way over on the Avenue. It's a real quiet bar. Just aren't
  hardly any problems there. ' But their complaint was my old buddies. The
  Muslims had set them up a PA system across the street on a grocery lot and
  were telling all the patrons of the Milky Way, as they came and went, that
  their time had come. That they were going to die. "You go in there and you
  won't come out. We're going to follow you home. And kill you."
  They were intimidating the man's customers considerably. To the point where
  he usually had maybe six hundred people there on a Friday night, he now had
  only forty people in the bar. He was disturbed by this loss of business.
  So I got there and he told me all this. I said, "Let me go talk to them."
  I walked across the street and started talking to the head guy who was
  talking on the PA system at the time. I said, "Will you turn the PA off,
  please. I'd like to talk to you."
  He was fairly reasonable. He said, "Sure, I'll turn my PA off for a
  minute."
  "Do you have a permit on the loudspeaker out here?" I said, "If you don't,
  you're going to have to quit. The second thing is, you don't want to incite
  a riot across the street. What few people are left over there are
                                    57
 COPS
 getting very militantly upset with you haranguing them so severely."
  "We don't care," he said, "whether they get upset or not. We mean what
  we're saying. We're going to kill everybody who goes into that bar."
  "You can't talk that way," I said. "You got to be reasonable about
  stuff."
  He turned to his buddy and said, "Take this microphone and go ahead. I'm
  going to talk to this honky for a little while. " The other guy took over
  the harangue. By this time they had a pretty good congregation there,
  maybe four hundred people on the block who were members of the church or
  followers of some sort. I got curly hair, but I started noticing that I
  was the only light individual in the group and that I was surrounded by
  all four hundred of these people. There was no place for me to go.
  Wanda, my female riding partner, was sitting across the street in our
  patrol car watching all these proceedings. One of her most profound
  moments was when she discovered, "They're probably fixing to annihilate
  my riding partner. He's just going to be a little bloody spot in the
  middle of the parking lot over there if he doesn't shut his mouth and
  quit telling them they-can't do what they are doing." So she picked up
  the radio and said, "HQ, why don't you get some more units over to this
  call. "
  One of my friends and his riding partner arrived because they were close
  by. Marv had a little more experience than Wanda. He looked over and
  said, "Hey, you have misread this. We need a bunch of units and we need
  them now." He picked up his radio and said, "HQ, this is a 34. Officer
  in need of help-now."
  While they are observing all this, I'm in the middle of all these people.
  I've figured out that I really need to get out of this situation. I had
  a really big flashlight, a 26-inch, twelve-cell light that I was carrying
  with me. 58
                              Police Work

 I just barred it across in front of me and started walking. A guy grabbed
 my flashlight and held on to it. Another one grabbed for my gun. I let the
 one with the flashlight have the flashlight, but that was in order to not
 let the one with the gun have the gun. I made an instant decision that if
 indeed they were fixing to kill me, some of them were probably going to
 die with me. I didn't know how many of them I would get before they split
 my skull, but I was prepared to take at least one or two of them with me.
  Then off in the distance I heard the sirens getting closer and closer.
  The first car around the corner just drove into a crowd of four hundred
  people at about 50 miles an hour, locked up all his brakes and slid up
  right into the middle. It was like Moses and the Red Sea. They just
  parted. He stopped next to me and said, "Who do you want?"
  "That one, that one and that one," I said. "And that one, too.

 We had a cop shot on the highway. We came in as backup. We ran this guy
 into a cornfield. I'm running through there trying to find the guy. The
 corn is higher than my head and he's got a shotgun. It brought back
 memories of Nam for me. I'm expecting this guy at any time to pop out of
 the corn and just blow me away, a fucking ambush. I got my gun out. I'm
 sweating and it's a tense moment. But we got the guy flushed out.
  Got back in the car and get a call to, a robbery in progress. We respond
  with lights and siren at 90 miles an, hour. The job turns out to be
  bullshit.
  So I'm coming down the main avenue there and there's a white guy and this
  woman in a fancy Cadillac. It's two lanes with no room to park on the
  side. He's stopped, blocking traffic basically in both directions. He
  didn't care.
                                    59
 COPS
  I'm still soaking with the sweat from the chase in the comfield. I'm still
  a little hyped up. I pull alongside this guy and I say, "Can you do me a
  favor, please? Move the car. You got the whole lane blocked."
  They cut into me, the both of them. She called me every name in the book
  and then she says, "Haven't you got anything better to do? Is this all you
  got to do to keep yourself busy?"
  I'm trying to control myself, but I looked at that guy and I said, "You
  better move this car right now or you're going to be the sorriest
  cocksucker around, I'll tell you that right now."
  But people don't know that you just been on two heavy runs--being shot at
  and running through a field, going to what you think is an armed holdup. I
  still got to tell these people to move.
  They're white middle class and they got a big Cadillac and they don't give
  a fuck about nobody else. They can park wherever the fuck they want.to.
  Because I told them to move, I'm a cocksucker and I don't have anything
  else to do. Why don't I go arrest those black people? That's what they say.
  They always say that. "Why don't you go to the bad area, the ghetto? You're
  scared of them so you're down here bothering white people. You're scared of
  them people, so you're here bothering us."

 Stolen vehicle. The suspects were a good ways away from us, but my partner
 said, "They don't know the area and they're going to try to get off the main
 road. Let's go out after them just for the heck of it."
  We hadn't started down the road but about a halfmile when here comes the
  vehicle the other way. We spun around and got behind them in a high-speed
  chase down a big old twisty, winding country road. No streetfights, no
  nothing.
 60
                              Police Work

  We finally ran them to ground. They finally pulled over and stopped. We
  bailed out. It was a fourteenyear-old and a thirteen-year-old kid. We'd
  been told they were armed with a .22 pistol that they'd shot at the guy
  they stole the car from.
  We jerked them out of the car and frisked them down. About this time my
  partner found the .22 on one of the guys. I flipped open the back door
  and was getting ready to throw them in and this kid-a thirteen-year-old-
  turned around, looked me in the eye and said, "What about my rights?"
  This is three o'clock in the morning, out on a deserted road. These kids
  held up a man, stole his car at gunpoint, tried to outrun the police and
  this kid's worried about his rights.
  We throwed them in the back. Anyway you look at it, there was a lot of
  adrenaline flowing. John and I sat there and looked at each other. Then
  we just busted out laughing. "What about my rights?"

 Some guy had the bright idea to sell the city automatic gas-dispensing
 machines. That'll eliminate the guy out there to pump gas. It'll be better
 for bookkeeping because it'll be a machine.
  It was bullshit. Every cop received two days' training at headquarters
  on how to operate the gas-dispensing machine. A very necessary machine.
  You're going to have to learn. You're given a stupid little test
  afterwards and then if you pass they issue you a plastic dispensing card.
  And every car has a card, so now you've got two cards. This monster has
  what you desperately need, gasoline. The combination of instructions must
  be performed exactly right or it ain't going to spit shit out. And your
  car won't move.
  You take one card and you put it in first. Then there is a series of
  buttons to punch and then a little light
                                    61
 COPS
 blinks on. If you've done something wrong, it's the green light.
 "AAAAAAHHH, the Green Light! I fucked up and I got to do it again. I don't
 know where I made the mistake! Why didn't it give me my gas?" At some
 point the second card goes in and you punch in the odometer reading and
 at that point the machine's brain registers that, yes, you are due for
 gas.
  The machine is a mess. One of them ha~ written on it in big black
  letters, "This machine puts out like my wife." They are bent and dented
  where they have been kicked and slugged. There are jack marks on them
  where they have been literally assaulted with blackjacks. "You don't want
  to give me my gas? I'll kill you, you son of a bitch. Give me my
  nightstick."
  They beat the piss out of the machine and then they feel guilty about it.
  "Look what I've done. It's made me a lunatic. I've just killed a gas
  pump."
  The wife says, "What did you do tonight, Harry?"
  "I kifled a gas pump. I jacked it and then I stomped it. I couldn't
  believe I did it."
  "Catch any criminals?"
  "Nah, I was too busy with the machine. It wouldn't give me gas. Son of
  a bitch, I did everything right, too."

 The owner of a car lot said, "One of my Cadillacs is parked in front of
 this guy's house. It was stolen a couple of weeks ago."
  I told my partner when we got there, "I'll get up on this porch next door
  and watch. When he gets in the car, you pull up and block him in with our
  car. I'll run up and pull my gun on him from the ' driver's side." That
  seemed like a pretty complete plan to me.
  About an hour later, this guy comes out and jumps in the car. I radioed
  my partner and told him the guy was in the car. He pulls up alongside
  this guy. I run over there, pop open the door and this guy floors the
 62
                              Police Work

 car in reverse. There's cars behind him. He pushes them out of the way, runs
 me down with the damn car, scoots out on the street and hits about four
 other cars going backwards.
  I'm laying in the street. I said, "Son of a bitch," pulled my gun out and
  opened fire on him. I put a couple of holes in the car, but I didn't hit
  him. He got out and away, although they caught him a couple days later.
  It would have been better for the car dealer if he'd just got into the car
  when he saw it, driven it back to his lot and never told us about it. It
  was a brand new Cadillac. By the time the thief and us got through with it,
  it was worth about $600. He wasn't too much in love with us after that.

 I was riding with a young officer in a wagon and we pulled up behind a
 motorcyclist. He was making a dope deal; we thought it was either heroin or
 coke. So I hit the beacon. The guy takes off and I started chasing him. My
 partner is saying, "A wagon has never caught a motorcycle. You can't chase
 a motorcycle with a wagon. 99
  "Hang on," I said, "cause here we go."
  We chased the son of a bitch. He goes down behind this hospital; he must
  have been doing sixty or seventy going down this alley. As I came around
  there, two doctors were coming out the back door. The only thing I saw in
  the rearview mirror was them diving for the ground as I go flying.
  The alley goes out onto a street, but it drops off sharply and then there's
  another incline on the other side. That motorcycle sailed right across the
  son of a bitch. I told my partner, "Hang on."
  We hit and we sailed off the first incline. When we hit the street level,
  we lost the right rear tire. The whole thing came off and %yent shooting in
  front of the wagon.
                                    63
 COPS
 But the wagon is still moving, because I was still throwing the coals to
 it. We were just riding lopsided, leaned over to the right.
  The motorcycle went between two ' telephone poles. I went between the
  -two telephone poles. The front end of the wagon made it fine, but the
  back end of the wagon, leaning like that, was too big for it. So a chunk
  of the body just ripped right off.
  He lost control of the cycle at the next street and laid it down. I went
  over the top of his motorcycle with the wagon and he takes off running.
  My partner couldn't move at this point. He was frozen to the seat. I
  jumped out and I heard him say, "You're never going to catch that
  brother." I chased that son of a bitch for about five blocks and caught
  up to him. He was too tired to do anything. I just handcuffed him and
  walked him right up the middle of the street. I always loved to do that.
  "Guess who got who?"
  My sergeant showed up and he said, "What happened to the wagon? I'm going
  on vacation tomorrow. What did you do?"
  "There was not an accident, sarge," I said. "We just lost a wheel and a
  little of the wagon on those two telephone poles." They had to junk the
  wagon.
  "For what?"
  "I got the drugs and the motorcycle."
  "You did all that for a motorcycle and a little bit of heroin?"
  "Sergeant, I'm surprised at you. He broke the law and that's what we're
  out here for, to catch criminals."
  "Jesus, I'm glad I'm going on vacation.l~

 We used to argue about whether or not the driver of the patrol car would
 stay with the car when -we came up on a stolen vehicle. If the guys bailed
 out, the driver was supposed to continue to cruise around the area.
 64
                              Police Work
 The passenger would bail out and chase the suspect. I never liked that part.
  We were driving around one time and we spotted a stolen car and we gave
  chase. The guys pulled up in an alley and bailed out. My partner said, "You
  stay with the car." But I didn't. I took off and he took off. I grabbed the
  driver of the car and I handcuffed him. My partner was a little overweight,
  so he was still running after his man.
  I told my prisoner, "Okay, asshole, now you're going to run as fast as I am
  going to run, because we are going to catch up with my partner and get the
  other dude. If you don't," I said, "I'm going to club you."
  We're running down the middle of the street. This guy is running along
  beside me keeping right up with me with his hands cuffed behind him. A
  sergeant drove by and did he ever give us a look, a prisoner and a cop
  running along, side by side, after another suspect.
  We caught the other guy. The sergeant says to me, "I've been on this police
  department for eighteen years and that's the first time I ever saw a thief
  run along like that. You do some strange shit."

 I got assigned to the embassy precinct. It covers the Upper Eastside from
 Fifty-sixth Street to Eighty-sixth Street. It is known for a lot of women
 and for fixers. Fixers are embassies and such that they assign a cop to
 stand in front of. You stand there for eight hours like a doorman. Or you
 stand in front of the Temple EmanuEl on Fifth Avenue so there would be no
 vandalism there. Very boring in the extreme.
  Here I am all primed to go out and combat crime and I end up in a precinct
  more boring than you can believe. I once fell asleep propped up in a
  doorway. Sergeant honked the horn and woke me up.
  It got to the point that when I got a fixer on Fifth
                                    65
 COPS

 Avenue, I'd stand out at the curb and look up the avenue for cars that
 would run the light on the side streets to make the lights on Fifth
 Avenue. I could see what color the lights were from the side shades on
 them. This guy would turn onto Fifth against the red and I'd stand out in
 the middle of the street, put my hand up, "Stop in the name of the law.
 You ran a light. Give me your license and registration." I'd give out
 moving violations, standing on a fixer. The sergeant comes around, "What
 are you, wacko? How can you give out moving violations standing on a foot
 post?"
  "What do you want me to do? I'm going crazy!"
  Occasionally, I'd get a car that wouldn't stop. He'd flash past me. In
  his mind, he figured, "This guy's on foot, what can he do?" It wasn't
  that they didn't see me or didn't know to stop. T'hey'd just speed past
  me. So I started throwing my nightstick.
  I threw it at one guy. When it bounced off his roof, he stopped, I gave
  him a ticket. He went down to court and he told the judge, "Your honor,
  he shot at me."
  "No; I didn't," I said. "I threw my nightstick at him and it bounced off
  his roof." The judge looked at me like I was some kind of weird-o, but
  said, "That's not the point here. The point was you ran the light."
  A couple of cars went off down Fifth Avenue with my nightsticks sticking
  out their smashed rear window. They wouldn't stop. I lost more
  nightsticks in the first couple of months. I wasn't crazy. I was bored
  for something to do.
  The Greek junta took over Greece and I had the unfortunate duty to be in
  front of that place the day it happened and got caught in a
  demonstration. I didn't get hurt, but it was my first brush with personal
  violence.
  The people are outside the embassy yelling and milling about. One of the
  officials was going inside. As he
 66
                              Police Work

 passed, he hit or pushed one of the demonstrdtors. Then they wanted to go
 inside and get him, of course.
  This one guy confronted me. I didn't know how much force to use, so I just
  held my nightstick in front of me across my body. He grabbed on and now I'm
  no longer in control. I'm wrestling with this guy. I'm back to where I was
  when I was a kid and I was getting into fights and losing. What do I do?
  How do I react? Do I go for this guy's eyes?
  Before I could decide, other cops helped break it up. Before you know it,
  it's over and he's at arm's length again. It was traumatic in that, even
  thougli I'm a cop, people are still going to go for me and not listen to
  what I say.

 We're all rearing at the bit. Six o'clock, we turned out of the station
 house, charging like a football team, "Aaargh!" Hit the bricks, you know.
  It was a hot summer night. The streets were crawling, man. We're going to
  really get the big one. In the back of the young cop's mind is the big
  arrest that's going to transform him immediately'to a suit of clothes and
  a gold shield. That's first and foremost-The Big Arrest. It could happen
  and it could happen anytime cause we're in a prime situation. We're looking
  for the heavies.
  Ten of us have got out the station house door. Almost directly across the
  street in front of the station, there's a dispute going on between a little
  PR and a black guy. It's a parking dispute. The black guy has scammed into
  the Puerto Rican's parking spot. The Rican was waiting for that spot, but
  he parked behind the space. The Spade came up, Johnny-come-lately, but was
  very smart and said to himself, "Look at this fool. That motherfucker's
  going to pull out and I got the spot." And he sure did. He slid in there.
  The Rican said, "No way,
                                    67
 COPS
 Jose. For a half-hour I been sitting here sweating my ass off with no
 cerveza Rheingold, no nothing. And this nigger comes, sliding into my spot."
 That's using their terminology, but that's the way they feel. They're very
 prejudiced against these people. They don't like niggers and that's all
 there is to it. Forget the white/black thing, we're not even prejudiced by
 comparison with the Spanish guys.
  This argument is ensuing and it is bullshit. It could develop into a small
  little fucking violation. We don't take violations--we take felonies. We're
  hooking. We're getting the fuck away from these fuckers.
  We're about ten feet away from these two dudes who are arguing and we hear,
  "Bam! Bam! Bam!" Undeniable fucking gun shots. We didn't even have to turn
  around. We know that one of the two has shot the other one. "Oh, God. I
  don't fucking believe it."
  We turn around and the Puerto Rican smoked the Spade. The gun is still
  smoking and there's the black guy deader than a fucking doornail. Put three
  right in the fucking locker on this guy from about a foot away. I took at
  the gun he's holding and it looked like a police revolver. I think, "He
  must, you know, be a cop." That was my first impression, because I thought,
  "He's so fucking calm. There's ten of us cops with guns, ten feet away and
  look at him. He's just looking at the body, holding his gun. Well, he's got
  to be a cop. I'm very fortunate. "
  I hesitated and didn't do what I really should have done, which is as
  follows: That fucker has a gun. He's just wasted this guy. My gun should be
  out. I say, "Drop the gun." If he says nope, then "Bam! You're dead."
  That's it. That's the smart thing. Totally justified.
  What did I do? I hesitated. That was a mistake. But it turned out that I
  didn't get hurt. He wasn't a cop, but he wasn't a fucking cold-blooded
  murderer either.
 68
                              Police Work

 He was an angry fucking man who wasn't too bright and just went the limit,
 man. Went the limit.
  When me and you got mad as kids, you'd say to your friend, "I'd like to
  kill you." It's in us, the fact that we could conjure up kill. The guys
  who commit it, they've brought it out and let it surface. But there are
  a segment of those who're still not considered murderers, They just snap
  and that's that.
  I walked up to him and said, "Give me the gun." The other cops with me
  now all have their guns out. It suddenly dawns on me, "I got nine guns
  on my fucking back because they want him. It's a gun collar and it's a
  murder. This could be instant promotion. These fuckers will kill me to
  get this son of a bitch. Oh, wow, Jesus." There was a moment of that
  thought.
  I looked at the guy and I said, "Why did you do that?"
  He looked back at me and said, "He took my parking space, man." Pure
  honesty. "He took my parking space, man." He had killed the fucking man.
  It might have happened the next day and he would have just argued with
  the guy about the parking space. It might have proceeded to a very
  violent oral altercation. But this day was just the day that he snapped.
  I don't believe that he was a killer, that he would kill over any parking
  space at any time. That was a momentary thing.

 I really don't have much use for the FBI. I'll give you one prime example
 why. I was walking a beat downtown around the Greyhound Bus Station one
 night about one o'clock. Two FBI agents come up to me and showed me their
 ID. They says, "Now, we're expecting a fellow to come in on the bus from
 the state capital tonight. He's very dangerous. He usually wears a
 holstered pistol under each arm." They showed me his picture. He, was a
 little fellow, I'd say about five foot six and skinny,
                                    69
 COPS

 too. "He's supposed to come in at two-thirty; but we got something else we
 have to do, so we'd like for you to look after this for us."
  At two-thirty I'm out there on the alert. I had checked with the dispatcher
  and found out what slot the bus would go into and I'm standing right at the
  door as it opens. Ile people start coming off. There is no one on it by the
  description or even with his build. So I asked the driver, "Is this all you
  had?"
  "No," he says, "we had so many, we had to put on an extra section. They
  should be here in about twenty minutes."
  I waited and waited and finally the second section comes in. The first man
  off was him. When he got off, he was looking down the barrel of my .38. He
  put his hands up. I told them to close the door of the bus and not to let
  anybody else off until I searched him. I took these two pistols off of him.
  I put handcuffs on him. Everybody thought that was some show.
  I took him inside and I asked the dispatcher to call the police to send the
  wagon. I didn't want my attention taken away from him. Even though I had
  handcuffs on him; I held him by the arm.
  My wife is expecting me home by eight o'clock that Sunday morning, so she
  can take the kids to Sunday school by nine-thirty. Time is rushing along.
  I have to go to the police station with him. First of all, the captain has
  to know. The sergeant has to know. The lieutenant has to know. And you have
  to tell each one of them the story individually. By then it's seven o'clock
  in the morning, see? After I get it explained to all of them, the captain
  tells me, "Okay, go to the detective bureau and explain it to them. Then
  write up your reports. Make damn sure that there's not flaws in them.
  Concise and to the point and everything." I didn't get home until about
  ten-thirty that morning. My wife went down 70
                              Police Work

 and borrowed the neighbor's car and took the children to the church, so
 I went home and went to bed.
  Well, when I woke up that evening, she was boiling, she was hopping mad
  and told me that I had lied about the whole situation. Actually she said,
  "I got a good notion to run you off." She thought I was lying to hide
  something else. I had told her about how I had got this fellow and
  everything. She put the newspaper in front of me and said, "Look here.
  You're lying to me." There in black and white was a story about how the
  FBI had captured this notorious criminal down at the Greyhound Bus
  Station. It had the description I had given her about finding the two
  guns on him and everything.
  I had to get the dispatcher at the bus station to tell her how he made
  the call for me. Now I'm not dumb. I could see how she thought I was
  lying to her. Anyway, that's why I don't have any damn use for the FBI.

 I used to love to ride the midnight shift whenyou had most of your B&Fs.
 It was a game trying to outsmart the criminal. We would ride the alleys,
 cruise with the lights out and catch them coming right out of the build-
 ings sometimes. We didn't get paid that much money, but when you caught
 a burglar you went home with your chest sticking out and you really were
 a champion of justice.
  We had a burglar out there breaking into cars. He had a regular MO. We
  had a fairly good description of him. He always wore this little knit
  watch cap. Detective division had a man specifically assigned to try to
  catch him.
  Between calls in a slack moment after dark, we decided we were going to
  catch that guy. Enough is enough. We were going east on Third Street
  right at Calhoun. We ease up with our lights out. We look up the sidewalk
  and here's this guy sticking his head out from behind a 71
 COPS

 tree. I can see the outline of that knit cap. We knew we had him.
  I went screaming down there where he was and slammed on the brakes. I let
  my partner out and said, "I'm going to circle the block." I went screaming
  around the other side and jumped out of the car. We were driving an extra
  car at the time instead of a patrol car. It was for accident
  investigations-.one of these Plymouths with the push-button transmission on
  the dash. It all happened so quick, I couldn't remember how to put the car
  in Park, so I just jumped out and left it. When the whole thing was over,
  an hour later, we come back to the car and there is some citizen holding
  the car from rolling down the street.
  I chased the burglar behind the old folks' home there at Second and
  Calhoun. We're running down the alley and I'm hollering, "Halt, police,"
  and all those things they teach you in the academy. They don't ever work
  anyway.
  Back then you could fire warning shots at your discretion, so I fired a
  warning shot at him. All of a suddenKapow!-here comes one back. From
  reports, we knew that he had shot at some of the people that had surprised
  him while he was breaking into cars and he shot at them at very close
  range. One of the witnesses had said, "I don't know how he could have
  missed, he was so close." So we figured he was shooting blanks. I thought
  to myself, "Heck, he's just popping blanks at me. These sure aren't blanks
  that I'm shooting at him." Still I wasn't sure.
  I ran north up to Third Street and when he crossed the street I kind of
  squeezed one off at him this time and hit him in the leg. He went down in
  a yard there at Third and Calhoun. When I come around the comer of the
  house, he's laying on the ground and he pumps a couple more at me. He comes
  pretty close with those blanks this time. So I shot a couple more back at
  him
 72
                              Police Work

 and all of a sudden I was empty. It's a terrible feeling. I backed off
 down the street and reloaded.
  By this time he had gone around the comer of the house and was behind a
  hedge. I got up there and he fired another shot at me. When I fired twice
  more, he stopped shooting. I shined my light on him and saw he was down
  and bleeding pretty bad. At least he wasn't ,shooting any more. We called
  the rescue and he survived, They patched him all up.
  Later on when we went to court, I got one of the lowest blows of my
  career. The jury found him not guilty of trying to kill me. He had stolen
  a nine-shot automatic pistol and it wasn't blanks he was shooting. He
  fired five of the nine shots at me before I shot him. I hit him four
  times. He would have bled to death if we hadn't got him to the hospital
  right away.
  The jury said, "We don't deny the fact that he-shot at this police
  officer. But we don't think he was trying to kill or hit him, because he
  would have fired all nine shots at him."
  He was also tried for breaking into the car to steal the gun in the first
  place. The jury and judge were different in that case. The jury found him
  guilty. All this came out about him shooting at me, so the judge threw
  the book at him. He got ten years for stealing that gun. That kind of
  offset the damage done to my morale.
  You never know what a jury is going to do. You can't predict a jury. A
  lot of policemen get discouraged by what a jury does sometimes. But those
  people, they watch Perry Mason and all this stuff on TV, so they start
  reading things into everything. There's no telling what they'll come up
  with.

 Usually when you go to a burglary, the people have gotten there hours
 after the house has been robbed.
                                    73
 COPS

 You're going there strictly for the formality of checking out the house and
 making them feel more secure. You do it a hundred times and you never find
 nobody.
  Then all of a sudden you go in one that has just happened and a couple of
  things just make you feel like the guy didn't get out of the house in time.
  So you start to -look a little extra, a little more thoroughly. The first
  thing that pops into your. mind is the attic. Attics are suicidal. The
  attic has got to be checked. The only way to do it is to poke your head up
  through that hole. If that son of a bitch has got a gun or a knife, you're
  a dead son of a bitch and you can't do a thing about it. There's no way to
  get around it. The only safety precaution I take is, if I can find a hand
  mirror on someone's dresser in the house, I'll use that to look up there as
  best I can-to check out the immediate circumference of the hole anyway. You
  can actually angle a flashlight off it and do some good with it.
  But when that's not available and there's two or more of you there, one of
  you has got to stick your head up there. Most often it's going to be the
  one who is a little bit more insane than the rest. In my particular
  situation, it's usually me. I'll go first.
  We went to a house and the window was out. I checked the attic and it was
  clear. None of the lights in the house worked so we had to search it all by
  flashlight. Although it was daylight, there are a lot of dark comers to be
  looked into. Everybody searched everywhere and didn't find a thing. But I
  said, "I just don't feel like the guy got out of here."
  I went back and searched everything again and then got down on my hands and
  knees and looked under the beds. The last bed I looked under, God damn, my
  flashlight batteries were almost dead. I barely got a little orange light
  out of the flashlight. I was on my hands and knees and squinting trying to
  get my eyes adjusted
 74
                              Police Work

 to what little light I had. When they got adjusted I saw a shoe, a tennis
 shoe down there.
  "Shit, I can't see under there." I went back out in the hall and said,
  "Hey, throw me your flashlight." He threw it to me and I went back and
  flashed it under there and this son of a bitch had an automatic pistol
  pointed right at me under the bed and could've had me anytime he wanted
  to.
  "Jesus Christ, motherfucker! Get out from under that bed!" I was ready
  to start shooting through the mattress. But then I realized he could,
  too. I was jumping from one foot to the other so he wouldn't shoot off
  my ankles. I was dancing.

 I got a call of a burglary in progress. I get there and this woman comes
 out in the road and she's yelling, "They robbed me! They robbed me! They
 took my jewels!"
  "Lady, lady, who robbed you?"
  "The Gypsies!"
  "Gypsies? In Southern California?" We get into the house and there are
  five Gypsy women. The victim says, "I was just sitting there and all of
  a sudden these Gypsy women are in my house and they're taking my rings
  and my jewels." So I round up these Gypsy women. I start talking to them
  and they just look at me.
  All of a sudden this Gypsy man drives up in a brand new Ford car. He
  didn't speak any English, but he spoke a little German and I do, too. So
  I started talking to him. It. turns out they were European Gypsies who
  had come to Canada. Then from Canada they had come driving down through
  the U.S. They were going to some Gypsy gathering in L.A. They had lots
  of cash, but they only spoke a Serbo-Croatian dialect which almost no one
  knows.
Why me, Lord? This is a real mess. None of them 75
 COPS
 had any identification on them. I get the sergeant down there. "What are we
 going to do with this?"
  "Take theiii all down to the station," he tells me. "We'll figure out there
  what to do with them." We interview the victim and find out what they did.
  There had been some similar-type thefts reported in the area, so the
  sergeant told me to book them. "Book all of them."
  Two of the five had babies, little babies. Great. I got them into the
  booking area in the station and I booked them-Jane Doe No. 1, Jane Doe No.
  2. No add ress. I'd put down a little physical description. So finally we
  get them all ready and we take them out to jail.
  The Gypsy men wouldp't take the babies, so we had to put the babies in the
  pediatrics ward at the hospital in protective custody while their moms are
  in jail. So I load all the Gypsy women into a paddy wagon and I take them
  to the hospital to do all the paper work.
  Mama's holding her baby and I get her out and into the emergency room.
  There's a lot of people in there. I get the baby from her, and the nurse
  comes toward me. About that time the Gypsy woman figured out what's going
  on here. She's trying to get her baby back and she starts chasing me. I'm
  running round and round the emergency room. The nurse is standing there
  slack jawed, staring. Every time I run by her, I'm saying, "Take the kid.
  Take the kid." We're going round and round in a circle and all these people
  are watching.
  This bitch pulls her top down, grabs both breasts and starts spraying me
  with Gypsy mother's milk. I was amazed. It sprays a long ways. She was
  getting me with both barrels. There was this old baldheaded man sitting in
  there and he got hit right on top of the head. It went running right down
  the tip of his nose. I was laughing almost as much as everybody else.
  I finally hand-off the baby to the nurse. I grab this 76
                              Police Work

 gal, get hold of her arms and pull up the top of her dress. I rush her
 back into the wagon.
  The second one tried to do the same thing, but I was a little bit
  quicker. The people in there were just roaring with laughter.
  For years all the guys claimed I was under the curse of the Gypsy
  mother's milk. They kidded me about filing charges: Aggravated assault
  with a breast. I've never had it happen again. But I was in that one
  instance attacked with a breast.

 You get dispatched on a prowler run and you'll meet strange people out
 there who are calling the police at three and four o'clock in the morning.
 When you get there, it might just be a cat in the trashcan, but they'll
 invite you in for a cup of coffee. They're lonely. They want somebody to
 talk to.
  I went to this house one day on a disturbance with another officer. A
  woman came to the door and said, "Come in, officers. Will you sit down?"
  We sat down and she says, "He's been bothering me."
  "Who?"
  "Him," she says, and she points,over to the couch. There's nobody there.
  I look at my partner and I'm biting my lip to keep from laughing. Then
  I start talking to the lady and the next thing you know I'm talking to
  the guy who isn't there to make her happy. I'm giving him hell for giving
  her hell, so I can get the hell out of there in the first place. I ask
  her what his name is and then I start talking to him. She says, "See what
  them officers is trying to say?" In her mind there's somebody sitting
  there. Maybe there was ... but I didn't see him.

 The captain got a call two or three times from this lady who said she
 wanted somebody to come by and listen
                                    77
 COPS
 to what she had to say and do. He said she acted kind of strange over the
 phone. He wouldn't send a car because he didn't really think that it was
 an emergency. But after about the fourth or fifth day of her calling him
 up, he decided he would send me and my partner around there.
  We stepped up on the doorstep and asked her if we could help her in any
  way. She said, "Come on in." We went into the living room and she turned
  around and told us, "I just want ya'll to sit down and listen to me play
  the piano. It won't take long."
  She could pl~y that piano like Devil Wood at the Grand 01' Opry. She
  would ask us, "Do you have any favorites?" She knew a bunch of songs. We
  thought at first that she was just putting us on. But come to find out
  that she was kind of a music nut, so to speak. She could really play the
  piano, but she couldn't carry on a decent conversation. Every other day
  she would call and someone would just go over and listen to her play for
  fifteen minutes. That's all she wanted. But if you didn't go, she would
  call the police station continuously.

 There was a call from a woman who said there was a man living next door
 to her who was really cutting up. The sergeant said he'd take care of it,
 but he didn't send no one. After getting a call every day for three or
 four days, finally he sent myself and my partner round there. We were
 supposed to get there by four o'clock because the man usually come in
 about 4:30 from work. When we got there, she invited us in to her living
 room and she says, "Here comes that man now. He's going in his house.
 He'll be in his room in just a minute and I'm telling you he carries on
 something terrible." The houses in this area was built in such a way that
 there was only about enough room between them to walk through. From her
 kitchen window you could see into
 78
                              Police Work

his bathroom window, which was only about 2 feet square. Sure enough, in a
 minute he come into his bathroom, and he was singing at the top of his
 voice. He pulled off his shirt. You could see him from about his breast
 up. He was making a racket and moving around. She says, "Look at him. Just
 look at that."
  "Lady, we don't see nothing," I said.
  She reaches over under her table and pulls out a little stool about 24
  inches high. "Well, stand up on this and look down in there," she says,
  "and then you'll see what I'm talking about."
  Naturally, we both took turns standing up on the stool. By this time, the
  man across the way was naked as a jay bird, getting ready to get into the
  tub. She climbed up there after we were through and took a good long look
  and said, "Ain't that disgraceful? What can be done about that?"
  "Lady, the best thing I could advise you to do," my partner said, "is to
  cut the legs off your stool." We left it at that.

 One time we got a call to the back door of a black lady's house. She had
 been threatened with rape and robbery. She told us about this white person
 who had come up on her back porch and knocked on the door. When she
 answered it and asked him what can she do, he dropped his pants and told
 her that he wanted to, "come in and get some of that stuff." Then he told
 her that he was going to rob her, too.
  "My screen door is locked," she told him, "so you can't get in. I'm going
  to go call the police." When she said that, he run down the street with
  his parts in his hand.
  "What did he look like," I asked her.
  "Well, he was a white fellow about twenty-five years old. Muscular
  built."
                                    79
 COPS

  "Can you describe any other features about him," my partner said.
  "Yes," she said, and she got a knife, the blade of which looked to be about
  8 inches long. "He had one about that long."
  We started riding around the area that Sunday morning. Two or three people
  come out. They knew we were looking for something and one of them said to
  me, "Are you looking for a white person without no clothes on? There he is
  right underneath that house over there."
  He was still undressed, hadn't even put his pants back on. We put him in
  jail.
  When we went to court that Monday morning, the judge asked the lady, "Could
  you identify the man?"
  "Yes, your honor," she said. She had brought her knife along and she pulled
  it out. "His was about this long." Everybody in the court just hollered,
  too. They bound him over for criminal court and he got six months on the
  county farm for indecent exposure and prowling.

 Women alone, it's really kind of sad. Women left by death or divorce. The
 safest guy in the world is a copat least from their perception. Sometimes
 they're wrong.
  So many precincts get calls in the middle of the night: "Burglar on my roof
  ... .. Somebody on my fire escape." The cops go over and the woman checks
  the cop out. She'll make a move on you, just because she's done that in the
  past and it's worked. Or a cop has come and flirted with her and she's
  never picked up on it. The cop never called her back, but there's other
  cops out there. So she calls the precinct and says, "Send a car over here."

 I love working with Latins, because they love to flirt and I love to flirt.
 You don't have to take it any further
 80
                              Police Work

 than that. It's just this wonderful male/female game. You want to take it
 a step further, you can-if they let you. Most times, it's just simple
 flirting. You can get away with it in uniform.
  I remember having dinner in a place in Spanish Harlem by myself. I had
  walked in in uniform, sat down and taken my coat off and I was getting
  my food. At the table opposite me there was a husband and wife and
  -child. The husband and child had their backs to me. The wife was facing
  me and she was really cute, a really pretty lady.
  I looked at her and she was like smiling at me whenever he was looking
  away. One time I look, she runs her tongue across her upper lip. I
  thought, "Uh-oh.11
  He went to the men's room and I made a hand gesture like, "What do you
  want?" She wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the kid who
  ran over. It was her address.
  When they got up and left, I followed them. You're a cop. You can walk
  wherever you want. So I'm walking on one side of the street and she's
  walking on the other with this guy. They got to a comer and they shook
  hands and he left. In fact, he wasn't her husband, just a guy who took
  her out for a date. You could see that he was confused.
  Then she walked into her building and I just walked in behind her. I
  said, "Did you want to see me?"
  "Do you like Spanish coffee?"
  "Yeah."
  "Come on in and take your coat off."
  I had a situation one night where. I never saw the woman, what she looked
  like. I knew that she was goodlooking. I saw her get out of a cab. It was
  dark and she was black or Hispanic-I'm not even sure. She walked past me.
  She stopped and looked at me. Then she walked on by and went into the
  building. And I went into the 81
 COPS
 building. I went up to her apartment and just knocked on the door. I heard
 the peep hole open.
  "Did you call the police?" I asked. I just heard a giggle. She pulled me
  inside and shut the door. I did not say three words to her. Walked into the
  bedroom, she was in there giggling. I undressed her and took her to bed,
  fucked her. It was nice. I got dressed and left.
  I was on school crossing. You stand on the comer and all the mothers go
  past with their kids in the moming. I have a hundred women come past with
  a hundred kids. Out of that hundred, three are looking for an afternoon
  with some guy. They're divorced or separated. Maybe they're married, they
  see that cop and they're thinking the same thing you are. American women
  are shy, but a lot of them-if they like you-they'll come after you.
  I had a woman walk past me for a week straight. There was a smile for me
  every day. Finally the last day, she walked past me and said-they always
  said the same thing-"You like Spanish coffee?"
  "I love it." And into the Project.

 I pulled up on a parked car one night and it turned out to be a guy and a
 girl necking. While I was talking to them the girl came on to me. 'Me guy
 said, "Oh, we were just leaving. We're going to go eat."
  "No," the girl says, "I've already eaten."
  Knowing full well what she was talking about, I said to this guy, "You mean
  to tell me that you're the kind of man that would let this young lady eat,
  and you haven't eaten yet?"
  The guy is sitting there between us and she said, "Oh, if he'd had anything
  to eat, the whole inside of this car would be torn up."
  "Well, my car is right over there," I said. "You can tear up the inside of
  that car anytime you like." The 82
                              Police Work

 guy is fuming since I'm standing there coming on to his girlfriend. I ended
 up getting her phone number.

 One time they sent us on a call to pick up a Navy man who was AWOL. The man
 was only AWOL from the Navy for about three months, but they wanted him for
 grand larceny of some materials that they considered about halfway secret
 that he had stolen. The sergeant contacted his wife and she wanted him to
 come clean and straighten up. She said, "Don't send them in until about two
 or three o'clock in the morning. He stays here until about five o'clock in
 the morning and then he goes somewhere, but I don't know where."
  I'd been sick with a cold for two or three days and on this particular
  night I could hardly talk above a whisper really. My partner told me, "You
  go to the front door and I'll go to the back. If he's there and he tries to
  give you any trouble, just shoot your pistol, since you can't holler. I'll
  yell and be to you in a minute."
  "Okay," I whispered, "I'll get word to you some way or I'll ask his wife to
  holler if I need help."
 I Right about two-thirty I went up on the porch and my partner went to the
 back side. I knocked on the door three or four times and finally the lady
 come to the door. She was in her nightclothes and she stood there inside the
 screen. I told her who I was and I said, in my whisper, "Is your husband
 home?"
  She opened the screen door and looked both ways up and down the street and
  said, in a whisper, "No, come on in."

 A woman had stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife. There was blood all
 over the floor. He was really cut. So we stuck him in the wagon and shot him
 down to the hospital. But he was DOA.
                                    83
 COPS

  We called the sergeant down to the hospital, which was the procedure at
  that time. He said, "Go back and lock her up."
  We went back to the house and told her, "You're going to have to come with
  us."
  "Why?" she said.
  "Your husband died."
  "INhat?"
  "Your husband is dead and you're under arrest."
  "That motherfucker. I stabbed him before and he never died."
  At the time it didn't really register. But we got back to the station and
  I'm sitting there almost pissing my pants laughing. It just came out of her
  so natural. She was pissed off that he had died.

 I took a big machete away from this lady who was going to chop this guy's
 head off. They had some severe alcoholic problems. I took off my gun and sat
 there and tried to convince her that she should give me the knife, and that
 I understood why she wanted to kill this guy, because I had had a husband
 who was a bastard. My partner stood there with his gun in his pocket cocked.
 If she would have swung, he would have shot her. But that was necessary I
 had to win this lady's confidence.
  I get very depressed about that kind of incident. I could relate to what
  she was saying, because my first husband used to kick my ass. He used me
  for a carpet and a punching bag. I really cared about this guy. I still
  have a love for him, because he was the true love of my life.
  I understood what it is like to be a battered woman. When I was in that
  situation, I knew I would call the police and sometimes it took them hours
  to come, because we were the family on the block that they had to 84
                              Police Work

 go to every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes they never showed up at
 all.
  I would be hysterical and crying because my husband had beat me up. The
  police would come in and he would sit there and laugh and say, "Look at
  her, she's acting like a fool. She's acting like a little kid, crying and
  stuff. " The police officers would look at me and here I am half
  deranged, looking for help and they would say, "Why don't you grow up,
  lady?" Then my husband would hit me again after they left. So I got to
  the point where I didn't call them. So I guess I have a lot of compassion
  for women who are victims of domestic violence.
  On the other hand, I had to learn that because I am an ex-battered woman,
  I had to put that fact into the correct perspective, so when I went to
  somebody's house I couldn't involve my personal feelings and what's hap-
  pening in the house. It's a tough thing to do. It's very difficult to
  say, "Look it, I can't get involved, but there are some resources for you
  if you want to get the help you need." You almost never resolve anything.

 I have a guy that I still have nightmares about. We had gotten a call that
 a man was trying to kill himself. Those are always really scary to me. If
 somebody is robbing a store they're pretty much open game if they come
 running out with a gun. But if you go to a suicide call and he comes out
 with a gun, what are you going to do, kill him? He has no respect for his
 own life, so what does he care about me?
  He was in the bathroom of the master bedroom. We got in and there's
  weights and barbells all over the place with the really big round weights
  on the end of the bar. Already we had some indication of what the guy is
  going to be like. The other obvious feature of the decor was knives
  everywhere-buck knives, souvenir bayonets and
                                    85
 COPS
 stuff. She says, "My husband is in there and he's already cut his wrists.
 There was blood on the floor."
  So we decided to go in there and save him. We asked her did he have any
  knives or guns in there with him. She says, "He's got a straight razor."
  I'd rather be shot than have somebody come after me with a straight razor.
  He's got the door locked and we're talking through the door. He won't come
  out or unlock the door.
  We managed to get him to open it a little bit. He goes to slam it back and
  I stick my flashlight in the door so he can't shut it all the way. We're
  both leaning against the door and he's leaning the other way. We're still
  talking to him, "Aw, come on out, Jack. Come on out." We give each other
  the high sign-at the count of thrbe, we're going to shove the door through,
  go in there and grab him. "One, two . . ." We're both leaning against it
  with everything we got. "Three!"
  The guy throws open the door. He's got a screwdriver and he comes out with
  it raised over his head and he tried to stab me in the face. As I flew past
  him into the bathroom, I put my hand up and he got me in the arm.
  Then he went after the other policeman and knocked him into a chair. He's
  got the guy off balance over the chair and is coming down with the
  screwdriver. I'm grabbing him, trying to hold him, but he was all muscled
  up. There was nothing I could do. He comes down and stabbed the other
  policeman in the chest. This officer gave out a death moan. Really it just
  hit his breast bone and gave him a little scratch on his chest.
  The guy kept fighting us. Another policeman got there by that time and we
  were able to get him handcuffed. His wrists weren't that bad. It was one of
  those fake suicides: "Hey, look at this. I tried to kill myself."
  "Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him!" the wife is screaming. "You don't have to
  kill him."
  We took him to the station. We ended up booking him on a bunch of charges
  including attempted murder. 86
                              Police Work

 When we started going to court it all came out. What killed me was his wife
 said we hadn't been invited in .since we didn't have a warrant. 'Me story
 changed to something that didn't include suicide. The police it seems just
 showed up and forced their way into this guy's house and tried to drag him
 out of the john for no reason. He was trying to defend himself and all he
 had was a screwdriver.
  For a couple of nights I had a nightmare and the other officer said he had
  nightmares, too. When he came out with the screwdriver I had in my mind
  that it was a straight razor anyway. I thought I was cut. In my dream he
  kept coming through the door and he was jumping on me and we were fighting.

 What scares me is the mentally disturbed, the people that lose it. They are
 so powerful. They will hurt you that quick and they'll scare you quicker.
 That's what I don't like. I don't like it when I'm scared. I know I'm in
 trouble then.
  I was off duty and driving down the street towards my house. I see this
  couple-a guy and a pregnant woman-I thought were fooling around. He tried
  to grab her and she jumped. This truck had to swerve to miss her. I said to
  my wife, "Kidding around, I guess."
  Then I looked in the rearview mirror and he had this pregnant woman by the
  wrists and was forcing her down to her knees in the road. Oh, shit, here I
  got my case, of beer in the car and I'm planning to go home, have a
  barbecue, drink beer and have a nice day off. Okay, I back up.
  I have a radio in my personal car. It's come in handy quite often. I cAlled
  the station, told them I was stopping and I'd be out of the car. I get out
  of the car thinking this will be no big problem. "Hey, what's going on?"
                                    87
 COPS
 I say. The guy gave me one of those looks and I said to myself, "Shit, I've
 got a squirrel."
  "Ho-ah her-ah aargh," he says.
  "He's hurting me! He's hurting mel" she's yelling. "He's deaf and he can't
  talk and-my God!-he's killing me!"
  So here we go. I step in between them somewhat, trying to get him to let go
  of her. He looks at me and starts gurgling. He's deaf and dumb and he's not
  all that big. I got one hand off and got it behind him. About that time, he
  grabbed me by the wrist. When he wrapped his fingers around me I knew I was
  in trouble. That son of a gun nearly crushed my bones. I said, "God, what
  have I done?" I was in a bad spot now. He had me, He let loose of her and
  that was for sure. He had me now. Now it's my turn to be forced down to my
  knees in the middle of the road.
  I grabbed his other arm and we looked like we were doing the old Chinese
  handshake. I reached behind him and tripped him up. Shit, he hit the ground
  and jumped right back up like he was spring loaded. What am I going to do
  with this squirrel? He's still got my wrist. He ain't let go of that yet,
  even for the few seconds he was down. My hand by this time is getting nice
  and white. It hurt.
  I tripped him up again and got my wrist free. Halleluja! Now I was thinking
  about running back to the car, getting in and leaving. But I was pretty
  obligated at that point.
  We're wrestling around. This son of a gun is getting ready to get back up
  and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. He does get back up. I've got him by
  the arms and all I'm trying to do is hold him off. He's on me like stink on
  shit. I yelled to my wife in the car, "Get on the radio and tell them to
  send somebody."
  "What do I say?"
 88
                              Police Work
  "Just tell them to send help. I don't care what you say. Keep it simple."
  I saw this figure running up the road. I was hoping it was a friend. I
  got the guy tripped up again. This time I got him down and I got one arm
  partially twisted behind him. By God, it was a friend from the sheriff's
  department. He was inside a house on the block visiting his dad. His
  little daughter was outside and saw this going on. I'd never seen her
  before in my life. She went inside and said, "Daddy, I think there's a
  policeman fighting down the street." I wanted to kiss that little kid,
  because I was so glad to see her daddy coming up the road.
  Jim grabs his other hand and we get the guy rolled over facedown. Jim is
  heavier than I am-probably weighs 250. He comes right down on this guy's
  neck with his knee. This guy is eating asphalt now and doing the shuffle.
  He has begun to bleed a little bit from a few spots'on his face which may
  have had something to do with the 250 pound weight on his head. But this
  guy starts arching his back and lifting his head up anyway. I've got my
  knee in the small of his back with my weight on him. I've got his arm up
  behind him near his shoulderblades, holding it with both my hands and
  he's starting to straighten it out.
  "God damn, whatever we do, don't let this son of a bitch loose. If he
  stands up again we're in trouble." He was totally gone berserk now. You
  ever see Chuck Norris in that movie with the guy he couldn't kill? That's
  what I thought I had.
  I had cuffs with me in the car and I had brought them with me. I hit at
  his wrist and missed and put a hole in his hand. Then I hit again and it
  locked around his wrist. Jim has got the other arm but the guy is
  straining to get free. Jim can hardly hold it.
  About this time, I see another figure hauling ass up
                                    89
 COPS
 on my left. It is hollering, "What the, fuck are you doing?. That's my
 brother! Leave him alonel"
  "Don't move," I said. "If you can calm him down, do it, so he doesn't
  hurt himself any more."-
  The deaf guy looked pretty atrocious now. He was really starting to get
  some asphalt bums. The brother gets down in his brother's face and he
  says, "Uncuff him." Bullshit. There's no way I'm taking the cuffs off
  this guy. We haven't even finished cuffing the other arm yet. He tried
  to talk to him and the deaf guy slacked off instantly. We popped the
  other cuff on the other wrist. We had both hands securely behind him now
  and we were HAPPY.
  Now the brother starts getting upset. "You better let him go!"
  "I think you better just get out of this general area," I said. Other
  units showed up now and escorted the brother away. We got the deaf guy
  up and over to the car. In he goes, quite violently, headfirst all the
  way to the other side of the car. He bounced around all the windows for
  a while, then went apeshit in the car, kicking, screaming, trying to push
  the cage out.
  His brother went over and got into the front seat. This is a bad scene,
  because I could just see the brother driving off in the car. This female
  deputy goes over to him and says, "Get out of my car."
  "Wait a minute," the guy says, real short.
  Another officer heard this and he zeroed right in on the guy, grabs him
  by the arm and jerks him out of the car like a cork out of a bottle. He
  gets thrown right into this female officer and they go head over heels.
  She's pissed, so she's got him bent over the hood of her car and gets him
  cuffed. He's under arrest, too. Now the deaf guy's wife-the woman he was
  attacking in the first place-is going berserk. Her water is breaking.

 90
                              Police Work

 "Rescue, somebody call Rescue." Rescue came and took her off.

 It gets down to one thing. What kind of physical shape you're in at the
 time the incident takes place. How good you are essentially. Everyone's
 afraid and you respond as if you had no training. That's the interesting
 thing. You see somebody, all of a sudden, in a fighting situation, the
 training goes out the window. The guy fights if he knows how to fight. If
 he don't know how to fight, he's in trouble and he pulls his gun. "Enough
 of this shit, I'm not Joe Louis."
  First of all, the fact that you're a policeman gives you a step up in
  almost every situation. Rarely, unless the guy is a total crazy, will he
  come at you first. If the guy's a total crazy, you're in trouble. A guy
  will use his mouth and get into a lot of screaming. In general, it's the
  cop who hits first. You say, "Nah, cops react, they don't act first." Not
  if they've been on the street for a while and they know how to handle the
  situation.
  You get into a family fight, nose to nose with somebody. You know that
  you're going to try to remove this guy from his apartment because his old
  lady wants him out. Man, he don't want to leave. He don't want to leave
  for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that, he gets out the
  door, she'll be fucking the guy who he's fighting with her about now.
  All the focus is on this guy and he's going to show you and the bitch.
  The worse thing that can happen to him is that he's going to get beat
  up-and that will be her fault.
  You go through stages. The first one, you just finished having coffee and
  talking about the crabgrass and stuff. Now you're in the apartment and
  there's this tremendous amount of tension. People get killed in this kind

                                    91
 COPS

 of tension all the time. But you're still thinking about the crabgrass and
 where you're going to have dinner, so you're not really ready. You grab
 the guy by the arms and say, "Come on, let's get out of here." The guy
 whaps you and you're in the middle of a big fight. You're getting your ass
 kicked. '
  So you learn. Stage two: "The next time I go in there and I look at the
  guy and I see that this guy is going to have to go, I'm going to take him
  out quick. I'm going to show him that it's a no-win situation and that
  he's going to get his ass kicked."
  The guys who are afraid continue with the ass kicking for their whole
  careers. The guys who aren't afraid move on to stage three and just exert
  themselves, establish their authority and the fighting ends.

 They sent me on a call once out on the west side of town. They said,
 "There's a lady with two kids out there in the rain. The neighbors across
 the street have called. " So I pulled up and there, standing outside the
 picket fence, is this lady with no cover and two kids. I asked what was
 the matter. She said her husband had chased her out of the house with a
 shotgun. "He's in there now,".she says.
  Just by long chance, I happened to know the man. It's raining like hell.
  I opened the gate, walked up on the porch and knocked on the door. When
  he opened the door I was looking down the muzzle of a doublebarreled
  shotgun. He looked over the sights and he said, "Mr. Louis, what in the
  hell are you doing here? Damn, I'm glad to see you."
  "Well, now come on, Earl, put your gun down," I says. "You know that
  you're doing the wrong thing."
  "Mr. Louis, would you take it for me. I know I'm going to get in trouble
  if you don't keep it."
  "Listen, man," I says, "tell me real quick. What's
 92
                              Police Work

 the trouble?" He had been drinking and he'd stopped by some bar on the way
 home and had lost his money in a crap game. He'd come home and his wife was
 nagging him about it and it just made him so damn mad that he didn't know
 what to do. So I asked him, "Earl, would you do me a favor?"
  "Mr. Louis, I'll do anything you want me to do."
  "Okay, I'll tell you what. You come on and go with me. I'll let you stay at
  a cheap place downtown for the night. Then tomorrow, you come to the police
  station and I'll release your gun to you. Ilen you can come home and
  everything will be all right as far as we're concerned. "
  "Would you do that for me?" he said.
  "Sure," I said. I walked him right by his wife. I said, "Don't you have
  something to say to your wife?"
  "Mr. Louis has told me that I was wrong," he said, "and all I know is that
  I'm sorry. I'll talk to you later. Please go back into the house."
  I went back up on the porch and told her what I was going to do. She said,
  "He'll probably be all right tomorrow.l?
  Two or three days later, I rode by there and he was out in the yard playing
  ball with the little boy. Everything was justfine.
  I was never one to think that-just because I had a badge and gun that I was
  little Jesus like some police officers do. But I don't believe that just
  anybody could be a police officer. You have to have above all an abundant
  amount of compassion for your fellow man. Also, you should have the ability
  to put yourself in the suspect's or the victim's position, just
  momentarily. "If I was in his position, what would I want done with me?"

 I go to this family fight. This black broad wants to kill her husband with
 a butcher knife. She wants to cut his 93
 COPS
 balls off. She comes home and finds him in bed with the neighbor.
  But, that's not what got her mad. He's down eating the neighbor's pussy
  when she walks in. That's what got her mad, because he never ate her
  pussy. All she was doing was screaming, "He never ate my pussy. I'm going
  to cut his balls off." She's ready to kill this guy, and he's turning
  white. So we took the knife away from her and he pressed charges for
  assault.

 It was about three o'clock in the morning. We get there. You have to see
 these apartments. This one was very spartan, very small, It looked like
 Ralph Cramden's apartment, except with dirt. A black-and-white TV with a
 bent aerial. A beat-up refrigerator.
  It was two old people and they weren't married. They were shacking up
  together, which was cute. They had a falling-out this evening.
  This guy had glasses like the bottoms of Coke bottles. He couldn't go
  from here to the wall without tripping. She is insisting on having him
  out of the apartment. It's three o'clock in the morning and there's
  sharks out there on the avenue would eat this guy alive.
  "He beats me," she says. She pulls up her dress and you see a lot more
  than you'd ever want to see. She shows me the bruises. Whether this guy
  did it or not, I don't know.
  I went out in the hall and I asked the guy, "What is the problem?"
  "Well, we had an argument."
  "Would you like to stay here? Why don't you tell her you're sorry?"
  "Oh, I'd tell her, but she won't believe me."
  I went back into her and I said, "You know, he was just telling me how
  much he loved you." She wanted to believe it. "If you just call him in
  here, I have a
 94
                              Police Work

 feeling that he'll say he's sorry. And if you're any kind of woman, like
 I think you are, you'll forgive him."
  I go out and I say to him, "Okay, Bob." He goes up the stairs. He's
  standing up there on the landing like a little kid about six years old,
  kicking one foot on the floor. He says, "I'm sorry."
  All of a sudden you see her arms just go out of the door and grab him and
  pull him back inside. That was really nice at three o'clock in the
  morning.
  Of course, I had another one where a black woman threw a whole sectional
  couch down the stairs at her boyfriend. I wasn't going to tell him, "Tell
  her you're sorry." She would have taken him apart.

 You go to a domestic fight and the guy is beating his old lady up. Her
 teeth are busted out and her eyes are all swollen. You ask her, "Do you
 want to file charges?"
  "No, I love him."
  "How many times has he done this to you?"
  "Ten or twelve."
  "Do you want to file charges?"
  "No, I love him."
  You can't do nothing for these people. There's nothing in the world you
  can do. A month or so later you go back and he's blown her away. If she
  could say it, she'd say, "No, I love him." But she can't. She's dead.

 You work a four to twelve. Say out of the thirty jobs you've gotten on the
 shift, eight of them mvolve a spouse, male or female, telling the other
 spouse a palpable he as to their whereabouts or as to who that was that
 didn't talk on the phone or whatever. On a given night you've got eight
 instances in an eight-hour period where somebody has said they were out
 bowling with their friends when in fact they were screwing around.
                                    95
 COPS
  You go home and your wife isn't home. Ten minutes later she comes in the
  door. "Where the hell were you?"
  "Oh, I was out with my girlfriends." And she probably was, but you've heard
  that lie eight times tonight. It engenders an emotional paranoia.

 This idiot who drove off the pier is such a loser. He's got two, maybe three
 living brain cells left and that's it. He's been out of state prison for
 three months. He's been arrested four times in six weeks for drunk driving.
 He comes up out of the water and he's standing there spitting saltwater at
 us. You don't even have to go up and ask him his name. He's a local legend.
 Every cop on the street knows him. Everybody's arrested him at least once.
  And after all this, he wants to fight. There's four of us there. I'm the
  smallest of the four. The lieutenant that was there is our weaponless
  defense instructor, the guy that knows more ways to make you hurt than the
  Marquis de Sade. Of the two other guys, one outweighs me by probably 30
  pounds and the other one has four inches on me.
  This nut is yelling at them, "Come on, let's fight! You'll never take me
  alive, coppers!" All this bullshit. Unfortunately, he turned his back on
  me, so I choked him out. We went down to the ground and it was a very, very
  short fight.
  The pier has been there for 128 years. The only other time anyone else has
  ever gone off that pier is one Halloween in 1896. They grabbed a
  horse-driven carriage and ran it off the pier. All these years and nobody's
  driven off again. It's a half-mile long. Now that this guy made the front
  page, we're probably going to have a car a night going off the end of the
  pier.

 96
                              Police Work

 We go out at midnight, we sit down and have a cup of coffee and wait for
 the events of the evening. So we were there and a call comes in from
 another sector of a robbery in a gas station. They put out a description
 of the two robbers and said that they had cut the gas station attendant's
 throat. The other car on duty for that area responded. 'Me robbers were
 gone so we didn't have any reason to rush over there.
  About fifteen minutes later we ambled down that way. The victim is still
  in the station. He didn't close up-a gutsy little guy. He was a drummer
  in a band and this was his second job. I talked to him, "What happened?"
  "The dirty bastards, I wouldn't give them the money till they cut my
  throat." They didn't really cut his throat. They just kind of sliced it,
  but he's got a big bandage on and he's all full of blood on his shirt and
  he's still going to work. He didn't mind the money they took from the
  owner, but he says, "The dirty bastards took my TV." He had a small
  portable TV. He's mad and he's cursing them.
  "All right," I says, "give me a description of the television." We go out
  to look around. Right around the comer from the gas station-I'm talking
  about less than a block-who's walking down the street but a guy carrying
  a portable TV. I turned to my partner and said, "Frank, do you believe
  it? Look."
  "Yeah, there's the big guy and there's the other guy. They fit the
  description. And there's the TV."
  I shut the lights off and I says, "Let's follow- them." They never saw
  us. They're walking down the block like nothing is happening. They start
  up the steps of a house and I say, "Come on, let's take them before they
  get in the house." So we run up. The guys are on the top step. We pull
  the guns. "All right, freeze." The big guy takes out a knife. He's not
  thinking of.attacking us. He wants to dump it. The TV is the same make
  that 97
 COPS
 the victim told us. We get the guys and the TV and we take them back to
 the gas station attendant. "Is this the guys?"
  "Those sons of bitches," he yells. He grabs a tire iron and he starts
  hitting the top of the patrol car. He's wanting to hit these guys in the
  head. "That's them, that's them." We took them in.
  We asked them, "Where the hell were you for that half-hour between the
  robbery and when we caught up to you?" They had hid in an empty house on
  the comer. "When we saw the police cars left, we figured it was okay to
  come out." By us dallying and getting there later, we were doing the
  right thing.

 I'm sitting in the radio car. This young guy who was my partner that day
 is in the deli getting us a couple of sandwiches for lunch. A woman comes
 down from the real estate office screaming, "Help, help, I've been robbed!
 He ran up the next street." Which was behind me. The kid starts running
 up the street. I ask her, "What's he look like?"
  "Guy had a black T-shirt on," she says, "and big."
  -I made a U-tum and went shooting up the street. My partner is running
  up the block. I yell to him, "Keep chasing him. I'll get ahead of him and
  we'll box him." But by the time I got around, he had cut down a side
  street and was away from us. So I pass up my partner and I have to get
  him by myself with the car.
  I'm driving the car and the guy is running on my right. The windows of
  the car are open because it's summer. I had my gun pointing out the
  passenger window and I'm going, "Stop or I'm going to blow you away.91
  He turns and looks right at me and says, "Kill me! Shoot! I'm no fucking
  good! Kill me!" But he stops

 98
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 running. I stop the car right in the middle of the avenue and I get out.
 He's a big son of a gun. I tell him to turn around. "Fuck you. Shoot!
 Shoot!" He had no weapon. I don't want to shoot no guy like that. He's
 still shouting, "Shoot, shoot! Kill me! I'm no fucking good!"
  "Turn around," I tell him. I turn him around. He was wringing wet from
  the run and he was slippery. Now on TV it looks easy, but you need your
  hands to handcuff a guy, especially when you're holding a gun and he's
  not standing still. "Stop moving, you." I'm trying to get the cuffs on
  him. I hit him once with the gun and that didn't even faze him one bit.
  Finally a citizen helped me get the cuffs on him. My partner caught up
  with us and we took him in.
  It turns out the guy is out of jail a week and he just couldn't live on
  the outside, actually. He was a bad, bad loser. That's why he said to
  kill him. That was weird. I had a bead on him and he looked me right in
  the eye and said, "Kill me." I knew right away I couldn't do it. If he'd
  said something different, like "I'm going to kill you," then maybe I
  could shoot him. They put him in the nut house. He was mental.

 We got a call one day, a jumper. So we go to the building and the floor
 and I ask this old fellow in there, "Where is he?"
  "He's out the window." I put my head out the window and I said, "There's
  nobody out there. What, are you crazy?"
  "Yeah, he's there. He's hanging."
  "What do you mean, he's hanging?"
  "He's hanging from the fire escape. Look." I go back out the window. I
  see the two hands that I didn't see before. He's hanging free. I say,
  "Hey, stupid. Get your ass up here." And I walked away, right? A couple
  of

                                    99
 COPS

 minutes later he comes back in through the window. I said, "That's
 psychology and it worked." That was cute.

 We got sent to a rape at four o'clock one morning. Nice-looking girl. She's
 in bed. She wakes up and there's a guy standing over her. He puts a pillow
 case over her head and rapes her.
  "But there's something strange about it," she says. Her big German shepherd
  is there and he doesn't bark or growl. Normally the dog would go crazy if
  somebody came into the house. She said she scratched the guy.
  We go over next door to see if the neighbor had seen or heard anything
  unusual and the guy comes to the door. He's got his clothes on at four
  o'clock in the morning, he's all nervous and he's got a big scratch down
  his face. We called the detectives. It was him. He just wanted to get a
  piece of ass, so he raped her. That's why the dog didn't bark, because he
  knew the guy. They made him on fingerprints, because she never got a good
  look at him.

 I guess she was thirteen or fourteen years old. She was despondent and was
 not making much sense on the phone, but she needed help. I went over there.
  She's crying. Her mother had left them-her, her father and her brother-two
  years ago. This is what she's telling me. But it's not making any sense,
  totally incoherent, in a state of shock. Her little brother is rocking in
  a chair next to her. I never found out how old he was-I would assume he was
  three or four. He's just rocking. She's not really telling me anything.
  I call for backup, because I wanted somebody to watch the kids while I
  looked around. What happened was the father made them come in and watch him
  kill himself. He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the
 100
                              Police, Work

 trigger. The whole wall was covered with the gray matter of his brain
 where he blew the whole left side of his head apart.
  A few days later after they had a chance to calin down, a detective
  talked to the girl again and found out that the father was a real
  disciplinarian. He made them sit down there. He went through the whole
  thing and explained to them why he was killing himself: because he
  couldn't live without their mother and she was going to get married again
  and he couldn't handle that. Then he made them watch while he blew his
  brains apart.
  The traumatic experience that was on these kids' faces made me want to
  cry with them. But I realized that there was nothing I could do. That
  shook me up as much as anything in police work-that total feeling of
  helplessness. There's no training for it. As much as he may have been
  sick in his own mind, they loved him and they couldn't understand it. I
  can't make it all right. They were placed in a foster care home and I
  never followed up on what happened to them, probably because I didn't
  want to know. I felt helpless and like I didn't do a good job.

 We got an anonymous phone call that this man was abusing his kids. There
 were three children in the family. One of them was not abused at all by
 the father, but one was beaten and we couldn't locate the third.
  We knew that there had to be a problem. This man at times appeared to be
  rational and then at other times irrational. We checked a few places the
  child might be and that came up negative. We got a search warrant so we
  could continue the investigation and we went in and searched the home.
  I don't know for what reason, but I decided to look into the
  refrigerator. The frig is fine. I open up the freezer and there is the
  child, all butchered, arms and 101
 COPS
 legs, and wrapped like a frozen chicken or a piece of beef. He had
 dismembered them and labeled them and put them in the'freezer.
  You try to explain this to someone and they just shake their head, and
  I just shake my head, in disbelief. Even now I cringe when I think about
  it. But that's an extreme case of what people will really do. Demented,
  sick. You look at that and you want to go home and hug your
  five-year-old. My God, how lucky you are to have a relationship with your
  own kids. How could that person be that insane to'do something like that?

 I had a kid just recently die on me. I got the call: "It looks like a
 guy's hurt in his car." I come up and it's a white kid from New Jersey and
 he's -clutching his chest. He's still alive, but I can see that they got
 him right in the heart. The kid says to me-these are his last words at
 eighteen-"He stuck me, but he didn't get my dope, man." He's holding the
 dope with all the fucking blood there and he died. Life, right? How
 precious that shit is, man. So they kill for that.

 A small farm. A suicide. This man had hung himself. He'd done some
 elaborate planning. He picked a branch in a tree that I'd say was 25 feet
 off the ground. Made a noose. Kept his two children home out of school so
 they could witness this. Climbed up and kicked the ladder away.
  When I got there, the two kids were in a catatonic state. I got them
  inside and got someone to take care of them. Our ID guy comes and takes
  pictures. Then I got to climb up in the tree and cut this guy down and
  try to carry him down the ladder. The guy weighed about 210. 1 got him
  over my shoulder and cut down. It was an old wooden ladder. A rung broke
  and I fell
 102
                              Police Work

 all the way down on my ass. His body goes flying to the right. I almost
 break my back and leg. He ~Jmost killed me. Killed by a guy who killed
 himself.

 We used to take the emergency runs. We were like an ambulance. But it got
 to where we were just a meat wagon. Ile fire department took over the
 emergency runs and all we did was haul drunks to jail and dead bodies to
 the morgue.
  I could not stand dead bodies. If I had to do it I did it, but I just
  held my breath, went to the morgue and got it over with. They got us a
  new morgue out there. After it opened they told us, "Man, you can't smell
  nothing. They got this plastic duct system that sucks all the fames out."
  Shit, it's just as bad out there as it was at the other place. You never
  forget the smell.
  I've seen bodies with maggots crawling in and out of them. We hauled a
  guy out of the river who'd been in there, they said, seven days. Turtles
  had been chewing on him and he was green. He smelled. We stopped and got
  cigars. Neither one of us smoked, we just wanted to get rid of the smell
  on the way to the morgue.
  I've hauled little babies. They died at the hospital and you have to take
  them to the morgue. They give you a little bundle about so big and you
  just lay it in the backseat of your car. Take it up to the morgue. That's
  kind of tough to do. I tried not to get too involved. I'd take them up
  there, but I didn't want to see them or anything. Especially little
  infants.

 This one night we get a call to Haight Street. We were right around the
 comer as God would have it. Child has stopped breathing. Two things you
 really look for in this job--an injured kid or a cop in trouble. My
 partner is five-foot-five and five-foot wide. He wasn't 103
 COPS
 fat, he was just broad. For some reason I was driving the wagon that
 night. Normally he drove and I was the observer. He had ten kids. He
 really reacted to kid e,qllg.
  Now this son of a bitch jumps out of the wagon, runs into the apartment
  and picks up this little boy baby. The baby was blue, practically gone.
  Somehow or another he got out of the apartment with the baby and the
  mother right behind him. Jumps in the back of the wagon.
  This is not the kind of wagons that you see today. This was an
  old-fashioned wagon where once you were in, you were locked in, but there
  was a sliding door between the cab and the back of ihe wagon, so I could
  hear what was going on. He was trying to give the baby mouth to mouth,
  but this was before that sort of thing was really widely known. I got on
  the radio and called the Children's Hospital. "We're on our way with a
  baby that's stopped breathing."
  The dispatcher came on and said, "Yes, we've notified them. They'll be
  waiting for you."
  It took me maybe a minute and a half or two minutes to get there--we
  weren't far away at all. I jump out of the wagon, open the back door. As
  soon as I open the door, Bobby waslon his way. He runs through the emer-
  gency room door, through the waiting room. He trips over somebody in the
  God damn emergency room with the baby in his arms. He falls on the
  fucking baby. Ping! Something comes out of the fucking baby's mouth, hit
  the fucking radiator and the baby was fine. This guy had to be 240
  pounds. He was big. Whatever had been lodged in its throat just went
  shooting across the emergency room. The doctor says, "What's the problem?
  There's nothing wrong with this baby."

 A car loaded down with a Cuban family came off the expressway and the
 brakes failed. The guy veered off
 104
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 into a vacant field by the creek. He made a wide circle trying to slow
 down, but the circle was too wide. The car went off into the creek and
 flipped upside down. He got everybody out except one infant child about
 fourteen months old.
  The call went out and we were the first ones there. Only a portion of the
  car is protruding out of the water. So I stripped off my gunbelt and my
  shoes, jumped in and got up underneath the car. I got the baby out and
  we managed to revive it. The baby lived for twentyfour hours. It died
  later on, but we did save the child's life, even if it didn't live. At
  least we did something. I got several plaques over that.

 You don't realize the impact you have on people. An old woman and her
 husband were broken down on the highway. I stopped, put out flares, got
 the tow truck and the guy to fix the car. I stayed there from the minute
 I found them. I put them in my car because it was so cold out. I didn't
 think anything more of it.
  She sent this two-page letter of thanks to the captain. You'd think I'd
  walked on water. I really didn't think I did anything great. Here's old
  people that aren't treated that well in our society anyway. I just took
  the time to be nice to them. After I read the letter I really felt good.
  You can make a difference.

 I remember an accident. It was a bad one, but it wasn't like people were
 injured all over the place. The car that got hit was flipped over. A woman
 got out, but she was dazed when I got there. Then she started coming to
 and she started screaming for her baby. I said, "Oh shit, now there's a
 baby inside that car."
  I go crawling inside the car, here's this little kid, about six months
  old, a little girl. She probably bounced around 105
 COPS
 in that car like a rubber ball, because they're so flexible. She's sitting
 there. She's not crying and nobody ever thought to go look for her.
  When you pull the child out, you feel, "Oh, I can't believe this, that
  I did this." You're scared shitless to go and look, because you don't
  want to see that kid's head crushed and have to tell the mother. But then
  you come out with the kid. You're able to tell everybody something good.
  They're all clapping on the side. The ending was nice and those kind of
  thingsmake you feel happy about doing the work.

 There was an accident. This little six-year-old kid was in the middle of
 the street with a broken leg. All these people were gathered around him,
 looking down. You could tell by the scared look on his face that they were
 freaking him out. So I just laid down on the road beside him and cradled
 him in my arms. I told him to ignore those stupid people, look at me and
 we'd just talk. And we did until the ambulance got there.
  I've had people die in my arms. It's easy to be hardcore, to be the macho
  man. But it's alsopice if somebody is dying to spy a little prayer for
  them. They might not be religious or maybe they didn't have a chance to
  say one for themselves. When I'm in a position that I'm with somebody and
  I know they're checking out, I try to say a little prayer to help them
  along their way. I don't care whether he's a criminal or an innocent by-
  stander. Everybody should have a prayer. If that's the only thing you can
  give them, at least you've done something for them. It may be the least
  you can do, but you should at least do that.
  I've seen a lot of death since I been a policeman. I've walked in blood
  flowing over my shoes from a mass murder. You've got to joke about it and
  you've got to forget about it. Also you got to remember that that 106
                              Police Work

 could be you lying down there someday. You'd want somebody to help you.
  I do not relish the thought of dying in the gutter someplace, having some
  wino standing over me going, "Jesus, what's the matter, fellow?"

 I had a sixty-four-year-old woman who was raped by a male black. She had
 been seeing her doctor for years. The nurse knows her for years. She was
 raped on a Thursday. She wouldn't go to him until that following Monday.
 They knew-something was wrong with her because she was drinking like you
 wouldn't believe. She was hysterical, emotional, but she wouldn't tell
 them what was wrong.
  They called me to the scene. I talked to this lady for an hour and a half
  and she confided everything to me. I think it was very important to her
  that I was a female. But she said, "Don't tell the doctor. Don't tell the
  nurse. No one. No one."
  I talked to her and talked to her. "I need your daughter's phone number,"
  I told her. "If anything should happen to you, God forbid, I need to know
  how to contact the next of kin."
  "Don't tell my daughter. Please, don't tell my daughter. "
  "I won't tell her. You got my word on it." I helped her through it and
  no one ever knew. Knife point right to her throat. Beat her unmercifully.
  She wouldn't talk to anybody. The guy who did it knew that.
  I take the lady finally to the hospital. She walks in and the nurse says
  to her, "Oh, you were raped on Thursday and now you decided to report it,
  sweetie."
  I went over to that nurse and I said, "Listen, you, okay? Be a little
  more professional. You're supposed to be a nurse. When people are sick,
  mentally or physically, you're supposed to help them. She doesn't need
                                   107
 COPS
 you to break her chops. She just went through an ordeal. "
  Every time I was going to leave the room, the woman was hysterical. I
  couldn't leave. Finally I explained to her, "Listen, dear, I have to go
  back out on patrol. I can't spend the rest of my career with you. You're
  going to be fine. I made sure you were fine. You're safe now. You'll be
  okay. " Finally I left. She was hysterical crying when I was leaving.
  Later, I helped her get in the psychiatric center so she'd have someone
  to talk to about the whole thing.
  That lady to this day still calls this precinct and asks for me, just to
  say hello, how are you. As long as I feel that I could touch one little
  life, I feel good about the job.

 108
     CHAPTER 3

 Crimebusters

 HoMICIDE, RAPE, burglary, robbery, narcotics, vice. Each detective
 division within the police department specializes in handling a certain
 type of crime. A cop with detective rank gets to shed his uniform and all
 the paramilitary posing that goes with it. Freed from the drudgery of
 patrol, detectives do the investigations, the stakeouts and the undercover
 work. Depending on his job and his personal inclination, a detective may
 wear a three-piece suit like a stockbroker or faded jeans and sneakers
 like Serpico.
  The other specialized divisions common in most urban areas are bomb
  squads, hostage negotiators and special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT).
  These are the elite groups of highly trained individuals who get involved
  in the cliff-hanging stunts and emotionally charged confrontations that
  television "eyewitness" news teams love to cover.
  The detective is the police officer most often depicted in novels and
  television programs. All the elements for
                                   109
 COPS
 a good story seem to be there: drama, mystery, danger, action.
  But contrary to their popular image, detectives are not masters of
  deduction foiling the plots of incredibly clever criminals by piecing
  tiny elements of evidence and circumstance into an arcane but logical
  sequence. Neither are they pigheaded stooges, bungling all the cases that
  the private eyes will have to solve.
  The world of the detective does not glitter. Drug busts are rarely made
  in million-dollar penthouses. There are very few diplomats operating
  houses of prostitution and slave trading posts from the back doors of
  exquisitely decorated embassies. Heiresses who bump off their favorite
  designer for a one-of-a-kind party dress are scarce these days.
  The aftermath of crime is sordid, tragic, ugly. There may be bodies and
  coagulated blood, the smells of death and decomposition. There are bound
  to be pain and terror. The sounds are the sobs of the violated and the
  frenzied cries for justice from families of the victims. To one side are
  frightened children with hollow eyes. This is where a detective works.
  At the scene of the crime, a detective oversees the collection of
  physical evidence and the preservation of the surroundings. A
  photographic record is often made. A thorough search must be conducted.
  This sometimes includes bodies to be searched. Fingers curled in rigor
  mortis must be pried open. Pockets are emptied and their contents are
  catalogued.
  If he is fortunate enough to arrive soon after the crime has been
  committed, the detective will try to interview the victim or other
  witnesses to the crime. He must sort through the confusion of hysteria,
  panic and fear for the hard facts that might help him.
  The detective may order the scene to be dusted for fingerprints, but this
  messy procedure is often performed merely to reassure the victim or
  relatives that 110
                             Crimebusters

 everything that can ' be done is being done. All that black powder and the
 inch by inch scrutiny with a magnifying glass is what the public expects of
 a detective. If he should make that one-in-a-thousand find-an unsmudged,
 latent print that does not belong to the victim, a member of the victim's
 family or one of the patrol officers who answered the original call-4t won't
 do the detective much good unless he already has a good idea of whom it
 belongs to. That an unidentified print can be compared to all the prints on
 file somewhere in Washington, D.C., and then positively identified is a
 myth. The unidentified print must be accompanied by a short list of the
 names of people whose prints it is to be compared with. And if the criminal
 has not been arrested on a federal charge, his fingerprints probably won't
 be in the central FBI file in any case.
  "Cops don't solve crimes. I'm not Sherlock Holmes. I can only think of one
  or two instances in my career when piecing together physical evidence
  caught a criminal. It convicts them, yeah. But if we find out who did
  something, it's usually because somebody saw it happen and he drops a dime
  on the perp." In other words, a witness or informer calls the police and
  tells them what happened.
  Most detectives have informants. These fall into two major categories-those
  he can threaten and those he can buy. The parolees and small-time local
  criminals that he can put pressure on for information will often tell him
  anything that comes into their heads just to get away from him. Those he
  can buy are often just as unreliable, and the five or ten dollars he pays
  them most often comes out of his own pocket.
  A detective's major tool is, his feet. His feet carry him on the endless
  journey of canvassing neighborhoods for witnesses. From door to door,
  upstairs and down, he knocks and identifies himself and asks his questions
  over and over again, hoping to come across ill
 COPS

 the recluse insomniac who just happened to be gazing out the window at 4
 A.M. when the crime took place. His feet are also handy in the battle
 against the bureaucratic red tape in his own department as he walks from
 section to section searching for information, standing in line filling out
 his request form for access, filling out the request form for request forms.
  When not engaged in some other activity, the detective, like the officer on
  patrol, is writing reports. The system requires that he put everything in
  writing, with the hope that these reports will serve him as ready reference
  material when he is preparing his testimony against a criminal brought to
  trial. In the meantime, his mounds of paper protect him from his superiors'
  accusations of indolence and the public's outcry of malfeasance.
  The most effective detectives combine a dedicated tenacity in the face of
  this endless red tape with alertness in the presence of mind-numbing
  repetition-and no little amount of luck. When they are able to bring a
  criminal to justice, the heroism in their effort goes beyond the outlandish
  plots of. television dramas. If a suspect is actually tried and convicted
  it seems little less than a miracle.
  Those other specialists-bomb technicians, hostage negotiators and SWAT Team
  member&--are never called in except as a last resort. They expect the worst
  and for the most part the worst is exactly what they see,
  Risking life and limb, they try to prevent deliberate acts of terror or
  perverted pleasure or they clean up after irrational bursts of hatred,
  anger or desperation. They do this job directly in the public eye. Because
  of their high visibility, every detail of planning and execution must be
  perfect. On those few occasions when everything goes right, they are heroes
  for a day. If anything goes wrong or can be interpreted that way, 112
                             Crinwbusters

 they are scapegoats for the press, the politicians and the public.
  It's little wonder that the detective himself thinks his world is a good
  deal less glamorous than the public thinks it is.

 I DID A four to one-four in the afternoon till one o'clock in the morning.
 Eight o'clock that same moming, I go back in to the desk. "Hey, you have
 a homicide," they say.
  "When did it happen?"
  "Happened at five past one last night.91
  "What you got?"
  "We found a guy at Twelfth and Avenue A. Don't know who he is. No
  identification. He was shot in the stomach and died on the operating
  table. We got no witnesses. "
  So what do I got? I got nothing. If I caught it right from the get-go,
  there'd still be people out there in the street. Next day, you're out
  there at eight o'clock in the morning, everybody's gone.
  We don't know who this guy is, so I go to the hospital and ask, "Was
  anybody up to see this guy?" You'll have some young rookies or
  inexperienced guys that might have let some family up there to see the
  victim and didn't notify you. Or let them leave and didn't ask if they
  had names. But nobody came to see him.
  So I still don't know who the guy is, much less why he was killed. Was
  it a robbery? Was it a drug deal?
  So we go to the scene and we talk to some people. There's an after-hours
  joint right around the comer, so maybe he went in there. We go in. People
  are looking at us. We go into the back room. What do the people think?
  They think you're getting paid off, of course. Everybody's saying, "Look
  at the cops in here. But they're, not closing the place up. They must be
  on the
                                   113
 COPS

 pad." I don't want to close this place up. There's a potential witness in
 here to a murder. You are all my friends now.
  Talking to one of the guys that ran the club and he says, "Yeah, I heard
  this guy was shot. His name was Clive. "
  "What do you know about it?"
  "He sells cheba down on Ninth and Avenue A."
  "Yet he's killed up here."
  "Aw, I heard he ran up from there." Now we got a direction. Maybe he
  wasn't killed here. Maybe he was shot downtown.
  The owner drops a name of a guy on us that carries a .22 and Clive was
  supposedly shot with a small-caliber gun. When I hear the name, it didn't
  click with me. I go to a couple of guys I know in the neighborhood and
  knock on their doors and say, "This is what I got. What can you get for
  me?" Send them on their little missions. Problem is, if I was the FBI,
  I could lay a C-note on one of these guys and he'd work for me the rest
  of his life. I can't give him nothing but five or ten bucks out of my
  pocket. I got to make my own mortgage.
  Then I get a call and I'm talking to one of my stoolies. He says, "You
  know that guy with the .22 you're looking for? You just grabbed him last
  year." Then it clicked, "Yeah, I know him." I found him, went to his
  apartment and started talking to him. He turned me on to a couple of
  other guys who might be connected. It's like a patchwork. You get some
  information here, then you jump over there.
  I couldn't just send those two guys out and then wait for them to come
  back with the information, because I'd still be sitting there. I grabbed
  somebody off the street that deals there, dragged him in the car, brought
  him to the office. I told him I was going to make his life miserable and
  ruin his business forever and all of
 114
                              Crimebusters

 these horrendous things I was going to do to him unless he came up with
 some information for me.
  "But I wasn't there," he says.
  "Yeah, but you know, because you're out there all the time."
  "No, I didn't see it go down. I heard from this guy Jimmy that was
  there."
  The information is coming in from all around now. I get a phone call.
  "Hey, the guy, Jimmy, that was on the block when it went down is there
  now." Gave me a description of Jimmy. It's funny, a guy can give you any
  description-"He's wearing pink sneakers and a red shirt and a red hat
  with a feather in it"-you go down and there's twelve guys there look like
  that. It just seems to be that way.
  Finally, I go up to Jimmy and--swoosh!--snatch him off the street. He
  don't know what he's going in for. Bring him in and tell him all this
  crap. He's not very cooperative. After talking to him for a while, he
  says, "You got it wrong. I wasn't there, but I know somebody who was
  there." Which turned out to be the truth as much as I sat there and said,
  "Aw, you're full of shit."
  "The guy was leaning out the window," Jimmy says. "When I got there
  everything was finished, but this guy was leaning out the window and he
  was telling me, 'Yeah, a guy just got shot over a girlfriend.' He told
  me the whole story."
  "What's this guy look like?" And he gave me the description. "Will you
  tell me which window he was leaning out of?" We took him down there on
  the QT and he pointed out the window.
  So the next move is that we do a canvass of all the buildings in that
  area and see if any witnesses show up. That day in the tenements, it was
  so hot, it was almost like water in the hallways it was so thick.
  We went to this one building there. It had only one apartment on each
  floor with real short hallways. Hot
                                   115
 COPS

 as hell. I'm knocking on the first floor. Man comes to the door with two
 Chihuahuas-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap. Go to the second floor--one Chihuahua.
 Third flooranother Chihuahua. My partner says, "Hey, instead of
 cockroaches, they got Chihuahuas in this building."
  I'm up on the top floor. I knock on the door and this lady answers. I
  says, "Where's your Chihuahua?"
  The lady looks at me. "What are you talking about?" she says.
  "You got to have a Chihuahua to live in this building. It's in your
  lease."
  We go up one tenement and if the door was unlocked, we'd go across the
  roof and down through the next one. Just me and one other guy. We did
  four buildings, I'm coming down near my potential witness. Figuring from
  the windows, he's in the apartment just below me. So we knock on this
  door. "We're the police. We'd like to speak to you. Did you hear anything
  the other night about one A.M.?" Finally I ask, "Who lives below you?"
  "Oh, that's my brother-in-law."
  "What's his name?" He gives me the name.
  "He mentioned that he heard a shot," this guy says. "They're going to
  Pennsylvania today. They probably left already."
  So I go down below and knock on the door. I always pull a weird act with
  people in the streets anyway. I always come in with my left hand and do
  a little circus act, so they don't know what the hell's going on. The guy
  comes to the door and I say, "How come you're not in Pennsylvania? Aren't
  you running late?" He looks at me totally confused. I tell him who I am
  and everything and then I says, "You know what I'm here for, right?" And
  he told me the whole story.
  He was in the street and saw the whole thing go down. Legitimate guy. He
  worked. His wife was there and we're playing with the baby. Before I
  left, I got his work number, his telephone number there at home,
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                              Crimebusters

 where his mother lived, date of birth, everything. In case he suddenly no
 longer existed at that address, I could hopefully still track him down.
  Anyway, I found out that the guy who did it lived over a barbershop a few
  blocks away. What happened was, Clive was selling smoke. He was trying to
  sell smoke to this particular girl. The girl wasn't going along with it, so
  he said, "To hell with it, I'll take your chains." So he ripped off her
  jewelry.
  Turns out that she runs a drug operation-the heavy stuff-on Eleventh Street
  and Avenue C. They have a lot of girls working for them now. She went back
  and told her little Al Capone-I don't know if it's her relative or her
  boyfriend-"Ah, this guy ripped off my gold chains." She then went back to
  the scene with this guy to point out the smoke salesman.
  That area, it's like Mexico. Ever been to Tiajuana or Juarez? "Hey, you
  want this?" "You want to buy that?" You can buy anything down there. Little
  Al Capone says he wants to see Clive. The smoke salesman on the street
  says, "Hey, I got the same stuff Clive's got."
  "No, Clive gives me a better play than you."
  "I'll give you the same play."
  "No, I want to see Clive, man, you know."
  When he saw Clive, he just lit him up and walked away. The next day the
  broad comes back and brags about it on that same damn corner. She went into
  where they have a few little video games and started bullshitting, "I told
  that guy who ripped me off of my chains that I wasn't going to chase no
  dead man."
  I have a legitimate woman in there that heard her say those things, so now
  I got two legitimate witnesses.
  I got two other guys who were there and saw the thing, but they're
  petrified to testify, because they're drug dealers. These guys are punks
  that sell smoke. They'll gorilla you, maybe, but they're not tough guys.
  Let's face it, this girl comes right back to the situation 117
 COPS
 where they're selling drugs and starts selling wolf tickets and they don't
 do nothing about it. These guys are punks. But she's coining from a group
 of heavy hitters. They've been involved in a couple of other homicides I
 had over there.
  On the QT my people are going to find out her little Al Capone's name and
  bring it to me. The next thing you do is a photo array. I show my
  witnesses six photos and hope they pick out this guy. Once they pick the
  guy out, maybe they'll pick out the girl from photos.
  I'll do a back history on these people, get as much information on them
  as I can, and then just snap'them up.
  I would like to snap the girl up first, hoping that she's going to puke
  up her guts. Or if not have them both in at the same time and play them
  off.
  "You know she told me about the gold chains."
  "That bitch."
  Just give them so much information. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
  doesn't. That's the interesting part. When you interrogate somebody, it's
  all an act. You go in and say something off the wall to like relax them.
  Or maybe you just leave them in there for a couple of hours. Then you
  come in and say, "M, how you doing?" Walk out. Come back later, you say,
  "Can you stand over here for a minute?" You take them over to the
  mirrored window. "Now turn around and look this way. Okay, go sit down."
  Mind games. It's all mind games.
  Years ago a cop probably could have beat the bejesus out of them until
  he got a confession. You can't any more - The laws are so ridiculous as
  far as the protection of the suspect. For example, I bring you in. I
  think you murdered somebody. I advise you of your rights with the Miranda
  warnings. It's like telling you, "Don't tell me nothing, man. Don't talk
  to me. What are you, crazy? I'm your brother and I'm telling you, don't
  talk to me. I'm trying to put you in jail, you dope."
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                              Crimebusters

  I tell you this. Now I got to get you to talk to me. If you say one simple
  thing to me-"I want my attorney"-that is the end of everything. Now I got
  to take you and put you back in the cage.
  An hour later, you get pangs of conscience, "Hey, can I talk to you for a
  minute? I want to tell you everything. I want to confess."
  You can't even confess to me now. Unless a lawyer comes and agrees. And
  then if the lawyer agrees, some judge is going to say that the lawyer
  wasn't competent and throw, out the case.
  So you play these games with them. I advise them of their rights. After I
  do that, I don't go into the interrogation right away. I'll ask them
  something stupid to get their mind off what I just told them. Something
  really dumb, depending on the person. "Did you see that fight last night?
  Leonard really nailed him, didn't he?"

 I've spent thousands of hours sitting and waiting. Sometimes based on a tip,
 but more often than not based on a probability. That's bullshit. That's like
 playing the big number in the lottery. The bosses say, "They been taking off
 Colonel Sanders all over the city. The chances are that this one will be
 hit. " So you set up for two weeks and you sit and wait and wait and wait
 and wait and wait.
  To pass the time, we look at women a lot if we're in the right
  neighborhood. We look at the women and make remarks. Not very gentlemanly
  remarks, but no one is listening. We score them. If they could hear us,
  they wouldn't appreciate it. But what else is there to do? You can't read
  a book.
  Usually, one of us is going through some kind of marital problems. We'll
  hash that over for a few hours. We will try to think up every which way the
  robbery
                                   119
 COPS
 could go down. Try to plan for every contingency. How to cover all the
 bases.
  You don't know what you're looking for. You don't know what kind of car
  they're driving. You just know ,how they're going to take it down when they
  do go in. Hopefully, you can see inside the store with your binoculars-if
  you're not sleeping.
  It's just so boring, it will drive you crazy. You're sitting there with
  your partner and you start to get into an argument, for no reason. You been
  on this thing for two weeks. It is.not glamorous. There's nothing glamorous
  about the job until the shit goes down and then it's not glamorous either.
  The biggest fear that I have is not about getting killed. It's taking this
  guy off without hurting anybody else and not letting him get away. Mostly
  not hurting anybody else. But it happens so fast that you almost miss it
  every time. Once you collect yourself and figure out that it is-in
  fact-going down, it's almost over. Your decision to shoot or not to shoot
  is like a split second. There are so many things that can happen in the
  meantime.
  This is. what scares me the most: What's going to happen this time? Will it
  go all right or am I going to hit some innocent person? Am I going to make
  the wrong decision? Or will I make the decision to shoot when it's not
  appropriate, when the guy really doesn't have a gun? That's almost happened
  a half-dozen times. The hammer's been coming back and the guy doesn't have
  a gun. He's got something in his hand, but he doesn't have a gun. That
  absolutely scares me to death.
 . We did a seven-week stakeout in a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. We were
 wearing the red shirts and red bow ties and we're packing the chicken in
 boxes. We got so good at it that the manager wanted- to pay us while we were
 in the store. He didn't know what to do with his employees, because we were
 really efficient. We never caught anybody. We'd be sitting in this place 120
                          Crimebusters

 with a little radio and one of us would have an earphone on. They'd go and
 knock off the one a few blocks away. Frustration.
  Another time, a few days before Christmas, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
  called our robbery squad. They had an informant who said that a supermarket
  was going to get held up. Two or three blacks were going to do it and they
  had gotten hold of a machine gun. That raised eyebrows. We worked it for
  the first night with ATF. They were sitting in their car in the parking lot
  and we were sitting in ours. Of course, nothing happened, which is the way
  it usually is.
  The weekend rolled along. They went on their weekend-that's how much store
  they put in their informant. But we stayed on it. In a car, we had to sit
  so far off we had to use binoculars to see. So we went and borrowed this
  old van from narcotics. Now we can be up on the lot, right by the front
  door. There was a glass front all across the supermarket, so we had quite
  a view.
  I was flat on my back bitching. It was closing time and the manager had
  shut off the automatic opener on the pneumatic door that goes into the
  store. We were just about to pack up our shotguns and put them-back in
  their cases. My partner is sitting at the wheel and he looks out this
  little side window and says, "Hey, buddy, this guy sitting in a car right
  here just tucked a gun in his belt."
  "Fuck you, asshole," I said. I didn't believe him. But I got up, since he
  did have a little bit of urgency in his voice. This guy gets out of his car
  and walks towards the store. He pulls open the door and all of a sudden you
  see the security guard's hands go up inside.
  Meanwhile, in the car which had been sitting right beside us, there was a
  second guy. He rolls the car right up in front, opens the door and jumps
  out with what looks like a fucking Thompson. Have you ever seen one of
  those with the canister? Jesus Christ. It turns 121
 COPS
 out that it is not an authentic Thompson, but it was a damn good
 representative. The same configurationsemi-automatic, a 40-round clip with
 .45-caliber ammunition which can go right through them dinky vests they
 give us. Suddenly, you see sixteen people, all their heads disappear. He's
 put them all down on the floor.
  It's my son's second Christmas and I'm thinking about him. And I do not
  want to get out of this van. I'm really upset by that Thompson. I didn't
  like that. I said, "Somebody's going to get hurt out here. I don't think
  there is any way to avoid it." I got my shotgun and I chambered a round.
  There's not cars anywhere to hide behind and we can't hide behind the van
  in the position that it's in. So we're just kind of standing out there
  in the middle of the fucking parking lot.
  Right before these guys are coming back out, a whole car load of people
  rolls up in an old Chevy, apparently to pick up an employee, one of the
  cashiers. I wave and shout, "Get the fuck out of here!" They're looking
  at us with that dumb look that people give you when you shput at them.
  We're standing there with shotguns and wearing our baseball caps and
  screaming at them. Finally the guy puts it in drive and gets out of the
  way.
  No sooner did they get out of the way than these guys are coming out the
  door. The guy with the Thompson is in the lead, he comes out the door and
  he's looking right dead at us. One of us yelled, "Freeze, motherfucker!"
  He's gqt the gun cradled like he's Machinegun Kelly. He thinks that he's
  the baddest thing that ever hit the road. He's strutting. He all of a
  sudden saw us and he brought it up. I waxed him. I said to myself, "Fuck
  it. If he gets a burst off, we're all going to get it." Right behind us
  there is an entire apartment complex and a four-lane main drive.
  I went, Boom! He took off running like a jackrabbit. Now, I've got a
  shotgun full of 00 buck which is the 122
                          Crimebusters

 equivalent of nine .32-caliber slugs all at once and he took off running.
 We're all following him in our sights and thank God it's all bricks down
 through there. You can see the powder coming off the brick wall as the shots
 hit behind him one after the other. He's going 90 miles an hour. Finally, he
 goes down.
  The second guy has a gun in each hand. He's got the security guard's gun
  and his own gun. He's got the cash drawer balanced on his forearms in front
  of him. He caught one of the 00 bucks right in the spine and went down
  immediately. The other guy had taken all the rest in the heart from the
  first shot and still made that run. The autopsy showed it. It's scary. You
  been watching cop shows all your life and you think when you shoot these
  people, they're supposed to fall down. They don't do it.
  The one guy died. The other guy lived and he's in the penitentiary. He's
  filed a $7 million lawsuit against us as well as a homicide sergeant that
  put some nasty things about him in the newspapers. He's suing us for
  violation of his civil rights.
  I want the city to go to federal court and say, "Dismiss this. It's a
  frivolous lawsuit." They won't do it. So we're just sitting around with it
  hanging over our heads.
  I didn't feel bad about any of that. I had an appointment with the police
  shrink two days after it happened because my wife and I were going through
  some serious marital difficulties. I walked in his office and he said,
  "Well, well. Haven't we been busy? I've been reading about you in the
  papers again. How do you feel?"
  "I'm,a little upset, Doc, because I don't feel bad at all.
  "That's okay," he said. "From what I read in the paper you don't need to
  feel bad at all." And I didn't. I was just glad to be home on Christmas
  Day.
  A female news commentator on the local news while covering the story said,
  "They gunned him down with123
 COPS

 out letting him fire a single shot." They had pictures of the rescue squad
 working this guy over. Then they had a picture of them putting the white
 sheet over him. There it is.

 We had a robbery. Three people are coming out into the parking lot of a
 restaurant in a real nice area and they're held up by a black male and a
 white male. They saw a female driver of the getaway car. They describe the
 getaway car and they had written down the license plate number. We run the
 vehicle registration on the car and it comes back to an address not too
 far away. We put out the description of the car and the suspects that the
 victims had given us.
  So they staked out the address that the car came from. Ile people who
  were staking the place out were un,dercover, junkie-looking plainclothes
  officers. Sure enough, here comes the car. The officers come up and yell
  at the people to freeze. The people dive to the floor of the car. The
  officers think they are going for guns. One of the officers smashes out
  the window of the car. They get them out at gunpoint.
  They call us on the radio that they've got our crooks in custody. So we
  took the victims and we drive to the area. We're going into this real
  nice residential area. I'm thinking, "Wow, this doesn't look right."
  We get there and the victims say, "That's the car. That's the car."
  They've got the two people there who are saying, "We live here." The
  suspects are a middleclass couple. The guy is an attorney. His wife is
  a schoolteacher. These are not your typical robbery suspects.
  The victims say, "She was the driver of the getaway car. " So we take the
  man and woman down to the station. I talk to the man. He is a prominent
  local lawyer. His story is that they had dinner at the same restaurant
  as the victims. They came out, got into their
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                          Crimebusters

 car, went to one other place and came home. When they arrive at their
 driveway, all these people are pointing guns at them and he said, "We didn't
 think they were cops. We thought we were being held up."
  We piece it together. When the victims were held up, the robbers ran around
  and away from them. The first car that just seconds later came by the
  victims, in their minds, these were the crooks. The robbers had run right
  by these other people in the dark as they were getting into their car. The
  victims were scared. It's scary when somebody sticks a gun in your face. So
  we've got three people saying, "We were robbed." And they were. "These are
  the people who robbed us."
  The two people are saying, "Hey, we didn't rob anybody or do anything."
  Here we are. We've done everything right. We responded. We got the victims.
  We broadcast everything they told us. The officers got the information and
  they stake out the house. They see the people. Those men were working under
  the assumption that these were armed robbers. The people go down to the
  floor, so the cops break out the window of the car. Handcuff the two of
  them.
  So here's this mess and as the police officer you've got to unravel it. You
  realize that there was a mistake made by the victims-an honest mistake,
  because they really believed what they said. It wasn't a lie or malicious.
  Basically what we did was unarrested the people. Technically it's a form.
  We talked to them at length to explain what had happened because they felt
  like they were being terrorized for no reason. Nothing is quite what it
  seems. They'll probably sue.

 The kid went missing Tuesday. I'd taken off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
 Thursday morning when 1 125
 COPS

 came back to work, I said, "Is that kid still missing? I read something
 about it in the paper."
  "Yeah," the guy I work for says. "I want you to go up to the golf course
  behind the kid's house and lead the civilian search party. Check the golf
  course very thoroughly. There's going to be some Civil Air Patrol kids
  there."
  I get out there at nine o'clock in the morning, me and my search parties.
  I send them out to look over the first hole, seventh hole, the ninth hole
  and out they go. They come back about two hours later to the staging
  area. Didn't find anything.
  "What are you going to do now?" says this deputy there.
  "We're going to get something to eat and see'what's up next."
  "Okay," he says, "but they're getting a little hinky downtown. You better
  bring the search parties back after they eat and look over the golf
  course again."
  "Hey, I just did that. And they did it the day before and the day before
  that."
  "But this is the spot the kid was last seen, that's where he's missing
  from."
  Okay. But this time when I go back, I grab a golf cart. I go out onto the
  golf course myself and just try to familiarize myself with how the kid
  got onto the golf course from the housing area where he lives. I get out
  of the golf cart and walk up the path toward the housing area. I see two
  older women standing outside and I ask them, "Can you tell me where the
  missing boy lives?"
  They said yes they could. They were his aunts. I made sure they'd checked
  out his house real good, under the beds and things. Then I told them,
  "I've been off for the last few days and I just came on this morning. I
  just want to familiarize myself with the location and how the boy would
  enter the golf course."
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                          Crimebusters

  One of the aunts says to me, "You go right down by Gerald's house."
 "Who's Gerald?"
  "He's the boy Jimmy had an argument with the other day. "
  "About what?" It seems that Gerald had accused Jimmy of stealing his
  pocket knife. "Oh, did you tell the other officers about this?" She said
  no. So I was going down toward the house and she says, "There goes
  Gerald."
  I was calling him. I says, "Gerald!" He stopped. I looked at him and I
  said, "Weren't you in one of the search parties this morning at the golf
  course?"
 "Yeah," he says.
 "What are you doing now?"
  "I came home," he said, "to change my shoes. My feet got.soaking wet this
  morning."
  "Yeah, mine, too. They're still soaking. Did you know Jimmy?"
 "Yes, sir, I did."
 "Did you have an argument with him?"
 "Yeah, Billy told me that he stole my pocket knife." "Oh, yeah? What'd
 you do?"
 "Well, I got upset."
 "How about Jimmy? Was Jimmy upset?"
 "Yeah," he says, "Jimmy was upset, too."
 "So what happened then?"
 "I invited him to my house to play my Atari."
 "What happened then?"
 "Well, I took a shower."
 "You what? At three o'clock in the afternoon?"
  "Yeah, well," he says, "when I sweat, I take showers."
  "Would you mind coming out and checking the woods with me? Just you and
  IT'
 "Oh, yeah, sure."
 A thirteen-year-old kid playing with a five- or six-
                               127
 COPS

 year-old kid, I knew something was wrong here. So I started talking to him
 and- come to find out this kid is almost a genius, loves computers, does
 very well in school, but emotionally couldn't get along with his peers,
 so he plays with little kids.
  I got on the radio and I called this other sergeant that works with me
  and I said, "Get over here, I think I got something."
 "What do you got?"
 "I'm not sure. I just feel like I got something."
  I go out in the woods with this kid. I asked him if he ever came out into
  the woods with Jimmy. He showed me all their clubs and forts in the trees
  and rocks and stuff like that. I figure the little son of a bitch has got
  the boy stashed out here someplace. You know, they were out playing in
  the woods. The little boy fell, This one panicked and he buried him.
  He's talking to me and I've got this feeling that this kid is close to
  insane. I say to him, "Wouldn't it be nice if we found Jimmy in one of
  these clubs. Maybe he hurt himself and we could help him. At the worst,
  if he got killed, we could take care of his body and make sure he got a
  proper burial."
  "That would be nice," he said, "but I hope we don't find him."
 S'Why?l$
 "Because I don't like blood."
  Oh, Jesus, it's getting better. I get called on the radio, "Do you still
  have that kid there? Well, come on back." When I got him back, the
  sergeant says, "We got a phone call. Somebody saw this boy hit Jimmy."
 "Shit," I said, "what are we going to do?"
 "We'll search his house."
 "But his mother's not home."
 "How do you know?"
 "He told me."
 "Well, we'll wait." Just then the mother pulls up.
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                          Crimebusters

 This sergeant went up to ask her if they could go in. I went back to. the
 staging area to tell my boss what was going on.
  "You stay here. I'll go down to the house," he tells me. Ali, shit. All
  day in the fucking woods and now I miss the most important part.
  Sure as shit, my boss and the sergeant go into the house with the mother
  and the kid and they start searching the house. They go up to the kid's
  bedroom. The sergeant is in the bedroom all alone and he sees a plastic
  bag up on the top shelf of the closet, so he grabs it. But it's ... cold.
  He takes it off the shelf and opens it up and there's all the fucking
  kid's clothes, his sneakers and socks, his underwear and a vest he was
  wearing. "Holy shit," he says to himself, "he's buried him in the
  backyard."
  But he goes ahead and looks in the closet. 'ne closet is filled half way
  up the wall, but in an orderly fashion. The sergeant is kind of a ferret.
  He just doesn't stop on the surface. He starts digging and digging. All
  of a sudden he gets to this plastic bag. He puts his hand on the plastic
  bag and it gives. "Jesus Christ, he's in the fucking bag. He's in the
  fucking bag!" My boss couldn't believe it. So they slit open the bag and
  sure enough the kid is in the bag. They grabbed Gerald and got him the
  fuck out of there.
  I come back down from the command post. I couldn't stay up there any
  fucking longer. The medical examiner shows up and pulls the kid out of
  the bag. The sergeant just kept telling me, "He was in the fucking bag."
  He had trouble dealing with itA wasn't there for the actual discovery,
  so I could handle it a little better.
  I felt good that I'd been instrumental in finding the body. Had that kid
  got the bag out to the dumpster, we would have never broken that case.
  The only reason he didn't put the kid into the dumpster right away was
  that it was too full to get the trash bag in. It was a
                               129
 COPS

 tragedy, but at least I helped put an ending on it and that satisfied me.

 This guy lived in an apartment that looked like a submarine. There was
 just like a trail through all this shit to a clearing over here and a bed
 you wouldn't let a dog sleep in. He strangled this girl that he used to
 hang around with.
  First, we go to the apartment and the guy said the girl ODU She's in the
  bed in the back room with all this shit. Lividity is all set in. Lividity
  is all the blood in your body, because of gravity, will settle in you and
  make all the down side look like a bruise, like you were beat to hell on
  that side of you. You could die of a heart attack, say, and if you were
  laying on your face, your whole face would look like you was bludgeoned.
  You can lose blood from your mouth and your nose. It'll break and go on
  the floor, so it looks like you were assaulted instead of died of natural
  causes. If you get shot and you die right away, you don't bleed. What
  pumps it out is your heart. If your heart stops right away, all the blood
  is left inside you. Anyway, lividity lidd set in and you couldn't really
  tell if she was assaulted or whatever. We've actually had a medical
  examiner come look at a body and say it looks like an overdose when in
  reality the guy took a round in the face. Now if he can miss it, we could
  miss it.
  The guy claims that she ODU When anybody dies in the precinct, we got to
  respond. OD is considered natural causes in this precinct. She was sent
  up to the morgue and they did an autopsy on her. They found out that a
  bone was broken in the neck that would only result from strangulation.
  That's what they told us: She was strangled.
 All right, we go back. Charlie is the guy's name.
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                          Crime6usters

 "Come on, Charlie, want to talk to us?" We bring Charlie back to the
 station house.
  The guy I work with, it was -his case. This guy is good, but he's like
  electric. There's a bulge in his eye. Wow! When he comes into a room, it
  like lights up. He's like "Brrrrrrr!"
  Charlie is talking to the Electric Man and he's keeping up with the
  story, "Oh, she overdosed. Blah-blah-blahblah." Electric Man finally
  goes, "DON'T HAND ME THAT!" He like explodes in the office, you know?
  The problem with that is that Charlie is the only person that we have.
  That tactic could either work or it's not going to work. You explode and
  the guy might say, "Whoa, I ain't saying nothing, man, because now you're
  not believing me."
  Electric Man exploded all over the room. There was no recovery. Now
  Charlie is like, "What? What happened? We were friends before." This guy
  is like shrapnel all over the room and Charlie is really upset. "Now, I
  don't know if I want to talk to you guys any more. I mean, if you're not
  going to be friendly and nice I just don't think I want to talk to you
  at all." But he's babbling on. Charlie's been shooting speed so long,
  Electric Man just blew a fuse in his head. "Arrgh. You're not believing
  this story now? I thought this story was so good. You were buying this
  only two seconds ago. Now you're calling me a liar."
  Electric Man leaves the room. I go back into Charlie and he's talking to
  his left, talking to his right, talking to the ceiling, talking to the
  floor. Talking about everything that comes into his head, all over the
  highway. "I don't know what he's yelling at me for. I didn't do nothing
  to him. How come he don't like me any more?" AD this unnecessary shit.
  "Let's get back to her, " I say. I grabbed his face, one cheek in each
  hand. We're nose to nose across the table and I say, "Now, talk to me."
  It's like talking to a little
                               131
 COPS
kid, a two-year-old. But I seemed to have his attention. Finally, he says,
 "Look, to tell you the truth, she didn't OD. She hung herself. That's
 right. She hung herself. We had an argument and all this stuff and I went
 to another part of the apartment. When I came back in the room she was
 hanging by the neck. By a rope. In the doorway."
  I just kept saying, "Go on. Go on, Charlie." He's going through this
  whole thing. I says, "All right, if that's the truth, there's nothing
  wrong with that. We go back to the apartment and you can show us the rope
  and show us where she hung herself. Everything will be okay."
  So we go back into this pile of refuse, just garbage, and he's rumbling
  through it. Digging and digging. He's probably saying to himself,
  "There's got to be some rope here somewhere." He keeps going through the
  trash and he finally comes up with some rope. "Hey, here's the rope."
  "Oh, good. Bring it over here, Where did you say she hung herself?" The
  Electric Man gets up there on a chair where the rope would hang. There's
  dust an inch deep all the way across. You don't have to be Mr. Moto to
  tell this is bullshit. But he's saying, "Okay, yeah, yeah." We have the
  guys from the crime lab come down and they're taking photos. This goes
  on and on.
  Finally we go back to the medical examiner himself and speak to him, "How
  could this have resulted, from a rope?"
  "No, that was the result of thumbs, had to be," the M.E. says. That
  little shit. Charlie's lying again. We bring him back. "Charlie, Charlie,
  she didn't die from a rope."
 "What do you mean?" he says.
  The case is still in court. Charlie didn't confess. How he could have
  beat the whole case was simple. They used the apartment as a shooting
  gallery. People paid 132
                          Crimebusters

 to go in there and shoot up. He could have said, "Yeah, she was there and
 she shot up and went into the bed. Then I left and went and shot pool
 someplace. When I came back, the door was open and there she was. I thought
 she'd OD'd." Then what do we do? We got nothing.
  But Charlie couldn't think of that stuff. He thought, "I think I'll hang
  her from the ceiling. I saw her hanging from the ceiling." The guy is
  unfortunately stupid. But, hey, he did find a rope.

 Every now and then in the decoy section, you want a woman victim, so we have
 to dress up one of the guys. He is drafted to be the woman. The guys
 outsmarted me at first. They started growing mustaches. Before long, they
 all had one, so I had to draw the line. Somebody has got to cut their
 mustache off.
  I can see Jimmy Rain right now. He was dressed up as a little old lady down
  on Main Street one night. The thing about teenage kids, fifteen or sixteen
  years old, is when they grab the money, they run. The guy they steal from
  can be passed out cold, but they're going to run when they get it from him.
  The older ones get the money and then walk on off and you don't normally
  have to chase them.
  Here's Jimmy Rain dressed up like a little old lady with a purse. These two
  young guys grabbed his purse and took off running down Main Street. I can
  see him right now with that dress up over his knees just barreling down the
  middle of the street with traffic stopping in both directions.
  Later on that same night, we were down in the park where we'd had some
  complaints. Jimmy had his dress on and he's walking through. We had him
  bugged with a radio. He was telling us what he could see as he went along.
  "I'm about in the middle of the park and there's 133
 COPS
 one old drunk vagrant just bullying the hell out of another one, beating
 on him for no reason at all," he says. Jimmy, dressed up like this little
 old lady, walks up to this drunk and just backhands him right onto his
 backside and says, "Behave yourself." Then just walked right on off.

 I had been working with my informant, George, for a long time. And I
 started to trust him. At Christmastime I did a little something for
 George. His old lady got sick and had to have an operation, I took care
 of her moneywise. I got very cozy with them. George didn't get as cozy as
 I did. I was a fool and I trusted him.
  George comes up to me and he says, "Listen, man, I got a buy and it's an
  ounce buy."
  "Well," I say, "that's okay, not bad, better than a couple of cheap-o
  bags. Cool."
  George knew me well. He says, "The only thing is, man, we got to cop it
  in the crib."
  "No way, you're out of your fucking gourd. I'm not going in no fucking
  sleaze bag apartment to cop a lousy ounce. You might as well just put a
  tag on my toe and ship me to the morgue. That's a setup. Bad news."
  Now I should have started to suspect something. Hey, George don't like
  to work and all of a sudden he's hammering me into this deal. He says,
  "Well, man, I know it's only an ounce and you don't dig the apartment,
  but the truth is he won't deal any other way. And if you bust this cat,
  oddly enough, he's a direct link from ounces right to keys. You can turn
  him. " I was greedy so I went against my better judgment. I said, "Sure,
  we'll bust him. Why not?" You cannot make mistakes like that in police
  work, particularly in the narcotics trade.
  I put a wire on. The device allows me to broadcast, but I can't hear
  anything from them; therefore I'm never 134
                          Crimebusters

 really sure that the fucker's"working. We've tested it, but mechanical
 things are so unreliable, usually when you need them the most. My backup
 team is a bunch of jerks and they're half a block away in a van. The idea
 is, if they hear that it's going down bad or if they don't hear' anything
 at all, they will come busting in after me because the safety of the
 officer is supposed to be foremost in their minds. They were a couple of
 assholes who could have cared shit less about me.
  I go into the stupid buy and the shit starts right from the get-go. We
  start up the stairs and George tells me it's the fourth floor; then he
  changes it to the fifth. As we're arguing and walking up, he keeps
  getting in back of me and lagging. I'm grabbing him and pushing him in
  front of me. The fuck don't want to go up. It was only about two floors
  up and we got to a landing and some fucking guy comes out with a .45. It
  was a setup. The fucking guy, George, set me up. I couldn't believe it.
  For some shitass reason I had this little .25 automatic hidden down in
  this like jockstrap. All I remember is trying to get into my fucking
  pants and he was shooting. That was a very bad situation that seems to
  be going by very slowly,-when in fact it all happened within a matter of
  seconds. Come to find out he took seven at me. There were holes in the
  walls and in the floor next to me. It stopped because I was unloaded and
  he was dead. I had no more and everything stopped. Then I heard sirens
  and my fucking partners hadn't even gotten there. The uniforms responded.
  I didn't want to kill that guy. I did want to kill George. While I was
  on the floor I didn't think, "I could die.' I thought, "George, you
  motherfucker, you set me up.' But the fucker got out.

 At the beginning, I thought it was great. I was chosen secretively out of
 this organization to be one of the guys 135
 COPS
 who was going to work this undercover job. I thought that was fantastic.
  I leave the station in the middle of the night. A call came from
  headquarters saying, "A sergeant is to stay on the desk and everybody else
  is to he out for whatever reason. Mitchell is going to leave the station
  and he's not going to sign out."
  I just left. My uniform is there, I'm gone. A couple of days later a
  personnel memo came down, saying I had resigned from the state police. I'm
  no longer a member. A follow-up order went right into the commander's safe
  and the attorney general's safe saying that the first memo was not true,
  that I'd gone for an undercover job. '
  So now there was the whole question about where did I go? Why did I resign,
  and all that stuff? It was kind of funny, like being at your own funeral.
  People that I thought were my friends start bad-mouthing me. Prior to going
  undercover, I took two weeks vacation and went to Florida. So the rumor
  said that when I was in Florida, I got in trouble. I stabbed a broad or
  slapped her around. Because my old man had been on the job and was a
  lieutenant, they covered it up, but they told me to resign. Now, can you
  imaging who the fuck made this story up? Where did it come from?
  Unbelievable.
  An undercover guy pretty much does what he wants; nobody bosses you around.
  The first six months, I thought if was glamorous. I grew a beard, I wore
  shitty clothes, I didn't look like a cop. I didn't even look like the
  people I'm working with. I'm working with the Mob. It took me six-months to
  realize what was going on. Nobody was walking around with long hair and a
  beard. They got three-piece suits and fancy shirts, silk ties.
  We're making cases, but it's starting to get long-a year and a half.
  Several times I think that they're going to wind it up and then they change
  their minds. They
 136
                          Crirnebusters

 say, "Let's go a little bit longer." The target date keeps getting extended.
 I didn't know there was an end.
  We're doing some deals with some pretty high-level organized crime figures
  in the state and around the country. For instance, I would fly to Florida
  and have lunch with them. Pretty big-time guys, the kiss on the cheek and
  the whole bit.
  In undercover work you come from this world of black and white into a world
  of "We don't give a fuck and whatever happens, happens." You're living like
  that and it's crazy. I never carried a gun when I was undercover. You only
  carried a gun when you wanted to do business with it. That's a very
  disrespectful thing to do, carry a weapon into a meeting. Among criminals,
  they have their own code of ethics. If you and I are going to sit down and
  do a deal of stolen merchandise or dope and we're just in the talking
  stages of it, why do I need to have a gun at the table? I am either a cop
  or extremely paranoid about my own survival or I'm out to do something to
  you. Then nobody will deal with me and how am I going to make my money? So
  that's the reason why you don't carry that weapon.
  I'm wearing this recorder between my legs. I know they'd kill you in a
  minute. There's nothing on me that says that I'm a cop. I'm there by
  myself. My nerves are really up. I'm starting to get to where I can't keep
  a meal down. I would eat with them and I'd be all right there with them.
  But when I would leave, twenty minutes later, I would be throwing my guts
  up on the side of the road. I started to feel these chest pains. I really
  felt like I was having a heart attack. I would have diarrhea on a daily
  basis.
  I go to this doctor that I'd known since I was a kid. That seemed safe. He
  checks me out on an EKG. He says, "I don't really see anything wrong with
  you. A little overweight, maybe. Are you under a lot of stress?"
I started spilling my guts, because I had to talk to 137
 COPS somebody. I'm really acting stupid. He writes this thing down on a
 piece of paper from his prescription pad that due to excessive stress it
 might be necessary for Officer Mitchell to change his position in the
 state police.
  Now I got this little piece of paper. Like a little kid, I go to my
  sergeant on the undercover gig the next day and iay, "I went to the doc
  and he wrote this down for you." I figure this is it. I have a note from
  the doctor saying I'm under stress, too much stress. They'll have to let
  me out of this job.
 He laughs. I say, "What are you laughing about?"
  "We got a million dollars wrapped up in this. You're not physically hurt.
  You're going through stress. You'll be all right. You can handle it."
  That's the mentality of cops: You can handle anything. Don't worry about
  it, kid, you can handle it. I was devastated.
  But finally when he gave me a real ending date, it got all right. There's
  a goal line. It will be over soon. Then I was fine again.
  The big day arrives. We go to the National Guard Axmory that day at four
  o'clock in the morning. We're going to lock up like twenty-eight mob
  figures in the state, then it was going to expand from there, once the
  investigation went to the grand jury: There's one hundred FBI agents, two
  hundred uniform troopers there when I walk in. Law enforcement up the
  ass. I think this is going to be the greatest day of my life. After two
  and a half years, I'm finally coming back, the prodigal son.
  I'm one of the main figures in the investigation, so I'm standing there
  next to all these people. We're supposed to get ready for this big press
  conference on the big raid. I don't have anything in common with them.
  They're the people I say yes sir and no sir to, that I have a
  military-like relationship that goes on between us, but it's no more than
  that. They don't come from my world and I don't belong in theirs. I
  wasn't able to sit with the troopers either. Nobody that looked like 138
                          Crimebusters

 me was with the troopers. Those guys are turning, looking at me, pointing,
 but nobody is waving.
  They start bringing in the defendants. They've picked them up and arrested
  them at their house. The armory is going to be the processing site. I was
  supposed to interview some of them. It would be a real shock value with me
  interviewing them. Maybe they would turn over quicker.
  I go downstairs and they're ready to fingerprint them. The troopers
  standing around, they think it's great. I thought it was going to be great,
  too. But I felt like the biggest cocksucker in the world. What a fucking
  bum.
  I'm coming in, wearing a three-piece suit. My hands were behind my back.
  One of the guys says, "What did they pinch you for?"
 "I'm with them," I said.
  "You cocksucker," he says, and then he spit. They were just looking at me.
  I couldn't even look these guys in the eyes. Here's guys I hung out with,
  guys I broke bread with. I really came to like some of them. And .,they
  liked me, trusted me.
  One guy comes up to me and says, "How could you do this, Ben? You're my
  friend. How could you do this?" He was sixty some years old. He was like
  anybody's grandfather, a nice guy, but he dealt in stolen securities.
  That's what we locked him up for. He put a heavy guilt trip on me. I
  couldn't look at him. I had to put my head down.
  I'm not in the troopers' group any longer and the friends that I've had for
  the past two and a half years I've just delivered into the enemy's hands.
  So now even the bad guys have told me I'm no good. I felt like a piece of
  shit. I felt bad and I had problems for a while. I never verbalized it, but
  I would have problems in mV mind, being a siool pigeon.
  Undercover is a very strange way to do police work, because you identify
  with them, the bad guys. It's a 139
 COPS

 strange feeling to be trusted by somebody and then betray them. I knew
 this one guy whose kid was retarded. A lot of the money he was using for
 special schools for his kid. I know it was stolen money. But I also knew
 he wasn't going out whoring it. He was a family guy. How he put the bread
 on the table was by stealing. He was paying a lot of money out for his re-
 tarded son to be educated enough to just feed himself.
  I've thought of those people on Christmas morning when I wake up. I
  thought, "Those kids' fathers aren't home because of me. I got that guy
  in trouble."
  On the other end of the coin, I've got to say, "Hey, you're a cop. That's
  what you were told to do and that is what your assignment was. Maybe
  through conventional means of police work, we would have never gotten
  these people. And anyway, what they did was wrong." Boy, it can get gray
  out there.
  It's difficult because you've come too close to the defendant. It's a lot
  nicer not knowing anything about their personal life. It doesn't make a
  difference on the criminal act that they did. But when you don't know
  their personal life, you just go in, put the bracelets on them and you
  take them away. It's very neatly defined. The job's over. They're the bad
  guys and we're the good guys. In undercover work it is not neatly
  defined, because personalities come into it. Just because a guy's a
  criminal doesn't mean you can't like him and that he, doesn't have the
  same interest as you do. They have company softball teams and wives and
  girlfriends. They drink beer and go fishing.
  They live in a very treacherous world. Everybody says, "They're so tough,
  these criminals in the mob." I don't see anything tough about shooting
  a guy in the back of the head. I don't see anything tough about setting
  a guy up in the middle of the night when he comes out of his house and
  four guys open up on him. 140
                          Crimebusters

 That's tough? No. That's a difference in morality, if you're able to do
 that and live with yourself.
  A tough guy to me is a guy that says, "Ben, I don't like you, I never
  liked you and I'm going to take you out in the parking lot now and clean
  your clock." And he does it. That's a tough guy. What's so tough about
  saying, "We're going to dinner tonight." Somebody picks you up. Now
  you're sitting in the front seat and the guy pulls the trigger from the
  backseat.

 Vice is a strange part of the job. It's basically a lot of people doing
 what they want to do. But you have to draw the line somewhere and it's not
 really my job to draw the line. Somebody is going to draw the line for me
 and then I go out and try to keep everybody in line. I hate to think
 that's my job in life, to go around telling guys to cover their buns and
 girls that they can't get their T-shirts wet and show their boobs and that
 you can't go out and get a friendly handjob now and then. But the line has
 to be drawn somewhere.
  I hold the distinction of being the only cop around here to bust a male
  stripper. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they have exotic male dancers at this
  one club. Only women can get in and the men have to stay out at the front
  bar. The guys strip down and they neck with the girls, etc.
  We have a city ordinance and there's a state law that says, if you're in
  a place that serves alcohol, you can't show any portion of the buttocks.
  You can't show pubic hair. If you are going to show that or a woman's
  breastsome places it's below the nipple, some places it's the entire
  areola-then you have to have an elevated stage and there has to be
  eighteen inches between the customers and the dancers at all times.
  This place didn't have any of that shit. They had a bunch of really rowdy
  male dancers. These guys would
                             1 141
 COPS
 get started -and they'd roll their bikini underwear and stuff it up the
 cheeks of their buns. We kept telling them you can't do that, ~ou can't
 do that. I got a female officer and some of the girls from work and told
 them, "I'll pay your way in and pay for your drinks. Just go in, use a
 camera and take pictures for me. They don't mind if you take pictures.
 Come out and let me know and we'll go in and raid the joint." We did
 that-twice. They decided that was too expensive. It cost the owner a
 hundred and the dancers fifty each.
  This place was big on Friday and Saturday nights, but on the week nights,
  you couldn't pay people to go in there. Next they brought in mud
  wrestling. I go to the door, supposedly undercover, but I've known the
  bouncer for years now. He says, "Hey, Sam, what's happening?"
 "I want to come in to see the show tonight."
 "Well, shit, you don't have to pay."
 "No, I really have to."
  "Aw, shit, come on in,. sit down and have a beer on me." He sent the
  barmaid over with a beer. I'm sitting there with my partner drinking free
  beer. There's also two off-duty cops in there. I'm there officially, but
  they're there to see the mud wrestling.
 I The show starts. The music is going and the announcer starts warming up
 the crowd. This chick comes bombing out. She has on this little tiny
 bikini, doesn't even make an attempt to cover her buns. One of the doormen
 goes running over to the MC. The MC puts the mike over his shoulder to
 talk to this guy. In doing so, he basically sticks it right in the guy's
 mouth. So it blares out over the PA system, "The fucking vice cops are
 here. Get that bitch out of here or put something on her." I'm cracking
 up. It's a real'high-class undercover operation.
  Then the fight starts. I'm standing on a chair watching the show and
  beneath me is my partner, a brand new 142
                          Crimebusters

 rookie. The guy next to him turned around and said something to him. I don't
 know what it was. I can't hear or make myself heard over the noise in the
 place. The rookie has no idea what it was anyway. 717he next time the guy
 turns around, he hits the rookie. I can see the bouncer and the doorman
 heading this way. I know what they're going to do. I have seen them in
 action before. They are going to trash both of these guys. So I jump down,
 grab the rookie and run him out the back door. I tell the bouncer that I'm
 going to arrest this guy and take him in.
  '17hey got rid of the mud wrestling on their own. It caused too many
  problems. Guys start watching the girls fight and then they want to fight.
  Working massage parlors is a crack-up. I knew absolutely nothing about it.
  I never got involved with this stuff before I got on the job. I've been
  here since I got out of high school. I go into this massage parlor where we
  had made a case before. The broad won't do anything. It's obvious that it's
  a whorehouse, but the first time in they don't trust you.
  I lived about a mile from there. About a week later, I went home and
  changed into a sweat suit and I ran from home to the massage parlor. I
  walked in all sweaty. "I just got done working out and this is going to
  feel great," I said. They started laughing at me. I got undressed and laid,
  down on the bed. She massaged my shoulders for five minutes and then rolls
  me over and grabs on. She's going to give me a handjob. I'm embarrassed,
  and there's some basic physiological responses that -you can't stop. Let's
  face it, the woman is a professional.
  You can't consummate the act, because then you are a willing participant.
  You lose your casa. In this state it is illegal to solicit for the act of
  prostitution or engage in the act of prostitution. What the D.A. wants to
  see is the solicitation. If you can get them to offer it and 143
 COPS
 then somehow get out from under it, so to speak, that's what you want to
 do.
  So I'm laying there and she gets me turned on and she grabs ahold and I
  push her off and say, "No, no. I can't. I can't. My wife, my wife." She
  only speaks broken English. After about ten minutes of being in the place
  you start talking just like them. We're having this inteffigent
  conversation. She pushes me back down on the bed and says, "No, no, no.
  Everything all right."
  I push her off again. "No, I can't, I can't. My wife, my wife."
  "No, is okay," and she pushes me down again. So I knock her away and walk
  over and start getting dressed. She reaches over and grabs me again and
  pulls me back over. I finally fight this bitch off and get dressed up in
  the sweat suit-which is kind of hard in this shape. I go outside to get
  my partner and my badge so we can come back in and arrest them. But I
  found out that it is entirely ludicrous to stand there with a raging
  hardon and try to convince somebody that "I'm really serious and you're
  under arrest."
  From that point on, I figured out that capitalism is the way out. I go
  in and my story is that I'd really like to,do this, but I don't expect
  it for free. I can't bring up money and I can't bring up sex first. Once
  I get her to bring up both of those then I can do whatever I want. You
  have to get her to talk and talk and talk and talk. Get her to bring up
  both of those, then you say, "That sounds neat. I'll be back tomorrow
  night or next week. How much money do I need to bring and what am I going
  to get?" I've gotten chicks to give me the whole menu, run it all down.
  Then we go for a warrant. All the girls who are massage techs have to
  register with the city. We take their pictures and everything, So I have
  a copy of all their registration cards and pictures. If they are not one
  of the ones I recognize that works there, then we set up 144
                          Crimebusters

 outside late at night just before closing. We wait for them to get in their
 car to leave and have an officer make a traffic stop on them to find out who
 they are. We process the whole thing through and get a warrant for their
 arrest, which may take a week or so. An officer goes in and serves them.
 They don't go to court for another week. By the time they see the report, my
 name is on it, but they have no idea who their customer was at nine-thirty
 on Monday two weeks ago. Never had to 90 to court. Got a lot of convictions.
  It worked really slick, until the last one I worked. The department was
  doing a survey during this big siege to shut them all down. I'd already
  made sergeant, but they brought me back, just for old time's sake. At this
  point they said, "Don't worry about making a case. Don't spend an hour
  playing all the word games. All we want is a rough idea of which places are
  dirty and which ones are clean. The ones that are dirty, we'll go back
  through and hit them hard." So I don't have to worry about letting them
  bring up sex, I can just start talking about it right away.
  The way you can tell whether or not it's a dirty spot is this: You're
  always laying on your stomach and you're naked. They rub down your back.
  Then they come back up with their middle finger right between your ass
  cheeks. I guarantee you-I don't care who you are-they hit that two or three
  times and you are at full attention. You spend very little time on your
  stomach. They roll you over on your back and make no attempt to cover your
  crotch. T11ey rub your shoulders a little bii, then move right down and get
  to it.
  The Oriental parlors, the handjob is just part of the massage. You paid for
  a full body massage and they're going to massage your full body. So this
  broad does this right away. I mean, she has me rolled over real quick. I
  said, "I feel really embarrassed here, when you're dressed.
                               145
 COPS
  "Oh, okay," she says, and she takes off her blouse. That was easy. I'll
  see what else I can go for. She starts to put a little baby oil on her
  hand and indicates to me what she's going to do. I say, "Why don't you
  use your mouth?"
 "You mean French?"
  "Yeah, yeah. My wife never does it and I always wondered what it was
  like."
  "Oh, no. This is your first time. I can't do it on your first time. You
  come back again."
  "Oh, God. That's terrible. My wife never does it and everybody says it's
  so neat."
 "Okay," she says.
  "Okay?" I said.. Now I got to find a way to stop it, because you can't
  go through with this whole thing. I might have to testify to this later.
  Everything is a total shock. I am not prepared for this at all. I've
  never had the slightest desire in my life to pull a woman's head off that
  part of my anatomy. So I go through this same thing as the very first
  time, "Ah, I'm too embarrassed. No, I can't . . . really. " I felt like
  an idiot. What a stupid job.
  I went home and I'm changing my clothes and talking to my wife and I tell
  her, "I think this is the funniest thing I've ever done. Honey, you're
  not going to believe this," I told her.
  "You did what?" was all I got. And those were the last words I heard for
  four days. Man, it was cold in that house.
  The good thing about working vice is that when you do get caught up and
  you have some time, you can spend city money doing this shit. You get to
  go in and get drunk for free. They have a wet T-shirt contest at this
  country and western bar. It's always been fairly mellow. I said to this
  guy I've worked with in the past, "Hey, I've got to go down to Wet
  T-shirt Night and see what those broads are doing. If they start flashing
 146
                          Crimebusters

 their crotch, we'll write some tickets. You can't be doing that shit. "
  We get in there at ten, but it turns out that the show doesn't start till
  midnight. Well, what can we do? We got to sit there and drink. This guy is
  telling me, "Any broad in here flashes her tits, we're going to hook her up
  right there on the dance floor and we're taking her to jail."
 "Yeah, okay," I say.
  Twelve-thirty, the show finally starts. This guy is drunk on his ass,
  standing on a table, yelling, "Take it off, bitch! Let's see some tit I" I
  had to carry him out to the car and drive him back home. All the way home,
  he's hitting the dashboard and saying, "God, I want to see more tit."

 We got a report from a confidential informant that one of these little Jiffy
 Marts was going to be held up on a Sunday morning. So we staked the place
 out. It was built in such a way that it faced the hard road, but on either
 end and in the back of it was wooded area. The nearest business or house was
 maybe 300 or 400 yards away. There was no back door to this building, so the
 only way to come out was through the front door. The lady inside didn't even
 know that we were staking it out. I was directly across the street in
 plainclothes and I had a walkie-talkie and was supposed to alert the others
 if something happened so they could*close in.
  About five minutes after nine, I saw this black fellow park his car about
  50 feet away from the building and raise the hood to make motorists think
  that he was broke down. He came walking up kind of stiff-legged and I could
  see with binoculars that he had what looked like a rifle or shotgun in his
  pants leg.
  We waited till he got in good and I could see the lady putting the money in
  a bag. Then he pushed her into 147
 COPS

 the cooler in the back. I was telling all these other fellows what was
 happening on the radio. We were set to move.
  About that time a car pulled up right behind this fellow's car and a man
  got out. He had his hand inside his shirt. He goes easing up to the Jiffy
  Mart. Inside, the first robber puts the shotgun back in his pants, got
  the bag of money situated real good under his arm and he was walking to
  the front of the store. The other fellow had gotten onto the concrete
  within two or three feet of the door. That's where they met. The second
  gunman pulled out his pistol and put it into the first robber's face and
  backed him into the store. The first man dropped the bag of money and got
  put in the cooler with the woman clerk.
  When Number Two comes back up front to pick up
 the money, he was told not to move or he will be blowed
 to bits, because there was three of us there with the
 drop on him. He dropped his pistol and his money. We
 put handcuffs on him. Then we go to the cooler. Num
 ber One comes out and w I e put handcuffs on him and
 grab his gun out of his britches leg. The girl is, of course,
 really upset and scared. We call her husband and get
 her taken care of.
  In the meantime, we tell the two robbers their rights and that we're
  going to put them in jail for armed robbery and grand larceny and a
  couple of other things. The first one turned to us and said with a
  straight face, "I'd like to prefer charges, too."
 "For what?"
 "Against that man who come in and held me up."

 It started out one evening when one of the patrol units got a call that
 somebody had shot a gun in the street. When the car pulls up to the
 residence, he's greeted by a pistol shot that blew his windshield right
 out. When
 148
                          Crimebusters

 he saw the guy in the window, the officer fired a shot as he retreated
 behind a tree and got across the street. He called for reinforcements. The
 guy shot several more shots out the window.
  The original complaint came from the woman across the street who said the
  guy who lived over there was shooting a gun and her child was outside.
  She didn't know what he was shooting at, but she felt it was a dangerous
  situation.
  They activated the SWAT Team and we responded. We surrounded the house,
  withdrawing the patrol officers and putting our people in. We cordon off
  the area and called in the negotiator. We only shoot somebody as a last
  resort. We try to talk to them and get them out. -
  We never could talk to this guy. He wouldn't answer the phone. We
  actually took more chances than we should have. If I had it to do over
  again, I wouldn't take so many chances. But we were trying to save his
  life. We got our negotiator right up to the window one time and he was
  talking to him. But the guy was really crazy. He'd gone off the deep end.
  The only response we ever got from him was, "I know that ya'll are going
  to get me--. But I'm going to take one of you with me." About that
  time-Kapow!-another shot would come out the window.
  He had a shotgun and a pistol and a deer rifle and he'd take turns
  shooting these firearms. This is pretty flat country. If you shoot out
  a window, you can hit somebody 500 yards down the street.
  Before dark it didn't get any better, although we kept talking to him.
  His wife was out of town. His son was graduating from some military base
  and the reason the father didn't go was that they wouldn't let him take
  his pistol on the base. This guy was very, very gone.
  The news media picked up on it. I looked down the street and I could see
  people standing on rooftops in 149
 COPS
 the next block and people on top of cars. Television had a picture with a
 telephoto lens and it was being broadcast live on TV. My wife is home
 watching all of this at about five o'clock in the evening. The reporters are
 teffing everybody where it was and how to get there. It got like a circus.
  Finally the decision was made. "Let's gas him out. It's getting dark. Get
  him out. Put a stop to it."
  We have procedures for doing this. You put the gas in the back areas of the
  house and drive him out the front door, rather than put the gas in the door
  and chase himback into the far comer of the house where he'll just hole up
  if he can.
  Our command post was in the trunk of my car, next door with the neighboring
  house in between us and him. I had a blackboard there and we're standing
  there in a huddle drawing pictures of where we're going to put the gas in
  and all. The gas man was standing right beside me with a 55 mm tear gas gun
  with the barrel resting on his shoulder pointing up in the air. The gun is
  probably fourteen inches from my head. A whispered conversation was going
  on between the gas man and another SWAT team member which I wasn't privy to
  at that time. The gas man was new on the gun and had not ' used that
  particular one before. He wasn't sure if it was double action or single
  action. "Is this single action or double action?"
  "No," the other guy says, "you just pull the trig - - .11
  Boom! That damn thing went off just inches away from my head. The only
  thing I couldn't figure out at that moment was how that madman got out of
  the house and shot me without anybody seeing him and stopping him.- Then I
  looked up in the air and I could still see the tear gas projectile
  spiraling away up into the air. These things are fairly incendiary, too. I
  thought, "Oh, my God. This thing is going to land on a rooftop and 150
                          Crimebusters

 bum the house down and the chief and the undersheriff are going to wonder
 what's happening."
  Then again, luck is on your side sometimes. Remember about the crowd at the
  end of the block? This projectile landed right in front of them, so help me
  God, and they dispersed beautifully, clearing the area.
  The sad part of it was that we had to gas the guy out and, when he came
  out, he wanted to go away in a blaze of glory. We ' had to shoot him. We
  couldn't let him leave the property still firing. I was one of the
  triggermen who shot the guy. Everybody's sitting at home in front of the TV
  eating dinner and watching this. My wife is watching all this on
  television.
  The next day, the news media went out and canvassed the neighborhood for
  statements. Naturally, the guy's already dead and the neighbors ain't going
  to say, "Yeah, that son of a gun, they should have shot him. " They said,
  "Well, you know, he was a pretty good guy really. I didn't know him." Then
  the news media tears us up.
  We went back with a follow-up investigation in the neighborhood also. The
  woman from across the street who called us in the first place was quoted in
  the newspapers talking about what a good guy this fellow was. One of our
  investigators asked her, "Ma'am, did you look at your car out there.
  There's a bullet hole in the fender. Do you recall where your little girl
  was on her tricycle when this whole thing started?" It app-bared that those
  first few shots he fired, he was shooting at the little girl, because the
  bullet holes were right about where the tricycle was. But they didn't put
  that in the newspaper. So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
  You can't win.

 We get a lot of pipe bombs here, a lot of bombs with timing devices.
 Seventy-five percent of them go off and 25 percent we have to disarm. We get
 five hundred or 151
 COPS
 six hundred suspicious packages every year. It takes its toll on you. You
 don't know it's not real until you work on it. I enjoy doing a job that
 nobody else would even think of doing.
  It hit me once when I was new on the job. I had my tool kit and me and
  my partner and the dog are walking into this building. Everybody around
  us is running in all directions to get out of it. It gives you a strange
  feeling. What the hell are we doing?
  You never know what you're going to get. I worked on thirteen sticks of
  dynamite in a lunch box as one of my first jobs. Another time me and my
  partner were on a suspicious package in an office building. We had this
  thing on a desk and we're working on it. We had the.dog on it and the dog
  didn't react to it. My partner and I are cutting the package. It takes
  a while. It was cardboard all wrapped in tape. Finally, we get through
  and about that time my partner says, "Holy shit, what'd the dog do?" He
  thought the dog either shit or passed gas. I started laughing and I'm
  still cutting off a piece of the box and then I realize that the smell
  we're getting is coming from this package. I opened up this aluminum
  foil. Inside it was human shit that had literally melted from the heat.
  We call them the shit bofnb. We get thirty or forty a year.
 . I had an unusual one. It was a lovers' dispute. This Armenian guy-he was
 a real wack-o-he had a girlfriend and she broke off the courtship with
 him. But he didn't want to hear nothing about that. He's from the other
 side over there and he's macho. He threatened to kill her, several times.
 He talked to her this one day and said she would be dead by that night.
 Then he delivers a package to her door. He's seen entering the building
 and leaving the package in front of the girl's doorway to h~r apartment.
  Everyone's panicking now. She's inside. Her mother's inside. So we come
  down and they tell us this story. 152
                          Crimebusters

 We X-rayed it and we couldn't see nothing. I put the bomb suit on. It's
 a real tight area. There's bad lighting in this old apartment building.
 I got a flashlight and I'm cutting into the bottom of this box. You always
 cut into a package where it would be least expected to be opened, because
 it might be booby trapped where they think you're most likely to go into
 it. I cut it at a low corner and I'm looking into this thing. I can see
 something in there. But I can't tell what it is. I'm cutting the hole a
 little bigger and a little bigger. I got the light shining in there. I
 recognize this thing, but somehow I just don't know what I'm looking at.
 It's got me puzzled. I know what it is in the back of my head. The damn
 thing is looking at me, but I cannot for the life of me fathom it.
  It's a fucking tongue I was looking at. A fucking tongue sticking out
  between teeth. The guy had a goat's head in there. I suddenly realize
  that it's a fucking tongue. A fucking goat's head.

 I responded one day to a rooftop. There was a man standing up there
 getting ready to throw a baby down into the streets because he loved this
 baby so much and felt so inadequate himself. He thought the baby would be
 better off dead--classic homicide/suicide.
  "Wait a minute," I said. "Maybe there's other ways. What other options
  do we have for this baby? Sure, if the baby is dead, you're right, it
  will not be under the influence of the people that you think are so bad."
  We're not going to argue his value judgment. That's going to get us no
  place. "Are there other ways to provide for the well-being of this baby?"
  You try to figure out what's going on. Okay, this guy is not a total
  psychotic who just wants to kill a kid. He's not doing this out of some
  other hidden motivations. He has a real concern for the child. It is
  basically a
                               153
 COPS

 family squabble. He thinks the mother and grandmother are not raising the
 child correctly, that the child would be better off dead than under their
 control. It is really what you see. This guy was doing just exactly what
 he wanted to do because of why he said he wanted to do it. Sometimes that
 can make it more difficult. So you say, "Maybe there's some way we can
 help."
  Am easy thing would be to tell him, "You're right. Screw your wife and
  mother-in-law. You get the baby. You take custody." It would be a very
  tempting thing to say. "Okay, you got it. He's yours.."
  )But to tell him that he can have custody is a falsehood. I know it is
  and he knows it is. Therefore, it's not a credible solution. If you're
  trying to take control of the situation and -solve the problem, you have
  to be credible and believable.
  "Okay, I'll tell you what. How about if we ask the family court to look
  at the situation here, to review the problem and let them make a
  decision? Courts can make this kind of decision. Cops can't."
 "Okay," he says, "that sounds good. Okay, good."
  So it seemed like we had broken it right there. "Give me the child."
 "No."
 "What's the matter?"
 "How do I know that you'll follow through?"
  "I just told you. You got my promise. You got my word, We'll shake hands
  on it."
 "Cops have been known to lie."
  "I guess so." On the one hand you want to hit him. On the other hand you
  want to hug him. "Well, what will it take to convince you? I'm saying
  this in front of witnesses, both police witnesses and civilian
  witnesses." There's no privacy on a rooftop, especially when other
  rooftops are right nearby and people aregawking out their windows. You
  can't clear the world from the scene. If he had a gun, we could clear
  people and they'd be
 154
                          Crimebusters

 more willing to move. But when his weapon is the baby that he's going to
 kill, it's very difficult to clear every fire escape. It's no threat to
 them.
  "It will have to be in writing," he says. Here's a man standing on a
  rooftop ready to toss this baby. But he really cares about the baby, so you
  got to look into that. So I get a piece of paper and I write. I hand it to
  him and he says, "That's no good. It has to be notarized."
  Now when you tell this later, it sounds almost like a comedy act. How could
  you take this serious? But the picture is you're up on a rooftop eight
  stories above the ground. There's a man with an infant. He is distraught.
  He is occasionally crying. The baby is just lying there in his arms. They
  could just as soon falLas throw and jump. If he sobs and staggers once, he
  could step off backwards.
  I totally forgot that, at the time, because of some other work I was doing
  for the department, I was a notary. So my backup negotiator reminded me. He
  said, "Hey, dummy, you're a notary."
  That's right. I got a card in my pocket that says I'm a notary public. I
  show him my notary card. It was just too smooth and too pat for him. It was
  all true. Everything we'd done so far was true. But he went back to his,
  "Nah, cops lie." We were just too adept at what we were doing. If you ask
  me to be a rabbi, I'll whip out a yarmulke. You ask me to be whatever and
  I'm going to whip it out on you. This gets back to credibility.
  We established in his mind the perception that this was not the only way it
  had to go. We established in his mind the support that the courts and the
  social agencies could provide. But we just couldn't get him o~er that last
  hurdle of how it was going to happen, the mechanics of how we were going to
  help him in a believable way.
  So now we're back to square one. I get nervous again. "Well, you tell me,"
  I said. "You tell me what we have
                               155
 COPS
 to do. It's your problem. It's not my problem. I can turn around-and
 leave. You help me. It's your problem and therefore it has to be your
 solution." You say that to people without using those words. "What can we
 do that'll convince you? If it falls within the framework of what we are
 allowed to do, both legally and within the organization, we'll see if we
 can do it."
  "The only person who can draw up papers like that," he says, "is a
  lawyer." He's really testing me, because if I whip out a card that says
  I'm a lawyer, he'll know I'm not on the level.
  Could we have done that? Could we have produced some cop dressed in a
  nice three-piece suit with a briefcase who says, "I'm a lawyer." Sure,
  we could have. But why do it when you don't have to.
  So what do you do? You turn to the backup negotiator and you say, "Go get
  me a lawyer. I don't care where you get him, just go get me a lawyer."
  We send cops out into the neighborhood. There is a law office nearby.
  T'hey walk in, "Mr. Lawyer, can you prove you're a lawyer? Can you bring
  some papers or something with you to prove that you are who you are?" We
  tell him what's going on. He takes his diploma down off the wall. We
  bring him to the rooftop. He draws up a request for a hearing at the
  family court for the custody of the child. I have to give that guy a lot
  of credit. He helped to save that kid's life.
  As soon as the guy surrendered the child in exchange for the document,,
  we then jump the guy, which the bystanders on the surrounding rooftops
  were very upset about We were asked later on, "Hey, you know, he gave you
  the kid. What'd you jump him for?"
  We jumped him so he wouldn't kill himself. For the entire three or four
  hours that we were talking to him, he exhibited great manifestations of
  suicide. Stated suicide, which is one manifestation, regardless of what
  people say-"Ah, if they talk about it, they're not going
 156
                          Crimebusters

 to do it. " Bullshit, if they're talking about it, it's because they're
 thinking about it. They just haven't made up their mind yet. And he went
 through all the classic justifications in his mind. He surrendered his
 valuables. The most valuable thing he surrendered, of course, was ,the
 child. But he'd also taken out his wallet and gave it to somebody, saying,
 "Here, I don't need this any more." So we had all the clues we look for. We
 prevented him from thinking about jumping any more. We just didn't give him
 the chance.
  Another time, after work, on the bridge I go over on my way home, there was
  a traffic jam. I'm annoyed at that. I see a car from another agency with
  its light flashing, so I figure, "They got a breakdown. I'll try to make my
  way around it." Everybody is slowing down and looking. It wasn't a
  breakdown. The guy parked and he was out climbing this bridge to jump. So
  I felt a responsibility to stop. It's something I supposedly know something
  about.
  I get on the radio and call for Emergency Services, call for people to
  block off the bridge and get some safety equipment and some lifelines and
  all that.
  I start talking to the guy. He was distraught over a personal relationship.
  His girlfriend, she didn't love him any more. Stuff that you hear time and
  time again that doesn't make good TV shows and movies. This was a
  nice-looking young kid thinking of jumping off the bridge because of a
  broken romance.
  A lot of them realize at a point in time, "Tliese cops are right. I
  shouldn't do what I'm doing." But they have the tiger by the tail. They
  don't know how to let go. They can't look like total losers. It's heavily
  losing face.
  This young man's concern was with being arrested. He's up there and he's
  serious. He's going to go. I believe these people when they say they're
  going to go unless there is a way we can stop them from going. You don't
  have a threat to other innocent people unless he
                               157
 COPS

 lands on somebody which is unlikely in this case. But you have the threat
 to the people who have to go after him. I'm going to talk to him from the
 roadway, but cops have to go up with lifelines and try to get this guy
 back in. So there is a safety factor for them and we try to minimize their
 danger.
  His concern finally became, "I don't want to be arrested. "
 "Okay, we're not going to arrest you."
 "Are you sure you're not going to arrest me?"
 "I promise you, I'm not going to arrest you."
  "How do I know that you're telling me the truth?" It's a replay, right?
 "You want it in writing?"
  "You'll give me something in writing that says I won't be arrested?"
  "I certainly will." I got a piece of paper out of the car and I wrote,
  "We will not arrest So-and-So on this date for trying to jump off the
  bridge." I signed it and handed it to him. He walks in.
  What did we do with the man? We took him into custody for psychiatric
  evaluation, which we are required to do by law. It's not against the law
  to sit on a bridge and try to kill yourself. People will turn around and
  say to me, "Yeah, but you know, you cheated. You hedged." Of course, I
  hedged. Did I tell a he? I didn't tell a lie. He was not arrested and he
  wouldn't have been arrested for that anyway. I didn't tell him, "Yeah,
  okay, you come on down and you walk your way and we'll go ours." That
  wouldn't solve the problem. What I've got to do is come up with a
  temporary solution for a long-term problem. The problems we encounter in
  policing, somebody else starts and somebody else has to ultimately
  finish. We get the little pieces in between.

 158
                          Crimebusters

 One of the mental out-patients walked into the hospital off the street and
 demanded some type of drugs from a male nurse, who wouldn't give them to
 him. So the patient pulled a revolver and stuck it to the male nurse's head.
 They were in the psychiatric ward, which is right next to the Intensive Care
 Unit. There is a kind of lounge area right in the center with glass walls
 all around. A hall runs down both sides to rooms surrounding this lounge.
 There are a lot of patients on this ward.
  He's sitting right in the middle with a gun on the nurse demanding these
  drugs. Somebody alerted the police. When the patrol got there, they alerted
  the SWAT Team.
  We didn't want him to know we were there until we had gotten set up. The
  tightest cordon we could get on him included about twenty-five other
  patients in nearby rooms. The first thing I did was send a group around to
  Intensive Care and told them to barricade that area. Under no circumstances
  were they to let him through there. "Get tables, anything you can use for
  a barricade and then we're going to set a barricade up in each hall. We
  will. gradually tighten the barricade. As we close in we will evacuate as
  we go" was what I told them.
  Before we could really get going on this and get our people deployed,
  somebody came on the radio and said, "The hostage is walking out." One of
  the patients got disturbed, came out of his room and started walking down
  the hall. The suspect was talking to a doctor on the phone. When the male
  nurse saw the patient, he instinctively got up, took the patient by the arm
  and walked him back into his room. They said to me on the radio, "The nurse
  wants to go back in. Should we let him?"
  "No, hold him right there." I went down there and asked the nurse where the
  suspect was in the room. He said, "He's sitting in the middle of the lounge
  talking to a doctor on the phone, but he4s still got his gun."
                               159
 COPS

 "Does he know that you're gone?"
 "I don't know for sure, but I don't think he does."
  What bothered me was, if that patient got up and walked into the lounge,
  what was to stop any other patient from doing the same thing. This is a nut
  ward. "Hey, what are you doing with the gun?" This guy is going to shoot
  him.
  What would you do right then? What decision would
 you make?                       I
  I decided to go in there right then. I came right up to the doorway about
  fifteen feet away from him. I knew his name, so I said, "Nfickey, drop the
  gun." He never said a word. He just looked at me. "Nfickey, we don't want
  to hurt you, buddy. Drop the gun."
  I did this three or four times. He stopped talking on the phone. I'm
  looking right at him and he's looking right at me. Then he starts raising
  the gun real slow.
  One of the guys beside me had a shotgun and I'm waiting to hear the shotgun
  go off. I didn't want to be the triggerman. I was the leader of the - SWAT
  Team and I'd been the triggerman on the last shooting, so I was waiting for
  him to shoot. But then I realized that of the three I was the ranking
  officer. A sergeant was there and a patrolman. One of them was waiting on
  the other and both of them are waiting on me. There was enough hesitation
  that none of them did anything.
  So now I'm looking right down the barrel of his gun. What would you do
  then?
  I had a fifteen-shot 9 mm. I could have fired fifteen times at him if I
  wanted to. I fired one shot as I ducked behind the door. The last thing I
  saw as I was squeezing the shot off was the gun go flying out of his hand
  and he was sprawling into a chair. So I didn't shoot any more.
  If I was trigger happy, I'd have fired more than one shot because that
  thing will fire just as fast as you can 160
                          Crimebusters

 pull the trigger. He would have been full of holes. But I saw that he had
 been neutralized and that was it.
  I found out one thing that was very, very important for anybody in police
  work in supervision. You need to have a good rapport with the news media.
  You need to talk to them. You got to tell the news media something. They
  got a boss and they don't want to go back to him and say, "I didn't get
  anything." They want to print something. You better get with them,
  because if you don't tell them anything, they're still going to print
  something. Nine times out of ten, it's not going to be what you want. The
  public information officer at the scene didn't give them an adequate
  enough statement, as far as they were concerned. I didn't tell them
  nothing. I just got in the car and left. Things were secured.
  According to one of the more liberal writers, it came out that the dead
  man was a good old boy and we overreacted. At that time we had changed
  administrations and the director had a different philosophy than I did.
  His philosophy was that I should have- held off, that I forced the
  suspect into a position where I had to shoot him. They asked me. I told
  them after thinking about it and critiquing it, if I had it to do over
  again, I'd have to go about it the same way.
  'Me word was that they didn't want me to be labeled a killer, that I
  acted a bit hastily. They took me off the SWAT Team that I had helped to
  establish for this department in the first place. What was bad about it
  was I got the word in the hall from another officer. I'd been on
  vacation. When I got back, I got the rumor that I'd been transferred.
  That was the first time I ever cried on duty, the day they told me that.
 A young girl Is sleeping' in an apartment with her girlfriends. They had
 recent ' ly graduated from college and moved to this area. She was six
 foot tall and looked 161
 COPS
 just like Susan Anton, blond hair, good-looking, twentythree years old.
 About four-thirty in the morning she was awakened by someone standing over
 her in the bedroom. This black guy put a knife to her throat, made her blow
 him, then he raped her and got out of the apartment. She left the apartment
 with her girlfriends when she got away and they went to the fire station.
 The firemen took her to the hospital.
  A report of the incident goes out and about two hours later an officer
  stops this black guy walking down the street in the area who fits the
  description she gave us. My partner goes and gets the guy. He's saying,
  "Shit, man, the only reason you're stopping me is because I'm black."
  I come in about 7 A.M. My partner tells me about all this and says, "I've
  got a guy who fits the description upstairs.~9
  "Where's the victim?" I ask. She's in a room there and like most rape
  victims she is very upset and confused. I get two black cops who work with
  me and I get them and the suspect together. I bring her into an adjacent
  room and ask her if any of these men look like the man who attacked her.
  "It looks like him," she says. Not good enough. "It is him," she says.
  Because of the fact that she was hesitant, that means that I have to be
  careful.
  We go back to her apartment to do an on-scene investigation. It's a
  basement apartment and you can see where the window had been systematically
  removed. We could see how he came through the window, jumped down into the
  living room and went into the bedroom. But we couldn't find anything to
  hook the bastard. There was no weapon recovery. We couldn't find any
  prints. We dusted the glass and there was nothing there. I looked at the
  windowsill and it's made of white tile. I had the officer dust the tile and
  he came up with a heel print, a sneaker pattern with some notches that made
 .162
                          Crimebusters

 it recognizable. We lifted the print and I took it back to the station.
  I went down to the room where they were holding the guy and I said, "Lift
  up your foot."
 "What?"
  "Lift up your fucking foot and let me have a look at it." He did and it
  looked like the print matched perfectly. I said, "I got you, you
  motherfucker."
 "You ain't got me."
 "I got you!"
  Now the girl's mother comes from the city a few hundred miles away where
  the family is from. Here's a girl who has just been raped at knife point
  and she's telling her mother how nice we've been to her. We've had a lot of
  work to take care of so we've been with her the whole day in the apartment.
  Then we finally got a search warrant for his apartment and found the chisel
  that he used to scrape out the putty around the glass. We found clothes
  with putty on them. When I take the sneakers off him down at the fucking
  courthouse, there's a big glob of fucking putty on the bottom of them.
  So he's arraigned at three-thirty that afternoon. The judge says $10,000
  bail, which is $250 cash. Two hundred and fifty fucking dollars cash bail
  for a rapist. I'm ready to go out of my fucking mind. I says, "Thank you,
  your honor. Please, excuse me, now I have to go tell this girl and her
  mother that the guy is going to be out on the street before we can finish
  the investigation."
  I go back to my boss and I say, "Hey, we got to do something. We got to
  keep that cocksucker off the street."
  "There's only one thing to do," he says. "Get the girl down to the D.A.'s
  office, tell him what the story is and get him into the grand jury."
  I call up the girl. Needless to say, her mother has taken her back home. So
  I call down there and I talk to her 163
 COPS

 father and I tell him, "We got to indict the son of a bitch to keep him
 off the street. "
  "I'll handle it," he tells me. The next morning, the three of them get
  into the car and drive all the way back up here. We bring her right into
  court. She gets in front of the grand jury and it finally happens. She
  finally lets go in the grand jury room. It's the first time she's told
  the whole story and she's very upset, to say the least. Bam! We got our
  indictment.
  We go to his house and he's not there. Two days later a call comes
  through with the report of a break-in. This guy that we're looking for
  has seen where we broke into the house with the warrant to search and
  he's called in a burglary. This is the first time he's been back there
  since he got out of jail. One of my guys remembers the case and the
  address. As soon as the call comes in, he shoots down there and asks this
  guy, "Are you Joseph Reynolds?"
 "Yeah, how did you know?"
  "You're under arrest." Bang! The guy knocks the cop on his ass and takes
  off. But the cop that backs him up on the call is twenty-four years old,
  six-two and can run like a fucking deer. He got him.
  So I take them out to lunch, the mother, the father and the daughter, the
  district attorney and myself. Great vibes. Everybody feels better. Then
  the case goes into the files until we go to superior court a few months
  down the line.
  I had a couple of very depressing cases to work on in the meantime. I
  came into the station one Friday night at midnight, all tired and hungry.
  I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. The sergeant tells me,
  "There's someone here to see you. They been waiting for a couple of
  hours."
  "Jesus Christ," I say. "All right, I'm going into the john and I'll be
  out in a minute."
 164
                          Crirnebusters

  I come out and there's the girl and a couple of her friends. She's got
  something in her hands. "What's this?"
  "I moved back into town and I'm living over on suchand-such a street.
  These are some of my friends," she says. "I made this cake for you just
  to say thank you." That was the best cake I ever ate in my life.

 165
                        CHAPTER 4

                   Deadly Force

 A PISTOL is an amazing piece of machinery. Its compact simplicity is
 ingenious and frightening. The standard issue .38 caliber revolver with a
 4-inch barrel, which is used by most police agencies in America, weighs
 about two pounds. That is about twice the weight of the book in your hands.
 The weight and solidity of a gun seem surprising; they don't seem to
 correspond to the size.
  The mechanics of a revolver are very elementary-a lever, a spring and a
  hammer. It takes eight to twelve pounds of pressure to pull the trigger,
  roughly equivalent to putting a finger in the handle of a gallon jug of
  milk and lifting it off the refrigerator shelf. That energy is stored in a
  spring as the hammer is forced back. Then the hammer reaches the cocked
  position and is released. The hammer strikes the shell casing, detonating
  a small amount of primer inside the shell, which in turn ignites the
  smokeless powder. This powder bums so fast that the result is an explosion.
  The expanding gas from this explosion forces the lead 158grain projectile
  out the end of the barrel at somewhere
                               167
 COPS

 between 750 and 900 feet per second. Spiral grooves along the inside of
 the barrel give the bullet the spin that keeps it going in the direction
 the gun is aimed.
  The noise a gun makes when it is fired is quite distinctive. The tinny
  speakers on an average television set just don't do justice to it.
  Moviemakers often amplify and synthesize the sound for psychological
  effect, making it resemble a small nuclear blast. It is not loud exactly,
  although the concussion from five or six rounds fired in a row at arm's
  length will make your ears ring. Late at night in a big city, some people
  mistake the faroff backfire of a truck or the report of a firecracker
  playfully tossed from the roof of a building for the sound of a gunshot.
  If his nerves are worn, a cop might make that mistake, too. But usually
  he recognizes the sharp, crisp sound of gunfire. The word "crack" comes
  to mind with plenty of "kuh" at both ends.
  In TV ' and motion pictures, the bullet is often portrayed as a very
  discreet piece of metal. When it strikes a bad guy, it produces a round,
  red polka dot approximately the diameter of a pencil. There is usually
  very little blood and never an exit wound. Good guys are regularly shot
  in the arm, shoulder or leg and are up and around in no time.
  For all this prim propriety, when it kills, the TV bullet is incredibly
  efficient. One shot-two at the most-and the bad guy drops like a rock,
  face-first onto the tarmac. Three shots can launch him on a long arcing
  trajectory through windows and doors and off balconies.
  The reality is both more and less than the Hollywood illusion. Bullets
  aren't sharp. They don't drill neat holes in flesh. Bullets rip and tear.
  When they hit bone, lead slugs don't produce neat fractures. Bones are
  burst and splintered. No longer able to support body weight, the jagged
  end of a broken bone is sometimes jabbed up and out through the skin as
  gravity pulls the flesh down. Flattened into an irregular shape by the
  impact, but
 168
                          Deadly Force

 unspent, the bullet tumbles off and away through the body, often bursting
 out with a fist-sized ball of meat at an odd angle and a remarkable
 distance from where it entered.
  Considering the small size and corresponding surface area of a bullet,
  it is extremely rare that someone's body is simply "grazed'~-a bullet
  coming close enough to plow a shallow furrow in the skin but not close
  enough to penetrate. The extremities-the hands, feet, arms and legs--do
  not contain vital organs, but they are packed with bundles of blood
  vessels, muscles and nerves. A wound in any of these areas almost
  certainly will result in a permanent loss of strength, mobility and/or
  feeling.
  For all this destructiveness, a single pistol shot usually won't stop a
  human being unless it is especially well placed. There is really no such
  thing as instant death from a gunshot wound. Inertia and momentum can
  carry an attacker to his target through a hail of gunfire. A body pumped
  up with adrenaline will keep coming for a second or two even after the
  heart stops. Two seconds is plenty of time for an assailant to lurch a
  few steps and stab, to fall and take someone with him, to pull the
  trigger of his own gun. If the heart does not stop right away, that organ
  can pump most of the blood the body contains through the wound and out
  onto the ground in a matter of minutes.
  The person who fires a weapon on television always does it with calm
  deliberation. He is a very good marksman. In fact, he usually takes the
  correct firing stance and actually aims his weapon, even at close range.
  He is never panting so hard after a hundred-yard sprint that he can't
  even level the sights. He is never so pumped up with anger and fear that
  his whole being vibrates. He would never jump behind some cover, stick
  his gun out and blindly fire off a few rounds in the general vicinity of
  his target.
But in fact most police shootings happen fast at very 169
 COPS

 close range, amid surprise and confusion. All an officer usually has time
 to do is pull his gun quickly from his holster, shove it toward the torso
 of his assailant and puff the trigger. If he's lucky, thenachine does its
 job, and he has chosen the right time and person to employ it on.
  The TV policeman doesn't seem to be bothered by extinguishing a human
  life. The more sensitively portrayed cops reflect on their actions
  following the commercials. Killing doesn't usually give them nightmares.
  It doesn't make them constantly nauseous for a month. It doesn't ruin
  their sex lives or drive them to alcoholism.
  After the smoke clears, the TV cop is rewarded, not second-guessed,
  investigated and sued. It's no wonder he so often solves crime with his
  gun.
  The average police officer never fires his weapon in twenty years on
  duty. Some of them rarely draw their weapons except at the firing
  range--if they practice at all. But it's there all the time, hanging from
  a hip or riding in a Velcro ankle holster, in the nightstand beside the
  bed or-all too often-under the pillow.
  The gun is an ego booster. Cops don't want to hear the words "gun" and
  "penis" in the same sentence. But there is still the cop who will make
  a display of putting on and taking off his sports coat as he gets in and
  out of his car, flashing anybody who cares to look a glimpse of that big
  leather codpiece snuggled under his armpit.
  That .38 service revolver is a police officer's final authority. He has
  the responsibility to take life, if it becomes necessary to protect the
  public or to protect himself. Because he does carry that gun and that re-
  sponsibility, he also becomes a target. His gun is a constant reminder
  of his ultimate power and his worst fears.
  "It's a dangerous job, but sometimes the fear becomes paramount. It takes
  over some police officers.
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                          Deadly Force

 It's all they think about when they go out into the street. So they need
 psychological buffers against that. They carry two guns, carry extra
 ammunition. What do you need all that for? If a guy pulls a gun on you,
 you're not going to fire 40 rounds at the guy. You got a gun. You pull it
 out and shoot. That's it. You're only going to shoot one gun at a time.
 But it's a psychological thing.
  "You talk to a guy, 'Hey, I hear you got to fly uptown to work a tough
  neighborhood.'
  " 'Yeah,' he says. 'But I got it covered.' He pulls up his pants leg and
  there's another ankle holster with another .38 under there. 'I got my
  Barretta in my pocket.'
 "Is this going to help him? No. But he needs that."
  The gun can become a crutch and then an enemy. At best, the pistol an
  officer is required to carry-in most department&--off duty as well as on
  becomes an inescapable burden.
  "I get tired of carrying. a gun around twenty-four hours a day. The kids
  probably think it's great to carry it around. I think it sucks, You got
  to watch out where you go. You're limited to what kind of clothing you
  can wear. It puts a lot of restrictions on your freedom of movement. You
  have to be cautious, if you take it off, where you leave it, what's
  happening. It's a pain in the balls.
  "People accidentally see it, say in a shopping center, my philosophy is,
  'Well, they'll instantly think I'm a cop.' That's not so any more. They
  call a cop.
  "I was in a department store at Christmastime shopping for my kid and my
  wife. I just had a sweatshirt on. I was wearing jeans and sneakers. I had
  my gun on. I had a lot of stuff in my arms and I was looking through it.
  The salesgirl called security. I turn around and I got three security
  guards all over me. Once I identified myself it was all worked out. But,
  fuck, I can't even go Christmas shopping without somebody
                               171
 COPS

 blowing the whistle on me because they think I'm going to rip them off.
 I don't blame them exactly. But Jesus, you get embarrassed yourself.
 Everybody's looking, :Hey what the hell is this guy getting shook down
 for? " Y
  Rather than trigger happy, many cops are hesitant to use their weapons.
  Firing that pistol puts an officer in a no-win situation. If he handles
  a shooting incorrectly, makes the wrong decisions, his whole career will
  be in jeopardy. He could easily end up on the unemployment line, or
  worse, in prison. If, by care and good fortune, he shoots the right
  person at the right time for the right reasons, he still may suffer. He
  will be subjected to an investigation conducted as though he committed
  a criminal act. In all probability, he will be suspended from active duty
  and stuck at a desk job shuffling papers until the investigation is
  concluded. He is more likely to be excoriated by the media than praised.
  If he is involved in more than one such incident, he may be considered
  a troublemaker and be passed over for promotion. If the criminal
  survives, he may sue the officer for civil rights violations..
  The point so often overlooked in the discussion of deadly force is the
  damage done to the humanity of the man or woman who is obliged to do the
  shooting. Everyone knows that a police officer's conscience clobbers him
  if he kills or injures an innocent bystander, but what about when he
  shoots the bad guy? For all the Dirty Harry bravado bandied about in the
  bars, every cop I talked to who had been involved in a shooting felt some
  guilt or regret for having been the agent for the death or injury of
  another human being.
  "All the guys are patting you on the back and congratulating you. Making
  jokes about the poor fucker. Taking bets about when he's going to die
  over in ICU. I never told anybody, but I didn't feel good, I didn't feel
  proud, I was glad it was him and not me; otherwise 172
                          Deadly Force

 all I felt was empty. It still makes me swallow hard to think about it."

 I WAS WORKING in a neighborhood best described as a ghetto. It was
 drug-infested, it had whores and that's why we were there. We're standing
 in front of this fleabag transient hotel. We're all spit-shined and ready
 for action. Up comes this black guy and he's bleeding like a stuck pig.
 Something had been severed and he is pulsing blood out. He comes right up
 into my face, squirting onto my uniform. My first reaction was, "Back off.
 You're bleeding all over me." I'd already seen blood before. The guy's cut
 and I'll get down to business, but don't bleed on me. I asked him what
 happened and he said, "My woman cut me." He was cut -from ear to ear, but
 he's standing up. He told us where it happened, which room in the hotel.
 I told my partner, "Call an ambulance and get some help. I got the
 portable radio. I'll go up and check it out. No big deal, it's a woman up
 there." That was a mistake.
  The hotel has got a raggedy-ass little elevator-two people and it's
  crowded, smells of piss, takes five minutes to go up the seven floors.
  I get off and it's a hallway that's maybe four feet wide and that's it.
  Like all those places, nobody's seen nothing, nobody's heard nothing.
  They may open the door a crack and see you're the Man and-Blam!-they slam
  it. You ain't getting no help from nobody. The elevator is also the only
  way out. There's no exit on my end of the hall.
  The elevator door closes and it starts back down. Here comes another guy
  bleeding as bad as the first guy. Behind him is the bi~gest, blackest
  woman I've ever seen in my life and she' has a very big fucking knife in
  her hand. She has death in her eyes and she is chasing this little twit
  down the hallway. She has not only cut 173
 COPS
 him, she is going to dissect him now. He spots me and I am his protector.
  There is no way out of this shit and there ain't no room to tussle. I
  didn't panic too much because I was too young and too dumb at that point
  in my career. I also figured that this cannon I held in my hand was my
  savior. That was stupid, too.
  Now the little guy is behind me. She's coming and I got the gun on her.
  I yell for her to stop, but she's not hearing a thing I'm saying. She's
  looking through me to him. I let her get too close. Bullets don't always
  kill a person and in any case they don't kill them right away. A person
  in a rage will keep right on coming, driven by momentum alone. For all
  intents and purposes he may be dead but he's still got a lot of juice.
  She was close enough for me to really see her eyes and I'm shitting. I
  really didn't want to shoot her. I don't know why, but I didn't really
  feel threatened. She didn't want to get me, so I didn't really want to
  hurt her. But I was still going to die because I was in her way. I should
  have shot her.
  I was really afraid. I couldn't hold the gun still. It was also cocked
  which means it only takes a little squeeze to make it go off. I'm down
  in a crouch and I decided, This is it. I got to let it go. I said, "Lady,
  you're dead." 'She stopped immediately about six feet away from me. She
  talked to me in the softest, soothing tones for a big woman. She said,
  "Don't shoot. I'm laying the knife down now. Don't be nervous. Point the
  gun away. The knife is down on the floor. I don't want to hurt you. I
  wanted the motherfucker behind you, but I've put the knife down, Officer.
  I'll do what you want. Just point the gun down."
  I thought to myself, "God, I'm so fucking nervous, I won't be able to
  uncock this thing without shooting a hole in my foot." By this time help
  is there and everything is under control. Turns out the three of them
  live 174
                          Deadly Force

 together and they're winos. The two guys got her welfare check out of the
 mailbox while she was out, cashed it and drank up the money. She found out
 and she cut them. Now these two guys have both stopped bleeding and
 they're telling me they don't want to press charges. I've almost blown
 this woman away.

 A fellow named Ronald O'Quinn and I were driving adjoining beats, one
 night. We'd been parked next to one another talking for a good twenty
 minutes. He went one way and I went the other. Thirty -seconds later, he
 called me on the radio. He said, "Come back up here." Right around the
 corner from where we'd been parked was an auto parts place, Handiman's
 Auto Parts. He said, "I hear impact noises around Handiman's. I'll take
 the back."
  "Okay, I'll be there in a minute." When I got to the front of the place,
  I let him know I was there and I got out. There was a long tin divider
  fence between the front lot and the back lot. I could hear him and he
  could hear me, but we couldn't see each other unless we ran down to the
  end of this tin wall. It was one of those fences they put up to hide a
  junk yard. To the south of us in the direction that this tin wall ran was
  an apartment complex about 300 yards away. Just,before you got to the
  apartment complex was a creek 30 feet across and 10 feet deep.
  As I walked up on the front of the building, I heard the impact noises,
  too. We had been very quiet and the guy obviously didn't know we were
  there yet. I saw the top of his head through a window. I ordered him to
  stand up and put his hands in the air where I could see them. He was in
  the open shed part of the business. The door to the office had been pried
  open. He walked out of the shed and produced his hands so I could see
                               175
 COPS
 nothing was in thern- Even though I had my shotgun on him as soon as he
 cleared the shed, he ran.
  "Motherfucker," I yelled. "Ronnie, he's running south." Ronald ran south
  parallel to me on the other side of the fence. It was obvious to me that
  the guy wasn't going to be overtaken by me. When I was right at the end
  of the tin wall and Ronald rounded the corner, we both dropped down at
  the same time. I unloaded my shotgun. Ronald unloaded his. I unloaded my
  revolver. Ronald unloaded his. I had two extra shotgun shelIs under my
  belt. I snatched them out, flipped him one and racked one. We both shot
  simultaneously and the guy hit the ground.
  We saw a patrol car rounding the bend near where the guy went down. I
  knew who it was, so I ran back to my radio and said, "Carl, stop where
  you're at. He's in the field right across from you, laying face down.
  Just walk straight into the field about 150 yards paraIlel to the creek."
  He walked over and gave us the high sign that he had found the guy.
  We were-God a'mighty-a hundred yards away from him, being conservative.
  We're trying to piece together the crime scene, because Carl's got the
  suspect on the ground. We don't need to go down there. The guy is shot
  ... to us.
  Our supervisor rolls up. He says, "Did ya'11 shoot him?"
 We look at each other. "Is he hit?"
  "Come on now," he says. "Did you shoot? Did you fire your weapons?"
 "Is he hit?"
  "We're not playing any games here now. Did you shoot or not?"
 "Yeah," I said. "We shot."
 "How many times?"
  "I don't know," I said. "He shot a couple and I shot a couple."
 176
                          Deadly Force
  The lieutenant got there and Rescue came. Carl sent Rescue away, so
  Ronald said, "He must be shot." We walked down there and I said to Carl,
  "Where's the suspect?"
 "Rescue carried him."
 "Man, they were awfully fast," I said. "Was he shot?"
  "No," Carl said. "The motherfucker had a heart attack." This is real
  humorous. We have a good snicker over this, that the guy's had a mild
  heart attack. He's on his -way to the hospital and we have to follow him
  and put him under a police hold so that we. can book him when he gets
  out. We go to the hospital and process the right paperwork. The guy's
  okay. No problem.
  We're patting ourselves on the back for getting him. He's one of the real
  bad guys that's been doing a lot of break-ins in the area. We feel pretty
  good about ourselves when we get back into our cars. On the radio, the
  lieutenant calls us back to the scene. He says, "How many times did y'all
  shoot?"
  Ronald smiled and I smiled. "We didn't even hit the guy. 91
 "How many times did you guys shoot?"
 "Well, I shot some and he shot some."
  "You see that apartment complex over there? We got damage on twenty-three
  cars and two apartments. I'm just glad nobody was lookingout.the window."
 "Holy shit, you're glad?"

 I was responding to a call of a berserk male. As I pull onto this street,
 about ten houses down I see a commotion. The way it came over the radio
 it was bad. I figured, "Let me hold up a couple of minutes until my backup
 comes."
  At the time we were driving those Plymouths that had big rectangular
  headlights in the front grill. You could spot them a mile away. I look
  in my rearview
                               177
 COPS
 mirror and maybe a half a block behind me, I see these lights. I said,
 "That's got to be him." So I pull up to the house.
  There's this maniac in front of his parents' house picking up garbage
  pails, throwing them at the neighbors. The guy was like an animal. I got
  out of the car, two people pass in a Plymouth which I had thought was my
  backup. Oh, shit. With this, the maniac sees me and goes running into the
  house. The neighbors have come over and they look at this and they hear
  the language he's using, so you've got to do something. You've got to get
  this guy off the street. They're afraid.
  The father comes over to me and says, "He just got out of the mental
  health facility. He's not taking his medicine. He's just going off the
  wall."
 "Has he ever hurt anybody?" I say.
  "Yeah, he hurt me and he attacked the neighbor a few prior times."
  I figured I'd go into the house and find out a little more information
  by talking to the father and wait for my backup. With this, the idiot
  comes running back out of the house with a hammer. He's coming at me. All
  the neighbors split. They leave me. Bullshit. I pull my gun, cock it and
  say, "You come one step closer, pal, and you're going to get it." He
  keeps coming. One step closer, one step closer. He was about eight feet
  from me. I had two pounds of pull on the trigger with it cocked and I was
  ready to let go.
  The father comes running over to the son and gets the hammer away from
  him. Then the backups come. He starts running into the house. I start
  running after him, while everybody bails out of their cars.
  As we're running, he's snarling. I mean, this guy was really off the
  wall. I take out my Mace. They tell you Mace doesn't work on berserk
  people. Well, it worked beautifully. I hit him square in the face with
  this stuff
 178
                          DeadJy Force

 and he went crying like a baby. Then I put the cuffs on. Then we committed
 him.
  That was the closest I ever came to shooting somebody. When you get all
  hyped up everything is like slow motion. I could see the guy just moving
  and moving. It's a matter of one little touch and his head's going to be
  splattered all over the place. I didn't want to shoot. He backed me into
  a comer. Luckily, the father stepped in and grabbed the hammer away from
  him. I go deer hunting. I know it's hard to kill something unless you hit
  them in the brain or sever the spinal cord.

 One Sunday afternoon, I was dispatched to this family fight. When I got
 there I had a six-foot-five, upwards of 250- to 300-pound man-a
 giant-standing in the driveway of this house with his arms folded, with
 a real pissed-off look on his face. A guy gets out of the other side of
 a pickup truck and he's the same size, twentyish, obviously the man's son
 or little brother. I said, "What's the problem?"
 "I didn't call you,"_he said.
  "Okay. No problem." I walk up to the door and knock. A man answers the
  door which is as tall or taller than them and just as big. I am six feet
  tall-barelyand I am no bulky individual. I was intimidated. I know that
  they're pissed at each other. I assumed that they were relatives on first
  visual inspection and their similarity in size. "Did you call?"
  "Yeah, I did," he said. "I ordered a cord of firewood from these guys.
  They came up here with a pickup truck and commenced to throw it across
  my fence. That pickup truck does not hold a cord of wood."
  "You're right," I said. "That's not a cord of wood. I've bought firewood
  before myself. What's the problem?"
 "The problem is, I told them when I got home and
                               179
 COPS
 they were just finishing up, that wasn't a cord of wood and I wasn't
 paying them what they wanted for that wood, because it is not a cord."
 "Okay. Well, what is the problem?"
 "The problem is they're threatening to kick my ass."
  "Oh, okay." Now in the process these two gentlemen are loading firewood
  back on their truck. I walked within a reasonable distance of them and
  began talking to them. I inquired of them what the problem was, I told
  them that if they thought they had been cheated or misused that they had
  courses to follow through civil court.
  He wasn't interested in anything I had to say. The first thing he said
  to me was, "I don't care about any of that. That motherfucker owes me
  money and I'm going to kick his ass. I'm going to kick his ass right now.
  "
  This man is coming out of his house now to meet this guy in the yard. I
  turned to him and I said, "Look, ya'll are too big for me to ~ fight,
  pal. You called me. Don't jeopardize your own safety. Go back into the
  house while I handle this." He goes back up on the porch and stands.
  There's other conversation between those two while I am trying to
  interject, to which the guy out here in the yard says, "Aw, fuck you.
  I'll kick your ass right now." He throws down two pieces of wood and
  starts toward him.
  "No," I said, "you're not going to fight, not while I'm here, Because I'm
  not going to let you." The son is standing over there helping to load the
  wood. The father says, "I'll stomp your ass, too, boy."
  "Let me explain something to you," I said. I was speaking in a
  conversational tone of voice, because you don't want to piss these guys
  off any more than they already are. "Let me explain something to you.
  You're not going to fight, because I'm going to get between
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                          Deadly Force

 you. If I get between you and I get hurt, since I cannot physically come
 close to matching you two, somebody is going to get killed. Now that's all
 that I can tell you about it. I'm not playing. This is nothing to play
 about."
  "Yeah?" the daddy said. "I got something in the truck for you." So he walks
  out of the fence to where the truck is parked in the street. I glanced at
  the truck and inside there is a rifle in a rack behind the seat. The son is
  to my right. The fence is between me and the truck. I said, "Don't go near
  the truck. If you put your hands near that gun, I'll kill you." At that
  time I unsnapped my holster.
  The son steps at me and says, "Don't you draw that gun. If you do, I'll
  bash your fucking head in." He's got a log in his hand. Now the daddy has
  not broke his stride. He is going for the truck. I step up close to the
  fence and the son is blindsided to me. If I'm looking at the father, I
  can't see what the son is doing. He has the full capability of hurling that
  log at me. This piece of lumber is a quarter of my weight. The father put
  his hands on the door of the truck, at which time I cocked my revolver and
  leveled it at the back of his head. It was only about a foot and a half
  from the back of his head since the truck was right on the other side of
  the fence.
  "Look, you don't realize what you're forcing me to do. I can't see your
  son. All I know is, if somebody makes me jump, the back of your head is
  going to come off. I don't know what to tell you, friend, but you do what
  you have to do." Luckily, he stopped where he was at. But his hand is on
  the door. His son is standing approximately ten feet away from me in a
  batting position, behind me, with a log. My gun is cocked at the back of
  this man's head. The idiot on the porch is doing nothing. I am in a Catch
  22 position. I can't take my gun off this guy to look at the son, because
  he's got access to a firearm.
                               181
 COPS
  Two black kids came down the street dribbling a basketball, just
  bebopping around. They kind of look over to see what's so
  interesting-like, "What the hell's going on?" I screamed at them, "Hey,
  I need your help!"
 "What do you want?"
  "My patrol car door is unlocked. Go over there, open the door, pick up
  the microphone and all you have to gay is '31-16, signal 34.'
 "Thirty-one-sixteen, signal what?"
  "Signal 34. Thirty-one-sixteen is my unit number and signal 34."
  He picked up the microphone and he said, "Ah-huh, this is 31-16. Signal
  34," and put it down. I hear the dispatcher saying, "Ten-nine, 10-9,
  repeat, repeat." I'm ignoring that. Everybody else out there has heard
  it. I hear sirens everywhere. When everybody slides up sideways, my heart
  came back up into my chest from my feet. I just knew either I was going
  to die or somebody else was or maybe ' both. That was one of the scariest
  situations in ten years of police work. That had my adrenaline jacked up.

 I'd taken somebody to jail and went back out to my beat. There's a 7-11
 out there on a corner in the middle of nowhere.- I stopped in there not
 only to get coffee, but also to make sure they were still allve and hadn't
 been robbed. I pulled into the parking lot and there's two hemorrhoids
 standing inside. One of them is leaning over the counter into the center
 of the cash register and the other one is standing by the door with his
 arms crossed, looking out. Immediately I just knew. Alarm bells went off.
 Something is wrong.
  I, just eased into the parking lot. The guy standing by the door was the
  lookout. He saw me and told the guy by the counter, "Here's the police.
  Goodbye, every 182
                          Deadly Force

 man for himself." Then he bailed out and took off across the parking lot.
 But Leroy, leaning over the counter, was not sure what he should do. He had
 the gun out when I first pulled up. When his buddy told him the police was
 here, he took his gun and slipped it back down in his belt, grabbed the
 money and stuffed it in his pocket.
  This whole time I'm getting closer. I stepped out of the car. He started
  for the door. I got to hand it to the old guy behind the counter. He
  called, "Look out! He's got a gun." But it was too late for that
  hemorrhoid, because the adrenaline was pumping real strong. Before the
  counter man had the word "look" out of his mouth, I had a bead right
  between the sucker's eyes. He just stood there and up went his hands.
  The next thing that ran through my mind was, "Damn, why didn't he try to
  shoot or something?"
  I grabbed ahold of him and threw him on the car. While I was handcuffing
  him, I was concentrating hard on the other one. I know he's getting away.
  I handed my magnum to the old guy from in the store and I said, "If that
  son of a bitch moves, fill him full of holes." The old guy could hardly
  hold the damn gun up. That poor hemorrhoid just knew he was dead now.
  I grabbed my shotgun, put the situation out on the radio all in one breath
  and hauled ass after the other one. I ran him down. He was about two blocks
  away, trying to get into his car. I put the shotgun on him and had him lay
  down. I didn't have my handcuffs, so I just waited with him for the backup
  to get there.
  They finally got there and handcuffed him. I got back in my car and I sat
  down. Tbat's when it all hit me. Naturally, the hands start going like
  crazy, shaking a mile a minute. I looked back at my shotgun and said to
  myself, "I better get that round out of the chamber." I racked it back and
  there wasn't a round in the cham183
 COPS
 her. I had never racked one in. That's the kind of thing that scares you
 more than anything else.

 I'm sitting there in the White Castle parking lot and I'm looking at this
 gas station across the street. There's these two dudes standing by a
 telephone. One of the dudes is looking all around. I thought, "There's
 something hinky about this. They may be thinking about do:mg a robbery."
 So I just watch them for a little bit.
  The one guy leaves and brings a car up. When I see this car, I say to
  myself, "That's the damn car we were looking for out west. It might be
  these guys they want for aggravated robbery."
  So I called another car and told them to meet me over here at the White
  Castle. The other car shows up and I said, "I think the two dudes over
  there are wanted for robbery, but I'm not sure. Let's take them out. You
  take the front and I'll drive up behind them. That way we'll have them
  boxed." So we did.
  I got there first, since I always like to get into things first, which
  this time was a mistake. I jumped out of my car, walked up there and took
  my badge out. At that point, I didn't know whether they were the -guys
  or not, so I had no reason to pull my gun. I say, "Police officer. Can
  I see some identification?"
  The one guy is still talking on the phone. The other one said, "Sure,
  officer." He reached into his,pocket and pulls out his wallet. He's
  getting his driver's license out. The other guy shoves his hand under his
  coat into his pants. I said, "Hey bring your hands out where I can see
  them."
  "Sure~," he says and brings out a .25 automatic. I thought, "Aw, shit."
 "Now you're going to die, pig."
  "Well, there's two guys behind you," I said. "They're coming up on you."
 184
                          Deadly Force
  "Sure, there are," he said. About that time he was into his trigger pull,
  but I had just a split second when he looked over his shoulder and his gun
  hand went down as the gun went off.
  The other officers pulled their weapons. I dove over the hood of my car to
  get some cover. I was going for my gun and I hear these shots going off,
  maybe eight or nine shots. By the time I get my gun out and get back around
  the car, the shooting is over-a matter of two or three seconds. The guy is
  laying there dead. I go, over and check him out. His partner is stretching
  for the heavens saying, "God, don't shoot me. Hey, man, I'm not even with
  this guy."
  Then I felt this warm sensation and I said, "Shit!" I looked down and blood
  is coming out of my tennis shoe. I'said, "Hey, Ed. I'm shot."
 "What do you mean?"
  "Look," I pointed to the ground. "I think 1, been shot in the foot."
 "Go sit down," he says.
  I went over and sat down. Then one of our police tow trucks showed up on
  the lot. I went over there and grabbed the radio and said, "Better get a
  couple of squads in here. There's an officer shot and there's a suspect
  10-18," which means dead at the scene. All the cruisers started rolling in,
  one after another.
  Some news station is just driving by so when the squad takes me and puts me
  in the ambulance, some female reporter comes up and says, "Officer, how do
  you feel?"
  I looked up at her and said, "I think I've had better days. How do you
  think I feel? My foot hurts like a son of a bitch." She quick grabbed the
  mike away.
  The guys took my tennis shoe that I was wearing that day and they had it
  bronzed. I have it at home on my wall with a big ass hole in the son of a
  bitch.
 The guy who shot me is pushing up roses or probably
                               185
 COPS weeds. 'Mat was the last time I ever told somebody to take their
 hands out of their pants.
  When I was going through training, we went out to the state police
  officers' academy. One of the things in my training was, you'd approach
  a guy and the guy would have his hands in his pocket. The trainer says,
  "How would you talk to this guy?"
  "Tilke your hands out of your pockets," was my first reaction. He'd pull
  out a gun-and bang! bang! bang!I'm dead.
  So we start again. I walk up to the guy and say, "Could you take your
  hands out of your pockets?" Before I could get my gun out, he goes bang!
  bang! bangl, rm dead. Well, shit.
  So the next time, the guy's walking up to me, I go up behind him and take
  out my gun full of blanks and go Pow! Pow! Pow! in his back. The
  instructor looks at me like I'm crazy and says, "Why did you shoot him
  in the back?"
  "Because I'm tired of this son of a bitch killing me. So I'm going to
  kill him to begin with. The hell with it. I know he's got a gun in his
  pocket."
  It should have sunk in out there. What I did on the street and what gets
  police officers killed is, I took too much for granted. You think he'll
  come out with his hand empty. You give people the benefit of the doubt.
  In this case, I shouldn't have.
  Since then when I see a guy with his hands in his pockets, I tell him to
  keep his hands in his pockets. I'll go up and grab them and make sure he
  doesn't come out with a gun.

 The first thing they ask you after a shooting is, "What was your
 backstop?" This is a standard question. "What was your backstop in case
 you missed or in case the round went through the person?" My backstop was
 a 186

                                    41
                          Deadly Force

 four-lane heavily traveled street full of traffic and the major shopping
 mall parking lot adjacent to the building. That's what it was.
  "Did he fire at you?" they ask. They love to ask that question. "How many
  shots did the suspect fire at you before you shot him?" Like you're
  supposed to give the guy a couple of freebies to make for a better sense
  of fair play. Bullshit.
  The headline in the next day's paper was, "Buckshot Shooting Cop
  Critically Injures Youth in Robbery Try." I was the fucking bad guy. This
  guy got a raw deal, but ,he managed to survive this terrible assault by
  law enforcement.
  He didn't die, so that made it easier. I had to go up into the hospital
  one time while he was there to talk to an officer who was guarding him
  in the hospital. He was fucked up and I felt bad. I didn't go around
  telling anybody that, but I did feel bad.
  Believe it or not they rolled the guy into the courtroom in a wheelchair
  and he pled not guilty. I get up on the stand. This guy has got a wife
  and a baby that I didn't know about. They're sitting in the spectator
  seats of the courtroom. I had to testify that I was the one that shot
  him. I could see her looking at me. He's going bye-bye into prison in a
  wheelchair. We're going through all the formalities of the sentencing and
  the wife jumped up and started calling me a motherfucker. She almost got
  locked up for contempt. Unpleasant.
  I almost felt, one time, like going up and saying that I was sorry that
  it happened that way and that he got fucked up so bad, but I never did.
  For one thing, I knew he wanted to kill me. I could tell when he got shot
  and he still went for that shotgun. I said, "Fuck it. He didn't care
  about nobody. He didn't care about that phar; macist or the girl. He
  didn't care about me, certainly.'
  When somebody gets a gun stuck in their face and they get put in the
  position of not knowing whether
                               187
 COPS
 they're going to be alive in the next few minutes, those are the people
 that I feel sorry for. It works on you for a long, long time after that.
 All these little girls that work in the hamburger joints and carry-outs
 and stuff, you see them quitting every time there's a holdup. You know
 what they're going through.

 A guy robbed a store. Two of us were dispatched. I really was going to
 wait on the blind side of the business for the backup, but the blind side
 I chose was also the robber's escape route. He came around the comer. When
 he saw me, he dropped the loot.
  He ran behind a barbecue business on the opposing corner from me. I
  chased him in my car. As I got next to him, I realized, "Hey, I can just
  bump him and knock him down."
  When I bumped him, the car slid a little bit and went too far. He hit the
  ground and I ran over his shoulder from about the midchest area to right
  next to his head. I hit the brakes. I thought, "Holy shit, I've killed
  this son of a bitch."
  He gets up running, uninjured. I'm out of the car now. I snatched my
  shotgun out. He runs around the barbecue. I run around the barbecue. When
  I see the lead he's got on me when I get around the corner of the place,
  I figured, "Whoa, fuck this."
  Boom! I shoot one time and he hits the ground. It turned out that one
  pellet had struck him in the head, and knocked him out, along with his
  teeth and stuff when he hit the ground. He was not mortally wounded. It
  had flattened out and slid around the side of his jawbone and clipped his
  Eustachian tube and got his pharynx. He couldn't talk at all or hear out
  of one side of his head.
  They connected him to several burglaries and robberies. Big loss amounts
  and they were really glad. But 188
                          Deadly Force
 I was real nervous because I knew that this guy had a tire print on him.
 He's wearing a white shirt with a tire print right up his damn back and over
 his shoulder. "Oh, God damn, man. Should I say something about this? Is he
 going to say something about this?"
  Now the brass rolled out for the shooting, civilian clothes, uniforms,
  everything. It is crawling with everybody above a captain in the whole damn
  department. But nobody has said anything to me yet except the lieutenant
  gathering facts for his shooting diagram that he's required to fix.
  The captain walks over. He's in civilian clothes. He says, "Is that where
  you shot him over there?"
 "Yes sir."
 "Did you see the teeth over there in the road?"
 "No sir."
  "Come on over and look." I went over there and there's two whole teeth
  laying in the road right where he hit the ground. "They're not even
  broken," he says. "They just came out. Do you want them?"
 "Do I need them for evidence?"
 "No. "
 "Well, then I don't want them."
  "Good." His face lit up. "I'm going to have them covered in gold for a
  necklace."
 "My God," I said. "You're what?"
  "Yeah, I'm going to have them covered in gold for a necklace. Souvenirs."
 Jesus Christ.
  I go to the hospital to check on the guy. I walk down the hall there just
  as the lieutenant and another officer are going into the room. I hear as
  I'm approaching, "Is he bad?"
  "No," the doctor says, "it's just superficial. He's got a lot of damage to
  his voice box and his ear. Otherwise he's all functional. He's not going to
  die."
 "Good," the lieutenant says.
                               189
 COPS

  "By the way," the doctor says, "how'd he get the tire print up his
  back?" I made an about-face and split. In all the confusion no one
  ever, ever asked me how he got the tire print up his back. The guy
  never brought
 it up.

 We had a silent alarm at the Sears & Roebuck store. When the officers got
 there and looked over the building, they found a plate glass window busted
 out. Some of the things in the display behind it were knocked over, too,
 where somebody went through. So the officers were searching the building.
 One of them took the escalator going down. Since it was night, they were
 turned off and it was like a staircase. As he got to the bottom of the
 escalator, he turned and in the glow from one of the emergency exit
 lights, he saw the silhouette of a large man standing there with a shotgun
 or a rifle cradled in his arms. He yelled halt, spun around with his
 flashlight and fired a round. He hit him right in the heart, a mannequin
 in a Sears & Roebuck sporting goods section, displaying shotguns and
 hunting equipment.

 I've been shot at a lot more times than I've shot at somebody else. This
 one particular night, we were riding in a two-man car at the time. We
 received a call to an address on a street that we knew dead-ended in the
 woods at that hundred block. But you got to go to the call. We had been
 there on three different occasions, the last two days after dark, similar
 calls. Nothing there. Nothing happened. "Code Alpha. There's nothing here,
 HQ. We're leaving." ~
  On this night we were both particularly nervous about going to this call
  for some reason. We were talking 190
                          Deadly Force

 about it on the way. "I don't have a good feeling about going down there."
  "No, me neither." So we took a little extra precaution. I opened my door
  and he opened his door and we coasted in with all the interior lights off
  down toward the dead end.
  Somebody opened up with a small caliber weapon and fired several shots. We
  could see the flashes. We jumped out and returned fire. Just filled the
  woods up around that flash with bullets and reloaded.
  After we did that, we thought, "What kind of a predicament did we put
  ourselves in? I'm not going to go walking into those damn woods now to look
  for blood or a body. But if we don't, if we walk away and let somebody die
  out there, we could be in trouble." We optioned for trouble and left.
  We went back the next day before it got dark and never found anything.
  If you tell that story, it seems like a really big event. But really, on my
  one-to-ten scale, that's four- or fiveish in my career. Doesn't rank high
  at all.
  It's a split-second thing. It happened and you reacted. You didn't have
  time to give it any consideration. Except that you're pissed off that
  somebody has the gall. to shoot at you. I thought about it later. There are
  people out there who would like to kill me just for the hell of it. Just
  because I'm in blue.

 We got a call--man with a gun in a candy store. We get to the candy store
 and the owner says to me, "It's this kid, just ran around the comer. He's
 fifteen, he's wearing a blue jacket, a white shirt and dark pants. He pulled
 a gun on me. He had a fight with me earlier here and he came back and he
 pulled a gun on me. He just ran around the comer."
I jump in the car and drive around the comer. I see 191
 COPS

 this description going into a building that turns out to be a youth home.
 I never really got a good look at him. I just had an impression of the
 clothing. I jump out of the radio car and I run through the door of the
 youth home. The place is crowded with kids, but I can hear footsteps ahead
 of me, running down the hallway.
 . I'm running, chasing the kid. I'm always just a little bit behind him.
 He's always one turn beyond me in the hallway. Up some stairs. Down that
 hallway. Up some other stairs. Down another hallway. Always one turn ahead
 of me. Then the hallway dead-ends where some elevators are and I finally
 come up on him.
  He turned around and he sticks a gun in my face and pulls the trigger.
  I watched the cylinder rotate. Nothing happened. I knocked the gun to the
  side. The kid doesn't even fight at this point. He's as stunned as I am
  that he pulled the trigger at point-blank range and I'm still standing
  there. I get his arms behind him- I cuff him. I get the gun and I stick
  it in my pants.
  My first reaction wasn't to beat the hell out of him or to even touch
  him. My first reaction was, "Why the fuck am I still here? Why aren't I
  dead?"
  By this time the kids in the youth center have followed the commotion and
  they're all around. We get the kid out and put him in the car and take
  him to the station house.
  He's fifteen years old. As near as we can make out from the situation,
  this kid has been sticking up cab drivers. We get the gun in the house
  and I open it up. It's a .32 Smith & Wesson. The .32 uses a shorter car-
  tridge than the regular .38 police special. But you can make a .38 bullet
  fit into the chamber if you cut the head off the bullet. He had two spent
  rounds of the correct ammunition, three full. 38 rounds with the heads
  cut off and an empty chamber. The gun had landed on one of the spent
  rounds. If it had landed on any one 192
                          Deadly Force

 of the three .38s, I would have gotten my brains splattered all over the
 hallway.
  He was a juvenile offender. I didn't hit him. I processed him through to
  the juvenile detention center, went down to youth court with him and they
  let him go. The worst punishment he got was when his mother came into the
  precinct and she started slapping him around because he'd taken her gun.
  He'd taken her gun out of her drawer. She slapped the shit out of him.
  Tried to kill me, had been sticking up cab drivers and got nothing at
  all.from the authorities.

 I was at the Belaire Apartments, standing in the parking lot. Out of my
 jurisdiction, which is a terrible no-no. But it was only just out of my
 jurisdiction. I was talking to Jim Sloane and his daughter. He was the
 manager there and we were just shooting the breeze, you know. I was
 leaning up against the patrol car. I laid my walkietalkie down, which is
 something I hardly ever do. I won't never do it any more, I'll tell you
 that right now.
  As we're talking, I see this person walking out by the street. I didn't
  think anything about it. I looked again and he's coming right through the
  sprinkler system which is getting him wet, so then I started thinking
  something's going on here. I said, "Jim, you know this guy?"
  "No, just some weird-o, I guess." He's still a good distance off, so we
  continued talking a few more seconds.
  "What's he got in his hand?" Jim's daughter said. I looked again and the
  damn hairs started raising on the back of my neck.
  "Something ain't right," I said to myself. Then to her I said, "Why don't
  you go into the house?" She did. As he got closer, I said, "Let me see
  your hands." He wouldn't put both of them where I could see them. I 193
 COPS
 could see his left hand. Then I saw this brown thing on him which suddenly
 resolved into a holster.
  He had his right hand down by his thigh. He had a gun in that hand. His
  hand swung too far forward one time and I saw for sure that it was a gun.
  I'd unsnapped my holster when I told him to show me his hands. I said,
  "Jim, get down behind a car." Jim had this big German shepherd-beautiful
  dog-which had been trained and everything, but which only attacks cats.
  So Jim and the dog got down behind a car. I shouted, "Let me see your
  hands!"
  He's about thirty yards from me now and about this time he started coming
  up with the weapon and Boom! I got down and moved. Everything went so
  fast, I left the walkie-talkie on the car where I had laid it down, so
  I couldn't say, "Help, send help." I went down about four cars, looking
  for cover and trying not to get my head blown off. I got away from the
  patrol car just in case Jim decided to poke his head around the comer or
  something.
  Boom! He fires another one at me. Shit, this guy is for real. I come up
  to.see what he's doing and I see him stick his head up behind this
  station wagon. Babooml I fired off two. Evidently, I didn't get him, he's
  still there. But he didn't hit the car I was behind. So they were in my
  direction, but he wasn't placing them well. 1, on the other hand, killed
  two cars.
  After he popped off his first two rounds I wasn't saying nothing. I
  wasn't giving myself totally away. But he said something strange. He
  said, "Police! You're surrounded. Give yourself up."
  "Aw, shit," I thought, "I'm surrounded by these guys." Thinking all this
  crazy stuff.
  "Throw your gun out," he said. If I'd been thinking, I could have thrown
  my extra gun out. When he came out to get it, I'd have blown his peter
  off or something. 194
                          Deadly Force

 There are just so many things going through your head right then.
  The whole thing didn't last more than two minutes. I'm sitting there
  thinking, "What am I going to do?" I'd had guns pointed at me before, but
  I'd never been shot at. I can't even begin to tell the things that went
  through my head. "Jesus, why didn't I wear my vest? Who is this crazy son
  of a bitch? Why is he doing this? Jesus, they don't pay me enough for this
  shit. " A million things. Plus you're trying to count bullets. You think
  about the investigation that's going to happen after this is all over.
  "God, they're going to kill me. I blew away that station wagon. What reason
  will I give for being all the way over here in the first place?"
  Boom! I got another one coming at me. I come up again and fired off a round
  and went down -another parked car. Maybe he'll still think I'm in my
  original place.
  He had about the same idea, because when I'd made my move, he backed up to
  a dumpster. I came around the car thinking I've got him and there he is in
  a new spot. He's got me. But he didn't shoot.
  I moved again and popped up to look for him. I didn't see him. What he'd
  done was just to step backwards into the black shadow that the dumpster
  cast. The next thing I know, he's back up at the street. He's booking. He's
  gone. I'm not going to shoot now.
  Finally, I get to the radio. I was scared. I mean, I was scared. When I got
  on the radio I thought I was screaming, but everybody said afterwards that
  I was talking very softly and measured. In fact, they had to listen twice
  because they couldn't believe I was saying I got shot at. I identified
  myself and gave the signal for urgent traffic. "I been fired at. I returned
  fire and I believe I wounded him in the arm. Description follows."
 I gave a total description of this guy. The only thing
                               195
 COPS
 I missed was the color of one of the thin stripes in his shirt. White male,
 approximately six feet tall, possible Latin-looking, dark hair with a
 mustache. I gave them the color of the pants, wearing a pullover type shirt-
 it was reddish-looking with a black stripe. And it was dark as a well
 digger's ass that night. 'Course there was light in the parking lot.
  Then I reloaded my weapon and it's the waiting period. Is he going to come
  back after you, or is the help going to arrive first? All of a sudden I
  heard that beautiful noise--sirens and blowing engines. You feel good when
  you see all those guys coming. And they were coming out of the
  woodwork--off-duty deputies, anybody who had their scanner on. They were
  coming out in jockey shorts. They brought the dogs and the handler and the
  gunners. They were there and they were pissed.
  They put another man with the dogs. I said, "No, I'm going with the dogs.
  It's my turn. I'm going to get him now. " Once I got over being scared, I
  got mad because he'd scared me so bad. I'd never seen this guy. I didn't
  know this guy. As it turned out we had seen this guy before.
  When he left the apartments, he went through a vacant area-sand and briers
  and everything else-walked over to the next housing development and knocked
  on a window. This older lady was at home talking with. her daughter on the
  telephone. He tells her, "There was a shoot-out. I was helping the police.
  They've arrested the suspect, but they forgot about me and I need a ride to
  the hospital." He's standing there with a gun and his arm was bleeding. I
  did hit him.
  She tells him okay, picks up the phone and tells her daughter, "Oh, there's
  a guy out here who's been shot helping the police arrest somebody, but they
  forgot him. So I'm going to take him to the hospital." She hangs up.
 "What?" her daughter says. So the daughter calls the
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 sheriff's department immediately. She says that there is some guy over at
 her mom's house who's been shot and claims to be a law enforcement
 officer. They come on the radio with it right away. "There is a subject
 Ishot on Lake Road at such and such an address. " This is right across
 from us. We know it's him. They converge on the house.
  The lady had come out by then and was getting ready to get into the car.
  We almost had a bad situation, because an off-duty deputy who came up on
  one side of the house had almost the same description as the suspect.
  He's got the mustache, the Latin look, the automatic weapon, everything
  but the striped shirt. Another deputy came around the house from the
  other direction with a shotgun leveled down on this off-duty officer. He
  saved himself by yelling, "No, Dick, no. It's me, Mack. That's the guy
  over there."
  The suspect is standing over, to the side, holding the holster with the
  gun in it. They tell him the usual. "Drop it." The only reason he didn't
  get blown away was because of the lady standing there. They knew that if
  they blew him away with her standing there she'd probably talk. Instead,
  they went over and helped him to the ground and made sure his arm wasn't
  hurt too bad and got him to rearrange the grass a little bit. They called
  me when they had him in custody and requested that I come over for an ID.
  I got over there, got out of the car. The first thing, the lieutenant
  walked up to me with four deputies and said, "You are not going to touch
  him. There are too many people watching. Do not do anything. Leave your
  gun in the car, too."
  "I'm not going to do anything to him," I said. So he let me keep my gun.
  "Okay, but don't even act like you're going to go for it, because I'll
  have one of these deputies grab you." I walked up there with them all
  around me. They didn't 197
 COPS

 let me get too close-about twenty or thirty feet, which was equal to the
 distance we were shooting at each other from. I just glanced over and
 said, "That's him." There wasn't no doubt in my mind. I knew him. I knew
 that face.
  "Can I walk up closer?" I asked. They let me. I kept going and they
  stopped me. I just wanted to choke that son of a bitch. I was so angry.
  I just turned around and left. Standing there was just boiling me over.
  I went back to the other sight and got ready for the big investigation.
  The sergeants came round and then the lieutenants and the chief and the
  reporters. They were putting little circles on the ground where all his
  cartridges were. They found all the slugs. When he shot at me, his rounds
  hit right in front of me in the asphalt and dug in. The bullet I hit him
  with was only a flesh wound. The car that was right next to where I'd
  been firing from was killed. I think it was one of the first rounds I
  shot, because when I came up the first time I was just letting him know
  I was going to shoot back. I didn't stick my head up too far. I killed
  a station wagon, too. I didn't break any glass. Not the first window.
  His name was Andrew Such-and-Such. He hadn't been out of the service too
  long, rank of captain. Had a prior mental record in the service. He did
  know how to use fire and concealment real well. He had training in it.
  He used the car, moved to the dumpster and used the shadow to get away.
  Two weeks before this shooting this guy had been seen by quite a few
  officers. He'd been baiting cops. Kid had a Corvette. He drove into the
  municipal parking lot, caught a few eyes, including the chief. Then he
  went to the entrance, gunned it and screeched out of there and was gone.
  About three days after that two of us had just finished a call and were
  parked window to window having a chitchat. This red Corvette driving down
  the road passed
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 us pretty slow. When he got about 100 yards away, he took off like a bat out
 of hell and was gone in a flash. We looked at each other and said, "Shit,
 we're not going to catch that stuff. Not in these cars."
  He had started wearing camouflage fatigues to work and carrying his gun all
  the time. He beat the crap out of his brother right in their business
  office. When we went into his room later, he had set up a battlefield with
  toy soldiers. All the light bulbs in the room had been removed so none of
  the lamps would go on. The windows were covered for total darkness. He was
  supposed to have been on medication, but I think he'd stopped taking it.
  That night when I was standing out there talking to Jim, it just so
  happened that he was living in the apartments just next door. He had just
  come home and when he saw me over there he must have decided, "Now's the
  time." He figured he could just walk up on me, which he almost did. I don't
  think he came at me personally. It was just the uniform.
  You know w'at they done to him? Five years' probation. They declared him
  mentally incompetent. I don't think he was. I think he had a problem but he
  knew what he was doing.
  "Do what you want with it," I said to the state's attorney. "Just don't
  bother me no more. Let me forget it." I've done real well with it. But I
  can still lie down and with my eyes wide open I can see that face. That
  crazed face.

 We got a call to Houston and Market. There was a little confectionery there
 on the corner. There was supposed to be a breaking and entering in progress.
 I had a rookie with me that night. I stopped in front of the store with my
 lights out and told him to watch the f-Korlt while I went around back. When
 I got around back, this guy
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 COPS

 was coming out of the window. I was so close that I thought he would never
 run. I told him to halt. He hit the ground going 90 miles an hour. He was
 fast and he was already into the dark. We had the law at that time that
 you could shoot at a fleeing felon, so I fired a shot at him. I missed
 him, but I kept running and was shooting at him. I'd just gotten the .457
 Magnum and it had a different grip than my other gun. I ended up firing
 four shots at him. I was trying to hit him anywhere I could. The last shot
 went right through the bottom of his shoe and out his big toe. That
 knocked him down.
  The paper wrote it up that the officer fired four warning shots, telling
  the criminal to stop. When he wouldn't stop, he shot him in the foot. I
  felt bad at the inquest. His mother came up to me and said, "I sure
  appreciate your not killing my son and shooting him in the foot instead.

 I had a traffic stop and before I could do anything, this guy dove under
 the seat, reached down and started coming up. I almost killed him right
 there in the seat. He was getting a flashlight to go in the glove box for
 his wallet.
  Maybe it would have come out officially in a courtroom that it was
  justified and acceptable. But I would have had to five with it.
  I said to myself, "This is it, buddy. He's going to take you out."
  Nobody-I don't care how understanding you are-nobody is truly going to
  understand wh*t my feelings were at that point. They are going to read,
  "COP MURDERS CITIZEN WITH FLASHLIGHT IN HAND." That's going to be the
  headline., -
  That's not the worst part of it. The worst part is how I would feel for
  the rest of my life.
  We've had a couple of officers who have been casualties of a malicious
  press. They will never be right
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 again. It goes with,the territory, but it's the thing that scares me the
 most about the job. It's a split second decision that you've got to make
 and if it's wrong, shame on you.

 This guy ran a light. We went to chase him and give him a ticket. He
 started running from us. I love a good high-speed chase. Nothing nicer.
 My partner was driving and I liked his driving style, so it was not a big
 deal.
  He finally lost it with our help and he crashed into a building. We went
  through a skid sideways. The guy jumped out of the car and started
  running. The driver's side of our car is facing this guy's car so my
  partner started running after the guy off to the side. I stayed on the
  passenger side and put my gun on the roof of the car and just followed
  this guy with the sights. He hit a chain fink fence and started to climb
  over it. He was almost to the top of the fence, his head was even with
  the top bar, and I heard a shot. My partner shot. I don't know why he
  shot, but it was the guy running from us that my partner shot at, and I
  was so used to relying on his judgment that it never even crossed my mind
  to think-I just pulled the trigger. I was aiming for the middle of the
  guy's back. I squeezed off my shot. I'm an, expert marksman and that guy
  went down. I thought I'd put one right between his shoulders.
  My partner runs over and kicks him. I said, "Pat, what are you kicking
  him for, man. For Christ's sake, the guy's got two bullet holes in him?"
  "What do you mean, bullet holes in him?" Pat says, and he turned around
  to look at me.
 . "You shot him. I shot him. I hit him. I never known you to miss." We
 used to go to the range together and he was an expert shot since he was
 a paratrooper in the Army. I didn't figure he missed him. The guy had
 started to fall before my bullet got to him, so I figured the guy's 201
 COPS

 got two shots in him. I'm looking for his gun. I figured that's why my
 partner shot-the guy had a gun and he didn't want him to get over the fence
 where he had cover to take a shot at us and put us in jeopardy.
 "I didn't shoot him," Pat says.
 "What do you mean, you didn't shoot him?"
 "I fired in the air."
  "Since when do we shoot in the air? You never fired in the air before. We
  never threw shots for no reason. What do you mean? I thought you shot at
  him for a reason. I hit him. I shot him in the back," I yelled at my
  partner. "The fucking guy's dead! I put a fucking bullet in his back!" I
  was 100 percent sure I hit this guy.
  Now I'm scared. Now I don't have a reason. My partner didn't shoot at the
  guy. He'd done something that was out of character and it scared the fuck
  out of me. I started looking for the bullet wound on this guy. I'm turning
  him over and I can't find any blood or any bullet holes. I've got him on
  his stomach and I'm looking for an entry hole in the back of his jacket.
  Nothing. Then I feel him breathe. I realize the motherfucker is playing
  possum ... and I kicked him. I gave him a kick in the head and said, "Get
  your ass up, you nlotherfucker." Tlere's these big round eyes looking at us
  like "You fuckers are crazy motherfuckers. " I says, "You're lucky you're
  not dead."
  "Lucky," he said. "I felt that motherfucker pull on my nap." Meaning his
  Afro. When my partner shot, he let go of the fence and started dropping. I
  squeezed off my shot and the bullet went right through his hair, just
  missing him. He was playing fucking dead because he didn't want to be shot
  no more. He was going to lay there and do nothing. I thought I killed the
  guy for nothing. I Was so mad at Pat. Ah, was I mad at Pat. "Why did you do
  that to me? You never done that

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                          Deadly Force

 before!" You get so used to each other that sometimes it can be bad.

 The last shooting I was on was a comedy. It happened Friday, August 13.
 We were working plainclothes at the county fair. We're pissed. We're not
 even on the fairgrounds. We can't even look at the women, because we are
 assigned to the perimeter. It's in a pretty bad neighborhood and all these
 kids come and rip off the cars while the people are in the fair. We've got
 to sit out there and chase hubcap thieves and stop kids from ripping off
 CB radios. It's hotter than hell even at night and the dust is flying.
 It's a shit detail.
  I've got a new partner. He's young and he's a hotdog. Somebody calls up
  the radio room and says, "They're going to knock off the Rax Roast Beef
  on the hilltop tonight." Click. No name or address, no particulars, no
  nothing. Just a one sentence phone call.
  The dispatcher calls us. This technician tells me about this phone call
  she has received. It was probably about nine-thirty at night. I didn't
  know whether to go cover it or not. But it would be like an hour till
  closing, maximum. I said, "We better go up and cover it. It's only an
  hour. We can eat, too." We went rolling on up there and another guy
  riding by himself went out there with us.
  We walked in the door of the restaurant. I went up to the manager and
  showed him my badge and told him, "We got this tip you were going to be
  held up tonight. We're going to be in the area until you close." He said
  that they did indeed close in an hour.
  I ordered a cup of coffee, My partner ordered a carton of milk and some
  chocolate chip cookies. Like I said, he was young. The other guy gets
  there and he orders a cup of tea. But they don't have any tea made, so
  we're

                               203
 COPS
 sitting at this table, waiting for his fucking tea. We're arguing about
 how to cover it, because we don't know what we're looking for. If a guy
 comes in slipping a note that says, "Give nie all your money," and he's
 not showing a gun or anything, if you're sitting across the street with
 binoculars, you're going to miss the whole thing, They'll give him a Rax
 Roast Beef bag full of money and he'll walk away.
  The door bursts open and two huge guys come in screaming profanities.
  They are dressed in dark blue hooded sweat shirts, dark blue ski masks,
  surgical gloves. They are carrying twin sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns. Here
  we sit.
  One guy immediately vaults the counter. The second guy has the whole
  dining room covered. We've got elderly couples, we have two mommies and
  their little toddlers, and various other and sundry people.
  I'm sitting there in a knit shirt with this Model 59 x4pe mm. It's a huge
  frame gun. Everybody thinks it's a .45. It is tucked in my belt. The knit
  shirt is over it, but there is this huge bulge. I have this police
  walkietalkie. Thank God that instead of on the table it is on the seat
  beside me and it was off. It probably should have been on, but it was
  off. At least it didn't go, "Lincoln Mary Six, call the station."
  I've never ever been this scared. These two were the most intimidating
  things I have ever seen in my life. They were dressed for the part.
  The one guy in the dining area had a straight shot right down the aisle
  at our table. We are three adult males sitting together at a table, so
  he ain't looking at nobody else. Nobody else there is a threat to him.
  We all are ordered on the floor: "Every motherfucker on the floor and
  start throwing out your wallets." With our police IDs in them, of course.
  There's nothing else to do. We throw our wallets out. I'm on the floor
  on my belly and I've gotten under my shirt and have my
 204
                          Deadly Force

 hand on this nine mm and I'm laying on top of it. I'm thinking to myself,
 "When he finds our IDs, he's going to start executing us. When he does I'm
 going to roll over and empty this gun into him. At least, he's going with
 us."
  The other guy has the manager and all the employees on the floor in the
  back and he's cleaning out the safe. In the meantime, there's this mental
  who gets up from the table and goes and starts hassling this guy. He's
  just some 6 Id -guy and he keeps at it and keeps at it. So the guy blew
  him up. He shot him. He didn't kill him, but he just about blew his leg
  off. He's crippled now. The old guy tried to pull his ski mask off. We'd
  seen him in there earlier and he was definitely a mental. He was nasty
  to the counter girl who was out there with a vacuum cleaner. He made her
  go and get a fresh bowl of lettuce for the salad bar. He was really
  shitty about it. I almost said something to him then, but I thought,
  "We're not here for that."
  He's now slumped in the corner. I said to myself, "Enough is enough." I
  stood up and started blasting. I'm highly trained SWAT man. I can't miss.
  This guy sees us, runs across the dining room, into the vestibule and out
  of my sight. I got about three off at him as he ran across the room. I
  thought maybe he's ducked down in the vestibule there, reloading, so I
  pumped about three into the vestibule. My two side kicks went over to the
  far side of the dining room and they are shooting through the plate glass
  windows as the guy is running across the parking lot. He had gone
  straight out the door and they were busting glass all the way across the
  front of the building. This is a trip now. All these customers-fifteen
  or sixteen of them-are laying on the floor during all this. One of the
  toddlers is running around through this firefight.
  When this happens you get tunnel vision. Your focus is limited to the
  particular thing that is going on. I cut
                               205
 COPS
 out the asshole in the back room. He could have gotten out the back door and
 gotten away. He came back across the counter and unloaded on me twice with
 his 12-gauge pump gun. Blew out the glass immediately beside my head. I
 could feel the glass flying and knew I'd been hit. He blew up a chair on the
 other side of me. About that time, we all started focusing where we should
 have been focused and all started firing. He had eighteen entrance and exit
 wounds in his body. After he went down, he was still trying to get back up.
 Looked like he was doing push-ups to get back up. My gun was empty and that
 was it.
  I jumped up and I started checking myself for holes. Literally. They say
  you can't feel a gunshot wound. I've heard that a hundred times. So I
  figured I had to look for it. We got the smoky haze and we got glass every-
  where. There is blood everywhere.
  The first thing that happened was one of the mommies jumps up and says, "My
  baby's been shot!" My heart sank to the bottom and I lost it. It's the only
  time I've lost my cool in thirteen years. I'm screaming into the
  walkie-talkie to get the rescue squad in there. I was totally, just totally
  ... I don't think they could even read me on the radio. I totally lost it.
  I thought I'd finally gone and fucked up big time. And this little kid is
  going to buy it, is going to pay. To this day, that is the worst experience
  I ever had.
  It turns out, she wasn't shot at all. She'd been bloodspattered from the
  mental getting shot.
  There was a police chief from a small town that bordered on this precinct
  in line with his wife and son getting a roast beef sandwich when the whole
  thing went down. They had all got put on the floor. He jumps up and pulls
  out a gun and a badge now that it's over. He waves his fucking gun and
  says, "I'm a police officer."
  "Well, so the fuck are we," I said. "Who'd you think we were, you dumb
  shit?"
 206
                          Deadly Force

  "If you hurt my little boy," he starts screaming, "you're in trouble." His
  little boy had blood spattered all over his face. Everybody did by that
  time.
  The guy who got out, dumped the shotgun in the river and ran home. Two more
  guys from our team went to his house and he was waiting. His name had been
  reported in a second anonymous phone call. He came to the door and said, "I
  give up." He was scared to death. He had holes in his clothing. It had been
  real close. He went to prison.
  I didn't have any problems with that shooting as far as remorse goes. You
  think about the fact that this guy's got a mother and you wonder how she
  feels, but you don't feel sorry for them. He almost got me.
  I wondered after that if I had any nerve left. You always wonder about your
  nerve. What are you going to do? Will you back down when the time comes the
  next time? Probably everybody goes through that. You don't talk about it.
  But you wonder how you're going to react. You hear stories about incidents
  where a policeman is faced with a similar situation and you wonder how you
  would have done it.
  There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on. Policemen are not
  very kind to one another at all. I get involved in the shit and there's
  three hundred guys saying, "I would have done this and that. You shouldn't
  have done this and the other thing." Terrible. I stopped doing it myself a
  long time ago. But'I used to do it. Now I say, "If you weren't there, then
  don't say nothing, because you don't know what it was like."

 207
      CHAPTER 5

 Blood Brothers

 THE MAJORITY of police officers socialize exclusively with other police
 officers. The first reason a cop will give is that his unconVentional work
 schedule imposes constraints on his behavior. Rotating shifts, odd days off
 and unpredictable overtime puts him out of synchronization with other
 working people. The cop is finishin~ a ten-hour shift and dropping into a
 bar for a cold one when his peers in other professions are eating their
 breakfasts and heading for the office. His weekends one month are Wednesday
 and Thursday, next month, Monday and Tuesday. Once he has canceled a few
 dinner engagements on short notice, he explains, his civilian acquaintances
 drop him from their social register.
  Every cop can tell a story of how his introduction at a party has suddenly
  put a damper on the fun of all the other revelers because they can see him
  only as a representative of moral authority. Or how some irate civilian has
  button-holed him in a social setting and proceeded to air all his
  grievances on the subjects of law
                               209
 COPS

 and order; abuse of police power and local parking regulations.
  Most cops will tell you they don't talk to civilians because only another
  cop can understand the pressures that shape a police officer's attitudes
  toward life and work and society. Consider this illustration of that
  point from a highway patrolman: "We found a guy in a 55gallon drum.
  Somebody had put him in there. It was a professional hit. The body just
  turned to shit. Pictures were taken for evidence. Then we tip the barrel
  over and the body just pours out. This situation has 'Janitor in a Drum'
  written all over it.
  Great sense of humor, huh? You just can't say that kind of thing to a
  civilian. They want to barf on your shoes. "
  Gallows humor is a defense mechanism all people in stressful situations
  use to relieve tension and to defuse horror. If a person's job concerns
  primarily the ugly, brutal side of life, his shoptalk is bound to be
  somewhat ugly and brutal. Even if he is simply reciting the day's events
  as blandly as possible, his stories can be shocking to an audience
  unprepared for such graphic conversation.
  This brings us closer to the core of the issue. "Nobody understands but
  another cop." Police officers work under hazardous, stressful conditions
  and this draws them together into a kind of brotherhood.
  A cop's life can depend on whether or not his partner and other police
  officers----some of whom he doesn't even know-are willing to lay their
  lives on the line for him. As one officer put it, "It's a contact sport
  and if you don't watch my back for me, there's no one else I can count
  on. If you're not looking out for me, I'm going to get hurt." Mutual
  defense in the face of physical danger is as essential for cops as it is
  for troops in combat.
 However, when the very real threat of harm is com-
 210
                         Blood Brothers

 bined with the habitual suspiciousness police officers develop on the job,
 the result can be a kind of paranoia. Many cops begin to see themselves as
 under siege from all sides. They develop a classic "Us versus Them"
 mentality. The protection of the brotherhood is then stretched and
 overextended to cover "hurts"-both real and imagined-from any front.
  The real reason most police officers socialize exclusively with other
  police officers is that they just don't trust the people they police--which
  is everybody who is not a cop. They know the public generally resents their
  authority and is fickle in its support of police policy and individual
  police officers. Older officers teach younger ones that it is best to avoid
  civilians. Civilians will only try to "hurt" the cop in the end, they say.
  That hurt may range from a personal insult to social ostracism to a formal,
  complaint of abuse.
  The "Us versus Tbem" attitude also applies within the ranks of the police
  themselves. Superior officers from sergeants on up are regarded by patrol
  officers as "T'hem. " They are the brass, concerned only with their own
  careers, not with the welfare of the cop in the street. The adversary
  relationship between patrolmen and their bosses is much like
  worker/management conflicts in any business, but the existence of the
  brotherhood makes it more virulent. Any decision from upstairs is
  considered a potential "hurt" and so it must be guarded against. It is
  therefore very easy for a cop to td* his membership in the brotherhood
  simply by trying for a promotion. One of the most difficult transitions a
  new sergeant must weather is the suspicion with which he is now regarded by
  his former colleagues who are still on patrol.
  The ultimate outcast from the brotherhood is the cop who works in the
  Internal Affairs Division (IAD) of the department, the people who police
  the police. That a fellow officer could stoop so low as to join in inves-
                               211
 COPS
 tigating and prosecuting corruption and abuses of police power, actively
 trying to "hurt" a member of the brotherhood, is simply unthinkable to many
 cops.
  There is racism within the brotherhood. Recent federal charges of
  discriminatory hiring practices and the resulting effort to hire and
  promote minority officers has put a real strain on the bonds among black
  and white and Hispanic cops. But the unwritten law of the brotherhood does
  not allow discussion of racial tension with outsiders. Most police officers
  will claim that all cops are blue and race is not a problem, even though
  they just finished punching it out along color lines in the locker room.
  On the other hand, almost every male officer will say that women do not
  belong on the job. The police officers' peer group is a brotherhood, and
  female officers are sometimes entirely excluded. The women usually try to
  tough it out without complaining-which would just alienate them further-but
  most of them have had a personal experience with sexual harassment or dis-
  crimination. There have even been reports of intentionally slow backup from
  male officers when a female officer is answering a potentially hazardous
  call.
  For all their talk about staunch loyalty and a united front, police
  officers also know how ephemeral the bonds of police brotherhood can be on
  an individual basis. Let an officer come under investigation or indictment
  and he is ostracized from the brotherhood. Many of'his brothers will desert
  him to avoid any possibility of guilt by association.
  Most police officers are not surprised when they see their brothers' feet
  of clay. They know that the blue tribe of blood brothers is made of human
  beings who have fears, faults and prejudices like everyone else. Deep
  inside they understand that the brotherhood of policemen is part necessity,
  part neurosis and part myth.

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                         Blood Brothers

 You woRK the paddy wagon and you go to work at eleven o'clock. You get in
 the wagon and there's a dead body back there that they didn't bother to
 take to the morgue. They left it for you. All the paperwork is there, but
 they didn't tell you. You can't get them, because you are the one who does
 the relieving. They don't relieve you. They got you.
  They'll spray tear gas on the microphone or put it in the heater ducts
  in the wintertime. You turn the heater on and that shit blows out. You
  sit there and cry all night.
  Put live chickens in your locker. I've seen it happen. Dead things.
  They'll go out and scrape up some raccoon off the street and put it in
  the front seat of your car before you go on a run, or put it in your
  briefcase. They're crazy, crazy.

 One time me and my partner were in a key shop getting some keys made. It
 was snowing pretty bad outside. One of the other officers on the beat told
 radio to hit our recall. When they do that, your beacons go on to let you
 know that you're wanted on the radio. So I said, "I'll go see what they
 want."
  It was an ambush. I went out to the car and these two guys stArted
  pelting me with snowballs. When they let up, I got in the car and told
  them to back off a little bit. I hit the siren and waved at my partner
  to come on, like it was an emergency. He come running out and I locked
  the doors of the cruiser and these guys just beat the shit out of tim
  with these snowballs.
  "You're no partner, man," he yells. "You left me out here with the
  wolves."

 When my partner and I would go in on a burglary, I'd unscrew some light
 bulbs out of the fixtures. My partner
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 COPS

 would be going down to check out the basement in an abandoned house. He's
 creeping down the stairs real cautious. I'd take the light bulbs and throw
 them-Pop! Pop! Pop! That would scare the hell out of him. I'd laugh my ass
 off.

 We're going on a domestic. At the apartment we were called to, there was no
 protection. Once you were in the hallway, the doorway was right in front at
 the top of the flight of stairs. My partner was going up the steps ahead of
 me. There was a hollow door off its hinges at the bottom of the steps. I
 took out my nightstick and hollered, "Watch out, Danny!" And I hit this damn
 door so hard it sounded like a shotgun. He fell halfway down the steps. That
 was the first time he really got pissed at me.

 I was working with this real character. We were going by the freeway
 off-ramp on Bright Street and there was a family there that looked like they
 were broken down with their station wagon off to the side of the road. We
 pulled over to see if we could help them out. What happened was, they had
 some kittens in the back of the station wagon. While they were stopped at a
 light, the mother cat jumped out the back window and was in the tall grass.
  So this asshole partner of mine says, "Well, that's tough. "
 "Come on," I said, "let's help them find the cat."
 "I ain't helping look for no God damn cat."
  "Well, you just wait here for me. I'm going to go and try to help them find
  their cat." It's kind of like a company sweep; we're going through the tall
  grass looking for the cat. I accidentally scared the cat. She ran 214
                         Blood Brothers
 out onto the freeway and'got run over by the first car that came along.
  This fucking partner of mine starts laughing. I'm real upset. I apologize
  to them. They don't know what they're going to do with this litter of
  kittens now. I had to load this partner of mine into the cruiser and get
  out of there before we had a complaint filed on us. The boy was crude.

 Everything happens nights, even on the wagon. They sent us on a shooting. We
 got there and this guy is laying in the doorway of a restaurant. He had
 definitely been shot. In fact, he's probably dead, but we're not doctors so
 we can't say that.
  We throw him on a stretcher. I was driving. I take off for the hospital,
  red light and sirens. My partner is back there bandaging this guy up,
  putting a hell of a bandage on him.
  Get him to the hospital and rush him in there. Get him on the table and
  pull his shirt off . Unwrap my partner's bandaging; job and wipe everything
  all off so they can see the wound. He's been shot in the back of the head.
  But all the blood had run down and collected on his chest. My partner was
  a first-aid instructor, too.

 We were having a series of pizza deliverymen getting held up as they would
 make a delivery. It would be a phony delivery. They would go back to their
 car and there'd be two guys standing there with knives or clubs. They'd
 smack the deliveryman and take his money. It got to be a problem after it
 happened about eight or nine times, so we contacted all the pizza places in
 the immediate area and told them if they got a suspicious call to call us.
 We could become their deliverymen and try to catch these guys.
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 COPS
  A pizza place calls us with a delivery that's about a, block over from
  where their driver had been robbed before. So we get in the car and go
  over there. My partner is hiding in the back. I've got my apron on and
  my shirt undone, no tie. Deliveryman disguise, right? I've got my gun
  underneath my apron.
  It's a dead-end street, a court with a little circle at the end. Driving
  down the street, I see these two guys standing there, so I just keep on
  going. I tell McGuire, my partner, "There's two guys standing there, but
  they're not doing -nothing." I get out of the car and get the pizza out
  of the back. I tell McGuire, "I'm going up to the house. I don't know
  where the guys went to."
  I get up to the house and the lady says, "Oh, we didn't order a pizza.
  This is the second time this has happened in a week."
  "I'm sorry to have bothered you, ma'am." I go back to the car and open
  up the hatch and the two guys come walking up out of the bushes. I told
  McGuire, "Get ready. Here they come."
  I put the pizza back in the oven and close the hatchback. They're coming
  around from the front of the car and I'm right in the back. So I kind of
  back up against the car where they can't get behind me. One of them gets
  on my left and one of them gets on my right. One guy has a club in his
  hand. The -other guy has something shiny in his hand. I don't know what
  it is, but it's black. I said, "What's happening?"
  "Give me all your money," one of the guys says. He's in a batter's
  position with this club.
  "Okay," I said. I pulled my gun out from under my apron and I shot
  him-Boom! If you read the report, it says I announced that I was a police
  officer. But I wasn't going to get smacked in the head with a club. Piss
  on that. He was cocked and ready to nail me. So I shot him. He went down
  and the other guy took off running.
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                         Blood Brothers

  McGuire jumps out of the car and cranks one off at the guy running. The
  guy keeps running and McGuire takes off after him. So they're running up
  the street toward the opening away from the dead end.
  Unbeknownst to us, there's another detective that has followed us out and
  is just kind of laying back to see what will happen. As McGuire is
  chasing this guy up the street, this other detective hears the shots and
  he thinks one of us are hurt. He comes roaring down the street in an
  unmarked police car. All he sees is a blur of someone running. He figures
  it's the bad guy and he's.going to wipe him out. The only thing is; it's
  McGuire that he wiped out.
  He knocked him forty feet in the air. McGuire went flying. He,ended up
  in these people's patio flower garden. It shattered his thigh bone.
 The bad guy has disappeared. He's gone.
  All hell breaks loose after that. Every police car in the general area
  shows up. They can't find the guy. I don't know that all this has
  happened to McGuire because I'm back down the street with this guy that
  I shot. He's screaming and shit. Finally when help arrived and I went up
  to this other detective-the guy that ran over McGuire--and I said,
  "Where's McGuire at?" He didn't say anything to me, so I figured that
  McGuire is still out chasing this guy. I head down to where the rescue
  squad is taking care of the guy I shot. He survived. We didn't kill him.
  I see this group of people up behind this house. I thought, "They must
  have found the guy that McGuire shot at." I get up there and I see
  McGuire laying there on the ground. I said, "What the fuck are you
  doing?" He don't say nothing. Then I can see that there's something bad
  wrong with his leg. I piece it together from the other guys.
  We had an asshole captain at that particular time. A real asshole. When
  I came back to the station that night-
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 COPS

 we'd gone out about eleven-thirty, the shooting took place at
 twelve-thirty and we got back about threethirty-the first thing this
 asshole captain said was not "Is your partner all right" or "Are you
 okay?" He says, "What the fuck were you doing out there?"
  They ended up putting a big steel thing in McGuire's leg because the bone
  had shattered. They tried this to get it to heal back together, but of
  course that didn't work. He was off for nine months. That leg is now
  threequarters of an inch shorter than the other one. He walks with a
  limp. He'll never be the same again. We still tell hirn he should have
  been given a ticket for leaving the scene of an accident.
  The guy that hit him really felt bad. In fact, he had a drinking problem
  for about six months afterward. We kind of rehabilitated him and got him
  back together. We tease him about it. But it's kind of a touchy subject.

 My first post was a foot post, four till midnight. It was -a dead-end
 block and at that time there were probably two thousand people living
 there. I walk the block. There's six crap games.
  I was there for about an hour and a sergeant and his driver came by. I
  threw him a high sign. Suddenly he realized I was there and stopped to
  sign my memo book that he had seen me on my post. He started to drive
  away, but he stopped and got out. He said, "Do you know where the
  firehouse is?" I said yes that I did.
  About an hour and a half later they drove by again and said, "Are you
  sure you know where the firehouse is?"
 "Yes, I know where the firehouse is."
  Two hours after that, they came by again. The driver gets out and he says
  to me, "You're making the sergeant very nervous. The firehouse is over
  there. That would probably be a good place for you to be."
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                         Blood Brothers

  It just didn't occur to me. I just assumed that these were all nice
  people. The people on the block weren't terribly threatened by me. Later
  on, I realized how unflattering that was.
  The culture that pays and maintains the police department is not the
  culture that we most often supervise. Very often people in a ghetto
  neighborhood do not want police protection. Most of the time they do, but
  in subjective terms. If you are there you have to be aware of what they
  are talking about and of their standards, because you can take a bad
  situation and make it worse. You can also get yourself hurt when you
  shouldn't.
  This was to be my steady post. Not long after I started there, a fight
  broke out in the street between a guy and his wife. In less than a minute
  there had to be two hundred people there. In my own stupidity I jumped
  into the middle of this thing to try to straighten it out. They both had
  knives.
  But, I was rescued. I was holding onto the husband and out of the corner
  of my eye I saw a radio car drive right into the crowd. An arm reached
  out of the passenger side and grabbed me by the neck. I held onto my
  prisoner. The arm threw us both in the back of the radio car. The
  sergeant then proceeded to chew me out. "What the fuck are you doing?"

 They were always shorthanded in that department. I still had two weeks to
 go in the academy and the chief got me out ahead of time to go to work.
 They were giving me fairly simple things to do, like deliver messages, go
 get the cars gassed up, that type of thing. The lieutenant was eating
 dinner and the other patrolmen were doling something else when they got
 a call that a man needed to talk to the police. They said, "It sounds like
 he can handle it. He's a policeman and he can talk. "
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 COPS
  I go to the residence and there's a guy out in the front yard. I pull up
  and say, "Can I help you?"
  "Yeah," he says. "Alphonso is in the house and he's dead." I didn't have
  any idea what was going on, so I go into the house and Alphonso was
  laying in the front room, sure enough dead. He'd been stabbed twentyseven
  times. There is blood all over the walls. So I get on the radio and I
  called the lieutenant and gave him the signal for "You need to meet me
  at this address." That's all I told him. I thought I'd done pretty good.
  I could hear him coming with his siren on, down the road, 90 miles an
  hour, with the blue lights flashing. He comes sliding up there, runs up
  to the front porch of this place and sees that we, in fact, have had a
  murder.
  Alphonso had had a homosexual relationship with some guy he'd picked up
  and carried home. The guy he'd picked up was into a little more bizarre
  stuff than Alphonso was prepared for. It started back in the bedroom when
  the guy cut him and then they had fought all the way up the hall. Then
  he killed Alphonso out in the front room.
  Here I am a rookie. He's laying on his stomach with nothing on but his
  Jockey shorts. He's got stab wounds all over him, but there's generally
  not that much blood. There's got to be something wrong though, because
  the front of his underwear is totally soaked in blood when we turn him
  over. Everybody is thinking, "We know what happened to this guy."
  The chief is standing there and they say, "Well, who's going to check?"
  Naturally everybody looks at the new guy. I didn't want to do it, and I
  imagine it was obvious that I couldn't do it. So the chief goes into the
  kitchen and gets him some of these spaghetti tongs and uses this kitchen
  utensil to pull the elastic out. The guy was still intact. We all
  breathed a sigh of relief.
 Later on, when we'd gotten the processing taken care
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                         Blood Brothers

 of, we were talking about it and I asked the lieutenant, "How did you know
 that something so bad had happened that you were getting here so fast?"
  "Your voice was cracking on the radio," he said. "And you could barely
  talk." I hadn't even noticed it.

 Sergeants turn into shitheads pretty quick. Lieutenants are not too bad,
 but once you get above a captain, you can forget it. They no longer have
 anything to do with you. They're administrators. Everything that the group
 does is reflected on them and they don't want to stand behind an
 individual unless that individual is 1000 percent right.
  I had an inspector come over to me once and tell me that I'd done
  something that he thought was pretty terrific. He was very straight and
  very honest. A tough old cop is what he was. He looked at me and he said,
  "If you ever get in trouble and you're 100 percent right, ,call me."
  "Fuck you," I thought. "What'd I need you for if I'm 100 percent right?"
  They'll never intercede for you if they think there's a chance-not that
  you're probably right-but if there's a chance that you're wrong, no one's
  going to stand by you.
  Cops expect to be backed up by people even when there is a chance that
  what they did was wrong. Most cases they're wrong as far as the rules and
  regulations are concerned, as far as the law is concerned. Morally, in
  almost every case, they're right. There are those cases, of course, when
  they are not. But the situations where most cops get into trouble,
  usually from a reallife perspective, they're doing something that's okay.
  People understand it. They say to themselves, "I would have done that
  same thing." That's how cops base their 221
 COPS

 opinions. They say to themselves, "What'd he do that was so terrible?"
  But you can't expect the administrators to say, "Okay. That's all right."

 I was walking foot post just rattling doors, checking the glass. We had this
 lieutenant that used to hang signs on the door handles of stores saying,
 "This is a simulated burglary, contact the desk." The whole thing was just
 a way of catching you loafing. If you don't call in when he thinks you
 should have found the note, he comes down and wants to check your book.
 "Where were you at such-and-such a time? I planted a sign on this store. You
 must not have picked it up. You must not have been doing your job." I was
 pretty new on the job, so I didn't need threats. I was out there busy,
 walking and looking all night long.
  The car man pulls up and says, "Hey, Mack. Over there on that store, there
  is a sign. It says, 'Simulated burglary.' You're supposed to contact the
  lieutenant when you find it."
  "Oh, yeah? Don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything. I'll do just
  what it says."
 "No," he says, "I don't want you to call in."
  "What do you mean? Don't call in? He's the lieutenant. I'll get in trouble.
  I got to call in."
  "Don't worry," he says, "I'll take care of everything. In fact, don't call
  in for the note and don't make any of your rings for the rest of the
  night."
  I was torn between getting in trouble with the boss and being accepted by
  the other guys on my squad. I debated a few minutes in my mind. The car man
  had been on the job a good while and he kept reassuring me. So finally I
  said okay and I didn't call in.
  About seven-thirty we meet at the relief point. The lieutenant pulls up in
  his squad car. He's mad, really
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                         Blood Brothers

 angry. "Where the hell were you all night?" he yells at me. "You didn't make
 any of your rings. Not one. I also had a note posted on a door on your beat
 and you didn't find it, because then you would have called. Where have you
 beenall nightT.'
  With this, the car man comes over to the lieutenant and says, "We found
  your simulated burglary, all right. But the foot man here was simulated
  shot. He never called in or made any of his rings because he was simulating
  a possibly fatal wound." He looks the lieutenant in the eye and he says,
  "What took you so long? From two o'clock to seven-thirty you never found
  the guy. He could have bled to death in the alley. You made a simulated
  burglary. We made a simulated death. That's all."

 Before I used to think, "Their doing this is a direct attack on me because
 I'm a black woman." Then I found out that when you are a new police officer
 you are prime vegetable for every piece of meat that wants to beat you. Even
 I have had the opportunity to get some of these new recruits and it's a
 satisfactory thing.
  Two girls came in going to do a strip search on a female junkie. They
  brought her in and I happened to be in the station. I asked them if they
  had ever done a strip search before and they said no they hadn't. So I
  offered to show them how to go about it.
  I gave each, of them some rubber gloves to make sure they didn't touch her
  body. She was swollen all up and you could see that she was a bad user. I
  told them, "You got to make sure that there are no vials up in there in the
  vagina, see?" They were a little shocked.
  This woman must have weighed a good two hundred pounds. I told her to bend
  over and spread her legs and grab her ankles. Of these two recruits, one
  was a short girl and the other was a tall girl. I told them, "Now you 223
 COPS
 got to bend over and look and make sure she doesn't have anything up there.
 If she has got something up there, you got to take her to the hospital and
 let them take it out."
  The real tall girl, she stood up straight and she kind of squints her eye
  and is looking real hard but from a good distance away. But the short girl,
  she gets bent down and she's looking right up there and I said, "Watch it,
  before she farts!"
  This girl jumped up in the air. It was the funniest thing. I rolled around
  the room. I almost peed myself laughiftg. The woman prisoner was so mad at
  me. I had to explain that I wasn't laughing at her, but she should have
  seen the look on that girl's face.
  But it was a very satisfactory thing, because I had five years on and had
  been getting zung myself. It was a good feeling to zing somebody else.

 We once had an old sergeant who liked to sleep on the midnight watch. That's
 against our rules and regulations. We're not supposed to do that, but being
 an oldtimer like he was, he didn't seem to understand that he couldn't
 sleep. He would pull up under a streetlight out by a Pic V Save. Lock his
 car up, lean back and start sawing big trees about an hour or two into the
 midnight shift. He'd set an alarm clock, I guess, because the next morning
 he'd be awake and away he'd go. If you called him on the air, he'd finally
 answer after a couple of tries.
  One night some of the guys got together and decided it was time to get the
  sergeant's attention. They took a hydraulic jack And some cinder blocks.
  When he went to sleep, they jacked up the back end of his car and put
  cinder blocks under the rear axle. Took the jack out from under it and left
  him there. Nobody called him during the night.
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                         Blood Brothers
  The next morning, it came time to check off and he awakened to the
  jingling of.his alarm clock. He cranked his car up, put it in gear and
  didn't go anywhere. Put it in reverse and it still didn't go anywhere.
  So he tried forward again. Without getting out of the car to see what
  might be wrong with it, he got on the radio and called for a wrecker.

 You come into the precinct and there's a long desk that the lieutenant
 used to sit behind all the time. This cop comes in to sign out with no
 clothes on. Just a gun belt. I mean naked, no socks, no nothing.
  The lieutenant looks down, figuring if he doesn't acknowledge this is
  happening, maybe it will go away. The guy will sign out -and that will
  be that.
  But naturally, when you're naked, you have no pen to sign out with. So
  this guy said, "Hey, lieutenant, can I borrow your pen?" The lieutenant
  doesn't look up, just hands him a pen out of his shirt pocket.

 Lieutenant Stobb-bad-ass Lieutenant Stobb-Small Paul we called him. He was
 about five-seven and had a Napoleonic complex from being a little guy. He
 was an overbearing son of a bitch and an irritating bastard. He went out
 of his way to make things aggravating for the fucking troops. So needless
 to say, the troops did the same thing for him.
  Larry would walk into the station, flexing his muscles and the lieutenant
  would say, "Hi, Lawrence, how are you?"
  "Fine, Lieutenant." Right next to the fucking front desk is a pay phone.
  Larry drops in his dime and calls the station. He gets the desk clerk,
  Eddie Forno.
 "Station 11. Forno."
 "Lieutenant Stobb, please."
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 COPS
  Forno knew who it was. "Lieutenant, phone call for you. 91
 "This is Lieutenant Stobb."
  "Fuck you, you baldheaded prick. " Larry would hang up, walk out of the
  pay phone, look the lieutenant in the eye and say, "How are you, sir?"
  Larry is doing this four or five times a night five nights a week.
  Now Forno would get the residuals from the phone call because the
  lieutenant would slam the fucking phone down and start hollering at Forno
  for what Larry did. So now Fomo gets smart. When Larry calls up the
  station, Eddie says, "Fuck you, Larry. I'm not telling him anything and
  I'm not calling him to the phone."
  So we're over to the hospital and Larry is saying, "I got to get that
  little prick lieutenant one more time."
  "Yeah," I said, "but Forno won't give him the fucking phone. As soon as
  he hears either of our voices he knows what's going on." Sara, a little
  nurse, is standing over there, so I said, "Sara, how about doing us a
  favor? Give Lieutenant Stobb a call."
  She knew him and she says, "Well, what are you going to do?" We told her
  what we were going to say and she says, "I'll do it. " She picks up the
  fucking phone and calls the station.
 "Station 11. Forno."
 "Officer Fomo, could I speak to the lieutenant?"
  "Certainly, ma'am. Lieutenant, some girl on the phone for you."
 "T'his is Lieutenant Stobb. May I help you?"
 "Is this Lieutenant Stobb?"
 "Yes, uh, this is Lieutenant Paul $tobb."
  "Fuck you, you little baldheaded prick," she says. We were positively
  fractured.

 The first thing about supervising other cops is you shouldn't fraternize
 too much with your subordinates,
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 because sooner or later it's going to make it harder to drop the hammer on
 them. You got to be tough, you got to be firm, you got to be fair. All those
 things are right. But in police work, if you don"t have some familiarity
 with what these guys are going through, if you don't know something about
 their backgrounds, their family fives, and in some cases their social lives,
 they'll do everything they can to make your fucking life miserable.
  I tried to play it by the book for a little while. But I found out I was
  losing somewhere, because they would give me nothing but the facts, the old
  Jack Webb syndrome. Nothing but the facts is fine in some respects, but you
  can't run a tight ship in that way. You got to keep tabs on what's going
  on.
  So I changed around. I got involved and tried to deal with people's
  personalities on a one-to-one basis. I became very helpful because I
  figured one of my' strengths was my ability to talk. I tried to establish
  a bond of trust. I'd tell these guys what I was going to do and then I'd go
  tell my superiors exactly the same thing.
  What I didn't really understand was that the responsibility of looking at
  somebody else's performance goes way beyond just what they produce as far
  as police work is concerned. You find yourself in the middle of disputes
  with investment companies, in the middle of their marriage problems. Guy's
  drinking too much and his wife calls you and says, "You're the boss. What
  are you going to do about it?"
  I thought, "I'm getting a promotion and I'm finally getting out of the
  street shit," which was frustrating the ever-living shit out of me and I'd
  had enough of it. I got promoted with a decent pay raise. I have my own car
  now and I'm a supervisor. All I got to do is make sure these guys do the
  work. All of a sudden, it becomes much more frustrating in a whole lot of
  different areas.
A lot of these things that the wives were calling me 227
 COPS
 up about-hey, that's me. They're talking about me and my family. "The
 guy's staying out, he's running around with this dude and he's hanging out
 there." I start thinking to myself, "Holy fuck, that's me." I got to go
 home right away and figure out who the hell my wife must be calling. Is
 she calling the lieutenant or what?
  Jesus Christ, these people want me to handle their fucking problems and,
  God damn it, I got the same shit. So now you're not on the street getting
  shot at any more, but your level of frustration dealing with problems
  hasn't stopped. It's increased. If you have three guys, you have three
  times as many problems. If you have fifteen guys, you have fifteen times
  as many problems. It's a heavy thing to deal with and it's not easy.
  I had one guy call me to come get him out of a restaurant because he's
  there having a meal witg'his girlfriend and on the other side of the
  partition his other bimbo has come in. So he's eating two meals and
  telling them both that he has a urinary infection and has to go to the
  men's room every few minutes. He was literally out of breath calling me
  to come down and tell this one broad that he had to go home sick. He
  wanted me to finish dinner with her, so he can go home with this other
  one. He calls me at home with this shit. I told him, "Fuck you. Pick the
  one you like most and leave the other one there. I ain't going to fuck
  up my fife telling my wife I have to go downtown to help you with your
  two bimbos."
  I had this other guy who was never where he was supposed to be. He was
  always screwing off. After a couple of counseling sessions that did no
  good whatsoever, I called him in and told him, "Look, I'm going to
  recommend that you be transferred and that you be stripped of your
  detective grade. And that you be monitored because of your lack of
  productivity." The guy
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                         Blood Brothers

 didn't say anything, just gave me a blank stare. That's it. He got up and
 left.
  After lunch, he walks into my office and his exact words were, "You know,
  if I didn't fear getting locked up, I'd pull my gun out and I'd blow your
  brains out right now. " If you'd seen the look in this guy's eyes and
  heard the tone of his voice, you'd know that he was dead serious. He
  scared me. I was sitting there sweating because I knew he meant what he
  said.
  He knew he was in the gin mills when he should have been working, but who
  was the guy who had to come down on him all the time? Me. It was me. I
  was the guy who had to ream his ass out.

 It was bitter cold, four o'clock in the morning on the late tour. Not a
 soul on the street. So a guy on the adjoining post says to me, "Hey, I got
 this girl I'm seeing on this beat and she's got a sister. They've invited
 us UP."
 "That's great. Let's go."
  We're so careful not to get caught. We go up in the building next door
  to the sisters, climb up to the roof, then down the fire escape in the
  back of the building to their apartment. We get inside. One thing leads
  to another and we pair off into separate rooms and have a good time.
  Now it's an hour and a half later. We get dressed and go back out the way
  we came into the building. We're watching and listening all the time. As
  soon as we hit the streets a sergeant drives by and he hits the brakes.
  He says, "Where the fuck have you two been?"
 "On our posts, sir."
  "Don't give me that shit," he says. By this time I could see the
  sergeant's driver laughing his ass off, but I say, "What do you mean?"
 "Just look at yourselves." I turn and look at my part-
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 COPS
 ner. IUs navy blue overcoat is covered with pink fuzz. I look at me and
 my overcoat is covered in yellow fuzz. We had put our coats down on the
 sisters' crummy blankets when we took them off . We were caught. What are
 you going to do?

 Somewhere there's always a broad or two who stop you and want to give you
 a blowjob--not for any other reason than that you're a policeman. Back
 when I worked the streets, there was a couple of girls like that. Tley had
 a little Mustang. They would spend the night taking care of everybody.
 They'd be out cruising and they'd find you. Sometimes, you'd find
 them-whatever.
  We had a big party one night, and these two gals were the main
  attraction. This thing had started in a bar for a couple of hours. We
  took the place over and drank everything. After we left the bar, we were
  moving to an officer's house. Ffis wife had left for the night. It was
  supposed to be a stag party for all the policemen changing shifts. We
  were going from day shift to night shift, so we would get off at 3 A.m.
  and we wouldn't have to be back at work until the next night at eleven-
  thirty., If we partied, we'd have time to recover.
  I had a brand new car then-nice car, too. So this one gal I was with, me
  and her were going to the party house. When we got to the house, this
  broad is taking off all of her clothes, so I just kept driving up the
  street. But she had been drinking heavy, and I mean mixing everything.
  All of a sudden she said, "I'm going to be sick."
  "You're not going to be sick in my new car." I reached over, opened the
  door and shoved her all the way out the door. She starts yelling and
  screaming. AN the porch lights come on in this neighborhood. Tbere's this
  broad out there with nothing on. I just put the old car in drive
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 and go to the party. No way was she going to get sick in my new car. That
 was a good party, too.

 I worked with a guy who went through a whole string ,of crazy girlfriends.
 He was buying a box of bullets every month. He was afraid to be in the
 apartment with them and a loaded gun. So every night, before he'd go to
 bed with them, he unloaded his gun and flushed the bullets down the
 toilet. He's going to go broke buying bullets.

 You see policemen with coyote dates. When you wake up in the morning and
 she's laying on your arm, you chew your arm off so she won't wake up as
 you leave. That's a coyote date. Who do you think a guy meets in topless
 bars and strip joints and hooker bars?

 I've had a few casanovas approach me on the job. I had one guy say to me,
 "I'd like to take some off-duty time with you."
  "Oh, yeah? Take some off-duty time and get lost, buddy. I'm your
  co-worker. Your uniform doesn't impress me, because I wear one, too. I
  do my late cruise at home with my family. I'm not here for 'The Dating
  Garne.' " They all call me Bitch because of the attitude I have with
  them. I tell them, "I love you. If you ever need to talk to me, I'll talk
  to you. But I'm not here to date you. My personal life is my personal
  life."
  Some guys think the bosses are more partial to the females. "Yeah, she's
  driving the sergeant because she's a girl," one guy said to me when I
  first came here. "You're probably driving the sergeant because you got
  dirty kneepads."
"Not really, dear," I said to him. "Are you shotgun 231
 COPS

 qualified?" He said he wasn't. "Any sergeant's driver has to be shotgun
 qualified. Number one: I am qualified. Before the qualification came down
 you used to drive the sergeant. Did you have a patch over your ass? Was
 he giving it to you up the ass?"
  "You can't even take a joke. I was only kidding," he says.
  "You're damn right. That to me is not a God damn joke and don't ever
  mention that shit to me again." Now he won't even dare speak to me. "It
  can't be that maybe the sergeant likes the way I drive better than you?
  I had a good activity record maybe?"

 One particular guy switched to my squad about a year and a half after I
 started. He stood back and watched for the first six months to see what
 I was made of. After that time he came to me and said, "I want to help.
 Anything I can do, advice, questions you've got, whether it's concerning
 the guys, law, traffic, anything, ask me. I want to help."
  We worked real well together. Max is one of these real fired-up,
  aggressive kinds of cops. I'm more laid back. I do a lot-of talking. I'll
  talk my way out of a fight before I'll punch my way out. We complemented
  each other. I cooled him down and he made me a little more aggressive.
  It worked beautifully.
  "Making friends with the girl cop" caused him considerable problems with
  the other guys. They didn't take what they saw as his defection very
  well. They started all kinds of rumors that he and I were going to bed
  together which were totally untrue. The most I've ever touched the man
  is I've shook his hand maybe three or four times. That's it. But some
  people have to put other people down to make themselves feel better.
  If I'd been doing all the things the guys said I'd been doing, I'd be too
  sore to walk. It was all bullshit. Before
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 I even got out of the academy, I promised myself that I would never date
 an officer that worked in the same department that I worked in. And I
 haven't.
  His friendship with me caused Max problems at home, still does, I think.
  One time we were both working second shift and we stopped into a
  restaurant for supper. His wife walks in with their youngest boy, who was
  seven or eight at the time. She's not saying anything. I said hello and
  asked her how she was doing,, because I had met her before. She wants to
  talk to him. Okay, so they go over near the bathrooms and I'm left with
  the kid, which I like to talk to kids anyway.
  They come back and they're arguing. They're starting to scream at each
  other in the middle of the restaurant and he's in uniform. She looks at
  me and she says, "She knows what she's done." She's screaming at him. He
  smashes out his cigarette in the ashtray and says, "Cancel my dinner
  order, " He walks out. She walks out. He tears out of the parking lot.
  I'm sitting there going, "Oh, shit." In full uniform they are having a
  family fight in front of all these people and I am the subject of the
  argument. I canceled both dinners and left.
  He still cannot mention me in her presence. She still doesn't believe
  him. There's absolutely nothing to it. I care for him as a partner would
  care for a partner, but other than that, forget it.
  One of the other guys used to have coffee with me quite a bit until the
  other guys started teasing him saying, "Hey, we'll have to call your wife
  and let her in on this." He quit having coffee with me. I have coffee and
  supper alone a lot unless I meet an officer from another, neighboring
  department.

 We had these two police officers who rode together for two or three years.
 They were real close friends. One of them lived across town, but the other
 lived on that
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 COPS

 beat they patrolled. When they were on the shift from ten-thirty at night
 to seven-thirty in the morning, they would go by his house about five
 o'clock in the morning, wake his wife up, and she would make coffee and
 maybe scramble some eggs and make them some toast.
  One night the partner that lived across town called in sick, so they
  assigned a new man for the fellow to ride with. Ordinarily, this man
  never did take a new man by his house, because he didn't want anybody to
  know that he was stopping on city time to eat and drink coffee at his
  home. This particular morning, he decided to go by his house for a cup
  of coffee anyway, because he wanted one so bad.
  As he rounded the comer he saw a light on in the back of his house where
  the kitchen was. He pulled up and across the street from his house there
  was a car that he thought he recognized. At first he thought, "Well,
  that's my partner's car." 'Men he thought to himselfhe told me this
  later-"Naw, my partner is off sick, so that can't be his car." He
  dismissed it and went up on the back porch. He knocked and his wife come
  and let him in. As he walked into the kitchen, there was his regular
  partner sitting at the dining room table with the husband's housecoat on.
  Now, his regular partner was a person who could lie and make you believe
  it. At first this man said he really got perturbed about the whole thing.
  But his partner talked to him and swore up and down that he had been out
  all night and he had just come by ten or fifteen minutes before, all wet
  and nasty and the wife had let him take a bath and put on that housecoat.
  It sounded so good that the husband didn't think nothing more about it.
  About six months later, he went home and found everything he owned on the
  back porch. On top of the pile of his clothes and shoes was his shotgun
  and a note that said, "Goodbye, don't you never darken my door
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                         Blood Brothers

 again. I want a divorce." He couldn't understand it. His wife left town.
 Six or eight months after he got the divorce, she came back and her and
 his former partner got married.

 One of the things that really violently upsets me is some of these
 television programs like this "Hill Street Blues." I've had too many
 police officers and other people say to me, "Oh, that's the most realistic
 thing to what it's really like." That's not true. One of the things I
 really resent is that just about everybody on that program is sleeping
 with somebody else's wife.
  I've been a police officer for twenty-five years and married longer than
  that. I have never stepped out on my wife and I resent the fact that they
  paint us all with the same brush, that all policemen are doing this.
  I admit it's a heck of a temptation and I'm not homosexual by no means;
  but I love my wife. She has to be a special person to be a policeman's
  wife. I don't like everybody labeling us as being that kind of person
  with our morals. I may be in the minority, but I am a basic believer that
  our whole society is based on our families. Without a good sound family
  our morals are going downhill. That's the way I really feel. We need to
  safeguard that.

 I just left my ex-wife a few years ago. I didn't have a vehicle except the
 patrol car to get around in, but I left her one morning and I came to work
 that night.
  Les and I were riding together. Les had a real bad problem about failing
  asleep at the wheel. But it was his night to drive because we alternated
  driving. I came in and hadn't been to bed all day. I was goggle-eyed and
  emotionally strung out. But I got into the car with Les and he drove
  around for about an hour and a half
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 COPS

 while we talked. it all over. Then I just got real, real tired. I lay my
 head back on the seat and said, "Les, I don't think I can keep my eyes
 open any more."
  "Just go ahead and go to sleep," he said. "If I need you, I'll call you."
  So I laid my head over to one side and I died. Out of this world.
  I must have slept at least five minutes, I guess. It may have been an
  hour, but it was probably five minutes, if my recollection is correct.
  I woke up with a semi-truck in my mouth. Les fell asleep and drove under
  a parked semi. The undercarriage of the truck had sheared off the
  windshield and front post and was resting up against the side of my nose.
  My eyes came open and I looked both ways, but it was stopped and my head
  wasn't coming off.
  "What happened?" Les said. "Oh, God. I hit a truck." We climbed out and
  created a fictitious dog that had run across the road in front of him.
  Then we called the sergeant to come write the report about how this dog
  had run us into this semi-truck.
  Of course, nobody believed it, but that didn't matter. The point was, we
  weren't going to admit that we were asleep. I had glass all over my face
  and hair and down in my collar, but otherwise I was fine.

 David is a good friend of mine. We lived three blocks away from each other
 when we were kids. We grew up together. We went into the state police
 together. We're still very close to each other.
  Christmas Eve a few years ago, we're working out of the same station.
  They made the decision that everybody will meet back at the station
  house, we'll have some pizza together and we'll sit down and bullshit.
  Then we'll go to sleep, leaving one guy on the desk. The next morning,
  we'll work it up so that two guys can go home at a time and see their
  family. So about
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 eleven-thirty a couple of guys had stopped off to get some pizza.
 Everybody's headed in.
  I call the station and say I stopped a hitchhiker and I'm giving him a
  ride. I get out of the car. Here's this guy walking on the shoulder of the
  road. I say, "Hey, I'll give you a ride. Where you going?" I figure I'm
  going to be real nice. It's Christmas Eve.
  "Get the fuck away from me," he says. "You don't know.what the fuck I'm
  going through. You fucking cops are all the same."
  "No, I just want to give you a ride wherever you're going."
 "Get the fuck out of here."
  I go back to the car and he keeps walking. I get on the radio and say, "I
  may need backup. Send a car. I have this person and he's being a little
  irrational." In the meantime he runs right across the highway. I pull
  behind him with the lights going. I get out of the car and say, "Pal,
  there's no problem here. I just wanted to take you for a ride. It's no big
  deal. Are you okay?"
  "You cops are all the same," he says. "My girlfriend threw the ring back to
  me. She's going with a cop. You cops sutk. You're all fucking around."
  I thought, "This poor guy, he hates all of us. This girl could have waited
  until after Christmas to dump him." So I got him by the arms and say, "I'll
  take you anywhere you want to go. You're going to get hit out here in the
  middle of the road. There's cars going by here at 55 miles per hour."
  All of a sudden he goes'into a rage and he starts to hit me. I just grabbed
  his hand and I hit him. As I hit him, we went down. Now I'm on top of him.
  David had been back at the station unsaddled, he had all his gear off. He
  knew I needed backup, so he just threw his jacket on, stuck his gun in his
  belt and comes out. He rolls up. Here's my patrol car on the inside lane
  with the lights flashing, the door's open. It's 237
 COPS
 a four-lane highway with a treed area breaking up the north- and
 south-bound lanes.
  I'm in the grassy area and from my headlights all he can see is my legs.
  I'm laying on the ground. And they haven't heard from me at the station
  for a good three or four minutes. He can't see the guy underneath me.
  David starts calling, "Chuck. Chuck! CHUCK!"
  I turned around and looked at him and he was white as a ghost. He thought
  I'd been shot. I said, "David, give me a hand cuffing this guy, will
  you?"
  "You prick, my heart is going into my throat!" He's yelling at the guy.
  He thought it was all this guy's fault because he got so scared and he
  thought I got hurt.
  "David," I said, "I'm all right. It's okay. I just pushed him down. I had
  him." I picked the guy up, but his shoe was off on the ground. David
  picks up the shoe and throws it at him. Now he hit him in the freaking
  face. Now the guy's got blood all down the side of his face. I said,
  "David, this guy is going to go to court and charge us with assault." At
  that time everybody was signing complaints on us.
  So we get this great idea. I'll get my tape recorder and we'll ask him
  to tell in his own words what happened. We're stopping the tape every ten
  seconds you could bear the stops, then we're telling him what to say. We
  thought we had this great statement, so that if anything came up in court
  about this kid be ing slashed in the face, we're covered.

 Every cop can tell a story about some guy throwing himself in front of
 him. I had one. A guy pulled a gun on me in a hallway and I never seen the
 gun. I was nose to nose with this character that I had chased a few times.
 I was so hot and angry that I wasn't even paying attention to him. I was
 young. But I could hear from the back, "He's got a fucking gun."
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  It was dark in the hallway and I froze. My partner just threw me to the
  side. The guy pulled the trigger twice and it didn't go off. We took it to
  ballistics later; they pulled the trigger once and it went off, exploded.
  It was a tear gas gun. If it had gone off, I would have been dead and full
  of tear gas. But my partner never hesitated. He saw the gun and he pushed
  me out of the way and went for the guy.

 One time we were just waiting outside this door. It looked like a real heavy
 door. So I decided to kick it in. When I kicked it I knocked one of the
 panels out and my foot went through the door. I was half in the apartment
 and half outside. It was pitch black in there and I couldn't see shit. I
 knew that there was supposed to be a wanted killer from Florida and
 Louisiana in there. He's a Cuban and no one can take this guy. He's got a
 life sentence waiting for him in federal court, so he'll kill you in a
 fucking minute. I'm straddling the middle of the door thinking, "That's it.
 I'm like a fucking target here. Backlighted by the hallway." 0
  As afraid as I was, my partner was twice as afraid. I saw the expression on
  his face. He was petrified. He started screaming, "Please, please, don't
  shoot." It wasn't him that was going to get shot; it was me that was going
  to get shot.
  With all this screaming and yelling and everything else, we put the light
  on in the apartment and the guy was sound asleep in the bed. Never woke up.
  Kicked the fucking door in and everything and he's snoring away. He had his
  gun there, but he wasn't awake to use it.

 So many police terms are picked up from the street world and become
 incorporated in police mentality. A
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 COPS

 lot of it has to do with the Mafia. A lot of policemen will say, "He's a
 stand-up guy."
  What's that mean? He's a fucking policeman. That doesn't make him a good
  guy. What do you mean a stand-up guy? Do you mean that what makes him a
  good policeman is that he's brave; if he sees a crime being committed in
  his presence he's going to do something about it? No, not necessarily.
  If it's his partner who commits the crime, he won't do anything about it.
  That makes him a stand-up guy.
  Had a case where a bunch of cops went to a family fight. There was
  nothing to it and they were coming out. There were six cops coming down
  the stairs. It was the middle of the night, but in most ghettos the
  middle of the-night is just like the middle of the afternoon. The street
  was filled with people. The stoop was crowded with kids.
  The kids move up the stoop as these cops were coming down. One kid walked
  over to one of the cops and said something to him. The cop pulled his
  gun, shot the kid in the head and killed him. Outright.
  Now you got five cops standing there going, "Holy shit! Why'd you do that
  for?" The guy said, "I don't know." Twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid.
  They all got together and they figured, "We got to do something. We'll
  say the kid had a gun or he had a knife or .
 They came up with all these stories.
  Later on a couple of the cops said, "Fuck this. Here's what really
  happened." They all ended up getting into serious trouble. The cop that
  did the shooting they sent off to the funny farm. They found his
  memorandum book and inside his book he had notations that were clearly
  written by a guy who was mentally unbalanced. He was having a breakdown
  and they read about it in the book. "Another night in the zoo. I don't
  know if I can take it anymore. It's making me crazy. These an-
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 imals. " He had written it right in the book. No one had even looked in
 his memo book.
  Nevertheless, these cops felt that kind of bonding relationship with him
  to protect him. So they all lied. They didn't have to say that the kid
  had a gun. But they wanted to protect their brother, because he was one
  of them.
  The end result was that he went to the hospital and kept his pension
  because he was crazy. Ile rest of the guys got fired from the job and a
  couple of them went to jail for committing perjury before the grand jury.
  But they're all stand-up guys.
  That mentality is an organized crime mentality. It is to be respected in
  some ways, but it has to be respected from the perspective of
  criminality, not from legitimate law enforcement. The culture that we
  come from and the kind of country that we live in, we do respect that
  kind of camaraderie. But it's magnified in police work.
 It can go too far.

 Eventually forty-three people that I worked with were arrested. One
 guy,they caught taking money from a peddler on the street. He had over
 twenty years on the job. Hire's what they did. "You're caught. You will
 be off the job. We might prefer criminal charges against you. You lose
 your pensio4. That's it.... Or we could give you a choice. We're going to
 put a wire on you. You go back out there. Don't let anybody know. If you
 tell anybody, we put the cuffs on you. No questions."
  He says to himself, "There's no choice to make. I'm going to lose my
  pension - I'm not going to get a penny for all this crap. Oh, my God."
  They all go for the wire.
  So this guy puts the wire on. What else is he going to do? The first day
  out with the wire, he gets his partner.
 They grab the partner and say to him, "Tell us every-
                               241
 COPS
 thing you've ever done and don't let us catch you lying.
 This guy is pouring out his heart. "We want you to tell us everything you
 know and anything that's gone on whether you were in it or not. Anybody you
 know, anybody you gave money to, anybody gave money to you:~
  The thing snowballs. Guys start getting caught. That was a traumatic time.
  I was afraid to talk to the guy I rode with. You could be together for ten
  years. He's off one day and you're riding with another guy. You get caught
  and you're put in this position. Then the next day your partner is back
  again. He's your best buddy, the guy you hang out with before, during and
  after work. You know his wife and kids. Everybody's friendly. Now you got
  to sink him.
  And they did it. They did it. They sunk everybody to save their ass. There
  was one sergeant that stood up. Everybody else gave everybody up. That was
  an ugly time. It was just cold. Police work was secondary.
  So what did they do? They transferred the whole precinct out. It made all
  the papers. I'm home at my house and my neighbor says, "Oh, ho, you're from
  the precinct in the papers. You fucking crooked cocksucker you, taking all
  that money. Where you getting transferred?"
  "Hey, that ain't fair, man. I been doing a good job there. I ain't
  crooked."
  "Yeah, sure. You been doing a good job. You bought a new car last year. Now
  I know where you got the money from."
  What were you? You were just another number. It made you very defensive.
  That makes you wake right up to the reality about the camaraderie. But
  that's also how organized corruption was stopped.
  We have what's called field associates. Very interesting people, these
  field associates. He's a police officer who for whatever reason has a
  number he calls and 242
                         Blood Brothers

 talks to a lieutenant. He doesn't have to give his name. He will report any
 sort of corruption that he feels is going on in his precinct.
  Sometimes you go into a restaurant and the guy only charges you half price.
  Maybe it costs $1.50 and the guy only charges you a dollar. The field
  associate reports this back to his guy in IAD. They send IAD out to the
  restaurant and he says, "I'm going to lock your ass up if you do it one
  more time."
  Every precinct has at least one of these guys. Nobody will ever know who he
  is. He will not get any monetary gain. He cari't be uncovered. It can't
  help you when you retire. It can't help you get promoted. It can't help you
  do nothing. But all your life, all you do is rat out your friends. There
  are hundreds of them all over the department.
  Corruption is ready to rear its ugly head at any time. Still that's a tough
  way to live, knowing that the guy you're working with may be a field
  associate. Or the guy you're working with may not like you, so what he does
  is tell everybody that you're a field associate. Then you're stuck with
  that.
  Okay, you handle rotten DOA's, you handle emotionally disturbed people, you
  make rotten arrests, you go to court. But what you really hate doing is
  ratting on another police officer.

 LAD's is following us around. We could spot them following us around our
 beat. I got in the-habit of holding back waiting for a light to change from
 green to red and then racing ahead to make the light. Then running up a
 block and turning to disappear and lose them.
  So they got in the habit, when I started getting up near the light, they'd
  get right on the ass of my car, so that if I ran the light they could chase
  and follow me. I let them do that a couple of times. Then one day when
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 COPS

 they were getting ready to do it, I made like I was going to go for the
 light, but when I got to the intersection I jammed on my brakes. They
 plowed into the rear end of the radio car.
  I jumped out, "Let me see your license and registration. " The guy didn't
  want to show me no ID because he doesn't want to blow his cover. I say,
  "I'm giving you a ticket for following too closely."
  The bosses come down, the captain. I says, "I know who they are. I know
  who they are." I just was sick of it. I was an honest cop and I wanted
  to teach* these assholes that I'm not some stupid schmuck they could
  follow around all day and I don't realize who they are. I taught those
  motherfuckeis a lesson, man. Plow into my car!
  "He gets a ticket for following too closely," I said. He ended up showing
  me his license and getting the ticket and that's the last I heard from
  IAD.

 Top level job from the police commissioner to the chief of Internal
 Affairs to the captain, my boss. He says to me, "Robert, go interview the
 mayor. There was a party at the mayor's mansion last night and it made
 headlines in the Herald that a drunken cop wrecked the place. The mayor
 wants to know what's going on." When you go in the organizational table
 of assignments and duties, it says at the end of the list of all your
 assignments and duties, "And whatever other thing as directed by the
 police commissioner." This is it.
  Now the case was handled through normal channels by a unit in the
  precinct. I'm the overseeing agency as a representative of Internal
  Affairs, the big umbrella unit over the small unit. It's got a lieutenant
  and a sergeant. Then there's me and my sergeant. A whole crowd of us.
 At the mansion, they had a party. The mayor was
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 entertaining dignitaries. I forget who. Anyway in the mansion, if they
 have a big sitdown dinner-a buffetthey have a big room and then to the
 side they have a press room. Whenever they have important people, maybe
 twenty guys from the press come in there, so they got to entertain the
 press, too. So they got beer, the liquor, the hors d'oeuvres. They got
 good beer, imported beer, top drawer. This is part of the expenses of
 government.
  At the mayor's mansion there's a detail of three or four cops to guard
  it around the clock. One guy at the gate, one guy to walk around the
  grounds. Nobody goes in or out without going through the gate. The
  allegation in the paper was that after the mayor's shindig, the cops had
  a party with the remains from the original party. During the course of
  this, somebody dirtied the rug in the press room and broke the windows
  in the guard booth. The cops were loaded. This is the way the reporter
  had set it up.
  Okay, we call up the private secretary, make an appointment and we go
  interview the mayor. He's a funny guy. He's fast with the quips, very
  enjoyable to be around. In the one hour I was with him, he changed my
  whole attitude toward him. He's got charisma.
  "What the hell's going on," he's saying. "Who's minding the store? They
  send all this brass over to find out about a rotten party? Who's that
  stupid reporter that wrote that story? What's the matter with him?" He
  didn't like it. He didn't want that kind of publicity, so he's making
  light of the whole thing.
  I had to sit there and laugh. We got the police commissioner worried that
  the mayor is mad and he's not. He says, "I know that you got to do what
  you got to do. I don't like these guys drinking my beer. I give them
  enough while they're working. What kind of beer were they supposed to be
  drinking? Heineken's? They're going back to domestic."
                               245
 COPS
  All right, we make our notes. Now we go back to the reporter and get more
  of the story from him. More than he wrote in the paper. What happened
  was, one of the reporters had a fight with one of the cops. Now he wants
  to zing him. While they're having their press room party, the cop is in
  there having a beer with the reporters. This reporter takes offense,
  tells the cop to get back to work, to do what he's supposed to do. The
  cop tells him to go take a walk. This triggers the whole business. That's
  the basic background of the whole thing.
  Now we go interview the cops who were on duty that night. We have to take
  statements. T4iese are statements that could be used against you in a
  department trial and maybe criminal trial if it turns into it. But this
  is the Internal Affair's function. We interview the sergeant on duty. We
  interview each of the cops.
  One of the cops is a very nervous type of person. Very high strung,
  worried sick because Internal Affairs is going to interview him. I could
  see. The guy was getting me nervous. He was no kid. He was like forty
  something years old. He's scared he's going to go to jail for ten years.
  End the interviews. We make out our report. I tried to tell my boss that
  the mayor isn't really mad, so maybe he can tell the ~olice commissioner
  that he can take it all with a grain of salt. If everybody had just shut
  up, nothing would have happened. That report in the newspaper the day it
  all came down would have been the end of it. But these people in Internal
  Affairs are hard to describe. It wasn't an important thing, but to them
  it was. They want their ounce of blood.
  I gave them the report. We pinpointed the guy who threw up on the rug.
  We pinpointed the guy who had the fight with the reporter. We showed them
  that it was the reporter's fault as much as the cop's, even though the
  cop wasn't supposed to be there and he knew it. He's not supposed to
  drink on duty, he knew it. Those
 246
                         Blood Brothers

 are the things he was hanging himself with saying, "I was in there. I had
 a drink. " Somebody's got to get hung, got to be in trouble.
  That's about the time I decided I was going to try a new business. I was
  planning on using the Internal Affairs job as a stepping-stone to an
  assignment that I wanted. But I really didn't like it there. I didn't
  pass the captain's test. I had an opportunity to go into business with
  a friend of mine, so I retired and took my pension and went into
  business.
  Turns out that cop-the one I said was so nervoushe killed himself about
  six months later. Over that. Over nothing. I read in the paper about his
  suicide. That's a tragic end for a silly nothing.

 247

    C
                       CHAPTER 6

                The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 As You are driving down the highway, suddenly there are flashing lights
 in the rearview mirror and the whoop of a siren in your ears. A small
 dose7of adrenaline surges into your blood stream. Your heart beats faster;
 your palms sweat. You feel guilty whether you've consciously done
 something wrong or not. Everyone is afraid of the police.
  There is really little to fear, especially if you are white and
  middle-class. The police officer will be civil and efficient. He will
  finish his business and have you back on the road in a matter of minutes.
  If he gives you a ticket, you can probably afford to pay the fine. No
  real damage is done, just a slight inconvenience and perhaps some minor
  bruises on your ego from being told you were wrong.
  However, the officer who stops you does have some extraordinary powers.
  On his belt there is a pair of handcuffs. He can arrest you and take away
  your liberty. In the holster on his hip is a pistol. You know it's there
  and he certainly knows it.
                               249
 COPS
  There on the side of the road, miles from a courtroom and judge, isolated
  from any support you might receive from friends and neighbors, removed
  from the moral restraints witnesses might impose on the officer's con-
  duct, you are at his mercy, A little fear is in order. Courtesy and a
  touch of humility are usually the best course to follow. Most people slip
  automatically into a "Yes, sir-No, sir-Thank you, sir" form of commu-
  nication. Offending a person with a gun is almost never a good idea.
  A police officer is well trained to deal calmly and coolly with the
  public. Even when he is confronted with abusive language and
  disrespectful behavior, he must suppress his personal prejudices and
  wield his authority with fairness. He is taught to hold his temper and
  to act in a detached, professional manner. And he doesmost of the time.
  But a cop is only human. Every police officer has had a bad day-a
  hangover, a fight with the wife, a screwup with the bosses-and has taken
  it out on the citizenry. He is rude, insulting, intimidating. Many a cop
  has given in to temptation and has misused his discretionary powers to
  gratify his own ego, tormenting some civilian like a cat toying with a
  mouse.
  It is a frustrating job, admittedly. There is so much work to do. For one
  example, recent statistics estimate that an assault occurs in this
  country once every fortynine seconds' In the minds of most police
  officers, our system of laws and the constraints placed upon law
  enforcement by the Constitution give all the breaks of the game to the
  criminals. They feel impotent and ineffective. It is easy to understand
  the urge to circumvent all the red tape, to just get out on the street
  and take care of business. Cops figure they can tell who's the bad guy
  and who's not.
  But for all the glorification of vigilantism in the movies and on
  television these days, it is not a noble im~250
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 pulse. It leads to illegal search and seizure, planted evidence, perjured
 testimony and a subsequent perversion of justice. A cop who makes himself
 judge, jury and executioner tramples over the fragile rights that protect
 the liberty of each of us. The next time you are cheering on Dirty Harry,
 imagine this: The suspect in Harry's clutches is you or a member of your
 family and is, by some quirk of fate, an innocent victim of circumstances.
  Fear and the anger it arouses are the most common causes of what is
  labeled police brutality. An officer is put in mortal danger and his
  hormones and emotions take over. When he finally gets his hands on the
  suspect who forced him into this precarious situation, his gut reaction
  overrides his brain. It is an explosion that is regrettable, but
  uncontrollable. One officer described his experience this way: ,
  "There were six of us in four units chasing these guys at a high rate of
  speed. I thought I was going to die more than once, and I was sure some
  bystander was going to get clobbered by these maniacs or by one of us.
  It was totally hairy. The driver finally lost control and smashed it up.
  Our four cars all come shding up sideways. The first officer to the
  suspects' car yanked open the door, jerked a guy out and punched him a
  good one right in the face. Then he handed him to me. I punched him one,
  too, and threw him spread-eagle on the ground. I was so mad I wanted to
  just throttle one of these nuts. I slapped a cuff on one wrist and
  grabbed the other am around behind him. It came off in my hand. The guy's
  got a fake arm. I just stood there with this arm in my hand wondering if
  anybody seen me punch out a one-anned guy."
  The ugliest of all police brutality is the kind that amounts to
  vengeance. But this is really a sort of vengeance by proxy in which the
  victim may have little or no connection with the act for which vengeance
  is ex251
 COPS
 acted. The pent-up frustrations, anxiety and rage come pouring out of a
 cop. One offender becomes the scapegoat for all the bad guys who got away,
 for all the humiliations, for all the cuts and broken ribs, for all the
 cold sweat and creeping flesh. The violence that results can maim or kill.
 It may start as a reaction to an emotion-charged incident, but it might
 also be set off by something much more minor-an insult, a curse, an
 obscene gesture. As one cop told me, "I've seen guys brought in and the
 entire outgoing platoon-who have no idea what's going on except that a cop
 has a guy in the back room and he's beating him up-and the entire platoon,
 forty guys, go in and take a shot. Everybody wants a piece. The guy's half
 dead. What'd he do? Well, he spit on a cop. He doesn't deserve six months
 in the hospital for spitting on a cop."
  Nfinority-group members are most often on the receiving end of abuse and
  brutality. It would be expedient to blame this state of affairs on
  economics and the statistics of probability: Blacks and Hispanics and
  other ethnic minorities are generally poor and living on the fringes of
  society where they are more likely to be involved with crime and
  therefore more likely to become involved with the police. But the plain
  fact is that there is racial prejudice among police officers. Minority-
  group members are more likely to be verbally or physically abused by cops
  and to be denied their rights than are whites. Is this situation likely
  to change? One ray of hope is that police officers seem more willing to
  admit their personal prejudices than most of the rest of us, judging from
  the interviews I conducted.
  When asked about such abuses of their powers, though, most cops throw up
  their guard and back off. They act as though every civilian they meet is
  just waiting for the opportunity to scream, "Police Brutality!" into a
  cop's ear. But they will talk about brutality and abuse, admit that it
  happens, sometimes even tell about some 252
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 incident they have witnessed. A good cop is perhaps more outraged by the
 misdeeds of a fellow officer than the general public is, because he knows
 his reputation and character are besmirched just because he and one bad
 cop wear the same uniform.
  "A few bad apples spoil the barrel" is the old saw that all cops repeat.
  Generally speaking, it applies. One lazy cop sleeps on the job and they
  all look like bums. The power to arrest people is put into the hands of
  a bigot, and racist acts are committed. A greedy cop will be corrupt, a
  bully will brutalize. No amount of screening and testing will eliminate
  these kinds of people from the ranks of the police. A few bad apples
  always end up in blue uniforms. Innocent people and our system of justice
  suffer because of them.
  The bigger problem is that bad apples are not always thrown out when they
  are discovered. Individual cops are all too willing to look the other way
  when another cop does something wrong. It's easier and safer to tend to
  your own business and to ignore someone else's petty abuses, laziness or
  corruption. Police department administrations often tacitly condone less
  than professional behavior rather than stir up bad publicity or incur
  employee animosity by actively prosecuting cases of misconduct.
  One officer described the danger of this "hear no evil, see no evil,
  speak no evil" approach: "In any department, anywhere, you can take 5
  percent of the- cops and they will be honest under any circumstances and
  they'll never do anything wrong. They are the priests of the department.
  Five percent on the other end of the spectrum would have been criminals
  had they not become policemen. They are, in fact, criminals who happen
  to be cops. The remaining 90 percent will go whichever way the peer
  pressure goes."
  Racism, corruption, brutality can slowly become institutionalized
  throughout a police department simply 253
 COPS

 because so many officers are willing to be indifferent, to let the
 standards erode from inattention, to go along and follow the crowd. Slowly
 the pendulum swings toward criminality. A locality gets a reputation for
 its dangerous or larcenous police officers. Those cops who are unwilling
 to participate are overruled or driven out and replaced with individuals
 who are attracted by the prospect of living above the law. The community,
 the people the police are sworn to protect, must live in fear.

 IT WAs a rotten night and all I wanted to do was get through the shift.
 I've got about three hours to go and I'm really pissed.
  We got a call of a guy and his girl that ran out on his check at one of
  the nicest restaurants in town. We're talking $50460. 1 find him hiding
  in this little alcove area in a service station restroom next to the
  restaurant. The guy is bent over with his head between his knees. I was
  given a clothing description. It was very obvious that this was the guy.
  For one thing he was right next to the restaurant, nobody else in the
  vicinity.
  I just want to get rid of this thing, go back to my car and drive around.
  I go over and tap him on the arms and say, "Are you awake?"
  He shrugged me off with this big macho thing, "Get the fuck away from
  me." I felt a little better right away. I'm going to get a chance to work
  out a little frustration. I said, "I don't want to hear that. Just stand
  up and turn around and put your hands on top of your head. You're under
  arrest."
  "Fuck you," he says. "You ain't big enough to take me, motherfucker." He
  stands up. He's got his fists clenched and he says, "Come on. Just come
  on. I'll kick your ass."
  Before I knew it, I've got all this frustration pent up and I hit him one
  time with my stick. I don't think I've 254
            The Borderhne, the Bad and the Ugly

 hit ten people in eight years with this thing. But all that frustration
 came through in one shot. That would have been a 450-foot home run. Reggie
 Jackson never connected so well as that. Good follow through. Hit the
 sweet spot. I felt real good after it was all over. I forgot what I was
 pissed about. It took the fight out of me. It stunned him. It didn't hurt
 him--.didn't break his bones, didn't break his skin or anything like that.
 Took care of the problem. I thought to myself, "It's a very therapeutic
 job."

 It's common practice to get stuff thrown at you from the rooftops. You
 always expect that sort of thing. You're walking down the street and some
 fucker throws a brick or a Pepsi bottle from six stories up. A brick
 dissolves when it hits the street from that height. If I get hit with
 that, I'm a vegetable for sure.
  I once was walking along and I got hit in the center of the back with a
  flashlight battery. I thought I was shot. Knocked me right down. Owww!
  Everybody laughed on the street. Some guys pull a gun and shoot up on the
  roof. No big deal. I get crazy. I went up on the roof and I pulled down
  every TV antenna on top. Fucking guy probably didn't even live in the
  building. But I had some sense of getting even. I knew guys who would
  throw pigeon coops full of pigeons off the roof if they got hit with
  something from the roof.
  There's no way to condone that sort of thing, but you can understand it.
  People will say, "I don't understand it and I think we have to eradicate
  it."
  That's great. That's just verbiage. It doesn't mean shit. It doesn't mean
  dick, because nothing is going to change. People are what they are and
  they're going to behave the way they're going to behave in stress situ-
  ations. Period.
Nothing-will change until we turn the whole society 255
 COPS
 around and in a sense it's getting worse. It's not getting any better.
 There's more anger. There's more unemployment among the people we police.
 The cities are boiling pots with the lid screwed down tight. Guys are
 waiting for the factories to reopen. That's never going to happen, and if
 it did, there won't be any jobs for these guys.
  For them the representative of the society is the cop. He's got a job,
  he's there and he's fucking them around. The government is paying him and
  keeping them out of work. He works for the bad guys. So he's going to
  catch the shit.
  He always does. During civil unrest in this country, the only ones people
  can put their hands on is a cop. "He represents everything, so let's fuck
  him around." That kind of pressure on the police creates the secret
  society. They turn inward. "Hey, fuck these people. It's you and I
  against them. " The system is self-perpetuating.

 See, if you do something really insane, no one believes it. Throughout the
 country, there are certain guys that if they stop you and you give them
 a hard time, they'll eat your driver's license. That's it.
  There's a guy in motorcycles, big monster of a guy. Amy time he gets
  hassled, if the guy starts calling him names or whatever it is, he takes
  the guy's license, puts it in his mouth and starts chewing. "I'm going
  to give you a ticket now for driving without a license," he says.
  The guy would go to court and scream at the judge, "This cop stopped me,
  took my driver's license and ate it!" No one would believe that.
  "I don't know about this guy," the cop says. "He must be nuts, your
  honor. He didn't have his license with him."

 256
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 We were out in the park. A bunch of people were shooting craps. They, of
 course, scattered when they saw us, so we were writing tickets for parking
 on the grass. While I was writing this one guy a ticket, this black dude
 is sitting in his car behind me. He honks his hom and says, "Hey, you
 honky motherfucker, get the hell out of the way. I want to move my car."
  I couldn't believe he said that to me, so I told the guy I was writing
  the ticket to, "You wait here." I went back and I said to this guy, "You
  got a problem?"
  "Yeah," he says, "I got a problem. You're in my fucking way. Why don't
  you move, so I can get the hell out of here?"
  "Nah," I said. "One of your wheels is on part of my grass and I'll have
  to write you a ticket. " There was about an inch and a half of his tires
  on the grass.
  I wrote him the ticket and gave him his copy of it. I went back and sat
  in my cruiser and tilted my side mirror so I could watch him. I knew what
  he was going to do. He rips up the ticket. He smiles at all the dudes out
  there and he throws the ticket on the ground. I jumped back out of my car
  and snatched him out of his. "You're under arr6st," I said.
 "What for?"
  "Littering." I picked up the ticket and put it in my pocket and took him
  back to the cruiser. I'm frisking him down. He takes his hand off the top
  of the cruiser and I said, "Ah, resisting,arrest."
 "Man, if I had my shit with me, I'd take .
  "Ah-ha, menacing threats." That guy started out with a parking ticket and
  it took him $5,000 to get out of jail. "You going to screw with me, I'm
  going to screw with you. But, buddy, I know how to play the game a little
  bit better than you do."

                               257
 COPS,

 I saw one guy arrested once for speeding and the police officer lost his
 temper. Of course, this highway patrolman brought it on himself, because
 he was bad-mouthing the guy. Finally-he's a man, too--the guy lost his
 temper and spit on the highway patrolman.
  Right on the side of a U.S. highway on a Sunday afternoon, the highway
  patrolman wrestled the guy down, took a handful of hair and held his head
  down in the dirt and started packing the guy's mouth full of sand. The
  guy was choking and spitting and this patrolman was shoving sand in his
  mouth. "I'll teach you to spit at a trooper, boy." Those were his exact
  words. I'm standing in the background, watching the cars go by, slowing
  down to stare at this event. It looked bad.

 We got a call on the radio and they said they'd found this woman and her
 child dead in Phoenix. Her relatives lived in our precinct and would we
 go down and notify them that their daughter had been found dead. I told
 my partner, "I can't do that."
 "What do you mean?"
  "I can't go up and tell somebody that their kid. is dead."
  "You're not going to get out of this one. I did the last one and you're
  going to do this one."
 "I can't go up there and tell them. I can't."
 "You're going to."
 "Okay, but you'll be sorry."
  I went up to the house and knocked on the door. Man opens the door and
  I said, "Is Mrs. So-and-So there?"
 "Yeah."
  "I'd like to talk to her." So she comes downstairs and I said, "Ma'am
  would you mind coming into the living room? I'd like to talk to you.
  You'd better have a seat."
 258
             The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

  I'm standing there and she's looking up at me and I started smiling. I
  kind of put my hand over my mouth. I askedfher, "Do you have a daughter
  named So-andSo?"
  "Yes." The grin is starting to really grow across my face and my partner
  is looking at me real snotty like. I started laughing and so I bite my
  hand and try to hem and haw. Her husband's sitting across the room and
  he says, "She's dead!"
  "You're right!" I yelled. "Excuse me, I have to leave." I went out into
  the kitchen and I was hysterical. I don1 know, ever since Vietnam, I got
  in the habit of laughing at a death to keep from going nuts. When
  something like that happens, I just can't keep a straight face. My,
  partner says, "You weren't kidding. You really can't
 do this."

 There was a deal we did one night that we thought was funny as shit at the
 time. But when you think back about it you say, "God damn, we could have
 got in trouble for a lot of reasons."
  There was a compound about 100 yards square on a lot that was open street
  to street-you could see completely across it in both directions. No
  trees. The guy that owned the property had built a concrete block
  construction of eight rental units. It had a pine bark parking lot and
  driveway. Spotty weeds and grass covered the rest of the lot. There was
  a 12-foot-high fence all the way around it-a big fence-with only one
  opening in it, just big enough to drive a car through.
  The people that lived there at this point in time were drug d6alers. They
  had fires going outside in twin 55gallon drums. They sat around on little
  benches thrown together from lumber and concrete blocks. It was im-
  possible to sneak up on them and jump them. No cover. Only one way in.
                               259
 COPS

  We conspired and conspired and talked about it and thought about it from
  every angle we could. We actually did get an undercover man in and made
  a buy on them and put one of them in jail. But then they got real
  suspicious after that boy got busted and they wouldn't sell to anybody
  except people they knew. We couldn't get any more of them.
  So we said, "Let's start scaring them." We started wolf-packing. We'd get
  four or five cars and we'd zip up there and run into the gate and chase
  them all over and laugh and have a good time. Sometimes, they'd really
  get scared and they'd throw their shit into the fire. We thought, "What
  the hell, we're making them bum their dope about every other night, so
  this is great sport, right?"
  But that wasn't enough. We got greedy. We said, "Let's really scare
  them."
  So one of the guys brought an Uzzi that he owned from his house-an
  Israeli nine mm machine gun. He loads his own shells, so he loaded a
  thirty round clip of blanks. No one wanted to actually shoot this thing
  off ... so I did it.
  We only had three cars this time. When we rounded the comer, there were
  a good ten or fifteen guys sitting around the fires. Well, they started
  running. The two cars circumvented the area and started catching the guys
  climbing out over the fence. Where they saw them ditch the dope as they
  jumped the fence, they caught them coming down on the other side. We
  actually made a couple of good cases.
  But the big man was sitting there with his hand out over the barrel ready
  to ditch his shit in the fire. Calm as can be, but on Start, ready to
  run.
  -1 skid into the lot, which is dry as a bone, and just a big cloud of
  black dust goes everywhere. All you can see is this red flashing light
  on the dust particles hanging in the air. Around me it's lighting up like
  an auditorium.
 260
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 I'm laughing like a motherfucker already, because I see the expression on
 these guys' faces as I bail out of the car with this weapon.
  I squeezed down on this machine gun-Budda-buddabudda! This son of a bitch
  is only fifteen feet away from me. He is looking straight into my eyes.
  He grabbed his chest and his knees buckled. He just knew he was hit and
  he was going down. I stopped and thought to myself, "The motherfucker is
  having a heart attack. Oh, God damn. What have I done? Scared this man
  to death?"
  It turned out that he recovered. He hadn't had a heart attack. It just
  scared the shit out of him and he fainted dead away. We made two arrests
  out of this thing and not a swinging dick out of that whole place
  complained. If they had we'd have been up the fucking creek.

 We do some things on the street that would probably be frowned on if it
 was common knowledge that we did them. But the people it happens to,
 they're not going to go complaining because they are escaping jail. One
 of the things that I enjoy when it gets boring is busting crap games. Bust
 those crap games.
  We usually get four or five cars together and completely circle the block
  and then converge on the game. A lot of times, you get real close on them
  before the first one sees you. By then, by God, it's too late, buddy. You
  run and chase them, but you never try to catch the bastards. Because then
  you're going to have to do something with them. It's funny as hell to
  chase them. And they run, boy. They run good.
  The idea is to get as close as possible and jump either on the pile of
  money, or on the guy that has the money, before the rest of them get out
  of there. It's like a chess game. You have to get close enough to see the
  pile.
 We'll get there, converge on the damn thing, dive on
                               261
 COPS
 the money and cover it up. They'll grab it right from under your body and
 run, because they know there's twenty of them and you're not going to catch
 them all. So you have to literally tackle that damn money and cover it good
 while they haul ass.
  They don't run far, because they know you can't identify them for shit from
  anybody else on the street unless they got a red polka dot shirt on. They
  mingle with the rest of the people on the street and wait and .watch.
  We take the money and go cruising down the road. The kids know what the
  hell is going on. They get ready. We get all the money and shit together
  and you look around and here come the kids, like seagulls when you show up
  at the beach with a loaf of bread. You don't know where they come from, but
  the seagulls start coming from somewhere and in droves. That's just the way
  it is with the kids. We hand the money out the window of the cruiser to the
  kids.
  Choong! They haul ass. They know they're fixing to get,their butts fixed,
  because the players see what's going on and they want their money back.
  It's great sport. The sport of kings. It's beautiful. Those are some of the
  best times I've ever had.

 You get somebody in here that's a real hard ass and you treat them halfway
 decent, you know that somewhere down the road they're going to come back and
 say, "Hey, you were halfway decent to me. I'd like to do something for you."
 Then there's some people that come in here and you might as well talk to the
 door knob.
  They brought an eighteen-year-old kid in here one night that come in with
  a hard-on. I mean, he was raging. "White motherfucker!" and all that shit.
  He had whipped some old man up on Cleveland Avenue, robbed
 262
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 him of about sixty bucks and put the old man in the hospital. Cruisers just
 happened to be in the right area and got the guy. He had the man's wallet on
 him. The old man had a broken jaw and his ear was messed up. The kid had
 kicked him in the head a couple of times.
  This kid is really wound up. He's wanting to fight. It's a lot simpler to
  talk to somebody without handcuffs and stuff than it is with. After about
  fifteen minutes of motherfucker this and motherfucker that, he seems to
  calm down a bit. So we say, "Well, we'll get started now." We take the
  handcuffs off him.
  I say something to him and he jumps up, swings on me. So I took the
  telephone and hit him in the head with it. I'm not going to mess up my
  hands for nobody. Fve seen too many guys do it. Then you have to mark off
  on the injury to your hand and all that shit. So you use something and not
  hurt yourself.
  The telephone is pretty hard. When I smacked him in the head with -the
  phone, it seemed to take a little bit of the fight out of him. We kind of
  wrestled around and I said to him, "Are you going to start acting like a
  human being and not a God damn nigger?"
 "Yeah," he said, and quit fighting.
  Now the sergeant's got to come in because I've used force. There's got to
  be an investigation about whether it was excessive or whether it
  wasn't-which it wasn't. They have to interview me, the prisoner and
  everybody else in the room. There were two other officers in the room, so
  they interview them separately. I don't know what they say. I only speak to
  what I can say and I told the truth, because if you lie and get caught in
  a lie, it's just that much worse. Then the sergeant goes and interviews the
  prisoner.
  The prisoner says, "Yeah, I swung on the officer and he hit me with the
  telephone and we wrastled around. I deserved it. But he called me a
  nigger."
The sergeant comes back to me and says, "Did you 263
 COPS
 call the prisoner a nigger?" I told him I had said, "Are you going to
 start acting like a human being and not a God damn nigger?"
  That was a Thursday. I'm off on Friday and Saturday and I come back to
  work on Sunday. The sergeant says, "John, I'm going to have to give you
  an oral reprimand for using the word 'nigger.' " An oral reprimand is
  basically, "Don't do it again and everything will be all right." I
  screwed up and I knew it, so I said, "Let's get on with it."
  He writes the whole thing up and tells me. Then he has to send it through
  the chain of command from the sergeant to the lieutenant to the captain
  to the deputy chief to the chief. It got through the-heutenant and the
  captain. But then it went to the deputy chief who's black.
  "That's not enough," he says. "He deserves more punishment." So he
  changes it to a written reprimand that will stay there in my permanent
  file for three years. But even after three years, it will still be
  around. It comes back down the chain of command as a written reprimand
  even though it went up as an oral.
  "Wait a minute," I said. "You can't give me two reprimands for the same
  incident." I filed a grievance with the fraternal organization. The
  grievance officer says, "No problem, we'll get it taken care of." So the
  sergeant he waives his comments, the lieutenant waives his comments and
  the captain waives his comments.
  When it gets to the deputy chief, he's pissed. He writes this two-page
  thing that the black citizens of our city will not withstand racial abuse
  from the white officers. If it ever happens again, I will be fired and
  all this shit. I didn't get anywhere with him, so I went to the chief.
  Of course, the chief has to concur with his deputy, so he did.
  My little incident came out in a federal discrimination trial brought by
  the black officers of the city. My rep2,64
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 rimand was brought out as evidence-the fact that I had called a prisoner
 a nigger. It was in all the newspapers. I didn't even testify.
  I'm not denying that I'm prejudiced. But if all you deal with for eight
  hours a day is the assholes of society, you do get a little prejudiced.
  You get cynical. My wife says I'm hard. I'm hardened. Tbere's a lot of
  things that don't bother me and a lot of things that do.

 The highway patrol was having this big push to hire minorities. They had
 this black trooper who had just graduated from the academy. His assignment
 was going to be about a hundred miles away, but he hadn't been issued a
 patrol car yet. He was being relayed from highway patrol troop to troop
 to his new post.
  I'm at the station house. There were a couple of troopers I liked to go
  on duty with because they were real levelheaded and good law enforcement
  people. I was trying to learn as much as I could at that time. But those
  guys were out. So Bert turns around to me and says, "Want to ride?"
 "No, I'm waiting for Hunter."
  "Aw, come on, come on." I finally said okay. We go up to the county line
  and meet the patrolman who has brought this new black trooper to us.
  We're to carry him south. I get in the cage in the back and Bert puts the
  black trooper in the passenger's seat.
  We start heading south. Bert's not going down the main drag, he's taking
  all these back country roads. His intentions are that he's going to show
  this black trooper what it's all about--scare him a little bit and have
  some fun with him as Bert gets him where he's going.
  It was a Plymouth Grand Fury we was driving, one of the last of the good
  440 Police Interceptors. We're rolling along this narrow country road
  past cattle ranches and farms and we're doing about 110. Bert is driving
                               265
 COPS
 sitting sideways in the car with his right arm on the back of the front
 seat looking at this black trooper and driving with his left hand. He's
 watching the road out the corner of his eye, but he's trying to make it
 look like he's not, see? He's zipping along at 110 and he starts in on the
 black trooper. He reaches down and finds a country and western station on
 the radio and he says, "Say, boy, you like country music?"
  The black guy is seared, you know. He's thinking to himself, "I'm stuck
  in a car with a maniac." I'm sitting in the back of the car clutching
  onto the cage watching cows whiz by at 110 miles an hour. I am scared.
  Old Bert is saying again, "Do you like country and westdrn music, boy?"
 "Yeah, I like it fine," the trooper says.
  "I'll bet you listen to all that nigger jive, that boogaloo and all that.
  Don't you? You like that, boy?" He just keeps eating at him with this
  "boy" business, that southern cop routine.
  There's only one little narrbw road going into this one-horse town.
  Bert's still trying to impress this trooper and the road kind of snakes
  and everything. They have these things called goats which are vehicles
  they use in orange groves. It's usually some old chopped up vehicle like
  a flatbed truck. Sometimes it has a little like crane on the back of it
  to lift pickers up into the trees. Well, here's this goat ahead coming
  out of the groves on one side of the road to go into the groves on the
  other side of the road. He comes shooting across.
  I'm hanging on the cage in the back and Bert didn't see the goat. So I
  hollered, "BEEEEERRRT!"
  Bert hit the brakes and just locked them up at 110. 'Me nose of that
  patrol car is dipping down almost eating the pavement like something you
  might see the stuntmen do on "T.J. Hooker." It has took the black trooper
  and got him stung up against the dashboard, his face pressed against the
  windshield. I'm pressed 266
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 against the grate in the cage. The car comes to a stop and we've done left
 yards and yards of rubber.
  Bert starts laughing and he turns around and says, "Did that scare you,
  boy?" and just grins. Hits the gas and with a squeal of tires off we go
  again.

 He was a good trooper, but he was a redneck. He'd been brought up rough
 and hard. He and his daddy poached alligators to put supper on the table
 and shoes on their feet. All these are hard-luck stories, but he lived it.
  He hated blacks. His favorite thing to do was to patrol some of the back
  countries and wherever there's a creek or something back in there with
  a bridge over it, you always find black people in there with cane poles,
  fishing. His thing was to hunt these places up. He'd go stand on the
  bridge---and I have seen it-he would pull out his revolver and commence
  to shooting the corks off their lines. Of course, the first thing they
  would do was drop their cane poles and run for their cars and get the
  heck out of there. He thought it was great, this was his bag. He'd get
  with me and say, "Let's go see if we can find some corks to shoot." I'd
  say, "Oh, no, here we go again." He had his own flair and style.

 This one lieutenant would marry and divorce people. All police departments
 all over the country have a guy that does that shit, especially in the
 ghetto. Some old Irish lieutenant that has something special about him.
 He has winos coming in and out all day long, all kinds of wackos going and
 coming, so after a while it affects his brain. He also gets into it.
  "Oh, fine. You want to get married? Bring her over here." He makes up
  some kind of ceremony. Maybe he gives them their Miranda warnings. "Do
  you swear 267
 COPS
 to love and honor each other forever and ever? You're married."
  I remember coming into the precinct one night and a couple were there
  screaming that they wanted a divorce. The desk clerk says, "I can't give
  you a divorce."
  "I don't want no more of this bitch, man. She's driving me crazy."
  "But I can't give you a divorce. You got to go downtown and all this
  other shit. You really married?"
 "Yeah, we're married."
 "Where'd you get married?"
 "We got married here."
 "What?" the desk clerk says.
  "Yeah, we got married here. That lieutenant, he married us. Ten-dollar
  wedding."
  "Well, it's going to be a ten-dollar divorce, man. Put your ten dollars
  here. You are officially divorced."
  "Okay, get lost, bitch. We're divorced." And the girl walked out crying.
  That stuff is happy farm. It's crazy. When you think of the very
  professional modem police departmentthe computerized police
  department-you don't see a whole lot of that. But the fact is, in the old
  precincts in the really tough neighborhoods, that's what goes on.

 Me and another guy had pulled in and were gassing up our cars. Some guys
 were stealing gas at the time, but we weren't. I was in a sector which
 generally was busy, but it was midnight shift and everything was fucking
 dead. I said, "I'm fucking bored."
  "Yeah, I'm bored, too," he says. We talked a little and he said, "Hey,
  you ever been to the -races, the stock car races out at the track?"
      19
 "Yeah.
 "I used to drive in those years ago," he says. "Yeah,
 268
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 we used to have a lot of fun. We used to burn tires all the time."
 "Burn tires?"
 "Yeah, we ignite the tires to get traction."
 "No shit."
  "I'll tell you what. Back up here and I'll show you." So we back the two
  Chryslers up to the gas pump. We took about 25 gallons of gasoline, fresh
  from the nozzle, and squirted it on the tires and all underneath the back
  tires. -
  
  He gets in his car and he's looking at me. He turns his hat around and
  puts it on backwards. We're revving up the two patrol cars in neutral.
  "When I give you the signal," he says, "drop it into drive, spin your
  wheels and we'll take off from here like a bat out of hell." We had big
  engines at the time.
  - I don't know what the fuck possessed me to do this. I mean, what the
  fuck am I doing this for? We're doing this because we are bored. That's
  why we were doing it.
  He drops his arm, we peel out of the lot. Look into the rearview mirror
  we see-BOOM!-flames shooting must have been forty feet in the air. He
  takes off now. My car is on fire. The paint's burning right off. I'm
  afraid my gas tank is going to blow. He jumps out with his fire
  extinguisher and starts putting out my fire on the back of my cruiser.
  The paint is a mess. Ali, fuck! I got to get this car painted. We're not
  paying any attention.to the flames that we let go in the back.
  I'm out of my car and I said to Alan, "What the fuck. . . " At that, the
  gas pump blows up. The housing goes up. It was like you went down to Cape
  Canaveral and watched a rocket go up. It had to fly a hundred yards
  straight up.
  Now what are we doing? Now what's going to happen? All Alan says is,
  "Follow me." He calls up his
                               269
 COPS
 buddy in the next town and got him out of bed. He reported back in that I
 had mechanical trouble.
  The desk sergeant inside is an old guy. He sees fucking flames and he's
  going bananas. He thinks some electrical spark started it because he didn't
  realize we were out there. The fire departments from all around the area
  show up. The thing burned for like two hours.
  While they got the fire under control and were calling everybody in, Alan
  got this guy out at 2:30 A.M. who owned a body shop. By 6:30 A.M. the
  bumper was off, the entire trunk of the car had been taped and painted, the
  bumper was back on and the lettering was redone. I was back on the street
  and nobody ever found out about it. And that's how out of boredom you can
  get yourself fucked up, especially if you get yourself killed.

 Most police officers don't like to talk to the press. I enjoy it. I like the
 notoriety of it. When everybody else walks away, I take advantage of that.
 I walk up to the front. Nobody else wants to be on TV? Shit, I'll do it.
  I tell them, "TV cameras will not hang around a scene where there's no
  action, because the newspapers can snap that. So what you got to do when
  you get on the scene is, you got to move around a lot, do a lot of action.
  If you're constantly moving, that shows up on TV real nice." The other
  officers don't think of things like that.
  One time we had an incident where a guy had stolen a taxi, hit a couple of
  cars and injured a few people. Then he smashed up the cab. When the TV
  cameras got there, they went right over to one of the victims. The medics
  were working on this person that had been hit by the cab. On the news that
  night, you see me grabbing the end of the stretcher and I'm putting the
  victim into the back of the ambulance. Then the shot changed to the front
  of the ambulance on the news for the next clip. 270
             The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 I'm standing in front of the squad, looking into the camera and taking
 names. Then the next clip, I'm walking the suspect down and putting him
 in the back of the wagon. It was a one man show.
  One night somebody called in and said they thought they had spotted a
  baby hippopotamus in the river that runs through town. They were sending
  the cruisers out and I told my partner, "Man, this has got the makings
  of a good TV appearance."
 "Oh, no," he says.
  I call on the radio and tell them that we will respond and see if we can
  spot this animal in the river. "Get ahold of the director of the city zoo
  and get him out here. Also, you might want to call the fire department.
  And water rescue, we might need them down there."
 My partner is going, "What the hell are you doing?"
  We get down there and, all the newspapers show up as well as the TV guys.
  But we can't find no damn animal. The zoo wasn't missing one. Some drunk
  was seeing things and called in the report, I guess. There weren't
  anything in the damn river. This newspaper guy comes up to me and says,
  "What was it?"
 "It was the Mysterious River Monster."
 "What do you mean?"
  "Every hundred years, it pokes its head up out of the river, laughs at
  Mankind and then dives back down. It probably won't surface again for
  another hundred years." It was such a farce.
  The next day on the front page: "Mysterious River Monster reported seen
  by city police Officer Johnson."
  When I say I like to be on TV, I mean I really like it. I was riding a
  cruiser and we were going on a robbery call running with red fights and
  siren. This woman busts a stop -sign, runs right into the side of us and
  runs us right into a telephone pole. That knocks both of us out.
  I come to and the car is on fire. All this radio equipment and shit is
  laying down in the floorboards. We
                               271
 COPS
 can't get the car doors open. My partner and I were finally able to knock
 out the windows and crawl out that way.
  The rescue squad shows up. They're taking us to the hospital, when I look
  out the back end and see the TV cameras have showed up.
  "Stop the ambulance," I said. "I want to get back in the police car. We'll
  get back out and they can get us on film."
 "Are you serious?" the medic says.
  "Yeah, he's serious all right," my partner says. So they stopped the
  ambulance and they put us back in the car and then they loaded us back into
  the ambulance.
  I'm a frustrated actor. This is the only way I can get on TV.

 We were walking around in the park and it was late. There was this big black
 guy wearing a bedspread as a wrap. He's carrying a long square iron rod.
 Re's a weirdo. We see him walking around the parking lot so we decided we
 better check this guy out.
  I said to my partner, "You distract him and I'll throw this iron thing into
  the lake, out of his reach, so he doesn't have a weapon. We'll see what
  goes on from there." My partner distracted him. When the guy stood up and
  faced him, I walked over, nonchalantly picked up the rod and threw it in
  the lake. I could barely lift it, but I got it away from him. The guy got
  really mad, but he didn't try to attack us or anything.
 "What shall we do?"
  "He's not breaking the law or anything, so let's leave him alone."
  "But sooner or later, we're going to have a problem with him. Sooner or
  later something is going to happen with this guy. You watch," I told my
  partner.
 272
             The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

  About two weeks later we were working back in the park, but it was early,
  still daylight. Some woman comes up and says that there was a man chasing
  women along a foot path just south of the theater. We go down a little
  further and another woman describes him to us. She says, "He's a big black
  man with a bedsheet." We know it's the psycho. I say, "Oh, shit, John.
  We've had it. I told you we were going to run into this guy."
  Maybe a hundred feet further, we see this guy. Right away, he must have
  recognized us, because he starts yelling, "I'm going to get you. You fucked
  with me before!" He's by a tree in a little clearing.
  "This is how we'll work it," I tell John. "You go off to the side and
  distract him again. P.oke him with your stick, but hold your stick loosely.
  Let him get your stick. When he gets your stick, I'll blow him away. I'll
  just shoot him. That way we'll have a reason: He got your stick and you
  were in danger. There's no way we can just tackle this guy, the two of us
  alone, without getting hurt." He was big and he was strong. He was mean and
  he was crazy.
  John circles off to the side and starts talking to this guy. His voice is
  lowered, but I figure he's egging the guy on. I'm waiting. I got my gun
  out. I'm planning to blow this guy's brains. out, splatter them all over
  the field. I'm maybe twenty yards away, but I'm sure enough of my shooting
  that I'm going to get this guy. I'm not going to shoot him in the leg. He's
  not going to go down if I shoot him in the leg. I'm just going to blow this
  guy away. John is circling and talking to him.
  The next thing I know, the guy's putting his hands behind his back. John
  signals for me to come over and put my cuffs on him. They barely closed on
  his wrists. I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. I said, "John, how did
  you do it? What did you say?"
  "It was easy," John says. "I just kept telling him, 'Hey, nigger, you see
  that guy over there with the gun 273
 COPS
 out? He's going to blow your fucking brains out.' He took one look at you
 and put his fucking hands behind his back." He believed it and he believed
 it because it was true. I was going to do it. I wasn't going to get hurt
 and I wasn't going to allow my partner to get hurt. It didn't make any
 sense.
  But after we got the cuffs on him, he started to fight. He kicked my
  partner in the balls. I had him from behind and was wrestling him over
  toward some rocks to knock him out. I pushed the guy down. I look up and
  my partner is taking a swing at where the guy's head used to be. He's
  swinging with all his might, but now my head is in the way. So I pulled
  the guy back up again and when the stick hit him in the head it
  shattered. The guy went down, we took him into the house. Maybe that was
  excessive force or something, but it didn't seem to do any damage to him
  or really subdue him. When he came to, he was just wild.
  He was crazy, but he wasn't that crazy. We got him into the station and
  now he figures he's safe. What can we do to him with all the witnesses
  around? He starts going berserk, kicking stuff around and trying to throw
  things. Cursing and spitting.
  He spit on the sergeant. The sergeant just looked at me and said, "Harry,
  I know that you'll take care of this." He walked into the back room. Up
  till then I had never hit a prisoner, somebody that was already subdued,
  but this guy wasn't subdued. This guy was still causing a big ruckus. I
  didn't hit him and I didn't beat him, but I threw him around the back
  room a little, bit, That calmed him down a little bit to where he was
  going "Yes sir" and "No sir." I wasn't going to put up with his shit. I
  knew that he was rational enough to go through the processing.
  We took him down to court charged with assault on an officer. The lawyer
  tried the defense, "Your honor, 274
            The BorderUne, the Bad and, the Ugly

 my client was drinking. He didn't know what he was doing. "
  The judge said, "Intoxication is no excuse for trying to strike a police
  officer. " The guy went berserk in court. The court officers tried to
  hold him down. They were getting nowhere. So I hit him. That's a no-no.
  You don't hit prisoners in court. I knocked the guy out. The judge just
  smiled at me like, "Now I know why you did what you did."
  At the time I knew a girl who was an admitting nurse at the hospital
  psycho ward, so I used to take all the psychos down and she'd hustle them
  through. Normally it took hours for the processing. But she'd hustle them
  along. Then from midnight till four in the morning we'd be up in her room
  enjoying ourselves. Around five o'clock I'd call the station and say,
  "Gee, I just got finished with this psycho. Will you sign me out? I'm
  going home from here." I'd have been getting laid.

 These young kids want to be a bunch of PR people. I told them, "If you're
 going in there and talk, you got to talk their language." When I go into
 a bar in a black area where there are fights going on, I just climb up on
 the bar, walk down it and kick everybody's drink off the bar. Then I says,
 "Okay, motherfuckers, the Man's here. Let's take care of business." All
 these sons of bitches look up to where I'm standing. The go-go dancers is
 standing next to me and the crowd is wondering which one of us is going
 to put on the best act.
  We had a couple of suspicious persons on the lot next to this bar. When
  I ran a check, one of them had a warrant on him for a traffic ticket or
  something. So my partner and I put him into the wagon.
  A crowd of people started gathering out of the bar. One of them says to
  me, "We're not going to let you take our brother to jail."
                               275
 COPS
  The guy I was arresting had a fifth of MD 20-20 on him. So I took the
  bottle of wine off him and said, "I'm going to auction off this bottle of
  wine and the proceeds are going to go to the NAACP." They gathered around
  and I climbed up on top of the wagon out there on the street. I said,
  "Okay, we will start the bidding at ten cents. Who will give me ten cents
  for this bottle of wine?"
  "I'll give you ten cents," says this wino over to one side.
 . "Do I hear twenty cents? Who'll bid thirty cents?" I bid it up pretty
 good. Finally I got down off the wagon and set the bottle of wine down. I
 said, "I'm going to set this bottle of wine down on the ground here. Then
 I'm going to turn around and check on my prisoner there. I hope nobody takes
 this bottle of wine." As soon as I turned around somebody in the crowd grabs
 the bottle and takes off.
  When I turn back around I said, "Man, wine evaporates fast. Even the glass
  is gone." Everybody is laughing, cracking up. I told my partner out of the
  comer of my mouth, "Get in on the driver's side and start this thing. Soon
  as I jump on, get the hell out of here." He gets the thing started and I
  jumped in the back of the wagon and I said, "GO!"
  This brother is sitting in the back of the wagon and he says, "I'll tell
  you, man, that's class. I seen a lot of cons in my day, but that was
  fantastic. I enjoyed that show so much, I don't even mind going to jail.
  Five minutes ago, they were ready to kill you. Now look at them back there.
  They don't even know what the hell happened. They'll be telling each other
  about tonight for years to come."

 I'm a light sleeper. I heard somebody out messing with my car outside my
 apartment. I got up very quietly. He
 276
             The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 was so engrossed in siphoning the gas that I walked right up and stuck my
 gun in his ear. I said, "Swallow." He swallowed. I went back inside,
 called the local police and told them where they could find him. He was
 outside gagging, sick. I went back to bed.
  I got arrested for terroristic threats. I got a lawyer. I, got grilled.
  "Two wrongs don't make a right. Blah, blah, blah. " The son of a bitch
  had a record as long as my arm and he was only nineteen years old. I got
  a suspended sentence and a $300 fine. Fortunately that was all that
  happened.
  About two months later the bastard broke into my house again and took
  about $200 and a television set. Six months later while the son of a
  bitch was out on bail, he got shot in another incident. He robbed the
  wrong person.

 We got the call that there was a disturbance in progress at the ABC Lounge
 and we go roaring up there. A bunch of other highway patrolmen come
 roaring in and city policemen and county deputies. The county helicopter
 is hovering overhead flooding the parking lot with the spotlight. The
 people are being contained and those that are blowing up at the police
 officers are being arrested for disorderly intoxication. Everything is
 taken care of. No problems.
  Here comes this highway patrolman roaring up the avenue. Slams on the
  brakes and slides sideways into the parking lot. He jumps out. You
  remember the old Dodge Boys commercial on television that featured the
  ppitome of a southern cop? Jackson looked the part. He had little bitty
  eyes, sunk back in the folds of flesh in his face. Jowls hanging down and
  this big pot gut. He stood about six foot three, I guess. Big old
  rednecklooking guy.
Jackson comes jumping out of his patrol car and he's 277
 COPS

 got his sap gloves on and he's clutching his riot baton. He looks like he's
 dressed in a hurry, see. He's got his riot boots on, but they're unlaced and
 his pants are kind of shoved down into them. He's looking around and he
 can't find anything to do. This guy comes walking across the parking lot
 heading for his car. Jackson ran up to him and said, "Weren't you told to
 get out of here, boy?" Jabbed that riot baton in the guy's ribs, doubled him
 over and drug him off to his patrol car.
  We all sort of went, "Oh, my God," under our breath. Jackson had on his
  helmet and the straps were dangling. It was kind of funny, but it was sad,
  too, if you think about it.
  Here comes this car down the avenue, this guy and this girl. The girl leans
  out the window and she sees all the blue lights and the cop cars and the
  helicopter in the air. She hollered something out the window. I never made
  out what it was she said. But Jackson did. He ran, jumped into his patrol
  car, puts it in gear and bums rubber out of the lot after these two.
  Me and a trooper I was with said, "We got to go with him." We jumped in our
  car and took off. By now, Jackson pulled the guy over a couple of blocks
  away. He has got that guy out in a parking lot, making him dance. He made
  him dance on his left leg, then he made him dance on his right leg. He made
  him do the Twist. He was standing there with his riot baton, getting his
  kicks, making this poor guy Twist all over the parking lot. The guy's
  girlfriend is in the car watching all this and the guy is crying.
  We get ahold of Jackson and say, "That's enough, Jackson. This is all taken
  care of now. Let's go." We managed to got Jackson back in the car.
  Jackson had been sitting in his house listening to the police scanner. When
  I'm home, I don't listen to a scanner. When I'm on the job, I monitor the
  police frequencies, because I like to know what's going on
 278
             The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 around me. But when I'm home, I turn the damn thing off, pop open a beer,
 prop my feet up and watch TV just like everybody else. Jackson was -sitting
 at home and heard this call come over the scanner. He's offduty, but he's
 got to go get involved in this big situation.

 Our sector turned out to be the bridge plaza. It is known for its whores, 99
 percent of which were men, usually ex-cons who did five-dollar blowjobs in
 cars. They wore wigs and tied their cocks up with pantyhose back toward
 their ass, so if the guy reached down he couldn't feel the swanz hanging
 there to give the guy away. They were all ugly as sin, but did they do
 business? Oh, man. They're making $100 to $150 in a night turning fivedollar
 blowjobs.
  We also had the bridge itself as part of the sector, so there were a lot of
  accidents to take care of. Other than that the sector was quiet. It was
  factories. In the daytime it was busy with traffic, but not much crime. At
  night, everything was closed, up and there was nothing but the hookers.
  Something possessed the captain to tell the lieutenant to tell the sergeant
  to tell us to clean up the hookers. Being the literaI-minded cop that I
  was, when they said, 46clean up the hookers," I said, "Okay. You want it
  done, we'll do it." I cleaned them up. Me and my partner did it. We got
  some reputation, but we did it.
  I'd drive around the sector and we'd see a hooker. I call them all women
  even though most of them were men. It's easier in your mind and it's easier
  when you point at somebody who looks vaguely like a female to say "she"
  instead of calling it a he and having to explain that it's a guy dressed up
  like a girl. We'd drive up to them and I'd say, "Okay. That's it for
  tonight. Go home."
 "Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay," she says. So you drive
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 COPS

 away. You come back five minutes later and she's still there.
 "Didn't I tell you to leave? Leave."
 "Yeah, okay. I'll leave. I'll leave."
  Ten minutes later she's still there. It's frustrating. It's aggravating.
  I said, "Hey, I told you to leave, man!"
  What are you going to do? Lock them up for loitering? The courts were
  throwing that out right and left. The hookers were laughing at us. The
  desk didn't want you to bring them in. They want you to clean it up
  without doing anything. The captain was giving lip service to this, but
  I guess he wasWt really expecting us to do it, much less to succeed. He
  expected us to do what everybody else ever did that had ridden that
  sectordrive by occasionally and say, "Get lost!" Then you were supposed
  to put up with the affront of somebody throwing the authority of the
  badge in your face. That is what they would do by not leaving when you
  said to lea~ ve.
  So I started becoming a psycho. I'd tell them to leave and they wouldn't
  leave. I'm working the midnight shift. It'd be five o'clock in the
  morning and this hooker would still be standing on the corner after the
  tenth time I told her to leave. I started slow in the beginning and I'd
  only chase them down the sidewalk at 5 or 10 miles an hour. But after a
  while, I was hitting 30-35 miles an hour with lights and siren down the
  sidewalk. If they didn't move, I probably could have stopped without
  hitting them. But they moved.
  I put the fear of God into them. No, I put the fear of me into them. I
  was the one guy who, when he said move, you moved or this guy was going
  to do something weird. They'd see me coming and they'd start to run.
  I'd come rushing up at them, jump out of the radio car with my stick and
  I'd be screaming, "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break your legs,
  you son of a
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            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 bitch. I told you to get out of here." They'd never had a guy try to do
 this shit to them.
  I'd make them come over. They'd shuffle over expecting to get yelled at.
  I'd say, "Put your leg on that fire hydrant." They put their leg up on
  the fire hydrant. I'd reach into the radio car and bring out one of those
  bi , old-fashioned fire hydrant wrenches. I'd go to take
  9                              1
 a swing like it was a baseball bat at their leg. "I'm going
 to break your fucking lea, you fucker. I told you not
 to come back here. I told you last week and the week
 before that. I'm fed up with this shit. I'm going to
 fucking bust your leg!" I'd swing it at the fire hydrant
 in such a way that even if they didn't move, I'd miss
 their leg. Almost invariably, they'd pull their leg away.
  I terrorized them. The only one that got hurt was one who fell down and
  skinned up his knees and hands and got a scratch on his face while
  running from us, but I didn't touch her.
  'They used to call my partner The Nice Guy. I had a mustache that I grew
  into a Fu Manchu down past my chin about an inch and a half and I'd twist
  it. The hookers called me The 'Stache.
  They were afraid of me, but my partner they could look to for shelter
  almost. He would protect them from my wrath. That was the act that we put
  on. He would say, "Aw, 'Stache, don't break her leg."
 "I'm going to kill this bitch."
  "Now, 'Stache, take it easy. She's going to go away and she won't come
  back. Isn't that right, honey?"
  But we still had some who would keep coming back or new ones to replace
  them. You get tired of doing the same thing every night. I thought, "How
  are we going to do this? How often can you threaten to break their leg
  and then not break their leg before they realize it's just a sham? It's
  not going to work forever." I had to figure out a way to escalate it
  without causing real
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 COPS
 damage. It had been basically scary., but nonviolent. A show. A facade.
  We -picked three of them up one night, took them to the railroad yard and
  locked them in a boxcar. We were going to let them out in the morning when
  we got off work. When we got back there in the morning, they'd kicked out
  the screen on one of the little air hatches and escaped. In their minds,
  they were going to Oregon. Only one of those three ever came back to our
  sector.
  We took three girls in the car one night and we drove down under the
  bridge. My partner and I get out of the car and start looking around as
  though we were looking for a body and shining flashlights around in the
  water.
 "You see her?"
  "Nah, I think she hit the water. I don't think she landed up here."
  "Yeah, we don't have to worry about the body. She's out in the ocean by
  now."
  This was all for the hookers' benefit in the back of the car. Word got out
  that we had thrown a girl off the bridge. "The 'Stache threw a hooker off
  the bridge." In some versions she was dead before we threw her off. In
  others she died from the fall.
  I ran into one of these girls one night and I threatened to hit her with
  the stick. It didn't seem to faze her. Nothing seemed to faze her. For some
  reason, I don't know why, I took out the gun. I was standing like two feet
  away from her and I stuck it right between her eyes. I said, "If you don't
  get out of here, I'm going to blow your fucking brains out."
  She just looked at me. So I cocked the gun. Her eyes sort of revolved. They
  seemed to almost change places as they followed the cylinder rotating. Then
  she just dropped like a stone to the sidewalk.
  I looked at the gun. It was still cocked. I let the hammer down and broke
  it open. There's no fired shells. For a minute, I thought I'd shot her.
  When you're hyped
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 up, maybe you pulled the trigger and didn't even realize it. I had to look
 to make sure I didn't blow this hooker away. But I hadn't. She'd just
 fainted.
 Oh, shit. My partner looked at me. "What'd you do?"
  "I think she fainted," I said. So I put my gun back in my holster; we got
  back in the car and drove away.
  There's another hooker around the corner. I told my partner to stop. I get
  out and I says, "Wait a minute, I need you to do me a favor."
  "What do you want," she says. She's scared. "Come on, 'Stache, what is it?
  What do you want?"
  I walked her to the corner and I said, "I just shot that girl down there
  and I want you to take her to the hospital for me." She looks and halfway
  down the street she sees this body laying on the sidewalk. She screams and
  runs the other way.
  This added to our reputation. Threw a hooker off the bridge, put them in
  railroad cars, breaking their legs. When they get together and talk, it's
  not, "Oh, I pulled my leg away and nothing really happened." They tell each
  other, " 'Stache hit me, he broke my leg." "Put me in a boxcar and I ended
  up in Florida." "Yeah, I saw them throw the girl off the bridge. She was a
  friend of mine." So we got a reputation for being killers.
  Things got so bad--or good, depending on your point of view-that I could
  get in the radio car at the beginning of the tour, drive around the sector
  one time and look at all the girls and let them see me. Then we'd go to the
  diner and get coffee, drive someplace and have a roll. When we'd drive
  around the sector again, there wouldn't be one girl on the street.
  Later on, it bothered me, because there was a part of me that had the
  feeling that what I was doing was wrong. But I was told by my superiors to
  do it. I had to do it. I'm not the type of person to do a halfassed job. I
  didn't hurt anybody. I scared the hell out of a 283
 COPS

 lot of people and broke a lot of rules. But I got my job accomplished. I
 cleaned up the sector.

 Downtown precinct has some really elegant detectives. In order to work
 downtown, you had to dress and look good. Generally they were excellent
 detectives, but they also had to present a good appearance.
  I had an arrest in that area so I was in the downtown precinct. They were
  interrogating a bunch of people. Finally they got to this guy who turned
  out to be a child molester. Like everyone else, police get really angry at
  child molesters. Most cops get crazy over it. Some cops are maybe a little
  more educated and understand that this guy has a very serious problem.
  They'll deal with it much more professionally, but there is a certain group
  that if they get a hold of a child abuser, the guy is in a lot of trouble.
  I saw this guy. He's a big, big fat guy, looked slightly brain-damaged. He
  was sitting in the corner. They had him for a number of child molestation
  cases.
  This detective sergeant, an elegant guy, looked Re a movie actor, he came
  in after all the other guys had finished the interrogation of this
  character, taken statements from him and fingerprinted him. They'd done the
  whole bit. He read all the reports. He'd been out drinking, so he was also
  half in his cups. But he's looking at all the paperwork.
  I had a prisoner and I was sitting at a desk near him. He calls to me and
  says, "Have you got the prick cards?"
 "What do you mean, the prick cards?"
  "You know, the prick cards," and he gave me a wink. "I got to print this
  guy."
  "Oh, yeah, yeah," and I picked up a fingerprint card and I said, "Here's
  one."
  "All right." He looked at it. "You. Come over here." From the way he lookdd
  and the way he dressed and
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            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 spoke, you'd just respond to him. He looked like he was used to command
 and he was clearly not a crazy. "Sir, what's your name, ah, Mr. So-and-So.
 Sit here. I'm in charge of this section. In a case of this kind, what we
 do is, we're maintaining a record of all the people arrested for child
 molesting. We're keeping prints of all their pricks."
  "I've been arrested for this three times before and I've never heard of
  this," the fat guy says,
  The detective sergeant replies quietly and calmly, "It's a new procedure.
  I'm afraid we're going to have to print your prick. You see, it doesn't
  matter whether we print your thumb or your fingers or your prick.
  Sometimes we have semen stains or marks inside of kids' mouths or the ass
  of somebody's kid. We want to be able to check the cards for possible
  identification. Especially if someone kills a child."
  "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think that's possible.
  Besides I would never kill anyone. I've never done anything to anyone who
  didn't want it done. I paid them for it."
  "Yealf, well, that may be the case, but we're going to have to take your
  print. So stand up and come over here." He had this little portable print
  board on the desk--generally, they're up on -a table, bolted down. He
  sets it up. He had the card folded over and all this shit. He goes, "All
  right, drop your pants."
  I couldn't believe this guy. Everybody in the room stops and looks. "What
  the fuck is this guy doing?"
  "You guys by the door," the detective says, "make sure no women come in,
  because I'm going to be taking a prick print here. " So there's witnesses
  all over the place. There's cops and there's a couple of prisoners. The
  child molester drops his pants. The guy tells him, "Now take your prick
  out and put it out here on the desk." The guy takes his prick out and
  lays it on the desk. The detective grabs the guy's prick in his hand.
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 COPS
 Under the desk he had a blackjack in his hand. He came up with a slapper
 and gave this guy a shot that went through everybody in the room.
 Everybody grabbed their balls. Boom! He hit him in the prick. The guy
 screamed and doubled over.
  My prisoner was a dope dealer. He got up and said, "He deserved that.
  Fuck him."
 . The cop said, "Okay, now you can go back in the cage." Where my head was
 at the time, I wouldn't have had the balls to do it. Excuse the pun, but
 I just wouldn't have had the balls. I would like to do that to somebody
 like that. I probably would. But to have the chutzpah to grab hold of this
 guy's prick and hit it with a blackjack, that was bad.
  The guy went to court later on and he told the story to the judge and the
  Legal Aid had the guy show his prick and the judge said, "He must have
  done this to himself. I can't believe a police officer would behave that
  way. I mean, a cop told you he was going to fingerprint your penis and
  then he grabbed it and hit it with a blackjack? Come on."

 Some guys need a beating. In the street or the back of Ahe precinct,
 there's a guy who needs a beating. And you got to do it. If you don't do
 it, the next situation that a cop runs into this character, it's going to
 be bad.
  It's hard for people to understand or believe that. But the fact of the
  matter is, if this guy runs into a cop, gets into a fistfight and really
  beats the shit out of him, he believes he can beat up all cops, if you
  arrest him without working him out. He's got to know that the next time
  he does this, he's going to get his ass kicked in.
  So I have no problem with that. Neither did any cop I've ever known have
  any problem with that. As long as you don't do it in public, as long as
  the guy really
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            The BorderUne, the Bad and the Ugly

 needs it, and as long as you don't carry it too far. Give him a beating
 and that's it. Don't break his ribs, you don't knock his teeth out, you
 don't crack his skull and give him a concussion.
  It's simple. Have a guy hold him. You rap him in the shins a couple of
  good times. Let him know that he's going to get his ass kicked and it's
  going to hurt.
  But how do you stop these guys. Tbere's a very thin line between giving
  a guy a couple good shots in the mouth and giving him a couple good shots
  with a nightstick across the shins. The problem is that you can't stop
  guys once they get started.
  I went into a precinct once and seen a guy hanging on a cage. He looked
  like Jesus Christ. What they did was they put a handcuff on either hand
  and hung him up on the cage with his arms spread. They cut out a crown
  of thorns from a piece of paper and tacked it to the back of his head.
  Put his feet together like Christ and tied them with a shoelace. The guy
  had a beard. I genuflected when I walked in. Christ on a Cage.
  It was early, like seven o'clock in the morning, and the sole person in
  the squad room was this old Irish detective, smoking a cigar and doing
  paperwork-ton of paperwork. Here's this guy hanging there. I was there
  to get some forms. I stood in front of the detective and he didn't even
  look up. I says to the guy, "That guy alive or what?"
 "Fuck him."
  "What happened?" What happened was that this guy was involved in a family
  fight and some cops showed up. He had made a Carolina pancake. A Carolina
  pancake is a mixture of lye, Crisco or bacon grease. Fat and lye. They
  cook it up and then they throw it on you. The lye will bum right through
  you. You mix lye with grease and you can't wash it off. It happens a lot.
  The cops had responded. This guy came to the door and splashed a cop.
  Caught him on the side of the face 287
 COPS
 and it ran down his overcoat. They couldn't get the overcoat off him fast
 enough and the stuff burned right through it to him.
  This guy was psycho, he ended up burning three or four guys. So they beat
  the hell out of him and then they hung him up. This old guy looks up at him
  hanging there and says, "He's not going to do that again." That guy
  deserved a beating. Whether he deserved to be hung up on a cage like that
  all night ...

 I ran into a different kind of cop that I'd never met before, the cop who
 got off on brutality. Got off on degradation, got off on putting people
 down. They stuck me with this guy named Gray. He was fat, sloppy, out of
 shape. He was a pig, physically and mentally. He was a mental pig.
 Apparently this guy had problems with other partners so they would put
 people with him that didn't know it. I said, "Okay, I'll try it for a
 while." I discovered why people didn't want to work with this guy.
  You start out the tour with him saying, "Are you catching?" That meant if
  you came across a crime and made an arrest are you willing to be the one
  who makes the arrest and has to do the paperwork. He didn't like to go to
  court. He didn't like the hassle of it.
  If I said yes, he'd say, "Good. I don't have to be nice." Then he'd go out
  of his way to be nasty to people, to cause problems, to push people around.
  He'd be arrogant for no cause.
  I was the type of person that if I took a dislike to somebody, I could turn
  a traffic ticket into a felony collar just by the way I treated them. I
  didn't have to be insulting or pushing people around or brutal to get a guy
  to lose his temper and take a swing at me. If the guy came out of the car
  when I stopped him with, "What do you want, motherfucker, money?" I could
  turn that 288
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 kind of attitude into a felony real easy. Assault on a cop, just by the
 way I smiled at the guy and yes-sir'd and no-sir'd. Check the depth on his
 tread. "You got a bad exhaust system" and "Let me hear your horn. Now the
 lights." You'd be surprised what you can do with people's heads. But I
 didn't make a habit out of it unless they came on to me first.
  Gray got off on doing this. He liked doing it. That was his thing.
  One day he told me while I was driving, "Make a Uturn." I made the U-turn
  and he tells me where to stop. He calls this girl over to the car. I
  didn't know if he knew her from somewhere before or what, but he starts
  rapping with her. She's leaning on the car. He's looking at her tits and
  he says to her, "Are those real? Are they really all yours?"
 "Of course, they are," she says.
  "Let me feel." He puts his hand out and starts playing with this woman's
  breasts. I'm sitting there flabbergasted. He just picked her up at random
  on the sidewalk.
  The next thing I know, he's got her head dragged inside the radio car
  through the window, her tits are resting on the car door apd he's
  squeezing her tits. I can't believe this is happening to me. What is this
  guy doing? Is he nuts? But this is where this guy's head is at.
  Gray loved to treat people like garbage. You'd go to family disputes. He
  liked to push around husbands and try to get them to swing so he could
  lock them up for assault-if I was willing to make the arrest. Then I'd
  get stuck with the assault or some other bullshit arrest.
  I started being a bounty hunter, which is a guy who gets a lot of
  arrests. The system being what it is, you can get overtime if you make
  the arrest. They had sent me to school for forged licenses, so I started
  using that to advantage. It's a bullshit collar, but it's a felony.
                               289
 COPS

  I'd stopped some guy driving down the street and looked at his license and
  saw that it was forged. I said, "Okay, you're under arrest. It's not a big
  deal. You go down to court and you'll be out tomorrow morning. I make a
  hundred dollars overtime."
  While talking to this guy, a kid walks past us and in his back pocket he's
  got these sticks attached with a piece of chain between them. Those are not
  classed as dangerous instruments but as deadly weapons, meaning that just
  carrying them is against the law. I figured, "While I got the guy with the
  forged license, I'll take the young guy with the sticks, too." It's eight
  o'clock in the morning and he ain't going to karate class. He's carrying
  them as a weapon.
  So we put him in the radio car and I told the guy with the forged license
  to take his car and follow me to the station house. "Don't run on me. Just
  follow me like a nice guy." The guy with the sticks offered no resistance,
  but my partner was unnecessarily rough, pushing him into the radio car. The
  other guy followed us to the precinct.
  We got there. We're walking them into the station house. For no reason,
  Gray grabs this guy with the forged license and just shoves him. In doing
  so, he injured his thumb. He sprained it, badly enough to damage the
  ligaments. Now he's injured "in the line of duty," and he wants me to tell
  somebody a bullshit story that he got injured by subduing the kid with the
  sticks. He wanted me to lie and say that this kid resisted arrest. He
  wanted an excuse for the injury and maybe get a medal out of it, plus get
  time off.
  By this time, I couldn't stomach working with this guy and I'd been asking
  out for months and months and been getting stalled. I hated his guts. Just
  being in the car with him turned my stomach.
 I told the sergeant, "That's not how it happened. I'm
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            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 not going to say it happened like that. He did it by pushing this dude for
 no good reason. Fuck him."
  They wrote it up that he sprained his thumb while he was helping the
  prisoner with the sticks into the radio car so he wouldn't hit his head
  on the top of the door. To save face for him, because I wouldn't lie and
  add onto the charge. That motherfucker retired from the job with
  three-quarters pension on a medical disability because they operated on
  his thumb and further fucked it up. He got out with 75 percent of his
  full pay, tax free, plus social security for being a scumbag. But at
  least I got rid of him as a partner.

 I got stuck with a bad guy. If you're the new guy on the block, you get
 stuck with the guy nobody else wants to work with. When I first started
 narcotics, all the partners were established. You got to get the guy who
 had no partner. But how bad could the guy be?
  I had this wonderful Irish lieutenant, a beautiful man. My first day in
  the division he said, "Look, I'm assigning you to this guy. -He's an
  outstanding cop and a good detective. He's a little bit kookie, but
  you'll calm him down a little bit."
  "What do you mean by kookie? What does that mean?"
  "You'll see. The guy has a little hand problem and most guys don't like
  to work with him."
  "I worked with a lot of guys who were tough guys. I don't mind working
  with guys like that, as long as he's not a sadist or crazy. I don't need
  to work with a crazy," I said. A hand problem means that he beats up on
  people. I can usually deal with that, because I don't do it at all.
  Generally a guy like that will only behave that way if the guy with him
  will back him up. I wouldn't. I just didn't like it.
So I call the office, they give me this guy's home 291
 COPS
 phone number and I call him. The guy sounds like he's from West Point, very
 direct, very official. He's a very, very square guy, I can tell. He says,
 "We're doing ten to six tomorrow. I want you to meet me at the precinct. I
 have some paperwork to do there. Then we'll go out and take a look."
  This guy seemed really nice. He says, "Look, you have to be careful around
  this area. It's a zoo. The animals are loose around here. What you do is,
  park your car across the street in the gas station. It's the only safe
  place around here. Keep your car next to mine. I got a black Oldsmobile.
  I'll be there before you."
 "Maybe I'll get there before you," I said.
 "No," he says. "I'm always there first."
  All right. He was there first. I got there at a quarter to ten and his car
  was already in the parking lot. I put my car next to his and I walk up to
  the squad room. He's typing arrest cards and telephone cards. He's a big
  blond Swede. I say, "How are you doing?" And we started talking about the
  narcotics division.
  "You're going to love it here," he says. "It's a really nice place to work.
  If you don't mind working with junkies, it's the best place to work in the
  whole department. Nobody bothers you here. Nobody wants your job. You do
  what you want to do as long as you give them four arrests a month. I give
  them four." He led the group in arrests, always the most arrests in the
  group. "I give them four and I want to give them eight a month as a team."
  "I'll give them ten a month. I don't give a shit," I said. "I like making
  arrests."
  "Terrific. You're going to like working with me. You look good. I'll use
  you as an undercover guy." And all this other business.
  "By the way," I said, "what are you doing with the arrest cards?"
 "Holy shit!" he says. He gets up and he's running
 292
            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly out of the station house.
            I'm running after him. We run across the street into the gas
            station. He opens the trunk of his car and there's a junkie
            in his trunk. He pulls this guy out of the trunk. I'm
            thinking, "The guy's got to be dead." It's the middle of the
            summer, a black car with the sun beating down. The guy could
            barely talk.
 "Who is this guy?" I ask him.
 "This is my informant."
  "Your informant? Aren't we supposed to treat these guys nice?"
  He pulls the guy out of the trunk and the guy is crying and begging him.
  He tells the junkie, "You're fucking going to jail. I'm locking you up."
  "What'd the guy do?" Turns out my new partner went to meet this informant
  before he came to meet me. When he went into the guy's apartment, he
  found a set of works on the table and a bag of heroin. My partner says,
  "He knew I was coming and he didn't clean the place up. He embarrassed
  me and I'm locking him up for that junk."
  "But he's your informant. He's a junkie. I mean, you got to know the
  guy's going to shoot dope."
  "Fuck him. He embarrassed me and he's going to jail."
  The guy is pleading with him, calling him Mister, 'Tlease Mr. So-and-So.
  I'm so sick. Please, let me shoot up my skull."
  "I don't believe this," I thought to myself. Even if you were real
  straightlaced, if you locked up a real sick junkie, you let him shoot up
  if he had any junk. You didn't want to put up with him throwing up all
  over your car and the precinct. Let them shoot up before you take them
  in. Not this guy. He enjoyed it. Loved it. Loved to see them sick.
  I worked with him for nearly two months. After the first week I started
  begging to get away from him. He did things that were fucking
  indescribable. The guy would 293
 COPS
 never take a dime. Never take a free meal. This guy -would do nothing
 wrong. But he was the most sadistic, bestial person I'd ever met and I had
 met some bad guys. This guy made them look like pikers. He was incredible.
  He was the most prejudiced, bigoted person. He hated everybody. But
  blacks really suffered the brunt of his hate.
  We had a search warrant for a guy we watched for a long time. Finally we
  did get into the house, caught the guy in bed, got him cold and executed
  the warrant. Girlfriend was there. We searched the apartment, let the
  girlfriend go. Then we had the guy alone.
  I could barely get my handcuffs on him, but I did get them on. As soon
  as I got the cuffs locked, my partner started beating on him, kicking
  him, hitting him. This guy was a big guy and he didn't budge. He just
  took it. Finally he looked at my partner and he said, "Sooner or later
  you're going to have to take these cuffs off of .me, you know."
  The cop was like six-two and ran about 170 pounds. Tall but thin and
  wiry. He says to me, "Go down, get the car and meet me out in front of
  the building." So I go get the car. He's coming down the stairs with this
  guy and he yells to me, "Can you hear this?" Bongbong-bong. He's hitting
  the guy with a blackjack as he's going down the stairs. "Listen to the,
  way his head sounds. Listen to that conk." Bong-bong-bong. "Listen to
  that. It's hollow, man." The guy comes down and he's all lumped up.
  This prisoner was only about six feet tall but an easy 230 pounds. We
  barely get him in the car. Head shaved, one of these triple X guys. He
  was pulling on the handcuffs behind his back. I thought, "Oh, boy.', .
  We get him into the station house. My partner is throwing the guy around.
  The guy falls down and he's kicking him in the legs, in the balls, all
  over. Cops saw
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            The Borderline, the Bad and the Ugly

 this. They're walking around saying, "Fuck this guy." They didn't care.
  Get up to the squad room and now we got to do the paperwork. Who's going
  to print him? My partner says, "I'll print him." He takes his gun and
  puts it away. That's procedure. I turned to the guy and I says, "Look,
  there's just the three of us here. I know how you feel, but you took your
  beating like a man and . . ."
  "Fuck you. When he takes these cuffs off me, I'm going to kill him."
  "Oh, Jesus, you do that and I'll have to kill you. Someone's got to kill
  you if you attack that cop."
  "I don't care. I'm a man. I ain't no animal and he can't treat me like
  that. I'm going to fucking kill him. It's as simple as that." He was not
  excited. He spoke calmly. He wasn't mad with me. "You want to try and
  stop me, you can try and stop me. But I'm going to kill this
  motherfucker."
  This guy's eyes were going round and round in his head and I said to my
  partner, "You're going to have to take the cuffs off this fucker. I'm not
  doing it." I put the guy in the cage and I finally took the cuffs off in
  there. I figured I'd best take them off, because he wasn't going to come
  at me-at least I didn't think he would. I get the cuffs off of him and
  he's rubbing his wrists. He could have torn us both apart.
  I said to him, "Look, go through this shit, get printed." I printed him.
  He acted like my blond partner didn't live. He wouldn't acknowledge his
  questions. He just said to him, "Come near me and I'll kill you, moth-
  erfucker. "
  I told my partner, "If I were you and I saw this guy on the street in the
  future, I'd either run for it or shoot him. You either got to kill him
  or you're going to have to hide, because this guy is going to kill
  somebody someday, and it will probably be a cop."
About two weeks later, we ran into some woman in 295
 COPS
 the street and this partner pulled the same shit. A black woman walking
 down the street. We have no idea who she is. She has nothing to do with
 what we are up to. People find it hard to believe that someone would be-
 have like this. She was pregnant. He walked up to her and said, "What
 black prick did that to you." He thought it was funny. The woman conked
 him on the head with a wine bottle. She really whapped him. He ended up
 going into the hospital.
  Turned out this woman was an assistant principal at one of the local
  schools. She wrote a letter on him.
  Right after that, he got into a fight. I told the bosses, "Look, I can't
  work with this guy. I can't be near him. He's crazy. The guy's nuts. Let
  the next guy who comes in worry with him."
  That's what they did. The new guy would work with him for two months and
  then the next new guy would work with him for two months. I saw him years
  later. I was going into a precinct and he was coming out with a prisoner.
  His prisoner looked like.he'd been through a meat grinder.

 296
                        CHAPTER 7

       Hardening of the Heart

 "YOU COME into the job with a lot of preconceived notions. No matter how
 worldly you are or knowledgeable you are, 'your body of experience has ex-
 panded exponentially because of the job.
  "Whatever sacred cows you may have been feeding all those years are
  usually slaughtered after a very little while. That's probably the
  greatest single tragedy that every cop faces. You find out that nothing
  is on the level. You find out that people die for nothing.
  "Whatever it is that drives people to religion is what you experience.
  And yet you're in a position where you can't accept religion, because you
  can't function that way. The job runs against every good impulse you ever
  had." These are the words of a thirty-eight-year-old detective describing
  the slow descent into cynicism and self-doubt that most cops experience
  sooner or later.
  Police officers are face to face with the evil in humankind. They see
  daily the worst impulses of men and women driven by blind passion as well
  as the broad spectrum of brutality the human intellect can concoct.
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 COPS
 In the wake of crime, insanity and pointless maliciousness, they are
 constantly confronted with grisly reminders of man's mortality. The longer
 they study our culture, the more deeply they probe into the dark side of
 American society, the more pessimistic they become. Here is a profile of the
 perpetual offender from a retired New York City cop who spent most of his
 twenty years on the street dealing with narcotics cases:
  64-What people don't understand is that there are street criminals out
  there now who are irretrievable predators that just get off-it's a sexual
  experienco---on people's pain and on people's crying and begging and
  pleading. They get off on it. They love it.
  "You're not going to scare them. T'here's nothing you can do with them.
  You've got to defeat them somehow. To talk to them about any sort of sense
  of morality, they don't have any sense of morality, they don't have any
  sense of right and wrong. Their sense of right and wrong is, 'Do I have a
  few bucks in my pocket to do what I want to do?'
  "It's a major misconception having to do with drug addicts that this
  screaming, crazy junkie is going to go out and rip off an old lady. Heroin
  addicts are sick most of the time. If they're not sick, they're high. When
  they're sick, they don't feel like beating up some old lady. When they're
  high, they don't beat up on anybody.
  "Me real street shit is generally somebody who doesn't use drugs. I've
  known a lot of those guys. They have a life story just like other people
  except their life story changes at the age of ten. They are extortionists
  by eleven. By twelve, they're untreatable. Forget it.
  "These guys are out there and they'll take your head off without blinking
  an eye. Your pain doesn't register with them. The blood, the shock, nothing
  registers."
  Policemen hate and fear the criminals. "Me cops in turn are feared and
  hated by most of the people they ,298
                    Hardening of the Heart

 police. The establishment they serve seems to hold them in contempt. In the
 cop's opinion, the press is a mortal enemy, ready to chew up an officer's
 entire career just to spit it out as a sensational headline or a news
 update.
  "You meet people and all they want to talk about is how this policeman who
  was a real bastard gave them a ticket. You go into a restaurant and
  everybody stops eating and they stare at you. The people at the next table
  are talking about the time they got a ticket and look at the cops in here
  eating when they should be out saving people and arresting criminals. You
  either weren't there soon enough or when you got there you handled it
  wrong. Aw, man, I'll tell you, you'd think you'd get just a little respect
  for what you do, but you're not recognized for that. You're not even paid
  for it especially around here," one officer told me.
  Cops feel as though they get no support from their colleagues in the
  judicial system. Cops see the system of justice, including the judges and
  attorneys who operate it, as a broken-down machine, spinning its wheels
  over solipsistic arguments rather than turning out clearcut decisions based
  on the elemental concepts of right and wrong.
  It doesn't take a cop long to decide that his own administration, like all
  bureaucracies, is more interested in maintaining the status quo and its own
  integrity as an institution than in protecting the rights of any one
  officer. Patrolmen are numbers, interchangeable parts. Even the police
  brotherhood usually dissolves when an officer is in trouble-under
  investigation or indictment.
  Finally, a police officer looks inside himself. He sees the callouses
  growing thick and hard over his ability to feel. He reconsiders his own
  motives with his newfound cynicism. If he is honest with himself, he sees
  how tarnished his ideals have become, how hard his heart is. The last
  disappointment is with himself.
 At this point in their careers, most cops simply resign
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 COPS
 themselves to a fatalistic view of their lives and their work. They just
 try to do the job and not think about it too much. As one officer
 expressed the attitude, "The most important thing to remember is this: The
 street is there now. It's been there for a hundred years. It'll be there
 a hundred years after you're gone. It's not going to change. You're
 certainly not going to change it. The street rubs off on police. They
 never rub off on the street."

 FRoM THE time a guy puts on the uniform and steps out of the academy, an
 erosion process begins to take place. Some guys are able to deal with it
 and cope with it fine. They pop out the other end no worse for wear.
 That's very, very rare. The vast majority of policemen are eroded by their
 environment, by the people and the places they work in. They become
 reflections of the people they police.
  There are some police who never have that experience, because they're
  working in areas where they never do anything-they're administrators,
  special investigators, students, teachers. But policemen who work in a
  real combat situation cannot help but be affected by what's going on
  around them. It's not humanly possible to come away from that without
  being touched by it. How much you are touched by it really affects what
  you end up as.
  After a while a cop becomes a judge, a juror and an executioner. If the
  rest of the world knew that a whole lot of cops--the most decent kinds
  of guys-would drive down tke street in the ghetto and just spend the
  entire night shooting dogs, what would they think? "We're going to kill
  ten fucking dogs tonight because the whole neighborhood is running wild
  with dogs. The ASPCA ain't going to come up here if their lives depended
  on it. We're going to shoot, you should excuse the expres300
                    Hardening of the Heart sion, nigger dogs, because they
                    are all over the fucking place."
  They're vicious, they run in packs. They kill kids. You're talking about
  big-time dogs--German shepherds, Doberman pinschers. People who own the
  dogs let them run loose and they get wild. So you get a bunch of decent
  guys who say, "Hey, enough of this shit with these dogs. I'm going to go
  out and shoot some dogs tonight. " Two or three o'clock in the morning,
  it's quiet. A blue and white sails down the street. They slow down. Pow!
  Pow! Pow! They take off and there's three dead dogs on the corner. "Hey,
  who killed my dog?"
  It's not a big deal, but people don't know that cops behave that way.
  Cops never talk about it. That is the type of thing they don't talk about
  a whole lot. They don't talk about the guy who goes inside a bar and has
  a few beers and comes back out and shoots out a few streetlights. A
  guy'll do that. Go in a bar and shoot it up. These kinds of things will
  happen. People will say that guy is a weird guy.
  I worked in a unit that was sixty average guys. They were good detectives
  and of the sixty, 100 percent in one way or another did something that
  was criminalnot corrupt, but criminal things. "Well," people will say,
  "water seeks its own level. These guys found each other and kind of
  formed an alliance."
  That's not true. They came from units all over town and they ended up
  working in an environment that was totally out of control. They were
  told, "You go out and do the job. We don't care how you do it; just get
  the job done."
  They cleaned it up. They did a better job than was ever done before, but
  what happened was they became reflective of the people that they were
  taking out. "If we're going to catch these guys, fuck the Constitution,
  fuck the Bill of Rights, fuck them, fuck you, fuck everybody. The only
  ones I care about are my partners."
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 COPS

  So you have all these decent guys all doing something wrong. My feelings
  after a lot of thought about it is this: I know what kind of guy I was.
  I was the kind of guy who wouldn't cross against the light. I wouldn't
  break the laws. I was afraid if I did. I didn't like taking on a cop. Had
  I been out running free in the '60s I don't know how I would have been.
  I know my own history up to that point was that I was a very straight
  guy. I carried the flag in the classroom. I find myself years later,
  kicking people's doors down, beating up on people, stealing people's
  money. I don't know how it all happened.
  It's an erosion process. After a while you throw up your hands in the air
  and say, "Fuck them. This is the way to be and I want to be with these
  people. They're the ones I care about. And I'm going to do what they
  think is right."

 The bottom line in police work is riding around in a radio car answering
 calls. There's nothing after that. You're in the basement. What are they
 going to do to you? The only thing they could do to you is transfer you
 to another place which is the same as working here. And they don't want
 to do that, because they'll be transferring a problem they had to another
 guy's precinct. So what you have is guys who whenever they are encouraged
 todo their work say, "What are you going to do? Transfer me?"
  You're on patrol in a precinct. There's a guy over at the big building
  they call headquarters. The guy's got an inside job, right? He's trying
  to get more out of you. He comes up with a computer. I can go downstairs
  right now and push in the number of any radio car in the city. There are
  seventy-three precincts and there are ten cars in each precinct. I can
  pick one at random, press a button, it comes up on the screen what the
  car
 302
                    Hardening of the Heart
 is doing right now. I'll find out if he's on a job or on patrol. If he is
 on a job, I'll find the exact Ibcation. There'll be a phone number where
 I can call him. At the end of the tour, I can press some buttons and it
 prints out what he's done. It comes out on a sheet what time he took each
 job, what time he came back on the radioand the disposition of each job.
 Now Big Brother is watching us.
  Over at headquarters when this guy came up with all this stuff, they
  said, "This is great, man. Look at what we, can do."
  The guy,on the bottom of the barrel is thinking, "What are they trying
  to do to me? The guy over at HQ is whipping me to death and they're
  telling that guy what a great job he did because he squeezed a little
  more sweat out of me." But how many of them are out there on the street
  dealing with the public? There's 24,000 officers altogether. Thcre's got
  to be less than 10,000 on patrol.
  Let me tell yo~ something. This has been part of the job since I came on
  and to this day everybody from the police commissioner on down knows it.
  They still use the number of summonses you give to determine your
  productivity on your activity report, because it's a number. You can't
  put down the number of times you prevented a burglary by parking the
  radio car in the right place and questioning a guy in the street. It's
  not on paper. It's not on the radio. It's never known. You can be out
  there being a diligent guy. It comes the end of the month, "How many
  parkers you give out? None? Five? Three?"
  Some guys can give a parking summons in a minute, a minute and a half.
  A moving summons is going to take you five or ten minutes. You got to
  talk; you got to fill out all the details. Every precinct has a summons
  man. He goes out and gets a book a day. Twenty or 25 tickets a day.
  That's 125 a week. That's 600 a month.
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 COPS
 "Fantastic. Six hundred a month at $25 to $35 a pop. Promote that man
 immediately!"
  What's he doing? He's spending twenty-five to fortyfive minutes out of an
  eight-hour day giving out summonses. They don't care what he does with the
  other time. The guy's a hit.
  You got a guy on patrol who has said, "Hey, fuck this job." He don't answer
  the radio or he's slow on giving a disposition on a call. He spends an
  extra twenty minutes in the place and in the meantime other cars are
  picking up the jobs that are starting to back up. You work with twenty
  guys. After a year, you know who's fucking who and who's not. But this guy
  here, he gives out 50 parking summonses or 10 moving summonses at the end
  of the month and the sergeant thinks, "Whoa, this guy is great." He doesn't
  know how many radio runs he handled. He doesn't know what he's doing.
  To this day, believe it or not, you-go into the captain to ask him for a
  favor and he'll say, "What're you doing for me, you fucking hump? Let's
  see. You got no tickets."
  "Yeah, but I been working with the community. The kids all respect me and
  the shopkeepers aren't calling all the time." That don't matter. It comes
  down to summonses.
  The other guys on a squad, there's nothing they can do about it when one
  guy fucks off. It's Re playing a basketball game and there's two referees,
  but they're not calling shit. After a while you're getting jabbed and
  fouled and so you go, "Fuck you." And you start jabbing back and it turns
  into a brawl. The sergeant knows who is working and who's not working. He's
  not saying anything. Why? It's tough to be a sergeant. Being sergeant means
  not having any friends. And what's he going to do? Transfer the guy?
 At the end of the day we get the proof back from the
 304
                    Hardening of the Heart

 computer. Here's one guy's got twenty jobs and the other guy's handled
 three or four.
  There's this one car that goes to get gas at two-thirty or a quarter to
  three every day on the day tour. They don't want to get stuck on any jobs
  at the end of the tour and it's a busy time of the day. I was working
  this shift one day and the guy I'm with says, "There's these fucking
  pricks. Watch this guy. I guarantee you at twothirty he's going to go for
  gas. " Sure as shit, the guy makes the call and goes for gas on the
  button. And then they brag about it the next day. They come into roll
  call and I said, "Hey, you going for gas again at two-thirty?"
  "You're fucking right, I'm going to go." And they do. The sergeant, he's
  oblivious to the whole thing. He could care less.
  A guy realizes, "I got to go fend for myself out there. Cover my ass and
  don't get caught. Try not to work my ass off and be a fucking idiot. I'm
  going to start getting stuck at the end of the day or I'll be making all
  the arrests and waiting all night at night court."

 When you first get out there, you have to make yourself a reputation as
 a cop, not as much with the people in the street as with the other cops
 that are out there. "Wow, look at this guy. He's got that collar, he's got
 this collar. He's in on that collar." You're pushing yourself a little
 more out there.
  As you're established, you pick your shots. You find out that you get the
  same amount just without really risking it. Without chasing this guy down
  the block. Now I say, "I know this guy. I'll get him tomorrow. He's not
  going anywhere. I know where he is and I'll go out there and grab him."
  When you're looking for it, you never find it. You come back in and your
  eyes are like two cigarette bums
                               305
 COPS
 in a blanket, sick of looking for people to do something. You wish mayhem on
 some poor little old lady walking down the street. "I wish this guy would
 grab her purse and knock her down so I could get him." You get a strange
 attitude out there. "Gee, he only stabbed him once. If he stabs him again,
 it's a second-degree assault."
  I don't expect people to understand this unless you're out there. I'm not
  talking about f6r a weekend or a week. I'm talking years and years. You see
  a lot of your friends burned out. They've had enough. They pack it in and
  go out to the suburbs. Or if they're fortunate, they get promoted and go on
  to a different level.

 It takes eight men to man a sector around the clock, seven days a week. So
 there's me and my partner and six other guys. A member of the six other guys
 comes up to my partner and says, "We have a number of contracts. There's
 money to be made. There are arrangements that are in order. Now, do you guys
 want in on them or not?"
  My partner came to me and told me, "One of the guys came to me and wanted
  to know what we wanted to do about the contracts." We talked about it.
  Should we go in with it or what? We thought and we said, "No, we want to
  stay clean. We like not having to worry about being crooked."
 . A lot of guys transferred out of the sector. We killed the contracts. Now
 I'm starting to realize that there is really corruption in the department,
 something I didn't think existed.
  I had three years on the job now. I used to eat hamburgers and drink coffee
  in the sector for nothing. You didn't go in and order steak. You didn't
  order the guy's best meal. You got a sandwich. They wouldn't charge you for
  it and they got insulted if you tried to pay for
 306  -                    Hardening of the Heart

 it. So you leave a big tip for the waitress. You go in and have a buck and
 a half hamburger and a soda and leave a dollar tip. This was the only
 corruption that I was involved in.
  Was it corruption? Yes. The owner of one diner used to park his car on
  the street. That was essentially his private parking lot. There was a
  fire hydrant in front of the place and people used to park there while
  they ran in for coffee and we didn't hang tags on them for that. In that
  sense, maybe we were corrupt. That's not totally neutral. If we had hung
  tags on every car that double-parked in front of the place, somebody
  would have accused us of trying to shake him down for money.
  They moved my partner and I out of that precinct and into a residential
  community.

 When you've been on the street for ten or eleven years, you know what it
 takes to make a good case and what doesn't make it.
  You go out on the street and'here's a car- with the side window busted
  out. You look up the street andt there's a kid running up the street with
  a paper bag. You fire up there and snatch him up. It turns out that,
  yeah, he's got a paper bag and in this paper bag he's got four cassette
  tapes, and an AM-FM radio and tape player. That's it. That's all you've
  got.
  Most of the time, you can't find the victirn-the guy who owns the car.
  If you do find the guy who owns the car, he says, "Oh, yeah, I had such
  and such tapes and a portable AM-FM cassette player." So you take it to
  court and the first question out of the public defender's mouth is going
  to be, "Did you see the defendant break into the car?"
 "No, sir."
 "Did you have sight of the suspect the whole time?"
 "No. He ran around the corner."
                               307
 COPS

  "So is it not possible that, as my client says, he found that bag on the
  corner when he ran around there and just happened to pick it up as you came
  around after him?"
  So you go ahead and you chase them down. You do what you're supposed to do.
  But the main thing you're after is the property. You'll take it to the
  property room, so the victim can get his stuff back. To hell with the
  arrest, because you know it won't make it in a million years.
  We had a robbery of a sailor downtown at one of the topless bars. The
  sailor described the suspects and the van they left in. Me and my partner
  put the sailor in the backseat of our patrol car and drove him around to
  see if we could find them. All of a sudden he says, "That's the van there."
  We run up with our guns drawn and we're dragging them out. The sailor goes,
  "That's them, that's them. Those two there, the tall one and the short
  one." So we take the sailor out of the backseat, frisk these guys down and
  put them into the backseat. We got positive identification of the vehicle.
  He points it out as it's going by. A positive ID of the
  suspects,----~'These are the guys who hit me over the head and stole my
  wallet."
  He gives us all this information about what was in his wallet. He had $50-a
  twenty, two tens and two fives. We search the van. Down in the back of the
  van where the spare tire is, I found the twenty and the two fives. I leave
  them right where they're at and get the evidence technician down there. He
  comes and takes pictures of where the money is at. Then we pull it out and
  he takes pictures of the money itself. I initial the bills and put the
  serial numbers in the report. We take them to jail.
  We no sooner get in the car again when we get a call from the jail. One of
  the suspects when given a complete search before being placed in a cell,
  they found two $10
 308
                    Hardening of the Heart

 bills in his shoe. Ah-ha! We had the missing $20 out of this deal. We go
 down there and get the two $10 bills. I initial them and we put the $50
 in the property room.
  The thing goes to court. I'm sitting up on the stand. The attorney comes
  over and he's got the money laid out there with my initials and my ID
  number on them and he has the pictures that were taken by the ET. "Do you
  recognize these pictures? Is this the way it was?"
 "Yes, sir."
 "Are these the bills that were recovered?"
 "Yes, sir."
 "Can you tell me which bills were where?"
  "We found the twenty and the two fives in the back of the van and the two
  tens were found by the officer at the jail.
 "Who found the two tens?"
 "The corrections officer."
  "Who was the corrections officer?" I referred to my notes and said it was
  So-and-So. "Are you sure these are the two tens that he found?"
  "Those are the two $10 bills that he handed me at the back door to the
  jail on the night of the robbery."
  "But you don't know where he found these two $10 bills. These could have
  been two $10 bills that he took out of his own wallet."
  The corrections officer didn't have his initials on the bills showing
  that he had turned them over to me and so the chain of evidence was
  broken. They threw out the whole thing. That was the only thing we had
  on the suspects other than the victim's testimony to prove that they had
  taken the money.
  You spend time and get what you consider a good case and something like
  that happens. Then the next time it happens and the sailor says, "That's
  them." You say, "Who gives a fuck. What's the sense?"

                               309
 COPS
 We had a little dope dealer down there named Benny Jefferson. Nat had a
 very special relationship with this dope dealer-like every time he saw
 him, Nat jacked Benny up to see what he was holding. We'd end up in
 internal about twice a week on that, because every time Nat would see
 Benny, we'd stop him. Nat would say, "Benny, what are you holding?"
  "You just fucking with me again," Benny would reply.
  "Nah, we ain't fucking with you. What you holding?" We'd then use the old
  stop and frisk to find it. About one out of every three times, you'd
  catch him holding some horse. Jack him up, bring him downtown, put him
  in jail. But I said, "Nat, you're going to lose the case. The district
  attorney is not going to file them. This is illegal search."
  "I don't care," Nat said. "It may be illegal, but I'm taking the stuff
  off him and he ain't getting to sell it. " Nat may not have been making
  good cases, but in reality he was right. He was cutting into the guy's
  profit real hard.
  We finally made some good cases on Benny. We caught him with three or
  four ounces of heroin and brought him down. I don't remember how we had
  stopped him this time, but we'd had a good reason. The state attorners
  office naturally dropped it to possession instead of possession for sale.
  Then they let him plead to a lesser charge. So he ended up convicted of
  a seconddegree felony.
  We were horribly depressed by the fact that, even when we did make a good
  case, we couldn't make it go anywhere. The attorney's answer to us was
  that Benny had never been convicted before of any charges.
  "Yeah," Nat said. "I've-arrested him forty-two times and every time you
  failed to prosecute him. I finally get a good case on him and you still
  don't prosecitte him."

 310
                    Hardening of the Heart

 The first thing that really struck me was plea bargaining. People are out
 there doing really terrible things to each other and just fucking each other
 up. We're there just after it's happened. You see the victim, this
 hysterical person. You lock up the suspect and file charges. And then all
 this cools down. The person becomes healed.
  Then we get down to the judicial part; that usually takes place weeks and
  weeks later. There have been two or three or four continuances and maybe a
  motions hearing, trying to get the guy off on some technicality.
  If by some dumb luck, the person who is initially harmed during this thing
  has gotten all our subpoenas and makes all his appearances, then you might
  go to bat. What usually happens is this: The case load is so incredible
  that once the prosecutor sees that the defendant, the defense lawyer, the
  victim and the cops are there and all the witnesses are there and he's got
  to do something, then it's--Ta-da-Dah-Let's Make a Deal. "You let this guy
  off on a misdemeanor and we'll plead him guilty," the defense lawyer tells
  the prosecutor. They work out a deal that makes both their work loads
  lighter.
  That kind of bothers you but then--surprise--the judge turns around and
  gives him this incredible sentence. "Six months in the workhouse and a
  $1,500 fine."
 "Wow," you go.
  "And I suspend the sentence and I suspend the jail term."
  First of all, you've seen this terrible thing happen. You've been down
  there to the courthouse umpty-ump times. Finally you walk out of the court
  and you go, "Nothing fucking happened to nobody except me. And here we
  are."
  You know the fucker is going to go out and do it again. We go after all
  these bank robbers and stick-up artists and murderers. The one thing that
  is 99 percent certain is that when you go down to the ID bureau to look for
  the
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 COPS

 guy's records, they've got his picture and they've got his rap sheet. He's
 been in trouble before. It's a certainty. If you go down there and the guy
 has no record, you shake your head and say, "Jesus, he's never been in
 trouble. I've got a virgin here. " It's an event.
  To me it's a totally screwed-up system. It's always the same guys. They
  just graduate.
  You've got to really screw up to get sent to the penitentiary in this
  state. First you've got to screw up a couple of times in juvenile. Then you
  get to be eighteen and you get to start all over again.
  You get caught for doing one burglary you get probation. You get caught
  doing another burglary, you may do some time down at the county jail. Maybe
  the third time you get caught, you might get shipped to reformatory. To get
  to the big house, you've got to have been going and getting hit for a long
  time, doing some nasty stuff.
  Armed robbery carries a penalty of five to twenty
 five years. If you get convicted of armed robbery-if
 you don't get it plea-bargained down, which is often
 the c ' ase-and you go up for the crime, you're looking
 at two years and you're out. It's a revolving door. It's
 job security for me if you want to look at it that way.
 But it ain't right.
  They all know it as well. They know what the risks are and they can tell
  you. You've got the cuffs on them, taking them downtown, and most of them
  can tell you what kind of penalty they'll get when it's all said and done.
  "So what, man! I'm going to do two years. So fucking what? So what,
  motherfucker! I'll be seeing you again." They don't care. They're telling
  you what they're going to get and they're usually right.

 California has the highest number of lawyers per capita in the United
 States, and the United States has more
 312
                    Hardening of the Heart

 lawyers than the rest of the world combined. They have to make money. One
 of the best things you sue is a municipality, because they have the money
 to pay off. Within that structure, the police department is a good thing
 to sue, because they're always getting into things. Even if you can't win,
 they'll settle out of court for some money just to get rid of the case.
 That's an ever present thing.
  Most cops want to know, "Where do I stand on being sued? If I'm over
  here, am I safe?" But it doesn't work that way. You can do everything
  absolutely right and still get sued and still lose.
  An officer sees a motorcyclist. The registration is expired. He turns on
  his light to initiate a traffic stop. The motorcyclist looks over his
  shoulder and just hits itaccelerates. The officer goes in pursuit down
  an alley. The cop is going 25 miles an hour.
 . The motorcyclist cuts out of the alley into a major street and runs
 broadside into a car. He is killed. The passenger in the car is a
 ten-year-old boy. The impact causes glass to go into his eye and the boy
 loses his right eye.
  The driver of the motorcycle is a 2.5 blood alcohol, a drunk driver with
  three priors, a suspended driver's license. He is pending sentencing on
  another charge of drunk driving.
  The parents of the little boy sued the city, saying the officer chased
  the motorcyclist and caused him to run. The whole chase amounted to about
  a block. The wife of the motorcyclist is suing the city, even though she
  and her husband were estranged.
  I had arrested the same man three months before for running into three
  parked cars because he was so drunk. He's dead. He was a dirtbag. No
  money. No insurance. No job. Just a dirtbag.
 What did the officer do wrong?
 You're before the jury. Here's the little boy minus
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 COPS
 an eye. He's traumatized for life. You've got the bereaved widow who's
 going to come in there and sob, gob, sob. The only reason he ran was
 because the officer was chasing him. Why was he chasing him? Just because
 he had a registration violation. That's all he knew at the time. 'Me
 policeman has got, to lose this case.
  Okay, say the motorcyclist is driving 90 miles an hour and the officer
  doesn't chase him. Well, you're liable then, too. That's wrong. You're
  obliged by law'to do something about it. If he runs into somebody and
  they know you were there and saw him and you didn't chase him, they can
  sue you. You failed to take action, so you get sued for negligence.

 We just did a search warrant the other day and kicked in the wrong door.
 The informant for the anti-fencing unit told us there was a bunch of
 counterfeit money that had been stashed in this one apartment. It was
 being- marketed at three dollars each for a $20 bill. If we didn't move
 quick, it'll be all gone. It was a very reliable informant. He'dturned
 nine felonies in a row.
  We got the Treasury people and we got the search warrant. The guy pointed
  out Apartment D of this address. They called us in on it because there
  were supposed to be a bunch of guns and bad actors in there. We went to
  the door, knocked and gave them twenty seconds to open the door. No
  answer. Boom! Down comes the door.
  The counterfeiters are supposed to be a family of white people. We go in
  and we find one lone black sixteen-year-old in the house who is first
  thrown up against the wall, searched and terrorized a little bitshivering
  in his shoes. Then we realized that we'd made a mistake. We started
  apologizing profusely and telling about how the city is going to take
  care of the damages to his house.
 314
                    Hardening of the Heart

  The detective goes and finds out that the family that we're looking for
  lives next door. He's admitted to the house. The occupant says, "Go ahead
  and search." No guns, no nothing, no screaming, no yelling. But these
  people started seeing dollar signs and made up the most incredible,
  preposterous story for the newspapers about our conduct.
  The black family told the truth. We busted in on the wrong address and
  then had to beat a hasty retreat behind a barrage of apologies. The white
  family made up this story and the press picked up on it and turned it
  into one of the biggest scandals we ever had. According to them, as soon
  as we realized we had made a mistake we went and kicked in their door.
  We pointed a gun. at their retarded seventeen-year-old son. As we kicked
  in the door we had knocked over their other son and stuck a shotgun in
  his face as he was thrown on the floor. We held them at gunpoint against
  their will for twenty minutes without a search warrant. When the other
  son arrived home in his car, I yanked him out of the car, twisted his arm
  up behind his back and slamdunked him on the car face first. None of it
  happened. None of it.
  We have an investigation that's coming to a head now, including eight
  civilian witnesses right there in the apartment complex who have verified
  everything we've said. They're probably not very fond of the police down
  in that part of town, but at least they're verifying us down the line.
  The federal agent who was with us there said, "The only reason I know the
  story I read in the paper and what happened out there were the same thing
  was the correspondence of the date, the time and the address. "
  That shit upsets me. They interviewed the woman of
 the household. She was on her couch with all the news
 teams around, half hysterical about all the shit we'd
 done. My wife was waiting for me at one o'clock mi the
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 COPS
 morning when I got home. She'd seen the news and came running down the
 hall. She asked me what in the hell I'd been doing to that poor woman that
 day.
  My neighbors are calling me. They don't ask me dead out what's been going
  on. They go, "How you been doing, Jeff ?"
 "Fine," I go. "How about you?"
 "Fine," they say. "What have you been up to?"
 "Oh, not much."
 "Anything exciting happen lately?"
 "No. Not really."
  "Well, you were out there on Garden Place, weren't you?"
 "Yeah, sure."
  "Well, how much trouble you going to get in? You going to get fired?"
 "That's really nice. Thanks a lot."
  I explained to my wife what happened. She has faith in me. She knows that
  I'm a dedicated policeman. She knows how hard I work. I'll have maybe a
  month of bum-out every once in a while where I just don't give a shit,
  but mostly I go on and on and on. When it's budget tightening time and
  no overtime slips are approved, if I'm working on something important,
  I just stay with it.
  The newspapers will print your name, address, the whole bit. The other
  kids at school know what's going on. Right now, my five-year-old is just
  as proud as he can be. I go to his preschool with my uniform on and hand
  out the coloring books about bicycle safety and traffic lights. My kid
  is in the front row and he's beaming. But I know it's going to change.

 You have to understand that you are, in fact, the good guys and they're
 the bad guys. As long as you're not doing something criminal, it's okay.
 Just be careful and 316
                    Hardening of the Heart

 protect your ass, because the guy you're going to lock up or testify
 against isn't worth getting in trouble over. You make sure that the case
 you make is good enough. And if it hasn't been good enough out on the
 street, you make it good. Or you make it good when you tell your boss
 about it. Or you make it good when you talk to whoever could hurt you.
  Policemen are taught very early that truth rarely, if ever, can be
  helpful. If a case or a situation is clearly without problems, you take
  whatever action you have to. If that action is justified in all sorts of
  ways, then there's no problem. You can tell the truth. For most policemen
  99 percent of what they do is legitimate. In some cases 99.9 percent. The
  problem for policemen these days is that they don't really know what they
  can do and what they can't do, what their rights are.
  They don't know how much force they can use, so they lie to protect
  themselves. Because they've been told by unions, by fraternal groups, by
  older cops, "Everybody out there is going to try to hurt you. You open
  your mouth and they'll use it against you. So you tell them shit. Don't
  tell them anything. You don't remember."
  Of course you remember. Nineteen witnesses say that this guy got beat
  over the head by this cop with a nightstick. Ile cop gets called into a
  review board and they ask him, "Did you hit this guy?"
  "No, I didn't hit him. I never hit him. Nope. He may have hit his head
  on the car when we were putting him in the radio car. Maybe he tripped
  and banged into something."
  "There's nineteen witnesses here who say you were doing a number on this
  guy in the street."
  "Who you going to believe, those people there or me? Fucking creeps. You
  fucking crazy? Is there a procop among that whole bunch or what? They're
  just looking to hurt me."
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 COPS
  His PBA lawyer and his PBA delegate are sitting there with him. Before
  they went in to talk to, the investigators on the review board, he spoke
  to these two guys and he said, "Look, I banged the guy. I didn't
  particularly want to, but the guy was robbing an old lady and he gave me
  some shit and I hit him."
  "You can't tell them that," the lawyer and the delegate say. "No way. You
  can't punch him. You can't hit him with your nightstick."
 "Then what have I got a nightstick for?"
 "You got a nightstick so you can probe with the night-
 stick. You can't hit somebody over the head with it.
 Hit them over the head and --- shit-you're trying to kill
 them. So just say he's lying."
  But that cop has every right to use that nightstick. He has every right
  to hit someone in a situation where he feels threatened or the guy is
  threatening him. The cop has the right to say, "Hey, I'm five-nine and
  I go 145 pounds. I got somebody here six-four and two-thirty or -forty.
  He's going to take me apart. So, yeah, I beat him up. My partner grabbed
  him and I hit him. It was great." That's okay, that's not bad. You're
  allowed to do that. But they'll never admit it. Instead they make up all
  sorts of stories.

 Search and seizure, the Miranda decision, all this kind of stuff, police
 have never cared about any of that. That's all bullshit. They testify
 however they want to.
 "Did you give him the Miranda warning?"
  "Yeah, sure I gave it to him." Who's there to say he didn't give the
  prisoner the Miranda warning? The prisoner? That's a joke.
  If the cops do give the Miranda warning, they give it at times when it's
  very self-serving. They have a camera and a guy in a very serious case.
  "You're going to confess; we're going to put this on tape. We'll do the
 318
                    Hardening of the Heart

 Miranda warning first. You'll have your lawyer present."
  But probably ~O or 90 percent of the cases that are made aren't made on
  camera. They're not made in a nice room someplace. They're made on the
  street, in a hallway, on a rooftop or in the back of a precinct.
  It becomes very complicated for most people, but it's not complicated for
  the police. Even though they say it is in public. Policemen know guilt from
  innocence. There's no such things as technicalities of the law on the
  street. Either you've got the smoking gun or you don't have the smoking
  gun. This guy either did it or he didn't do it. He had the gun or he didn't
  have the gun. "What difference does it make where the gun was when I found
  it? Whether it was in view or it was hidden? Whether I had a search warrant
  or I didn't have a search warrant? I'm there. I can see it clearly. I see
  the spreading pool of blood. I know who the good guy is and who the bad guy
  is. It's simple. " It doesn't matter to the policeman, which is the way
  most of our justice should be run. The bottom fine is the smoking gun.
  Now the case gets to court. "You're telling me that you're going to let
  this guy go because I didn't give him the Miranda warning or I searched him
  when I shouldn't have searched him?" Now it gets down to a one-onone
  situation. Essentially the police officer wants to beat the defendant.
  "This son of a bitch ain't going to walk out of here smiling at me and
  giving me the finger. I'm going to put that fucker in jail. I caught him.
  I got him. I know he's guilty. He knows he's guilty. He knows that I know
  he's guilty. He's going to jail. Don't give me this shit about how I didn't
  see the bulge under his coat. Of course I saw the bulge."
  "What do you mean, you saw the bulge? You couldn't have seen the bulge. The
  defendant had on an alpaca coat, three sweaters and all this other stuff."
 "No, I seen it."
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 COPS
  The judge and the lawyer and the prosecutor say to themselves, "This cop's
  lying." They know the cop is lying because from earlier evidence his story
  can't be true. So the bad guy gets away. And unfortunately there will
  always be one bad case where the cop will lie and not get caught and the
  guy is really innocent. That's why all these rules come down in the first
  place.

 Most of the things I do as a cop have to do with drugs and a lot of them
 have to do with either buying drugs or somebody else buying drugs. In those
 cases, you almost never have to be concerned about your testimony. The only
 time testimony is a problem is when you make application for search warrants
 or wiretap orders.
  I go into an assistant district attorney and I say to him, "I want a search
  warrant for this particular location. " You have to make out an affidavit.
  Based on that they decide whether or not they'll let you have the search
  warrant. They have a form and you just fill in the blanks all the way down.
  Observation, information, type of drug and all this kind of stuff. You fill
  it in: "Two observations on Monday, two observations on Tuesday, two on
  Wednesday, all between such and such hours."
  You made the observations. You go, you sit and you watch. You see whatever
  it is that you see. You know damn well that the information is good based
  on an informant that you've known for a while and who you trust. He's
  telling you this guy's selling drugs. You see people-junkies--that you know
  coming in and out of this building. So you fill in the blanks on the
  affidavit.
  The D.A. tells you, "Oh, that's not enough. You're going to be going into
  a specific apartment, not just the building. I can't give you a warrant for
  the whole building.,,
 320
                    Hardening of the Heart

  "Well, I was down the hallway and I saw them going into this apartment."
  "How did you get into the hallway to make this observation?"
  "I was sitting in a refrigerator box, one of those big giant ones.
  Somebody delivered a refrigerator that day and the empty box was sitting
  in the hall. I got into it and put a little hole in it and I saw them go
  into the apartment." ,
  "Okay, that'sgood. That's what you have to testify to. Remember that. You
  got it? You were in the refrigerator box, right?"
 41tight.91
  "Saw them go into the apartment through the little hole, not just into
  the building, right?"
 "Right.91
  "Okay, I'll give you the warrant." He knows you're full of shit. You
  don't care - As far as you're concerned, you're not doing anything wrong
  at all. You know absolutely what the truth of the matter is. Junkies are
  going into this building and they're going into that apartment to buy
  heroin.
  You get the warrant, you go in there and you find the dope just where the
  informant told you it was going to be. Everything is just the way it's
  supposed to be.
  So you get into court and the judge asks a question like, "Well, officer,
  we don't care whether this guy had the drugs or didn't have the drugs.
  We don't care if the guy is guilty or innocent. What we care about is
  that in your application for the search warrant, you said you saw people
  going into the apartment. We find that hard to believe. How did you see
  people going into the apartment?"
  Now I've got to worry about-not whether the guy is guilty or not-but how
  did I see people going into the apartment? What kind of box was it, a
  washing machine box?
                               321
 COPS

  "Give me a fucking break," the judge says. "The last four warrants, you
  guys were in boxes."
 "That's the way it was."
 "I don't believe you." The judge will throw it out.
  That is what cops call just crap. It doesn't make any sense to them. "If
  the guy didn't have any dope or if my informant said the guy was a black
  guy, forty-eight years old, and the guy turned out to be a white Jewish
  teenager--okay--my information is bad. But I found the dope, look."
  They can't understand-along with the general population-who are we
  benefiting here? Who ultimately gains by this sort of behavior? The only
  ones gaining are the people who are breaking the law, because an innocent
  person is never going to be in trouble. If that person is innocent, there
  wouldn't be dope in the apartment, there wouldn't be guns in the
  apartment or there wouldn't be a kidnapped person in the apartment.

 They send you out there to do a job and they tell you not to get
 emotionally involved. You'd have to be superhuman not to get emotionally
 involved. But you try to keep your wits about you.
  If it goes bad they say, "Why didn't you use any discretion?"
  "You told me not to use any discretion. Just the facts. Do the law,
  Sergeant Joe Friday."
 "Why didn't you show any compassion?"
  "You told me not to get emotionally involved before."
  It's baloney. There's no way you can help but get emotionally involved.
  I used to go home thinking about the kids. You go to house calls where
  the family is fighting, beating each other, beating the kids. We walk in
  and the kids would be so relieved to see us. When you're five years old
  and your family is fighting, killing
 322
                    Hardening of the Heart

 each other, you think your world is coming to an end. The kids come up and
 hug your leg.
  Then you're useless, because there's nothing you can do and we're
  leaving. They look at you like, "You're it. If not you, then we got
  nothing."
  I remember getting into the radio car and thinking, "Holy shit, I can't
  believe I'm doing this." But we couldn't do anything.

 I was riding with another officer and he had a CB radio in his patrol car.
 He bears this girl come over the air on Channel Nine, screaming that a kid
 had been hit over on the bridge. So we go roaring up through town. We were
 only a couple miles away.
  Here's traffic backed up in both directions. Right at the north end of
  the bridge was this mother screaming and yelling and crying, holding this
  kid who had just been hit by a car and knocked 180 feet. Chaos, you know.
  The other officer grabs the woman and tries to pull her away. Of course,
  she tries to clutch onto the kid a little more. I get her arms off the
  kid and the other officer walks her off to the side of the road. A couple
  of women who are there get around her. This officer comes back to me and
  we took one look at the kid and he said, "Bob, I don't think my first aid
  is as up as it should be. I'm going to go back and call for help. You
  take care of it here."
  "Okay, Russ." The kid-must have been about six years old-would come and
  go. He was bleeding from real severe scalp lacerations and bad abrasions
  on his back and his rear end. One pupil was dilated and the other was
  like a pin head.
  Here we are in this tragic situation, and all of a sudden, this guy comes
  running up there and he starts snapping pictures. The mother is crying
  over there and
                               323
 COPS

 I'm huddled over the kid. Russ comes back from the radio car after calling
 for rescue and sees this guy with a camera. Russ asked him, "What are you
 doing here?" About the same time the mother is screaming, "That guy is
 going to take a picture of my baby!"
  "I'm a member of the press," the guy says, "and I have a right to be
  here."
 "You going to take a picture of this?" Russ said.
 "Yeah, it's news," the guy says.
  "No, it isn't," Russ said. "It's a tragedy. I'll tell you what. You snap
  one more picture and I'm going to throw you off this bridge and I mean
  over the rail and into the water."
  The guy got a picture of Russ in his uniform. So it shows up in the
  newspaper the next day, "Newsman Accosted on Bridge."
  I hate a news cameraman. They thrive on sensationalism, blood and gore
  and bad happenings. That's how they make their living. They're like
  buzzards.

 The smell was so bad, the building emptied out. It was in the middle of
 the block and the bar on the comer had emptied out. People thought it was
 a sewer backing up in the basement.
  We get there and open the apartment door and there's this mound on the
  floor. It wasn't hardly recognizable. The stench was so incredible that
  you didn't breathe in the room. It's something I can't describe. I can't
  say it's like rotten eggs or anything. It was like nothing I ever smelled
  before. It was wintertime and the apartment was hot. This thing on the
  floor was a nineteenyear-old kid covered with maggots and blown up all
  over the wall.
  The story we found out was that the mother had a heart attack and he took
  her to the hospital. He came home and shot up. Died with the needle in
  his arm and
 324
                    Hardening of the Heart

 laid there for two weeks while his mother was in the hospital. The body
 began to decompose. Since there were not breaks or punctures or wounds, the
 gases of decomposition made the body bloat. 'nere was nothing for this
 expansion to come out of. The body blew up. He was on the walls and all over
 the floor and when you rolled him over he was nothing but a pile of maggots.
  We had to guard the body for the medical examiner to come pick it up.
  You're supposed to literally sit in the residence. We sat out on the
  street.
  That shook me up a lot. It thickened the shell I was developing since I got
  on the job. As the shell thickens, you become more and more out of
  touch-not with the world, but with yourself. So that when you walk in on a
  scene like this, you just shrug your shoulders. Another messy thing.
  When you get a dead body you have to search it. If it's got any jewelry or
  anything in its pockets, the clothes stay with the body, but anything else
  is supposed to go as evidence to the precinct.
  We had a DOA that was partly decomposed and it had a gold ring on it so I
  had to take its ring off. When I pulled the ring off, all the soft flesh
  pulled off the finger and just left the bone. But I had the ring. I started
  carrying rubber gloves around in my briefcase along with my accident
  reports and other forms.
  Some guy fell in front of an elevated train and Emergency Services gets
  there to go on the tracks to help this guy and get him out from under the
  train. For some reason, they couldn't find his foot, so they told me and my
  partner to go under the tracks of the elevated train and look for the foot.
  I found it in the shoe and picked the guy's foot up. You build up a thing
  where you just don't feel it. Where a normal person might look at that foot
  in a shoe and puke, you can't do that. You can't vomit and run away 325
 COPS
 from it. So you pick it up and carry it back to the Emergency guys. They ten
 you to throw the whole shebang into the morgue wagon and off it goes. You
 get another layer on the shell, so you don~t feel things.
  Before I started seeing so much death, the job was like a game. I played a
  cop and I chase the robbers while I'm at work. Then I started getting down
  to the other business of being a cop, which is driving around for eight or
  nine hours and not having anything to do, running up and down stairs for
  nothing, getting into family disputes where no matter whose side you're on,
  they're both against you. I got exposed to the routine of boredom.
  Once they sent me over to this bar where a guy had just keeled over on his
  bar stool and was dead. He had a bad heart or liver or both. We had him
  declared dead at the hospital and then they sent us to notify the parents.
  We've just washed up this guy off the barroom floor and we've taken him to
  the hospital where he has been pronounced very dead and we're now walking
  up the stairs of this building to notify the next of kin. The guy was in
  his late thirties or early forties, so the parents have to be at least
  sixty. We're joking. I say, "Here's how we'll do it. We'll knock on the
  door and then when they come, we'll SING, 'Your son is dead, your son is
  dead. He drank too much and now he's dead.' "
  While I'm singing this, a man is walking down the stairs. He walked past
  us. We get to the apartment door and this older woman answered. "Hello, are
  you Mrs. So-and-So?"
 "Yes, I am."
 "Is your husband home?"
  "No, he's not. He just left. He'll be back in a moment. What's the
  problem?"
  Oh, God, he was the one who just walked by me. The older man who had passed
  us on the stairs did in 326
                    Hardening of the Heart

 fact come back in within a minute or two. I thought he must have heard me
 joking about his son dying and singing my little ditty about the kid.
  "I'm sorry to say that your son was in such-and-such a bar when he had a
  cardiac arrest and was taken to the hospital and declared dead."
  They took it pretty well. "It happens. That's life." And we walked out the
  door.
  Another layer goes on the shell to help shut out the grief and not let it
  affect you. Go down and get into the car. I felt bad. Stupid and bad. But
  I just let it become part of the scene.

 The part that really caught up with me was seeing the death. A lot of people
 say they don't see a lot of it. I saw a lot of it. You go to somebody's
 house. She's crying because her husband died at the dinner table. The police
 are the first with everything. You're involved with her screaming, her
 crying. She wants you to play God. She wants you to bring life back into
 that person. You go through the motions. It really catches up with you.
  Let's say that you got to knock on the door of this woman's house and tell
  her the husband just died down at the square. I sit down at the table with
  her and break the news to her very slowly and naturally. She goes into a
  state of shock. What people don't realize is that I'm picking up the
  feeling, too--unless you're a callous, cold-blooded drug addict you can't
  help it. Now they train you with different techniques about how to do this
  stuff. You don't go in and say, "Are you the Widow McNamara?" But nobody
  tells you how you're going to react. They don't train you how to deal with
  your own emotions.
  The next thing you know is that you're kicking kids off the corner or
  you're getting the newspaper for the sergeant or lunch for the guys in the
  back room or you're
                               327
 COPS

 going to a barroom brawl and you're the bouncer. You're breaking up this
 fight. You're not Superman. You can get knocked on your ass. When somebody
 punches you in the mouth, you can feel it, too. You're scared.
  You're always scared. I don't give a shit who the cop is that tells you
  that he's not scared, that's a lot of shit. He's scared all the time.
  He's scared of looking like a fool, of being weak, yellow, of being a
  coward. Afraid he's going to say the wrong thing and get in trouble with
  the department. Fear is a policeman's life. It's impossible to go out on
  the street day in and day out and not have fear.

 I had a two-year-old kid raped once and I took him to the hospital. Ile
 city doctor wasn't on duty at that time and not one of the doctors there
 would deal with it. They would examine him for damage and that would be
 it. I said, "Somebody has to examine this kid. This is crazy."
  "Okay," one of them says, "I'll examine him, but I'm just going to make
  sure the kid's going to live. That's as far as I'm going to go. " They
  didn't want to get involved in the court case or anything. They won't get
  into testifying about whether there is semen in there and tear inarks and
  fingerprints on the baby. You say to yourself, "What the fuck. You ain't
  a doctor." But the whole system is like that.

 Here's a guy who lives out on a tree-lined street in a lily-white area
 with his wife and a couple of kids. He gets on the train or he drives into
 the center of the city to a ghetto area and he just deals with blacks. You
 don't see a white face all night unless it's your partner. Not that
 there's anything wrong with that, but he's living in two worlds.
 328
                    Hardening of the Heart

  He gets more work in one weekend than some entire towns get. Even if he's
  a racist and a bigot, you'd have to have a heart of stone to go into an
  apartment house there and take a look at babies without diapers, just
  laying there, filthy, no mattress. The kid's having trouble. And it's not
  just one. There's thousands of them out there.
  He goes to a family fight and one of them is knifing the other one. He
  sees the kids are in the apartment during this whole thing. People are
  drunk and overdosed.
  He does that for eight hours a day, forty hours a week. He goes home to
  the wife. He walks into the house and she says, "You better take the day
  off tomorrow. I've got a PTA meeting and you got to take care of the
  kids."
  He just saw like five people die tonight and she's worried about the kids
  need shoes. "I seen kids without clothes. They needed food!" He don't say
  that to his wife. He can't say that to his wife. He don't say, "Leave me
  alone. I got all these problems to think about.
 What does he say? Nothing.

 After eight hours of this shit, you're supposed to go home and be a human
 being. I say that you can't do that. You witness these things and you
 can't go home and be a normal human being.
  You don't know how to express-them. Do you alarm your family? Do you tell
  them that you're dealing with this type of stuff all the time? They can't
  understand it. How do you relate this type of stuff to them? Subsequently
  what you do, what I've done over the years, is to say little or nothing
  to my family about my job.
  That has an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is trying to
  answer the questions they would ask me that I can't answer would be
  frustrating for me,
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 COPS

 and when I get frustrated, I get angry. When I'm angry I make a miserable
 husband and father for my wife and kids. So it's good for me and them that
 I don't tell them.
  The negative thing is, my family feels like they are cheated. I'm out in
  an exciting job, but I never related any of it to them.
  The disadvantage for me personally is, Who do I talk to? You talk to
  other cops.

 How do you get this out? Your wife or girlfriend will give you all kinds
 of heat about doing what you do for a living. The first Christmas you have
 to work or one of your kid's birthdays you have to work and all the
 neighbors and relatives are there and you-the fatheryou're not there, they
 start blaming everything on the job. They don't realize all the good you
 got from the job. They just look at the bad. They start giving you heat
 about being on this job. So, you don't bring the stories home, because you
 know what's going to happen.
  Plus how do you tell your wife that you were scared. You're supposed to
  be this big, brave guy.

 The job is like a mistress, too. If you have a serious relationship going,
 it's every bit as threatening. Aside from the obvious-the fact is, if you
 work around the clock in this kind of irregular atmosphere, the oppor-
 tunities for actually fooling around are much greateraside from that, a
 lot of cops screw up their relationships because they don't want to track
 that dirt into the house. There are things they're not talking about. A
 perfectly good woman feels cheated. Because she knows that something is
 going on. She knows that there are major 330
                    Hardening of the Heart

 parts of your life that you're not talking about. It can be bad.

 I just recently was divorced. It's been a year since he left. I think my
 marriage was a typical police marriage. He is the public relations officer
 for a neighboring police department. It's kind of a nice job because he gets
 to work eight to four Mondays through Fridays. He spends his time talking to
 kids about protecting themselves and how to prevent crime. He doesn't see
 the stuff that I see. He doesn't have people calling him pig because he's
 the good guy.
  I didn't realize it at the time, but in our marriage, I was the police
  officer and he was the normal person. He had regular hours on regular days.
  I was working weird shifts and couldn't socialize with our friends. I
  brought my work home. I was the one up in the middle of the night saying,
  "Dam it, this guy won't confess." I brought home the bad feelings and bad
  attitudes. I think it affected me and that might have been part of our
  problem.
  I'm just at the point now where I'm getting somewhat normal so I can
  start.dating again. But the people I have most in common with are other
  police officers. I see it here, I see it in all the other suburbs: Most of
  the married police officers have at least one girlfriend on the side. We
  call them police groupies. Somehow I never had that problem when I was in
  uniform. Men aren't attracted to women wearing men's clothing. They don't
  exactly set off your figure. Hell, I had hardly started wearing a bra and
  I had to start wearing an undershirt.
  I'm definitely a one-person person. I couldn't condone something like that
  and yet I know that most police officers are like that. I know a lot of
  their wives, too. I'm a little in the middle, because I know that he's 331
 COPS

 seeing a girlfriend. I think to myself, that could be me. It's kind of a
 dilemma for me.

 A lot of cops really want to believe that they're the type of guy that can
 do the things the cops on TV can do. They want to believe that they can
 talk people into confessing and they'll fall down at their feet, instead
 of having a guy whipping out his cock and pissing on you or spitting in
 your face. Nobody knows what it's like until you're talking to a guy and
 there he is smiling at you, but you're just looking at his face. Now watch
 his hands, because he's taking out his cock and pissing at you.
 So you lock him up. So what? "Punch me again.
 He doesn't give a shit. The fucking guy has an IQ of two. That's what it's
 all about.
  Once you find out and you're comfortable with that and you can deal with
  that, then you can be very successful.

 I worked the streets for a couple of years. Then because I was a
 photographer in the Navy, I applied for the photography section of
 criminal investigation. I even used politics to get the job. After I had
 the job a few years, I said, "Why did I ever use politics to get this
 fucking job?"
  I was photographing winos who died and their throats were chewed up by
  rats. In cold water flats, babies that just died. A family that was wiped
  out by a deranged father who killed all his kids and his wife and then
  himself. I had seven kids and everything you get involved with reminds
  you of the needs of your own family.
  A lot of anxiety comes in. You have an image, this macho image, that
  nothing is supposed to bother you, 332
                    Hardening of the Heart

 that you're a hard robot. You're out there and you have a job to do and
 people expect this of you. What people expect, what society expects and
 what you expect of yourself, it's too much. It's too much. You can't hold
 up to it.
  My job was photographing dead people, and taking their fingerprints.
  Holding dead hands, breaking off the fingers when they're too stiff to
  manage or having to cut them off, inking them and feeling them, putting
  them back in bags. Seeing that this is how people end up.
  We're in there with the smell, the roaches all over us, for two and three
  hours. We're also in the other rooms, trying to tell the people, "Please,
  we're doing our job." They don't think you are. They don't think you give
  a shit. It's their husband that was just stabbed seventeen times and
  they're screaming that they want justice.
  The very first thing that happens to most of us-and I don't give a shit
  what anybody tells you-is that we start to lose touch with reality and
  you really start to believe that there is no God. You get very mad at
  God. You want to know, "Why does God allow this?" You see one side of
  life. You see the seamy side of lifethe corrupt politician, you see the
  homosexual priest, you see the deranged guy who wipes out a young woman.
  You see so much of it, you start to believe that's mostly the whole
  world. That it's all a sewer.
  We go in on the tail end of things when it's too late. It's sad when you
  see a fifteen-year-old girl who committed suicide or'died from an
  overdose and there's nothing you can do about it. You get frustrated.
  By the time you even get some of the maggots and get them in court,
  because of some little infraction of justice, they walk free. More walk
  free than are convicted. It's a tide coming at you all the time. No
  matter
                               333
 COPS       1P

 what you do, it keeps coming at you. There's too many of them out there
 and not enough of you.

 People are emotional creatures. I was sent to a call. It was a despondent
 subject. It was daytime. I went to a house in a middle-class residential
 area, knocked on the door by myself. A woman comes and says to me, "I want
 you to talk to my husband. He's just really been depressed and I think he
 may be suicidal. I'm really worried."
 "Does he have any guns that you know of?"
  "He's just been off work. He's got a medical problem, and I'm just
  worried because he's so down."
 "Where is he?"
  "He's sitting out in the garage." She told me his name, which was Tim.
  So I walked around there and I see this man sitting in the garage on a
  stool, stumped over.
  "Hi, Tim. My name is Daniel. Can we talk?" He doesn't say a word. He just
  kind of looked at me. He had a strange look inside. All of a sudden, he
  got off the stool and jumped on me. He was trying to take my gun. He was
  making horrible noises. Kind of a moaning scream. The guy was six-four,
  two-seventy-five and he was quite strong.
  We were fighting over my gun, which was still in my holster. We went down
  to the ground and I was trying to get out my portable radio. I was
  losing. He was stronger than I was. I realized that I was losing. I got
  out one word on the radio: "Help!" I was supposed to send one of our code
  things, but at the time my brain didn't work like that. He kicked the
  radio and broke it.
  I managed to get over and get my arm around him where I could choke him.
  He starts biting me on the arm. I could see blood coming and I knew it
  was my 334
                    Hardening of the Heart

 blood. I had this real strange feeling. I yelled at his wife, "Call the
 station. I need help." I'm trying to beat him off and he's still trying to
 get my gun. He ripped my shirt completely off.
  The nearest unit took three or four minutes to get to me, which doesn't
  sound like a long time unless you're on the ground fighting. The unit gets
  there with a female officer, five-foot-two, a hundred and ten pounds. She
  comes up with her gun. By this time I had sort of gotten the upper hand. I
  was in better shape so I was outlasting him. I said, "God, put that gun
  away." I was afraid she would shoot me or him or both.
 "What do you want me to do?" she says.
  "Just sit on him." I was really running out of gas bad. About thirty
  seconds after that one of our detective units came in with two officers. I
  remember hearing the brakes squealing out front when they pulled up. With
  their help, we got the guy handcuffed.
  He goes unconscious. The wife comes out and says, "He has a heart
  condition." I can't believe it.
  Here I am. I've got blood all over me, which is mine, my uniform is torn,
  my heart is thumping about 900 miles an hour. They take him off to the
  hospital and they take me down there, too. It was minor, but I had some
  bite marks on me that needed washing out and bandaging.
  He didn't have a heart attack. It was just the exertion. I arrested him for
  assault on a police- officer. I got my wits back together and went and got
  a new shirt.
  The next week, I did some follow-up on him. It turned out the guy is a
  county fireman. He's been out on disability for a year with the heart
  condition. He wanted to retire, but the county had been screwing him over
  on his retirement. No history of any criminal record. He was a deacon in
  his church, a scout leader, as fine a background as you'd ever want in a
  man.
 I got a letter from just about every fireman in the
                               335
 COPS

 county asking that I not press charges against him. The district attorney
 calls me and wants to have a council between myself and this guy's attorney.
 The D.A. goes, "Hey, you've got a good case. You don't have to talk to his
 lawyer." But I agreed to talk to him.
  His lawyer comes in and basically says, "He was despondent over this whole
  thing and he just flipped out. To put an arrest on his record and to
  disgrace him and his kids would seem unnecessary. We'd really like for you
  to drop the charges." The D.A. concurred.
  I go off and I'm thinking. The only thing I did was respond. I could have
  gotten killed. I got in a fight. I got bit. I got knocked down and torn up.
  But what should I do? Here's the shades of gray. Here's a violation of the
  law and I am a police officer. I thought, "I'll go with the program if he
  gets professional help." The D.A. arranged something like deferred prosecu-
  tion. If he got competent help, they wouldn't press charges against him. I
  kind of forgot about it It was just one of those things.
  About four months later, I got a card from him and his wife. He'd gotten
  his retirement and things had worked out. They thanked me for being, I
  don't know, generous, I guess. I talked to the D.A. and I said, "I'm glad
  everything worked out for those people. But you know, it's a funny thing.
  When a police officer has too much stress and cracks out, you guys
  prosecute the hell out of him."

 336
 CHAPTER 8

 Curtains

 THAT MORNING in late September 1984, the weather was changing. Fitful gusts
 of wind blew through the sea of blue uniforms that filled the street for six
 blocks at Holy Name' Catholic church in Manhattan. There was a sound like
 distant thunder as the motorcycle contingent preceding the cortege
 approached. The rumbling of their pistons gave way to the slow pounding of
 the dirge on muffled drums. An officer standing on top of a van equipped
 with loudspeakers called the assembled throng to attention. Just as four
 thousand white-,gloved hands rose in unison, a squall of thin autumn rain
 whipped through the crowd, sending a chill trickle down every neck.
  One last time an on-duty officer told the jabbering teenagers on the cornei
  to shut up. The scree of the pipers puling out "Amazing Grace" did the
  trick and the kids watched in silence as the coffin seemed to float up the
  steps and disappear into the church. The honor guard and the brass followed
  it in. The rain slowed and stopped.
                               337
 COPS
  "Dismissed," came the order. "Be back here in ranks at 10:40." Cigarettes
  materialized everywhere, ordered lines jumbled and broke over the curbs,
  ready to consume hundreds more gallons of coffee. The wire trash baskets
  up and down Amsterdam Avenue were already half full with Styrofoam cups
  from the first round. As circumspectly as they could, a few men looked
  over their shoulders and ducked into a liquor store for a pint. Others
  simply headed for a bar a discreet distance away for a beer and a shot.
  Most simply wandered around the general vicinity.
  They were there to honor transit police officer Irma Lozada, the first
  female police officer to be killed in the line of duty in New York City.
  She and her partner had been working on the LL subway train in Brooklyn.
  As the train pulled into the Wilson Avenue Station, they saw a young man
  run from the train with a necklace in his hand. Officer Lozada and her
  partner split up to chase the suspect. She took the team's radio and her
  partner told her to call for backup. Then he climbed a wall and began
  searching the subway tracks.
  It is assumed that Officer Lozada went to search the street. There was
  no record of a radio communication between Lozada and the district
  headquarters. However, transit police radios don't work well outside the
  subway stations; the above-ground antennae system is unreliable.
  When he didn't find anyone on the tracks, Lozada's partner went to the
  street to look for her. He checked with the railroad clerk at the token
  booth to see if she'd been seen coming back to the station. He tried to
  contact her on another officer's radio. There was no answer. He called
  district headquarters and asked if she had checked in with them and then
  returned to headquarters himself.
  Around 5 P.m., when there was still no word from Officer Lozada , a
  search was begun. Approximately two
 338
                             Curtains

 hours later they found her in the tall weeds of a vacant lot at Chauncey
 Street and Central Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Lozada's
 shield was under her body, her handcuffs were out and a necklace was lying
 on the ground nearby. Her .38-caliber service revolver was missing. She -had
 been shot in the head, twice.
  It wasn't the kind of heroic death most cops picture for themselves, not
  exactly a blaze of glory. But Officer Lozada's death was a sadly typical
  police death. She was doing her job. Something inadvertent or unexpected
  had happened. She lost control of the situation and was murdered. There's
  nothing glorious or glamorous about dying all alone in a vacant lot full of
  rubble and garbage, but it happens much more often than those romantic
  gunfights at the O.K. Corral which many cops envision when they daydream
  the endings of their personal movies.

 BY TEN-THIRTY the street had begun to fill again and the rain threatened to
 return as well. The wind was blasting harder than ever, rattling the limbs
 of the scrawny city trees and snapping off the leaves that had already
 turned brown.
  The crowd of police wasn't what you'd call somber. There were smiles and
  even laughter punctuated by the hearty backslapping of renewed
  acquaintance. Informal group photos were snapped around a fire hydrant. One
  knot of men and women made fun of a crazy wino who was inspired by the
  sight of so many cops to perform a short but ecstatic dance.
  But when the loudspeakers boomed, "Stand by," they formed ranks without
  reluctance or hesitation. They were there to do a job. They would show
  their respect and they would demonstrate their solidarity to the television
  audience. And they would keep up the barriers 339
 COPS
 that hold fear at bay. They have to face the possibility of death every day.
 One police officer, a thousand miles away from this particular funeral,
 expressed the attitude of police officers this way:
  "You don't really get that camaraderie. You really don't know that much
  about individuals. All you do is five with cops.
  "I remember a line on'Kojak'once. A cop gets killed and somebody asks,
  'Does he have any kidsT Why is it that times like that is the only time
  people ask, 'Did he have kidsT Nobody gave a shit if he had kids when he
  was alive. Now he's dead and they want to know.
  "When you walk in and look at the casket, you know that's now So-and-So
  that got killed. But it could have been any one of you. They shot at the
  uniform. You're sorry, but what hits you is, 'It could be me laying there,
  because I'm wearing the same uniform.' That's what you're really giving a
  few prayers about. It's not, 'I'm sorry you're laying there.' It's about,
  'Whew, that could be me.' Very weird."

  I stood in the lee of an apartment building while waiting for the last act
  of the funeral pageant to begin. A white-haired man had taken shelter under
  the overhang with me. He was wearing a maroon sport coat over a faded navy
  knit shirt and holding a long fat cigar that had gone out. He had been a
  lieutenant on the NYPD and was up from retirement in Florida, taking
  treatments at a medical center. He spoke with that Queens accent that gives
  explosive force to the consonants in a word like "perpetrator."
  "You never get used to these things," he said. "What I hate most is when
  they play 'Taps.' Jeez, there's something about that sound. I told the wife
  that if something

 340
                             Curtains

 should happen to me-God forbi"on't let them play 'Taps' at the funeral. I
 hate it when they play that.
  "Every night I was a cop, when I'd come home and climb in bed, my wife
  would wrap an arm around my neck and hold on to me all night long.
  Sometimes I thought she'd choke the shit out of me. She was worried the
  whole time I was on the job.
  "After the second time I got hurt, she went crazy: 'You got to quit. I'll
  get a divorce. I can't stand it.'
  " 'Look,' I told her, 'you know it's part of the job. It's what I do.' She
  calmed down a little, but after that I thought about it.
  "This was '72. Christmas Eve, the kid was at his grandmother's and I says
  to my wife, 'Let's go out to eat.' We get to this nice place and I pull out
  this big box all wrapped up with a hell of a big bow- on it and she says,
  'What's thatT I told her it was her Christmas package which she was going
  to open at dinner. She said, no, we should wait until we got home, but I
  wasn't hearing any of that.
  "So we sit down in this restaurant and she opens this big fucking box and
  all there is inside is a little envelope about six inches long.
  'What's thisT she says.
  'What do you think it is,' I says to her. 'My retirement papers. Effective
  January One. Now I don't want to hear any more of your barking.' We moved
  to Florida. She hated New York. Won't even come back for a visit."
  At this point Officer Lozada's coffin reappeared and we stood in silence
  with our hands over our hearts. As the trumpeter hit the first three notes
  of "Taps," the ex-lieutenant whispered, "Jeez, I hate it when they play
  that shit. "
  Then the crowd broke up like kids getting out of school. Those officers who
  didn't have to return to duty

                               341
 COPS

 went looking for a bar. The cops from other jurisdictions and other states
 were looking for a good time.
  "You know what one of the biggest things is at a police funeral?" a
  suburban police officer said. "It's to show off police cars. 'Let's go
  out of state and show them what kind of patrol car we got and all the
  gadgets we got in it.' You gd out of respect, but as soon as the funeral
  is over the cops begin to mingle and talk about the bad guy they just
  shot or the one they kicked the shit out of. Ten minutes later, every one
  of them is checking out the police cars from the other states. 'Man, look
  at that big Plymouth four-barrel.' 'Damn, look, he's got four different
  radios. Who the Christ does he talk to?' "
  So Officer Lozada was taken to the cemetery in Queens and the rest went
  their separate ways. Violent ends like Officer Lozada's are the exception
  in police work. The ex-lieutenant's orderly retirement is the rule. Most
  officers put in their fifteen to twenty-five years of service and then
  retire to one of those Archie Bunker dreams so many of them have-to buy
  a fishing boat or a bar. But that doesn't mean it's easy for an officer
  to make it through twenty years of mental stress, emotional strain and
  physical punishment. Or that if he does,make it, he'll be all in one
  piece, body and mind.
  "The great danger in this job is not getting shot or stabbed. It's that
  you'll get fat and die of a heart attack. Or because you let your nerves
  eat you up, you'll have a nervous breakdown. Or you become an emotionally
  disturbed person," one police officer told me at the end of his
  interview.
  "Chances are shooting and stabbing aren't going to happen to you. There's
  a good chance that you're going to be dragged out of your patrol car or
  from behind your desk dead from cardiac arrest. A good chance that you'll
  be a nervous wreck. A good chance that you won't be able to talk to
  normal people because of your 342
                             Curtains

 own emotional problems. The rest of the shit, don't worry about.
  "You talk to the new kids and they can't wait to strap that gun on their
  side, go out there and show the world. They're going to do a job, man. I
  had that feeling and it's a good feeling. But when the reality comes round,
  you got to worry about your sanity and making it through your career."

 You see guys who find it very difficult to retire from the police
 department. It's become more than a way of life for them. It is all those
 toys, those gifts that he has, the authority, the specialness that he has.
 To give that back and go back to the real world, that's what the tremendous
 surrender is.
  Policemen have this sense of "I don't care who you are or what you are,
  you're not a cop. You can be the President of the fucking United States of
  America or a God damn brain surgeon, but you're not a cop. I'm special. I
  can give you a summons and you're going to sit and listen to me. If I stop
  you, you may be driving a brand new- Mercedes worth $50,000 and you may've
  done more in one afternoon than I've done in my lifetime, but for this five
  minutes that I have you for running that red light, you're going to sit and
  listen to what I have to say. I may go home to my above-ground pool and
  drink my beer, while you're off to drink Dom Perignon someplace.
  Nevertheless for that moment in our lives, I'm the boss and you're the
  shithead."
  You go to Park Avenue to someone's apartment and they want to sit and
  listen to your story, especially if they've been robbed or mugged. They've
  seen the other face and it scared them to death. Now they see this face who
  is on their side and is the answer to the other face. "You're going to help
  me. You're going to protect me. That other person isn't going to touch me
  again." The
                               343
 COPS
 guy may be a major movie star, but he wants your gun and hat and badge,
 because he wants to go out and kill that son of a bitch that just made him
 plead for his life for a stinking watch.
  There are a lot of cops who have that sense of their own specialness and
  they don't want to give that up. When they do give it up, it's very
  difficult for them to function. "How am I going to go out there and
  listen to some shit tell me how to stack boxes? I'll kick the shit out
  of him. I'm not going to be able to deal with that,." That's a problem.

 I've been on the job for seventeen years and I've seen a lot of guys come
 and go. You know~ what I've never seen? I've never seen a guy quit in
 seventeen years.
 -As soon as you been on the job for four or five years
 and you're making good money, you can't quit. You're
 a high school graduate and now you're twenty-six years
 old. Where are you going to work and make $31,000 a
 year?                          I
  Now what do you do? Got to go to work, but you hate the job. Hate it.
  Despise it. Most of it's in your head. You just can't get up for the job
  any more. You don't want to hear any more people complaining. You don't
  want to worry about the bosses giving you complaints. You start drinking
  too much. You're fighting with your family because you're upset about
  your job, but you can't quit.
  So how do you react? You might take it out on the public. You might take
  it out on the job itself. Some guys go out there and try to do nothing.
  They say, "I'll fuck this job." They just do nothing unless the sergeant
  actually order~ them to do it. I know about them. There's pcople out
  there like this. There were a lot more years ago.
 You got guys with calendars inside their lockers,
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 marking the days off until they can retire. Get out of this job. The job
 sucks.
  The guy next door in mounted, he brings his horse over to you and he
  says, "Usten to this." He says to the horse, "Does the job suck?" The
  horse whinnies and shakes his head up and down. It's a big joke. All the
  cops go, "Hey, Billy, Billy. Bring the horse over here. Ask him. Ask
  him."
 "Does the job suck?" The horse does his thing.
 There's different approaches for these kinds of guys:
  "I'm going to stay here, but I'm going to get a plum assignment someplace
  if it's the last thing I do."
  "I'm going to stay here, but I'm going to fuck the job to death. They're
  not going to get anything out of me.~,
  "I'm going to stay here, but I'll get hurt in the line of duty and get
  fucking three-quarters pay."
  All police officers are potential lottery winners. I can win right now,
  there's no question about it. I go out in the radio car and I get injured
  so I can't work. I wouldn't s*ear that I knew a police officer that
  slammed his hand in the radio door so that hc couldn't shoot the gun
  anymore. I wouldn't say that had happened, but it is possible that that
  happened.
  You get three-quarters, that means you get $22,000 a year, tax free. Tax
  Free. For the rest of your life. Plus you're allowed to get another job
  making the other quarter. When you reach what would have been your
  twentieth year on the job, then you can make as much money as you like.
  We got a captain that should hear from the civil service review board
  this week. He's making $63,000 a year. He's going to make over forty of
  that tax free. You'd have to be making eighty thousand a year to clear
  forty. You hear guys say, "You got three-quarters. Congratulations!"
We have the heart bill now. If I'm home and I have 345
 COPS

 a heart attack, I get three-quarters. They consider it in the line of duty
 whether you're at home or at work. They say the stress of the thing is
 job-related. But the average life expectancy for men receiving benefits of
 the heart bill is two years. Nobody has ever lived'over ten years. So the
 heart bill is not the way to go threequarters. Like the guy says, "Just take
 the tip off my trigger finger. Just an inch or so. I don't mind. I can't
 fire no more, I got to go three-quarters."
  There are stories that you hear. Who's to say that they're not true. You're
  at home and you're painting your house. You fall off the ladder and you
  hurt your ankle real bad. Maybe you've got a fracture or something. If you
  can drag yourself to work, put yourself into a uniform and get in a radio
  car, the first job you get, step off the curb and fall down. It could
  happen. I've heard stories about guys with heavy-duty compound fractures
  making it in to work. Your wife even warns you when you do something
  dangerous around the house, "You fall down and I'm going to get a radio car
  here to get you to work." It's a psychological out about the job. Hey, the
  job sucks but I could always get three-quarters.

 There are cops that have no business being in the police department, no
 business being in uniform. They're a disaster. I say to them, "You should
 become a garbageman. You don't want to be a cop. You're here just passing
 the time of day. Become a fireman. You get the same money. You're only doing
 it for the money."
  "No, no, no," they say. "I like the gun. I like the shield. I like the
  authority."
  These are the same men-if you call them men-that are empty people. They'll
  end up divorced or drunks or drug addicts. They're just wasting time. They
  don't enjoy it. They should do something else, for Christ sake.
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  I got a good personal friend of mine that was just like that. He was
  driven into the department. His wife drove him to it because of me. She
  seen me and thought that he should be me. He hated it. This guy used to
  get stomach cramps, lose clumps of hair, he was so nervous at work. It
  made him a wreck. Everything he did in the police department was to get
  himself away from police work. He tried to be a mechanic; then he tried
  working on the boats.
  He had an incident happen to him that maybe don't happen to a hundred
  cops. A guy took a shot at him and missed him at close range. The guy had
  shot the sergeant and got him. Then he shot at my friend and hit the car
  right next to him. The bullet didn't hit him and he was in the hospital
  for two weeks. It made him so physically disabled that they put him out
  on threequarters.
  This guy is now the happiest mechanic you'd ever want to see. He's got
  grease under his nails and he's happy. He works on cars and he's smiling
  and laughing. Now he's no longer married to that woman. He's got a nice
  young wife, his pension and he's happy. Ain't that something?

 I had a heart attack. I was out a little while with that and when I went
 back they put me on light duty in dispatching. I did that for three months
 and I was going crazy. I was stuck inside with all these machines. That
 was enough to make me have a heart attack right there. I was used to being
 on the street. So I went and talked to some people I know and got myself
 put back out there on patrol again. I did change and go on days though,
 I called it my semi-retirement. I had a few twinges, but I had the
 nitroglycerin pills to control that.
  Then we were in the middle of the desegregation thing and that was pretty
  heavy. We had a stabbing at
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 COPS

 a high school one day and I was in there most of the day getting things
 under control and I come out and my cruiser is tipped over. All the
 windows are smashed, all four tires are flat. We were working extra shift
 and everything else. I was off for a few days' vacation in the middle of
 all this and I had another heart attack. I was in intensive care for about
 five days. Then I spent another few weeks in the hospital. It was a good
 one this time. That was it. I said, "There's no sense in me staying on the
 job with this." So I put my papers in and went out. I had a little over
 nineteen years in. I got out on a disability pension-the heart bill.
 Stress of the job and all that.
  You have to go before the Civil Service Commission. I had my doctor and
  they send you to two more doctors, who give you the electrocardiogram
  andtalk to you and so forth. Then you stand before the commission and
  they all question you. You're talking into a 'microphone and one'll say,
  "When does it bother you?"
  "I got to run three floors up in apartment buildings," I'm telling them.
  "By the time I get up there I'm out of breath. Then I got to fight
  somebody."
  "How often do you got to wrestle with somebody, about once a month?"
  "Once a day is more like it," I say. Once a month? Jesus. Basically they
  want to know whether or not I can do the job any more. There was no way
  I could. I wasn't going to jeopardize my life for the job any more. By
  then my boy was finished college and I could afford to retire a little
  better than when I had the first one.
  I didn't try to get a job like a lot of guys do. It wasn't in my nature.
  I didn't know if I could handle one, to tell you the truth. I get tired.
  If I mow the lawn, I have to do it in sections and rest in between.
  My wife and I were together. I had a perfect marriage. It was just great.
  We'd go out to dinner once or twice a week. We had our little house down
  here to
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 take care of. My wife was tremendous. Everything was grand until she died.
  We got home one night about three-thirty in the morning from our best
  friends' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I kissed her goodnight. We'd
  had separate bedrooms since I'd worked shift work most of my life. She
  went to bed and I went to bed. I got up about nine the next morning. We
  got in late so I just leave her sleep. About noon time I go into the room
  and I says, "Come on, honey, get up." I grabbed her arm and she was
  stiff. She must have been dead from when she went in the night before,
  because rigor mortis had really set in hard.
  I called the police and they come down. Of course they called the medical
  examiner. He come down and when I opened the door, he says, "Jesus,
  Howie, I thought it was you." He knew I had the bad heart and there was
  nothing wrong with my wife. It was a massive coronary. Boy, that was a
  jolt to me. That just corked my life. That just about done it.

 There was no one thing that set me off. Just over a period of time it
 built up. I got burned out. I had eleven and a half years on. There's no
 incentive in the police department to do well. There really isn't. You
 practically have to commit murder to get fired, so you're not going to get
 fired. It's a typical civil service job, although I probably would not
 have admitted that when I was a policeman.
  I had gone to school nights to get my college degree. It didn't mean a
  thing. There was going to be no raise. It does not help you get promoted.
  We have lieutenants and captains that don't have eighth-grade
  educations-not that they have to have more, but by the same token, if I
  have a college degree and the same experience, why shouldn't I have a
  shot at an administrative job where
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 COPS
 I can do some good and use my education instead of just waiting through
 the fifteen or twenty years of normal attrition to get there? Plus the way
 the political air was blowing, a judge had decided that blacks and women
 were going to be promoted and advanced quicker than anybody else no matter
 what you did, so that had a lot of effect on my attitude. I decided to
 quit.
  Now I'm working for a large chain of banks as a fraud investigator. I can
  truthfully say that I probably put more people in jail now than I ever
  did while I was on the police department. There's still the challenge of
  putting the pieces of an investigation puzzle together and I enjoy that.
  There's a lot more freedom out here as opposed to the police department.
  They just give you your cases and you work on them. There's isn't any
  political pressure: "Drop what you're doing. We got to go take care of
  this group. We got to go get this guy because the chief wants it done."
  If you do a good job, you are rewarded for it. I did a good job on my
  last case. I get three days off with pay. I'm getting taken out to dinner
  and I'm getting a raise. The police department can't do that. I've been
  here two years and I can tell you that inside of five years, I'm going
  to be the boss. I just know I am. I can feel it and I think I can do it.
  I can work for it.

 I was on the department twenty-six years in various assignments, the last
 sixteen as a supervisor. One of the things that attracted me to the job
 in the first place was an ad in the paper that showed a picture of a
 police officer in uniform holding a machine gun and the words said,
 "Retire at 52.11 1 made a promise to myself when I entered the police
 department that I would retire on my fifty-second birthday, which I did.
 I had how many days left to retirement written on my calendar and 1
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 started counting them off each day two years before it was going to happen.
 When the day fell that I was eligible for maximum retirement benefits, it
 was my last day. They gave me a little party. I got a leaf blower for my
 parting gift.
  Retirement just feels great. My wife and I had purchased a house that had
  been vacant for a year and vandalized. I worked on the house for well over
  a year after I retired. I have small children. They're in the second and
  third grade, so that keeps you young. They like having me home as a house
  mom. I'm working now again part-time with an investigation service. I like
  it.
  The good times will never be the same-the traffic man riding his motorcycle
  down the hall, throwing firecrackers in the building. I miss the people,
  but I don't miss the place. I was tired of the make-work projects that
  someone dreams up for the sake of seeing someone work. Monthly reports turn
  into weekly reports, plus monthly reports, and the weekly reports, of
  course, go in the waste basket. It was just something to keep the paper
  flowing. Law enforcement has changed. Attitudes have changed.

 I was appointed in 1951. 1 stayed a patrolman in the department, in the
 exact same precinct, for thirty years. -I'retired in February '81. 1 was
 looking forward to it. Once I got to age fifty-five and had my years in, I
 just got out. With the Supreme Court decisions and everything else, you
 couldn't be a policeman any more. They tied your hands. The thugs in the
 street were dictating to you more than you could tell them what to do. In
 the old days, a slap on the back of the head or a good kick in the fanny did
 these kids a lot more good than taking them to court and giving them a tap
 on the wrist. They get out of the courtroom faster than you do. After a
 while you just do what you can. It's just something 351
 COPS

you have to put up with if yo?4're looking for retirement. Some of the guys went
 on to be security guards different places after they got out. It'd be all
 right punching a clock and making rounds, but carrying a gun? No, I wouldn't
 want it. I was never proud of that thing anyway when I had it. I was never
 happy with it. It never made me feel any bigger. Thank God I never had to
 use it in thirty years. I never had to shoot anybody.
  I worked for about a year driving one of those vans for one of the express
  delivery companies, picking up packages and stuff. It was still dealing
  with the public. I always did work dealing with the public.
  Then we sold our home and moved to this senior citizen community in
  Florida. The wife has arthritis and we thought the weather and everything
  would be better for her. As it turned out, it isn't. The dampness, you
  know. It's cheaper living down here and it's a little warmer, but that's
  about it. She doesn't like it because we're away from the kids.
  I have no regrets. Oh, there's things maybe I could've done better. Maybe
  studied a little harder and made sergeant. But them things didn't happen
  and are all passed, so there's no sense crying about it. Once it's gone,
  there's nothing you can do.

 When you're out, you're out. I was traveling out of town and I got stopped
 on the highway by the state police. He's getting ready to write me up and
 I'm telling him kind of frantically how I used to be a cop, how I worked in
 the city for twenty years. He looked at me like, "So, who gives a shit?"
  You're saying to yourself, "But-wow-I don't belong here." You'd better make
  up your mind that you no longer belong, pal.

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 I know a guy who got out for the No - 1 reason that he had a lot of
 overtime in that year. Once you've got your years in, the pension was
 predicated on the amount of money you made the last year you worked. He
 knew he would never get that close to having that much money again. The
 guy decided to get out.
  All he talks about now is how he made a mistake. He gets in some real
  depressions. He's beside himself now. He misses whatever it was he had
  there. Whether it was the ex'citement of the job, whether it was the
  authority, I don't know. Some guys, you take the power and distinction
  of being a cop hway from them and they're just another Joe Schmoe out
  there looking for a job . . . it's degrading to them.
  He's not the only guy I know like that. I've seen at least a half-dozen
  guys with the same problem. Very honestly, I think it's because they're
  not making it on the outside. It's a whole different ball game. In the
  job they had that umbrella of security that no matter what they did they
  were still a cop. A lot of guys say it's because they never had to work
  directly under a boss and they got to make their own decisions. I think
  it's just the opposite. Men find solace in the job and relative security.
  All of a sudden they realize, "Wow, I'm free from that now. What'll I do?
  I've always had 'The Job.' I had unlimited sick time. I had my medical
  coverage, my benefits. Who's going to take care of this?" I think guys
  miss the structure. You see guys who were praying twenty years to get out
  of the job. They take their terminal leave and try the outside for two
  or three months; then they try to get right back into the job.
  The sad part is that now I'm seeing so many guys coming in for really
  menial jobs. They have gotten out of the police department and they're
  really not making it. I see guys with no special skills. What is a cop
  going to do? You walk into a company these days and tell them you're a
  retired detective and it's no big deal.
                               353
 COPS

 They want to know if you can run a computer or an elevator.

 You do miss that feeling of power that no matter what you do or where you
 go, nobody can really do anything to yotr, because you're a cop.
  A simple thing like driving. Once I wasn't a policeman anymore, I was so
  scared I was going to get a ticket. I never even thought about it before.
  I would drive 60, 65, maybe 70. 1 would bust traffic lights all the time.
  "I ain't going to sit here. Nobody's coming. I'm going. Somebody sees me
  and pulls me over, so what?"
  I go into a store and see a ruckus going on; now I stay away from it.
  It's not my business. I don't want to get involved. Before it was, "Hey,
  I'll get involved. I got a gun on me and I ain't going to worry about
  it." Ninety percent of the policemen still on the job, whether they'll
  admit it or not, that's the way they feel.
  I don't have that attitude any more. I have a license. I can carry a gun
  when I'm working, but most of the time I just don't mess with it. I
  forget it and leave it at home.

 When you're in your forties and you're working with younger guys and you
 see them jumping over fences and stuff, you realize that it's time to go.
 I wasn't pressured, I wasn't really afraid. Just something inside said it
 was time to go. When I was twenty-two years old I could accept a lot more
 shit. As I got older I realized there were things I couldn't accept. For
 instance, I couldn't accept working with a twenty-seven-year-old boss.
 Don't get me wrong, I know this was my problem. But I was not totally
 convinced that because you passed
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 one civil service test the police department should make you a supervisor.
  About a month before I retired we had this incident. There was this girl
  and guy that were running together. They beat up like seventeen senior
  citizens and robbed them on separate occasions. The girl's father was a
  corrections officer and she stole his gun and gave it to her boyfriend.
  He proceeded to do all kinds of stickups and bang-ups with it.
  I had a squeal on the guy that he was in some shithouse hotel. We were
  to hit the place like four o'clock in the morning. I showed the picture
  to the desk clerk and then grabbed him by the hair and dragged him
  upstairs with me so he can't call this guy on the phone. I made him show
  me with the passkey-how all the doors work so I can get in there in a few
  seconds' time. The only thing he -didn't tell me was the size of the
  room. I expected to go through the door and make like a fortyyard dash
  to the bed where this guy is sleeping with the girl and drag them apart.
  I locate the guy's room. Now we're going to go through this door. It's
  not that we think he's got a gun. We know he's got a gun and he's been
  using it pretty well. At one point, when I put the key in the door, I
  said to myself, "Holy shit. I got a month to go. What if I do this now
  once a week? Is this really what I want to be doing? What the fuck am I
  doing? What the fuck am I doing here?"
  If you were laying on the bed and put your arms out you would be touching
  both walls of this room. We crashed through the door and he did go for
  the gun, but it was all over in a matter of seconds, because these three
  gorillas ended up laying on this guy.
  What the fuck am I really doing here? I enjoy it to a point. You really
  want to go through that door, as unlikely as that may sound, but now it's
  starting to seem dangerous to me. For whatever reason-I turned chicken
  355
 cops
 or whatever you want to call it-I realized it was time for me to go. I
 retired a month later.
  Twenty years to the day. Just did my time. I enjoy being out. It's
  rejuvenated my life. I never disliked the job. It was always good to me.
  It supported me and my family. I was satisfied with what I was doing, but
  when the time came, I felt it was right to go.

 I was twenty-seven years old and I went to the doctor. I told him I drank
 a lot. He says, "I'd drink too, kid, if I had your job. But beer will
 never hurt you." He put me on Librium. "You shouldn't drink and take this
 at the same time," he did say that. So I stop the drinking and I took the
 Librium.
  Then I couldn't sleep, so he gave me sleeping pills. When I was
  depressed, he gave me antidepressants. Then he gave me anti-anxiety
  pills. Then I was in pain, so he gave me pain pills.,
  I'm walking around with a bottle of pills and I'm feeling like a fucking
  charlatan. Here I am a cop, going to work. I'm arresting drunks and
  settling family disputes and my entire life is fucked up.
  Instead of pulling out a flask or going around the comer into a bar to
  get a drink, when I'm out somewheie on the job and I feel uptight, I'd
  go into the bathroom and take a pill, whatever pill fit the occasion. I
  feel very, very phony, like garbage. I was afraid somebody would see me
  and find out. In fact, I used to take the bottle of pills and stuff it
  with cotton so they wouldn't rattle. When I had to go down to the morgue
  to photograph a dead body, I'd stick Vicks up my nose to get rid of the
  smell, fight a cigar because I smoked about ten or fifteen a day-I had
  to compulsively always be doing something. Then I'd take two or three
  pills.
  What I didn't know because nobody ever educated me was that I was a
  walking time bomb. The thought
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 that came into my head all the time was suicide, taking my own life. I lived
 in fear of taking my own life. This wasn't caused through any one thing. It
 was a cumulative amount of stress, of handling shit over a period of time.
  I didn't really know what was wrong with me, but all of a sudden that gun
  I carried, that went everywhere with me because I thought I had to be Mr.
  Macho and make all kinds of arrests, that gun became my worst enemy. I
  began to fear that gun. I'd photographed so many people who were dead by
  guns. I'd seen so many people who blew their brains out, including cops. I
  started to get more and more scared. The more afraid I got, the more
  anxiety attacks I got, the more the gun became the enemy. I was in deep
  depression.
  It was a merry-go-round and I didn't know how to get off. I had this
  feeling that I was cracking up.
  I was trained to use a gun. I saw cops who tried to blow their brains out
  and still lived because they put it to the side of their head. The oral
  sex, the making love to the gun is to put it in your mouth, put it inside
  your head so that way you don't miss. And I started to think about it an
  awful lot.
  I lived in fear. When I was driving to a homicide to photograph the bodies
  and I'd have an anxiety attack and I'd panic, I've seen myself stop the
  car, get out, empty the gun and throw the bullets across a field. Then I
  felt safe. I couldn't use it on myself. Then, I'd say, "That's a lie. You
  can get bullets from anybody at the crime scene."
  I lived that way for a couple of years and it got worse. I wouldn't bring
  the gun home. But as long as you worked you had to carry it. They inspected
  you to make sure you had the proper equipment. I used to do details at the
  ballpark guarding the money from the gate and I wouldn't have any bullets
  in my gun.
 I was ashamed of that, because I felt weak. I felt not
                               357
 COPS          I

 a man. "What the fuck are you doing wearing a gun and a badge? If you feel
 like that, you shouldn't be on the job. You should quit." But I was more
 afraid of quitting the job because I got seven children and I'm the
 provider. Really I was afraid of what people would think of me. That's the
 killer, that's the real killer. To fail, to be less of a man, then I might
 as well kill myself. And I couldn't kill myself. I lived with it a long
 time.
  The way I handled it was I eventually started drinking again. In other
  words, I just said, "Fuck it." The pills were so depressing, so I just
  drank, too. So now I had a dual addiction. I was a whore.
  I'm sitting in my police car by myself crying, afraid somebody will see me.
  I didn't know what was wrong with me. It was a twelve-year period before I
  got this bad. I lived with this for twelve years.
  I couldn't get help although I went to the doctor. I back-doored him so
  nobody would know. I talked about my drinking, but I couldn't tell him I
  thought I was cracking up. He reassured me that there was nothing wrong
  with me being on these pills for years and years. I would go back to him
  and get anything that I wanted.
  Worse than that, when I would go to a drugstore or a doctor's office that
  had been robbed or broken into, I knew the supply and got what I wanted. It
  was very easy. I was a thief on top of everything else. I'm not proud of
  that either, but I did what I had to do to survive.
  The strangest part about it was, I still made arrestsgood ones. I had to
  prove that I was still good. I still took the best pictures. I got the best
  undercover work done. It didn't hurt my job performance. I'll never un-
  derstand that. I didn't overreact. I didn't get complaints against me.
  It came out. It came out in my home life. They're the ones that got hurt,
  they're the ones that paid the price. In my family life I was
  deteriorating. I was 358
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 overparanoid with my kids. I didn't beat them with my hands, but I beat
 them with my mouth. My wife and I ended up in divorce. I left home for a
 young girl and all that kind of stuff.
  We had a department chaplain, but I didn't want to talk to him, partly
  because I saw him as part of the administration. Plus I was convinced
  that I did not believe in God any more. Although I used to tell Him,
  "Come down off of that fucking cross, I'll put spikes in you-never mind
  the nails-for what you do to people out there. How dare you do this to
  people?" I wanted to fucking kill him. If Christ would have come in here
  I would have wiped him out with a shotgun. That's how much hate I had in
  me.
  I didn't want to hurt my family. I think the only thing that stopped me
  from committing suicide is that I could see the faces of my kids. If I
  really fuck up and blow my brains out, this is going to be the biggest
  failure of my life, because I'm going to do this to them.
  There were two guys on the job who were recovered alcoholics and they
  knew that I had a problem. They had tried to talk to me, but I would
  avoid them like the bubonic plague. But finally one day I was tired of
  crying, I was tired of the gun in my mouth all the time, I was tired of
  hurting my family and I called them. I said, "Look, take me. I don't give
  a shit what the fuck you do with me, just take me."
  The only reason I called them was because I knew they could be trusted
  and they were cops like me. I wouldn't go to anyone else. I wouldn't go
  to God Himself if he came on Earth. I wouldn't go to a shrink. Shrinks
  to me were the fucking cuckoos. I'd gone into their offices and taken
  clients out that they were saying, "Get this nut out of here." I'd taken
  mental patients who were runaways back to the hospitals and seen how they
  were treated there. They were treated bad. If 1
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 COPS

 went there, I'd be treated the same way. So, where do I go?
  What they did was, these guys put me in the hospital and dried me out,
  got all the shit out of my system. Once I got sober, I went to Alcoholics
  Anonymous. I didn't like it. But I started to learn stuff about fears and
  anxiety. I started to see cops and reporters that I'd been in the front
  lines with. That made me feel better. "We knew you were having a bad
  problem, but nobody could talk to you," they said. "You were really bad.
  We were worried about you." I found out that my case wasn't unique. I
  wasn't alone any more.
  It happens a lot to cops. They're driving around out there in their car,
  just crying and crying, not knowing what's wrong with them. They can't
  admit it. The people that are burned out are the people that care, the
  people that want to help and do a good job. I noticed that a lot of
  policemen don't have AA to go to. They're not alcoholic, maybe they don't
  even drink. Yet they have the same problems-fear, anxiety, ulcers,
  stress.
  If you go to a crime scene and look at the faces, you will see the fear
  right on their faces. You don't see anybody smiling. People will laugh,
  but that's just a release from the tension. You see death, trauma,
  stress. I thought about my macho image and how deadly it was.
  Nk and another cop I sobered up with, we said, "What can we do about it?
  Let's get up and talk about it, get up in front of a bunch of cops and
  tell them how we feel. "
  It's scary, getting up in front of a bunch of cops and telling them how
  you were scared, how you thought about suicide and how you drank because
  you were weak. "They're going to laugh us out of the room."
  But we did it anyway. They didn't laugh. Nobody laughed. They wanted to
  know more.

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 The job changed me. You begin to lose your perspective as to what is right
 and what is wrong. I'm not trying to blame the job for what I did,
 understand me? But you see so much that is alien to your background. You
 see drug use, prostitution, violence. Your moral judgments get kind of
 twisted around and you say, "Well, this is wrong, but it's not very wrong.
 I see guys get away with a lot worse than this every day." I got very
 weird.
  I got jammed up. I got caught screwing an underage girl. It got shoved
  under my wife's nose. My wife said, "That's it. Goodbye." The job said,
  "You know, maybe it would be a good idea if you quit ... before we fire
  you." Everything went down the tubes. Everything was destroyed and what's
  the way out? Your whole livelihood is beyond your reach. No job, no
  pension, no family. I came very, very close to committing suicide on more
  than one occasion. I sat in the backroom of the station with two of my
  guns in my hands, wondering if I could pull both triggers at the same
  time. A lot of guys go that way.

 Mounted cop, notorious fucking drunk, an old-timer. He refused to spend
 his uniform allowance on his uniform, so consequently he very seldom gets
 out of the saddle, because his pants got no seat. Nobody fucked with him.
 The sergeant might give him a slash if he scratched one day-maybe, maybe
 not. The sergeant only saw him twice in the eight hours, going out and
 coming in. They don't call him on no radio run. It's a major sin to give
 an old fart like that a run.
  He was doing the eight-to-four shift. He showed up so hung over that he
  was still drunk. It's broad daylight in midtown Manhattan. There was
  fucking people running all over the place and he was out on that Godfor-
  saken nag. There's only one way to level off and that's to get the hair
  of the dogthat bit him.
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 COPS

  He spied a bar, but he knew he couldn't leave the horse parked outside. If
  the boss came by and saw the animal without a rider, he'd know something
  was afoot. But he was a slick old-timer. The doors to the basement that
  swing up out of the sidewalk are open and he's got this horse that will go
  anywhere he tells it to go, so he walks the horse down the stairs into the
  basement.
  He stayed in there for four hours. Now he was past the level point again
  and out of his head. At this point, he felt that he could cope. His sense
  of responsibility returned and he decided to get out there on the street.
  He lifts the sidewalk grating and there's his horse laying on the basement
  floor. It weighed 1,700 pounds and it was dead as a doornail. It was
  confined and hot down there. The horse had swished around and inadvertently
  knocked the smoke stack off the heating unit. He had asphyxiated himself.
  What could he do? Certainly he'll be guilty if anybody finds the horse down
  there. He had to get the horse up on the street so that it can have died on
  the curb. Then he could have said, "I don't know what happened. Who the
  fuck knows? The damn horse laid down in front of this bar and died on me."
  But the thing weighs so much that the whole bar couldn't lift it even if
  they were so inclined.
  The bartender was smart. He said, "We call my friend with a tow truck, we
  put the winch on the horse and we winch the horse right up. You're set."
  Great idea. They went back inside the bar to have another shot while he
  made the call.
  The tow truck came. The cop went out and opened up the doors. The truck
  backs up with his ass end on the sidewalk, consequently blocking all
  traffic. Now he had a huge traffic jam working. After about two minutes
  everybody's honking their horns. This of course attracted the attention of
  all the pedestrians. They came
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 over to investigate what a tow truck could possibly be winching up out of a
 basement.
  Ba-boom! Trouble. Now the old-timer has got ninetynine ASPCA workers on his
  case and was being attacked by hundreds of New York animal lovers. Here's
  this poor dead horse and there's the owner, the cop, barfing his guts out
  on the sidewalk. That was his last day. He ended up on the farm taking the
  cure for booze.

 Somebody knew. Somebody had to know as crazy as this guy was. His partner or
 his sergeant or somebody who worked with him saw that he was going crazy and
 should have tried to get him help. But that's not the way it usually works
 out. The guy who came to us at IAD was an officer who just happened to meet
 this cop in a bar they both frequented off-duty. They became casual friends
 over about a year. It had become quite apparent that this guy had all kinds
 of problems with narcotics in the form of pills. He was also paranoid,
 probably schizophrenic.
  The wife of the cop who came to us was a pharmacist and the guy was always
  pushing to get Quaaludes from her. Of course that was wrong and he should
  have reported it, but he didn't think it was that dangerous at the time.
  But then the guy had begun to offer him weapons in exchange for 'ludes and
  at that point he came to us.
  We recorded some telephone calls between the two of them. I listened to the
  recordings and I knew the guy was scary, not evil, just sick and screwed
  up. You could hear it in his voice. He said, "I don't want to get caught
  with this shit. I wouldn't do this with anybody else, I know you're a
  straight guy. You're probably nervous. I know I am. Here's what we'll do:
  We'll arrive at a motel that we will jointly agree on only at the last
  minute so there's no chance of setting each other up.

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 COPS
 When we get to the room, we will both immediately strip so we'll know that
 we're not wearing wires. Then we'll make the exchange."
  I said to my partner, "This guy is on the edge. We've got to confine this
  situation. He's liable to do something. Let the thing go. down in a closed
  room like he wants. We'll bug it so he never finds the bug. He'll do the
  deal, walk out into the hallway and we'll grab him. That's

  Our superiors didn't want to pop for the hotel room. They say, "We'll pick
  an open spot. We'll wire our car. We pull up and he gets in our car. The
  exchange will be recorded. We can videotape the thing from hidden vans.
  Then we converge on him when he starts to get out of the car."
 I thought, "No fucking way."
  The meeting was held in Queens near the Triborough Bridge. The quarry pulls
  up to a spot and our guy pulls up beside him and was just about to say,
  "Hop in my car," when a citizen comes out of nowhere walking a God damn
  dog. The guy we're after takes a look and he says, "I think he's a fucking
  cop." He's freaking on us. "Listen, do the deal right now. Throw me the
  pills, throw them. I don't have the guns with me, but for good faith here's
  money." He's got two grand with him and he throws the two grand into the
  car window. "Give it to me now, man, give it to me now!"
  Our guy throws a jar of 500 fucking 'ludes into his car. The dummies have
  started to converge on him so he knows for sure what's up. The race is on.
  This guy is running amok. He obviously has no regard for his own life and
  doesn't give a fuck for nobody else.
  He. ran across Queens Boulevard nonstop, not a hesitation. We were right
  behind him and I was shitting in my pants. I thought, "I'm dead. I'm
  fucking dead." And I was driving. He wings the bottle of pills out the
  window, all over a residential street in Queens, runs a
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 couple of more blocks and finally crashes his little Volkswagen into a
 double-parked car.
  I see him fidgeting around and I just know that he's going for his
  service revolver. I'm with this really ballsy lieutenant. I said, "Tony,
  I think he's going for his gun. He's moving in that car and I think he's
  after his piece. Be careful. " I no sooner got that out than up comes the
  fucking gun and he is crazed.
  "I'm not going with you guys," he says. "You're IAD, right? I'm not going
  with you guys."
  The lieutenant did the talking. We held everybody back. He sat there and
  we kept hoping that we can get him. The lieutenant tried everything.
  "Look, you fucked up. It ain't the end of the world. It's no big deal.
  You're still a cop and we're cops. You're one of us. Number one, you
  don't want to do what-you're doing here. You want to shoot me? I'm like
  you. I promise you, we'll get you help. You got a problem with these God
  damn pills. It ain't a criminal thing."
  "It's over," the guy says. "The job's over, everything is over." He takes
  his shield out, he looks at me and he just threw it at me. He said,
  "That's it. I ain't going with you guys." He opened the door and made us
  back up. He kneeled down. He took the gun and put it to his temple and
  he blew his brains out. Right there. I never seen anybody bleed so much
  in my life. It was like a geyser.
  We went to his house afterwards and there was a suicide note on the bed.

 This guy said to me once, "I don't feel sorry for cops that get killed.
 That's why they take the job. There's no reason to make any special
 ceremony or burial."
  I couldn't really let myself go, so I just tried to ignore this guy. But
  this is the attitude you run into all the time. "You took the job. It's
  part of your job to get 365
 co~s
 killed." It's not. "It's part of your job to get beaten up." It's not.
  You take this job to protect people and to help them. I may go out there
  and get my ass kicked or get shot. That might come with the job, but it's
  not my job to die. People think that's your job, that it comes with the
  money. Nobody takes a $30,000-a-year job to die. You'd be crazy.

 I made an arrest that night. I brought the guy in and I was processing him
 upstairs. Our man at the desk downstairs heard on the radio that there was
 a 10-13-which is assist patrolman. You could be doing anything, but the
 minute you hear 10-13, you drop everything and you go. Then it came over,
 "Cop shot."
  1 don't remember who I was with, but we jump in a car and go down to the
  scene. When we get there, there's a lot of cops and people milling around.
  They say a cop got shot. I'm looking and I see a little bit of blood on the
  street.
 "Who got hit?" I says.
 "Nlikey."
  We started going through the-motions, trying to get names and witnesses. In
  the back of my mind, I think, "Flesh wound, just a nick."
  We're there for maybe ten, fifteen minutes and I said, "Let's go up to the
  hospital and see how he's doing." So we go up.
  At that particular time, since we were working the street, we were in and
  out of the hospital all the time. The nurses up there were all about our
  age. The relationship with them was, they were a lot like us. They had the
  same mental outlook on life. They saw the aftermath. They caught the abuse
  from some of these people we were trying to help. So they had a very
  similar job to the one we had.
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  We walked right up to the emergency room and the nurses we knew very well
  were working. When you go in, there's swinging doors and a preparation
  type of an operating room with four beds. If it's a rush thing, they'll
  work on them right there. Otherwise, they get them ready and take them
  up to the OR.
  When we walk in there, I saw that not only was Mikey shot, but the
  sergeant that was with him was shot. They were both laying on the table
  cracked open. You could see their lungs.
  The sergeant was a boss. I didn't socialize with him. But Mikey, he was
  over to the house. He was separated from his wife, so there wasn't that
  real family type of thing. But he'd come over by himself and we'd have
  a few drinks. He was getting back with his wife. I looked at him and it
  was like . . . how personal can you get when you see a guy's insides.
  I looked over at one of the nurses, Ann, and she was crying. Another of
  the nurses just made a gesture like, "It's over." Neither one of them
  made it.
  I just walked out of there, mad as hell. I didn't cry. Other cops in the
  precinct had been killed, but I didn't have the relationship with them.
  Just, "Hey, how you doing?" type of thing. It wasn't like the reality hit
  tiff this time.
  We worked about three days straight, the Whole unit. We went out and
  terrorized the shooting galleries. "What happened? Who,did it?"
  The detectives-I can see their point of view now, because I'm at their
  level-they weren't giving us any information. We could give them
  everything we had, but they weren't giving us anything. You feel
  frustrated, because what we wanted was more or less revenge. Now when I
  work on a homicide case, I know I want the information from the street
  cops, but I don't give them everything that I have, because you don't
  want them jumping the gun. Maybe the case isn't ready yet. There's
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 COPS
 a whole procedure you follow because you don't want to lose it in court.
  What happened was, the guys that killed them had been doing bank stickups.
  Mi-key and the sergeant pulled up on a car that was double-parked and got
  out to tell them to move the car, maybe issue the guy a summons. One guy
  was coming out of the tenement and saw them. He killed both of them.
  They tell me Mikey was laying there in the streetthat's the part that gets
  yqu-laying in all this garbage, just strangers around him. He was saying,
  "Call my people. Call my people." I don't know if he meant us as his people
  or his family. You don't know what goes through his mind when a guy dies.
  Everyday you spend thirty hours thinking, "Jeez, I'd
 hate to die in this shit." Then when you come back to
 home, this isn't the greatest place in the ' world, but it's
 like a little oasis, where I can come and chill out for a
 few days and then go back into it.

 I had to go to court that day, so I didn't work the same shift. By the time
 it actually happened, I was off-duty. My partner was killed.
  His name was Mikey. Mikey had grown up in a very bad neighborhood. One of
  the strongest experiences of his life was when he was badly beaten up by a
  policeman. But he was the good guy and I was the bad guy. He was not as
  aggressive as I was. I was the prick. My job was not to trust anybody. His
  job was to give a person the benefit of the doubt.
  He had hands, the largest fucking hands I've ever seen. One time we chased
  a guy down the street and Mikey finally got within arm's reach of him, but
  not close enough to get a good grip on him. Mikey swatted him on the side
  of the head, picked the guy up off his feet and knocked him into a hallway.
  He was very good
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 with his hands and never felt the compulsion to use a gun.
  That night he was working with our immediate boss, who was a sergeant-a
  very nice guy, very tough, but easygoing. A car was double-parked up the
  block, so Mikey got out of the car and went to tell the guy to move his
  vehicle. Any time you do that, it's just a matter of course to ask to see
  the driver's license and registration. Unbeknownst to Mikey, the guy had
  done like four stickups and had killed somebody. Mikey walked up to the
  car, the guy shot him, shot him twice.
  Mikey and the sergeant were in a substitute car that was provided by
  motor transport. It wasn't a regular precinct radio car and it didn't
  have a radio in it. To open the passenger door you had to turn, in the
  seat and kick the door open with both your feet. By the time the sergeant
  was able to climb out of the car, the guy shot him, too. Then he turned
  around and put two more in Mikey.
  As soon as the initial shock rolled over me, I took two weeks' vacation.
  I didn't want to be under the direct authority of the police department.
  By this time, we knew who the guy was who killed Mikey. We thought we
  knew where this guy was holed up.
 The apartment door was right across from a stairway.
up the stairs looking at the door. Lived on bologna +es and whiskey for
two weeks. I don't think I slept two hours
a night. I just sat there with my palms on my knees with my gun out. I was going
to kill him. All I could think of
was, "You're going to kill somebody in cold blood. Can you really do this?"
I was prepared to wait
                as long as it took. Finally somebody came in and said
                  "Hey look, we got the wrong place." As luck would have it, the
                     guy wasn't in that apartment. So, I never had to deal with
                     that for real. If nothing else, it taught me that to go out
                     and kill somebody in cold blood requires a special person.
 COPS

  I felt very guilty about Mikey's death. He was a very positive person. At
  that point, I wasn't. I felt guilty for being alive, guilty for surviving,
  guilty for not being there to protect him.
  Under the circumstances, I probably would have been the one to go to the
  car, if I'd been there. If I didn't have my gun out, I would have sure as
  hell had it loose. Since I was more suspicious and cynical than Mikey, I
  always had my gun ready.
  Anyway, my first official day back at work, don't you know, I was assigned
  to that same car. About the next six months after that, I teamed up with
  another guygood guy. Finally Jack grabbed me one day after six months and
  said, "Look, if you want to commit suicide, that's your business. But do it
  on your own time. Don't drive when I'm with you."
  What I'd been doing without realizing it was jumping into situations that
  clearly mandated caution and some degree of force and I was doing it
  empty-handed. I wanted somebody to kill me. I got help after that, because
  when he said what he did, I realized he was right. I was acting crazy.
  Because of my own emotional thing, I was likely to hurt this guy, Jack.
  On the anniversary of his death every year, I go up to the cemetery. It's
  one of those new cemeteries. They
  
 don't use headstones any more, just plaques in the
 ground. They don't want to have to mow around the
 memorials. It seems like if you're dead you should be
 able to inconvenience people. Every year I go up there
 and cut the weeds away. Nobody's going to walk on
 that grave. I'll break their fucking ankle.
  Sometime within a year after the killing took place, i was working with
  my new partner in a radio car. It was nasty out, cold and misty.
  This Spanish woman was trying to hail a cab and she was very pregnant.
  It had been quiet and just because it seemed appropriate, we stopped and
  said, "In your condition, I wouldn't be



 standing out here in the rain. What's the matter? Are you ready to
 deliver?"
  "No, no," she says. "I just have to go see my gynecologist. I got a few
  pains and I thought maybe I ought to have him check it out.. ,
 "Where's your husbandr,
  "Oh, he's at work right now." The long and the short of it was, we put
  her in the radio car and gave her a lift up to the hospital. She said,
  "Would you do me a favor? I haven't been able to reach him, but I'm sup-
  posed to tell the district attorney where I am at all times."
 "What do you mean?
 "I'm a witness to something and they have to know."
 "What is that?" I asked her.
 "I saw the guy kill two cops."
  She was the principal witness to Mikey's killing. She came forward on her
  own with a description of the guy who did the shooting. She stuck her
  neck out, didn't even ask us for anything. With all the people pushing
  to the head of the line, she wanted nothing from anybody. She could have
  really asked us for anything and we would have done our damnedest to give
  it to her. She was just doing the right thing.
  It's people who keep you in this game. Long after you're completely
  disaffected with society as a whole, the majority of people
  you'encounter, you always think of those few good people. They're too
  fucking honest to be prosperous, just too fucking good. They're really
  the only thing that makes this life worth it.

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