by Tom Philbin
SUBWAY PEEP SHOW
Of course, you meet all kinds of weirdos on the job, including perverts galore.
One who always stood out in my mind was a guy I spotted on the Lexington Avenue subway station at Forty-Second Street. I was on plainclothes duty. We always scope people out, but when I first saw this guy standing on the platform, he didn’t seem anything special to me. Quite the contrary. He was a well-dressed middle-aged man with a tie and shirt and wearing a nice fedora and camel hair overcoat. He was standing a couple of feet from the edge of the platform, facing the tracks.
A train came into the station as I went about my business, but when it left I was surprised to see the guy still there. So I made myself as invisible as I could and watched the new train come in. When it pulled to a stop, I saw this guy’s head swiveling back and forth like he was checking out who was getting on and off the train. The doors finally closed and the train left the station. Without him. I thought maybe we had an EDP.
Another train comes into the station, and he does this head swiveling thing again. Then I see him take a few steps so he’s standing next to one of the windows. I can also see a pretty woman is sitting there.
The doors closed, and a millisecond before the train starts to pull out, I see him open his camel hair coat, and spread it apart. The woman in the window looks his way and freaks out. As the train passes me I see her looking back, her arms waving, screaming.
The train goes into the tunnel, and by then he has closed and rebuttoned the coat. But he stays on the platform. I sidle up to him, flash my tin, and say, “Hey, pal, what you got in that coat?”
“Nothing.”
“Let me see.”
He opens the coat, and the answer was right. Nothing. His pants, overlapped by the bottom of the coat, only went to mid thigh and were attached to the bottom of his shirt with suspenders. From the waist to the pants he was totally naked. Cops who heard about it called it “The Subway Peep Show.”
AND OUT IT COMES
We had this desk sergeant—let’s call him Lou—who was a good guy, and sometimes he’d pull pranks on us. Some other guys devised a prank to really nail him. We knew a homeless guy with one good arm and one false arm that looked pretty real unless you were up close. We knew the arm could be detached, so we bribed the guy to become part of the prank.
One night me and my partner bring this homeless guy into the station like he’s a regular collar. I’m on one side of him and my partner’s on the other. We approach the desk and just before we get there, as planned, the homeless guy makes a dash for it and I grab his arm and pull on it and out it comes—it looks like it came out of the socket. I keep the arm sort of out of sight so Lou can’t be sure it’s false, and the homeless guy hits the ground and starts yelling.
“Give me my [bleeping] arm back. Give me my [bleeping] arm back! You ripped my [bleeping] arm out of the socket!”
I look at Lou like I don’t know what to do. He’s standing up, his face is white as a sheet. He doesn’t know what to do either. I say, “Should I call a doctor?”
“What?” Lou says. Then he gets it, and he laughs as hard as anyone else.
Double Jeopardy
One New Year’s Eve in the mid ‘90s, I was doing a four-to-twelve and was also driving the patrol supervisor (a sergeant) around. It was pretty quiet for a New Year’s Eve until around eleven P.M., when we get notified of a dispute on Briggs Street. A sector car was already there, but they wanted the patrol sergeant at the scene because there was a possible mental case involved, and a superior officer is required.
We arrive at the scene. It is an upscale apartment complex, but we know right away where the trouble is. Three people—two middle-aged females and a middle-aged male—are on the grass and they’re surrounded by all kinds of things—stereo, dishes, small appliances—that have obviously been tossed by the EDP, who’s on a balcony above yelling down at them. One of the women yells up, “Peter, please calm down. It’s okay. You’re right. We’ll do it your way.”
The sergeant asks Paul, one of the sector guys, “What set him off?”
Paul says, “Ma’am, you tell him.”
“Well, we were going to have a quiet New Year’s at home, have some friends over from his job at the post office, play some board games, and have a few drinks. We decided to play Home Jeopardy.”
The guy on the balcony is quiet, but then yells: “I don’t have to put the answer in a [bleeping] question! It’s my [bleeping] house with my [bleeping] rules!” Then he left the balcony and went back into the apartment.
“Oh,” the woman says, “he heard me say ‘Jeopardy.’ “
We all look at each other and start to laugh. “So?”
The girlfriend continues, “We got to Final Jeopardy, and he didn’t put his correct answer in a question so the other couple said he lost. I took their side, so he got angry and started throwing things around in the apartment. Then he started throwing everything over the balcony, and the neighbors called you guys.”
A few seconds later the guy is back on the balcony, and he throws more stuff down—pillows, sheets, blankets.
Of course, being NYPD cops, we have to start in with jokes. We all yell up questions with an emphasis on the question part. “Peter, what’s the matter?”
“What’s the problem?”
“Who’s bothering you?”
The sergeant tells us to knock it off, and we do. About a minute later, the ESU shows up, and one of their guys asks, “What’s the matter?”
We all just burst out laughing.
ROAD SCHOLAR
I was in the detective squad when I get a call that we had a potential homicide way up on the north end of the precinct by the Whitestone Bridge. I had to notify the CO of the detective squad who was new in the precinct, and he needed directions to the crime scene. I put him on hold a moment and announced, “Anyone know how to give the lieutenant directions from his house in Long Island to the bridge scene?”
Nobody knows. I guess they all lived in the city or something. I am about to tell the lieutenant that nobody knows when I hear a voice from the cage [a cell for prisoners in the station house], “For that last slice of pizza I’ll tell ya.”
I look up at the guy in the cage. He is neat and clean, and I know he has been collared for GLA [grand larceny auto]. He would steal cars from rich people across the Long Island border and bring them to the city auto shops that would chop them up.
“Go ahead,” I said.
So the guy starts rattling off the quickest way to get there and all these alternative routes if there is traffic, and I relay it all to the CO. Then I hang up, and give the guy his slice and ask him, “You’re a walking MapQuest. How do you know so much about roads?”
“Hey, I’m good at what I do.”
“So how come you got caught?”
He takes a bite of his pizza, munches it slowly, savoring it, and finally says, “I guess you guys are better.”
A NEW YORK MOMENT
There a lot of things about New York that make it a great city, but what is really the heart and soul of it is the people. I mean, the different cultures and how even though they are different they take it in stride and get along. I used to love being on a foot post so I could just absorb the whole scene. One of the funniest things I ever witnessed was on Queens Boulevard. I stopped at a pushcart for a bottle of water, and there were two bus drivers there. They were just making small talk about the weather, the women walking around, and stuff like that. One guy was short, balding, heavyset, and white. The other was older, thin, a black guy who resembled Morgan Freeman. The white guy starts to tell his plans for the weekend in his heavy New York accent, which I love.
“Ah geez, I’m goin’ away dis weekend, upstate. Gonna do some fishin’.”
The black guy asks in his accent, which I also love, “What kind uh fish you fish foe?”
“I dunno. I don’t care. I catch ‘em and trow ‘em back.”
“You what? Dat’s crazy! Why don�
��t you eat dem?”
“I don’t eat fish. I just find it relaxin’ to go on the water and fish.”
“Man, you crazy. Go on the water all you want. Row around the whole damn lake if you want. But why you gotta botha the dam fish foe? They ain’t botherin’ you! How you like it I stick a hook in yo mouth and rip it out then th’ow you back ‘cause it ‘relaxes me’?”
“Ah, what’s da big deal? After a day of it, I sleep like a baby.”
“Sleep like a baby? Man I don’t understand white folks’ expressions. You know what a baby does? It wakes up cryin’ every two hours and wets its bed. Is dat what you do? Cry and wet yo bed every two hours? Another thing. I got a friend that goes out east and goes antiquing with his wife. What the hell is dat?”
“If it’s nice, dey probably goes to dem expensive estates out in da Hamptons—“
The black guy cuts him off. “Shut up. I know what it is but I don’t get it. When a white man has something old it’s ‘an antique.’ When a black man has somethin’ old it’s ‘junk’!”
They agree, finish their dogs, and get on their buses to finish their routes. Man, you gotta love it.
Stopped for Gas
This event occurred in the patrol car when I had a young female partner named Jessy. One fall afternoon, we were driving along Ventura Avenue when I started to feel stomach distress, and there was no mystery about why. For lunch we had stopped at a Korean place, and whenever I eat Korean I get a little gassy. But I was feeling something way beyond what I normally felt. I had a pain in the middle of my stomach like someone was twisting my guts. I knew what the answer was: Pass wind, get the gas out.
Of course, this was a problem because of Jessy. I had one partner who used to fart in the car—not caring about anything—and we almost got into a fistfight over it. I knew I had to stop the car and do it outside if I could. So I said, “I got to stop the car.”
“Why?”
“I want to check the engine. I think I heard something.”
So I stop the car in a little shopping center where there’s no one around, and then go around to the front and open the hood. By this time I am sweating and in real pain. I put hands on the front of the car to brace myself. Jessy can’t see me or, more important, hear me because all the windows are closed. Finally I release one of the loudest, longest farts of my life. It sounded like the foghorn of a freighter.
Before I was finished I hear this high cackling laughter. Two women I hadn’t seen are across the street standing in a doorway and they have seen and heard everything. Christ, they were still laughing when I drove away.
THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN FLORIDA
I know one thing about Florida,” said a sergeant who retired to Florida.
“What’s that?” his ex-partner asked.
“The leading cause of death.”
“Which is?”
“The electric chair.”
WHAT COLOR FOR YOU?
We got a call to go to Home Depot because a customer was causing a ruckus in the paint department. When we got there, things had more or less calmed down. The customer had threatened one of the employees. It didn’t come to blows, but it was close.
The customer didn’t handle English too well, and when he arrived, he had marched up to the employee and announced that he wanted to “stain his dick.”
The employee kept a straight face and said: “So what color you want? Blue, green, red, natural?” With that he started to cackle, and the customer didn’t know why. “Why you laugh?”
“I thought of something funny.”
“You laugh at me?”
“Oh no. Never.” Then he starts to laugh harder. He basically couldn’t control himself.
About then the wife or the girlfriend of the customer comes into the department, and he has a brief conversation in their native language. He finally gets what’s going on. So he turned on the employee, yelling at him in his own language, and it starts getting hot. Then another employee calls the manager, and he calls us. But it’s a good thing the guy didn’t see my face when I heard the story. I was trying to be professional, but I was laughing too hard.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
One day me and my partner were doing a training gig with a kid who was like two weeks out of the academy—fresh-faced, full of energy and enthusiasm. We figured it was time to introduce him to the world, specifically a guy called Joe and the woman he was always with named Sarah.
They were a homeless couple, totally harmless, but Joe had a nickname. Cops called him “Low Tide” because of his breath. I mean, this guy could hire himself out to remove wallpaper. All he’d have to do would be to stand in the room and breathe for fifteen minutes, and the wallpaper would come off.
We knew where they usually hung out—in this alley on Jacobs Avenue. So we drove over and found them there. We stopped the car and my partner said to the kid, “Eric, see that homeless couple in the alley? They’re like alley strays, but they are the eyes and ears in the neighborhood for us. Why don’t you go over and introduce yourself.”
“Okay!” So he bounds out of the car and walks into the alley straight for Joe and Sarah. Me and my partner are watching him with great interest. Joe looks straight at this kid walking briskly toward him. When Eric gets to within a few feet of Joe, he abruptly turns and starts heading back to us. The expression on his face tells us he’s caught a nose-ful of Low Tide’s breath. Me and my partner are hysterical, and when he sees us laughing he gets it, and starts laughing himself. He was a sharp kid.
When he gets into the car he says one word, “Yuck.”
“How’d you like your visit?”
“What I can’t understand is how anybody can be around that guy all the time.”
“Oh, you mean Sarah,” my partner says. “Didn’t you notice?”
“Notice what?”
“Charles Darwin got in the act. She has no nostrils. Survival of the fittest.”
MOMMY, WHERE ARE YOU?
The day Martin Luther King was gunned down was one of the tensest days I ever spent on the job. There were riots or near riots everywhere, and we were called to quell the disturbance near 122nd and Lenox in the heart of Harlem.
It was me, my partner Louie Perlman, and a rookie named Fred Garnet. We had never seen him under pressure, so we had no idea how he was going to react. We’re getting close to the scene, and Fred is very quiet, so me and my partner are thinking maybe he’s going to go south on us if there’s action. So I ask him, “How you doin’, Fred?”
“Fine. Would you please do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Call up my mommy and tell her I need my blankie?”
We burst out laughing, instantly sure he was going to be all right. And he was.
Clothes Don’t Make the Man (or Woman)
Me and my partner, Mike Heppernan, were working Anti-Crime in the 109 one night, when a “1010” call for help near the Whitestone Bridge comes in. Anti-Crime is supposed to pick up street crimes by cruising in an unmarked car and blending into the neighborhood, so we’re not stylishly dressed. We wear plainclothes, long hair, maybe even a ponytail if we get permission. We are not usually supposed to pick up jobs over the radio, but this night the sector cars were busy, so we took the call. When we show up we hear a woman screaming behind some bushes and we find this twentysomething-year-old girl laying on the ground completely nude. She’s yelling from what looks like a bad mescaline trip. “Get off me! Get off me!” Except there’s no one on her.
“You all right?” I ask while Mike goes to get a flashlight. Now we’re in a desolate area, and when my partner comes out, he sees an old, heavyset woman wearing just a sweatsuit. She looks at him, and suddenly starts blowing a whistle.
Mike yells, “Stop, lady! Stop!”
“Go away,” she yells, “get away from her. I’m part of neighborhood watch. If you don’t, I’ll call the cops.”
“Lady,” he said, “I am the cops! Stop blowing that whistle in my ear!”
“Where’s your uniform?”
“I’m undercover. We don’t wear uniforms. Here’s my shield.”
She stares at him in disbelief and says, “You don’t look like a cop with that long hair and torn clothes.”
“Yeah, well, you’re wearing a sweatsuit, and you don’t look like no aerobics instructor!”
OFFICER YUMMY
One night I was on a foot post in the Sixth in Greenwich Village, and I saw two obviously gay guys coming out of a hallway. One of them was sipping an open can of beer. This is a minor infraction, but the department wants us to crack down on it here, so I approach. “Excuse me, guys,” I say, “but drinking in public like that is against the law. You’ll either have to throw the can away or put it in a bag and drink it that way.”
The guy drinking the beer has on heavy makeup and upswept blonde hair. His eyes are wide, glistening. He looks me up and down and says, “Oh my God, you are delicious!”
At this point, I am a bit taken aback, but I am a New Yorker and I can roll with the punches, so I laugh a little. Before I can tell him again to put the beer away, he grabs his friend by the arm and says, “I want you to meet someone. Isn’t the officer delicious?”