by Luke Waters
Amazingly, shooting was a skill which I found easy to learn, only because I knew nothing about it. An expert showed me what to do. I listened carefully and did it exactly as I had just been shown, working so many rounds through my newly issued weapon that I lost count after the first couple of thousand. I never took my eye off the bull’s-eye and managed to hit it a couple of times. I was good at it but didn’t take for granted that I was being trained to kill if needed.
The range was a busy place. Every officer had to qualify at Rodman’s Neck twice a year and the facility was also used by the New York City Department of Corrections and the members of our SWAT team, the Emergency Services Unit (ESU), who did a lot of extra training with specialized weapons.
Limerick native Steve Morrissey, a longtime weapons instructor, told me later about a few of the more unusual shooters who turned up from time to time, men and women who were numbers, not names, who stepped out of vans wearing ski masks and put every round in the bull’s-eye before being whisked away to their deep undercover work inside criminal gangs and terrorist organizations.
*
Most of our academy coursework was done in the classroom, however, and lectures always began with the same two words: “At ease.” The next lesson became equally repetitive as Instructor Cassidy would walk to the blackboard and begin to creak out the phrase with a stick of white chalk.
“The law. Know it. Love it. Live it and breathe it.” He would step back to survey his efforts with satisfaction, pause to slap his hands together, and smile at the empty desks in the front.
Although barely older than me, Cassidy was definitely old school when it came to study, and if you didn’t hit the books every evening you would regret it the next morning. In reality, he was pushing an open door. Every one of us was anxious to learn as much as we could over the next six months.
The curriculum dealt with every aspect of law enforcement. Police Science was taught by Instructor Downey, covering everything from filling out accident reports to the correct way to toe-tag a dead body. Instructor Velez was in charge of Social Science, which was commonsense stuff such as dealing with the public, community relations, and other practical issues. She clearly had a soft spot for Weiver, who looked like Charlie Sheen but didn’t behave like him.
The physical element of training was just as important as the mental, and a high level of fitness was expected of all cadets: the series of runs, press-ups, and jumping jacks would be familiar to anyone who has undergone basic training with the military. All recruits, male and female, were taught to box, and later to use equipment like the PR-24 nightstick, a development of the regular police stick which features an extra handle at right angles near the end of the baton, creating an “L” effect. The PR-24 is excellent if used properly and can serve as an outer arm guard to block swings by a club, lead pipe, or machete, or be moved in a sweeping motion to take a suspect’s legs from underneath them. We were shown how to punch with the tip, which concentrates huge force into a surface area no bigger than a coin, with devastating results, particularly against vulnerable points of the body, a technique inspired by martial arts.
An even better tool on our utility belts was the aerosol can of pepper spray, which contained oleoresin capsicum (OC), originally developed to ward off bears in remote parts of Canada before being taken up by the NYPD, too, for use against human attackers. The spray used an extract from chili peppers to cause intense pain—we were warned not to use it on crazy people or pit bulls.
We learned how to search a perp, pat them down for weapons and contraband, and handcuff them, another essential class for any cop. If a police officer thinks a suspect poses a threat, they will always try to restrain them behind the back on both wrists as soon as possible, because although a foot or an elbow which connects will hurt, a hand clasped around a broken bottle, knife, or gun will kill.
*
We were organized into “companies” which were as diverse as possible. I was one of about a dozen Irish-born cadets but our numbers were spread out, as were the other ethnic groups, in our massed ranks. The average age in my company was about twenty-two, so, as we were a bit older, PPO George Walz, his girlfriend Sherry Silbert, Kenneth Weiver, and I naturally gravitated to each other over the coming weeks.
Sue and I were living in an apartment in Woodside, Queens, a popular neighborhood amongst the Irish for generations, and each morning I dressed in my uniform, similar to that worn by the NYPD patrol officers but gray in color, and grabbed a quick breakfast before catching an early train at Roosevelt Avenue to make the seven a.m. roll call in Midtown. Like all the other recruits, I walked in the door and stepped up to the large Stars and Stripes dominating one side of reception, saluted the flag, and paused briefly in front of the giant NYPD insignia, with the motto, “Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve,” before I headed over to the muster area for morning inspection.
From the very start they wanted to learn about our backgrounds, and one of the first tasks was to select a leader. Instructor Downey stepped forward and introduced himself.
“Okay, Officers. I need a show of hands. Who here has previous military or police experience?” Several hands popped up, including one attached to the arm of George Walz, who, because he was the oldest, was made company sergeant. My pal smiled weakly, cursing his luck, faced with the prospect of the forty-four other recruits running rings around him for the next twenty-five weeks. It wasn’t long before one of our recruits would cause concern for not just poor George, but also the Brass down at the Training Bureau.
Company Sergeant Walz put us into formation at roll call one morning.
“Everyone is present and accounted for, sir—except PPO Sanchez,” he reported, snapping a salute to Downey, the most laid-back of our instructors.
“Don’t worry about Sanchez,” he said. “She won’t be joining us anymore …”
Participation in the regular random drug test was not optional. Anyone could be selected and we found out a little later that Sanchez had produced a positive sample the previous morning—her career was over before it had even begun.
On the Job a positive test sees you fired, without exception. Cops who take drugs are corruptible, undependable, and unwanted.
*
The real highlight of the academy was our Emergency Vehicle Operator’s Course, a two-week class conducted at the Driver Training Unit in Floyd Bennett Field, in Flatbush, southeast Brooklyn. We got to hurl along abandoned airstrips with JFK International Airport in the background and the NYPD Aviation Unit as near neighbors. The aim was to learn how to drive as fast as possible and as safely as possible, and we put on helmets before sliding into a Chevy Caprice—two cadets to a cruiser, with the instructor yelling instructions from the backseat as we took the sharp turns.
The atmosphere was more relaxed than on the range, and a lot more fun, as I put my foot to the floor of the car, hitting over a hundred miles per hour on stretches. The real challenge was to move the two-ton sedan through curves, as I wove in and out of rows of cones which simulated the sort of scenario we might see out on the street. That’s when the unexpected happened.
I was in the driver’s seat, belting along the old landing strip, when an NYPD helicopter flying above the car suddenly descended and landed right in front of us.
“Hit the brakes!” the instructor yelled, and we slowed to a halt a few yards in front of the chopper, as the pilot, dressed in a helmet, leather jacket, and sunglasses, jumped out. He gave me a thumbs-up and walked to his passenger door, which was flapping half ajar—he slammed it shut, then stopped in front of our car and snapped us a salute. The cop jumped back into the aircraft, starting up the rotors and taking off again, soon disappearing into the distance as we stared enviously from the car.
“Now that, guys,” our instructor said with a sigh of admiration, “is a vehicle.”
*
Of the twenty-eight hundred cadets who entered the academy at the same time as me, twenty-two hundred graduated as police officers.
I was amongst them. The program had been challenging, and we learned a lot in the twenty-five weeks, making us as prepared as we could be for what awaited us on the streets, although the real training would only begin the day we arrived in a precinct.
I fulfilled my lifelong dream in March 1994 when I took my place with the other cadets, our gray uniforms replaced by immaculately pressed dress blues, for the graduation ceremony in Madison Square Garden. Mick O’Rourke, from County Leitrim, Mary McDonagh, from County Waterford, and Sean Quilter, a County Kerry native, graduated along with me, and up in the gallery their families joined my old Finglas neighbor Paul Hurley and his wife, Fionnuala. My parents, my brothers Tom and Vincent, and Sue were all there. Ma and Da were proud that I was following in the family tradition, although they were nervous about my becoming a New York cop and wearing a gun, even though they knew it was part of the Job. As the years passed, they would become used to the gun and to my regular appearances on the news at various crime scenes, although they never fully relaxed about it. Parents worry.
As the formalities ended, a roar went up to rival any title fight and our white gloves flew into the air.
After we’d posed for pictures and raised more than a few glasses to toast our future successes, we transferred across the five boroughs, and we would soon drift apart. The occasional Christmas card or retirement party would bring back rose-tinted memories of the boasts and predictions of the Fightin’ Irish, NYPD, Class of ’93.
CHAPTER FIVE
DOG DAY AFTERNOON
My first few months as a full-fledged member of the NYPD, and everybody is happy. Except me. For an ambitious rookie, to be standing on guard duty outside Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s luxury townhouse on Sutton Place—just off Fifty-seventh Street—is just about the worst job in the entire city.
Don’t get me wrong. Sutton Place is swanky. Just a few weeks earlier Princess Margaret, sister to Elizabeth II, the Queen of England, spent several days as a houseguest of one of Boutros-Ghali’s neighbors, while the diplomat Jean Kennedy Smith and movie stars such as Sean Connery and Sigourney Weaver are amongst the well-connected residents. These blocks are home to some of the richest and most powerful people in New York City. But I joined the police to make a difference and had hoped to be sent somewhere with problems, a neighborhood where I could make a name for myself.
Sutton Place isn’t exactly a high-crime zone. It isn’t a low-crime zone, either. It’s a tow-away zone. A go-away zone. An absolutely-no-crime-under-any-freakin’-circumstances-you-got-that? zone. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, cop hell.
And six months earlier it had all started so promisingly.
The day after we’d finished at the academy, we each received word of where we were to be posted. Initially, the news that I was to play nursemaid to the influential residents in the United Nations district of Manhattan didn’t faze me. I had chosen Midtown because I’d worked in bars there and was familiar with the place. Little did I know what a nightmare choice I’d made.
I reported for duty on my first day carrying so much gear that I staggered, rather than swaggered, into roll call at 6:55 a.m. The telltale smell of overpolished leather let all the veterans know they were in the presence of an overenthusiastic rookie.
Underneath my carefully pressed uniform I wore a Kevlar bulletproof vest, which, reassuringly, would stop the five hundred pounds of force delivered by a small-caliber pistol round, with only a 5 percent risk of inflicting a broken rib. It comes with a 100 percent guarantee of weight loss, too, as you sweat like a racehorse in the hundred-degree heat of a Manhattan summer.
On my hip was that newly purchased service Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol, holstered to a utility belt on which I had my two spare magazines, a radio, pepper spray, a PR-24 nightstick, and a flashlight. When anyone with bars on their collar or stripes on their sleeve walked by, raising my arm in a salute left me so exhausted I needed to get my breath back. Strangely the bosses I passed in the corridor seemed to have missed the memo from the chief of patrol that they had a future star in their midst.
Sergeant Brian O’Leary came over to personally shake my hand. “Welcome to the 17th Marines, Waters!” he said with a smile, as I introduced myself to the lads, who shook with laughter. One clapped, sarcastically. It didn’t take me long to get the gag. A grizzled veteran later confided that the only real Marine around this place was our bullet-headed, barrel-chested CO, now retired from the military. This precinct was known as a “deadhouse,” populated mainly by “hairbags.” It’s a phrase which became popular in the 1950s, in reference to the well-worn woolen uniform pants of the era. The crime stats were so low in this corner of the Big Apple that they made policing the Garden of Eden look action-packed. Being assigned to the 17th was paradise for time-fillers simply “wearing the bag,” turning up in uniform day after day, week after week, answering routine calls, as the months melted into years and dragged into decades, until suddenly it was time to retire and pick up that fat pension.
When roll call rang out that first morning at 7:07 a.m. I looked around the muster room to see what fate awaited me if I didn’t make my mark and ensure I got moved to a place where people abused the laws, rather than obeyed them.
It was weeks later that I hopped behind the wheel of a Radio Mobile Patrol (RMP) car and pulled out into traffic with Sergeant O’Leary sitting beside me, taking off at speed to make my first arrest. It wasn’t a kidnapping, a rape, or a murder, just a routine 10-31 call at one of New York’s most famous addresses, but it was still my first arrest and I was determined to make the most of it.
Jimmy Jones was a career burglar who was first handcuffed in NYPD squad cars when I was still chasing my brother Vincent across the fields on horseback in Finglas. Jimmy had been nabbed by security officers at a thousand-foot tower of glass, brick, and steel on 405 Lexington, the Chrysler Building. As we pulled up onto the sidewalk outside the famous landmark, the tires on our Ford squealed in protest, followed by a similar exclamation from O’Leary.
“Whadda you doin’?” my sarge, a stickler for routine, demanded, half turning in the seat to shoot me another glare. It had become his mantra over the last couple of days, curbing my enthusiasm as he urged me to do the same with the Crown Vic, now parked across the pedestrians’ path.
“Luke, kid, how many times I gotta tell you? Park the car legally. Take your time. There’s no rush on here. Security got our guy collared.”
I nodded in agreement, grabbed my notebook, and sprinted in the front entrance before he could even open the passenger door.
We got to the security office, and I read Mr. Jones his Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent …”) before hooking him up—placing him under arrest—pausing occasionally for effect. This was what it was all about. My first collar! Fighting crime, living the dream. O’Leary rolled his eyes heavenwards.
Jimmy had a rap sheet as long as Grape Ape’s arm, but unfortunately for me he was more inclined to exercise his mouth than his right to remain silent, and he took us on a whistle-stop tour of the injustices perpetrated upon him by the Man.
“You guys ahways on my ass. I’s innocent—innocent, I tell you! Ain’t goin’ to jail again, you hear me? Ain’t goin’, man! I is I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T. Gonna fight this all the way!” Jimmy warned.
He was, it seemed, innocent. This time, just like all the others.
“Cops! The Man, he always the same! I ’member first time I’s ever stopped by some dumb rookie like you, sonny, back in ’68. Or was it in ’69? Anyway, it was right after JFK got hisself shot. Or maybe it was his brother … No, it was the Reverend Martin Luther King. Anyway—”
“Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones,” O’Leary interjected, sounding as if he were about to burst into song. It was a lament to the lame-asses he had to deal with. “Officer Waters here has told you—in some … some detail—that you have the right to remain silent. Please shut the hell up.”
My supervisor took advantage of Jimmy’s need to draw breath to bring m
y attention to one or two shortcomings in my arrest technique.
“Luke, a friendly word of advice: you gotta stop watching Kojak. This is not Law & Order. Just do the job!”
Jimmy opened his gob once again, and like an athlete now fully warmed up, he hit full speed as he whinged about nothing in particular.
“Kojak? You think this is television, eh, rookie? Where cameras at? He-he-he! You funny. Rookies! I heard they did TV here, way back, man. Anyhow, you guys got nothin’ on me. Nothin’! Cops! Let me tell you, firs’ time I was arrested, back in ’76. Or maybe it was ’77 … No, it was the time Reagan got hisself shot. Anyway, back in the day, that was a frame-up, too. I was innocent, I tell you. I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T! Some cop planted a bag …”
My sergeant let out a groan as Jones—who was now up to the late eighties in his life story—was led back to the car. It was hard to tell which one of us was trying his patience more.
I was pretty naive when I joined O’Leary’s 17th Marines, and I got greener still with envy when my academy classmates, who were posted to some kip of a station, boasted of dodging bullets, catching kidnappers, and single-handedly taking on Chinese triad gangs armed with deadly throwing stars. And those were the more believable stories. I knew it was all nonsense, but the Job was proving a massive anticlimax, and so far I had managed to make a mess of a simple arrest of a motormouth burglar.
*
O’Leary realized that he had made a mistake taking me under his wing, so he wisely decided to put me someplace where I couldn’t wreck his career as well as his head. And that’s how I ended up on one of the many static guard posts he had to fill in a precinct alive with UN dignitaries.
Standing on the corner of East Fifty-Seventh and Sutton Place was to be my assignment for the next, oh, twelve months.
By the third week outside Sutton Place the monotony was so complete that if I was shot on duty someone else’s life would flash before my eyes. Such were the random thoughts that ran through my mind as the hours passed into days and weeks in the safest, dullest posting in the entire five boroughs. Until one afternoon, that is …