|
|
|
ENRICHMENT. OF THE CURRICULUM? NO, THE FACULTY.
|
|
Last year in this space I wrote extensively about the cataclysm in the rich suburb of Roslyn, where the Superintendent of Schools and his chief financial officer along with others were accused of stealing over $11 million in school funds during their term of office. Last year was the year of investigations, revelations, accusations and arrests, while this year will be the year of indictments and trials. There isn’t much hope for 2006; it’s not likely that it will match up for excitement.
0n Wednesday the four alleged ringleaders appeared in court to plead to the charges against them. They all pleaded not guilty. Frank Tassone, the superintendent, was charged with grabbing $2 million, while his roommate, Stephen Signorelli, an outside vendor to whom he paid out school funds for testing and surveying and such, was charged with falsifying records and kicking back $219,000 to Tassone. Mrs. Gluckin, the financial whiz, was accused of swiping $4 million, with which she bought four houses and, get this, a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Lexus, a Maserati, and a Jaguar. When she went shopping on Jericho Turnpike, the car dealers hung out their flags and there was dancing in the streets.
Her car-shopping has subsided a bit since her arrest last year, but she apparently has spent money on a weight-loss program, since her appearance has greatly improved. There’s nothing like a prospective trial for making people spruce themselves up. Of course the furs and diamonds have to be left home, but a snappy getup and a firm chinline is never out of place.
Presumably Mrs. Gluckin’s niece, Mrs. Rigano, who worked in her office, will also be putting her best foot forward. She is accused of diverting $780,000 of district funds to her own use, so she would need to. She’ll have to explain the needs she felt for a Rolex, $12.000 worth of other jewelry, $27,000 cash advances from credit cards, and the hundreds of thousands she charged to school credit cards in her possession. That’s a lot of explaining to do, but there is some evidence that she might not have to.
This is what the newspapers deduced from the fact that the two women above arrived in court without handcuffs, whereas the men were cuffed up like murderers. The reporters on the story concluded that that probably meant the girls were cooperating and were going to testify against the men. They may very well be right.
Another explanation might fit the case however. Maybe we’re having a return to civilization. You see, this business of handcuffing women is something new. In my day as a cop the rulebook said flatly “Women and children will not be handcuffed unless necessary”. What primitives we were. Imagine, special consideration for women. Didn’t we know that women are actually no different from men and should be treated just the same under all circumstances? Isn’t this what the whole lesbian world demands and shouldn’t their demands be heeded by the rest of us and met to the best of our ability? Don’t we believe in jellyfish justice and in compliance with the requirements of pressure groups at all costs?
Well, no, I don’t. I think we ought to return to civilization and ignore the outbursts of lesbians and revert to natural behavior. Leave the unnatural stuff to those who like it. Let them go their way while the rest of us go our way.
None of the newspapers entertained my explanation of the absence of cuffs, probably because their experience doesn’t go back to the time when there were no handcuffs, at least not in New York. In the 50’s New York hadn’t started using them. Other jurisdictions did, but that just hardened the opposition in NewYork. Nobody was going to tell us what to do. So we cops got along with nothing more than a pair of “nippers” as they were called. This was a chain you could twist around a prisoner’s wrist to subdue him to your mighty power. Of course if he was the one with the mighty power, he could use it to drag you along the street behind him, instead of doing things your way. The only thing left to you was to threaten to shoot the bugger if he didn’t stop. It was a messy way to do things.
We looked around for alternatives. One of them, as I recall, was the “Iron Claw”, which was a clamp on the wrist instead of a chain. It was used some places outside of New York, but we rank and file weren’t interested in it here, not seeing much advantage in it over the nippers.
My own solution, which however I never offered publicly, was a simple dog leash of a strong type, to be used in the same way as on beagles or terriers. Get it around a culprit’s neck one time and you were in command. So what if some sensitive people thought it was dehumanizing? So what if the prisoner might take it into his head to start barking to make the same point? Are we going to be intimidated by this kind of thing? Yes we are, Officer, or don’t you realize this idea is insane?
Since I figured the answer would be yes, I kept my idea to myself, and along with everyone else welcomed the adoption of handcuffs when the department finally gave in and started using them. They saved a lot of broken bones, especially for cop-fighters. They immobilized these types before they could begin beating on the cop like a drum. So retaliation against them wasn’t necessary and they were fit for presentation in court.
The use of cuffs is still a sore point with me, though, because it seems to have become a symbol to the rights crowd of equal treatment for women. Equality over civility is what they want. I’ve seen these equal rights in action as in one encounter I had working for a New York bank. I called from a Brooklyn branch to tell a vice president that a teller under suspicion had admitted to stealing some deposits. Lock her up, he told me. So I called 911 and the cops duly arrived to remove her. On the way out the door I asked them, fellows, can we do without the cuffs on this kid? Okay, they said, but not when we get to the station house.
In the end I left a girl, four foot ten, weighing 96 pounds, handcuffed to a hook on the wall of the station house. This is civilization? Not by me. I’ll be writing again about the school swindles and some more about handcuffs on males and my solution therefor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
