by Tom Philbin
When you’re in the academy, they teach you that if you go to a crime scene or an auto accident and there are body parts, you’re supposed to pick up the part, pack it in ice, and get it to the hospital. They may be able to sew it back on or whatever.
So there is an accident where a guy was decapitated, and the first cop on the scene packed his head in ice. When I arrive I say to the cop, “What the hell are you going to do with that?”
“In the academy they tell us to pack parts in ice.”
“Yeah! You jackass. But a living limb, an arm, a finger that can be reattached, not a head!”
WE MARRIED, BUT …
Me and Mike Talmone were in the section of the precinct where the abandoned buildings are. It’s a bad area where all the prostitutes go, a lot of crack is sold, and every once in a while you get a shooting. It’s a place where dealers go to test their guns. It’s like a perp shooting range—you see the street signs with bullet holes in them.
Anyway, we’re on a four-to-twelve, and we see a car parked with its windows all fogged up and movement in the back. We don’t know what’s going on, whether someone’s being raped or doing drugs—it’s all happened in this area before. So we pull up nose to nose to the car with our lights, and the searchlight is on, so whoever’s in there will know we’re cops, not some perverts.
We can see inside, and we see a couple of people, looks like a man and a woman, scurrying to get their clothes on. We tell them to get out, and they do. It’s two Chinese people, a man and a woman, maybe in their mid-thirties. We have to question them, because we still don’t know what’s going on. Might be a rape. So Talmone takes the woman aside to talk with her, and I take the man. I say to the guy, “What’s the story? What you doing back there?”
“Oh, uh, we together back here.”
I think he’s trying to show me he doesn’t speak English at all so I say, “I understand, you’re doing chop chop. But you can’t do chop chop here. You married?”
“Yeah,” he says, “we married.”
I nod and say, “Okay. It’s dangerous. Shouldn’t be taking your wife back here to do chop chop. People get raped and robbed here. Go home. If the kids are home, go to a motel, spring for a couple of dollars.”
He nods, and I go around to where Mike is talking with the woman and I say to him, “They’re married.”
Talmone shakes his head, “They’re not married. They work together. She just told me the whole story. They just work in the same office.”
So I go back to the guy and say, “I thought you said you were married?”
“We married,” he says, “but not to each other.”
By the Book
Years ago there used to be a unit called FIAU, Field Internal Affairs Unit. The guys weren’t even internal affairs guys—they were inspections guys. They didn’t want to go on the street; they didn’t want to do real police work. Their sole purpose was to try and screw cops, and they didn’t go after cops who were doing anything really illegal—just cops doing little stuff, minor infractions. Like if they caught you on patrol with white socks, they’d write you up. You’d get what they call a CD, a Command Discipline, or a “rip.” You could lose a vacation day just for that.
They gave my partner, Bert, a rip for a “bent cap device.” The shield on the top of the cap was bent because Bert was chasing a guy, and his hat fell off onto the street and bent the little Indian on the top. But you couldn’t explain that to this hump. Bert got written up.
Two weeks later, he is standing at the newsstand right above the subway on a hot, sweltering day, and he buys a newspaper, which is an infraction. You can’t buy one, have one, or read one while you’re on patrol. As soon as he buys the newspaper, he sees the sergeant from FIAU—the same one who had given him a rip two weeks earlier—coming down the block. He doesn’t know if the sergeant saw him buy the newspaper or not, but he knows he could get another rip. He thinks fast and yells to the sergeant, “Sarge! Follow me!”
He knows the guy doesn’t want to get involved, but he’s required to. The sergeant starts running, and when he’s close, Bert yells again, “Follow me! Follow me!”
“What’s the matter?”
Bert doesn’t answer, but he runs down the subway steps, the sergeant behind him. The subway is even hotter than the street, like the inside of an oven, and this sergeant is not in uniform—he’s got a suit on, so it’s even hotter.
They run and run and run. Bert takes him at top speed all the way to the end of the platform, and the FIAU guy was really out of shape. By the time they get to the end of the platform, the guy is sweating freely, his head looks like a tomato, and he’s out of breath. Then Bert turns and says, “Ah [bleep]! The guy was [bleeping] me!”
“What do you mean?”
“A guy told me that there was a pregnant woman giving birth down here on the platform, and in the academy they teach you to catch the baby in a newspaper.”
The sergeant didn’t believe him for a second. “You turd! You made me run the length of this platform in a hundred and three–degree weather just to avoid another rip?”
But Bert stuck by his story. “No, no,” he says, “a passerby told me. A passerby told me, and you know we have to do things by the book.”
BE A LITTLE PATIENT
When you go into the psycho ward at Bellevue with an EDP [emotionally disturbed person], the procedure is usually to bring him to a waiting room and sit there with him until a doctor can see him and tell you whether he can go home or they’re going to keep him for observation. The hospital takes people from all over the city, so you’re usually sitting there with other cops and their EDPs and maybe a hospital cop.
Anyway, one time I’m sitting in the psycho ward, and another cop’s EDP starts having an episode. He runs around yelling, “I’m shrinking! I’m shrinking! I’m shrinking! Help me!” He does this for about five minutes, and finally I yell out, “Hey, calm down! You just have to be a little patient! Get it?”
He obviously didn’t get it, but the other cops did and they were roaring.
VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW
We got an aided call to a bodega in Spanish Harlem where a woman is having a seizure or something. So me and my partner rush in and ask this middle-aged Hispanic guy, “Are you the proprietor?”
“No. I don’t know who that is. I’m the owner.” Then he takes us back to the woman, who’s lying on her back in an aisle and twitching a bit. My partner says to the owner, “Is she epileptic?” “I don’t know. I think she’s a Methodist.”
THE RECEIPT
We got a call to go to the 103 to help them quell civil unrest in a shopping center. This center was overrun with wolf packs—kids from a local high school who would band together in groups of a dozen or more, invade stores, and take what they wanted. The owners couldn’t stop them. Our goal was to create a police presence that would scare the kids away.
Because we were from the Bronx, our radios didn’t work in the 103—we’re on different frequencies. So when we got there, radios were issued to our sergeants so they could stay in touch with the cops from the 103.
We set up and stay for twelve hours, and the kids get the message. They don’t come into the center. At the end of the day, we pile into our van to head back to the Bronx, but Sergeant Decker tells one of the cops named Shalimo that he forgot to return the radio to the mobile command unit, and Shalimo should run it back. Then he adds, “And don’t forget a receipt.”
Now Shalimo is a very experienced cop, and when Decker tells him to get a receipt, Shalimo thinks it’s a joke because he never heard of such [bleep]. But he leaves with the radio. From Decker’s point of view, it was not a bunch of bull. If you lose a radio, they will launch a major investigation. They don’t want some perp directing cops to go into one area of a precinct when he’s robbing another.
Shalimo comes back, gets in the van, and Decker starts driving. We go a little ways, and Decker says, “Where is it?”
“I got it.”
&n
bsp; “Let me have it.”
Decker continues to drive, and when Shalimo doesn’t give him the receipt he barks out, “Where’s the [bleeping] receipt? Give it to me now!”
Shalimo nods, then takes out a piece of paper and hands it to Decker. He reads it and then growls, “What the [bleep] is this?”
“The receipt.”
Decker’s really annoyed. He stops the van and says to Shalimo, “Go back and get a [bleeping] receipt!”
Shalimo goes back and gets one. Later we learned that he had written on the paper he handed Decker, “I owe you one radio.”
ONE OLD COP
There was this guy,” said one detective, “named Larry Kennedy. He was the oldest cop I ever met on the job. He had to have at least forty years in, maybe more.”
“How old was he?”
“I don’t know exactly,” the detective replied, “but I do know that when the Indians came into the precinct to file a complaint that the white man had stolen Manhattan, he was the one who took it.”
The Secret Sauce
Cops have all kinds of mental cases come up to them on the street, but you have to take every complaint seriously until you understand what’s really going on. Me and my partner were on foot patrol when a middle-aged female comes running up to us. Her eyes are on fire.
“I want to make a complaint,” she says, “about McDonald’s.”
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“They won’t hire me.”
“Do you think it’s racial?” I say.
“I don’t know. But they won’t hire me. I been there ten times in six months. I want to work there!”
My partner says very seriously, “Well, maybe they think you’ll steal the secret sauce.”
Her face screws up, “What secret sauce? I don’t know about no secret sauce.”
My partner gets an incredulous look on his face and shakes his head. “So,” he says, “you want to work at McDonald’s, and you don’t know about the secret sauce? Wow! Before you apply again you better learn about it.”
She went away, but we figure the next twelve times she applies she’s going to be driving them bananas about the secret sauce.
YOU’LL ALWAYS BE RETARDO TO ME
There was a guy named Baccardo, and at the police academy he got the nickname “Retardo.” One day a cop who went to the academy with him but whom he hadn’t seen for twelve or thirteen years was transferred to the same precinct, and when he recognized Baccardo he yelled out, “Hey, Retardo!”
Another cop comes up to him and says, “Hey, you can’t call him that. He’s a lieutenant.”
“Oh, sorry. Hey, Lieutenant Retardo!”
DERICIOUS
I used to ride with this Chinese cop named Charlie Lai who was really authentic Chinese—born in China, came to America when he was a little boy. He fractured the English language a little, but he was a great cop.
He ate some of the most godawful stuff you could imagine, brains, the eyes of things, dogs, cats, tripe. It makes me shudder to think about it—genuine Chinese cuisine, not Americanized Chinese food, like ribs.
So one day we’re in a car on patrol and we park, and he’s spooning this stuff—a thin milky liquid with black balls in it—into his mouth. It made me almost hurl, so I say, “How can you eat that crap?”
“What we eat. We eat what we can. You hungry, you eat anything.”
So he’s almost finished with whatever that mess was, when this guy who’s walking his Dalmatian comes near the car, pulled over by his dog. The dog must have smelled the food because he stands up on his hind legs and puts his front paws on the door and starts sniffing like crazy. I’m a dog lover so I tell the guy, “Beautiful dog.”
“Thanks,” he says.
“What do you think, Charlie? Beautiful, huh?”
He looks up from his food, looks at the dog, and says, “Rook dericious.”
NOT EINSTEIN’S SISTER
I’m telling you,” the old-time cop says with heavy disgust in his voice, “the intelligence requirement for new cops has been deteriorating for years. Just a few months ago, me and my partner—she’s on the job four months—are involved in a high-speed pursuit. I’m the driver, so she notifies Dispatch about the pursuit, and Dispatch comes back and says they dispatched Aviation.
“She doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Dispatch!’ she says, ‘we don’t need Aviation! We need a helicopter!’”
WELCOME TO ELMIRA
Back in the ‘50s a mounted cop from a Bronx precinct was trying to keep warm—it was February, about ten degrees—and he hit on a clever idea. He went over to the freight yards and rode his horse up into one of the freight cars, then closed the door behind him. It was a lot warmer than outside, particularly since he had a bottle with him and he started to nip on it.
He got so comfortable that he fell asleep, and when he wakes up and checks his watch, he realizes he slept for hours. He pulls open the freight-car door and gets another surprise. He sees a sign Welcome to Elmira, an upstate town over two hundred miles from the Bronx. I understand he finished off the bottle because he knew he had to call his sergeant and explain why he and his horse were checking out the Elmira freight yards.
Let Me Ease Your Mind, Lad
About ten o’clock one Sunday morning, this guy named Charlie who operated a bar in midtown was in there sweeping up when he hears a loud knocking on the door. A big Irish sergeant named Mike is there, and he wants to come in. They don’t open until twelve o’clock on Sunday, so Charlie points to his watch and shakes his head.
“Open the door,” Mike says in his thick Irish brogue.
Charlie goes up to the entrance. “I can’t open yet.”
“Open the door!”
Reluctantly, Charlie opens the door, and the sergeant goes over to the bar, takes down a stool, and sits on it.
“What do you want?” Charlie asks.
“Bloody Mary. Can’t start me day without me Bloody Mary.”
Charlie shakes his head. “Sarge, because of the blue laws in New York, you know I can’t sell you any alcohol before twelve o’clock. If I do I can lose my license.”
“Put your mind at ease, lad,” the sergeant says. “I have no intention of paying for it.”
MUTILATED ENGLISH
I made a car stop [pulled a car over] in a bad drug area. The driver is a local drug dealer, and I’m hoping I’ll find something. I don’t, but I’m still yearning to bust his chops in some way. I had to come up with something. His license is all scratched and barely readable, so I write out a summons for a “mutilated license.” I hand him the ticket, and he looks at it and says, “What did you give me a ticket for?”
“For your license. It’s mutilated.”
“Yo, man. That’s [bleep]. My license doesn’t mutilate for another six months!”
AND I’LL BE ON MY WAY
During the Dinkins Administration in the ‘90s, it was the wild west in New York City, with over 2,100 homicides a year. So they come up with a brilliant idea, the Gun Buyback plan. The administration announces it’s going to buy guns, “no questions asked,” even if the weapon had no serial numbers or was used for a murder. The goal was just to get the guns off the street.
Me and my partner are on a foot post, and a passerby points to a guy walking down the block and says: “He’s got a gun!”
The guy who is supposed to have the gun is heading down a one-way street, so we get on the radio and tell Central to get a car to block the other end. When the guy sees the cops coming down the one-way street, he turns and runs—almost right into our arms. “Where you going?” I asked him.
“I’m goin’ to the precinct for the buyback program. Handing in my gun.”
“Then why you runnin’ from us?”
“Got to get there quick! But now that you here, why don’t you give me the money, and I’ll be on my way!”
NOW THAT’S DANGEROUS!
This old-time cops says, “Today I hear cops complain about having to make five
or six runs a night. In the late ‘80s, when I was on the job, we made fourteen, fifteen runs a night, and half of those were gun runs. It was either shots fired, man with a gun, or when we’d get there we’d see bullet holes, blood, or a body. Listen, let me put it this way: When I was on the job it was so dangerous the Statue of Liberty had both hands up!”
FRAMED
I was on a foot post one beautiful summer night, and naturally there were wall-to-wall people on the street, including lots of tourists. There was this homeless guy who was part of the scene, and he went by the name “Brokejaw” because of his permanently twisted jaw. He was fifty, maybe sixty. He wasn’t pretty—he had that jaw and maybe two teeth—but he was harmless. He would walk around with a pushcart filled with his stuff and earn money panhandling. And he had a sense of humor. He made people laugh by pulling his bottom lip over his top one so far it would cover half his nose.
Anyway, a call comes over the radio about an attempted child abduction. I race to the location and find a hysterical woman with a baby in a carriage. She said a guy just tried to take her baby, and she gives me the description. I know right away it is probably Brokejaw. Another unit shows up and takes the woman in a patrol car to canvass the area. I walk to a small park, and I find him. I say, “Hey, Brokejaw. This woman says you tried to steal her baby. What happened?”