Dorothy Uhnak
Detective
New York City Transit Police Department.
1
“A strange world, a terrible world, a familiar world”
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the insistently intrusive warm April air that made us restless that morning, or it might have been the droning hum of the lecturer’s voice, or it might have been the knowledge that this was the last morning of classes. Though most people have a natural affinity for their birth-month, I have always been uneasy in April, for it is one of those beginning months: I don’t like beginnings of things or endings of things. In May, it is definitely spring, the indecision is gone, the shifting between grayness and sunlight, between warmth and mean chill is over, and we are plunged into the steady heat of summer. September is another month I find hard: the remnants of summer cling, the indications of winter are sly and not clear-cut transitions. There is always a restlessness, a kind of wary, eager, nervous anticipation to get to the heart of things during these fringe months: get into the heat and learn to live with it; get into the cold and complain bitterly, but be in it.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons for the agitation. The class of police recruits shifted and scuffled; the young men, dressed in somewhat crumpled gray twill uniforms, were in various stages of motion or sunk in lifeless immobility. My white dress shirt felt starchy and the heavy navy blue uniform skirt was sticky and thick, and the black tie, with its uncomfortable knot, was like a noose.
My attention became focused on the man sitting to my left—or rather on his right hand, which was tapping an infuriating beat: one-two-three, one-two, one-two. He was accompanying his finger dance with a breathy soft whistle. Two seats beyond him, a black shoe was kicking at the air in time to some inner music. One of the men two rows ahead of me was sprawled out, his legs apparently thrust forward, judging from the position of his light curly head resting on the back of his chair; his arms were looped over the chairs on either side of him. His neighbor to the left, a slight, nervous type, was leaning forward anxiously to avoid pressing against the burly arm. The girl to my right was tracing a flower over and over on her note pad: the petals were long, delicate, swaying arrows, pointing toward a round, black, spiky sun. The faces all around me were like faces in a trance: it was as though everyone in the room, except me, was hypnotized by the unaccustomed measure of heat and by the relentless hum of the book-lieutenant who was speaking about something. What? I tried to concentrate, to blink away the lazy blending of sound into a stream of meaninglessness, to catch the individual words. He spoke in a loud and even tone, but he was completely devoid of vitality. Something about the law of search and seizure. Search and seizure. I relaxed, keeping my eyes from blinking, giving up the effort and letting myself slip into the encompassing coma that covered us all like an inverted cup. It was no effort to move from the irritating, jangling sounds, from the tappings and creakings of boredom-heavy bodies unable to adjust to the inadequate metal chairs, or from the droning instructional voice. The sounds were a dull, even background for my own thoughts.
It was somehow odd that the long weeks of lectures and demonstrations had not deadened me, had not diminished the sense of intoxication that would suddenly, unexpectedly burst through me at the most unlikely times, triggered by a word, a phrase. It was an excitement that could never be revealed to anyone here: not to the other three girls attending the Police Academy with me in this class of one hundred and four police recruits. But I would go home in the evenings and in recounting the day to Tony would find a sense of reality springing from the sections of the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure that we had to memorize and were tested on each week. They related to people, these words couched in incomprehensible legal terms, to acts committed by people I was to move among.
And Tony, familiar with my earnest dedication to whatever I threw myself into, would let me talk, would let the thing grow and swell around us. Then I would stop, finally aware that my throat was dry and that I had been speaking for hours and that he had been listening, leading me on with his grave attention, and we would both laugh. “Oh, God,” I’d finally say, “you know what? The classes today were as boring as the devil!”
But that wasn’t completely true either. Though the air about us had been thick with the hum of ineffectual lecturers, there was still a pervading hint of reality in all of it. As we had walked through the musty room which housed a kind of police museum, looking, in groups of four and five, at exhibits of weapons, narcotics, fragments of evidence which had cracked seemingly insoluble cases of murder and destruction, some element of excitement had managed to break through. For me, at least, each yellowing card pasted on the exhibition boards beneath the glass cases, telling in terse and unimaginative words the step-by-step method of investigation, led to speculation on the people involved: those who had done these terrible and incredible things, and those who had discovered and revealed them. I was fascinated by the actual weapons: the gun which had actually shot down four people, been held by some demented man, been wrenched from his grasp by a police officer whose only thoughts at that moment had been on that particular gun in that particular hand. For him, nothing else in the entire world had existed at that particular moment. The cards were inadequate: too coldly written, failing to show the emotion, to show the thing as it must have been. Even these things were somehow made dull and unreal in their presentation.
They showed us movies—those grayish-white documentaries designed to stimulate your resolve to do your job efficiently and with honor. Young, clean-cut, carefully selected policemen showed you how to search a prisoner, how to place his feet so many inches from a wall, his hands resting against the wall in such a manner that you had a kind of safety device against him. If he moved so much as an inch, your foot could swing out quickly in front of his, and he would fall on his face. And then we practiced—or rather, we girls watched the men practice—patting each other down. The women, we were told, were not often called upon to search men, and we would learn from other policewomen the procedures whereby women prisoners were searched.
Then an older policeman, a detective, would appear and challenge the recruits to search him, warning them in advance that he was heavily armed. A bright-eyed rookie would place him just so, run his hands along the detective’s arms and shoulders and body and legs, and place a gun or two on the table, maybe a knife. He would stand back, satisfied, and then “die” when the detective casually peeled an automatic revolver, two switchblade knives, a .32 Smith and Wesson, brass knuckles and a jack from his person. It was a demonstration designed partly to shock, but mainly to warn and to instruct, and it made a strong impression on us. Of course, it made an unforgettable impression on the recruit who had diligently searched the “prisoner.”
There was physical fitness training, too, but again we girls were excused. We were invited as spectators to the judo sessions, to observe basic karate slashes, but the instructor, a beefy man with a flat face, twisted ears and beady gray eyes, wanted no part of us and cast a watery sneer at our requests to try a toss or a slash or two. We spent those hours with older policewomen, listening to their stories, and wondering. They spoke so casually about it all: about arrests, about the taking of a prisoner into custody. You wondered if it was all really like that, or if they were just enjoying their effect on us.
We all took part in firearms training. The men had standard service revolvers and the prospective policewomen had .32 Smith and Wesson revolvers. My mother paid for my gun. A strange present from a mother to a twenty-one-year-old daughter, I suppose—my first gun. But it was in fulfillment of a promise, long forgotten by me, that my mother had made when I was about ten years old. “When you become a policewoman, I’ll buy your gun for you.” We were both unsettled to learn that a gun cost fifty-four dollars—and this at a special rate. The expenditure for my uniforms was another jolt; it cost close to two hundred and fifty dollars to buy the required skirt, jacket, overcoat (that was so heavy you could hardly hold yo
ur shoulders up), hat (that wouldn’t stay on your head), sling-pocketbook (that allowed for revolver and notebook and counted on your not needing lipstick, comb or even a handkerchief). The shoes were medium-height black pumps. “Make sure they’re comfortable, you’ll be standing on them quite a bit.” The white shirts were regulation, which meant uniformly uncomfortable, and the black tie and clasp were foreign to us; fathers or husbands or brothers stood patiently each morning, arms looped over shoulders, watching in the mirror, trying to teach us how to make the incredible, stupid knot.
I had seen guns before, of course: in the holsters of policemen, in the hands of swift cowboys and movie desperados. But having a gun of your own, holding it in your hand, loading it with bullets and being responsible for it, is another matter altogether. The shooting range was located in the center of Central Park, in a building adjoining the park precinct. Here there was no discrimination: man or woman, you had a gun and you had to learn to handle it. They showed us charts which described the way your sights should look when you held the gun at arm’s length and fired at the target. Three even little ridges should stick up at a level; there should be a tiny, exactly equal space on each side of the middle ridge, and the center ridge should be lined up with the center of the bull’s-eye. When I shot my gun for the first time, I was somewhat prepared for the blast; it was an ear-shattering, resounding blast, echoing down the long chamber of the shooting range, with a simultaneous flash of fire. But the feeling of the gun in my hand was unexpected: the jump, or thrust. My hand, outstretched, was trembling; the gun seemed to get heavier and heavier as I tried to hold the revolver in the way shown on the chart. An instructor stood behind my right shoulder, telling me to rest my arm on the counter in front of me. As I started to turn toward him, he held my fight arm tightly. You should never turn your gun-hand around; you keep it facing down the alley. Firearms instructors are the bravest men I have ever known.
I had thought I would take to shooting easily; this, too, was to be a natural thing for me. But there is nothing natural about shooting a gun, and I stared in disbelief at my target when I reeled it in with the little handle that sends it waving up and down the alley. I had fired ten bullets but there were only two holes in the target—just two, and those were on the outside rim. The instructor explained with infinite patience that you do not pull the trigger. “You squeeze, you squeeze, you squeeze,” he intoned softly, “until it becomes inevitable, automatic, a natural conclusion and an extension of your arm, your hand, your finger.” Squeeze—the magic word. I practiced at home for hours holding a milk bottle at arm’s length, to steady my arm, to rid myself of the quiver; I practiced “dry-shooting,” with the six bullets in sight on my dresser, pointing the emptied gun toward some imaginary spot, dead center on the target. Cock with your thumb and squeeze, squeeze. Throughout a police career, we learned, there are periodic practice sessions, and if you don’t achieve a qualifying score on the allotted bullets, you start purchasing bullets. I could see that this shooting business was going to be a continuing expense.
We were taken on tours of the courts, a bewildering network of buildings: General Sessions, Special Sessions, Felony Court, Magistrate’s Court, Gambler’s Court, Women’s Court, Youth Term. Here you write up the complaint, after putting your prisoner in the custody of the Department of Correction officers. If it’s a felony, of course, you present him at the photo gallery in the basement of police headquarters for some picture-taking. And you arrive with his rap sheet, his yellow sheet, his criminal record which you have obtained from the Bureau of Criminal Identification. The Bureau has obtained said rap sheet through a search based on your prisoner’s pedigree sheet, which you had filled out at the precinct (when his fingerprints were taken) prior to booking. Then you escort your prisoner to the appropriate jurisdiction and follow your case through to its completion, the satisfactory completion being a conviction. This is when we all became silent and when the wisecracks stopped—at the realization of the total responsibility that would be placed on each of us.
Oh, God, he was still talking, that poor lieutenant, completely unaware of, or maybe accustomed to, the fact that he had long since lost his audience. These were the initiation rites, I thought, the hated beginnings that had to be gotten through. When these were over and done with, I could put them from my mind, these hours, because no word spoken here in this hazy, grayish room had any relation to the world out there that we were soon to enter. It flashed through me again, that persistent, recurring feeling, like a chill: I’m really here, I’m really getting into it. I looked around at all of them, completely aware now of myself and where I was, but feeling like a twelve-year-old who has sneaked in disguised, and gotten away with it.
There was a silence in the room now, and it filled the air with a kind of lightness, it was so unexpected: Apparently, the lecture was over, for the lieutenant was gathering up his pencils, closing his folder of papers. Everyone in the room was moving slowly, purposelessly, stretching, muttering the usual bitterly funny comments about this lieutenant’s ability to murder us all with words. What charge do you give him? Verbal strangulation in the third?
Mary Leary, the girl to my right, asked if my husband would be at the ceremonies tomorrow, and what time we were supposed to be there, anyway? The noise of the voices and moving chairs became louder, the sighs and relieved groans mingled with questions and answers and greetings hooted across the room. Some of the men were struggling along the uneven rows of chairs, scraping them out of line to get into the aisles.
A voice cut through the room like a scythe. “Attention!”
We all froze in place, not glancing at each other, but looking up to the lecture platform and the straight navy blue figure of a captain we hadn’t seen before. He did not call out a second time, but stood, unmoving, dead-center, glaring coldly down at us until there wasn’t a sound anywhere and until each recruit present somewhat self-consciously drew his feet together, put his shoulders back slightly and let his hands fall more or less stiffly at his sides. The captain stood motionless as the room slowly molded itself into straight lines of gray-clad men, one behind the other, each in front of a metal bridge chair, with four girls standing in front of chairs at the right side of the room. The captain’s eyes swept the room, stopping at a particular section, and that section turned slowly to steel, rigidly perfect. For a full minute, there was not even the sound of breathing. And then he spoke again.
“Deputy Inspector George J. Harrington will now address this assembly.”
He turned smartly in his shiny black shoes and faced to his right, saluted briskly as the tall, gray-haired man approached and returned his salute. The deputy inspector surveyed us, and at some hidden signal, which somehow communicated itself to everyone in the room, we all saluted. The D.I. returned the salute and told us to be seated.
He was a tall man with a bitter face and a very low voice, which he did not trouble to raise. Yet he could be heard in the very last row, and it was obvious that he intended to hold the attention of every person in that room.
“Tomorrow, you will all graduate from the Police Academy and you will all become probationary members of the Police Department of the City of New York.”
His tone was not commendatory; there was something almost scornful in his voice. If we had expected a routine speech of congratulations and welcome, we knew immediately that this was not to be it.
“I don’t know any of you; not by name, or sight or reputation. I don’t know your capabilities or your possibilities. I don’t know if there is, in this room, one person who will become a good police officer or one person who will become a bad police officer. I do know that you have had the benefit of the finest academic training the Police Department can offer you. How much or how little you have benefited from this instruction is not measured by the examination marks you have achieved during the last three months. Don’t congratulate yourselves if you have done well on these little examinations: it is no measure of what kind of cop you’re g
oing to be.”
One rookie patrolman in the third row blushed furiously. He had finished number-one man and was to be presented with an award the next day.
“I don’t know what brought any of you here, why you want to be police officers. I don’t know if your reasons are good ones or bad ones, or what you expect to get from the job, or what you are bringing to it.”
The inspector’s tone and manner clearly indicated we were all suspect: our motivations and capabilities were all clear to him. He knew.
“But I do know about policemen and the world of policemen. I’ve been in that world for twenty-three years. There is little you can gain by what I’ve experienced—you are going to have to live it yourself. But I will tell you what it is to be a police officer, and you can start out with this, and think about it and turn it over in your own mind, and don’t say you weren’t warned.”
There was a slight sound in the room; the D.I. stopped speaking, and a cough was stifled and a sneeze swallowed and an exchange of glances halted in mid-air before he would continue.
“This is your city, and most of you have lived here all your lives. But you don’t know this city and you don’t know its people. I don’t care what backgrounds you come from or what neighborhoods you were raised in. You don’t know it because you haven’t seen it, but you are going to see it now with policeman’s eyes, and I advise you to put aside any illusions you might have. There is dirt and corruption and moral disease and agony and tragedy, and you are going to be a part of it.”
His voice was as soft as before; it just seemed louder—or clearer, perhaps—because of the words. They were sharp and familiar to me; I had heard them before, somewhere. They were known to me, somehow.
“I don’t mean the stories you read in the newspapers or the pictures of a murder victim’s wife and children or a dope addict’s cravings, as detailed in syndicated articles by sob sisters. No matter how graphically described, these stories skim the surface, and you as police officers are going to go down into the depths. You are going to touch and handle and encounter the living flesh and the dying blood.”
Policewoman Page 2