The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books)

by Robin Barratt

  Minneapolis Police Officer Melissa Schmidt was shot and killed while on duty. On the day of her funeral I worked patrol and, along with other officers, attended a Take Back the Night gathering in Cass Lake. Take Back the Night’s motto is “Shatter the silence, stop the violence” and the first known march in the United States was organized in San Francisco, California, on 4 November 1978, by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media. They marched through the red-light district of San Francisco in protest of rape and pornography. While the march began as a way to protest the violence that women experienced while walking in public at night, the purpose of these marches was to speak out against this violence and raise community awareness as a preventive measure against future violence. The movement has since grown to encompass all forms of violence against all persons and in the reservation citizens get together and talk about community violence and to try to come up with new ideas to help prevent further crime.

  Earlier that day I was on foot patrol in my assigned district, handing out fliers, knocking on doors and talking to the members of the community about a wide range of topics. The community has seen a lot of positive growth and change recently and, aside from taking our normal police calls, part of our job as community service officers is to keep track of what is going on in our area and do a lot of proactive policing. Visiting the kids in my community is one of my favourite things and on that morning a little girl came running up to me saying, “Kim, here,” and placed a small green apple in my hand.

  “This is for me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, with a proud smile beaming from her face. A little later another couple of girls who are cousins said to me that they both want to be police officers in the community, which is wonderful to hear.

  As I walked around the community that day, I had forgotten I had put a black mourning band on my badge until a teenage girl I was speaking with asked, “What is that on your badge?” I told her about Melissa’s death, that her funeral was taking place that day and that the band was a symbol of mourning an officer who had lost her life. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the honour of meeting or knowing Melissa but like all officers in the state that day, I wore my band not only out respect for her, but also for the Minneapolis Police Department that lost one of their own. Watching the kids running around playing at the Take Back the Night event and wearing that small black mourning band gave rise to a wide range of feelings and emotions about all our other brother and sister officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice in protecting and serving their communities, and of course about their families and partners left behind to grieve. And my thoughts were then of my own sons, my parents, friends and family; it makes me want to hold them just a little longer, a little tighter, tell them I love them a little bit more.

  Unlike larger departments we don’t have any specialized units and aside from incidents involving possible homicide (where we still do all of the preliminary police work), we handle almost all our calls and investigations from the beginning to the end. Our most frequent crime on the reservation is assault, and we get some very brutal assaults, some of which result in death. We are exposed to various communicable diseases like hepatitis, AIDS, tuberculosis and more, and when we are taking someone into custody and they are spitting on us or trying to bite us, these are things we must think about. We are exposed to weapons such as knives, guns, baseball bats, axes, pipes, drugs and needles almost daily. We can get injured in the course of our job; from wrestling with a person we are arresting to climbing on a roof of a business chasing juveniles. Thankfully many people are great to deal with and really do appreciate the police. But others have a great distrust or dislike of police, which is influenced by family, friends or what they have perceived as a negative contact with the police in the past. Most people don’t appreciate the police until they need assistance and I would call that one of the frustrations of the job. Also, everything we do and say is under microscopic scrutiny by the public, media and the press; it is never considered that a police officer often has less than a second to react in a life or death situation. My partner once arrested a guy who didn’t realize we have cameras and audio in our cars. He proceeded to tell my partner how he was going to beat his own head against the window inside the car to make it look like he was injured by the police, and then sue them for millions. There is a prayer in Cass Lake that talks about not judging your brother until you’ve walked in his moccasins. I can honestly say I would love to see those people who make uninformed, uneducated judgments and criticisms of cops throw on a vest and handle some of the calls we do.

  As cops we see everything and can cope with most things but I was very saddened by the murder of forty-eight-year-old Darrell “Louie” Bisson, a local and much-liked blind man who was beaten to death on Second Street, just two blocks from the police department, while walking with his dog in downtown Cass Lake. Two sixteen-year-old youths were arrested on two counts each of second-degree murder. No reason is known for the attack. Two people witnessed the episode on Bisson and called 911, and when one of the witnesses confronted one of the attackers, who was using an axe handle to beat Bisson, the attacker came after him too. Around 150 family and friends attended Bisson’s funeral at Christian and Missionary Alliance Church and after at his burial in Pine Grove Cemetery. After sundown about seventy-five family members, friends, Cass Lake residents and many area law enforcement officers gathered at the spot where Bisson was killed, each of us holding a candle, not only in honour of “Louie” Bisson but also as a message that violence in Cass Lake won’t be tolerated.

  The night of Louie’s death, just prior to getting off my shift, I had the privilege of visiting him and his family. His mother had made a feast of various home-made dishes. The house was warm and filled with family who did not know that hours later their son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle or friend would be gone, forever. A life senselessly taken in a brutal, horrific attack.

  During Louie’s funeral, the pastor said we must try to ask ourselves “Why?” and suggested that we may in fact never really know the answer to that question. Gangs are present in Cass Lake and a lot of violence relates to drug use. Also lack of parental supervision, children fending for themselves for long periods of time, negative peer influences and alcohol are just a few more pieces of the puzzle.

  However, there are more good kids than bad in Cass Lake; I see that first-hand. The majority of our youths are not involved in gangs and what needs to be focused on here is that all the youths in Cass Lake are part of the solution, not the problem. Many are involved in one of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America which “promote and enhance the development of boys and girls by instilling a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging and influence”. The club in Cass Lake has a place where children can meet and play games, socialize, have fun, engage in a variety of healthy activities and contribute to the community. Some of the girls from the club took the time to make a lovely sign and leave it near the spot where Louie died. The sign read, “Darrell Louie Bisson 8-11-54 to 11-29-02; Rest in Peace; Stop Violence, Drugs and Alcohol.”

  We have made some great strides in building a stronger, safer community and organizations like Community Voices Against Violence, Network for Native Futures have helped make our

  community a better place to live. Our police department recently hired a school resource officer to be actively involved with the students and school personnel in further helping our youth in the community and as police officers we are part of the solution too; we patrol the community, we get out of the car and talk with people, we show our support at community events like Take Back the Night and we respond to a variety of calls as professionally as we can.

  What are the things that make this job so gratifying? It’s sometimes just the little things like the pastor who recently thanked me for arresting the person responsible for vandalizing his church with a baseball bat or the kids who wave me over just to say “hi”. It’s watching a kind woman approach one of my partners, apologizing to him
after she accidentally set off a burglar alarm and thanking him for responding. Through rain, hail, sleet and snow, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, being a police officer is not just a job, it’s an adventure.

  MICKEY FRANCIS (UK)

  Convicted Football Hooligan

  Introducing … Mickey Francis

  ONCE ONE OF the toughest football hooligans in the UK and a football hooligan since his youth, Mickey Francis was born in 1960 and raised in Moss Side in Manchester, England, and has numerous convictions for violence-related offences. He has served two prison terms and at one time he was banned from every soccer ground in Britain.

  His father was Jamaican and his mother was from Liverpool.“My dad used to beat us badly,” says Francis. “He was a big chap, a wrestler, and we used to be scared shitless of him. Basically, he used to beat the fuck out of us. As soon as he came into the room, we would walk out. He was a bastard to his children and a bastard to my mum. He used to beat her up, never treated her right and was always fucking around behind her back.”

  Francis grew up on Acomb Street, about five minutes from Manchester City’s then football ground, Maine Road, and was on the streets making money from the age of twelve. “My very first means of collecting money was minding people’s cars. People used to park up on the street for the football match, and we would ask if they wanted their car minded for 50p [$0.75]. If they said no, we would puncture the fucking tyres.” They had their own territory and kept to their own streets, with other young gangs working other streets. “When most kids were delivering papers, I was minding cars – and damaging cars if their owners didn’t pay the fee! In the end, everybody paid.”

  Growing up near the football ground, Francis naturally became a Manchester City fan, and at just fifteen years old started to get involved in football violence. He loved it. His first real fight was at an away match at Wigan Football Club, about forty miles north of Manchester. “It was in the Doc Martens area,” he says. “A rough area of the town, and I got knocked fucking out! This lad had banged me straight out. The police picked me up and asked me what I was doing in that area. Then they banged me in the stomach and told me to fuck off back to Manchester.”

  Francis started off as a little “soldier” in a football “firm” (gang) and worked his way up by showing he would always go in first and fight hard. At the age of eighteen he started to arrange fights himself and he, with about 100 others all searching for violence, would meet up at the Parkside pub near Man City football ground to arrange fights with the visiting team’s supporters. Francis eventually became the head man of the “Guvnors” firm and whenever and wherever there was trouble, he would be at the front of it.

  The Manchester police eventually caught up with him and set up an operation called Omega. They infiltrated the gang and watched them while they collected as much video evidence as they could. He says, “Looking back, I had an idea something was going on, but at the time I couldn’t tell who the coppers were. For almost a year, I got away with murder. I could do almost anything, and I didn’t get charged once, even though I was arrested twenty-eight times that year for football-related violence. They were letting me get away with it because they were building a case on me.”

  Eventually, when Francis was twenty-eight years old, and after dawn raids on his house, he was arrested. He was put on remand for six weeks and then let out on bail for about a year until the trial took place. He was then sentenced to prison and banned from attending any football match in the UK or Europe for ten years.

  Taken from the book Guvnors by Mickey Francis and Peter Walsh, this is the story of his trial in 1989.

  TRIAL

  By Mickey Francis and Peter Walsh

  “Michael, it’s not looking too good. If we go through with the trial you are facing six to eight years. If you throw your hand in now, okay, the judge will take it that you are the main man. That’s bad for you. But he knows that you can swing it for the other to plead guilty if you do. That will count in your favour. If you jack it in, you are looking at a lower sentence and so are the others, as they all have to get less than you. At the end of the day, I think I can get you three years if you plead guilty.”

  This inspiring little speech came from my barrister. He looked out of the window of the interview room in the new Liverpool Crown Court building. In the distance I could see a ferry crossing the Mersey towards Birkenhead, and the Irish Sea stretching out to the horizon.

  He turned back to me. “Take a good look, Mike. The way things are, you won’t be seeing it again for seven years.”

  Thank you very much, you bastard.

  We were all pleading not guilty, but my chances of getting off were receding. The police had requested permission to give evidence while hidden behind screens. They didn’t want to identify themselves, they said, because they were involved in dangerous undercover work. Naturally, l thought it was pretty sad that the justice system could let them get away with that sort of thing. They’re police officers and they’re getting paid to do a job. Testifying behind screens, hidden from the public gallery, gives the jury the impression that the defendants are a bunch of desperadoes.

  One of these coppers was asked the question, “How would you describe Mr Francis?”

  His exact words were, “He’s a bully.”

  Not, he’s tall, brown skin, stocky build, or whatever. Just “He’s a bully.” It’s not exactly evidence, is it? They were allowed to get away with things like that and, of course, they were granted their protective screens.

  There was the odd funny moment. When we were asked to plead, the court clerk went through each of us in turn.

  “Michael Francis, how do you plead?”

  “Not guilty.”

  Next.

  “Not guilty”

  And so on. It came to Martin Townsend. Martin has a speech impediment and we all knew he wouldn’t be able to get the words out

  “Martin Townsend, how do you plead?”

  Before he could open his mouth and stutter, we all shouted in unison, “NOT GUILTY!”

  Thewhole court jumped about a foot in the air. We cracked up.

  The trial began in February 1989 and was to drag on for months, a complicated mess of different defendants with different pleas. First up were two of our lads and one United fan, who admitted taking part in a fight outside Old Trafford. This was the brawl on Chester Road before Arthur Albiston’s testimonial, three months after the original Guvnors arrests. Another City lad, Vincent George, a seventeen-year-old who kept a written diary of his fights entitled “War Games”, went not guilty. During his trial the jury watched a three-minute black-and-white video of the fight which took place in the middle of the road as cars swerved out of the way:

  A jury retired to consider a soccer hooligan case today – all twelve members also witnesses to the alleged crime.

  For the six men and six women at Manchester Crown Court had seen several times over a video recording of an incident in Chester Road, Old Trafford – shot by police spy cameras – when rival supporters clashed. The confrontation left one young fan unconscious on the ground, after being kicked and stamped on.

  The surveillance equipment picked up a group of City fans walking towards Old Trafford forty-five minutes after the match started. “The prosecution say their purpose was to fight – it wasn’t to watch the match otherwise they wouldn’t have been there at that time of day,” said Mr Wright.

  The group was seen by a “scouting party” of United fans and various youths were spotted picking up missiles and arming themselves with sticks, he told the jury. Then the groups clashed. Missiles were thrown, there was a large scale disturbance and one youth was left unconscious. Eventually the City fans turned and began walking away chanting and shouting.

  Mr Wright said George, “had not kicked or fought with anyone but he was a member of a gang flat bent on trouble”.

  For Mr George, Mr John Bonney said his client accepted he was guilty on the lesser charge of fear or provoc
ation of violence, which carried a much lesser sentence. Mr Bonney invited the jury to consider what they had seen on the three-minute clip of video, which had shown his client had not thrown anything, kicked or stamped on anyone.

  “Had he intended serious violence, he had ample opportunity to carry it out, as others did. But he didn’t.”

  Mr Wright said that in an interview with the police Mr George had refused to identify any members of the City supporters gang “the Young Guvnors”, said to be involved.

  “If I did that I would probably get my head kicked in,” George had told the police. (Manchester Evening News)