The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop

by Steve Osborne

  There was a slight awkward moment when I didn’t smile back. While they huffed and puffed trying to catch their breath, they seemed surprised that I wasn’t as happy to see them as they were to see me, and that’s when he said, “Don’t you remember me?”

  I looked up at him with my best “don’t fuck with me” look and shot right back, “Sorry bro, I don’t know you.” And I underlined it with a tone of voice that said, “Tell your story walking.” He seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t remember him. Apparently whatever happened between us was a lot more memorable for him than it was for me. Undeterred, he continued, a little more enthusiastically this time, and said, “Come on, you remember me, you arrested me a couple of years ago. I was selling crack down the block on Sixth Avenue.”

  Telling me that I arrested him didn’t help my memory either. By this time in my career I had locked up a lot of guys, and after a while they all start to look alike, smell alike, and become one big ugly blur. Many of them you forget, but some leave a lasting impression, usually because they did something incredibly stupid, funny, or heinous, but this guy didn’t seem to fall into any of those categories.

  I could feel my muscles start to tense up, and I told him again that I didn’t remember him and that he must have me confused with someone else. But this guy wouldn’t give up, and that’s when he leaned a little closer and said, “Don’t you remember—THE HOT DOGS!” It took a second, but as soon as he mentioned the hot dogs it all came back to me.

  —

  A while back my partner and I were out on patrol, working a four-to-twelve tour in uniform, and I was looking to “collar up”—meaning make an arrest. Years ago, in the bad old days of New York City, crime was everywhere, so making a collar was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Any day of the week I could leave the station house and within an hour come back with a felony collar, and if you couldn’t find a quality arrest like a robbery, assault, or maybe a guy with a gun, you could always grab a drug dealer, since they were everywhere. Everybody in or around Greenwich Village knew that if you wanted crack, weed, or maybe a little cocaine, just head over to Washington Square Park and it wouldn’t take very long to find a dealer.

  We always had a few cops assigned to the park, so the dealers would sometimes steer the buyers down to Sixth Avenue and “hit them off” down there. So I told my partner, let’s check out Sixth and see what we can find.

  We took a slow ride up the avenue starting at West Houston Street and checked out every storefront, doorway, side street, and subway entrance—looking for the guy who is always walking, but has no particular place to go. Another reason the dealers steer the buyers down to Sixth Avenue is because it’s always crowded. Any time of the day or night there are people and cars all over the place, and it’s easy to mingle in the crowd and do your business. And just like the crowds and the cars help the dealers, they also help us. It’s not easy to sneak up on drug dealers when you’re in uniform and driving a nice shiny police car with a big red light on top. Dealers, just like cops, have eyeballs in the back of their heads, always watching everything and everybody.

  We cruised up the avenue nice and easy, my partner driving and me in the passenger seat, and to anybody watching it looks like we’re just two cops out cruising around. But nothing could be further from the truth. My partner is checking one side of the block and I’m checking the other, and we’re eyeballing everybody and everything, until we find what we’re looking for. With all the thousands of people coming and going in different directions, it might seem impossible to find that one drug-dealing shithead slipping something very small into somebody’s hand—which only takes about five seconds. And to makes things more difficult, sometimes the dealers will have the buyer hand the money to one person, then have him walk down the block and get the drugs from someone else. Instead of a five-second “hand-to-hand,” I have to watch for two exchanges in the middle of a busy Manhattan street. But my partner and I are good at this.

  After passing at least a half a dozen guys that I knew were dirty but not doing anything illegal at the moment, I found what I was looking for—a skinny, scraggly crackhead talking to a very well-dressed Wall Street–type businessman. They were on the west side of Sixth Avenue just before Fourth Street, and if you weren’t looking carefully enough you’d drive right past them. The crackhead’s baggy pants were ready to fall off his skinny ass, and the business guy looked like he was wearing a nicely tailored Brooks Brothers suit, and they were involved in this intense conversation. To the rest of the world passing by this was no big deal, these guys sort of blended in, like they were two old buddies happy to see each other—but not to me. When I saw these guys my spider sense started tingling because I know at any other time or place Mr. Brooks Brothers wouldn’t piss on Mr. Baggy Pants even if he was on fire. But right now they’re best buddies, and that’s because Baggy Pants has what Brooks Brothers needs—crack. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the suit and briefcase, and I’m sure his boss in that tall glass building he works in doesn’t know it either, but Brooks Brothers is a crackhead too, he’s just better dressed.

  When I first spotted them I could see Brooks Brothers had his hand balled up into a tight fist out in front of him—that was the money—and Baggy was counting out something small in his hand—that was the crack. Brooks Brothers was oblivious to the rest of the world, as he kept staring down at Baggy’s hand like a dog waiting for a treat. He wanted his shit and he wanted it now. Baggy was a little more careful. His head was on a swivel, looking for the cops while he counted out tiny vials from a plastic bag. They might as well have had a big neon sign over their heads with arrows pointing down at them saying DRUG DEALER and DRUG BUYER.

  I wanted to grab them, but I had a bit of a problem. I didn’t spot them until we drove past them, and if I jumped out now and they saw me coming across the street, they were probably going to start running—in two different directions. On TV when two perps run in opposite directions, one partner chases one and the other partner chases the other, and they usually get them both, but it doesn’t work that way in real life. In real life that’s a good way to get yourself killed. In real life we both chase after the guy we want most—hoping that’s the fat, slow guy—and then we try to catch number two, and if we’re really lucky, we get both. Besides, my partner was a big Italian guy who was not exactly light on his feet, especially with the size-twelve combat boots he liked to wear. He was great to have around in a fight, but chasing skinny crackheads fleeing for their freedom was not his forte. So I told him to whip it around the block and I would get them when we come back around.

  There was not much to talk about. In the past year since we became partners we had made plenty of collars together, and he knew exactly what I was thinking. We would whip it around and I would get out about a half a block behind my two crackhead buddies, then I would blend in with the crowd and sneak up behind them. My partner would drive past them, cut them off with the car, and we would have them boxed in between us. Most of the time they would spot the car first and start running away, usually in the opposite direction, and right into my waiting arms.

  We made the right on Fourth Street, then another right on MacDougal Street and stopped dead. The traffic light was red, cars were backed up, and we were stuck. I was pissed because I knew the heartwarming friendship between my two friends was not going to last very long. We couldn’t hit the siren because I didn’t want to let every drug dealer in a two-block area know we’re up to something, so my partner very quietly jumped the curb and drove down the sidewalk. We left a few angry pedestrians in our path, but we made it around the traffic and we were back on Sixth Avenue in no time.

  When we got back around I spotted Baggy Pants, who was all smiles as he counted his money, but Brooks Brothers was gone. I knew this friendship wasn’t going to last very long. But it was no big deal, I figured I’d grab Baggy, cuff him up, throw him into the back of the car, and then go looking for Mr. Wall Street because he couldn’t have gotten
very far.

  I jumped out of the car, hurried over to the sidewalk, and used the sea of unsuspecting pedestrians to get lost in. Across the street a couple of other salty-looking dudes saw me sneaking through the crowd and started high stepping it off the block. They didn’t know who I was after, but they obviously figured it was a smart idea to go hide for a while and dump anything they might have on them.

  I looked over my shoulder to check on my partner. He was laying back, waiting for me to get closer to Baggy Pants so he could race up and cut him off. This is the exciting part, as I’m bobbing and weaving through the crowd trying to get closer, I can see Baggy has his head down still counting his money, and he has no idea that he’s about to be collared.

  When I saw Baggy counting out the bills I knew he was a one-man operation. He wasn’t part of a team: steerer, moneyman, hand-to-hand guy, and maybe a stash guy or girl. No, he was an independent operator, so I knew I was only getting two collars out of this, Baggy and his buyer.

  I kept creeping closer, twenty feet, ten feet, I’m almost there, a few more steps and I’m going to grab him by the jacket, yoke him around the neck, and get him down to the ground before he can try to run. But just like cops have a spider sense, bad guys have it also, and his must have started tingling because just as I was about to grab him, he turns around. You should have seen the look on his face, his eyes were popping out of his head like a cartoon and he had that “Oh shit!” expression.

  I grabbed the back of his jacket and that’s when he tried the classic perp evasive maneuver. If the front of the jacket is open, just point your arms backward, lean forward, and start running—right out of your coat. The next thing the cop knows he has a handful of empty jacket and you’re off and running, I know because it’s happened to me before. But it didn’t go so well for this guy because both his hands were balled up into fists—one had the money and the other had the stash, and he wasn’t about to drop either. I’m sure his brain was telling his fists to open, but the fists weren’t listening, and they got caught inside the sleeves.

  When his hands got caught I grabbed him around the neck, jumped on his back, and rode him to the ground, hard. When we hit the sidewalk there were loud groans—from me because I banged my knee and elbow, and from him because two hundred pounds of cop just landed on him when he wasn’t expecting it. He threw a couple of punches, kicks, and elbows trying to get away but it wasn’t working, I was all over him like a bum on a baloney sandwich, and the next thing he knew he had one hand behind his back and I was slapping a handcuff on it. I tried to get the other hand but he wasn’t giving it up, and that’s when I saw why—in the other hand was a clear plastic bag with twenty-eight vials of crack in it.

  In a situation like this, desperate men do desperate (or stupid) things, and that’s when he popped the bag into his mouth and tried to swallow it. The bag was big, and I don’t know if he really thought he could swallow it, but he was giving it a good try. He had it in his mouth and his jaws were chomping up and down like he was chewing a giant wad of gum. He looked like a pelican trying to swallow a fish that was a little too big for him to handle.

  I finally reached around and pulled his other hand behind his back and got it cuffed—now he’s mine and he knows it. I rolled him over and told him to spit the bag out, but he wasn’t giving it up that easy. His bottom jaw was bouncing up and down as he stretched his neck out, doing his best to get that bag down his skinny, scrawny throat where he thought I couldn’t get it.

  This is another common maneuver with drug dealers. They think they’re slick, they think no evidence equals no collar, but it only works if I don’t see you doing it. Sometimes they get it down and sometimes they don’t, but it doesn’t work with a bag this big and it never works with a cop sitting on your back. As hard as he tried he couldn’t swallow it, and now it was getting stuck in his throat. I couldn’t care less if he choked on it and died, one less drug dealer in the world, but if he did swallow the bag I’d have to sit in the hospital with him for the next twelve hours waiting for it to come out the other end.

  Just then my partner comes screeching to a halt and runs over. I told him to watch my back and that I would take care of the perp. I wasn’t as worried about the perp as I was about getting hit in the head with a flying beer bottle thrown by some cop-hating shithead in the crowd.

  Again I told him to spit it out, but it was no good, he wasn’t giving it up, so I decided if he wanted to play hardball so could I. I wasn’t going to stick my fingers in his mouth, that’s disgusting plus it’s a good way to get a thumb chewed off. So instead I grabbed him by the throat and pinched his windpipe, cutting off his air supply. Now he was the one with the problem. If he wanted to breathe, he would have to spit it out—and that’s when I leaned over and whispered ever so gently into his ear, “Spit it out, motherfucker, or I’ll strangle you.”

  As soon as I grabbed this guy, a small crowd of concerned citizens had gathered, wanting to see the show. Everybody in New York loves a good fight. The crowd had no idea what was going on, but they seemed to be more on Baggy’s side than mine. It wasn’t a problem until they started moving in a little too close and yelling for me to leave him alone. My partner is big and intimidating, so he took care of the crowd and I could hear his deep voice behind me barking at the crowd to “start fucking walking.”

  Finally Baggy Pants realized that he couldn’t swallow that big bag, plus he also realized that if he wanted to breathe again he was going to have to spit it out, so with a cough and a burp, it flew out and landed on the sidewalk. I patted him on the head and said, “Good boy.” It was disgusting: the bag was covered with phlegm, spit, and whatever other slimy crap he had down his throat. I had the bag, but I needed to make sure I didn’t miss anything, so I flipped him over and told him to open his mouth. He knew the routine. I shined my flashlight in his mouth and down his throat while he rolled his tongue around to show me I had gotten it all. We were now both out of breath, and glad this was over.

  I grabbed Baggy by his belt and jacket and lifted him to his feet and started putting him into the back of the car. That’s when some do-gooder got up into my face, blocking my path, and started yelling that Baggy Pants wasn’t doing nothing, and that he wanted my name and shield number so he could make a complaint. I’d had enough. My knee and elbow ached from rolling on the ground, and I had crackhead saliva all over my sleeve from Baggy coughing up the stash. So I informed Mr. Liberal that if he didn’t shut the fuck up and get out of my way, he’d be joining Baggy in the back of the car for a ride to the station house. The lib was concerned, but not enough to go to jail, so he took my advice and started walking.

  It always amazes me how people right away want to think the worst about the police. Without knowing all the facts they just assume we’re the bad guys. Police work is a difficult and dangerous job, and it rarely goes as clean and neat as it does on TV—which is where most people get their information about cops and police work. I just want to do my job with as little hassle as possible and go home in one piece—and without germ-filled crackhead saliva all over me.

  I threw Baggy into the back of the car, then went to get the stash, which was still lying on the ground. My partner was standing over it so nobody would scoop it up and take off with it. I knew there were other junkies standing in the crowd drooling over it, and they didn’t care how disgusting it was, they would have smoked it anyway. When I went back, my partner was standing there with a rubber glove in his hand. The glove was for me, and he had that smile on his face that said, “Your collar, you pick it up.”

  I scooped it up, threw it into a brown paper envelope, then we jumped back into the car and took off. I wanted to get out of there because I wanted to get away from the annoying crowd, but also because I wanted to go look for Brooks Brothers—I hadn’t forgotten about him. We checked the surrounding blocks, and I even ran down into three different subway stations looking for him, but no luck. The guy from Wall Street was in the wind. Once a junkie gets hi
s shit, he gets happy feet—he takes off like a squirrel with a nut and wastes no time looking for a nice quiet place to go get high. I just hoped he wasn’t the guy managing my 401(k) tomorrow morning.

  I grabbed the radio off my belt and notified the dispatcher that we were going into the house with “one under” (into the precinct with one arrest). I was a little pissed that I didn’t get my second collar, but that’s the way it works sometimes. I hoped he’d get grabbed by Narcotics someday—I was sure this wouldn’t be his last vial of crack. That’s the thing about crack, you chase it like a gerbil on one of those little wheels, and the wheel never stops until somebody else makes it stop.

  The ride into the station house was quiet. Sometimes perps will try to talk their way out of things. “Officer, this is all a big mistake, you got the wrong guy.” Or sometimes the cocky ones will mouth off and tell you, “This is bullshit, my lawyer will beat this.” But not this guy, he was quiet. I had him good and he knew it, there was no way he could say the stash wasn’t his—I found it down his throat. And there was no way he could argue that it was for personal use, because twenty-eight vials is way too much for one person, so he just sat there staring off into space contemplating his future like the NYU students and the hippies in the park. I figured he must have more than a few collars on his rap sheet and he knew he was going to do a little time for this one.

  We got back to the precinct, and I brought my prisoner before the desk. In every station house the desk is the focus of attention, everything and everybody that enters or leaves stops and notifies the desk officer. It’s the center ring of a three-ring circus.

  Today’s desk officer was a grumpy old lieutenant who wore tiny Benjamin Franklin glasses and had very little use for rookies. While I stood there waiting to be acknowledged, I emptied my prisoner’s pockets and wrote down his pedigree information so it could be entered into the command log. After an appropriate amount of time had passed and the lieutenant let me know where I stood in the police department hierarchy, which was on the very bottom, he looked up, grumbled, and acknowledged my presence. I informed him that I had one under for criminal sale of a controlled substance and showed him the now moist brown paper envelope with the plastic bag containing the stash.