Paul Bacon

by Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All

“Court?”

  The driver reached into his inside lapel pocket and produced a business card. “I’m an attorney,” he said with a confident voice.

  “You’re not a doctor?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I work in malpractice claims.”

  Amazed and delighted, I took his business card and cradled it in both hands. ARDEN J. MATTINGLY, ESQ., it said. Personally, I had nothing against lawyers. Without them, there’d be no civil rights. I knew most of my colleagues did not share in my admiration, however. To cops, attorneys were rich, greasy know-it-alls who let our perps out of jail. My own feelings aside, there would be no shame in locking one up.

  I handed back the man’s card and said, “Thank you. Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping outside the car.”

  “I’m not budging until you show me where it says tinted windows are illegal,” he insisted.

  “No problem,” I said, and yelled back to the van. “Hey, sarge!”

  “Never mind,” said the man, unfastening his seat belt and opening the door.

  Mr. Mattingly clammed up after I got the cuffs on him. To show my appreciation, I continued to let my coworkers think he was a doctor. We drove him back to the Nineteenth, where I left him in a cell while I processed his arrest. It took me about thirty minutes to finish the whole job. With a suspended-license offense, also known as a five-eleven for its traffic-law code, the only evidence to voucher was the license itself. I had to send it to the DMV, but it went out via department mail, so I didn’t even have to find a stamp.

  My MSU mates had already gone back out on patrol, so when I was done, I approached the Nineteenth desk sergeant for his approval on my paperwork. “I just finished my guy,” I said. “Can I get your signature?”

  “The five-eleven guy? Yeah, sure,” said the sergeant, reaching out for my handwritten complaint report.

  He flipped the report to the back side without reading it. “When I was a cop, I used to bring in five-elevens all the time,” he said while signing his name. “So easy.”

  Handing me back the report, he said, “Your boss said the guy’s a doctor, though. That’s brutal, kid.”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah, a collar’s a collar,” he said.

  CHAPTER 18

  WITH ONLY THREE COPS in our squad and an unofficial mandate to concentrate on arrests, we turned our van into a collaring machine. In the weeks to come, we surpassed the arrest activity of all the other MSU teams combined, becoming known as the A-squad of the unit. I got most of the credit for this for some reason; maybe it’s because I brought in the first collar of MSU. I didn’t think I deserved all the congratulations and handshakes I got from the other guys in the detail. While Randall and Witherspoon raked in serious offenders, doing their part to clean up the streets, I continued to make five-eleven arrests. They’d lock up a gang member and I’d lock up a high school teacher. They’d collar a heroin dealer and I’d collar a telemarketer. Finding physical evidence on suspects was a competition and a con game, and I’d never been good at either. When it came to building a case, I preferred the cold facts of the public record. If someone popped, they popped—nothing personal about it.

  Pretty soon, my affinity for five-elevens became an addiction. Because of our squad’s phenomenal activity, Sergeant Watts procured a mobile digital terminal, or MDT, a wireless laptop with access to certain state-and federal-government crime databases. Encased in a shiny magnesium shell and rubber-padded against shock, the computer looked as if it could withstand a bomb blast, so we started calling it the “Israeli laptop.” Having it in the van not only weaned us off of our dependence on Central, who did not appreciate us putting over a car stop every ten minutes: It also turned every license plate on the road into a potential arrest.

  On our way up to Washington Heights one evening, we stopped behind a Mercedes-Benz sedan at a red light, and I couldn’t help myself. I shifted the transmission into park and began typing the vehicle’s plate number into the Israeli laptop.

  “What are you doing?” said the sergeant. “We’re still in the Nineteenth.”

  “Just practicing. I want to know this system backwards and forwards,” I assured him. This was a lie. I was secretly praying the guy would pop.

  A moment later, the laptop emitted a gentle chime, indicating that the results of my search had been transmitted. Hitting the F11 key, I called up the own er’s pedigree information, and a few extra details as well:

  SEX OFFENDER: CT, NJ, NY, PA

  “Hey, look at this,” I said.

  “Whoa,” said the sergeant. “The guy gets around.”

  “Should I pull him over?”

  “For what?”

  “He’s a sex offender.”

  “That’s a record, Bacon, not a warrant. You can’t lock someone up for having a record. He’s already been locked up,” said the sergeant. “Come on, the light’s green.”

  I shifted into drive and pulled forward through the intersection, then hit the F11 key again out of curiosity. The next search result said:

  CLASS D LICENSE—SUSPENDED (23 ON 20)

  This meant the driver had twenty-three unpaid traffic tickets on twenty dates, constituting a felony. “This guy’s got more than a record,” I told the sergeant.

  “So he’s a collar after all,” said the boss.

  I reached over to turn on the roof lights, but the sergeant batted down my hand and laughed, “You can’t be serious.”

  “You just said . . .”

  “But we got no predicate for a stop. We can’t just go fishing.”

  “He has to turn sometime, doesn’t he?” I pointed out. “What if he just happened to forget his blinker? It’s his word against mine, isn’t it?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Randall shouted from the back seat. “Can we get something to eat first?”

  “Yeah, you’re starting to scare me, kid,” said the sergeant. “What would your friends at the ACLU think about this kind of behavior?” The liberal jabs were starting to annoy me. I said, “I don’t have any friends at the ACLU.”

  Randall said, “That’s pretty obvious.”

  The sergeant said, “Let’s just grab some food, bang out our three summonses for the night, and then start making collars, legally.”

  I nodded and continued driving up First Avenue behind the Mercedes. Four blocks later, the driver turned right without putting on his signal, just as I’d hoped.

  “Wuh!” I said, pointing at the car as it disappeared around the corner.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Sergeant Watts.

  After their scolding, I started narrowing my MDT searches to actual moving violations. But this had the effect of widening my net, because it forced me to find my old Vehicle Traffic Law book and crack it open. The VTL listed thousands of violations, so many that the police academy didn’t bother testing us on it for lack of time. A hefty paperback set in blindingly small type, the VTL made for very dull reading, save for the occasional law that jumped right off the page. One obscure old code I found particularly helpful: It was illegal to have colored lights on a personal vehicle for any use other than brakes and turn signals. The law was written to prevent civilians from soup-ing up their cars like emergency vehicles, which was not a huge problem as far as I could tell. More frequently, it was broken by people who decorated the hoods of their cars with little blue running lights. They tended to be loud and flashy young men, which eliminated the guilt I would normally feel about enforcing such a silly law. When people were so desperate for attention, I was glad to give it to them.

  The more VTL codes I learned, the more licenses I could run, and the more collars I could make without a hint of doubt or remorse. Eventually, the entire driving population became my enemy. My early focus on SUV drivers widened to everyone on the road—that is, except professional drivers. I gave cabbies and movers and anyone else who worked behind the wheel a blanket amnesty for the little things. People in their own vehicles were another story. I hadn’t owned a car in thi
rteen years, so my pedestrian bias ran deep. The way I saw it, anyone who chose to drive in New York City was only capable of learning things the hard way. Plus, they were polluting my air and clogging my streets when they could have taken the train, so why shouldn’t they suffer in return?

  I could do twenty car stops a night with my voluminous knowledge of the VTL. In my experience, one out of three drivers was uninsured, which would give me a summons at least. About one in five had a suspended driver’s license, which made them collars, and one in ten had an outstanding warrant, which made them even better collars. Thanks to scofflaws, I became so familiar with the initial arrest process that some of my MSU coworkers started calling me Collarsaurus.

  One night at roll call, I was standing in formation with the rest of the MSU night tour, about fifty cops in all. We were listening to one of the squad sergeants reading off our posts when Lieutenant Carothers walked into the muster room. The lieutenant interrupted the sergeant for a brief conversation, then walked out again. The sergeant called out my name, and I put up my hand.

  “Fall out,” the sergeant said. “You got a special assignment.”

  This was the first mention of a special assignment since the beginning of our detail. A number of cops in front of me turned around and glared. I could understand if they were jealous; while we were driving around in a van all night making collars, most of them spent their nights on foot writing parking tickets. I looked back at their crusty faces and rolled my eyes like this was no big deal, trying to at least seem humble. I didn’t want their envy, but I couldn’t help feeling a little victorious. The last time I’d stood out at a roll call had been in the Three-two, when I’d raised my hand to show I hadn’t made a single arrest. I liked the view much better from here.

  A rookie on the MSU day tour named Mulligan was having a hard time processing an arrest in the nearby Twenty-fourth Precinct, and he needed help. This was all I was told before I was given keys to a patrol car and ordered to report to the Two-four as soon as possible.

  During my drive across Central Park, I rolled down my windows to let in the warm spring air. The trees were leafing up, the flowers were blooming, and I was on my way to a dazzling career in law enforcement. Swept up in it all, I started singing my own theme song: “Super cop! Coming to help you. Super cop! ”

  When I arrived at the Twenty-fourth Precinct on the Upper West Side, I walked into the station house on a cloud and approached the desk sergeant. “PO Bacon reporting as ordered, sir,” I said, throwing up a crisp salute.

  Typical of a desk sergeant, the man stared back at my fresh face as if it was a loaf of moldy bread. He returned my salute by tapping his brow with a pen and said, “And you would be?”

  “Super cop! ” I thought, but was able to restrain myself to, “I’m from MSU. I think one of my coworkers is having a little trouble with a collar.”

  “Oh, he’s trouble all right,” said the sergeant. “I’m short-handed, and he’s got two of my cops sitting on his perp while he screws around with the online. Do everyone a favor and give this kid a clue, will you? He doesn’t know his ass from a hole.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Where can I find him?”

  “In the computer room,” the sergeant grumbled, pointing me down a nearby hall before he called me back. “Wait, he’s gonna need something for later.” The sergeant reached into a drawer and pulled out what looked like the world’s largest pair of handcuffs.

  The manacles were twice as big as the ones I had hanging on my belt, and the chain between them was about a foot long. When the sergeant handed them to me, I wondered who or what they were designed for. I didn’t want to look stupid, so I said nothing and set off down the hall.

  I found Mulligan in the computer room standing beside a laser printer that was churning out pages. The tail of his uniform shirt was untucked, but he looked like he had everything under control.

  “How’s the collar going?” I asked him.

  When he turned to look at me, the cracks started to appear: His eyes were bloodshot, his complexion was a bit on the gray side, and the knuckles on his right hand were bandaged. He looked as though he’d been in a fight that he hadn’t won. “This one’s a real cunt,” he said.

  Mulligan had moved to New York from Ireland four years earlier, and he still had a noticeable brogue. Unlike many in the NYPD who prided themselves on some distant blood connection to the old country, Mulligan was an authentic Irishman, and he sounded like one. His accent might have earned him a bit of respect if it hadn’t turned him into a walking punch line. The Irish were synonymous with the old days of the NYPD, so cops would beg Mulligan to say something in uniform, then break into laughter before he finished a sentence. I’d worked with him in the Three-two, and I’d noticed that civilians found him amusing as well, especially the drunk and disorderly. He spoke better English than most police officers, but intoxicated people acted as though he was the one talking gibberish. While Mulligan tolerated his coworkers’ constant teasing, he was less than forbearing with strangers on the street. His pride got him into a lot of unnecessary conflicts, which I figured had something to do with the enormous handcuffs I was delivering him.

  I lifted up the cuffs and said, “The sergeant said you might need these.”

  “Brilliant,” Mulligan said while pulling a stack of pages off the laser printer. “Take them back to my perp’s cell, will you? And relieve those cops from the Two-four until I finish up in here.”

  I thought I’d come to help Mulligan with paperwork, not guard his prisoner. I glanced down at the manacles, which looked large enough to restrain a horse. “How big is this guy?” I said.

  “Not very . . . Oh, you thought—” Mulligan laughed. “No, those aren’t handcuffs. They’re leg shackles.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said. “Why does he need leg shackles? And why does he need two cops to watch him?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mulligan. “Just don’t stand in front of his cell. He’s a spitter.”

  Mulligan’s prisoner was being lodged in a special row of cells away from the main arrest area, called the tombs. Though the tombs were just off the lobby on the first floor, they felt at least six feet underground. A long gray cement hallway stretched down a series of windowless jail cells that smelled like latrines. I looked into one of the empty six-by-eight-foot cells and stared around in disbelief. The walls were painted black, a gloomy accent to an already oppressively small space. Brightening things up a bit were hundreds of graffiti tags of every conceivable color, artistic style, and possible meaning.

  At the end of the hallway, I saw two female police officers sitting in fold-up metal chairs, both reading magazines. When I walked toward them, one of the women bugged out her eyes and put up her hand to stop me.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just . . .” I began to say.

  “Shhh,” she said while pointing at the nearest cell.

  When her partner saw me, she closed her magazine, grabbed her baton and memo book off the floor, and started folding up her chair. They tiptoed past the prisoner’s cell and walked around me, grinning. “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “You’re lucky he’s sleeping,” one of them said before they both walked out of the tombs and closed the door.

  I stood off to one side of the prisoner’s cell while I waited for Mulligan. I wanted to see this menace with my own eyes, but I remembered he was a “spitter,” and I wasn’t entirely sure he was asleep. Every time I got the courage to peer inside, the prisoner would start mumbling, and I would flatten myself against the bars of the next cell. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me, and I poked my head around for a look. If he wasn’t the monster I was expecting, the sight of him was unsettling. A skinny man in a dirty overcoat, he was curled up on a wooden bench with his face just inches from an extraordinarily foul steel commode. He looked perfectly at peace breathing in the fetid air, but I could only look in the cell for a few seconds before I started to gag.

&nb
sp; When Mulligan walked into the tombs a half hour later, he was carrying a riot helmet. Our helmets were fitted with clear plastic face guards—very helpful, I realized, in dealing with spitting perps. “Good thinking,” I said. He’d need it.

  Mulligan stared back at me with a fake smile.

  “What?” I said nervously.

  “I had to borrow this from one of the Two-four cops, and it’s too small for my head.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not pulling your perp out of there.”

  “How else can we move him?” Mulligan said, pushing the helmet into my hands.

  “How should I know?” I said, pushing it back.

  “You make all the collars,” Mulligan said. “You must have learned something.”

  I’d never locked up anyone like this before. Most of my prisoners were motorists, people who could afford to drive a car in New York. They tended to have jobs and apartments and clean clothes, and they never resisted arrest. I didn’t want to admit how easy I’d had it so far, so I changed the subject. “Why’d you collar a homeless person anyway?” I asked Mulligan.

  “It wasn’t my decision,” he explained. “The guy was panhandling next to an ATM, and the lieutenant told me to bring him in. He put up a fight, so we had to go a few rounds on the sidewalk before I could cuff him.”

  “For panhandling?”

  “I know, right? I guess he’s there all the time, and the lieu was sick of seeing him.”

  “Great,” I said. “And now I have to pull some crazy guy out of a toilet.”

  “Either that or we call ESU.”

  ESU, the Emergency Services Unit, was the NYPD’s version of a SWAT team. This was all I’d learned about them at the academy, so I always pictured them like the SWAT teams I’d seen in movies—breaking down doors, rappelling out of helicopters, and the like.