by John Hersey
“It was about one thirty in the morning. I was leaving my girl friend’s apartment downtown, took her to a show or something and I dropped her off, and I was leaving, had my car parked out in front of her place, and across the street I saw this red convertible parked at a flower shop. I noticed this fellow behind the driver’s seat fiddling around down there. He couldn’t find the key was what it actually was, but I thought he was hotwiring the car. He started the car, and after that he opened the passenger door and two guys came running out of the shadows, and one guy got in the front seat and one guy got in the back seat.
“Well, to me this was a stolen car. Police officers tell you, you know, old-timers, they say, ‘Don’t get involved in that stuff,’ and I’ve heard it a million times, and I said to myself that I wasn’t going to get involved. I had my mind made up that the first police car I came to I was going to give them the information, tell them what I saw, not tell them anything about who I was or what I was, and just be on my way and let them take care of it.
“Started following this car down Adams. Got to Grand River. I followed them. Not a scout car in sight. Citizens tell me this all the time: ‘Whenever we need you, you’re not there.’ But this particular time I needed a police car and I couldn’t find one, either. So I sympathize with them.
“We were going down Grand River, we passed the Olympia, got to around West Grand Boulevard. I figured they were going way out Grand River, and I was going the other way, I was supposed to be going out Gratiot, see, so I was just getting farther and farther from my destination. So what I did was pull alongside of them and take a look at them, at the two fellows in front, and tried to remember the face of the driver, and then I was just going to fall back and start going my way, and as soon as I saw a police car, tell them, have them radio it in and see if it was a stolen car—be some help.
“So then I dropped back, and I was going to turn off, and they turned in to the curb right next to a beer-and-wine store that was still open. So it was still perfect; it was a perfect UDAA [Unlawfully Driving Automobile Away]. So I passed them, and I was watching them in the rear-view mirror, and I noticed that their one headlight on the left was dim, and I could distinguish their car from the front, now. When they pulled into the beer-and-wine place, I figured it backed my assumption, because if they did steal the car they were going to stop for some booze, get liquored up.
“So I was going down Grand River on the inside lane, and I’m watching the headlights of this car, and I pass one light and I’m coming to this other light, and it’s green. So I slowed down so that I could hit the light so they could catch up to me, because at that time I was almost convinced that I wanted to follow and see where they go. Everything was pointing at their being a stolen car.
“So the light finally changed red and I went up there and stopped, and I was watching these two headlights, see, because there were other cars coming down Grand River at that time, and it was hard to distinguish the two; I wanted to keep them in my sight.
“Just at that time two prostitutes jumped in the car. Colored one and a white one. I had stopped for a paper downtown and I’d opened the door for the guy, so the stupid car door was unlocked; otherwise it would have been locked. The colored one did all the talking, she was the old pro, and the white one, she was real nervous, she was learning the trade.
“So they said, ‘We’ll give you anything you want for twenty-five bucks.’
“I said, you know, ‘Get out of the car.’ Because at this time, I’d been working with these girls for almost two years, and prostitutes don’t really concern me, they’re not something that really scares me now; I can look a prostitute in the face and not shiver. So I just halfheartedly pushed them out, and I was still trying to keep track of this stupid car. Told them to get out, pushed them. Looked up in the rear-view mirror and the next thing I knew the colored prostitute had a knife, a little thing; she had it right up to my throat. That wiped away all thought of the stolen car at that time.
“She said, ‘Drive forward, make a left-hand turn at the next street.’ So I waited till the traffic cleared, drove forward, made a left-hand turn. She seemed to know where she was going, so she said, ‘Keep going.’ It was getting darker and darker. So she says, ‘Turn right on the next street.’ It was all black down there, pitch black.
“After I turned down that street, she seemed to get a little lax, you know, she figured me as just an easy Murphy and dropped the knife from my throat down here”—pointing at his chest—“and as soon as she lowered the knife I had my chance. I slammed on the brakes, grabbed her hand, threw the gearshift in ‘park.’ I was wrestling with her in the car. I grabbed her hand that had the knife in it, and she grabbed me by this hand, started tearing my skin apart. She pressed so hard on my skin that I had a bruise for three weeks after that. I was down, I went into the well of the car with her, trying to knock the knife out of her hand, while her white partner was laying over her beating on my head.
“I had a knife in my pocket, so I pulled that knife out. I’ve got hundreds of knives I took off people, I just had one of the knives. Usually the people that carry these knives will work them so you can open them with one hand, they’re so proficient at it they can open it faster than you can open a switchblade.” Senak reached in his desk drawer as he talked and pulled out a clasp knife and opened it with his left hand. “So I more or less did what I’m doing now,” he said, “and opened it. When she saw that thing of mine she let loose of her knife, and I closed it. I think this is where she got cut, I can’t see anywhere else.
“And then we went into the back seat, we were halfway into the back seat. I knocked her knife out of her hand, and it fell down in the back seat. I figured, ‘Beautiful!’ You know, I had it made now. They were unarmed, I could get them out of the car. So, pulled her up, and I started pushing her toward the door, the other broad gets over the seat, starts picking up her knife and opening it. So I have to let go of the colored girl and grab the other one to stop her from opening the stupid knife. I knocked her back. I came back, I was getting the colored girl on the top of my back, and the white girl got scared, after I pushed her against the door, so she opened the door as she was getting out and I pushed the colored girl. Well, when I pushed her out, her wig and her shoe came off.
“And so, being the obstinate police officer that I am, I had no intention of giving them back to her, you know, shaking hands and leaving the scene. So I just left, and I threw the shoe and the wig out somewhere between there and my house.
“What happened was that they were walking back to the corner, see, down this street. A scout car happened to pass. She was really angry about losing her wig; those wigs cost quite a bit of money. And her shoe. So what she did was go to the police officer and say that she was having an argument with a guy and he cut her, and she wants to file charges. They gave the wrong names, wrong addresses. They said they were cut, and they wouldn’t take any medical aid; the officers offered to take them to the station. But the only thing they said that was true was my license number. The only reason they gave my license number was that they wanted to get me in trouble because I took their wig. Working with prostitutes that was the last thing I thought they were going to do; I didn’t think she was going to be so mad about her wig. Otherwise I would have given it to her.
“As it happened, they had my license number so they came over here and picked me up.”
2. The Female Negro Refusing to Leave
Oct. 13, 1967. To: Chief of Detectives.
Subject: FELONIOUS ASSAULT of DIANE TAYLOR F/N/22 of 2740 W. Chicago, Apt. 104 and PAT STAFFORD F/W/21 of 2211 W. Grd. Blvd., Apt. 208 Rio Gran Motel phone 894-6200 and the Arrest of DAVID SENAK W/25. Held for F.A.
“1) At 2:30 a.m. received a call from Patr. John Ronan who stated that at 1:55 a.m. while in company with his partner Patr. Gerald Boucher on scout 6-5 they received a radio run to 8924 Dailey Court ‘A cutting.’
“2) Upon arrival at the run location they talked to the compl
ainants who stated that at 1:40 a.m. they had just left the New Yorker Bar, 8985 Grand River. A lone white male in a late model gray-blue Chrysler AF7245 pulled up and called them to the car. They entered and he drove to Hillsboro and Dailey. An argument ensued over the female Negro refusing to leave the car. At this time he struck Taylor on the right eye, then produced a knife and cut both complainants about the hands and wrists. They got out of the car and the man escaped driving north on Dailey towards Grd. River. Both complainants refused medical attention.
“3) Vehicle is registered to the arrested subject, who at the time is a suspended Detroit Police Officer from the 13th precinct.
“4) At 2:50 a.m. Sgts. Henry Gizicki and Al Trafton arrested the subject at his home.
“5) Scout 6-5 was sent to 2740 W. Chicago to contact the complainant and she is unknown at this address, and also to the Rio Gran Motel Apt. 208 where it was found that Stafford lives there, but is registered under the name of Donna Crawford.”
3. Disposition
“Those girls,” Assistant Prosecutor Garber said to me, “want to stay as far as possible from Beaubien Street, so they didn’t press charges, though both were rather badly cut.”
“They finally kicked the case,” David Senak said.
48
A WINTER OF WAITING
1. Surpassing Rage
On November 3, Chaney Pollard was released from the Naval Hospital in Oakland and was placed on guard duty at the Treasure Island station; later he was returned to full duty, and in the winter he was granted leave to visit his family at home.
Tanner Pollard managed to stay fairly broke. During the year he had worked part-time as a waiter and busboy at the Black Knight Supper Club, where, with tips, he averaged ten to fifteen dollars a night; that job had gone with the riot, during which the club had been burned down. He worked awhile as parking attendant at the Sir Loin Inn, where, with tips, he could make four or five dollars an hour. He also worked in passing as a salesman for Snow Maid foods and for places called Jimmy’s and King’s Arms. He had paid $595 for his car, $150 for its engine; a total loss. He had had a collision in the rain one night on the Expressway and had paid a lady $50 to fix her car; he had had to pay $45 in court costs on that case. On October 26 he had to pay a $5 fine for jaywalking. In November he paid $35 for a bondsman so as not to be held in Wayne County Jail while waiting for trial for driving without a license; that case cost him $70, plus a fine of $150 for foolishly trying to break away, while being boarded on a bus for Dehoco, to telephone his employer, because he was fearful of losing his job. On his release from Dehoco he found he had indeed lost it. He mostly stayed home after that taking care of the baby, Palarena. His wife Lucy earned $5 or $10 a night several nights a week go-going.
In January the family visited Robert at Ionia, and they found him in a surpassing rage. The source of his fury was the history of police beatings of Pollards—his own beating, the time the police told his mother he had tried to commit suicide; Tanner’s beating, the night of the fight at the Twenty Grand; Auburey’s beating, before he was killed. Mrs. Pollard told me that Robert had said he was a member of the “in crowd” at Ionia, and that when he got out he wanted to collect in person some of the debts of pain he felt the Detroit Police Department owed the Pollard family. Mr. Pollard was so upset by Robert’s tirade that he got two tickets driving home from the prison. In February, Robert was moved to Cassidy Lake Technical School, at Chelsea, Michigan, where he would be able both to learn a trade and have some psychiatric therapy.
Mrs. Pollard waited.
49
THREE MEN AT WORK
1. Everything on the Line
“It’s a good thing I have something to back up on,” Robert Paille said to me, “because I had operated machinery before. Construction equipment and that. And after this happened there, I went to the union, and I told them my previous experience, in that if I didn’t have the experience I wouldn’t never have got on, and I got a job, you know, as an equipment operator. I been working on cranes. I have been working at River Rouge here, where this other crane operator just went in. Most of the time I’ve been oiling, but I have operated machinery and that. It’s the only thing I hadn’t handled before was cranes, so the best way to get in as an operator is to oil; you see, you learn all the functions of the machinery and all, because it’s too much responsibility, you know, you can kill somebody very easy with something like that. Getting much better pay than as a policeman, but I do like police work better. When I was working this other job here, this one at River Rouge there, I wasn’t taking home anything less than $172 a week; I was getting only about $112 a week take-home as a police officer. I’m right between jobs now. I just got laid off this last Thursday, I was working over at the GM Tech Center.
“I was on one of the jobs over there, and this one fellow didn’t recognize me, a white man, and right away he comes out of nowhere, and he says to me, he says, ‘Remember that Algiers Motel last summer?’ I says, ‘Yeah, what about it?’ He says, ‘You know those policemen involved in that?’ I says, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘You know what they should do with them?’ ‘What?’ He says, ‘Hang them.’ I says, ‘Why?’ He says, ‘You and I both know what happened over there. These white policemen broke into the building over there, saw these white girls with these colored guys there and killed them.’ I says, I says, ‘You’re all wet in that.’ I says, ‘How do you—’ He says, ‘What do you mean?’ I says, ‘First of all, the police is conditioned to that type of environment there. He’s in contact with these whores all the time. You know, in fact, these colored guys are in bad company, as far as I’m concerned. And why should he put his life, his job, everything he has on the line just for one little single incident? There’s no sense in it.’ And I says, ‘Were you there?’ He says, ‘No.’ So I says, ‘Well, don’t make any hasty decisions about that.’ ”
2. Instead of Being a Peace Officer
“I am working now as a plant guard, security guard,” Ronald August told me in midwinter. “I’m on midnights, which there’s no sidearm or—all you do is make your fire patrols, it’s strictly, instead of being a peace officer or police officer with the idea of law enforcement, you’re strictly just like a fire patrol.
“I sleep practically most of the day—she says. I don’t feel like it; seems like I get in there four hours, but my wife says it’s all day. But we have a babysitter come in till two, and that way I can catch some sleep. She likes her nursing, she says she’ll never quit. I believe I’d like to see her keep it up, but not so much, not so many days in a week. She’s working now about four days a week. I’d like her to go back to three days. I guess she makes about eighty dollars, seventy-five dollars a week, depending on how many hours she puts in. When she was working full-time, she was making more than I was, when she worked down at Children’s.
“I’m doing better. Before, I took home $122, after deductions, and now I’m taking home about $140 after deductions, weekly. Average, so to speak. If I work a Sunday, I make time and a half, where down there, you don’t. Down there, you’ll spend as much as three to five dollars a week on cleaning your clothes and buying shoe polish or something, but where I’m at now, you got your shoe kit and you shine your shoes; your clothes are dirty, you take them off and throw them in the basket and you get a lockerful of clean ones at their expense. So I mean this counts up a lot.”
3. A Broken Ankle
“When it got cold,” David Senak told me, “I had a job with a friend’s father for a while, scraping, bumping and scraping of machines. Worst work I ever did in my life.
“Well, for about a good three months there I think there were maybe four places I went to—here, two friends’ houses, and driving around. Didn’t go to a show, didn’t go anywhere but those four places. Didn’t see too many people because I was embarrassed that I got the Police Department into trouble. My close friends, like the police officer that was my partner for a year and a half, and him and his wife, you know, know me, and I know
that they have confidence in me, but the general public and the Police Department, to them I let the Police Department down because I got them in trouble. I had a bad feeling about seeing people. I didn’t want people to say, ‘Aw, we know that you’re all right,’ you know, ‘we know that you did good, and they won’t do anything to you because you’re innocent.’ A lot of people just say it to say something, to be able to say something, and I don’t particularly like it. You’d rather have them not say anything than to just compromise me, so I stayed away from people for a while.
“Then I got another job with a buddy in the Air National Guard helping him with delivering refrigerators, and fell off the outside of a house, about thirty or forty feet. Broke my ankle.
“This was before Christmas. I was helping him move refrigerators. This time we were installing air conditioners in Lansing, and their basements in Lansing are the type that are three quarters above the level, they’re on a sloping hill; I fell from the second floor to the sublevel.
“What happened was that I was boosting this air conditioner up the stairs; the stairs were wooden, they were outside—and came to the last step on the second floor and lifted it up, and there was no guard rail in back of me, and the weight of the air conditioner pushed me back, and for a second there I was standing in midair for a long enough time for me to look down, see the concrete below me, and know that if I hit it I’d be in trouble. So as I was falling down I was facing the building, and I turned my body around so that I hit the grass, or all of me hit the grass but my ankle. My ankle caught the end of the concrete steps. The air conditioner stayed up, luckily; had it gone down there might have been a little more trouble.
