While I had always worked the South Bronx, Timmy was essentially an East Bronx version of me. Very active in the arrest department, he gave the job all he had. He was also a bodybuilder and lived a healthy lifestyle. But the similarities ended there; he was married with two kids, and I was still playing the single game. He was also fair skinned with dirty-blond hair and sported a thick mustache, while I was bearded and tattooed and, as I often told Timmy, much better looking.
The incident that I’m about to relate may seem unusual to those who aren’t police officers, but it is not uncommon on the job. Timmy and I had a fight, a real fight, not a schoolyard pushing-and-shoving match. If there was anything unique about this battle, it was its length … the brawl lasted thirty minutes.
What brought about this epic encounter might sound trivial, but taking contributing factors into consideration, it was the perfect storm of two guys who were having a bad day and taking out their pent-up hostilities on each other.
As I mentioned, Timmy and I were both bodybuilders, and as such had a friendly rivalry. We’d good-naturedly bust each other’s chops periodically—nothing malicious; it’s just what guys do.
On the day in question, I was at my desk attempting to clear up paperwork. I was not in the best of moods, but bad days come with police work. Timmy just chose the wrong time to get on my nerves. He silently approached me from behind, grabbed my arm, and said, “This isn’t so fucking hard,” referring to the size and strength of my bicep.
A few things shouldn’t have happened here. One: sneaking up on a cop from behind isn’t recommended; we tend to overreact out of instinct. Two: grabbing a cop by surprise is basically seizing an alligator’s tail while he’s sleeping. And three: insulting my bicep is just begging me to show you how well it works. My immediate response was to grab the bulky Underwood typewriter I was using, whirl on Timmy, and hit him in the chest with it. This made sense to me at the time.
Timmy went down with me on top of him swinging away. Every detective in the squad room froze, then went right back to what they were doing. Taking a lesson from the many witnesses we’d all interviewed in the past, the five detectives didn’t see a thing. Fight? What fight? Sergeant Harris briefly came out of his office to see what all the commotion was about, rolled his eyes, and went back in his office.
We were both in it to win it—punching and kicking. Eventually, we spilled into the hallway and to the brink of the second-floor staircase. Statistically, this is when the fight should’ve ended. Most fights last a minute or two, rarely three minutes. With the energy we were expending, that should’ve been it.
Not only did neither of us call the fight—a draw at that point—we took it to the next level … literally. We rolled down the stairs to the main landing, still spitting, kneeing, head butting, and cursing.
There were numerous cops and bosses on the main floor, plus a smattering of civilians reporting crimes or otherwise looking for advice from a nice, stable policeman. What they saw were two out-of-control cops who seemed hell-bent on killing each other.
The civilians started a chorus of gasps and screams. The cops? They didn’t give us a second thought once they saw what was up.
We were now fifteen minutes into the Battle of the Bronx with furniture overturned, chairs crushed, and no end in sight. Then Timmy grabbed me in a bear hug, and we both fell backward through the main doors and into the street.
We were both beaten bloody, but neither of us was willing to give up. After bouncing off the sidewalk and a few department autos, Timmy lifted me off the ground and hurled me onto the hood of a Chevy Caprice Classic. If you’re not familiar with the car, it has a sharp, protruding hood ornament, a Chevy logo encased in a metal rectangle, which found a new home in my back.
Did I give up? Hell no! I unplugged myself from the chrome decoration and resumed the fight.
We raged on for ten more minutes, both of us totally exhausted. We were still swinging, but most of the punches were either too limp or our faces too numb. The only way I could see this marathon ending was for both our hearts to give out. We’d be dead, but at least neither of us would have to admit defeat.
Then something happened to end the fight almost as quickly as it had begun. Timmy grabbed my arm, and in doing so ripped off my wristwatch—one that had belonged to my dad. I had inherited it after his death. I pictured it shattering.
“Yo, Timmy … Stop!” I said breathlessly. “You got my dad’s watch … It’s my dad’s, man.”
Timmy stopped cold, watch dangling from his fingers. He knew how much that watch meant to me. All of a sudden, the fight was out of both of us. It was over. We felt every second of those thirty minutes.
One major thing was accomplished: we realized that neither of us could ask for a better partner. And so it came to pass, with Roger gone, that Timmy and me paired up. We stayed partners for the remainder of my time on the job and became best friends. Thirty-five years later, we’re still friends.
Before changing the subject, I should add a detail in memory of my friend Roger Cortes. He never got promoted to first-grade. He would hit the mandatory retirement age of sixty-two and be dead of a heart attack within two years.
* * *
Timmy and I were summoned to Sergeant Harris’s office a few weeks later. Harris was behind his desk with a man in a suit who had “cop boss” written all over him standing by, leaning against a chair
The Suit, whom I won’t name here, introduced himself as a retired inspector. He had some trouble and he laid it out for us, but not before giving us business cards for a private security company.
“I own this company,” he said. “We have armed and unarmed guards. The armed guys sign out their weapons from the office and go to their assigned site. They can take the guns home after work but are only permitted to carry the weapon to and from the job site. That’s it. No off-duty carry permitted, which is the rule as set down by the License Division.”
The NYPD License Division is responsible for issuing all manner of pistol licenses, including permits for armed guards. To be in violation of any of the myriad rules involving possession of a licensed firearm means the security company would have all their pistol licenses suspended pending a review of the violation. This review could take up to a year, and during that time the security company would lose all their armed-guard contracts, which could easily put them out of business.
Sergeant Harris said, “One of his guards is off the grid with a company gun, a .38 Smith, four-inch barrel.”
“How long’s he been gone?” I asked.
The Suit grumbled, “Just about a week. It’s starting to feel like a problem.”
I’ll say it was! The gun could be lost, used in a crime, sold, or just vanish along with the guard. Private security guards don’t make a lot of money, and this wouldn’t be the first one to sell his weapon or trade it for God knows what. I’ve even heard of guards renting out their guns for hits and stickups. Worst-case scenario, the guard flips out and kills innocent people.
Sergeant Harris gave us the guard’s last known address, which was located in another precinct in the Bronx. “Find this guy, but keep it quiet. Do what you do best.”
“I sent some guys to that address,” the Suit said. “Hard to believe, but it’s a doorman building. How a square badge guard could afford the place on what I pay him is a mystery … Anyway, my guys had no luck and no cooperation from the doorman. We’re private, no juice. I’m figuring you could do better.”
We got the subject’s description and told the Suit and Harris we’d do our best. There were no photo ID cards for guards back then, and the description could’ve fit half the male population of the Bronx: male, Hispanic, five foot nine, 165 pounds, brown hair. “There’s a time constraint on this too,” Sergeant Harris said. “The License Division will be doing their annual gun inventory in two weeks…”
“Yeah,” the Suit interrupted, “if that gun is still gone by then, I’m fucked.”
* * *
&nb
sp; Timmy and I went to the address, which—just like he said—turned out to a very nice building with a doorman protecting the entrance. The security guard must’ve been doing holdups with his boss’s gun to afford an apartment there.
The first thing we did was talk up the doorman. Cops and doormen get along well, although there has always been a shortage of the latter in the Bronx. Doormen depend on cops for protection, and we need them for information regarding tenants and goings on in the neighborhood.
We identified ourselves and described the tenant. The doorman knew the guy but hadn’t seen him all day. We worked out a system where the doorman wouldn’t be seen identifying him to us. (There would be nothing worse for our new friend’s career path than being known as a rat who helped the cops by fingering tenants.) We would stand away from the building, and if our guy showed up, the doorman was to give us a slight nod.
Hours passed. Several males resembled our subject, but the doorman didn’t signal, so we remained in place a little way down the street.
At about 4 PM, a gypsy cab pulled up to the building, and a guy who looked like our boy stepped out. As I glanced to the doorman, I heard Timmy say, “He’s got a gun!”
I was on the guy in seconds and held him down so he couldn’t reach for the gun, which, by the way, I still hadn’t seen. Meanwhile, Timmy was still shouting, “He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!”
I gave my perp a half dozen quick jabs as he tried to get up, and then, my adrenaline pumping, I gave him one more and he stayed down.
Timmy was in the mix now, still yelling. This time I heard him a bit more clearly: “He’s not the one, he’s not the one!”
Which sounded very similar to: “He’s got a gun.”
Now we had a real fucking problem. I’d just attacked some poor innocent who was probably coming home from work after a hard day at the office and wound up in the middle of his worst nightmare, all because Timmy and I had had a failure to communicate.
Timmy said, “Jesus, Ralph, what the fuck did you do?” He was looking around for witnesses. Fortunately, other than the doorman, there weren’t any.
“Man, I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Give me a hand with this guy.”
We scraped Joe Citizen off the pavement and hauled him to the doorman.
“You know this guy?” I asked while I lifted his head up for a good view.
“Oh, yeah,” the doorman said, seemingly unfazed, “he’s 5C.”
I was praying that he lived alone. The doorman told me he did. I searched his pockets and found the key to his apartment.
Timmy and I hoisted each of his arms over our shoulders and half walked, half dragged him to the elevator. He was coming around.
“What the fuck happened?” he mumbled.
“Some asshole tried to mug you,” Timmy said. “You’ll be okay.”
I kept my mouth shut. Not one of my finer moments.
We got the guy into his apartment and deposited him on a couch. He looked okay, just a bit confused, and his face was beginning to blow up like a balloon.
“Have a nice day,” I said as Timmy rolled his eyes.
Back downstairs, we cornered the doorman.
“Who are we?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “You guys? Never saw you in my life.”
Doormen, the cops’ best friend.
As we drove back to the command, we rewrote history. We felt the doorman was good and would keep quiet about the incident. The story we told to Sergeant Harris was that we couldn’t find the subject and didn’t think we could.
“It’s a dead end, Sarge,” Timmy said.
When the sergeant turned his attention to me, I nodded like a woodpecker and mumbled, “What he said.”
Sergeant Harris looked at us like we were crazy but was savvy enough not to pursue the matter. If he’d been tighter with the retired inspector, we may have had to elaborate a bit more or, worse, return to the subject’s address the next day and continue the stakeout, but our take was that the Suit had walked in off the street and asked for a favor from Harris, one cop to another, knowing he wouldn’t be turned down. The thing that continued to haunt me, though, was the thought of that gun out there.
When Timmy and I signed out for the day and were leaving the squad room, I said to him: “He’s not the one, huh?”
We looked at each other and couldn’t help laughing. I felt awful about hurting an innocent man, and the joke wasn’t meant to be at his expense, but Timmy and I both needed a release.
* * *
I’d heard some talk that I was about to get promoted to second-grade detective. Actually, I’d been hearing the same scuttlebutt almost since I’d gotten promoted to third grade five years before. I’d received way above-average job performance evaluations right out of the gate, and for those five years led the entire NYPD with the most arrests and medals. I was overdue for the advancement, but the city’s financial troubles were getting in the way.
A job freeze had been instituted in 1975 because of New York City’s fiscal crisis. The Big Apple was in poor shape financially, and if you were a city worker, you paid the price. So severe was the crisis that for the first time in the city’s history, police officers were going to be “furloughed,” which is a softer term than “laid off.”
Cops with fewer than six years on the job were getting let go with a promise that, as soon as the city got back on its feet, they would get their jobs back. Cops have a cynical streak and not too many believed the promise, but three years later the city kept its word and rehired those they had let go. Those cops that remained and were due for promotion would have to wait seven years for the promotion freeze to be lifted. Everyone who worked for the city would be in limbo until New York City had a few bucks in the bank.
I felt bad for the guys losing their jobs back then, but I wasn’t going to be one of them; at the time I had two years additional city seniority, counting my time as a police trainee. My extra time saved me, having been sworn in as a police officer in 1970, which was right on the borderline for layoffs.
You can imagine my confusion when I arrived home from work to find a letter telling me I’d been furloughed. It was a helluva jolt. I called the NYPD’s Personnel Department and set them straight. In essence, they told me I was wrong, that I’d never been a trainee.
These were the days before computers, and somehow records verifying my two years’ service as a trainee with the NYPD had vanished. I was concerned but stayed calm. One thing I’d learned about dealing with New York bureaucracy is that if you work for the city, you should save everything, which means every piece of paper issued by the city that has your name on it.
I’d saved all my paystubs, in addition to a mountain of arrest forms, departmental recognition letters, and everything else that had the name Ralph Friedman attached to it. I had to physically go to personnel and show a clerk the stubs to prove that I’d actually been employed by the department as a trainee. They wanted to keep the paystubs. I gave the clerk a you’ve-gotta-be-fucking-kidding look. No way was this bureaucrat keeping originals of anything relating to my employment.
Those paystubs saved my job. It’s been thirty-five years since my retirement, and I still hold on to everything pertaining to my service with the NYPD—literally cartons of material—which coincidentally is serving me well as I write this book, as I refresh my recollections of the good old days.
While my job was secure, my brother Stu’s job wasn’t, as his tenure with the city began in 1974. Ironically, he received his “bye-bye” letter upon returning home from a ceremony where he had been awarded the coveted Combat Cross, the second-highest medal under the Medal of Honor. I felt for him; police work meant as much to him as it did to me.
The promotion lockdown ended for me on April 2, 1982. I made the journey to One Police Plaza to be elevated to the rank of second-grade detective. I wanted to go alone, unlike my last promotion to third grade, when I’d had family and friends attend. The auditorium was packed with those of us who had b
een shelved for years, waiting for this day to come. It was sort of anticlimactic. All I wanted to do was shake Police Commissioner Robert Maguire’s hand, get the photo op with him, and get back to work and on the path to first grade.
* * *
I was still single and loving it, not looking to settle down because at that time I was married to the job. Even if I got involved in a serious relationship, I knew from past experience that no woman would put up with being runner-up to the NYPD. Whatever she invested in our relationship was riskier than playing the lottery.
That said, I never stopped looking for my next ex-girlfriend.
I was on patrol in an unmarked car one day when I made eye contact with a lovely young Hispanic girl. Around twenty-five years old, she was gorgeous: around five foot six with long dark hair and a dynamite body. After having spent half my life in a gym, I was naturally attracted to women who were in good shape. I thought I’d seen her around the neighborhood before but couldn’t be sure; all I knew was that I had to meet her.
I pulled over, got out of the car, and introduced myself. Cops have a pretty easy time meeting women.
Her name was Lucy Santiago, and we hit it off immediately. She told me she worked for an insurance company in Manhattan, was single, and lived alone. She also had an incredible smile. I was definitely in lust.
Over the next two weeks, we met for dinner a few times and talked for hours. She was nice to be around and wasn’t what you might call a “cop groupie.” While plenty of people don’t have high opinions of cops, there are quite a number of women who gravitate toward the badge. Go to any cop bar and you’ll find some women who think we’re the best thing since the Lone Ranger. That’s not to say I couldn’t find nice girls elsewhere. Show me a cop who can’t find a girl and I’ll guarantee him a place in the Guinness book of records.
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