by Tom Philbin
JUST BEING HELPFUL
We get a call about a robbery on Boone Street with a description of the perp. We see him on the street, and he starts to run. We catch up to him and start to put on the cuffs, but he looks at us in total bewilderment. “Hey,” he says, “whatcha doin’? Whatcha doin’? What’s going on?”
“You robbed a lady back there.”
“I didn’t rob no lady! I didn’t rob no lady.”
“Then why you running from us?”
“I was running after the guy who did it! I was trying to help you catch him! Come on, follow me before he gets away!”
True Love
We get a call about a domestic dispute in an older part of the city, and we go to the apartment, and find an elderly couple in their seventies. The woman says to us, “He’s got the devil inside him. The devil inside him. He’s drinking the devil’s beverage.”
So I ask, “What happened?”
“He’s crazy. He’s accusing me of cheating on him.”
We go into the kitchen and the man is sitting at the table as calm as can be. He’s drinking from a bottle of Scotch, and there’s also a long machete that he must have gotten from the war. So we sit down and ask him, “What’s the problem?”
“She’s cheating on me. I know it. Every Wednesday night she goes out—“
The woman interrupts, “I ain’t cheating on him. I go play bingo at the church!”
Then the couple starts arguing back and forth like cats and dogs about whether this is true, and my partner interrupts, “Listen, how long you guys been together?”
“Thirty-eight years,” the man says.
So I say to him, “You think she’s cheating on you after all these years? You really want to ruin your marriage now?”
The man looked shocked. “Married?” he says. “Married? I ain’t married to that crazy woman! We just been sleeping together!”
LOOKS ARE IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
One of the fun things about being a cop is the camaraderie and banter that goes back and forth between the guys. It is one constant chop-busting contest day in and day out.
I worked with one guy named Fast Eddie in the 109. He was a good cop and great friend of mine. On the side, he was also a very successful model, and the women all loved him. Because of it, he was an obvious target for everyday chop busting from the rest of the command, but he gave it back just as quick.
One day after our tour, we are all in the locker room changing to go home, and Fast Eddie was paying extra special attention to his appearance in the mirror. One of the old timers, a cop named Doyle, walks by and says, “Ya know, you spend more time in the mirror gettin’ ready than my old lady.”
Without taking his eyes off his reflection, Eddie says, “That’s ‘cause I’m better lookin’ than your old lady.”
WELL, YOUR HONOR, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED …
Some stories are so unbelievable they’re believable. Me and my partner are on patrol, and we see this car in front of us stopping, going, and weaving. We look though the rear window of the car, but we can’t see a head or any indication that someone is driving. We pull the car over, and I go up to talk to the driver. When I get there, I find a very small Asian woman behind the wheel, and on her head is a shih tzu dog—right on her head! The dog’s head is facing the back of the car, and his tail is in front of her face, going like a windshield wiper. She says, “Sorry. Dog jump around car. Jump on head.”
I am looking at her in total disbelief, and I start telling her how she can barely see over the dashboard as it is. I am in total shock, so I tell her, “Keep the dog off your head and go.” Then I go back to my partner, and he says, “You’re not going to write her?”
“No. How can I? Where on the summons does it say ‘Dog on head’? How would I explain this to a judge? He’ll never believe me.”
Cinderella
The kids in the inner city used to wear their pants down over their butts with Timberland boots. The boots were always untied—it was the style. There was one guy wanted for a robbery, and a cop we worked with named Burns spotted him. The guy was big and muscled up, and he decided not to go peacefully. He wrestled with Burns, who was doing the best he could, but couldn’t cuff him. Then another cop comes up and grabs the guy by the legs. His pants start to come down and one of the Timberlands comes off, but he gets away.
So Burns and the other officer radio in a description, including that he has one shoe on and one shoe off. After a couple of minutes, Central comes back and says, “Can you advise what size shoe it is?”
Burns says, “Never mind! Just bring Cinderella back to the ball!”
GLAD I COULD CHEER YOU UP
My partner and I went to the academy together and ended up working in the same precinct. One day we get a call about a jumper and we get there before ESU. When we arrive, we ask the neighbors what’s going on. They say the guy is really distraught. His wife left him and took the kids, and he lost his job. He’s in debt, and his mother just passed away. This guy’s got a laundry list of troubles.
We go up to the roof, and the guy’s pretty close to the edge. So my partner starts talking to him saying, “What’s going on?”
“Everything is falling apart.”
“Yeah, I know, your neighbors told me your wife left you, you lost your kids, you lost your job, you’re in debt up to your eyeballs, your mother—“
“Hey,” the guy says, interrupting, “If this is a pep talk, get to the peppy part!”
BEST DATE EVER
The department says it doesn’t have a ticket quota, but it does. Unless you’re on a special detail they expect you to write a book a month, which is twenty-five tickets. There were two guys who didn’t meet their quota one month and then again the next month. They were punished pretty severely by having their sector car taken away for a month, and it was the summer. They had to walk a foot post rather that ride around in a nice air-conditioned car.
Then this duo was on a four-to-twelve tour shortly after they had their car taken away. They’re walking around, and one says to the other, “Let’s get some lunch.”
They go to a nice sit-down lunch, and they’re not worrying about missing something because they have their radios with them. The lunch lasts two hours, and then one says to the other, “What do you want to do now?”
“Let’s go to a movie.”
In the theater, one of the guys stays in the back row for a half hour and puts the radio on low. Then he switches with his partner, and then back again. They do that until the movie is over. They leave the theater and again comes the question, “What do you want to do now?”
“Let’s go over to the firehouse.”
“Good. The Rangers game is on.”
They go to the firehouse, take off their gun belts and shirts, and just relax and watch the game. Of course, the firemen love to cook, so one of them bakes brownies. While they’re munching fresh brownies, one of the cops looks at a clock and says, “Hey, it’s getting late. We better get back.”
They put on their shirts and gunbelts, and while they’re doing this, one of the cops looks over at the other, smiles warmly, and says, “You know what? This is the best date I’ve ever been on!”
Why Shotgun Teams Were Disbanded
Back in the ‘60s, New York would sometimes put cops in what they call shotgun teams in locations where robberies were common to provide an unpleasant surprise for robbers. They would get the drop on the bad guys, and an arrest would follow. Shotgun teams were disbanded as the result of one team’s actions. They hid behind a vent and waited for someone to come and rob a liquor store that had been held up five or six times earlier.
What happened was recounted by the perp who had been shot by the team and who was in a hospital. “I came into the joint,” he says, “and put the heat on the dude. I tell him to give me all the bread in the register. As he’s doing that, I hear a little noise to my right, and then I hear someone yell though I can’t see anyone, ‘Goodbye, [bleeper]!’ And t
he next thing I know I wake up here.”
FUNNY COP LINGO
Airmail. Concrete, bricks, and other items hurled down from rooftops onto patrol cars responding to a call.
Bag Bride. A prostitute who smokes crack cocaine.
Bernie. In the New York area, a potential crime victim who may look like easy prey to criminals but is emphatically not. “Bernie” refers to Bernhard Goetz, a mild-looking bespectacled man who was approached on a subway train by four youths—three brandishing sharpened screwdrivers—who asked for cigarettes and money. Goetz, who had been mugged twice before, reached into his pocket, produced a nine-millimeter automatic, and shot all four.
Blue Flu. Illness feigned by a group of police officers.
Boneyard. Also referred to as a bone orchard—the cemetery.
Bridge of Sighs. The nickname for an enclosed walkway between the courthouse and the old city prison in Manhattan called the Tombs.
Chalk Fairy. Outlining a corpse on the ground with chalk is standard procedure in a homicide investigation. Chalk outlines show not only where a body was located but also serve as markers that indicate where small bits of evidence like bullet casings and blood are located.
Chalking must only be done after the crime scene photographs are taken; otherwise, says Vernon J. Geberth in Practical Homicide Investigation, the defense attorneys can maintain that the crime scene has been contaminated. One photo in one of his books is captioned: “Here you see the deceased lying in the position in which he was found. The crime scene photo may possibly be ‘inadmissible.’ While the first officers were securing the scene, a ‘chalk fairy’ suddenly had the irresistible impulse to draw chalk lines around the body.”
Death Fart. Gas expelled by a dead person.
Felony Flyers. Sneakers on a young inner-city male.
Grasseater. Police officer who takes small, insignificant bribes.
Ivory Tower. In New York City, One Police Plaza, police headquarters.
Jewish Lightning. Arson for profit.
Keister Stash. Illegal objects secreted in the rectum; also called a keister stow.
Lush Worker. Someone who steals from sleeping riders on subway trains.
GOYAKOD. Acronym, a reminder for homicide cops on how to conduct a murder investigation. Namely, “Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors!”
Meateater. A police officer who takes cash bribes.
Token Sucker. A thief who steals tokens from subway token machines by sucking them out. Before the New York city subway system switched to the MetroCard, subway riders used metal tokens. Though token suckers have vanished from the scene, they once were a force to be reckoned with in the city. They would jam paper into the slot where the tokens were deposited. Then, while the patron went back to the token seller to complain that the stile would not open, or perhaps simply went through a different turnstile, the token sucker would press his lips over the slot and suck the token out.
Trolling for Blues. Police officer dressing up as a potential victim and inviting attack.
This is a practice in PDs everywhere. It is frequently used where muggings or rapes are common. Both male and female officers troll; sometimes male officers dress as females. One candidate for the all-time record in trolling for blues is Bo Dietl, now a private investigator, who in his years on the job posed as a victim more than five hundred times.
Whore’s Bath. Washing the armpits only, or any other cursory bathing.
Wood Shampoo. When multiple cops hit a perp’s head with multiple blows of their batons.
The Last Laff Comedy Club in Centereach, New York.
We hope you enjoyed reading these stories and some of them made you laugh, as one cop said, like a hyena.
THANKS! STAY SAFE AND, IF YOU ARE A COP, SANE.