You gotta be kiddin’ me! This woman walked into my life, rescued me from an end-over-end free fall into a bottomless abyss, gave my life rhyme and reason, and now she is giving me life itself!
TV cops had been my only exposure to police work. Fresh out of the academy, I expected sniper fire from the rooftops as we walked across the parking lot to the squad car. But street patrol was way different from anything I had imagined. It ranged from extremely boring to exciting, adventurous, and even fun. On patrol, from call to call, I worked with people during the most vulnerable, personal, and private situations of their lives, witnessing things previously unimaginable. People would tell me the most bizarre stuff, and I’d try to act like it was normal. People living in closets. A domestic complaint in which a husband had allowed a male friend to come to his house and beat his wife. Say wha-at!?
Sometimes, choking back a huge laugh was a big success in itself. Just after midnight, while working Squad #534, I was dispatched to assist the fire department at a burning building. Occupants in apartment three refused to leave. It was hard to breathe inside the tiny apartment. Billows of smoke shot up from the stovetop, covering the ceiling. Five partiers in a stumbling drunk delirium were sitting around the kitchen table, arguing some incoherent point. They had torched an entire slab of bacon to cinders.
Just as I thought they were about to leave, the lead cook opened a new package and threw another slab of bacon right on top of the burnt bacon and kept on cooking, while clouds of smoke shot up and lined the ceiling. As laughter began to build up in the back of my throat, Sergeant Pasket, a serious no-nonsense supervisor, appeared in the doorway. I tried not to allow him to see the slightest smirk. But I was so relieved to see him standing there, roaring with laughter under a blanket of smoke. We evacuated them all safely without incident.
My first domestic was to a household of three—a father, a mother, and a son—on Selby Avenue, near old Rondo. There was shouting but no violence. Upon entry, my training officer shouted, “Everybody shut up and tell me what the hell is going on!”
Having flashbacks to my childhood when police came to our house during family squabbles, I was offended on behalf of the child I was back then. I determined never to enter anyone’s home like that.
I had the opposite of a poker face and never could hide my true feelings. When I was angered, the arteries and veins in my face pulsated and throbbed. When my feelings were hurt, my eyes watered and my mouth pouted. My bottom lip quivered. But the big downer came when I was truly scared. Because I was so absolutely transparent, I decided to err on the side of sincerity.
“Hello, I’m Melvin!” I’d introduce myself to coworkers. “Mel!” they’d say. “No, Melvin. My name is Melvin.” I ain’t never introduced myself as no Mel. Mel got choked and put through a plate glass guillotine, tried and convicted, never to exist in the first place, back in Bouknadel, Morocco.
I survived my first year and got off probation. As it turned out, only two of us didn’t make it. One flunked out, and the other got fired. Both were Black.
Roll call, September 1976. Machoman entered the squad room. As usual, everybody got out of his way. He disregarded me; I noticed a new growth of mustache.
“Damn! Machoman! What’s that shit on your face? Your mouth looks like you been eatin’ dirt!”
Predictably, he stomped over and grabbed me. It was time for him to regret putting his hands on me. Physical violence erupted right then and there in roll call. The other cops in the room evacuated. We tussled end-over-end across the floor. It was as violent as a fight could get, shy of any blows being thrown.
Before too long I had gained the upper hand. After establishing that he knew that I knew that he knew that I knew, I staged his comeback as though we had fought to a standstill, when in fact I was really helping him to his feet. In the end we stood panting face-to-face, clasping each other’s collars, letting go of each other at the same time. I could feel his gratitude for my not humiliating him. I had a friend for life. One down, just one more to go.
Being off probation brought a new batch of problems. New cops sucked up to supervisors so they could get into the ol’ boys club. It was highly competitive, and everybody was out to get somebody. Back in the academy, targeting me for failure seemed a sure bet, because that’s what I did. Now that I had survived, I was at the top of the hit list and at the bottom of the pecking order. And all shit trickled down. Not being one to suck up to anyone, unwilling to “prove myself,” I had to absorb lots of shit.
Besides, for a Black officer, “proving himself” meant acting like a white officer while policing Blacks—in effect, prioritizing blue loyalty over his humanity and betraying his Black identity. Since I never would have chosen police work had it not been for the community-driven, class-action lawsuit, I was always aware that I, more than anyone else, had a debt to repay. Deep community hadn’t gone through all that long hard work for me to come on and cosign the traditional insensitive okeydoke! My task was to help curve the arc of justice for change.
I’d enter roll call and say hello across the room, only to get grunts, groans, and dagger eyes. I’d walk into the supply room and hear laughter, then sudden silence when I came out. “Hi, you guys,” I’d say. No response. “I’m doing good, thank you. I’ll be just fine.” Pretending to think somebody cared pissed them off, but it helped me to keep my rhythm and maintain some kind of equilibrium. Inevitably somebody would mumble, “Carter, nobody gives a damn!”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” I’d say, and leave fast to dodge the incoming insult.
20
Two New Worlds
My first beat after probation was the downtown midnight shift, mostly transporting drunks to detox, arresting pimps and prostitutes. As much as I hated pimps and discouraged prostitution, I secretly identified with them, thinking of us as the three P’s—Pimps, Prostitutes, and Police—because by different definitions we all had to bring some ass, and were all vulnerable in different ways.
After a couple years on the midnight shift, I was transferred to St. Paul’s east side, called A-3, where there were absolutely no Blacks at all, cops or citizens. Residents’ faces contorted with confusion upon seeing an officer with a bronze face and an Afro driving a blue squad car. One day I noticed that a squad car was following me. I stopped and introduced myself to an extremely overweight cigar-chompin’ old-timer, Jerry. He smiled and said, “It looked like somebody stole a squad car!” He sped off.
Officer Blockhead made my daily dose of racism his personal duty at roll call. “Hey, Carter!” he shouted from across the room. “Know how to keep Black kids from jumping on the bed?” I didn’t answer. “Put Velcro on the ceiling.” Next day: “Hey, Carter! Know why so many Black soldiers got killed in Vietnam? When the point man shouted ‘Get down!’ all the Blacks jumped up and danced.” “Hey, Carter, wanna know the definition of reneging? It’s when the basketball coach sends in substitutes.” Roll call roared with laughter. But his favorite routine everyday joke was when he was holding a shotgun and looking at my Afro. “Carter, wouldn’t it be funny if I blew your brains out and there’d be blood and fur all over the walls and ceiling?”
Black officers were strategically assigned, two per district. Our squad car call numbers were literally color-coded. The midnight squads with Black officers had call numbers that ended with 11, the day shift squads’ ended with 21, and the afternoon shifts with 31.
Some dispatchers assigned us the most work. They’d actually withhold calls, letting them pile up while other squads were available, so they could assign them to us as soon as we cleared the previous calls. Dispatcher Charlatan hid way up in the Communication Center and openly spoke to us across the airwaves with blatant disdain, sending us to call after call, back-to-back. Once I asked to get off work early so I wouldn’t go up there and kick his punk ass.
Some of us privately called ourselves the workhorse squads. Predatory supervisors trailed us like circling sharks, showing up at our calls not t
o back us up but to make sure we did the grunt work and to document our faults and imperfections. They assigned us to do cleanup work after other squads—towing cars and writing reports after car collisions, for instance—on top of our own cleanup. We were exhausted, and other squads with white officers complained of the night being so slow.
We were told, and it was understood: “You gotta be better than these white boys.” That was easier said than done, because most of these guys were good, real good, sharper than four razor blades and two butcher knives. In fact, some were true heroes, courageously putting themselves in harm’s way, and deserved all the credit and commendations they received. But “being better” meant obeying more rules to the letter, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s. Our evaluation was by the “Gotcha!”
Unless you made it into the good ol’ boy club, it was difficult to get credit for doing anything right.
I partnered up off and on with Officer Clifford Kelly, a fellow Black officer who came on with me. They made it a point to assign us the raggediest piece of crap to drive, located way back in the outskirts of the parking lot. It barely started and gave zero heat in the dead of winter. Amazingly, we managed to keep the windshield defrosted. We never complained. We just did it.
Kelly was driving one late night on the midnight shift. I sat deep in the passenger seat, literally riding shotgun. Two felony getaway cars zoomed westbound on Carroll Avenue, a very narrow side street, running stop sign after stop sign. Kelly, a daredevil stunt driver, stepped on the gas. I activated the rotating red lights and siren. We were in hot pursuit.
The high-speed chase that ensued was terrifying. As we sailed down that tiny side street almost airborne at sixty-five miles per hour, blowing stop signs, all I could think about was surviving just long enough to see my child. I wanted this danger to stop, but Kelly had a tractor beam on the escaping vehicles.
After blasting through half a dozen stop signs and three red lights, we found ourselves westbound on I-94 at 120 mph. The fleeing cars caused traffic to swerve out of control, running one car off the road, almost causing other collisions, endangering everything and everyone in their path, including me. I made a decision: End this now! I must survive! I must at least see my firstborn child. Taking responsibility and ready to suffer whatever consequences, I drew and fired my Colt 357 Python, aiming at the tires. I missed my first two shots, but my third round struck the left rear tire of the vehicle at the Hamline exit. The car swerved and stopped, and we left the arrest for assisting squads.
Cheering and high fiving, we continued in hot pursuit of the second car, westbound several miles into Minneapolis, zigzagging in and out of traffic, reaching 110 mph along the curving roadway, narrowly missing other cars. After reloading, I hung far out the window, trying to get a clean shot. I readied, steadied, aimed, and fired three rounds. Suddenly the right rear tire of the escaping vehicle exploded. At such a high rate of speed, the driver lost control. Vehicle number two appeared to go airborne and crashed into the viaduct southbound on 35W.
The driver suffered severe injuries but recovered, so everyone survived, especially me. Thank God! But it wasn’t considered the cleanest shooting. The manual clearly stated: “1. Never shoot from a moving vehicle,” and “2. Never shoot at a moving vehicle.” I had just violated both, but surviving long enough to see my firstborn child was justification enough for me. The report I wrote was so powerful that not only did the gun range authorities defend me and aggressively come to my defense, but they used my report as a model for how to write a shooting report in several academies to follow. In response, the police department rewrote the manual to ban all shooting, even under the conditions I had used as justification. Informally this was referred to as the Carter Amendment.
Some guys partnered up and worked the same squad together all day every day. But being with anyone every day for ten hours can get real stale real quick. It didn’t take long for me ’n’ Kelly to irritate the daylights out of each other. We remained friends, but split up.
The problem was that Kelly and I, the only Blacks on the shift, had no one else to work with. I really wanted a partner, but everyone knew that I was the most vulnerable, the most targeted “nigger.” So everyone avoided me. When the sergeant ordered other officers to work with me, they protested, saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” Referring to me as an “it” probably got to me a little. But I could see their point.
So I mostly worked as a one-man squad. For me, the streets were like the swamp to the alligator. Having grown up the way I did had prepared me for street patrol better than all the formal official training put together. I grew to love this one-man squad stuff because after my daily dosage of intensive roll call racism, the streets were an escape. I found the bad guys to be a great relief.
My grandmother Mary Carter, having lost Henry and Gregory to gun violence, reminded me that she prayed for me every day. I thought it interesting that she’d ask God to protect “the one with the gun.” In the event that I might perish, I promised myself that I would not go alone, that I would take my assailant with me. I relieved my brothers in advance of any notion of having to get revenge. I instructed them not to allow the words “He gave his life” at my funeral. Someone may have taken it, but I ain’t gave up shit!
That night I had come home after working two shifts, zonked tired, only to wake up to contractions. My mom and all my siblings, already on high alert, rendezvoused in the hospital waiting room, anticipating confirmation. I stood beside my wife in an examining room, speechless and motionless. The nurse confirmed it: “Yes, she is in labor!”
I was instructed to go to admissions and have them admit her. But first I walked down the long, brightly lit corridor to the waiting room filled with my family. Eagerly they watched my face, awaiting confirmation.
“Is she in labor?” someone asked.
In shock, somewhat paralyzed, I was unable to speak. Words did not come. I just stood there. Voices in the waiting room repeatedly asked, “Is she in labor?”
I felt like a comatose zombie with my finger in an electric socket. Immobilized, unable to blink, my eyes locked wide open like the headlights of a car. Hot salty tears rolled down my cheeks. Momma, knowing her son, confirmed softly, “Yes, she is.”
Speaking through my delirium, she asked, “Melvin, do you want me to come with you to admissions?” Then she said, “Just nod.”
I nodded. She took me by the hand, guiding me gently, like a child pulling a wagon.
No wonder they call it labor!
But labor was an extreme understatement. Lovely Willetha was in excruciating agony. Every inch of her body seemed to be in pain, and I had done this to her. All I could do was bring her water and ice for her to chew on. Holding her hand seemed to help, until all of a sudden any touch only added to her pain. “Get your hands off of me!” she yelled. Even my attempts at humor only irritated her.
She’d rise slowly out of bed, reeling with agony, walking slow motion to the restroom, stopping to cringe, almost losing her balance. My reflexes refused to allow her to fall, and I’d grab her, trying to hold her up. But my every touch, no matter how I tried, only accentuated her pain. “Don’t touch me!” she yelled, and I snatched myself away.
I accompanied her on every bathroom trip, staying as close as possible. As each trip got slower and slower, she stalled and leaned lower and lower. Eventually I found myself moving backward on my knees, only touching her enough to help her balance while staying underneath enough to be a cushion in case of a fall.
But this labor went on for hours. The only mercy was that it wore us out enough so we could pass out, off and on. At one point, because the chairs were so uncomfortable and she was sound asleep, I jumped into the bed beside her and snatched me some good ol’ catnaps.
And finally in the delivery room the crown of my firstborn child became visible. I was overanxious to see my first baby, crowding in close. The doctor had to nudge me aside, shooting me elbows. “Excuse me,
Mr. Carter, we need a little space to work here.” Catching myself, I kept stepping back, only to find myself doing the same thing again.
The birth of my child was a blessed sacrament. “Aww yeah!” The doctor announced, “… a girl!”
“A girl?” I was enchanted. Willetha thought I was disappointed. But while I had only associated my identity with masculinity, presuming that any replica of myself would be in the masculine, never could I have imagined anything so beautiful. She came into this world extremely alert and aware.
Willetha clung to the newborn infant most gently and with all her might. We had worked hard for this baby. Victoriously we watched her wiggle, squirm, and make baby noises, then start to cry.
“What’s-a-matter?” I panicked.
Calmly Willetha explained. “She’s sleepy.”
“That don’t make no sense! She’s already laying down. Why don’t she just go to sleep?” Willetha picked up the infant and smiled.
This fatherhood business wasn’t no joke, either. Being responsible for the entirety of the growth and development of another being was a huge calling. No longer did I belong to myself.
We named our daughter Anika, a name we got from a book with African names. It meant goodness. At home, watching my baby, I wondered who was in there, who she would be, what kind of personality she’d have. By this time in my life, I had failed and messed up lots of stuff. But I would totally commit to being the best father I could possibly be, to giving this child a future that had been unavailable to me. I would father this child with all my might!
21
Policing While Black
Police work and family life were diametrically opposed. I lived two personalities with two identities, keeping them separate, sincerely believing that I never brought outside hostility home.
Street patrol could be so violent and hostile, and it wasn’t just the bad guys. When I heard that somebody new was out to get me, be it criminal bad guy or police supervisor, my reaction was, “Tell ’em to get in line!” The white boys always backed each other up and celebrated each other with accolades and medals for routine everyday courageous stuff. Black officers—not so much. When I disarmed a felon or brought in an armed robber single-handedly, I’d hear, “Carter, you’re just doing your job” instead of “Good job!”
Diesel Heart Page 19