by Luke Waters
Con artists usually don’t carry guns, but you have to assume they will try to resist arrest and we didn’t want any shots fired in Manhattan. This was not the Bronx, and Mayor Giuliani actually cared about what went on in this part of his city, so we pulled our vehicles in behind and in front of our target car and boxed them in before jumping out, pistols drawn.
“Police officer. Show me your hands. Do it now!” yelled brick-house Nick.
“Policía! Todos ustedes pongan sus manos arriba! Rapido!” Judy added aggressively a couple of times from behind her Glock, just to keep it multicultural. I got such a fright I nearly put my hands up, too.
We took the prisoners over to the nearest precinct and I read them their Miranda rights before arresting both men on charges of fraud, which was enough to hold them for interrogation. Pretty soon the details of the ruse emerged.
One of the gang had read a magazine article in which an official at Chemical Bank highlighted the customer-friendly attitude of the large retail bank, explaining that branches were authorized to cash up to three thousand dollars without the usual time-consuming questions. Armed with this knowledge, our perps would go into an American Express office in Bogotá, buy, say, fifty grand or more in checks, and wait a day before reporting them stolen.
As soon as their money was reimbursed they would then hop on the next flight to JFK, wasting no time in cashing the checks at various Chemical Bank branches, confident that the details hadn’t filtered through from the company.
*
Sometimes the scammers were even cops, or at least appeared to be. June 15, 1996, found us driving down Scam Avenue, shimmying and sweltering in ninety degrees of summer sunshine.
The air-conditioning of the Crown Vic was on full-blast when Jack spotted a pistol-sized bulge under the suit of a well-dressed, sober-looking black male in his mid-thirties strolling along the sidewalk.
“Gotta be an MOS,” he said. “What the hell? Let’s pull him over, anyway.”
There are forty thousand police officers in New York, almost all of them carrying handguns, on and off duty, and when you add in state troopers, feds, and plainclothes military police, you realize that there are a lot of people who are entitled to pack a piece, without even taking into account ordinary citizens with carry permits.
As a New York City police officer you are legally entitled to stop, question, and frisk someone if you have reasonable suspicion that they are carrying a gun, but our suspect was relaxed and cooperative right from the start, and as my partner predicted it looked like we had simply stopped an off-duty cop.
“It’s okay, guys, I’m on the Job,” the man said as we took out our badges, his lips parting in a smile which showed a gap between his two front teeth.
“The Job? What job would that be?” I echoed, playing the Dumb Mick. On the street, knowledge is power, and you learn early on not to give up information that may give you an edge. Most of my neighbors had no idea what I did for a living in my twenty years with the department, though some knew I worked for the city in an office somewhere.
“Same job as you guys, of course.” The pedestrian grinned. “I’m Gene Harrison, NYPD detective.”
“Oh, yeah. No problem, Detective Harrison,” I said in response. “You know the routine, though, we still have to check.”
“Sure,” Harrison replied. “Do ya thing.”
The atmosphere was relaxed as Jack shaded his eyes from the bright sunshine, peering at the credentials the man had just handed him. Harrison’s badge and laminated photo ID card, which were carried by all MOS, seemed identical to those in my own pocket. Well, maybe not identical. Our badges were silver and his was gold.
“Where do you work out of?” I asked, more by way of casual conversation than interrogation.
“I’m with OCB,” he promptly responded. Wrong answer.
Everyone on the Job has heard of the Organized Crime Control Bureau, composed of half a dozen divisions, including Gangs, Auto Crime, and Narcotics, where I would soon transfer as part of another street team targeting drug dealers in Harlem. But “OCB”?
It’s “OCCB.” A mistake? Maybe. But no Cold War Soviet agent ever claimed to be a citizen of the USR or CCP.
Every occupation has its own language. On the Job the 17th Precinct is always “the Seventeenth” and never pronounced “The One Seven,” whereas, for example, the 43rd Precinct is always called “the Four Three,” never “the Forty-third,” and so forth. Why? I have no idea. But more than once a police impersonator has given himself up by making these simple mistakes.
Jack immediately picked up on this man’s slip of the tongue and shifted position to stand behind our subject, shaking his head.
“Gene, we have to make sure you are who you claim to be. What’s a … hmmm … okay, what’s a ‘ten-sixty-three’? Humor me.”
Every rookie knows that most important of radio codes, “Officer on a meal break,” but Harrison hesitated, and beads of sweat gathered in the creases in his forehead as he broke my stare.
“What’s with all the questions, you guys? We’re all cops here,” he blustered, his voice now tense, his body language defensive.
“We gotta make the OT. You know how it is with the OT.”
“Sure. Yeah. We all gotta make the OT,” he replied unconvincingly.
“Do me a favor, Gene,” I replied, moving swiftly to close the distance between us before Officer Dibble turned into Quickdraw McGraw and reached for that bulge on his hip. “Just put your hands behind your back and relax while we sort this out.”
I leaned over to take the gun which had originally attracted our attention.
The bulge turned out to be a pair of police handcuffs but Gene wouldn’t be needing them today. Jack had loaned him his pair.
A lot of New Yorkers hate the police, but some people develop a fascination with the Job which can go from a fun pastime to an all-out obsession. Every year a special unit within Internal Affairs named Group 51 investigates dozens of cases of guys using fake badges and imitation uniforms to pull off robberies, rapes, and murders.
When Jack handed me our suspect’s credentials I still couldn’t see anything wrong. The photo was certainly Harrison, with his name and tax number, under a laminated cover, and his badge seemed exactly like the real thing.
“Look at the tax code again, Luke,” Jack urged. “It starts with the wrong number. And there’s something just wrong about that picture, too, man, but I can’t figure what.”
Back in Interrogation we examined the photograph once more, and the truth finally dawned. Every cop, irrespective of rank or assignment, wears a uniform for their ID photo. Harrison? He was in a shirt and tie.
We later found out that his card was genuine, or it was when it was issued to his dad, who had since retired from the Job. Our perp had swiped it and added an old Social Security number, before relaminating the fake identification. That just left his shield. I had really struck out on this one. Unbelievably Gene had hacked it from the faceplate of an old bowling trophy which Pop had won in an NYPD tournament, and although as fake as a three-dollar bill it had passed inspection by two experienced street cops.
*
Although I was kept busy with our unit, I could still be called in for riot duty with the Rapid Response Team at any time, which was what happened in the wake of the arrest of Abner Louima in August 1997. The follow-up investigation made headlines around the world as the NYPD was forced to ask itself some uncomfortable questions.
Louima, a thirty-year-old Haitian immigrant, was in a gay Brooklyn nightclub when a fight broke out. He and other patrons intervened, and when the cops responded a scuffle ensued, during which one officer, Justin Volpe, was sucker-punched. Convinced the Haitian was responsible, Volpe arrested him and beat him on the drive back to the 70th Precinct. Later he sexually assaulted him by shoving a plunger handle up his rectum, causing serious internal injuries which the officer later suggested were caused by rough sex prior to the victim’s arrest.
A
t first I was skeptical reading about Louima’s claims, convinced that it was an attempt to set up cops, whom I could never imagine torturing a handcuffed prisoner in that manner. But it soon emerged that the man was telling the truth. When the news broke there was outrage, particularly in the black community, fueling protests which spiraled out of control as thousands of men, most armed with plungers, took to the streets, heading across the Brooklyn Bridge, threatening to use them on us and wreck City Hall.
Every trained officer was mobilized, handed a riot helmet, nightstick, and a four-foot-long pliable ballistic shield, before being ordered to hold the masses at a perimeter set up several streets back from the building. When I stood in the front lines bracing myself for the onslaught, I looked to the left and right and found faces as full of fear as my own as the protest, which had now degenerated into an uncontrolled, screaming mob thousands strong, streamed towards our position.
We were all carrying the L-shaped PR-24 nightsticks we had trained with in the academy, but I had also packed my collapsible ASP baton, and I had no sooner unsnapped it when a lieutenant roared over the chants, now just yards from where we stood, “Put that shit away, you! Let them vent! Stand your ground, but let them vent! They have a right.”
The surge continued to ebb and flow for the next couple of hours, as first threats and later plungers flew through the air, and the appeals by the Brass over loud-hailers telling the mob to disperse were ignored. We eventually got the order to push the ringleaders back towards the bridge, and a diversionary riot soon developed in an attempt to lure the remaining cops away from City Hall. The Brass decided to march us towards the scene and back up the guys already there, who by this stage were engaged in one-on-one pitched battles with protesters. When the orders to disperse were ignored yet again, we waded in, too, driving rioters back with the shields and swinging with our PR-24s as if our lives depended on it, which, for a while, they did. It took time but we ultimately regained control.
Louima later sued the city and our union for the assault, winning $8.7 million in damages. Justin Volpe was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for his part in torturing him, while cops Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese were fired. The case made world headlines, leaving me in total shock that this could happen to someone in police custody and that the perpetrators were the sort of men I served alongside.
Quite honestly, when this story first broke, I thought, Here’s another person looking to blame the police. But when Justin Volpe pleaded guilty to the crime, my heart bled for Abner Louima, because I found it so hard to believe that one of my own had done this terrible thing. There was a general air of disgust in the NYPD, a real sense of “lock him [Volpe] up and throw away the key.”
Sadly it would not be the first time I felt let down by people whom I, or any other officer, would have supported through thick and thin.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN YOU’RE IN, YOU’RE IN
“Yeah, I think your countrymen are right, there, Officer Waters. You are done.”
The captain sits there, stroking his gigantic chin, as he stares across the table at me in an anonymous back office at One Police Plaza, a place where careers and reputations crash and burn.
I was done, all right. The guy had been grilling me for more than half an hour, in the process killing off my chances of a hard-earned transfer. The plan has just stalled.
“You didn’t got a lotta answers for me today, but now, maybe you got a question for us?” he suggests.
I had a question for him, all right, but it wasn’t one he was expecting.
I’d strolled into the building an hour earlier, full of optimism, hoping that a combination of bluff and my contacts up the food chain might get me through the interview about four years earlier than my arrest record warranted. But so far the day has been a disaster, thanks mainly to this Italian boss who is one of three on the interview panel.
Sitting to the left and right of this capitano are a couple of other “White Shirts,” as Brass above the ranks of lieutenant in uniform are called, but unlike his two Irish-American colleagues, who are part of the plan to get me transferred, this other boss is playing it straight down the middle.
His determination to go through every line of my application is muddying my plans to skip the line for a transfer over to Narcotics, which was using federal money and OCCB expertise to train more people in an attempt to get a grip on the growing problems up in Washington Heights, which had become the front line of the war on drugs. The move is a crucial step to getting my gold shield ahead of time.
“Actually … yes, sir, I have got one question, for you,” I say to the capitano. “I’ve worked with quite a few Italian officers, all fine bosses, but I haven’t met one with an answer for this. It’s … er … well … something which has always troubled us Irish lads. Sir, can you explain to me why Italy is shaped like a boot and not like a shoe?”
Murphy and Sullivan suddenly sit bolt upright in their chairs. They know the punch line but can’t believe that this nobody is about to finish the worst interview in NYPD Narcotics history with a crack about the guy who stands between him and the job he’s chasing.
“Why is Italy shaped like a boot and not like a shoe? Hmmm. I have no clue. That, I do not know, Waters. Maybe … an Irishman can tell me,” the capitano muses cautiously, smelling a rat and shooting a quick glance at the lads to either side before looking me directly in the eyes.
For the first time today he gets a straight answer.
“Well … because you can shove a lot more shit into a boot than into a shoe, Captain!” I reply before Murphy and Sullivan beside him steal my line.
The other two Micks are in no condition to do anything.
Both have abandoned all semblance of seriousness and now lie half collapsed in their cheap seats, roaring with laughter. Sullivan looks like he needs a doctor.
Capitano just sits there shaking his head as the other members of the interview panel try to recover, but the look on his face sends them into further hysterics, as they all know full well that this story will be around the department within the day. Although I have the last word, he has a smile on his face, too.
He will have the last laugh.
A month before making my short-lived comedy debut in police headquarters, I’d sat with a pint in Kennedy’s on Second Avenue to take a long, hard look at my career, realizing that four years out of the academy, and with two years in the Pickpocket Squad under my belt, the time had come to make a move. My dream was to get out of the patrol car, and I could see my friends moving on, getting promoted … My good friend Nick Palmari had become a DEA agent, and I thought it was time for me to move up the ladder. So I did what we all do when we need an edge. I called my rabbi.
The man I reached out to was the biggest Mick of us all, or rather the biggest Mike—Inspector Michael Collins, a rabbi, as we called our close advisors in the NYPD, and a cross between a cousin and a mentor to a lot of guys like me. He was well known for favoring anyone with a reputation as a good worker and an “O” or “Mac” at the start of his surname, helping them get a lead on a decent assignment within the department. As long as they didn’t make the mistake of using the term “Irish-American” in his presence.
Collins was raised in Brooklyn to two immigrant parents who had come over in the 1950s, and he originally wanted to join the fire department but instead trod the well-worn path to the police academy. He took great offense at anyone suggesting that just because he wasn’t “off the boat” it made this six-foot-five-inch, 270-pound cop any less of an Irishman.
On the Job the inspector was known as a “gentleman,” a cop synonym for a stand-up guy, a colleague admired and respected, the very opposite of the Empty Suits who dominated the Puzzle Palace, the popular name for our headquarters in One Police Plaza, where policy was formulated and grudges fermented. The NYPD was and remains a political minefield, and without a guy like Collins, a young cop’s career progress was slow. Just like on Capitol Hill, c
ontacts were key, from where “juice”—influence—flowed. This inspector would retire in 2009 as a deputy chief, his rise up the ladder largely due to a combination of his considerable persuasive skills, good eyes and ears in the precincts, and a bigger list of contacts than any hack or politician.
It was far too early in my career for this promotion, and I needed Mike Collins to reach out on my behalf if I was to have any chance of making my skinny résumé stand out amongst the thousands of heavyweight applicants for the few Narcotics spots available. On the phone he was sympathetic but he stressed that, though he would do what he could, he was making no promises.
I started the ball rolling by picking up a Career Program Transfer Application and, not for the first time, getting in touch with my creative side. Officially, promotions at my rank level were on a points system based on arrests, and typically it would take a cop about seven years of active police work to hit the numbers required for a place in Narcotics. At this stage I had around sixteen medals for service (worn as colored ribbons on the breast of a uniform jacket for ceremonial occasions), and reading through the application I was reminded that each of these was worth 0.02 of a point, but no matter how much I calculated it, I was way short of the target. At this rate even if I had the Congressional Medal of Honor it wouldn’t bring up my scores high enough to make the cut. Yet, ever the optimist, I figured that I could wing it if I could get off to a good start. Assuming that the interviewers didn’t do something very technical, like actually read my application.
I got a phone call from Narcotics to come down the following morning to headquarters, and I arrived in my one good suit, showered and freshly shaved. I was directed to a small, glass-partitioned office at the end of a hallway, passing an army of plainclothes and uniformed MOS along the way.
