Breaking Rank

by Norm Stamper

  She was on her back on the bathroom floor. One hand was locked around the drainpipe under the sink. Her purple tie-dye maternity smock, homemade, was pulled up over her distended belly and her legs were in the customary position. “Oh, thank God!” she said when she saw me. God was getting thanked a lot that week.

  “What do you think?” I said, bending down to her. “Are you ready?”

  “Past ready,” she said. “Jesusfuckingchrist, I’m past ready already!” I took the cigarette from her mouth, snubbed it out with the others in a saucer on the back of the toilet. A can of beer sat off to the side. I gave her a pat on the arm.

  “I’ll be right back.” I ran through the house and out to the car—there were no walkie-talkies in those days—and got on the air. “Unit 35-East, have 30 expedite.” That was code among street cops for fuck-policy-put-your-freaking-lights-and-siren-on-and-get-your-ass-here. Now! I rushed back inside, stopping in front of the jerk. “That your baby?”

  “She says it is, but . . .” He mumbled his doubts, something about being in the joint when she got knocked up. I turned the tube off, checked to see if he’d jump me for it. The quiet was complete.

  “Do me a favor, okay?” He looked at me dumbly. I sent him on the same fool’s errand. “Boil us some water, get us clean towels.” The towels I could use. He stood up, towering over me, even with my helmet on, and sauntered into the kitchen.

  His woman was, indeed, past ready. I heard 30’s siren shut down out front just as she pushed the baby into my hands. This one had outdoor plumbing.

  It was awfully sleepy out. We were working twelve-hour shifts on P3 (eight at night till eight in the morning), something we did every other week because of the riots in Southeast San Diego. Think Watts, Newark, Detroit—on a smaller scale. I’d seen some action earlier in the shift when, along with a hundred other cops, I attached a face shield to my helmet and waded in to the throngs of rock- and bottle-throwers at Mountain View Park. Things had calmed down at about two in the morning, which was when we east-end units got sent back to our beats. The Heights regulars would be held over another several hours to maintain the uneasy peace. You never knew when a smoldering ember could flame into another fireball.

  The sun was just peeking around the side of Mount Helix. I was on the Boulevard, almost at the La Mesa border, having just cleared from a call. My eyelids felt like anvils but there was no way I’d park myself in some shaded glen to catch a few Z’s. I had little use for peers who dozed on the job, even the ones who claimed they could hear the radio in their sleep. When you’re needed you’re needed. Besides, the thought of kids on the way to school standing next to a police car, eyeballing a drooling, snoring cop . . .

  I started back to my beat, still congratulating myself for having delivered those two babies the week before. Delivered: a lousy term of art. It was the moms who’d made the deliveries, I’d merely accepted the packages. Still, it felt pretty special . . .

  I was getting sleepier. I took my helmet off, smacked myself in the face a couple of times. Only half an hour to go. Maybe another call? Something to help me honor my vows, stay awake, stay alert? Dispatcher Betty Nulton obliged. Abandoning her half-dead tone, she put out the call: “Any unit for an 11-40. Infant not breathing.” She broadcast it with the urgency of a mom. “Any unit” calls, as opposed to designating a specific car, came when there were few, or no, units showing green on the big board down at headquarters. Or when you needed the closest police car.

  Three calls cause cops to drop whatever they’re doing and race to the scene. An 11-99 (“officer needs help”). The report of a naked woman. Or any situation involving a sick or injured kid.

  The cop world was no longer asleep. I was one of a chorus of units roused by the 11-40 call. At least two or three would beat me to the scene, I was sure. But I goosed it and dropped down to the interstate in order to avoid all the lights between Seventieth and my destination, the 4400 block of Marlborough. Commuter traffic was light on the freeway. I floored it, hitting speeds of ninety, ninety-five, my lights flashing and siren wailing, the ancient Ford shaking. I eased off the accelerator and pumped the brakes in time to make a harrowing turn off the freeway. Ninety seconds later, I pulled up to the house, my car smelling of rusty steam and burnt rubber. I was the first unit at the scene.

  A man who looked too old to be the father ran out. He was dressed in pajamas, robe, and slippers. “Please, please! It’s our baby! He’s sick, we think. He’s not breathing well.” I sprinted into the house, ran down a hall and met a woman who looked at me in terror. Was it the helmet? Or what she’d woken to that morning? Her baby was dead.

  Unit 43 was minutes away. Maybe I’d ask him to continue. What would be the harm of a “PR run”? We did them when angry crowds gathered at a fatal cutting or shooting. But I fought back the urge to go through with the charade. It didn’t feel right, the “kiss of life” administered to a stiff little creature who’d been dead for hours, followed by a sham run to the hospital. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Your . . . your baby died in his sleep.” I pulled the baby-blue blanket up over the infant’s head. Michael read the sign on the blue dresser, each shiny letter a different color. Her husband and I helped pull Michael’s mother to her feet. She’d collapsed to the floor, wailing. She apologized.

  “May I use your phone?”

  “Yes, of course,” said the father through his own tears. “Right in here.” He pointed to the kitchen. Everything was neat, clean, polished. I called 232-6981, told the business office to call off 43. “It’s an 11-44, civilian, natural. An infant,” I choked. “I’ll stand by for the coroner.”

  I sat with Michael’s parents, discreetly asking for the information I needed to fill in every box of the death report. They brought me coffee.

  At the time, Dottie was pregnant with our first and only child. Delivering those two babies had brought joy, and optimism; their squealing, their wet squirming imparted confidence that our Matthew would be born healthy, with ten toes and ten fingers. The call to Marlborough Avenue left me numb, full of doubt and despair.

  CHAPTER 15

  DOUGHNUTS, TACOS, AND FAT COPS

  WHEN KRISPY KREME CAME to the Seattle area in the late 1990s, off-duty cops had to be called in to untangle the massive traffic jam and to control the hordes of pedestrians lined up around the block for the store’s grand opening. I have no idea whether KK paid the cops in dollars or doughnuts, but I do know that the fatty little bombs have contributed to one of policing’s most enduring traditions, a persistent cultural stereotype of fat cops and their love affair with the doughnut.

  I don’t like doughnuts, never have. I don’t care for the stale jokes, the “all-you-cops-do-is-sit-around-and-eat-doughnuts” jabs at community meetings and parties. But, if my neighbors want to stuff themselves full of sugar and fried dough, more power to them, right? They’re Americans, living in the land of the free and the morbidly obese.

  Does that make it okay for police officers to make pigs of themselves? To create image problems for a department, to compromise the public’s safety, their own safety, the safety of fellow officers?

  When it came to Code 7 (meal break), graveyard cops in the forties and fifties had few choices. They could pack a lunch, pray for an all-night diner on their beat, or fill up on doughnuts. Doughnuts usually won out. They were, to most palates, tasty, and they were cheap and convenient. Thus was the legend born.

  By the time I became a cop in the mid-sixties, 24/7 convenience stores and fast-food drive-thrus were everywhere. So my “doughnuts” were tacos and burritos from Azteca, “krautdogs” from Der Wienerschnitzel, burgers and fries from Jack-in-the-Box, and fish and chips from Arthur Treacher’s. After only a year on the job I’d put on thirty-five pounds (see sidebar).

  A DAY IN THE EATING LIFE OF A ROOKIE COP

  My eating day started at midafternoon when Dottie and I would sit down to dinner of meatloaf and potatoes, or sandwiches and chips, or a little something from the Colonel’s finest
(which went the way of the doughnut for me the day our neighbors discovered maggots slithering around their lips as they lit into the familiar red and white bucket).

  Even though my shift didn’t begin until eight, I’d head for work before 4:00 P.M., telling Dottie I had to run records checks on the troublemakers on my beat, get my shoes shined by a trusty, and stake out a car that had fewer than a hundred thousand miles on it—all of which was true. But the larger truth was that I was desperate to get down to headquarters before Vi left work at the POA Coffee Shop. Nobody made a chili size like Vi: two giant hamburger patties, smothered in beans and cheese (hold the onions). And what’s a chili size without fries and a chocolate shake?

  Out on the beat, between 11 o’clock and bar closing, I’d stop at one of those fast-food joints that Eric Schlosser describes so lovingly in Fast Food Nation and order a sackful of fatmacs or hot dogs or cheesy burritos, and attempt to scarf them down before the next call.

  When I got home from work at around seven or eight I’d dive into one of those plate-filling, old-fashioned, vein-clogging American breakfasts. (Cocktail hour for those of us working swings, and who “indulged,” was around five in the morning. Six packs and tequila all around.) I’d finish breakfast, smoke a few cigarettes, down a second or third cup of coffee then hit the hay. When I awoke it was time to start the whole thing over again.

  No one held me down and stuffed Mr. Treacher’s deep-fat-fried cod down my gullet. I understood I was responsible for my weight gain. But the ubiquity of fast food outlets, the relentless advertising, the low cost and convenience (especially to a cop on the run), the “centralness” of high-fat outlets to our culture made those franchises a coconspirator. Don’t you think?

  In any case, with my new job came a new habit of eating (and drinking). Still, I was a slim panatela compared to some of the guys, the ones who got so stout they had to be taken off patrol.

  When you reached the size of Divine or Andy Divine they’d assign you to the jail (where trusties served up huge, high-calorie meals daily, gratis) or they’d put you on a three-wheeler, writing parking tickets in La Jolla. Some cops were simply too fat to fit behind the wheel of a police car, or they’d crush the springs in the bench seats.

  It took me twelve years, a hiatal hernia, two divorces, and a diet of grapefruit juice to shed those extra pounds. But I did it (and then some), and once I’d done it I had a hard time looking at an overweight cop without judging him. I went through a long period convinced that every police officer, regardless of age or gender or metabolic rate or body type or bone structure or thyroid or other medical condition or family history or life stresses should look like—me.

  Police work is physically demanding, in peculiar ways. To illustrate: It’s early Sunday morning, your radio’s dead quiet. It’s all you can do to stay awake. Then, a hot crime, an armed robbery. The attendant at a gas station has been shot. The stickup man is headed your way. Before you can pick up the mike to let radio know you’re joining the hunt, the suspect vehicle passes you going the other way. You notify radio, make a squealing U-turn, and the pursuit’s on—at harrowing speeds. The suspect barrels down commercial streets, through residential neighborhoods, out onto the freeway, then back to surface streets. He’s making hairpin turns, and bottoms out several times. Sparks fly, his and yours. Department policy says you should have backed off ten minutes ago, but you’re determined to get the bastard.

  A moment later, in testimony to the wisdom of the department’s pursuit policy, you do catch up to the guy, only to find that he’s T-boned a minister and her family who are traveling to church services in a distant city. Both cars are totaled, and it’s obvious that death and/or serious injury has resulted.

  Somehow your suspect has managed to extricate himself from the mangled mess and is now darting between houses. You stop your car, bail out, give chase. Two blocks later, sprinting the whole way, you corner him next to a kid’s swing set in someone’s backyard. Your heart is ready to burst through your chest and you’re gasping so hard you can hardly bark orders—but your prey’s not too pooped to put up a good fight. You thank God your backup is right on your tail because the bastard’s got the upper hand and he’s giving you a pretty good thrashing. Finally, with help of other cops you get him cuffed and haul him off to your car.

  Forget that you’ve violated the law and half a dozen department policies, helped ruin a family, endangered innocent other lives, and ignored basic rules of self-preservation (where, for example, is the suspect’s gun?)—you’ve done your job, you’ve gotten your man.

  And your body knows it. At the peak of exertion your blood pressure spiked at 190/120. Your pulse rate almost tripled, jumping from a resting 65 at the time you were sleepily cruising your beat to 175 by the time you handcuffed your prisoner. ACTH (adrenalcorticotropic hormone, which floods the body when the mind is gripped by acute trauma) saturated your system, and stayed at dangerously high levels for several minutes following the arrest.

  (Had you opted, instead of chasing the guy when he fled on foot, to stay at the scene and provide first aid your body would have been subjected to different but similarly taxing demands: prying dented metal, pulling bodies out of the wreckage, carrying dead weight, working feverishly to save lives.)

  And that’s how it goes in police work. From deadly boring to deadly physical, in a heartbeat. And back. Day after day, night after night. Add to that a diet rich in doughnuts and/or greaseburgers, frequently interrupted meals, a typical cop’s drinking habits, smoking, sporadic or no exercise, shift work (with its corrupting metabolic effects), mandatory overtime, family commitments, court appearances, college classes, an off-duty job, perhaps the occasional extramarital affair—and you’ve got all the makings of a malnourished, sleep-deprived, cranky, and probably fat cop.

  Given the environmental, psychological, and biological pressures that produce obesity, shouldn’t we let fat cops off the hook? No. Maybe. Yes. I’m not trying to sound like a consultant or a politician here—“no, maybe, yes” is not an unreasonable answer.

  The answer is clearly no if we listen to U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona who told the National Sheriff’s Association in March 2003 that “being overweight or obese directly impacts job performance when you’re trying to defend the public safety. Remember, when you are called upon, you [must] be ready to back up a partner or a citizen. To me, failing at this calling when challenged would be a fate worse than death.” It’s rare that I agree with anyone from the Bush administration, but Carmona, who used to be both a cop and an ER surgeon, speaks to me with that “fate worse than death” remark.

  An average of thirteen police officers die of on-the-job heart attacks every year. (Carmona also notes that my brothers and sisters in firefighting are felled far more often by heart attack than by flames, smoke, or falling roofs. Forty percent of all firefighter deaths are caused by heart attacks, resulting most commonly from overexertion.)

  Also supporting the “zero tolerance” forces in the battle against fat cops is the Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission. Citing the works of the world’s foremost authority on police officer fitness, Dr. Kenneth Cooper of the Cooper Institute (whose test we used in Seattle to screen entry-level candidates), the commission found that:

  •Fit officers use less sick time, and they recover quicker when they do get sick or injured.

  •Fit officers go to the gym to work off their stress, while “unfit” cops are more likely to rip open a jumbo bag of garlic potato chips, pop open a brew, or light up a cigarette.

  •Fit officers are less likely to resort to force (they don’t need to because, in the [highly debatable] words of the commission, “bad guys don’t want to go up against a fit enemy”).

  Given these benefits of a fit police force, wouldn’t it make sense to mandate physical fitness? For years that was my official position. Several agencies at one point did demand fitness, or at least offered attractive financial incentives to encourage obes
e cops to lose weight. But police union politics and financial liability issues reared up and smote many of those programs.

  Before I arrived in Seattle the city had traded away fitness testing at the behest of the union. This kind of thing happens often at the bargaining table when cities lack, or claim they lack, enough money to satisfy the financial needs of the membership. Management throws labor a bone, labor picks it up, snarls about the lack of something more tangible, more bankable. But at least the members don’t have to show up on their days off and run, jump, lift, and sweat their way through a fitness test. And that’s how Seattle’s fitness program went the way of the vibrating exercise belt. Shortsighted? You bet. I would have reinstalled the requirement, and the financial bennies, but was told fitness testing was a “nonstarter.” I should have pushed it.*

  Liability is a significant issue. Picture cops being tested in the gym: running, jumping, lifting, and—falling over dead. But also picture a police force trying to explain to irate citizens that 20 percent of its cops aren’t available to answer calls for help because, having failed the fitness test, they’re riding a desk. Or, imagine a city defending itself because a cop, officially determined to be unfit, was allowed on the streets—and failed to protect and/or serve.

  Given that the whole country is in the middle of a full-blown, virulent outbreak of obesity (with Medicare likely in the near future to begin making payments for obesity treatments) we are unlikely to be filling our 900,000 police officer positions with Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz body types. Besides, the “let it all hang out” argument deserves to be heard.

  If, like certain professional football players, cops can carry an extra forty, sixty, or eighty pounds of body weight, and still get the job done, why not just leave them alone? (Have you seen the bellies on some of those NFL offensive linemen? Do you want to tell them they’re out of shape?)