NYPD Green

by Luke Waters

  While the FBI and other agencies dealt with the bigger picture, our day-to-day revolved around narcotics sweeps, and on my first day I was designated arresting officer. This meant I rode along with Krusty in the unmarked leader car to our RV—rendezvous point—about five miles away at 155th Street and Riverside Drive, a notorious Heights address.

  The other members of our team were also given their assignments, and a few jumped into the P-van—a minivan handy for transporting prisoners back to the hub site, where we would process the perps we hooked—while others rode in the chase car, an unmarked Ford. The undercovers (UCs) had already arrived at the location in style, driving a luxury Mercedes with out-of-state tags which helped to sell the deception. They used the time to source suspects, which they tipped us off about over the radio in code, starting with “steers,” usually drug addicts themselves, who don’t sell but direct customers to crack houses or other less public areas in return for a baggie or two.

  On my first day I got to grips with the KELL—a wire, basically—a receiver and recorder which picked up signals from the inbuilt heart monitors worn by our UCs: any sudden rise in levels would show us that the deal had turned sour, and part of my job was to flag this immediately to Kollmer, who would order us to either abort or move in, guns drawn. The KELL could be concealed in anything—a necklace, a pen, a ring. There was also a “booster,” placed, say, in a decoy yellow cab parked outside the building where the deal was taking place, to boost the signal from the UCs.

  Simpler signals were also used. For example, if the dealer was armed, our guy might joke: “Hey, man—you packin’ in yo’ pants, or are you jus’ happy to see me?” letting us know where he liked to hide his weapon.

  On B&Bs we were lucky to have Chang and Ramos, since the Brass often used officers straight out of the police academy because they didn’t yet walk, talk, or look too much like cops. But Washington Heights was no place for rookies to risk their lives and learn the ropes. One mistake could get them, and you, killed.

  Working undercover is a stressful, thankless job, and experience counts. Thankfully my pasty Irish complexion and accent meant it was a role I’d never play. Chang fit right in and this day he was acting as the buyer—the Uncle—with Ramos acting as the Ghost, a job that required him not only to verbally guide us to the target, but also to shadow his partner and to act as primary backup if the shooting started. They would alternate these roles from time to time to remain focused.

  Chang and Ramos would take as few chances as possible. They would have no contact whatsoever with us on the street, even using different entrances and exits in our building, because in the Heights a dealer would pick up on the slightest glance and make us all out in a second.

  I was still fiddling with the KELL in our car park when Eddie Ramos’s voice crackled through the speaker.

  “Guys, I got a positive, 110th Street and Lex,” he said. Succinct, to the point.

  “Ten-four,” Kollmer cooed into the radio. “Okay, you guys, suit up,” he ordered the team. “We got a live one here!”

  It only took a minute to drive to the location and about another thirty seconds to identify ourselves to the unhappy customer, who was cuffed and loaded in the P-van.

  That day our Field Team needed five arrests to hit our overtime target. Not four, not six. Five.

  “Easy pickings,” our sarge chuckled, rubbing his hands together. “Four to go.”

  We made another arrest before spotting a woman smoking crack from a pipe, which we recovered and charged her with possession of a controlled substance.

  Then it was back in the vehicles again and not long before another known junkie was spotted, stopped, and collared, then put in the P-van with the others. It was another routine, forgettable arrest, but one more body towards our quota.

  The day was going well. Two to go.

  We were back in the vehicles again and a few minutes later, as we rolled past the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 181st Street, my passenger spotted someone blowing his nose. Maybe this guy had a cold. Krusty believed it paid to be suspicious. And for his team, it did.

  “Hey! You see that? What’s this idiot got? Looks like coke to me,” he said, pointing to the pedestrian. We jumped out and found a small box of cocaine, a simple misdemeanor arrest but good for our overtime target.

  Mr. Sniffles was handcuffed and placed in the overcrowded P-van, as my attention returned to the KELL. Ramos was calling in another buy from a female Hispanic, this time at 204th Street and Post Avenue. He gave us a health warning before we arrived to arrest the suspect. Sure enough, as soon as we got there and tried to click the cuffs closed, the junkie started kicking, screaming, and cursing, just like the last time she was arrested. A couple of us wrestled her to the ground, where I struggled to hog-tie her ankles to her wrists. Now immobilized, Ms. Scuffles was patted down for weapons and placed in the van with the other mopes.

  “Okay, that’s number five. We’ve got our bodies, let’s shut it down.” Krusty sighed with satisfaction as I brushed the dust off my jeans. “Welcome to the exciting world of Narcotics, Waters.”

  My first day was nothing remarkable—we made twelve arrests on another particularly busy shift and we could make fifty if the manpower and overtime for it were sanctioned.

  The actual arrests were only the start. The team members assigned to the P-van fingerprinted the collars and transported them to court, while the officers in the chase car vouchered the prisoners’ property, either putting it into safekeeping or evidence, and helped me with the reams of paperwork which take up most of any cop’s time and pay a lot of his mortgage.

  This was the workplace, the marketplace—or for Chang and Ramos the stage—where we plied our trade.

  Ricky Schroder, a child star from the movie The Champ and the eighties sitcom Silver Spoons, spent a day with us as a “ride-along” civilian observer, to help prepare for his new role in the hit show NYPD Blue. He was keenly aware that on-screen, just like on the street, small details matter, revealing that he often spent his downtime downtown, sitting in a sedan opposite a police station, making notes on the cops’ mannerisms and behavior, and was taken with how one Mick patted himself.

  “I like the way you do that. What’s the reason?” he asked me, slapping his waist and groin as he demonstrated the move.

  “Janey, I’d never thought about it, but, sure, I suppose I’m checking for my radio and my piece,” I mused.

  “You cops all do that, constantly. You ever notice?” Schroder enthused. “I like it. I think I’ll borrow it for my character if you have no objection, Officer Waters.”

  “Feck it. Sure, why not?”

  Sure enough, “Detective Sorenson” used the move throughout the next two and a half seasons on the show.

  *

  Chang and Ramos were the best actors I ever saw, walking the walk, talking the talk, wearing the right gold chains, flashing the correct tattoos, driving the proper sort of car, and most of all staying cool, all within a couple of feet of the harshest of critics: dealers who would put a bullet in their brain if they knew the truth; but success came at a price. Our UCs had been too close to too many arrested dealers, as they were occasionally reminded.

  “You Five-O, homey! Ain’t got nothin’ for you!” was the slap-in-the-face response Chang got when he appeared on a corner one day, but he wasn’t the sort of guy to turn the other cheek, and the dealer didn’t get the chance to turn either of his before he was punched, full force, in the jaw, the blow sending him staggering backwards.

  “Yeah? Well, I got that for you, motherfucker!” Chang snarled.

  The short, sharp shock helped establish credibility, because on the street you never, ever show weakness. Stepping aside for somebody passing by on the sidewalk sends out a message that you are weak. Chang’s usually got through.

  “You callin’ me a liar, you fat bastard? Gimme a bag! I be here for biznizz, not bullshit. Look like I give a crap ’bout you problems, homes?” the cop continued as the
guy rubbed his face, figuring he must have made a mistake.

  He was about to.

  The deal was done. Another score for Chang. Cha-ching! Another five hours for us. The game went into overtime as the Ghost called in the good news from the shadows. A few blocks away we would pick up the pusher, still rubbing his bruised ego, the blue mark a reminder as he sat in the cells to always trust your instincts.

  The B&B arrests were as strictly choreographed as any Broadway show, and after a few years they became boring and bullshit as far as I was concerned. The repetitive nature of our work meant it was easy to become depressed by the predictability of it all. Most users rely on crime to feed their habits, so they get up early and steal as much as possible, or prostitute themselves as often as necessary, to buy the junk their bodies crave, and as a result drugs play a large part in every cop’s workload.

  As part of a Field Team you have a good idea not only how many arrests you will make the following day, but what kind of dope you are going to find, too. If the statistics for seizures of a particular drug are below the expectations, your focus will change.

  “How come it’s all PCP and marijuana this month?” someone from the Brass will demand, waving a computer printout at one of his captains. “Where’s all the goddam coke and heroin gone? Get me more coke and heroin!”

  So for the following month we would concentrate on coke and heroin sales, and a month later it was back to PCP and marijuana again. No matter the orders, you always kept an eye out for crack, an ever-present scourge in the Heights, hooking users the first or second time they smoke it. Crackheads build up a tolerance to the drug within a few hits and begin to take more and more to try to reach that first great high, like a puppy chasing his tail. Ten years before I joined, the head of OCCB was clear about the threat it posed to society across all communities and tax brackets. “It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, or Hispanic, or whether you have a white-collar job or are unemployed. Crack is the drug of choice,” O’Boyle explained to a New York Daily News reporter.

  The effects of crystallized cocaine are devastating on so many different levels, as a look through Tammy Black’s arrest record showed. Tammy was tall, thin, and glamorous when we first hooked her up in the Heights, a woman who once literally had the world at her feet. Walking through our hub site, she turned heads, clearly out of place amongst the usual junkies and degenerates, but after a few more arrests she started to fit in. Within a year nobody could tell the former American Airlines air hostess from the part-time prostitutes, as her life collapsed, as her teeth fell out one by one, and as her worn-out clothes hung from her scrawny, scarecrow frame.

  One morning Krusty and I were the only ones interested in overtime, so we partnered up and headed southbound on Riverside Drive, close to the corner of West 146th Street, where we spotted four Hispanic males walking in a beeline, single file, about ten feet apart.

  “This looks wrong, Sarge,” I said to my supervisor, who was at the wheel. “Turn around and we’ll check these guys out.”

  We didn’t hear any protests from our suspects, not that they had much choice, since we had them at gunpoint, and within seconds we recovered a loaded pistol, a 9mm this time, and a couple of “elbows” of cocaine, about two and a half pounds in weight, worth up to a hundred thousand dollars, depending on how it was cut. Amongst drug-dealing punks, quality control isn’t such a priority, and product will always be heavily diluted with chalk, sugar, and any other bulking agents handy.

  It was a great result and seemed like a slam dunk for us, but the assistant DA raised concerns as soon as I flopped the file on his desk.

  “We may have a problem with this one, guys,” our prosecutor said, poring over the details of the arrest.

  “Officer Waters, you didn’t have reasonable grounds to run a stop-and-search on these men. Their lawyers are going to say that you breached their constitutional rights by doing so. I can’t pursue this.”

  We manfully argued our side, but the ADA had made his decision, and the Riverside boys walked back to their turf to help Tammy Black and her friends take one step closer to their long-drawn-out suicides. It wasn’t the first time we felt frustrated with the laxity in the DA’s office, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  After four years in OCCB I finally got my gold shield and soon found myself posted to a detective squad in Melle Mel’s old stomping ground, the 42nd Precinct, in the heart of the South Bronx, the maddest, baddest place in NYC, before eventually moving up to Bronx Homicide. Tragically Kollmer wouldn’t be joining me. Having a guy called Krusty based in a squad room at Simpson Street would be the ultimate gag.

  I left Narcotics believing that we had made a difference in the War on Drugs, but it was only later that I discovered our efforts were undermined by fellow officers who were working just as hard to send the dope we seized out the back door into the arms, and lungs, of addicts. The motivator, as ever, was “the green.”

  As far as I was aware, Lieutenant John Maguire was a good cop and a fellow Irishman, and I was closer to him—literally—than I was to my own supervisor in many ways, because he spent more time sitting with the two investigators under his direct command, Thomas Rachko and Julio Vasquez, whose desks were near mine, than in his office, fretting about when he would make captain like any normal Lou (as lieutenants were universally known).

  His hands-on approach made sense when it became clear that a lot of the drugs and money they stole would end up feathering Maguire’s retirement nest a couple of years later. Their racket only came to light when Rachko, by then retired himself on his departmental pension with seventeen years’ service, and Vasquez, who had been promoted to detective second grade and transferred to the Firearms Investigation Unit, ran out of luck.

  Rachko and Vasquez were stopped by members of the El Dorado Task Force after the two men had pulled over a courier carrying $169,000, totally unaware that the courier was a confidential informant under surveillance by the task force. The duo remained calm and the feds were at first taken in by the NYPD raid jackets and their appropriately contrite attitude, particularly when they dropped Maguire’s name to help smooth things over, blaming the lack of notification of their “operation” on a communications mix-up back at the station.

  El Dorado swallowed it, until one of their team picked up the phone and tried to hook up with the cops’ supposed supervisor.

  “I don’t understand. Lieutenant Maguire is retired. Lucky SOB is over in Ireland. Least that was the last I heard,” the puzzled police officer on the other end of the line explained. The phone was barely back in the handset before another call was made, this time to the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB). IA is ruthless, particularly in Narcotics, where the temptation is clearly there. The NYPD conducts credit checks on all MOS, especially Narcotics, to make sure you don’t give in to this temptation, but once IA is involved, all bets are off. You never know when you might be set up. You might take drugs from a perp’s car, and if you don’t voucher for the correct amount, you’re in big trouble.

  Rachko and Vasquez were quickly arrested, and their old colleague, who had indeed retired to Ireland, was also arrested as soon as he returned to New York. Now facing lengthy prison terms, the dirty cops soon became the “Three Tenors,” singing like canaries to get reduced sentences.

  John Maguire, who held a degree from Columbia University, admitted to his part in the scam, and to actively conspiring with several men under his command in dozens of other shakedowns, personally ripping off guys the rest of us were trying to catch. In one case he had stolen $100,000 a dealer had hidden in a cereal box. I could never look at a box of Lucky Charms the same way again. I’d never realized it could contain a real pot of gold, though I was a little more particular than Maguire about where my money came from. My view always was if your pension is worth a million dollars to you, it’s not worth stealing a million.

  The Three Tenors were in the spotlight, and so was I and every cop they worked with, as IAB brought attention to their ar
rests. Eventually nine other cops were arrested in the cleanup, including Detective Carlos Rodriguez and Detective Eric Wolfe, both of whom I had also worked alongside, never suspecting that all these men were far bigger perps than the miserable addicts I spent two years chasing down and shoving into the P-van.

  That gold shield I rubbed for luck between my finger and thumb didn’t bring any magical powers and didn’t confer integrity on the man or woman carrying it, either, as I would be reminded throughout my years on the Job.

  CHAPTER NINE

  UNCHARTED WATERS

  “… five … four … three … two … one …” The cop’s countdown abruptly ends with the screech of a rocket, momentarily lighting up the windows of the precinct.

  He braces himself against the wall, arms outstretched. To his left and right, two other detectives, one dressed in a SWAT ballistic helmet, another in a bright blue Kevlar vest, take similar cover, as a cacophony of explosions replaces the usual clatter of computer keys and rumble of conversation.

  On December 31, 2001, Billy Brower isn’t taking any chances. He’s wearing both. So far we’ve had a quiet shift in the Detective Squad of the 42nd Precinct. Even criminals take a break to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

  Cue another loud crack from a nearby rooftop, followed by two more in quick succession. There’s no way these are .44s, or .38s, either. They sound more like rifle rounds, and the next burst sends my ankles in the air and my backside crashing to the floor. I’d fallen for it after all.

  “Jaysus Christ, they’re shooting up the station!” I roar from the floor, cowering behind the nearest wastepaper basket as further bursts of fire light up a nearby window. My colleagues all seem remarkably calm despite the fact that we are probably about to be overrun by a bunch of gangbangers in a scene straight out of Assault on Precinct 13.

  “Relax, buddy,” George Chin reassures me, protected by the safety of a stairwell, well out of range of ricochets. “Locals ain’t trying to break in. They celebratin’. Lettin’ loose a few rounds from the rooftops, just for fun, as you do. They won’t shoot into the station. Well … they probably won’t shoot in here …”