|
|
|
DISTORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE
|
|
Leading the retired life I do I don’t always find it easy to come up with subjects to wrap a column around and complete my self-imposed weekly commitment to filling this space. (Commitment taken on due to knowledge that if you don’t update no one reads you). At such times I resort to my bursting file of reports composed by me during my police days and kept private since because like Sherlock Holmes with the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, I didn’t think the world was ready to hear them. Now the world is enduring a third version of King Kong, so it should be ready for anything
What I have here is an anecdote only, which won’t revolutionize anything or cause history to be rewritten from a new point of view, but does serve to illustrate the way cops did business before a man named Giuliani came along to put them right. It was like this:
One December morn in Queens two cops in the Bayside area busted two teenagers for a house burglary and brought them to the station house for examination and an inspection of the jewelry they’d carried out of the house. The kids began naming names of their escaped accomplices, including the location of one, causing a couple of cops to be sent there to get him, which they did, finding him with two rifles taken before the burglary was interrupted.
The more important information concerned the fence the boys used in the 100 burglaries they estimated they’d committed. They gave up his name and address and the fact that he carried a couple of guns to protect the stash of stolen goods in his house. A plainclothes sergeant and patrolman headed there to prevent the flight that could be expected if the fence heard from the remaining unapprehended burglar.
He had heard, apparently, because when the two cops arrived he and his son were loading up their car with loot and taking off precipitately. The cops pursued and tried to stop the pair, but they only gunned their motor and went to high speed. A caravan then formed with the sergeant in the lead car, having been joined by several patrol cars alerted by their radios.
The hoods raced through lights and against one-way signs, making sharp turns, driving onto one highway and off it onto another, but eventually they blew a tire trying to make a U-turn over a divider. The first car behind them avoided them, but the next one, the sergeant’s car, didn’t manage to avoid the radio car. The next radio car avoided a crash, but the driver fractured his hand doing it. The fourth police car also took evasive action, but the driver later was diagnosed with stomach contusions and muscle sprains.
The casualty list at Long Island Jewish Hospital was pretty big, Six cops were treated for sprains and such, but only one was admitted, the others being released. The fences were treated and not released. Two radio cars were placed out of service.
Offsetting all this was the recovery of thousands of dollars worth of stolen jewelry from the fences’ house, along with a supply of drugs and miscellaneous merchandise. Four burglars and two fences were taken out of circulation and placed in a better environment, which my bring them to repentance
Something about this sequence of events -- six damaged cops, two radio cars -- drew the attention of a Chief at headquarters who seemed to have a nasty mind. Instead of sending us a greeting card or a rosy wreath he produced a questionnaire casting doubt on the bona fides of this outstanding example of modern police work. In particular he seemed to have a bone to pick with me. He didn’t seem to care about my feelings.
He also seemed very curious about the involvement of Anti-Crime cops instead of detectives in the process. Did the detectives question the first arrestee at the station house or did someone else do it? Why was the information we got about the fences given to an Anti-Crime officer instead of detectives?
Here I’ll stop to explain that Anti-Crime cops were picked men in plainclothes working for the precinct and usually leading the way in enforcement, being active by nature and motivated by their assignment. It was often easier to rely on them for quick work than on detectives since the dicks worked around the clock, doing a lot of office time and only going out when there were interviews to be done or arrests ready to be made. Unlike Anti-Crime they did not generally patrol looking out for targets of opportunity.
In this case, however, we were able to say that the detectives did the questioning and then headed out to get a search warrant for the fences’ house. All by the book. Anti-Crime took on the surveillance of the house pending the warrant, also to prevent an escape if one were tried. As it was.
After some more nuisance questions about everyone’s turf the real complaint came to light. Why was there a chase over stolen goods? Because it was a lot of stolen goods and besides the fence’s arrested accomplice said he carried two guns.
Isn’t the investigator (me) being “silly” when he says the chase was kosher because nobody was seriously hurt and no innocent bystanders were endangered, the roadways being empty? Is he saying someone planned it that way?
Come on. The escapees chose the route It was what it was and the cops said they would have given up the chase if they endangered anyone. Escapers don’t like crowded streets either. They slow them down.
Next, Captain Goodguy wants to be nice to the cops, so he says the chase didn’t endanger anyone and only resulted in minor injuries and damage and that this proves it wasn’t reckless. He’s saying the end justifies the means
I wanted to answer that the right cliché was ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, but I refrained. Many years later Giuliani stopped the practice of nitpicking good work instead of backing it up. I had told him this, but I was only one of many, I’m sure.. I met him once and answered a question that way and maybe it entered the memory bank.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
