by Lou Reiter
“Doesn’t matter, got rid of the scum.”
“Tell me how your department handles citizen complaints, boss.”
He looked at the neatly arranged books lining his credenza. “Well, the complaints come to me first. Not going to investigate anything that doesn’t need to be looked into. Then I ship those that appear to be legit to one of my sergeants. When the report comes back, my secretary sends a letter to the citizen who’s doing the bitching.” He looked at Taylor and smiled. “Should I be doing something else?”
“Yes, boss, you should. You’re looking at one of the most important keys needed to make a police agency professionally run.”
“Now wait a minute. I just bought this new computer program out of St. Augustine or somewhere up there. It’s supposed to be the best available. Does my IAs and keeps track of my men to make sure they don’t get too many complaints. Checked with about three other towns and they also love this computer gizmo. Cost the city a pretty good sum. This software is supposed to handle all those problems so I don’t have to worry about them.”
“You know what this gizmo is called? Has it identified any officers you need to pay closer attention to? Do you know how to use the program?”
“Not yet, but I’ve got one of my lieutenants looking at it. We’ve only just got it last year. Cost us over 20K. Want me to call him up to explain it to you?”
“No, boss. I know you’re not using it. I’ve audited all sixteen complaints made against Batman and Robin. Bullshit investigations. No consistency to your follow-up. Most complainants were never interviewed and not one interview was taped. The investigator never interviewed identified witnesses. Every case was either unfounded or exonerated. That’s a record no cop can attain unless the department doesn’t give a shit.”
Chief Thompson leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. A good sign he was shutting Taylor out. Now he simply glared daggers at Taylor.
“Boss, you and your supervisors allowed Don and Ricky to get into this mess. They’re not coming out of it, and neither are you or the city of Playa Diablo. It’s gonna cost you. Boss, you failed those two young cops. Failed the homeless. Failed the kids who were just skateboarding. Failed the kids’ parents who wanted you to look into what happened. All those plaques parading on your wall won’t protect you. Maybe you’ll eventually be able to crawl out of this mess, but you’ve got to change. Put some of that training into practice. It’s up to you, boss! I heard someone refer to you as a pussy. Are you?”
Chief Thompson didn’t get up as Taylor rose to leave. Didn’t offer his hand. It really didn’t matter to Taylor. That’s the good and bad thing about being a consultant. You can be honest and offer solutions, but down deep you still care if anything you’ve done will really matter. Will anything you do really change things? Rarely will a consultant find out as he simply moves to the next job, the next crisis.
Jenny got up and crossed in front of her desk as Taylor started to leave the station.
“Going out to get on the white stallion, huh, Taylor?” She said with a smile. “You ever get near Diablo again, you give me a call, ya hear? You’re a culinary oddity I’d like to experiment a little more with.” Taylor grinned, leaned over, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
*****
“Taylor, what’d you find in Playa Diablo?” Ben Jackson asked when Taylor reached him by phone.
“A glorious green place built over a cesspool, Ben. You’ve got some work cut out for the League. The department’s salvageable, and maybe, only maybe, you can bring the chief around if you can get his head out of his ass.”
Taylor heard Ben chuckle.
“Seth Spencer, Dennis’ dad, is a good man. He’s really hurting, though. Not ranting that this was anyone’s problem. You can save a lot of money if you settle with him early. I’d estimate that he’ll accept 300 to 400 thou, maybe. Half a million at tops.”
He heard Ben give a low whistle. Taylor continued, “Cheaper for you than if he gets himself a lawyer. He did mention a team of Yiddish lawyers in the Gables. Remember those guys? Neil and his partner, Marilyn? Took the League for nearly two million in the case up in northern Dade County. And then added nearly another million in fees and expenses. And they earned it. Don’t think you want that crowd after you again. I’ll send you my report when I get home; probably by end of next week.”
Taylor was ready to switch off when Ben asked him an unusual question, “Taylor, what do you think is going to happen to those young cop cowboys?”
Taylor paused before he answered.
“Fifteen years ago the State Attorney would have held a press conference and announced that what happened was a tragic incident, but was confident the police department would handle it properly and the officers would never work in Playa Diablo again. But, Ben, today it’s a different world. Prosecutors aren’t looking the other way. There’s too much pressure on them from advocacy groups. Then, too, many prosecutors are pissed that chiefs aren’t doing a good job cleaning their own houses.
“Batman and Robin I’m afraid are in for a hard fall. Could be second-degree murder will be pressed, but probably more likely will be voluntary manslaughter. The boys are going to see jail time, no doubt about it. Different world today, Ben.”
Taylor hung up and suddenly a sick feeling filled his stomach.
CHAPTER 5:
TANGLED RELATIONSHIPS
Case File: Officer Betsy McKnight
Allegation: Domestic Misconduct
Agency: Addison County/Addisonville, WI
Accused employee: Lt. Luke Hansen
Betsy McKnight was excited when she graduated from the Police Academy at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. Fox Valley offered an open enrollment academy, meaning a student paid for courses unless a police agency sponsored the schooling. Betsy, or Bits as most people called her, decided on Fox Valley because it was close to her folks’ home in Oshkosh. She convinced her dad that the $2,950 tuition fee would be money well spent. Of course, old dad harped that his money hadn’t been well spent paying for Betsy’s three years at University of Wisconsin in Madison. At the state school, Bits wandered around the usual liberal arts curriculum, touching on marketing, poli sci, and business management. Nothing held her interest for long. Bits was only 21, leading her to wonder why she needed to determine what she should be doing for the rest of her life at such a tender age. Sure, she had at least 60 units of qualifying credits to show for those three misspent years, but she’d gotten lost in Madison’s “alternative world,” as the locals referred to the gay and lesbian scene.
The Fox Valley Police Academy offered a full-time curriculum. Betsy’s grueling schedule started at seven in the morning and continued until nearly six each night. Plenty of homework was assigned to assure candidates could master the eventual certification tests. Three months and 520 hours of classes is what it took. Bits wasn’t at the top of her class, but she wasn’t at the bottom either. Her lacrosse experience in Oshkosh and UW helped with the physical training necessary to meet academy requirements, but she struggled with academics, particularly her legal courses.
Betsy’s biggest challenge was the firing range. Betsy wasn’t small, but she wasn’t as tall or heavy as most male recruits. She was strong, but stamina was her savior. Her hands were smaller than most candidates and she had difficulty grasping the large capacity Smith and Wesson the academy used for firearm training. To make things worse, the double action trigger required her to pull approximately twelve pounds to fire the gun. This combination of problems resulted in low range scores. Betsy knew when she was eventually hired by a police department, she could downsize to a more compact weapon which she could easily handle, but for now she had to tough it out with a smile on her face.
The range master recognized gun handling was a problem for most female recruits and smaller-framed men. He mentioned that many years earlier the LAPD faced a similar problem when the department was court mandated to hire female officers. Thinking outside
the box, the police chief enlisted the help of Jack LaLanne, one of the first fitness gurus, to develop a special program just for the new female recruits. LaLanne volunteered his time and expertise, and even allowed the women to use his fitness centers free of charge. LaLanne’s program blended extensive stretching exercises for the hand and wrist using free weight regimes of multiple-set weight manipulation.
Fox Valley’s range master, Jon Edwards, offered to give Betsy personal remediation. Jon was one of those guys who loved guns. He handled them as though he was fondling a woman. The guy was probably in his early fifties and was still on the job as a cop at one of the smaller agencies near the college. Jon could have been an attractive man, but he insisted on covering his receding hairline with long wisps of stringy hair combed over the top of his head. At the end of each day when his morning application of hair gel weakened, the slightest breeze would whip those six inch wisps into an unsightly mess that resembled a haystack on steroids.
The first day of Bits’ remedial training, Jon focused on her trigger squeeze and sight picture. Holding the gun on target was difficult for Bits when she pulled the trigger back to mimic the steady movement Jon had shown her. During her second lesson, Jon concentrated on her stance, thinking that might help her shoot straight. He got close behind her, encircling his arms around her midsection under her arms. Betsy could feel his forearms pressing on her breasts as his pelvis thrust against her buttocks. During the third session, Jon purposefully cupped one cheek of her ass. That night they were in bed together. Betsy looked at this unexpected happening as just another study night. She had to pass her firearm qualification course, you know.
The end of training came sooner than Bits anticipated. She liked the training process, challenges faced, and the friendships she developed at the academy. Her folks came for graduation. They still weren’t sold on having their daughter enter police work. Daughters were supposed to get married, have kids, and create a home-sweet-home for a husband. The McKnights were still clinging to their Scandinavian heritage and the expectations that came with it.
Betsy decided to look for a position with one of the sheriff departments close to Madison. She had enjoyed her time in the city when at the university, but didn’t want to work in such an extensive, far-reaching environment. Besides that, if she was a Madison cop, Betsy worried she might be forced to confront and arrest former friends.
She searched the Internet and found Addison County was looking for deputies. With her state cert in hand, Betsy ventured south to Addisonville.
Her interviews went well. Betsy was a safe choice for the department: a female with some college experience. She soon found herself outfitted in the browns of the Addison County Sheriff’s Office. When she signed on the dotted line, Betsy was told her first two years would be spent monitoring jail cells before she would ever see the inside of a patrol car. She wasn’t thrilled about the detail, but she recognized recruits had to start somewhere.
Betsy was assigned to jail intake, the first step an inmate took in the booking process. Intake was all about paperwork, fingerprinting and photographing, marking suicidal checklists, itemizing inmates’ property, and finally determining which pod, or block of cells, would be the inmate’s new home. It was important to avoid putting rival gang members near each other. Those booked on sex charges were relegated to a special pod. Occasionally a politician or law enforcement officer was booked into the jail and they had to be segregated for their own protection.
The jail received most of its inmates from the local police departments in Addison County. A few prisoners were contracted from the feds; they were primarily illegal immigrants waiting for deportation hearings. Once in a while, DEA put somebody in for a couple nights.
The sheriff’s office didn’t have many deputies on the road collecting jailbirds. Most prisoners were warrant arrests or had been convicted in the local court system. The powers-that-be tried to keep Betsy working in the female segregated section, but there weren’t that many females booked so Betsy was often assigned to intake male prisoners.
“You like looking as my pussy, sweetie?” a drunk woman taunted as she stripped down for delousing. Betsy had to make a visual inspection of each female prisoner to make sure she wasn’t loaded with contraband. Betsy’s training officers told her the most common acts that get jailers in trouble was sex with an inmate and allowing or bringing contraband into the jail population. Cell phones, money, and narcotics were the most common contraband substances prisoners tried to sneak in. Betsy couldn’t imagine having sex with any inmate, male or female, she saw coming through the jail door. She hated the rancid body odors and stale breath emanating from the parade of new residents.
Betsy’s primary training officer was Deputy Carl Lundgren. Carl was coming off his second divorce. He was an avid outdoorsman and had rugged appeal. The guy would often disappear into the men’s locker room and emerge twenty minutes later with dog-eared pages marking his hunting, rifle, and adventure magazines.
“See this here rifle, Bits? 50 caliber. Shit, I could take down anything from a mile out. Sweet, huh?” A glaze pooled over his eyes as Carl salivated over the picture of the rifle.
“I guess, Carl. I think I’d like to try hunting with a bow. One of those new compound bows. Like the girl in Hunger Games. You ever see that movie, Carl?”
“That’s a chick flick! Fuck no, I haven’t seen it. Now give me a Bruce Willis or Stratham guy movie and I’m first in line. Kick ass stuff, that’s what turns me on.”
“Hey, what’s that Lieutenant Hansen like?” Betsy asked, the question coming out of left field one afternoon.
“Hansen? Normal guy, I guess. I stay out of his way. He’s too uptight for me. I’m thinking he’s looking at having a go at being sheriff if the old man ever decides to hang it up. Why do you ask, Bits?”
Betsy had been working in the jail for six months. She couldn’t imagine handling it for another 18 months. The whole scene demoralized her. She wanted to be a real cop. She needed more action. Lt. Hansen was in charge of Jail Operations. She had seen him making rounds and talking with the shift supervisors. She wondered if Lt. Hansen could get her assigned to the Traffic detail. Traffic operated the prisoner transport vans, taking them to and from various courts and sometimes doing pick-up duty at local agencies. Betsy thought she might like that. At least it would get her out of the jail and away from noisy drunken females and the guys who lustily grabbed their crotches and catcalled when she passed by.
“Bet you’d like some of this, huh, little lady? Ever had a black cock?” The huge black inmate had both hands down his pants eagerly cupping his groin.
Betsy reached to her side and pulled out a small canister of OC spray. This is the chemical spray that replaced Mace back in the 1980s. OC was made with cayenne pepper and was rated on a Scoville heat index. It affected a subject’s respiratory system, made him think he was suffocating, invaded his nostrils, and caused his eyes to sting and forced them shut. “How’d you like this sprayed down your pants, Everett? Heard some people call this stuff ‘fire from hell!’ You kinda get the idea, huh?”
“You know I’m just funnin’ you, Miss Betsy. I just like looking at your fine young tight ass. I might just stay a couple more months so we can get better acquainted. You wearing an itty bitty thong under those pants?” Everett began moving his hand simulating masturbation.
Betsy was getting tired of the continuous wise cracks and profane comments. She wouldn’t touch any of these inmates, male or female, with a ten foot pole. She heard bizarre stories about jailers falling in love with their charges. Betsy just shook her head at the thought. Yuck!
Whenever Betsy had an opportunity, she stopped by Lt. Hansen’s office or caught up with him during his jail rounds. Hansen was cute, Betsy thought. He couldn’t be much over forty, probably in his late thirties. She discovered he wasn’t married and apparently never had been. She wondered if he was gay. Nah, she decided.
“Betsy, you interested in going over to
the Milwaukee County Detention Facility with me in a couple weeks? I’m doing a half-day training session. You could sit in and get four hours credit for your yearly mandate. I could offer you a tour of a real jail.” Lt. Hansen looked for her reaction as he walked past the intake desk with his empty coffee cup.
“You got some fresh brew in the back room?”
“Always for you, L.T.,” she answered breezily as she buzzed him in and walked to the supply room. “What about the other guys going to training though? Don’t they have seniority? Wouldn’t they get pissed if I go and they get passed over?”
“They don’t want to go to the big city. It probably scares them shitless. That’s why they work here. Most of them got other businesses goin’ off this job or can’t wait to clock out to go fishing or hunting. This is just a second job for most of them. I sense you’re really interested in police work. Bits? Is that what you like to be called?”
“Those who know me call me Bits,” she agreed, looking straight into his blue eyes. “Had that nickname since I was in first or second grade. Just sort of stuck, I guess.” She wondered if Luke was interested in more than someone to ride with him to his class. She added, “I’d really like to go to the training, L.T.”
“It’s Luke, Bits,” he said as he poured a stream of coffee into his cup. Luke smiled as he left and said, “I’ll get the training order out in the next day or two.”
*****
The security alarm shrilled. Instantly the control panel blazed with blinking red lights indicating activation in the jail’s isolation area, the place where the crazies and suicidals were kept. The cell was located directly across from the pod control room.
“Lock everything down, Deputy McKnight!” Lt. Hansen ordered. “Get on the line to the patrol shift commander and see who’s available to help.” Hansen disappeared down the hallway, heading to the high-risk pod.
By the time Betsy arrived on the chaotic scene, the hallway was crowded with jail personnel.