by Tom Philbin
“They’re mine.”
“What?”
“I’m a man. I’m taking hormone shots, and I’m going to get the operation.”
Me and Jay are stunned. It’s unbelievable. This guy looks as good as any girl. Nice body, pretty, long wig, nice skin, the works. It occurs to me that me and Jay were not the only ones fooled. Think of all the guys that ended up being propositioned by this guy.
Anyway, we take him back to the station, and everyone else is marveling that this girl is a man. Then Jay has an idea. “Let’s play a little prank on someone based on how incredible the guy looks, see if we can fool them. But who?”
“How about Joanne Alana?” someone suggests.
There is immediate agreement. Joanne is a plainclothes cop, smart, knowledgeable, and tough—a great cop—but she can also take a joke.
So Joanne is radioed by the desk sergeant and he asks her to come to the house, that we have a pros [prostitute] in custody and would you mind giving her a good toss? [Male cops can’t thoroughly search female suspects.] Being the good team player she is, Joanne says no problem, but there is one stipulation. “Is she clean?” Joanne asks. “I am not touching any more AIDS-infected crack whores.”
“Sure,” the desk sergeant says. “She’s clean. You know you can trust us.”
Joanne’s mind must have been on vacation, because she believed him. When a cop says “Trust me,” it’s time to leave. So she comes in and takes the pros into a female bathroom and everyone goes to the door and listens. Joanne starts frisking him, saying various things and then she says, “What’s this?”
“That’s my tampon.”
“It’s too big to be a tampon. Lift your skirt and drop your panties.”
Then Joanne yells, “Holy [bleep]!” and she comes storming out the door. Her face is red as a beet. “I’m going to kill you [bleeping] guys!”
Everyone was hysterical laughing when Jay says with a straight face, “Listen, you just said you didn’t want to toss an AIDS-infected crack whore. You said nothing about an AIDS-infected, cross-dressing, pre-op, transsexual crack whore!”
Fair Is Fair
You deal with all kinds of mentals on the job, but the one I remember most occurred before cell phones near the bus station on Main Street. A person was harassing people who were lined up waiting to use a pay phone. From the description—he’s a big bushy-haired guy with a gray beard wearing old Army clothes—I know I’ve dealt with him before. He’s mental and mean, from Creighton Mental Hospital a short way away. I knew him from his harassment of people at the railroad station. He would ask for money, and if they didn’t give it to him, he would throw down his pants and defecate.
What he was doing now was asking the person who was on the phone for spare change. If the person said “No,” he would hang up their phone. When they reached into their pockets to take out more change he would yell in their face, “I thought you didn’t have any change?” Then he would interfere with them making another call. Fortunately, we were able to get him to leave without a problem. Every time I think of him, I think that when you’re crazy you have cojones the size of Kansas.
A GOOD SCARE
I used to work in Crown Heights. It’s half Haitian and half Hasidic, and the Jews are a big voting bloc because they all vote together. They had connections in the department, and if you pissed the wrong guy off you could be sure that by the time you got back to the precinct, there would be a phone call waiting for you. Somebody high up would want to know why you gave such-and-such a ticket.
An old-time cop named Johnny Grant really got fed up with this, just sick and tired of dealing with all the political B.S. So one day this Hasid commits a traffic violation and Johnny stops him. Now most people have different ways to ask a cop not to give them the ticket, like, “Give me a break,” “I was distracted,” “I was on my way to see my dying mother,” et cetera. But the Hasidim had their own way of asking, and it was invariably the same. The Hasid said it to Johnny on this occasion, “Please officer, don’t give me a ticket. Just give me a good scare.” So Johnny went back to his car and a few minutes later goes back to the Hasid, hands him a ticket, and says, “Boo.”
HOW NOT TO MAKE A NEW FRIEND
Back in 1992, when I was in the 109, the brass really cracked down on cops because of Michael Dowd, a dirty cop whose activities cast suspicion on everyone. One of the crackdowns involved the Interrupted Patrol Log. If you came off patrol for any reason, you were required to go to the desk sergeant, sign in, and state why you were in the precinct. They wanted to keep close track of everyone.
So one day I came in to the precinct to voucher a stolen vehicle, and I passed the desk and the sergeant on duty. This guy had just transferred over from another precinct, and I didn’t know him, so he looks at my nametag and says, “Baker, did you sign the Interrupted Patrol Log?”
I didn’t know what to make of his question, because he had winked as he asked it, and I didn’t know if he was serious. But I decided to play along, and said, “Sure,” and winked back and went about my business. I figured it was okay because he was an old timer and agreed with other old timers about what crap these crackdowns were.
Five or ten minutes later my business brought me past the desk again, and again he stopped me. “Baker, did you sign the log yet?” Again, he winked, this time a couple of times. I still didn’t know what to do, so again I played along, winked back a couple of times, and went away.
Maybe ten minutes later I go past the desk again. This time, Sergeant stops me and says really seriously, “Did you sign the freakin’ log?”
But now he was winking like three or four times. “Sure,” I said, winking back.
He picks up the log and says: “Where?”
As he’s saying this he’s still winking. I don’t know what the hell is going on. But I wink back and sign the log.
A few days later I was talking with some other cops and I tell them what happened. One of them knew the sergeant from the Four-Six, and he smiled broadly. “Hey you idiot! He wasn’t winking. He’s got a facial tic!”
GUESSING GAME
I was on patrol on Bay Street where there are always livery cabs—most of them illegal. Today it had snowed heavily, and the snow was piled up along the curbs. Openings had been shoveled in the piles so people could get to the buses that stopped there, but some of the cabs were parking right next to the openings, making people climb over the snow to get to the buses.
We’d tell the drivers to move along, and usually they’d do it. There was this one Indian guy who wouldn’t move. So on Monday I gave him a ticket. Tuesday when he did it again I gave him another ticket, and also on Wednesday. I start to write another ticket for Thursday and he says to me in a heavy Indian accent, “Officer Leary, this is not fair. Monday you give me ticket, Tuesday you give me ticket, Wednesday you give me ticket, and today you give me ticket. Every day you give me ticket—“
“Well, every day you park at a bus stop, you’ll get one. It’s not like you’re immune for the rest of the month if I give you one at the beginning of the month. Every day you park illegally I’m going to give you another ticket.”
“No, very unfair! Very unfair. Don’t give me ticket every day.”
“Hey, don’t tell me what I’m allowed to do.”
“I want your badge number!”
So I cover the badge on my chest with my hand and say, “You can’t have it.”
“I want it!”
“No, you can’t. You can only have the one on my cap. You can’t have the one on my chest.” Of course the badge on my chest and the cap are the same.
“No, I don’t want the one on the cap!”
“Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take my hand away for three seconds. If you can get it you can have it.” So I start playing peek-a-boo with my hand on and off the badge, but he can’t get the number, and he’s pissed.
Anyway, he goes to the precinct and tells the desk sergeant about how I’m giving him a
ticket every day, and I won’t give him my badge number—only the one on the cap.
When I come in, the sergeant calls me over and tells me the guy came in to make a complaint. He says, “Do me a favor, knock it off out there. I got better things to do with my time than mess around with this jerk.”
I held my hand over my nameplate and said, “How do you know it was me?”
“Donde Es el Pollo?”
One spring evening, me and my partner, Eddie, walk into a bodega on East Tremont Avenue because Eddie’s got to take a leak pretty bad. The bodega is sort of typical—deli case and counter in front, narrow aisles with shelves with food on them. A Hispanic man and woman are behind the counter, and there are a couple of young kids running up and down the aisles. So Eddie says to the man and woman, “Buenos dias, señor and señorita. Como estás?”
“Bueno, bueno.”
“Bueno.”
He says another few things, and I know he’s showing off his Spanish.
Then he asks where the bathroom is in Spanish, but instead of saying “Donde es el baño?” he says, “Donde es el pollo?” which means “Where is the chicken?”
The people look at him blankly. They don’t know what he’s talking about, but I do. I say nothing. I’m just trying to hold in my laughter, which is enhanced because I know he’s got to go. He repeats himself. “Donde es el pollo?”
The guy puts out his hands, shakes his head a little and says, “No tengo pollo,” meaning, “I have no chicken.”
Then I see Eddie sneakily touch his crotch and give it a squeeze. He really has to go bad. It’s taking me everything I got to hold my laughter in. “I have to use the pollo!” he says more urgently. Of course, he’s saying, “I got to use the chicken!”
Now I see that the kids, who were likely educated in America, are laughing hysterically—because they know what he’s saying, and it’s rare to see a cop grabbing his crotch. “C’mon,” Eddie says, his face a little white, legs moving. “You want me to pee on the counter? I got to use the pollo.”
“Señor,” the guy says, “you’re asking to pee on the chicken.”
I burst out laughing, and Eddie says, “Oh! Do you have a bathroom I can use?”
“Yes.” The man points. “In the back of the store.”
Eddie scuttled away, holding his crotch. I hate to say it, but it was a pisser.
AN UNFAMILIAR PLACE
Me and my partner, Jimmy Antonelli, go to a domestic dispute at an apartment and see two people who could not be more opposite in appearance. The woman stands about four-two, four-three, short and built like an ash can. The man is six feet, very thin, has a drawn look like you see in a health-food store. Neither of them is very attractive, and he has this whiny, nasal voice and talked very slowly. “Officers, I’m so, so glad you’re here.”
Now there’s no physical violence, apparently they were just arguing. So Jimmy asks, “What’s the problem?”
“Officer,” the guy says in that whiny voice, “she’s crazy. A lunatic. She’s gone off her rocker. I can’t get hold of her doctor. Look what she did.”
I look at the woman. She’s not saying a word. “What’d she do?” I ask.
He points to a table on which there are nine or ten bottles of medication—without the labels. “She tore the labels off. She doesn’t know what medication to take.”
“Well,” I said, “can you call the doctor?”
“I don’t have the number,” he whines, “it was on the labels. I was looking in information. I can’t find it!”
I say, “Ma’am, did you do this?”
She answers loud and fast like a machine gun. “That’s right! I did it! I did it. And you know why? Because I want him out! I want someone else. Anyone! Anyone! Anyone but him. Anyone! Out!” She keeps repeating it over and over again. Then, very abruptly, she stops. He says, “See what I’m putting up with? She’s crazy. She’s a lunatic. She’s nuts.”
Then she starts again, a mile a minute, “I want him out of here! Out of here! Out of here!”
“Officer,” he said, “I love her, but look at the abuse I take! I mean is it so wrong to want to make love with your wife?”
In my mind I’m looking at her and thinking, With her—yes. Anyway, I tell him that I can’t keep coming back here, and I can’t institutionalize her because she’s not doing anything violent. She obviously doesn’t want the guy in the house, and we can’t force him to leave, but I would suggest he either get in touch with the doctor to medicate her or stay somewhere else for the night and get in touch with the doctor in the morning. “Is there any place you can go?”
“I guess I can go to my sister’s.” Then he looks at the woman and says very sweetly, “Honey, do you have the spare key?”
“Yeah,” she says rapid fire, “yeah. It’s right here in my panties!”
His eyes roll back, and he’s says, “Oh my God! I’ll never get it! I haven’t been down there in years!”
INCINERATED
When someone is arrested, they have a choice of holding on to certain items of their property or getting it vouchered [held by the police department] and returned to them when they’re released. It’s definitely safer to have it vouchered. When you go through the system there’s a good chance you’ll lose it or have it stolen.
One time, I’m on the desk, and this guy who had vouchered his property with us called. “I want to get my property back. I was incinerated there last night.”
“Oh,” I said, “you might want to call the fire department.”
“No man! You guys incinerated me!”
“So, didn’t you go to the hospital?”
“For what?”
“Burns.”
“What burns? Man, I was incinerated there.”
“You mean you were incarcerated.”
“Oh, call it what you want. I just want my property back.”
A BRAVE THIEF
New York City is famous for three things: its people, its culture, and its rats.
The rats are huge, and there are tons of them. So one day, me and the sergeant who’s riding with me get a call to go to a possible burglary in a Chinese bakery in a dirty party of town. We get there, and my sergeant tells me to search the basement. With gun drawn, I make my way down the concrete stairs, and the light is very dim. As soon as I step on the basement floor, a rat the size of a small baby runs across my shoe, and I freeze. I know if there’s one rat, he ain’t alone. I think about going deeper into the cellar, which is really dark, and there’s no light switch in sight. So I go back upstairs, and the sergeant asks, “Anyone down there?”
“No, it’s clear,” I say, thinking, except for the rat convention, and I figure if the burglar is down there, my hat’s off to him. He deserves every penny he robs.
A Sad Story
I was working the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village with my partner Mike McCabe. It’s a famous event, and a lot of gay people take part in it. The parade has already started, and we’re just there shooting the breeze. All of a sudden, this thin, pretty, small gay guy comes running down the street. He’s wearing lingerie, heavy makeup, and a feather boa. He says with a very pronounced lisp, “Excuse me, Officer! Excuse me—where’s the parade?”
So I tell him just go down Houston. “You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you so much.” He takes about five steps, whirls around, looks at Mike, bats his eyes, and says, “You, you’re so handsome. I could spend a lifetime with you!” Then he looks at me, “But you, you have bedroom eyes, so you’re just a one-night stand.”
He turns and goes away, and I say to McCabe, my face sad, “How come no one can ever commit to me? I feel like just a piece of meat!”
LOST HIS WAY
The 111 in Queens borders the Nassau County Police Department, and sometimes it’s confusing as to whose jurisdiction a case is, the city’s or the county’s. So cops from both usually went out on calls and sorted out whose collar it was later.
This one time, we go out t
here and arrest a guy for a burglary at a house straddling the county line. We arrest him and put him in the back of the car, and he figures he has no problem because he knows at that time, the city was a revolving door of justice. You go in front of a judge, and he says, “You caught him, nobody got hurt. Okay, six months.”
Then the Nassau cops show up at the scene. Our sergeant and the Nassau sergeant talk it over. Turns out the guy broke into the house on the Nassau side of the county line. So we have to hand him over, and they didn’t treat burglary like we did. They treated it very seriously. So we get the guy out of our patrol car, and he asks, “What you doing?”
We explain that he broke into the house on the Nassau side, and we’re handing him over. “Oh no,” he says, “no, no, no! I broke in on the city side!” He is panicking, because he knows he’s going to do about three years. You can’t burglarize houses in Nassau like the city. There’s civilization there.
“City side! City side! City side. Going to the city jail, not the Nassau jail!”
Now the guy starts fighting with us. He’s nasty, spitting, cursing. He even gets a little bloodied up in the struggle. As he was being put in the Nassau patrol car, my partner says, “Next time instead of burglar tools bring a [bleeping] map!”
ALIVE WORKS BETTER