by John Hersey
1. Something I’ve Always Wanted to Do
David Senak’s grandparents on both sides were immigrants from Czechoslovakia; his paternal grandfather settled on a farm near Memphis, Michigan, and his maternal grandfather moved to Detroit, to a small Slovak community centered on Carrie and Strong Streets, with its own church, Harper Baptist; he worked for Henry Ford. Senak’s father became an accountant (at the time of these events he helped keep books for Holley Carburetor), and his mother worked, too (at Chrysler, as a key punch operator).
David was born in Detroit on June 18, 1944. He attended A. L. Holmes School, Osborn High School for one year, and Cass Technical High School until his graduation in January 1963. He took architectural drafting and building at Cass, and he designed, among other things, he told me, “a house of my own. It pretty much suited my idea of what a perfect house was. Had a master bedroom that was eighteen by twenty-four feet, quite large, and it had a built-in range downstairs, and it had my private den, which gave adequate space for mounting trophies and the like.” However, in a class in cost estimating he found that the house would have cost, not counting the price of the acre of land on which it was to stand, $175,000. “So I gave up the idea.”
David was active in the church, he told me, “from infancy.” He attended Sunday school and church “and the different functions” at Gratiot Baptist, and through his church organization he became affiliated, when he was sixteen, with the YMCA, and soon he was employed there—part-time as long as he was in school, full-time afterward. “Within about four years I probably covered just about every minor position in the Y”—attendant for the Youth Department, teacher of gym classes, swimming instructor after he got his life-saving badge at eighteen, and locker-room attendant and “various positions.” “This gave me,” he told me, “a general liking for the public, and I still have it.”
While he was working full-time at the YMCA, David began part-time studies at Macomb Community College, in the liberal-arts curriculum; but shortly afterward, a friend of his who was a junior executive with Hamilton Carhartt Overall Company told him that the firm was in the process of moving its inventory from Detroit to Ervine, Kentucky, and that the company needed a man in its shipping department. “I cut my classes at school down to a minimum,” he told me; he served the firm for about six months as shipping clerk and then, for six or eight months longer, as shipping superintendent. He returned to Macomb for one semester full-time.
In May 1965, he told me, “I put my application in for the Police Department. This was something I’ve always wanted to do, and it became more evident after I’d worked with children at the YMCA, and it’s just been a more or less natural thing for me to want. Instead of being a doctor or lawyer, I chose the Police Department as a profession.” He was told that he would have to wait for his twenty-first birthday. “So I kept in touch with them, and it was the day after I turned twenty-one that I took the entrance exam.” Screening took about three months, and on August 2, 1965, he enrolled at the Police Academy. On October 28 he was stationed, in uniform at last, at the Thirteenth Precinct.
A week later, however, he changed uniforms: He enlisted in the Air National Guard for a four-month stint. “I had an obligation to fulfill,” he explained to me, “and I didn’t want to take two years from the police force to go into the service, and so I took the Air National Guard because it was a means whereby I could serve my obligation and at the same time continue my Police Department work.” Most of his tour was at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport, and four months later, at the beginning of March 1966, he was back on the force.
2. It Really Impressed Me
“The first week in March,” he told me, “I was reassigned to the Thirteenth Precinct and probably the second or third day there I was assigned to the cruiser. This was a four-man scout car, three plain-clothesmen and a uniformed man, and they were assigned to the general precinct to do only the most important runs, like hold-up runs in progress, and the like, and they had occasion to help raid a blind pig”—it was a raid on a blind pig that touched off the Detroit riot of 1967—“and it was Sergeant Vic De Lavalla and his crew that busted the pig, and we were assigned to just back them up. Well, it really impressed me, and the crew chief, Patrolman O’Kelley, took a liking to me, so he introduced me to Sergeant De Lavalla, and shortly after that he recommended me to go on clean-up. And so that started a sort of a career within a career, and I’ve had many experiences on clean-up.”
3. I Really Looked Bad
“Clean-up basically deals with blind pigs and prostitutes and numbers men in daytime. In my very first week, we were working on night crew, and we were called in by the inspector, who was Inspector Loftus at the time, and he was notified by a colonel of the Salvation Army, I believe it was, on Rivard, that they had a blind pig that was operating only on Sundays. These men would be paid on Saturday night, and the colonel would see them by eleven o’clock Sunday morning, and they’d all be drunk, and he said the only thing that could be happening would be that they’d be visiting this blind pig in the morning. So these are very secretive, basically. There was no way of him finding out through his sources where this blind pig was, so he wanted one of our men to more or less infiltrate his ranks and find out where it was, get a drink and bust the pig. Well, the inspector really wanted the place, so they asked me if I would ‘join the Salvation Army’ and try to find out where it was.
“For a week prior to the time I went to the place I wore a white sweatshirt and white Levis and didn’t change at all, didn’t comb my hair or shave, and I really looked grubby about Saturday. I was to go there Saturday night and get acquainted with the men and the following morning try to get one of them to take me to the pig, and then get my drink and somehow contact my crew. This was all sort of makeshift because we didn’t know exactly what we were running into. The arrangements were made for me to have a cot in there, and the only thing was to convince these other fellows that I was just one of them.
“So I went over to a buddy’s house and told him what had happened. Him and I bought a case and a half of beer, and another couple of friends came over, and I just started drinking. About nine thirty or so I was quite inebriated, so it turned out that my friends had to drive me to the place and just drop me off, and I stumbled in to the Salvation Army, and this fellow wouldn’t even talk to me—they have a policy of not admitting drunks. I tried to explain to him that the colonel had told me to come here, but the words just seemed to be a little incoherent, and it took me about fifteen minutes to explain to him that I was a friend of the colonel. So finally he did admit me and take me to a cot.
“It was really an experience. I was in such a state that everything was a little exaggerated. I walked into this big auditorium-like deal, and they had cots in rows, and on Saturday nights these men, you know, drink a little bit; they bring bottles in with them, you know, and sneak them. And so they were laying all over the place. Some of the men were vomiting, and stuff like this, and everything just seemed to be overemphasized. So he took me to a cot, and I laid down there, and I think the situation, more than anything else, made me a little sicker than I would normally be, so it was a very disgusting night, as a whole.
“I got up the next morning, and my eyes were bloodshot, and I really looked bad. I don’t even think my mother would let me into the house. So I stumbled downstairs and I couldn’t eat breakfast with the guys, so I just started talking with a couple of the fellows, and during my conversation with them I had established the fact that I was just a fellow in transit, I was from Ohio, I hitchhike around the United States, and because of my clothes and my general appearance, they believed it, and this one fellow, he was about fifty years old or so, it just so happened that this was how he got started on the road, and so he took to me, and in about an hour and a half or so we killed a bottle of wine that they had, which didn’t help my hangover any, and they invited me to go with them to this blind pig.
“Well, I went inside the place. They gave me a drink. I�
�d had wine, and the guy gave me a bottle of beer. I couldn’t stomach it, and I vomited on his floor. After vomiting on his floor, the fellow didn’t want to serve me any more, and according to court procedure you have to have evidence in your possession, to establish the fact that you did make a purchase inside of a blind pig. Everything was great except for the fact that I had no way of notifying my crew; he wouldn’t trust me to use his phone. So finally he told me if I’d leave his premises, he’d sell me a bottle of wine. This was beautiful, because I could leave the premises and call my crew and go back there. So I did. I paid for the wine, left the premises and walked three or four blocks to a pay phone, called my crew and met them. Then I went back inside the pig, and as soon as I was in the premises and drinking there, they busted the place. At the time I was told by my sergeant to go and lay down in the back seat of the car, because I couldn’t even participate in the raid. . . .”
4. We Subdued Him
“My first citation was just after I got on the job, March 20, 1966. Two elderly people came out, and they were really terrified, because there was a man that had attempted to break into their house, and they lived on the ground floor; he’d smashed their window and was halfway in when they started screaming so loudly that he left. When we got the run we got a description of the man. So we started patrolling the area. Usually when you get a run like that and you can’t get the fellow right away you go back to the station. Well, what we did was just a little out of the ordinary, we figured he may be in the area yet, waiting for us to go, so we circled the blocks, maybe five or six times. This one time we circled I saw this fellow between the houses in the shadows, just caught a glimpse of him. So I yelled at my partner, ‘Slam on the brakes.’ My partner pulled in to the curb, left side to the curb, rolled down his window, and yelled to the guy to come out of the shadows; he didn’t get out of the car. I was still a rookie, so I was told in training in the Department to always get out of your car when you’re investigating anyone. So I got out of the passenger’s side, which was toward the middle of the street, and walked around the car. And this guy was coming toward my partner, who had his head stuck out the window, Roy St. Onge was my partner’s name. I saw that the guy had something in his hand, so I yelled to Roy to get his head back in there. And I grabbed the guy, and he had a rock in his hand, and he was real close to smashing Roy and taking off, see. So we subdued him, arrested him, and got him back to the station. They had a line-up. Turned out to be the same guy. So they wrote us up for a citation.”
5. Something I Wonder About
One day I asked David Senak, “What makes a good policeman?”
“A police officer,” he said, “is probably a unique person. Most police officers with a little experience could probably tell you within a few months of a new officer’s tour of duty whether he would probably make a good police officer or not, and whether he’s going to stick it out. In the late forties it was sort of difficult to get a job, and a lot of people resorted to being a police officer, simply because it was an easy way of earning a living. I think these are the police officers right now, as a whole, that give the general public a bad opinion of all of us.”
Then I asked, “What do you think are the qualities that a man needs to be a good police officer?”
He paused, and finally answered in a low voice, “Perseverance.” Then he added, “You’ve got to be dedicated.” Then, as if still answering my question, he said, “I think one bad aspect of my life as far as the Police Department goes is that I never really fell in love with any girls up to the point where I joined the Police Department. And then afterward, the type of work I did on the force reflected a sort of bad attitude toward women in general.” Here he gave a slight laugh. “And I have a tough time, you know, bringing them up to the level of a police officer’s aspects of a woman.”
“How does that work out? How do you mean that?”
“Well, see, I’ve arrested maybe close to a hundred and seventy-five, maybe a hundred and eighty girls, and taken them to court and gotten convictions for Accosting and Soliciting. These girls come from all different backgrounds. You couldn’t name a background that a girl hasn’t come from. I’ve had many different situations where girls would, after the accosting is made and the arrest is made, they would try to give you a background so you’d be a little softer on them. I think not so much being a police officer as doing vice duties has on the whole given me a bad outlook on women in general. I know a lot of vice men that are married, you know, and have married after vice squad, that seemingly are happy, so I just probably never have found, you know, maybe the right girl. It’s something I wonder about, whether I will, and, you know, whether it is because of my vice duties or not, or my police background.”
This subject came up again another day. “I know the problem myself,” he said, “and I say half the battle is knowing the problem, but in my case I know the problem, and I know all women aren’t prostitutes, and I know all women don’t have a checkup with everybody they come often in contact with, but I think subconsciously it affects me. I go out with a lot of real nice girls, and I just can’t seem to, you know, get really attached to them. I like to be friends with people a lot more than I do—girls tend to want to become attached right away, and I’d rather have them as a friend. You know, it sort of makes for conflicts. It’s hard to say what I feel inwardly. I know the problem. I just can’t—I’m not even sure that’s why, maybe I just haven’t found a girl that I want to settle down with. Maybe she just hasn’t come along yet. But I figure, you know, that there’s got to be someone. I’ve gone out with quite a few girls, you know, you—maybe everyone feels that way when they—for different reasons. It may not be the police experience that has governed that.”
“Do you think,” I asked him, “that this has made you think of women as essentially evil, or more apt to be criminal than men?”
His answer was: “Who gave who the apple?”
6. Select Areas
“Eighty per cent of the work on the clean-up squad,” he said once, “is colored. At least. The only time we get white girls probably would be Third Street, Second Street, select areas where a lot of white people go, you know. Where they’re not conspicuous.”
7. A Typical Accosting
He opened a drawer of his file, rummaged awhile, and drew out a write-up. “This is a typical accosting,” he said. “This is what I’d say in court in front of a judge.” And he read: “ ‘On March 22, 1966, at approximately 4:10 a.m., while driving my private car north on Brush at Canfield, defendant waved me to the curb. I pulled to the curb and got out of my car. The defendant then approached me, unzipped my pants, and attempted to put her hand on my privates. As she was doing this, she stated she would give me a straight lay for ten dollars, plus the cost of the hotel room. I then identified myself as a police officer and placed her under arrest for Accosting and Soliciting. Date of trial was adjourned to April 12th, 1966, by Judge Maher. A plea of Not Guilty was entered. Sentenced by Judge Maher to ninety days in Detroit House of Correction.’ It’s interesting the reason that she adjourned was that Judge Maher was on the bench, but she knew why she was trying to adjourn it, because the judges change by the month, she was trying to get another judge. See, he was taking the place of another judge, he’s a traffic-court judge, normally, and he’s real tough over there, he believes a criminal should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. These prostitutes were really getting zapped!”
8. Some Judges Like It
“In an Accosting and Soliciting, which is the charge you take a prostitute under,” he told me, “the court requires the initial accosting to be done by the prostitute. There can be no overt act on your part to solicit anything from her, so all you can do is drive down the street and hope that they signal you in some way to pull to the curb. If they don’t do that, you know, there’s nothing you can do about it. The way most of these prostitutes work is they’ll stand at a curb and wait for the people to stop for a light, or something like that, o
r just after a light where they’re just speeding up, and then they’ll call them to the curb, they’ll call them or they’ll wave them.
“The second half, the soliciting, it’s a two-part deal, where they have to give an act and a price. On the act, I usually, in my cases I stick to the exact wording of the prostitutes, and a lot of my partners go to court and the whore’ll say, ‘A suck and a fuck for fifteen dollars,’ see, or, ‘A half-and-half for ten dollars,’ and the officers when they go to court will say, ‘An act of oral perversion and an act of sexual intercourse with the defendant for the sum of such-and-such.’ I don’t know whether it’s better or worse, but I usually just stick to the exact wording of the prostitutes. ‘Around the world.’ ‘A suck and a fuck.’ ‘Sixty-nine.’ ‘A half-and-half.’ ‘A French.’ Some judges like it and some judges don’t.
“Often they’ll say, ‘How much can you spend?’ The courts will allow you to say whatever price you give. And then they can say, ‘Okay, that’s good enough.’ I hear the prices are a little higher now because the trade is a little less after the riots, but when I was working you could get just about any price you want, depending on the area you choose—the lower-class colored girls, higher-class colored girls, lower-class white girls, higher-class white girls, the colored call girls that’ll come to your room, the white call girls. Generally on the street it would be five or ten dollars.”
9. Real Clean-Cut-Looking
“There are special places to work queers,” he said to me, “and special police officers, too. Like I used to be a whore man. The whores would take me because I sort of more or less have an innocent-looking face, and I can dress real clean-cut-looking, and a lot of their conception of a police officer is a slovenly-looking guy. They look at them in a bad light to start with, see. I worked with prostitutes, but my partner Bill used to work with queers mainly. As easy as it was for me to get a prostitute, I had a heck of a time getting a queer, talking a queer into believing that I was trying to solicit him—or, you know, make him solicit me.”