The cop assigned as the cell attendant today was burning incense. I hated the smell, but it wasn’t as bad as the stink of body odor it was covering up. Most of the perps don’t put personal hygiene on top of their daily list of things to do, so the cells have this constant stink that never goes away. It hangs in the air and clings to the cement walls and iron bars. It smells like the inside of a dirty gym bag.
I looked into the holding cell to make sure my prisoner was okay. You need to check on them frequently because once they are in your custody they are your responsibility. If they escape or somehow manage to hang themselves or just drop dead—it’s your fault. And prisoners can be ingenious. If my guy figured out a way to tie his Calvin Klein boxer shorts around his neck and end it all, the police department would be looking to hang me also.
There was a desk and a chair nearby so I plopped myself down and started banging out the paperwork. As I was sitting there making my way through form after form, I could hear my prisoner starting to bitch about his leg. He knew I was out there and was whining loud enough to get my attention.
Prisoners also love to complain. Once incarcerated they have nothing better to do than be a pain in the ass. And if they have a choice they would rather spend time in the emergency room than Central Booking. Almost all of them know the routine. If they complain about being sick or injured the sergeant down at Central Booking won’t take custody of them until they are medically cleared.
And it’s not like they have to pay any medical bills. The city pays for everything. So they go to the hospital, get checked out, and if they’re lucky, have the nurse get them something to eat. Then after a couple of hours spent killing time and a few thousand dollars of taxpayer money wasted, it’s time to go see the judge. To these guys getting locked up is no big deal. It’s a way of life.
So I cut him off and said, “What’s your problem? What are you crying about?” He laid there on the wooden bench looking at me with a wiseass grin and said, “You fucked up my leg. I got to go to the hospital.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not. I knew I had nudged him a good shot, but he seemed to be walking fine a few minutes ago. So I told him to lay back down and stop the bitching. I told him that if he shut the fuck up and let me finish my paperwork, I’d buy him a soda and a bag of potato chips before going to jail. Maybe if he was real good I’d get him a cigarette.
But he was on a roll. He was determined to be a ball breaker. Somehow, my sending him flying through the air made him feel like he was in the right. Like he was the victim. He was peeking through the bars and taunting me. He said, “I’m gonna sue your ass. I’m gonna sue the city. I’m gonna sue all you motherfuckers. You fucked up my leg.”
So far this had been “one of those days,” and I was in no mood for any crap out of him. If he was really hurt I’d take him to the hospital, it was no big deal. I’d probably get some overtime out of it. But if he wasn’t I had better things to do than listen to his nonsense.
Prisoners are like really bad kids. They will try to test you and see how much they can get away with, and the best way to deal with them is to put your foot down. You have to be firm but fair. Never abuse a prisoner, but you have to let him know who’s in charge. Normally you can bribe them to be quiet with a cigarette and a bag of chips, but this guy was determined to be a pain in the ass. He knew I was a rookie and probably figured he was going to have some fun with me.
He kept going on about the leg and how he was going to sue the city. How he was going to get rich over this. Finally after a few minutes I had enough of his bullshit. I dropped my pen and grabbed the keys to the cell.
You should have seen the look on his face when I stormed over to the cell and flung the door open. He knew he pushed things a little too far.
I stepped in and got right up into his face. I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in close. He and I were nose to nose. I wanted to have his full attention. I told him, “Look, jerkoff, if your leg is messed up and you need to go to the hospital, I’ll take you to the hospital. It’s no big deal. If not—shut the fuck up!”
He tried looking away. He was like a kid being scolded. The eye contact was making him nervous but I wasn’t finished.
Now I was on a roll. I said, “Let me clear things up for you just so you understand what happened today. That guy you were about to stab—I saved his life. But guess what, asshole? I saved your life too!”
He looked a little puzzled and didn’t know what I was getting at. So I kept going. “You were about to kill a guy…right in front of a cop! Do you know what that means? That means twenty-five to life. No bullshit plea deals. No parole. That means twenty-five to fucking life. You’d be an old man before you got out of prison.”
I explained that right now all he was looking at was a bullshit attempted robbery and a misdemeanor weapons charge. And that he would most likely be out of jail in a few days.
He kept trying to look away, but I wouldn’t let him. I continued, “So guess what? Looks like I saved your life too!”
He wasn’t stupid. It took a second, but I saw the lightbulb go on over his head. He knew I was right. He knew he had every intention of killing that guy in the park and didn’t care who was watching. You’re not giving your defense attorney too much to work with when you commit murder right in front of a cop.
I let go of his shirt and calmly finished up. “Now. Do you need to go to the hospital?”
Prisoners can piss you off but they can also make you laugh. And what he did next made me laugh.
He rolled his head around to the right, then around to the left, like a boxer trying to loosen up. He pulled his knee up to his chest and rubbed it a few times. Then he did a few deep knee bends and followed that by running in place for a few seconds. After shaking it loose and stretching like he was getting ready to play a basketball game, he turned to me and said, “Nah, I’m fine.”
I was trying not to laugh but it was funny. That instructor in the police academy was one hundred percent right. I really did have a front-row seat to the “greatest show on earth.” And sometimes it’s a comedy!
I asked him again, “Are you sure?” He just smiled. He thought it was a little bit funny too.
I was sure that if I got into a foot chase with him, I’d have a hell of a time catching him. After we ironed things out he was a model prisoner. I gave him a soda, a bag of chips, and a cigarette. Then he laid down on the bench and went to sleep so I could finish my paperwork.
After it was over, all I could do was laugh. The lieutenant thought I was a loose cannon and the crowd thought I was an overzealous, brutal cop. I did what I had to do and that was that. No more, no less. And in the end only me and the two drug dealers knew what actually happened that day. Or even cared.
2.
Never Do That Again
Rookies do dumb things. That’s just the way it is, and I was certainly no different. The thing about police work is, physically it’s a young man’s job but mentally it takes maturity and experience. Having balls doesn’t necessarily mean you have brains, and in police work you need both. I had plenty of the first but I was still working on the second.
Desperate men will do desperate things to stay out of jail, so you need to be prepared to go toe-to-toe with some bad guy. You have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to get the job done because cops don’t run away when things get tough. We don’t give up just because a situation becomes difficult or because some guy who thinks he’s tough doesn’t want to go to jail. It just doesn’t work that way. But it takes experience and street smarts to know what’s important and what’s not. What’s worth getting killed over and what’s not. You need to know when it’s appropriate to go all out and do whatever it takes to get the bad guy. And you need to know when it’s time to say, “Fuck it, it ain’t worth it, I’ll get him next time.”
I was young, strong, fast, and eager, and it didn’t take long before I realized I loved “the job.” I loved catching bad guys. It pissed me off and I
took it personally when they sometimes got away.
In the beginning, when you walk down the street you try to look like a hard-ass so nobody messes with you, but your spit-shined shoes and stiff leather gear make you stick out like a broken thumb. You’re not fooling anybody. Everybody you walk past knows you’re a rookie. Kids call you a “new jack” because of your shiny new jacket. And the dumb young look on your face doesn’t help either.
The day I got sworn into the police department there were seventeen hundred of us sitting in a big auditorium at the Fashion Institute of Technology waiting to take the oath. That may seem like a lot of people, but this was an average-size NYPD class. We had more people entering the academy than most police departments in this country have police officers.
Cops can be real ball breakers and have a sick sense of humor sometimes. That doesn’t mean we’re not funny, it just means we have a fucked-up way of looking at things. The crowded auditorium was really quiet as we sat there filling out a stack of paperwork. I was printing my name, address, and Social Security number for the twentieth time when one of the instructors got up onstage and approached the podium. He had this shit-eating grin on his face as he grabbed the microphone and started to talk. It was obvious he had something funny to say—or at least he thought it was funny.
He said, “You guys like trivia?” Every baby-faced recruit in the room dropped their pen and looked up waiting to hear what pearl of wisdom the instructor was going to bestow on us.
He continued, “There are seventeen hundred of you in the room. Statistics show that one in every hundred police officers will die in the line of duty over the course of a twenty-year career…take a look around…that means seventeen of you are not going to make it.”
He stopped smiling, making his long dramatic pause seem even more ominous. He continued, “Seventeen of you are going to die a violent death in the line of duty.”
He paused again, letting that little tidbit of information sink into our young impressionable minds. Then he cracked up laughing again as he walked off the stage. It seemed like a well-rehearsed line. A line he had obviously used many times on previous academy classes before us.
We all looked around wondering who the seventeen were going to be. The big auditorium suddenly got smaller while the other instructors laughed their asses off also.
Not that cops getting killed is funny, but fucking with rookies is. At the time he was quoting some statistics from the seventies, so his numbers were a little high. But a few guys in that room would be shot and a few would die. I know because a couple would become friends of mine.
The amazing part is, I went back to finishing my paperwork without giving it a second thought. I think the reason the instructor said it was to thin out the herd. Get rid of the weak right at the beginning. If that little statistic scared you off then you shouldn’t be in that room waiting to raise your hand. But the funny thing is, we all went back to finishing our paperwork. Nobody left the room! You would think there would be a mad dash for the door but there wasn’t. Cops aren’t like normal people.
As I went back to writing my name into little boxes I made a mental note of the statistic. I never wanted to forget it. Plus I figured it might be useful in picking up girls in bars.
When I first went out on patrol I was a little nervous—but definitely not scared. Cops don’t get scared, or at least we never admit it. I knew this was going to be a life of adventure and couldn’t wait for it to begin. And I didn’t have to wait long.
I was assigned to NSU 12, one of the worst areas of Brooklyn. We covered the Six Seven and the Seven One precincts in Crown Heights and East Flatbush. The day I graduated from the academy, the ceremony was held in Madison Square Garden. I was standing out front in my shiny new dress uniform when one of my instructors asked me where I got assigned. When I told him, he just smiled and said, “You’re gonna learn how to survive—real quick.”
At the time I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just smiled back, with that young dumb look.
My first day out of the academy I’m walking a foot post in the Six Seven when I see this huge drunk guy in the middle of the street throwing punches at the passing cars. The guy must have been at least six foot seven inches tall, and he had on these dusty, dirty clothes and a tool belt around his waist. He was obviously a construction worker who had probably stopped off for more than just a few beers after work.
My first reaction was, that’s dangerous, somebody should do something about that. Somebody should call the police before he causes an accident. It took a few seconds but then I realized, I was the police! I was that somebody that had to do something about it.
When I was a kid growing up, I lived in a fairly tough blue-collar neighborhood. Getting into a fight was no big deal. But when a cop gets into a fight it’s very different. You don’t have any friends standing around to break things up before anyone gets too hurt. When you’re rolling around in the street with some guy you know from the neighborhood, chances are nobody is going to get killed.
In police work the total opposite is true. You don’t know the individual you’re going toe-to-toe with. You don’t know how crazy or desperate he is. You don’t know if he’s armed. You don’t know if he is wanted for a homicide somewhere and is willing to do anything to stay out of jail. You just don’t know!
I fished around under my coat, grabbed my radio, and asked Central to send me over one car for backup. I was a rookie but I wasn’t stupid. I fully expected to be rolling around in the middle of the street with this guy in another minute, and I wanted to call for assistance before I was out of breath.
I marched up to him with my nightstick gripped tightly in hand. This was my first taste of police work and I was determined to do my job. I looked up at him, and with the best authoritative voice I could muster, I pointed to the sidewalk and said, “Get the fuck over there.”
I’m only about five nine so the guy towered over me. We stood there in the middle of the street, cars passing on both sides of us, staring each other down for what seemed like a long time. He was staring—way down—at me with his drunken bloodshot eyes, and I was staring—way up—at him with a look of “don’t fuck with me” in mine.
I could feel my knuckles turning white as I gripped the nightstick in my hand. If he wanted to fight, I was ready to lay that stick right over the top of his head and end this thing quick. I hoped. He had no problem throwing punches at passing cars, so I figured he would have no problem throwing one at me either.
People passing by stopped and stared, waiting for the show to begin. Everybody loves a good fight in Brooklyn, especially when they think the cop is going to get his ass kicked.
But to my surprise he put his hands down and started stumbling toward the sidewalk just like I told him to do. He suddenly slouched over, hung his head down, and gave up. It was like he was a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon and somebody just let the air out of him. I was utterly astonished. I was a twenty-three-year-old kid who had never told anyone what to do in my entire life except my little sisters, and even they didn’t always listen to me. But now I’m standing in the middle of bad-ass Brooklyn enforcing the law. It was kind of a rush.
When we put him in the back of the car for the ride to the station house, he was so tall he had to duck his head down. That seemed easy enough. I wrote him a summons for disorderly conduct and I had my first arrest. It wasn’t the Lindbergh kidnapping, but it was a start. And since this was Brooklyn, I didn’t have to wait long for another collar to come my way.
Two hours later I’m walking my foot post again when I see a guy running down the same block. I’m only a few hours into my first day on patrol and I still had no idea what I was doing, but something wasn’t right. I didn’t see a bus coming and it wasn’t raining either. I figured this guy must have done something, so I started running after him. He was fast, but I was faster. I was young and dumb, but I was in good shape.
I chased him for two blocks, and when I tackled h
im into a parked car he had a gold chain and crucifix in one hand and a knife in the other. He had just robbed some kid and his girlfriend around the corner, and I had my second arrest. Police work was fun and seemed easy. A little dangerous, but easy.
A week later I’m walking a foot post again when a teenage girl walks up to me and says she was raped by two guys in an apartment not far away. I went over to the apartment, dragging the victim with me, and found one of the perps. BAM! Just like that I had another felony collar. I was starting to get the hang of things. After just one week I had a rape, a robbery, and a disorderly conduct.
Not long after that a woman approached me all hacked up. Her hands, arms, and back had been slashed by a razor. She and her baby’s daddy had an argument over some money and diapers he owed her and it got a little heated. He pulled out a razor and did a real nasty job on her.
When I went up to the apartment to lock him up and get her baby back, she felt the need to warn me about his bad temper. I smiled and assured her I would be fine. I told her that I would explain to this asshole that this was inappropriate behavior toward his baby’s mama. She could read between the lines. She understood that I wasn’t going to take any bullshit from this guy like she had to. As the blood pooled on the ground around her feet, she smiled back at me, eager to see this prick in handcuffs.
Unfortunately by the time she had found me out in the street and by the time I made it to the apartment, the guy had fled. That pissed me off because I really wanted to lock the guy up. I found the baby in the apartment unharmed and returned the kid back to the mother, but there was not much else I could do except fill out a complaint report referring the case to the detective squad. Somebody else would get to lock this guy up.
I quickly learned I was falling in love with the job. I loved the metallic clicking noise handcuffs make when you’re slapping them on some bad guy’s wrists. I wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor so I probably wouldn’t find a cure for cancer, but in some small way I knew I was doing something worthwhile in this world. For a guy starting out in life with just a high school diploma and a driver’s license, I was making a difference and it was gratifying.
The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop Page 4