Homicide detectives began to ask openly: What is the mission? If it’s to create heroes, well, these heroes could be a real pain in the ass. Homicide was openly critical of the shootout, and especially of Manny Lopez.
Two of the homicide detectives had opinions about the entire affair.
“I don’t think San Diego policemen have any business out there in the first place,” was how one of them said it.
His partner put it this way: “I don’t think what they’re doing out there is police work. And I think Manny Lopez insulted those two cops into coming across.”
Manny Lopez was waiting to see what was going to happen to Chuey Hernandez. He told his men that the D.A. had better file charges on the Tijuana cop. On Monday after the big weekend, Chief William Kolender scheduled a press conference regarding the shooting of the Tijuana policemen.
Former chiefs were law and order types who, if they were ever asked to speak at a service club luncheon, would quote from the evangelists or J. Edgar Hoover. William Kolender was something different for a career lawman. Large, imposing, young for a chief, he had a good image with the media, the politicians, the public and the cops. It takes a juggler.
In truth, he had made positive changes for the beleaguered minority cops in a city that was one-fifth black and brown. But the choice jobs remained top-heavy with whites, so he knew how far to go. He pushed, but not too hard.
It was quite a sight when Chief Kolender, dressed like General Motors, stood side by side with his boss Gunslinger, dressed like Saturday night in a singles bar, representing, as it were, the divergence in a police department heading in new directions. Manny Lopez was in a way a tribute to the innovation of the fledgling chief. Everyone knew that there would never have been a Barf squad under previous administrations. For sure, after the first controversial shooting it would have been disbanded. So on the one hand Chief Kolender was considered freethinking for recognizing the need to protect illegal aliens within the city of San Diego, and on the other hand, was hard-nosed enough to back his men when the international confrontations started.
But juggling is never easy business, and any chief of police whose job is subject to political appointment has to take advantage of positive press while the taking is good. BARF was bringing positive press and good public relations to the department the likes of which the television show Dragnet had brought to the L.A.P.D. decades earlier.
Chief Kolender genuinely admired Manny Lopez. He often said, “I’ve never seen such gutsy work. Would you go out there and do what BARF does? I wouldn’t.”
So despite what homicide detectives thought and said privately, the shooting of the Mexican policemen was publicly and privately defended by the chief. On the Monday following the international shootout, during the chief’s press conference, the Barfers were asked by the press relations officer to wait outside central headquarters so as not to steal the limelight from Chief Kolender, who after all was not one of the Gunslingers, and couldn’t compete.
The Barfers waited at a local cop bar called Bernie’s. Within minutes Manny Lopez received a call at the bar. Deputy Chief Robert Burgreen was on the phone to tell him that the press was on the way. The Barfers were red-hot copy.
Manny Lopez turned to his men and yelled, “Everybody out a here! Go to Anthony’s Harborside and run up a tab. On me!”
Manny Lopez then hustled over to central headquarters, slipped in the side door and went to the office of Deputy Chief Burgreen, who said, “Chief Kolender is not going to recommend that charges be filed on Hernandez.”
And Manny Lopez said, “That’s it. I quit.”
“Don’t you want to think about this?” the deputy chief asked.
“They didn’t file on the immigration officer when he almost shot me! Now they’re not gonna file on this cop who shot one a my men? I ain’t got more than a hundred I.Q. if I take this shit again.”
Thirty minutes later the deputy chief led Manny Lopez into the office of the chief of police, saying, “Manny’s upset.”
The chief of police was writing on a legal pad. Without looking up, he said, “Oh? And what’s he upset about?”
Manny Lopez tried to remind himself that this was the superchief himself. He said, “I’ll tell you what I’m upset about, Chief. They’re not filing charges on Hernandez!”
“I know,” the chief answered. “Homicide says it’s a very weak case.”
Then Manny Lopez surprised both his superiors and himself by pounding on the desk, saying, “Fuck Homicide! Fuck this shit! You didn’t ask my side of it. I quit! I quit!”
And the chief said, “Do you mean the department?”
That stopped him, because he sure as hell didn’t mean the police department, only the Barf squad. So he added, “Well, I hadn’t thought about that.”
Suddenly he started seeing his whole career slipping away and this was the scariest thing that had happened to him lately. He needed time to think, because the chief was calling his bluff.
Something else occurred to him. “Those fuckers’re running a tab on me!” Manny cried. “I gotta go see my guys. They’re at Anthony’s.”
And Deputy Chief Burgreen said, “Do you mind if we come with you? I’ll pick up the tab.”
“No, I’ll pick it up,” the chief of police said.
By the time they arrived at Anthony’s Harborside that afternoon, the San Diego press relations representative had already informed the other Barfers that charges were not going to be filed on Chuey Hernandez. And since Manny Lopez was never a piker, especially when someone else was picking up the tab, he grabbed a waitress and said, “Four bottles a good wine for my guys.”
The chief of police surprised them all by saying to the Barfers: “I believe in you people. I’ve just talked to Manny and I’m going to ask the D.A. to issue charges on the Mexican officer.”
Manny Lopez figured he had won a major victory. He got good and drunk that night. Only one thing spoiled the evening for Manny. It was when Deputy Chief Burgreen said aloud, “The thing that worries me about this is the danger. I’m afraid Manny’s going to get killed out there.”
Instantly, Eddie Cervantes’ down-turned eyes started throbbing and bulging, and he cried, “Manny’s gonna get killed! Why only Manny?”
“Of course I’m equally concerned with all of you,” the deputy chief added. “I only meant that Manny is … he’s always out in front. That’s what I meant.”
Later, Manny Lopez tried to placate a scowling Eddie Cervantes by saying, “Listen, fucker, things come out that way. I always tell the reporters that Cervantes did this or Salgado did that. I don’t write the stories, fucker. I don’t write em!”
The next morning Manny was shaving, with a monstrous hangover, when his ten-year-old son came in and said, “What’d you do wrong, Dad? On television they just said they dropped charges on the guy you shot.”
“THEY DID WHAT?” Manny Lopez screamed, almost cutting his own throat.
As he was pulling on a jacket, ready to go out the door with his head feeling all mushy and inflamed, he said to his wife: “I’m gonna get fired today. Good-bye.”
When the BARF sergeant got to the chief’s office, it was the first and only time he ever saw William Kolender uneasy.
“Chief, you promised you were gonna see that they issued charges!” Manny Lopez said.
“The case isn’t strong,” Chief Kolender said. And then he stood up, came around his desk and put his arm on the shoulder of the shorter man. He said, “Manny, I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do.”
“Fuck it, Chief, I quit!” Manny Lopez said.
And then Chief Kolender, who was no slouch at handling legendary Gunslingers as well as ordinary macho cops, said, “Manny if you quit, I’ll get fired.”
It was worthy of Manny Lopez himself, this piece of work: If you quit, I’ll get fired. The implication being that Manny Lopez was such a fabled and mythic and legendary celebrity that he could displace the chief of police. And by implication,
maybe the mayor. And shit, Governor Jerry Brown wasn’t even safe!
It was like a diva refusing to sing until the impresario takes her in his arms and says, “But, Divinity, I’ll be finished if you don’t sing!”
Deep down she knows it’s bullshit, but it sounds so glorious she goes out there and gets so many curtain calls the stagehands get hernias.
Then the chief added, “What if we issue assault charges and bind him over for trial at a preliminary hearing? Will that be enough for you?”
And Manny Lopez, now a king breaker as well as everything else, said, “Sure. I don’t care if he never goes to trial. At least bind him over and that shows we didn’t fuck up. Okay! And, Chief, how about coming down to the station some night and telling my guys how much you think a them? It might be nice.”
There was a person connected to the Barf squad by umbilical cord whom the chief did not particularly appreciate, nor did Deputy Chief Burgreen. Nor did lots of other ranking brass who felt that BARF was the tail wagging the dog. That was the man who had created it, Lieutenant Dick Snider.
Dick Snider at this point was like poor old Victor Frankenstein: nobody remembered his intent. And Dick Snider, as was his way, remained totally loyal to his mutant creation. He accepted the official interpretation—that is, the Manny Lopez interpretation of the international shootout—without much soul searching. Though he had long since been officially relieved of duty as the BARF officer-in-charge, unofficially, as a Southern Division watch commander, he was still the Barfers’ uncle. Manny almost always showed him the courtesy of keeping him informed. Dick Snider repaid the courtesy with total allegiance to BARF, alienating the department brass in the process.
Of course the alienation of the department brass had probably begun many months earlier when Dick Snider, through his one-man canyon crawling and publicity campaign, got the experiment going in the first place. When a deputy chief or inspector would suggest something like keeping the Barfers farther than fifty yards from the international border, Dick Snider would reply, “We already have one invisible line to work with. Don’t give us another. Either let us work or disband us.”
Deputy Chief Burgreen, whom the troops refer to as Bobby, and who looked like a blow-dried middle-aged cherub, spoke for the administration when he said, “Lieutenant Snider was not interested in evaluations, route slips, councilmanic reports. He was vocal, a street cop, not an administrator, but his rank demanded an administrator. He might be a good guy and he might even be a good street cop. But he was not a good lieutenant.”
The department’s position on the BARF creator was dramatized during a meeting of the big chief and several of his immediate subordinates during the difficult weeks following the international shootout. There was some serious talk about disbanding BARF.
Manny Lopez, Dick Snider and the captain of Southern Division were there to opt for continuing the experiment. There were ideas being tossed around as to the feasibility of uniformed cops patrolling the canyons. There were suggestions of begging for federal troops to be stationed in the hills. There were suggestions that the city should somehow cede the land to the federal government and let Uncle Sam worry about all of it. Finally, there was a growing consensus that the BARF experiment was just too dangerous.
Manny Lopez was showing his reptilian sidewinding eyebrow and pointing his finger like a gun and talking triple time in his disingenuous style that charmed the chief of police, and he said, “We’re safer than the guys on the street! They’re not ready for it when some dude smokes them down while they’re writing a traffic ticket! But my guys’re always ready!”
Dick Snider then removed his dangling cigarette and in his country drawl tried to add his thoughts. “Chief, I think what Manny is trying to say is …”
“Lieutenant, we know your position,” a deputy chief interrupted icily. “I was talking to Manny.”
And that was it. Manny Lopez returned to the Barfers and told them sadly that Burl the Pearl was no longer as big as John Wayne. He’d just been sawed off at the knees.
Manny said, “Snider’s sweet-guy personality … his … niceness—it’s a detriment to me now.”
Manny added something else when he’d had a Chivas or two that evening after work: “I got a relationship with the politicians. I got a relationship with the chief. I’m surrounded by news media. I love Dick Snider, but he can’t help BARF anymore.”
Manny Lopez genuinely admired Dick Snider for qualities he did not himself possess. Manny privately said, “I had this interview with a young reporter and I told him that me and my guys have a Don Quixote syndrome. And sure enough he does this flowery piece about us fighting windmills. Well, maybe part of it was true, at least so far as Dick Snider’s concerned. Saving people would be his motive. But the fact is, BARF was giving me this tremendous feeling! That I could do anything out there in those canyons! That was my motive.”
Dick Snider, as correctly pointed out by Manny Lopez, did not have the temperament or the glibness to slug it out with the brass. Debate was an outlet for Manny Lopez. He was very good at it. Dick Snider had no outlet. And now Dick Snider knew for sure that they didn’t need him. And didn’t want him.
As for Manny, the meeting ended when the chief of police stopped all argument by saying, “I don’t think you gentlemen understand. Manny’s saying that if it’s not his way he’s not leading the squad anymore.”
The experiment was permitted to continue. And Chief Kolender tacitly approved whacking Dick Snider off at the knees that afternoon.
One day when the city council of San Diego drew up a resolution to honor the Barfers with a piece of parchment full of fancy “whereofs,” the chief of police was supposed to make a speech on behalf of his men. Except that Manny Lopez was suddenly asked to say a few words. Manny wisely stood up and thanked all the politicians present and the chief of police for giving his men the chance to do what they did. He got a standing ovation from all.
When the chief did make speeches about the border crime problem he said it should be made a federal responsibility and he spoke like a Republican about the lack of direction in the Jimmy Carter administration. When Manny gave speeches it was about facing bandits in the night and drawing against the drop. It was easy to guess whom people wanted to hear, Republicans and Democrats alike.
Dick Snider was never heard to verbalize a whit of resentment about being effectively banished from any further decisions regarding his brainchild. BARF belonged exclusively to Manny Lopez. Even when his career was, in the words of Deputy Chief Burgreen, “on the slide,” Dick Snider was uncomplaining.
Just so long as they kept it going, just so long as Manny and his men were arresting bandits and protecting the aliens of the canyons, in his city, in his country.
As Manny put it: “Dick Snider’s motives were pure till the end. He was the only one of us whose motives were always pure. And the brass not only couldn’t forgive him for it, they couldn’t even believe it.”
As to the danger to the Barfers themselves, Dick Snider would only say, “If there was a threat of robbery and rape and murder to the millionaires of La Jolla, we’d all be asked to give our lives if necessary. Without question.”
During the weeks to come, during a media barrage on both sides of the border about the international shootout, Chief of Police Kolender, true to his word, did come to Southern Division to reassure Manny’s men of what a hell of a bunch of gutsy hardballers they really were, and what a job they were doing out there, and that he was behind them all the way.
The chief addressed the Barfers on their own turf just before they went out canyon crawling. After the pep talk he said, “The charges against the Tijuana policeman may be dismissed after the preliminary hearing. You should be aware of that.”
And suddenly up popped Ken Kelly, who, feeling especially militant and goofy, had the concoction of instant coffee and powdered chocolate smeared all over his face. And he’d wrapped his long blond hair in a bun and covered it all with a stocking cap
to be less visible in the hills. He looked like a cocaine-inspired Hollywood version of a loony G.I. in Vietnam, sort of a cross between a punk rocker and a Jivaro headhunter.
Ken Kelly, suffering the results of having been the only San Diego cop ever convicted in court of assaulting a civilian, wiggled his walrus moustache and said, “Chief, how come the Tijuana cop shoots a San Diego cop and walks? And I dust a number one prick asshole with a flashlight and get honked? How come?”
And the chief of police changed the subject by saying, “Who’re you?” Then he smiled and added, “You are one of the most ominous people I’ve ever seen in my life!”
The Barfers were all tickled by that because Ken Kelly did look pretty loony, all right. They were flattered as hell that the chief had stroked them, whether or not charges were dropped on Chuey Hernandez.
The chief ended it by saying of the Tijuana lawman: “He paid some pretty heavy dues, you know.”
The one thing that the chief also said during that meeting which filled the Barfers with all kinds of conflicting emotions was this: “I have to be honest about something else. It’s been a miracle that nobody’s been killed yet. I’m awfully worried about you guys. I’ve had many second thoughts about letting it continue. If someone’d get killed, well, I just don’t want to go to police funerals. I’d stop it then.”
The Barfers did lots of soul-searching over this one. If one of them gets killed, BARF is stopped? Then why not stop it now, because the way it’s going it’s a sure bet! There seemed to be a bunch of things wrong with the philosophy behind a statement that their job was worth getting shot over, but not fatally.
It seemed like a warning. As soon as one of them died, the rest would be getting new jobs. Don’t die if you like your job. Die if you don’t like it! Oh, their brains were parboiled by this one. The chief sort of absolved himself, it seemed. He said he wanted to stop it. He’d warned them: Don’t die or you’ll lose your job. Was he saying that he was blameless if one of them got smoked?
Lines and Shadows Page 27