by Tom Philbin
His friend starts in too, “Oh, my God yes. He’s yummy!”
With that they both start to sing that commercial for cat food, “Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum …”
Then they head back into the house to solve the beer problem, and just as they do I see my sergeant getting out of his car to sign my memo book. I am hoping that he did not see the interaction between me and these guys. He signs my book and says, “Where you going now?”
“I’m going to West Fourth, okay?”
I thought I got away with it, but he hands me back my book and says, “Fine, stay safe and see ya later … Officer Yummy.”
DR. DIRT
There was this cop who had the nickname “Dr. Dirt” because whenever there was a dirty job in the precinct he always got it. I mean, he would be the first at all kinds of homicide scenes—including one where they had to take a body out of a cesspool—as well as motor fatals and just about everything that other people didn’t want to do.
He looked like a guy with that nickname, too. He was pretty big with a big belly, very heavy eyebrows, and really intense dark eyes that were always looking at the world in a very cynical way. He had his twenty in, so he could say and do just about anything, and nobody could touch him. If they gave him a hard time, he would just throw in his papers.
He was always telling us how much change he had seen over the years. Not just in the city but in the department itself. How the NYPD was not hiring the same type of tough street cop like it used to. How the job was better back in the old days when he first came on.
So one day in the summer on an eight-to-four day tour, a call about a DOA [dead on arrival] comes in. Turns out this guy who lived alone was mowing his lawn and had a heart attack and died. Well, this being New York in the late ‘80s, nobody noticed for about two, maybe three weeks. There was a stench in the air, and the lawn was overgrown except where he had died, so the neighbors finally called it in. Now, a dead body in the middle of July exposed to the elements—well, let’s just say it was not a pleasant sight or smell. Rats had started in on him, and maggots had already made him their home. Two rookies get the call, did all the paperwork, and waited for the ME. The meat wagon shows up just as these two rooks are being relieved by two other rooks, a guy and a girl, from the four-to-twelve tour. Dr. Dirt is driving the sergeant, and they show up to see what is going on. Six cops were there when the city morgue guys pick up the body and put it in the body bag to take it away. One morgue guy takes the two arms, and the other takes the two legs. They are supposed to count one, two, three and lift and put him in the body bag. As they get to three, the dead guy’s arms come off. All four rookies turn away and lose it. One puked, and then it was a chain reaction—they all did. Dr. Dirt just calmly lights up his cigar and says to the three guy cops, “What’s this job coming to? When I came on the job men were men.” Then he turns to the female. “And so were the women!”
Not a Silver Bullet
In his book My Life in the NYPD: Jimmy the Wags, Patrick Picciarelli tells this story involving a well-known celebrity.
I was working in the Ninth, the East Village. Back in the ‘70s, it was referred to as the “Evil.” It was very busy this night because it was the middle of a heat wave, and the natives were restless. We were on a midnight-to-eight tour and about four A.M. things started to quiet down. Then right in front of us, we see this Caddy weaving all over the street. We decide to pull him over by Ave B and see what’s up. I approach the driver’s side, and my partner approaches the passenger side, which is the proper tactics for car stops.
“Hi, Officer,” the dark-skinned driver managed to slur.
He looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As he handed me his license, he blurted out, “I’m Tonto!”
With that the door flew open, and he vomited all over the street. Sure enough, I looked at his license, and it said he was Jay Silverheels. I couldn’t believe it. I grew up watching The Lone Ranger. Here I was about to bust his faithful companion. I called to my partner on the other side of the car, “Hey Kenny, we got Tonto here.”
He was a very happy drunk and a great guy. Within ten minutes, we had every working car in the command trading “Hows,” taking pictures, him signing autographs. He told us some great stories of the show and his life and how he loved Clayton Moore (the Lone Ranger) like a brother. After a few hours and some coffee, he sobered up and “kemo sabed” us to death. We put him back in his car and pointed him to the Brooklyn Bridge, and watching him so we knew he was okay. As he drove off, he stuck his head out of the window and yelled, “Gettum up, Scout!”
Then my partner Kenny says, “Who was that man?”
“I don’t know partner, but he left this,” and I pointed to the pile of Tonto’s vomit in the street.
TOP TEN FUNNY PRECINCT NICKNAMES
Cops use humor to cope with things. They’ll garnish anything with a little humor, and one of the things they love to do is give the station house a nickname based on its essential character. What follows is a lineup of ten New York City precincts, though not in the order of funniness.
1. 112th Precinct—Fort Bagel. Named for the large Jewish population in the precinct.
2. 75th Precinct—The Killing Fields. Named for all the murders that took place there in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. In 1993 there were 126 murders in the 75th.
3. 62nd Precinct—Fort Goomba. Located in the Benson-hurst area of Brooklyn. Named for its wannabe mobsters who are famous for statements like, “Yo, do you know who I am?” Followed by, “Do you know who I know?”
4. 77th Precinct—The Alamo. In Brooklyn. Got its name in the ‘80s because the officers felt as if they were under siege.
5. 41st Precinct—Fort Apache. Located in the South Bronx, this precinct was in the middle of a burned out, devastated wilderness where hope was a rarity. Some sergeant nicknamed it after the John Wayne cowboys-and-Indians movie Fort Apache when he was calling downtown for help because the precinct literally was being assaulted by people living in the area. A film starring Paul Newman called Fort Apache, the Bronx made it famous.
6. 114th Precinct—Fort Souvlaki. Named for the large Greek population in the precinct.
7. Police Academy—Fort Pencil.
8. 6th Precinct—Fort Swish. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village with its large gay population.
9. 66th Precinct—Fort Surrender. Back in the ‘80s, a large group of religious Jews were protesting something that had happened in the precinct. The demonstration got out of hand, and the people ended up storming the precinct. A 10-13 [officer needs assistance in a hurry] went out over the station radio. Cops from other commands had to come in and help take back the station house.
10. 109th Precinct—Fort Frushing. Located in Flushing, Queens. Got its name for the way the large Asian population constantly mispronounces the name. In the early ‘90s, there were over seventy ethnic organizations listed within the 109. There was a T-shirt printed up at the time that read, “The last American out of Flushing, grab the flag!”
TIN FOIL, WORKING FOR YOU, INDOORS AND OUT
I was working in the Six-Oh, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, also known as “Little Odessa” for all the Russian immigrants who relocated there after the fall of the Soviet Union. I had about six months on and was working with Jimmy Sabatino, a real streetwise Brooklyn guy. He was smooth, knew how to handle everything. Sometimes it seemed like nothing fazed this guy. We get a call of a 10-10, which can mean a lot of things. It stands for possible crime, calls for help, whatever. We go to this very old building by the boardwalk, to third-floor apartment 3J. This sixtysomething old Jewish lady answers the door. We ask her what the problem was, and she invites us in and starts to tell us why she called. “Well, I am afraid to leave my apartment because they are out to get me.”
Jimmy, in his real thick Brooklynese, goes, “Who’s dey?”
“Them.”
“Yeah, who’s dem?”
The lady poin
ts up toward her ceiling. So being a naive rookie, I say, “You mean the people upstairs?”
I’ll never forget the look on her face. It was as if I were the crazy one who should be committed. She says, “Noooooo. Not them. The UFO people. They are trying to get to my brain with radio waves.”
Without missing a beat, like he has seen this a thousand times, Jimmy says, “Put tin foil on da TV and radio attennas. Den on the windowsill and you should be fine, dear.”
“I went to the precinct, and they told me to do the same thing, so I did.”
I went over to look at her TV and window, and sure enough there was tin foil. She says, “That isn’t the problem. It works in here, but I can’t leave my house.”
Jimmy walks her to the kitchen and starts up a conversation with all kinds of small talk. He goes in her pantry closet, and she has like twenty boxes of Reynolds Wrap. As he is talking about the weather and how he uses matzoh with his linguini because it is less fattening than bread, he makes her this aluminum-foil hat. The thing looked like a hat Captain Crunch would wear. “Here, dear, put dis on wheneva you go out. Dey can’t get radio waves trew it, and you should be fine.”
She thanked him up and down, and we leave. The next week, we see her walking outside on the avenue doing her shopping wearing her tin-foil hat and looking like a female Captain Bly. She comes over to the car, “Thank you so much, Jimmy. This hat works great!”
QUOTE FROM A CLEVELAND HOMICIDE DETECTIVE’S OFFICE
A dermatologist knows nothing and does nothing, a surgeon knows something and does something. A medical examiner knows everything—but a day too late.
On the Table, Please
Back in the mid ‘70s, we made a raid on a gambling game. It was run by wiseguys, and they usually didn’t take much crap from anybody. They were always swaggering in one way or another. There was guy on the squad named Carl Benton who was one of the toughest guys I ever met, and he got off one of the best lines I ever heard when we made that raid.
We burst into the cellar where the game was going on, and everybody was told to freeze and put their hands in sight. They all cooperated except one guy, an enforcer without a neck named Tony Bol. It happened in a split second, but he had his hands under the gaming table, and one of the cops yelled for him to get them in sight. He didn’t, so Carl runs up to him, cocks his Berreta, holds it against his head, and says softly, “Put your hands or your brains on the table.”
His hands came in sight real quick.
THEY ALMOST GOT ME
I was on the Bunco Squad in the late ‘80s, and I was fortunate to collar some of the Williamson gang, a group of thieves who travel around the country—they’re also known as “Travelers”—conning people into buying home improvement work done that is worthless. For example, they come to the house in midday when just a woman is likely to be there and tell her that they will coat the driveway with a can of sealer for sixty dollars. That seems reasonable, so then they apply some kind of junk—it might be used crankcase oil or paint. When they’re finished—very quickly—they tell the woman she owes them six hundred dollars. When she protests that they said only sixty dollars they reply, “That’s right, sixty dollars a can. We used ten cans.”
The woman offers them a check, and they say they only take cash. They accompany her to the bank, and while they’re gone, their confederates may rob her house.
I was visiting my older aunt in Queens. While I’m there she answers the door and someone starts giving her a rap about why she needs her roof done. So while this guy is talking, I sneak up behind the door and listen. He was so convincing I was tempted to take him up on it.
Instead, I step out from behind the door with my gun and badge and say, “Where do I sign?”
HOW TO GET TO HORREEKETOPEEKEE
I was doing a foot post day tour in Queens, and a guy approached. He looked like he might be from another country, and when he opened his mouth, I knew he was. He had a heavy accent.
“Help me go somewhere,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Go somewhere.
Then I get it. He wants directions to go somewhere. “Where do you want to go?”
“Two-three-oh-four Horreeketopeekee.”
I repeat what he said, and he nods. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know where that is.”
“Oh.”
Then something dawns on me. “You have the name written out?”
He takes a piece of paper from his breast pocket and hands it to me. I look at it and burst out laughing. On it is written “2304 Jericho Turnpike.”
For Crowd Control
One mounted cop had a clever way of getting off the street with his horse. He and the horse would get on one of those street freight elevators, and it would lower them to the cellar. He’d tether the horse to something downstairs and go on his merry way for a few hours. When he returned, it was a simple matter for him and the horse to be lifted to the street, and he’s on his way back to the barn. But one time when he returned it wasn’t so simple because the horse had died. There was no way he could move a thousand-pound animal onto the elevator.
Me and the guys sat around making up reasons he could give his sergeant about why he had gone down there. The best I heard was “crowd control.” His sergeant would say, “There are no people down in the cellar.”
“No,” he would answer. “But hundreds of rats.”
DUELING REMOTES
One day we were driving on West Covina when we get a call that there’s a disturbance a few blocks away, a woman is calling for the second time about neighbors yelling and fighting.
We go to the apartment, and we can hear loud arguing in the hallway. We knock on the door and this old Irish guy opens up. We tell him that we got a complaint about noise. “Yeah,” he says, “it’s all Mamie’s fault.”
“Who’s Mamie?”
“The bitch I married.”
And from the room we hear, “I heard that, you old bastard!”
“Sure, lads, come on in.”
We go inside and meet the wife and ask them what’s going on. They start jawing at each other about how she hates how he uses his remote, pressing the change button a “mile a minute.” So she sometimes uses her remote to turn the TV off, which makes him turn it back on, and then they just duel—the TV going on and off. So far, each of them have mysteriously lost four or five remotes.
We know they’re eccentric, but we have to come up with a solution. So I stop their arguing and say, “Look, we are too busy to come here again. Sir, you watch TV in one room, and lady, you watch it in here.”
They are silent, but they look kind of sad.
“What’s wrong?”
“But we’ll miss each other.”
Proof That Norwegian Rats Are Smarter
Most of the NYPD station houses were built many years ago. They’re being modernized now, but they are in bad shape. It’s even hard to take a nap in a station house lounge because rats or mice or bedbugs run across your legs—it’s disgusting. They used to have exterminators come in, and one of them sat down with us and talked about the rats in New York. He says, “You got American rats and Norwegian rats. The American has a kind of rounded snout while the Norwegian has a longer snout. Both are very smart and difficult to catch.”
“Well,” one cop asked, “which is smarter?”
“The Norwegian,” the exterminator said. “He found his way here from Norway, didn’t he?”
MAY I STORE YOUR ILLEGAL GUN IN A SAFE PLACE, SIR?
Cops today are getting pushed more and more to be politically correct. The only problem is the perps don’t have a set of rules. So they can make bogus complaint after bogus complaint and nothing will happen to them, but the officer has to go through all kinds of stuff to defend himself. One cop got so fed up, he made up a questionnaire for perps, whom he refers to as “customers.” Some cops actually hand them out, and some customers are so dense that they fill in the form:
NEW PRISONER
SURVEY FORM FOR NYPD
CUSTOMER SURVEY FORM
2005-UP-YOURZ
* * *
All customers (formerly called prisoners) of the NYPD are to be given this form and a pen. It should be collected before prisoner, er—customer, is transported to CB [Central Booking]. Failure to give this form out will result in severe discipline to PO. A copy of this form is to be faxed to CCRB [Civilian Complaint Review Board] to see if a complaint will be filed against the PO. Form is to be faxed to CCRB BEFORE fingerprinting perp, er—customer.
TO THE CUSTOMER
Please fill this form out as accurately as possible. We are the new NYPD, and we are trying to adjust to the needs of you. After all, without you people, we’d be out of a job! If more than three questions are answered “no,” a copy of this form is automatically sent to CCRB, and a complaint filed against the PO as a courtesy to you.
THE ARREST
* * *
At what time were you arrested?
What were you charged with?
What do you think you should have been charged with?