Hero To Zero 2nd edition

by Fortier, Zach

  Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. Before he achieved hero status by running away during the mall shooting, Zeller had been on a call one night breaking up a loud party. He told the partygoers to keep the noise down, and while he was looking around, he saw a girl he liked. He came back later and convinced her to give him a blowjob while others at the party watched.

  She was willing at the time; problem was, she was underage. A minor.

  When she came forward with witnesses to the event, Zeller tried to deny it had ever happened. The chief again sent his spokesman to support Zeller and claim it was all lies, and that there were people out to discredit Zeller because he was a proven national hero.

  It was all smoke and mirrors, of course, and Zeller was history. The chief eventually disowned him. Zeller was decertified and stripped of his police officer status, and eventually ended up in jail.

  He was never a “real” hero, but he definitely hit zero. I am sure the sergeant and the SWAT team members who really did stop the killer that day had smiles on their faces at the news of Zeller’s very public demise. I know I did.

  MORE THAN ANYTHING, ED MASCARENAS wanted to be a cop. He had entered the Marines after high school and did a four-year enlistment. He did some time in Bosnia while he was in the Marines, and then elected to get out when his enlistment was up.

  He applied at the police department in my city and was picked up as a non-sworn community-service officer, tasked with handling cold calls not considered important enough for sworn officers. Mascarenas immediately made a name for himself as a go-to-guy in the community service officer (CSO) group.

  He came in early, stayed late, and was always available for overtime shifts. That was what the brass looked for in the new guys—workers who were willing and able to put the job above all else, make the job their only reason for living. It was a philosophy that came back to haunt them time and time again.

  Police work is taxing, and even the most resilient cops get jaded and twisted from the job. The brass didn’t care. They wanted production and enthusiasm. When the new guys burned out and fell apart, they’d just get more young, fresh meat. This kept budget costs down and production up. Ed Mascarenas wrote more reports and handled more cold calls than any other CSO in the department. One night after he had come to patrol, I asked him how he did it, and he admitted that he took paperwork home and did cases on his off-duty time to stay ahead of the rest of the group.

  “That’s crazy!”

  “I was going to get to sworn status no matter what it costs me, and I have to prove myself. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of my goal of being a patrolman.”

  It took about a year, and the brass liked what they saw: another go-getter to add to the growing list of new guys. They offered him a job on the road, and he jumped at the opportunity.

  While Ed was working as a non-sworn officer, he had to do a lot of tasks in the records division—filing papers, writing cold reports, and answering the phones. He hated the work, but there was one major benefit to the job. The department had recently hired several young women as records clerks. Ed was able to spend a lot of time with the new hires, and eventually he fell hard for a nineteen-year-old clerk.

  He was twenty-six, and in a dying marriage with his high school sweetheart. They had grown in totally opposite directions since Ed had decided to become a cop, and he was miserable. It took him about a nanosecond to decide that he wanted out of the marriage when he met “Victory,” the nineteen-year-old records clerk.

  Ed ended his marriage and became a sworn officer at about the same time. His life was turning around and his dreams were coming true. He was now a patrolman with a beautiful young girlfriend.

  He started in patrol with the same enthusiasm that he had shown as a CSO. He was coming in early, going home late, and always working overtime. He appeared to be headed for greatness in the department.

  He received his first medal about a year later for saving an infant who was drowning in a swimming pool in the backyard of the child’s home. The child’s mother had left the infant in a wading pool and had gone inside their house. She came back to find the child face-down in the pool. She called 911, but was so distraught she could not determine whether the child was breathing or not.

  Ed was working that night and monitoring the dispatchers on the medical channel with his own personal police scanner. He heard the call come in about a possible drowning, and jumped the call. He arrived several minutes ahead of paramedics and started infant CPR on the drowned child. By the time paramedics arrived, he had the child breathing and crying loudly.

  He was credited with saving the child, and received the department’s lifesaving medal. No one could remember the last time a lifesaving medal had been awarded issued. Ed was proud, as he should have been. His enthusiasm and zest for the job had saved the child’s life. He liked how it felt to be recognized by the chief as a hero. The local paper ran an article about him as well. He received a lot of recognition in the community for the incident.

  His new girlfriend was proud as well. She beamed as she stood at his side while he was given the medal at the annual awards ceremony.

  Ed doubled his efforts, made even more arrests, and handled more cases than any other officer on his squad. He fell back on the tactic of taking home cases that were not high-priority and writing them up in his off time. This enabled him to get back on the road, available sooner for the next call that came up in his area.

  The brass loved it. His stats were so far above any one of the other officers’ stats on his shift that they were almost double the next-highest producing officers. The sergeant praised him daily. The chief left him personal notes in his mailbox, praising his performance. The sky appeared to be the limit for him in the department.

  The practice of taking paperwork home, however, eventually came back to bite Ed in the ass. He started to lose cases and case notes. The reports went unwritten, incidents were not recorded, and Ed was in trouble. He had to admit to the brass that he had been taking work home and doing it off-duty, which wasn’t technically allowed. Instead of punishing him, though, they gave him a slap on the wrist and sent him back out on the street. He was told to keep up his strong work ethic, but to stop taking casework home.

  A short time later, he saved another child in much the same fashion as the first child. Again the mother had fished the infant out of a small wading pool. She was also so distraught that she could not tell the dispatcher if the child was breathing or not.

  Ed again overheard the dispatch and responded. He again arrived before paramedics, and claimed the child had not been breathing when he arrived. He said that he started infant CPR on the child and that it started to breathe again.

  Paramedics found this suspicious.

  Their resuscitation rate with CPR was never as successful as Ed had been. They quietly mumbled that something was wrong with this repeated lifesaving by the enthusiastic officer. The brass pushed their suspicious complaints aside, and Ed was awarded another Lifesaving medal. He now had two in fewer than five years on the department.

  Six months went by, and Ed Mascarenas was on patrol. He called on the radio one afternoon about another child he said he had watched fall into a backyard pool as he drove past a house. He had jumped out of his patrol car, hopped the fence that enclosed the backyard of the residence, and grabbed the child he said he saw fall into the pool. He said that he had started CPR, and requested immediate medical response.

  He claimed the child was not breathing and that he had resuscitated it, as he had the past two victims. This time, however, things did not add up. The child was too small to have climbed into the above-ground pool, and had been left in a swing by her mother for a brief moment while the mother went into the house. She came back out to find her child was in Ed’s arms, wet from the pool, and he claimed to have saved her from drowning.

  They say lightning never strikes twice, but how about three times? This time, no one believed Ed. He was pissed that the
tactic backfired—and now there was an investigation into the previous lifesaving events.

  He was never formally charged with falsifying reports, but the rumor mill kept whispering that the lifesaving events were now being questioned and Ed was being watched. Not surprisingly, Ed never saved another infant.

  Instead, he looked for other ways to shine. He eventually worked his way into the DUI squad. He volunteered to become a Drug Recognition Expert (DRE). He, along with one other officer, was sent to the DRE school, and six months later both were certified as DRE-trained and -certified officers.

  His work ethic was taking its toll on his relationship with his new bride. He and Victory had been married for about a year, and they had a child on the way. It would be his second child, and her first. He worked harder to pay the bills and took whatever overtime he could.

  One night he was headed home, after already having been held over for two hours , and an officer called out that he had a located a DUI and asked if Ed could respond. Ed paused and then said yes, he could. He came back to work, completed the DUI paperwork, and then signed off the radio, telling dispatch that he was done for the night.

  He headed home, and about half-a-mile later he was hit broadside by another drunk driver. His left shoulder was injured in the impact, and he required medical treatment. He was about to get a reality check.

  When he went to file a workers’ compensation claim, the department denied it. They said that because he had signed off the radio two minutes before the crash, he was no longer at work. They would pay him no compensation for his injuries.

  Ed could not believe what he was hearing. His medical bills started to pile up, and he was unable to work because of the injury.

  This was the beginning of the end for Ed. As the bills piled up, he eventually lied about his condition and came back to work before his shoulder was healed.

  He tried to work his way out of the bills, picking up every overtime shift he could. His new wife was mad that he was never around to help with their new child—while his ex-wife was pushing for more child support for his first child.

  He was getting jammed from every angle. To make matters worse, soon after this happened, his ex-wife was charged for check fraud, and he had to take custody of their child while she served time in prison. He kept fighting back, working hard, and nursing the injured shoulder. He was under a lot of stress.

  There was an apartment building in the center of the city that housed mostly poor people. Entire families would be housed in one-bedroom apartments. The building had been an upscale apartment house in the 1940s, but fifty years later it was run down and overpopulated.

  One night, an elderly man was sitting in the basement of the building, in a recliner someone had thrown away. Somehow it had made its way into the basement, and it was where this man slept if he found it vacant at night.

  The man was homeless. This was one of many places he had found in the inner city to stay, which was out of the elements, and relatively safe. He would sift through the cigarette butt cans outside the apartment building, looking for discarded portions of used cigarettes. One night he found several, and began to smoke in this favorite throw-away chair in the basement of the building. He fell asleep, and the cigarette fell out of his hand into the cracks of the chair’s upholstery.

  An hour later, he woke up to find his chair on fire. He ran from the building, but warned no one. The building was quickly engulfed.

  Ed was on duty that night, and responded to the report of the fire. He and many other officers arrived and were out of their vehicles. They entered the burning building, grabbing children, old men, women, and anyone they could save, dragging them from the smoke.

  Ed finally really was a hero, and the reality was painful. He and his fellow officers saved a lot of people, but not everyone. He had to stand by and listen while people screamed from inside the building as they burned to death. His shoulder had not healed, and in the rush to save people he had aggravated the injury.

  I talked to him the next day, and he broke down in tears. He told me about hearing little children screaming from inside the burning building, and feeling helpless and unable to do anything while they burned alive.

  His shoulder was really in bad shape now, and he asked me to tell no one how bad it really was. I agreed not to tell anyone. About a month went by, and he decided to try to get a job in another department.

  This happens a lot after an incident like that fire. Cops will leave to try to get away from the memories of death. Ed was testing for the new job, and could not pass the physical because of his injured shoulder. He was really depressed afterwards, and started to drink a lot.

  Soon after, he was caught drunk-driving and arrested for DUI. His medals and work ethic meant nothing now. He was a DUI enforcement officer and had been caught driving drunk. He was disgraced. He was convicted and lost the job that had meant so much to him. His new wife left him as well. His entire life fell apart in the space of six months.

  He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to recover his life. The last I heard, he was running a backhoe for an outdoor pool company. He was now digging the holes for installing the swimming pools out of which he had pulled the alleged drowned infants years earlier.

  OUR DEPARTMENT HAD SEVERAL SETS of brothers working as cops. Looking back now, I recall at least five sets of brothers working for the department. But none of them were more dysfunctional than the Preston brothers. They are great examples of amazing cops who went down in flames.

  The Preston brothers were as different as night and day. Mike, the older one, was tall, thin, and had a head full of dark hair. He loved attention, loved to party, and went to all the department functions. Scott, the younger one, was stocky, athletic, had thinning hair, and was edgy as hell. He hated parties. He trusted and socialized with no one. Both were gifted in their own way. Here are their stories:

  MIKE PRESTON

  Mike Preston had one major goal as a kid. He wanted to be a cop more than anything. He watched every Dirty Harry Callahan movie, every John Wayne movie, and every cop show there was to watch on TV. He had to become a cop; it was an obsession. But he had some very serious obstacles to overcome to make that goal a reality.

  First, Mike and Scott were both raised poor in the city in which they worked. That meant baggage from inner-city life. Mike was a high-school dropout. At seventeen, he had been kicked out of every high school within driving range for fighting and failure to attend classes. He could not overcome the demons of his childhood. Angry and looking for a face to smash so he could vent his anger, he fought all the time, and when there was no one to fight, there was always his favorite punching bag: his brother Scott.

  At twenty-four, Mike decided it was time to turn his life around. He was working as a gas-station attendant for minimum wage. He had not graduated high school. He had an arrest record for drugs. He was married to a woman he had met at a drag race in which he was driving, and he had impregnated her with one of the five illegitimate children he would eventually sire. But in spite of all that, he decided one day to try to become a cop.

  If he had had any idea what a long shot it was for a convicted drug grower and user to become a cop, he would have tried for something else. But he had no idea that people who get arrested for drugs never make it as cops. So he charged forward.

  To make a very long story short, he amazingly overcame all those obstacles. He had his criminal record expunged, obtained his GED, he divorced the crazy drag-racing groupie he’d married, and through a series of incredibly lucky breaks became a cop in the city in which he and his brother Scott had grown up.

  In his mind, Mike had arrived. He had dug himself out of a crushing hole of poverty and no future and had become a cop. He bought a used Corvette to reward himself.

  He worked all the overtime shifts he could get, and saved up for his dream house in the mountains above the city. He was not a good father, or a good husband. But he had achieved his childhood dream of being a cop.

>   His father was immensely proud of Mike, his oldest son, and of his accomplishments. He bragged about him often at the coffee shop in the afternoons, after work, and on the weekends.

  One day Mike’s dad had coffee at his favorite coffee shop with a man who was also a cop.

  “Do you know my son, Mike? If so, what do you think of him?”

  “You should be proud of him. Mike is an outstanding rookie and a bright star in the department. Mike has some issues, he has a hard time controlling his anger, and the department has taken his nightstick away for excessive force, but overall he is going to be a solid cop…someday.”

  Mike’s dad beamed with pride at this report on his oldest son. Think of how he felt, knowing his oldest son was a cop in the city in which he had raised him. He could not have been more proud of his son and all that he had overcome to get where he was.

  Mike paid his dues in patrol. He handled calls like the rest of the rookies. He had a few bumps along the way, and nearly lost it all when one day a senior patrolman suddenly remembered who Mike really was. Mike had a past in the city as a drug user and a street cruiser who did nothing but look for fights. Mike told me one night while we sat and talked in a parking lot that one day a senior patrolman suddenly remembered the loser version of Mike and remembered that he had been arrested for growing pot in his apartment. This should have shown up on his background investigation when he was hired, but it had not.

  The hunt was on. The senior patrolman was out to rid the department of Mike and shatter his dream of being a cop. Mike told me that he was seriously worried that his past had come back to haunt him. He was called in to the administration and had to meet with a crusty old lieutenant, who also was in charge of the computer and records section for the department.