No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop

by Robert Cea

  There was a nasty dive bar not far from central booking. After finishing the arrest process at e-cab, I headed right for it. I ordered a double of Jack Daniel’s. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to feel the comfort of my partners or any of the ghetto beauty that Alfredo’s offered. I needed to be alone with my thoughts about what I had just done. I noticed my hand was shaking as I shot the liquid back. I noticed the blood of Day-Glow caked under my nails. I didn’t bother to wash it off. I just ordered two more doubles, shot them back, and suddenly the magnitude of the lie I had just told didn’t seem to matter. I smiled at the fact that Day-Glow would not be able to hurt anyone, and I realized that I was now in the game for keeps.

  4

  Bully of the Badlands

  With Conroy gone to Red Hook, I was pretty much on my own in the Badlands. There was no one as good as John in the precinct. There were some excellent street cops in the 6-7, probably the best in the city, absolutely, but they just did not have what John Conroy had. I hadn’t met anyone else who had the ability to develop and cultivate snitches, to bullshit the bullshitters—and the streets were loaded with them. I now had to develop this talent on my own, without Conroy’s guidance. I needed to mature as a street cop, especially if I was to achieve my next goal: hooking up with John in Red Hook.

  The first step toward that goal involved a neighborhood cat named Bully. He was an impossibly huge man, probably close to four hundred pounds, though he did not seem fat, just big—big hands, big legs, big head, big dreads, big everything. He also had a big personality. He was a gentle giant who wore a continuous smile, constantly surrounded by his people, friends and family. He would always go out of his way to say hello, walk to the RMP and offer us coffee or free rotty at his jerk-chicken restaurant. He was always quick with a joke, but you had to listen very closely because his thick Kingston accent made it impossible to decipher the punch line. Yes, he was a “local businessman” with a popular Jamaican bistro and a comical personality, and he also had a very successful sideline in purveying weed.

  We knew why he’d buddied up to us: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And in this sector, MikeNancy, we were his enemies. This was the heart of the Badlands, and it was also Bully’s domain, his real estate, his sector. Now, the cops in ghetto precincts generally look the other way when any kind of weed is found, say, during a car stop or on someone’s person. It’s at the bottom of the food chain for arrestable offenses, no matter how much weight is found. The paperwork is long and tedious, and with manpower low in the 6-7, cops from the closest sector would have to pick up all the radio runs in the now-vacant MikeNancy sector, and for what? A charge that’s only going to get tossed or dropped down to a lowly misdemeanor anyway, probably at e-cab, garnering no overtime and just pissing off the ADA who has to write it up. So not only do the cops know this and practice this street discretion regularly, but the street cats know as well that it’s practiced.

  Now if you pull some mope over and he’s belligerent to you or your partner, you certainly have every right to lock Nat E. Dread up and quite possibly tack on the oldie but goodie discon charge as well. The discon, or disorderly conduct, charge guarantees every cop who makes an arrest that the mope will go through the system. How’s that? Anyone can be charged with discon. If you are drinking an alcoholic beverage in the street, a cop stops you, you can go through the system for discon. You don’t have any ID and are standing in a drug-prone location, or just look suspicious—BANG, you’re sleeping in some smelly precinct for three days. Take this as an inside FYI: The next time a cop stops you and you are not 100 percent proper, smile and kiss ass, because the cop has that fabulous discretionary power. This the perps, and street hustlers, and dealers, and users, and bum rushers don’t know, though many of them found out the hard way. Three days in the system, eating bologna sandwiches and drinking watered-down Kool-Aid, has got to suck for smoking a spliff with your boys. Bully didn’t care about any of this because he was Bully, friend to cop, friend to all. But things were about to change. Bully was about to get played and then replayed, Conroy style. I thought about how every street perp knew only what Conroy wanted them to know. He was making moves on them without them even knowing it. He bullshitted the bullshitters and now it was my turn.

  Bully never drove a car; he was always driven or he walked, as his world was the eight-square-block area in the heart of Badland territory that he called home. So on a rainy four-to-twelve tour when Billy saw he was driving a pieceof-shit nondescript Monte Carlo, we knew some serious shit was going down. Billy banged a sharp U and came up behind the Chevy. I turned on the turrets and then turned them off quickly so as not to raise up the neighborhood to the car stop. I gave Bully that kind of respect. I was learning. Billy turned on the side spotlight and pointed the halogen beam through the Chevy’s rear window. We saw that Bully had placed his hands on the steering wheel, an attribute the smart perps in the street know all too well, compliance. By doing that, he was telling us he was cool, everything was irie, he was with the program. I wrote his name and license-plate number down on a pad, just like the one Conroy had in his car. I then put over the radio that we had a car stop for a traffic violation. Billy looked at me oddly because I was never one to talk into that radio for anything other than putting over that I had “one under arrest.” I just winked at him. I had a good feeling about this. The fact that he was driving raised me up big time, and, more telling, he was driving out in the rain. Why would he do that unless he figured that no cop was going to do a car stop and get soaked in the process. It was thin, but then most of what I did in the beginning was thin. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you’re the cock, and sometimes you’re the anus. Today Bully was the anus.

  “Turn the light off, Billy.” He did, and I moved out of the RMP and up to the driver’s side of the Chevy.

  Bully wore his jiffy-pop hat as usual and was all smiles when I reached him. The rain was pounding. “Officer C, what up, get in the car, man, get out the rain, man, every-ting irie boss, it just me, Bully.” He laughed, and when Bully laughed, all four hundred pounds of him laughed; the car bounced up and down gently with each guffaw.

  I just smiled. Billy walked up to the passenger side and tapped gently on his window to let Bully know he was there. Bully rolled the passenger window down with much effort, as they were not electric. He then looked at me, very concerned, and almost whispered, “Every-ting okay, Officer C; is there some-ting wrong, boss?”

  “Bully, there’s nothing in the car, is there?”

  He looked at me and then just dropped his head, feigning embarrassment. Bully was too smart to play the angry militant. He also knew about the street warnings and admonishments doled out for weed transport. “Ya, C, me not gonna lie to the boss man. Got some ganja in the car, just a little, C, bringing it to me friends for personal.” He brought his thumb and forefinger up to his lips, puckering them as if he were taking a hit.

  “Where is it, Bully?”

  “Did not want to disrespect you, boss, it in the trunk.” He looked me directly in the eyes, trying to gauge what I was up to. He had no idea what he was in for.

  “Open it, Bully.” This I said with the least amount of authority possible. I wanted him to feel as if it was something that I was obliged to do; I wanted him to think that he had placed me in this uncomfortable situation, and it worked because he apologized to me before he opened the trunk. It clicked open, I walked to the back, and what I saw was nothing less than amazing. Monte Carlos have notoriously large trunk spaces, which would account for Bully’s choice of wheels. Inside the trunk were five bales of marijuana wrapped in large black construction bags. At first I didn’t know what it was because I just couldn’t fathom that much weed, but the odor that wafted out of the car was unmistakable. It smelled really good too. Growing up, I wasn’t into weed, but I certainly knew what quality weed smelled like. I tried to reach behind the bags to check further to see if there were any guns or cash, but the bales were jammed so tightly
in the trunk that it was impossible to check. It was an empty gesture anyway, as Bully was too smart for that. He knew he quite possibly could ride this out in the event he got stopped, and, quite frankly, had it been any other time and John Conroy had not raised that flag of plainclothes up the pole, Bully would have made it to his overworked bong. I needed to make an outstanding collar to get into that plainclothes unit, and all that weed in the trunk was just the start of it.

  I closed the trunk and slowly walked back. I placed my hands on the door. He was getting wet, and I must’ve looked like a wet rat because I was not wearing my raincoat; this was good for the drama of it all. I spoke quietly. “Bully, I’m going to go back to the RMP for a couple. I wanna talk this over with my partner. Shut your window so you don’t get wet, just gonna be a few.” He rolled up the window quickly; I tilted my head to Billy to follow me back to the car. He got in and we discussed my plan of action. Billy didn’t think I could get away with it, but knowing Bully’s culture and what occurs regularly between cops and bad guys in Kingston, Jamaica, I felt I had a better-than-good chance of pulling this off.

  I got out of the RMP alone and moved to the passenger side of his car. I opened the door and got in. We didn’t look at each other; he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I fucked up, Bully; I put this over the radio, so central knows that I stopped the car, and when I went back to the RMP, Billy had already put it over that we had one under for possession.” Bully made a hissing sound, like a teakettle just before it starts to whistle. “But I have an idea.” His giant head turned slowly, and he glanced at me through halfclosed eyes, resigned to the fact that something big was about to occur. “Now, there is an awful lot of fucking ganja in that trunk, my brother. I mean, goddamn, that is a big fuckin’ load, Bull, big fucking load.” He dropped his head and shook it slowly. Now I knew I had him. He was playing the game with me, knew it was time to pay a tax, and to Bully a street tax, or getting hit with a vig payment while on his way to make a delivery, well, that was just the price of doing business. It was good business as far as he was concerned. Fuck, this was Kingston, he’d get taxed, beaten, and collared, but this was America, home of free enterprise, and everybody understood how the grease game was played here.

  “Whatcha need, boss man, what can Bully do?”

  “Well, because my partner put it over, we have to make a play that we’re bringing you in, so we bring you in. I’m going to say that we got you with a small bag of weed, write you a summons for smoke, and you’re on your way.”

  Bully let out a big sigh of relief, dropping his big head on the steering wheel. Without looking at me he placed his hand on my wet shoulder and said, “Everybody said you was Officer Cool. Now I’m a let them know they was right. You Jah, child, you the Buffalo Soldier C, you irie, boss man.”

  “Now, Bully, c’mon, this is a major solid I’m doing here. I get caught I’m gonna lose my job and go to jail, you know this, yes?” He looked up at me quickly; now he was all ears. He knew this was tax time and that a number was going to be exacted, but once a criminal feels like he is dealing with another criminal, there is a bond that is developed, and even though Bully was going to have to pay, he was more into this now than before. He was so happy at the prospect that he was going to pay Officer Cool off, in blocks of cool hundreddollar bills, that he was going to own me.

  I laid it out for him, told him that I was going to keep half the weed in my car and that it was mine. I also told him he was going to have to pay me twenty thousand dollars. How I came up with that number is beyond me, but he didn’t even flinch and agreed to have one of his boys bring it to the precinct within the hour. I wasn’t making top pay yet, only $27,000 a year. I am going to have to work a year to bring that money home, I thought with much bewilderment. The money out on the street is fucking phenomenal. If I had asked him for two hundred large, I’m sure Bully could’ve gotten it brought right to the RMP on this rainy night, a drive-through cash transaction, time served and fine paid. But as it was, twenty grand was all that was needed for my purposes this evening.

  I got him out of the car and walked him over to the RMP quickly. We placed him in the backseat, and here is where the fun began. I wanted to keep his guard down, let him know that we were primarily his bitches. We didn’t want him to get wet, we didn’t want the neighborhood lokes seeing him in this embarrassing predicament. We sold him lots of wet dreams and whatnot. And us being very cool, we would cuff him inside the car. I got into the front seat, and he, with much trouble, squeezed his way into the backseat. He tried to reach the door but could not grab the handle to close it. I got back out of the RMP and slammed it closed, though it must’ve hit his leg because all I heard was him scream, like his balls were on fire. I had to stifle my laugh. I got into the front seat and made him maneuver so I could get his hands cuffed. Now, this was virtually impossible because backseats were not designed for four-hundred-pound cats built like Bully. Cuffs weren’t even designed for guys like Bully. I was trying my hardest to get one cuff on his wrist, and then he screamed in pain as I accidentally pinched his giant wrist. He was trying so hard to bring his arms around that he slid off the bench and sort of got jammed between the back of the front seat and the floor. He tried to get up, but the harder he tried the more he got jammed in between the seats. I was covered in sweat. “Fuck it, Bully, we can’t do this in the car. Let’s put the cuffs on in the street, then we’ll work on getting you back in the car.”

  “Ya, man, but how you get Bully out the car?” His head was jammed into the floor, so it was muffled, which made it that much more hilarious. I know Bully started to laugh, because the car was gyrating as if we were in the beginning stages of an earthquake. If we laughed for five minutes straight it was a second, just the sight of his huge ass sticking up high above the front seat. I realized that the rain was starting to let up and that my sergeant was off meal, so it was just a matter of time before he rolled up on us, blowing this whole caper, so Billy and I got out and not so gingerly pried Bully from the bowels of the RMP. Now we had to cuff him, another monumental task because Bully’s wrists could not reach each other. Luckily, Billy had an extra set of cuffs in his briefcase, and we attached both of Billy’s cuffs and my set of cuffs together and then hooked them to both of his wrists; they barely made the connection. We all looked into the small backseat and then decided against it, Bully fit snugly in the front seat of his Monte, so fuck it; we let him ride with me in his own car. This also gave me time to grease him up even more and let Billy get to the precinct first and make the proper notifications. So I drove very slowly.

  When I arrived in the rear of the station house, Billy was waiting for me. His uniform jacket was off, tie open at the collar, so I knew that everything was set up for us inside. The sergeant on the desk was a guy named Bannerette. He loved the games that could be played in the streets if the cops were smart enough and the perps dumb enough; luckily, all of the planets were aligning this evening. We followed Billy into a back room of the precinct; he said it was all taken care of and that the sergeant was in on it with us. Bully was a little disappointed. “I got to pay ’im too, C?”

  “No, no, Bully, he comes out of our end, that’s how it done. C’mon, brother, you’ve done this before, yes?”

  We got into the room, sat him down in front of a desk, cuffed him to a metal chair, and placed a phone in front of him. I noticed there was a brown paper bag at the edge of the desk, but I didn’t think it was anything other than someone’s lunch; it wasn’t mine, so I did not look in it, and thank God I didn’t, Bully was magic; this was the first time I’d done this, so I was feeling my way around, but I must say Bully made it all very easy. He’d obviously done this before.

  He picked up the phone. Before he dialed he looked at us and said, “Twenty g’s and I walk, ya, man? No hidden surprise?” Surprise was pronounced “soup-prizzze.”

  “Nah, Bully, we want to continue doing business with you; we ain’t about that, brother, our w
ord is good.”

  Billy jumped in with this for good measure, saying, “We get to keep the weed, though, don’t forget.”

  Bully liked that. He was glad that he could turn on the men in blue, get them high with his good herb. He laughed. “Ya, man, that some good herb too, your dick is gonna grow so much, man, you be able to suck it youself, man.” He started to dial but was laughing so hard he had to stop. Eventually he dialed the number and talked to his boy in dialect I could not understand. He hung up, then kicked back in the chair, looked at me, and smiled. “Yo, C, you could get us some a that herb to smoke now?” We just looked at each other and laughed.

  “Bully, you mind if we do this once a week? This is fun,” I said through gritted teeth. More laughter and I realized that this friendship could have gone far beyond uniform and semi-bad guy. Bully’s beeper started to pulse; he looked up at us. “Him here, in the back of the precinct. He won’t come in, you have to go get it.”

  I went outside; there was no one in the rear of the lot, and then I saw someone peek out from behind a tree. I called out, “You here to drop something off for Bully?” A beautiful young woman stepped into the street. She was diminutive. She looked like a fragile doll, the ones with the painted lips and porcelain faces. She was light skinned, like heavily creamed coffee, big almond eyes, and had her hair tied up neatly in a pretty cornflower blue silk kerchief. I had never seen her in the neighborhood; I’d never seen anyone remotely as beautiful as this woman in the neighborhood. These are the girls who are immediately hustled out of the Badlands by guys like Bully before they get corrupted by the mean streets. She just stood there on the curb, holding out the bag. I almost didn’t want to take it from her; then I made a battlefield decision. I took the bag from her, looked around, and said, “Get out of here as fast as you can, just go.” This was another illegal maneuver, a felony, to be exact, but I felt she had no idea what was occurring and Bully would probably have made her pay dearly had she refused his request to be the bag woman on this trip. As it was, she looked terrified, so she handed me the bag and without saying a word took off like a bat out of hell.