When we arrived at the hotel, we looked like survivors of an avalanche. Our uniforms were frozen solid and we had icicles hanging from our noses and eyebrows. Our hands were cold to the point of futility in the event we had to draw our weapons.
My father took one look at me and said, “Maybe you should’ve gone to Vietnam after all. At least it’s warmer over there.”
I grunted in agreement.
“You guys hungry?” he asked rhetorically.
Cops are always hungry.
Within minutes we were seated in the deserted adjoining Black Angus Restaurant. I knew prices in this place were steep, and I had a feeling we were about to get a free meal.
We were a group of rookies who’d been inundated with numerous lectures in the academy on how to avoid corruption, and here we were about to be fed a few hundred dollars’ worth of prime beef. We exchanged glances, not knowing what to say when my father recognized our dilemma.
“Look, guys, the meal’s on me,” he said with a broad smile. “I’m paying.”
We immediately began to protest, insisting on paying, but my dad persisted. “I run the hotel. I can do whatever I want. C’mon, eat; I’ll take care of it.” He looked at me. “A father can’t buy his son and his friends a meal?”
We knew damn well that he was covering our asses and that the food was a freebee. We relented. Famished, the cook didn’t even have to broil the steaks as far as we were concerned. All these years later, I still can taste that meal.
Out the window we could see the snow was accumulating at a rapid pace. There had to be at least ten inches, and now sleet was mixing in and the wind was roaring through Fiftieth Street like a freight train.
My dad called me aside during dessert. “Listen … roads are impassible, subways are frozen to their tracks. You and your buddies aren’t going to be able to get home.”
I wondered where this was going.
“So come back here when you’re done. I’ve got rooms set aside. I’m staying here too. Your mother already knows we won’t be home.” At that, he patted me on the shoulder and walked away before I had a chance to protest.
I went back to the table and told the other rookies about the accommodations. No one bitched; they knew we had little choice other than walking home. They called their families. We were the guests of the San Carlos Hotel.
We went back out on the street for the remainder of our tour, mostly huddled in doorways to avoid the biting winds. At midnight we made it back to the hotel. My dad had already turned in.
Quite a guy, my father.
* * *
After a week of classes and more snow duty, I looked forward to kicking back, seeing friends, being with my family. On the evening of March 21, 1970, a Saturday, my dad and I had a talk about my new job. My father was always interested in what his sons were doing.
“So, you like it, Ralph … the police?”
“Yeah, I really do.” I laughed. “Who knew I’d be doing this? I can see a future here, get promoted someday, maybe make detective or go to a motorcycle unit.” Of course, I still had no idea what the job was going to be like once I got assigned to a command. What we were learning in the academy was The Book—the laws, rules, procedures—and we were whipping ourselves into great shape.
I’d talked to a veteran patrolman one day—we didn’t get the unisex title of “police officer” until a few years later—outside the 13th Precinct, which shared the building with the academy. He told me two things: “You know all that stuff they crammed into your head in the academy? Well, forget it. It’s not the real job; that you’re going to learn when you hit the street.” And the other pearl: “This is no job for an adult … you get your twenty years in, take your pension, and get the fuck out.”
He was right about the first one, but I would never make it to the twenty-year milestone.
My father had said, “You’re going to see a lot, Ralph. Don’t let it get to you.” He shrugged. “I can only relate to the army … the war, but I think both are similar in some ways.”
My dad rarely spoke of his wartime experiences, like most combat veterans, and when he did he was vague. But I did know he was shot in the leg and that he’d dug out the bullet with a knife rather than be evacuated to a field hospital, where his chances of getting his leg amputated were high because of the lack of adequate medical care. He still had the knife after all these years, and the scar from his handiwork.
“What I’m saying,” he said, “is be your own man. You lead a clean life and I’m proud of you. Don’t be swayed by what others do. Think for yourself.”
We talked a while longer, then I left to see my friends. My dad was still up when I got home after midnight, and we spoke some more before I went to bed. I think back on that night often and cherish the time we had spent together. It would be our last.
* * *
I awoke with a start when my brother burst into my room screaming. “Ralph, it’s Dad!”
I heard my mother shouting my father’s name in the living room.
I shook the sleep from my head and leapt to my feet. Racing to the living room, I saw my father prone on the floor wearing just shorts and a T-shirt. My mother was on her knees bending over him, crying.
I hit the floor next to my dad. He was very pale and was unresponsive when I called his name and grabbed his shoulder.
I was close to panic; my arms felt weak and I began shaking him, calling out “Dad!” numerous times.
No movement, no response.
All of us were crying, but tears weren’t going help my father. I began CPR, which I’d learned just weeks before. Between breathing into my father’s mouth and chest compressions, I told my mother to dial 911. She ran for the phone.
A team from the emergency services unit (ESU) was there in literally less than two minutes; they must’ve been driving past my building when they got the call. ESU cops are the elite of the NYPD. Highly trained, they respond to everything from potential suicide jumpers on bridges to hostage situations. They are also experts in stabilizing sick and injured people until medical personnel arrive.
They worked on my dad feverishly while my mom, brother, and I stood back and watched. I felt utterly helpless. As minutes passed with no signs of life, I came to the realization that my dad wasn’t going to regain consciousness. He was dead. We were devastated.
My father had succumbed to a massive heart attack. As is Jewish custom, he was laid to rest before sunset the following day. I couldn’t comprehend how swiftly he left us. He was literally here one day, buried the next. The void in my life, as well as my mom’s and brother’s, was incalculable.
The NYPD excused me from duty, not necessarily out of compassion, but to comply with a contractual stipulation allotting four days off for the death of an immediate family member. Despite my overwhelming grief, I was ready to go back to training. I needed to get my mind on something else, and relieving my sorrow on a daily four-mile run proved cathartic. Four decades later, not a day goes by that I don’t think about my father.
* * *
Just before graduation from the police academy in April 1970, we rookies got to request our desired precinct. We prepared a form appropriately called a “dream sheet” because if you thought you were going to be sent to the precinct you requested, you were dreaming.
I didn’t care where I went, just as long as it was a high-crime command. I wanted to go where the action was—the more crime, the better. Most cops want this because you get to learn the job quicker and make quality arrests. For those of us who entertained ideas of becoming detectives, high-crime precincts were the way to go. I hadn’t thought about my career path; at this point I was open to anything.
Much to my surprise I got my wish; I was assigned to the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx, which would become known as Fort Apache given the untamed territory that it covered and the propensity for the station house to get attacked—and in more than one case, overrun—by rioters. The Four-One had the city’s highest crime rate and
arguably the worst working conditions of the city’s seventy-seven precincts. It was with great anticipation that I set out on the Monday morning after graduating—uniforms and gear slung over my shoulder—to what would be my home for the next five years.
* * *
The precinct station house was located on Simpson Street, right in the belly of the beast. A lone oasis surrounded by urban squalor, the station house was opened in 1914 and hadn’t been refurbished since.
I entered the three-story building amid mass confusion. It was a little after 3 PM and the place was a whirlwind of cops coming and going with handcuffed prisoners, EMS attendants assisting a patrolman with a bandage around his head into the back of an ambulance, and a drunk on the front steps of the building asking cops for money. Most of the cops ignored him but a few made disparaging remarks about his mother. At least he got some recognition. I got none.
Someone once told me that one of the most stressful days in anyone’s life is when they get married. Apparently that person never experienced the first day in a precinct as a rookie cop. Cops walked past me as if I didn’t exist. I’d been told by instructors in the academy to expect this sort of greeting, or lack thereof, but it’s unnerving when you experience it firsthand. All newly assigned rookies are treated like nonentities until such time as they prove themselves to be capable police officers.
I presented myself at the desk, which in every station house looks like an elevated alter with a sergeant or lieutenant presiding behind it. The desk is the nerve center of the station house, the first stop for cops and civilians as they enter the building. The desk officer is in charge of … well, everything. He’s responsible for the entire shift and for running the command in the absence of the precinct’s commanding officer.
There is protocol when dealing with the desk officer, in this case a blustery old lieutenant who looked as if the station house had been built around him. As procedure dictated, all superior officers were to be saluted, the desk officer being no exception. I whipped a sharp salute and introduced myself.
“Probationary patrolman Ralph Friedman reporting for duty, sir.”
The good lieutenant had just hung up the phone and it’d started ringing again. A patrolman standing next to him with a pile of paper in his hands was vying for his attention, but the lieutenant stopped what he was doing and stared down at me as if to say, “Whogivesafuck?”
“Well, isn’t that nice. I’ll alert the media. And what can I do for you, Officer Friedman?”
“I, uh … just got assigned here. From the academy.”
He shuffled some papers looking for my name “Yeah, here you are. You’re in the Fifth Squad. Go upstairs and find a locker. Then report to the 124 room to fill out some paperwork.”
Finding an empty locker was easier said than done. Every cop was supposed to be assigned one locker, the essential word here being “one.” Cops in the Four-One must’ve never gotten the memo, because here every cop had at least two lockers, sometimes three. The spares were for civilian clothes and what other stuff they didn’t want their wives to see. The occasional case of beer usually found its way into one of those lockers. I checked every locker on the floor; all were taken, and so they were to remain for the next four months. I worked out of my car until I grabbed a locker from a retiring cop. I stood over him while he removed his belongings from his three lockers and made sure another cop didn’t grab them. I only claimed one, taking pity on the next rookie.
After I got settled I went to the clerical office, or the 124 room as it’s known on the job (no one knew why it was called that, just part of a new language I needed to learn), and filled out a pile of forms. That completed, I reported back to the desk.
The lieutenant I’d spoken to before was on his meal hour, and I had to reintroduce myself to his replacement, a sergeant who was younger and less harried.
“Okay, Friedman,” the sergeant said after he consulted the roll-call sheet, “you’re on a foot post, post eight.” He gave me the location and boundaries; two blocks of stacked tenements with a few mom-and-pop businesses located four blocks from the station house. “Stick around a few minutes, I’ll get you a ride over.” He looked around for a stray cop.
“Nah, that’s okay, boss. I’ll walk,” I said. “It’ll help me get the lay of the land.”
He pondered that. “Well, okay.” After what seemed to be an afterthought he added, “Take it easy out there; might be a little time before you get acclimated to what goes on around here. You think you got a potential problem or an arrest situation, get to a phone and call for backup. And be sure and sign out before you go home.” He gestured to a table where the roll call would be. “Got to account for all you guys at the end of the tour. You wouldn’t want to be lying in an alley somewhere with an ax buried in your head and us not aware, right?” He smiled.
I thought that had to be a rhetorical question, as he turned away from me before I thought of an answer.
* * *
I heard the crowd before I saw it: an uproar composed of a mix of laughter, cheers, and jeers. There were about thirty people clumped in a tight circle about a block away. I jogged to the scene and pushed my way through the mob.
They’d cleared an opening for a man gyrating and spewing gibberish. He was about forty years old and naked as the day he was born. It might’ve been April, but it was chilly; I was wearing my brand-new job-approved winter overcoat, a snappy-looking garment called a choker. It was high and tight around the neck and it did just what the name implied. Meanwhile, Naked Man was sweating. Probably high on something, I surmised.
The crowd was having a great time taunting him. When they saw me they stepped back, as if to say, “What’re you gonna do about this guy, Dick Tracy?”
Good question. I must’ve missed the class at the academy regarding naked lunatics, but figured there had to be a law against this behavior. So I whipped out my shiny new handcuffs and pounced on the guy. He resisted, but not much. Some of the pack of onlookers jeered, some applauded, and some cursed me. Cops got injured often by unruly mobs, but this crowd didn’t strike me as violent; they seemed more bent on having a good time.
We didn’t have portable radios back then, and I couldn’t see myself jammed into a phone booth (providing I could even find one with a functioning phone) with Naked Man, so I decided to march him to the station house. Aside from gawking pedestrians, my trip to the house was without incident. Naked Man had calmed down and was now downright docile, although mumbling incoherently. As I approached the station house, a group of cops good-naturedly broke my chops.
“Hey, you looking for the pool? It’s on the roof.” “Talk about a fuckin’ holdup! They left this guy with nothing.” “Taking strip searches a bit far, aren’t you, rookie?”
I stood before the desk. The older lieutenant was back, but he had his head buried in the command blotter, a huge bound book that was used to record the events of the day and acted as an ongoing history of a precinct. It could also double as a doorstop. Or as a handy weapon if the situation called for it.
I waited.
He finally looked up from whatever he was writing. I expected a look of shock, dismay, inquisitiveness … something. What I got was a bored expression and a line I’d come to hear thousands of times in my career, “What’ve you got, kid?”
Almost everyone on the job under the age of fifty gets called “kid” from time to time; nothing derogatory about it, just cop talk.
During my short stroll back to the station house I thought about what I’d do with this guy. An arrest? I didn’t think so. More likely just a nut case, better known on the job as a “psycho.” Years later, the job changed the designation to “emotionally disturbed person,” or EDP.
“Looks like a psycho, Lou,” I said, using the accepted diminutive for his rank. I could do that now. Hey, I’d brought in my first miscreant—broken my cherry so to speak, my first day on the street.
He shuffled some paper and mumbled, “I see you didn’t waste any t
ime making the streets safe.”
I didn’t respond.
The lieutenant who had assigned me to the post had a cop call an ambulance for Naked Man, and I accompanied him to a hospital mental ward. I was informed my “nut case” would probably be cut loose the next day after he came down from whatever he’d ingested, if that was in fact his problem. He could’ve been just plain crazy. Bottom line was I discovered that no one really cared. After preparing a mountain of paperwork, I went back to the street.
As minor as this incident was, I hadn’t waited to take a watchful, cautious approach, as I’d been advised. I felt confident I could handle anything the street had to throw at me. Looking back, I knew just a little more than I did the day before meeting Naked Man (when I knew nothing), but my raging testosterone told me differently: I felt that I was ready for anything. I was also certain that I’d found my calling.
* * *
During the next few weeks I tore through the streets of the command. I was a cop on a mission—the mission being to lock up everyone who needed arresting. There was no shortage of targets. Fort Apache was replete with drug dealers, robbers, burglars, and any other criminal you could think of.
On one of my first days on patrol, I glanced through the window of a bodega (a small mom-and-pop grocery store) and spotted a thirtysomething male taking money from an older male and giving him a small slip of paper in return. I took off my uniform hat so as not to draw attention and observed the scene for a few minutes. The procedure was repeated several times with men and women of varying ages. The guy taking the money glanced around every so often, but didn’t seem overcautious.
I didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was screamed “illegal!”
I entered the store and came up behind the guy when he was alone. Before he could react, he was cuffed and read his rights. His only response was “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” After that, he took his right to remain silent seriously.
Street Warrior Page 4