by Joseph Flynn
Ron could hear the approaching sirens. He was desperate not to let this man die before medical help could arrive.
“Listen to me, Officer Gosden. You have a family? Tell me about your family.”
Ron Ketchum knew he’d never be able to explain it clearly to anyone, but he felt with those words he’d extended his hand across a great void to a man who was just about to turn his back on life — and Gosden reached out and took the hand he offered.
“Wi-ife,” the wounded officer whispered. “Ba…baby boy. Danny.”
“Don’t leave your wife, man,” Ron urged. “Don’t you let your son grow up without you.”
“Lauren . . . s-so beautiful.” Gosden swallowed hard. “Da-anny . . . sleep just like … angel.”
Then Officer Gosden’s eyes closed, and Ron thought he’d lost him. But he saw the wounded man’s chest rise and fall as he continued to breathe. And he noticed there was a peaceful smile on his face.
Help arrived in time.
The carjacker, Dantrell Weems, was resuscitated and he lived, too. That stunned Ron, because he was sure he’d killed Weems. The news of the carjacker’s survival left Ron uncertain how he felt. Should he be relieved that he didn’t have a man’s life on his conscience? Or should he feel annoyed that he’d have to go through all the hassle of testifying against a cop-killer at his trial?
For the most part, he felt more annoyed than relieved.
But Ron’s aggravation was only beginning. It was about to take a quantum leap forward in the form of Marcus Martin. Martin, an African American, had been Ron’s nemesis since he was a teenager. As high school athletes at rival schools, Martin had once put Ron in the hospital by undercutting him during a basketball game. Ron had repaid Martin by spiking him viciously when baseball season rolled around.
Now, Marcus Martin was a big time lawyer and a man who loved the limelight. While Dantrell Weems was still unconscious in the prison ward at County Hospital, Martin gave a news conference in which he appeared with Weems’ mother and his common-law wife. Martin announced plans to sue the city and Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum on behalf of Dantrell Weems, at the behest of his family.
The charge would be abuse of authority. Martin claimed that Ron should have arrested Weems instead of shooting him. He said that even a cursory reading of the police report on the incident revealed that by his own words Lieutenant Ketchum admitted that the automatic weapon in Weems possession had run out of ammunition, and that the only other weapon, a handgun, that Lieutenant Ketchum claimed Weems possessed had been found twenty feet from his client’s body. Martin insinuated that the handgun found at the scene had been dropped by the lieutenant after the fact as an excuse for shooting Weems. He suggested that the judgment against the city would run into the millions.
He also urged the district attorney to look into filing charges against Lieutenant Ketchum, and hinted darkly that the man was a known racist.
Marcus Martin’s plans were undercut by responses from two quarters.
The family of Officer Oliver Gosden held a bedside press conference in the hospital room where the wounded cop lay recovering.
Speaking for her family, Lauren Gosden said, “Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum saved my husband’s life. He kept me from becoming a widow, and my son from never knowing his father. We will be grateful to him for as long as we live. As to the charges that Lieutenant Ketchum is a racist, well, as he held my husband’s head in his lap and kept him talking about Danny and me until the paramedics arrived, I really think he must have noticed that Oliver is black. And he probably guessed my son and I are, too.”
But what really wrecked Marcus Martin’s case was what Dantrell Weems said when he regained consciousness.
“I been to the other side,” Weems told his mother. “I know what’s waiting. I got to get right or there ain’t no hope for me at all.”
Neither Weems nor his mother would pursue the case Marcus Martin wanted to file. The common-law wife still wanted to go after the money. Dantrell was going to prison, damnit. What good would he be to her in there? But Martin knew that without at least the mother, he couldn’t even get away with pleading that Dantrell had been brain damaged by the shooting, and was incompetent to plea for himself in either a criminal trial or a civil action.
But Dantrell Weems did plea for himself: He pled guilty to the murder of Officer Conrad Bauer. He pled for forgiveness from the slain cop’s family. And when he was sentenced to die he pled to God to have mercy upon his soul.
The second incident occurred shortly before Ron had put in his twenty years with the department and was considering retirement. He was at a gas station near his Westchester home filling the tank of his personal car. He heard a toot from a car horn and looked up. He saw Jeff Woodridge, the son of his next door neighbors, drive past. The boy waved from behind the wheel of his new car, a used but immaculate BMW 325i.
Ron had known the Woodridge boy since he was six years old, and since that time, Jeff had been telling Ron and his wife, Leilani, and any other neighbor who’d listen, how he was saving to buy his first car. Now, at age eighteen, the day had finally arrived for Jeff. Ron smiled. But not for long.
He noticed another car with two black guys in it who seemed to be following Jeff. The city had been experiencing a large number of follow-home robberies in the past month, and Ron didn’t like the feeling he got off these two guys. He got in his car and tailed them — which he had to do anyway since he was going home and they were following Jeff to the house next door.
Ron’s heart raced when he saw the two guys following Jeff pull stocking caps over their heads. He used the radio in his car to call for assistance and laid his gun on the seat next to him.
The bad guys’ car sped up just as Jeff pulled into his driveway. Ron hit the gas, too.
Jeff had just stepped clear of his prized new set of wheels when the bad guys slammed into his rear bumper. The boy looked around at the sound of the crash. He couldn’t believe what had just happened to his new car. Redfaced with anger, he started to stomp toward the driver of the offending vehicle. Then he saw something that made him turn and run for his house. He was trying to open the front door when his father pulled it open from inside.
At that point, the bad guys got out of their car. Each of them had a gun in his hand. The weapons were immediately pointed at the Woodridges. The driver yelled, “Leave that door open, motherfuckers! Y’all got company.”
Before either bad guy could take a step, though, they heard a screech of tires and then another voice of command: “Drop your weapons! Police!”
When the driver turned toward Ron with his gun still in his hand, Ron shot him. Just once. The other bad guy started to run. Ron called for him to halt, and fired a warning shot into the ground. As Ron raised his weapon, not intending to let this sonofabitch get away, but dreading what the consequences of shooting him in the back would be, the guy skidded to a stop. He dropped his weapon, and put his hands in the air. He tensed his shoulders, too, as if bracing himself for the shot he expected to be fired.
That was when Ron realized how much he’d like to oblige the little shit.
But he didn’t. Instead, he came up from behind and swept the guy’s feet out from under him. He quickly cuffed him, and told him to stay flat on his face or he would be shot. Then he ran back to the first asshole to make sure he wasn’t getting ready to run. Or to shoot him from behind.
He wasn’t.
The Woodridges had kicked the guy’s gun away from his body, and stood between it and the robber. George Woodridge, Jeff’s father, looked at Ron and said with an approving nod, “I think you killed this one.”
Ron had.
There’d be no reviving sixteen year old Qadry Carter.
Neither would there be any stopping Marcus Martin this time. Sharrod Carter, the late Qadry’s accomplice and surviving twin brother, claimed Ron had never given him or his brother any warning before he’d gunned down Qadry. And when he’d chased Sharrod, he’d yelled, “Get dow
n, nigger, or I’ll kill you, too!” Then he’d shot at Sharrod.
Jeff and George Woodridge refuted these accusations. The LAPD found the bullet from the warning shot Ron had fired into his neighbor’s lawn, and the department recovered ninety-seven items of property missing from other follow-home robberies in the crawlspace of the garage behind the Carter boys parents’ house.
Teddy and Mavis Carter claimed to have no knowledge of the stolen goods found on their property, and didn’t condone what their sons had done. But they believed Sharrod’s story and said that white racist cop had no business killing Qadry, who‘d been only a sixteen year old boy, after all. The Carters were happy to have Mr. Marcus Martin protect their interests.
The DA, however, found those interests to be less compelling. He accepted the Woodridge’s testimony to be credible; he knew that the Carter boys had a history of juvenile offenses dating back to when they were nine years old; and he liked the idea of prosecuting Sharrod for multiple home invasions a lot better than trying to nail a police lieutenant for protecting his neighbors.
The county of Los Angeles declined to institute any criminal proceedings against Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum. And because the DA was savvy enough to notify the police department in advance of making his decision public, there was no immediate outbreak of civil disorder.
Marcus Martin railed publicly against the system, saying there was no hope for justice for the black man in America. Within hours of his outburst, the Korean owner of a car stereo shop on Vermont Avenue exchanged gunfire with an irate African American customer who claimed the man had sold him a defective iPod dock. Both combatants died at the scene. Only a swift and massive deployment of police, who were already on alert, kept the town from exploding.
The fallen customer’s girlfriend told a radio reporter that her boyfriend had heard Marcus Martin’s comments about the lack of justice for blacks and had picked up his gun, told her where he was going and said, “I’m gonna to get me some justice right now.”
At that point, the federal government decided to enter the picture. The U.S. Attorney for Southern California said he would look into filing charges against Ronald Ketchum for violating the civil rights of Qadry Carter. The FBI would be investigating Lieutenant Ketchum, and would report to him on their findings.
The response from the district attorney who was genuinely pissed at this action by the feds, which was a none too subtle slap at his decision on the matter — and who saw the chance to curry favor with the cops — promptly brought charges against Marcus Martin for incitement to riot, and said he would be looking into the lawyer’s culpability in the deaths of Noh Ree Kim and Lester DeChance.
That was the situation for a month. Each investigation proceeded apace. The FBI pored over every aspect of Ron’s life with the implicit presumption of guilt. Cops working with the DA made Marcus Martin’s life equally miserable. Accusations were hurled back and forth. The DA and the U.S. Attorney held daily press conference. Marcus Martin never passed up a single microphone without getting in a barbed sound bite.
Only Ron Ketchum refused to comment. He was concentrating on his retirement plans, and wondering if there was any way to save his marriage, which was not holding up well under all the stress. Things got to the point where Ron thought a divorce would be the least of his worries.
In the end, a deal was struck. In separate press conferences, held at precisely the same time, the DA and the U.S. Attorney announced that all charges were being dropped against each man. Both prosecutors had concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to go forward.
But a tie wasn’t good enough for Marcus Martin. Not this time.
He filed a wrongful death suit against Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum on behalf of Teddy and Mavis Carter. Ron Ketchum, he said, had shot two black men, killing one of them. He was a homicidal, racist cop and he had to pay. Marcus Martin would make him pay.
By the time the trial started, Ron and Leilani Ketchum had decided to call it quits. He’d been after her for years about having kids, and she’d been refusing, pleading the need to maintain her figure for an acting career that had amounted to nothing more than a handful of walk-ons over a period of twenty years. Their dreams, both personally and as a couple, seemed about to expire of natural causes, and once they’d gotten past a final shouting match, they’d decided to be decent to each other in honor of the love they’d once had. They would divorce amicably.
In the meantime, Leilani decided she would bear up under the ordeal of the civil action and would support Ron and escort him to court every day. Make it that much more difficult for that bastard Marcus Martin to say a man with a Polynesian Japanese English Swedish American wife was a racist. She would make a silent, favorable impression upon the jury for Ron, and there would be nothing Marcus Martin could do about it.
Ron and his lawyer, Jack Hobart, knew that Martin was going to paint Ron as the worst bigot since Nathan Bedford Forrest started dressing people in white sheets. They planned their defense accordingly and with more than a little irony. They were going to be pre-emptive. After the O.J. Simpson debacle, L.A. cops knew better than to pretend they were angels, or even boy scouts. So, Ron’s defense was going to be a new twist on a classic theme: He was the victim of his childhood.
When Marcus Martin called Ron to the stand for direct examination, he asked Ron if he had shouted at Sharrod Carter, “Get down, nigger, or I’ll kill you, too.”
“No,” Ron replied simply.
“You neither threatened Sharrod Carter nor referred to him as a nigger?”
Jack Hobart didn’t object to the question that had already been asked and answered.
“I did neither.”
“Did you refer to Sharrod Carter as a nigger at any time?”
“No.”
“Did you refer to Qadry Carder as a nigger before you killed him?”
“Objection! Prejudicial!” Jack Hobart roared. The defense lawyer didn’t want Martin to realize they were laying in wait for him. He would have smelled a rat if Hobart had let that one slide by.
“Your Honor,” Martin boomed, “prejudice is at the very heart of this case. The prejudice of the defendant, who has a history of —”
“That’ll be enough, Mr. Martin,” the judge interrupted. “Objection sustained. Rephrase your question if you wish.”
Martin gathered his dignity with a deep breath. “Did you call Qadry Carter a nigger at any time?”
“No.”
“You called neither of the Carters a nigger at any time?”
Ron knew that a large part of Martin’s game was to say nigger as many times as he could while Ron was on the stand. The plaintiff’s lawyer wanted the jury to see the word written across Ron’s forehead any time they thought of him.
“No, I did not.” Then Ron added, “If I don’t like a suspect, I call him an asshole.”
The jury laughed, and the judge admonished Ron, but only mildly. He was suppressing a grin himself.
The reaction didn’t please Marcus Martin. Bigots weren’t supposed to be funny. It humanized them too much. So he decided it was time to go straight for the jugular.
“Are we to believe then, Lieutenant Ketchum, that at no time in your life have you ever referred to a black person as a nigger?”
That was when Ron’s defensive strategy kicked in.
“No, it would be untrue to say that. As a child, I routinely called black people niggers. It was what I had been taught. In fact, growing up, I didn’t consider black people to be people.”
The five African Americans on the jury sat up straight at this brutally candid admission; the expressions on their faces were not particularly sympathetic. Ron seemed to have won no absolution by his extraordinary public confession.
But Marcus Martin was smart enough to know he’d just been thrown a curve. An affirmative response, much less one so bluntly forthcoming, had been the last thing he’d expected his question to elicit. He’d been ready to mock and destroy Ron’s denial. So now he had to procee
d with great care.
“Are you admitting to this court, Lieutenant Ketchum,” he asked softly, “that you are the worst kind of racist, one who would deny even the basic humanity of your fellow man simply because the color of his skin is different from your own?”
Ron looked straight at Martin so he would not suggest even the slightest hint of dishonesty.
“No, Mr. Martin, I am not. What I’m saying is, that was the kind of man I was raised to be.”
Marcus Martin took a sip of water, and glanced at the jury out of the corner of his eye. All twelve jurors were paying rapt attention now. Worse for him, the black members of the panel seemed visibly less hostile than only a moment ago.
But Ron Ketchum had just given him a denial. It wasn’t as sweeping as the one for which he’d originally hoped, but it was still something to attack. It was still an opportunity to destroy the prick’s credibility. Brand him a liar as well as a racist.
Martin had disliked Ron from the very first moment the lawyer had stepped onto the basketball court at Agnus Dei High School for pre-game warm-ups and saw Ron’s face among the members of the opposing team. Ketchum had been a short, skinny kid in those days. But as absurd as he looked compared to his bigger, far more physically mature black teammates, Ketchum had this look on his face like he was tough. Bad. And when Marcus Martin, six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Ketchum then, had stared at him, Ketchum stared right back.
It was ridiculous. Ketchum trying to stare down Marcus Martin. He was so small. So skinny. So white. It still made Martin burn with shame every time he admitted to himself that he’d looked away first.
The thing was, the little shit had been cat quick, and put up an outside shot that those skinny wrists never should have been able to launch, much less hit with such frightening regularity. So, one time when Ketchum faked that jump shot, the guy defending him left his feet. Ketchum then thought he had a clear lane to the basket, and Marcus Martin let him have it. But as Ketchum was up in the air making his lay-up, Martin cut his legs out from under him, and the white boy landed on the floor head first.