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

by Steve Osborne

  As we escorted him out of the lobby of his very expensive building and toward the backseat of the unmarked car, I watched the complainant give him a cold, icy stare that said, “You son of a bitch.” The perp hung his head and just stared at the ground, trying to avoid eye contact. His sad, defeated look said, “I think I fucked up—big-time.”

  When we put him in the car he was rear cuffed behind his back and still had the vest on. It was one of those heavy military-type vests that could have easily stopped the bullets we were carrying. I couldn’t help but think the headline in tomorrow’s newspaper could have been “Cop Killed. Perp Had Vest, Asshole Cop Didn’t.”

  I called for another car to transport my victim and brought the whole caper back to the station house for processing. We had paperwork to do plus he had to be fingerprinted and photographed and she had to be seen by a doctor for injuries and evidence collection.

  While my guys did some paperwork and argued over who would get the collar, I went back to the holding cell to make sure our wimpy little stockbroker didn’t hang himself or try to escape. It was slightly gratifying to see my millionaire rapist stockbroker sulk inside the dingy cell. I mused silently to myself, “And justice for all, motherfucker.”

  When he saw me walk into the room he peeked through the bars and asked if he could make his “one phone call.” He obviously watched television.

  You might think that I would be pretty pissed at him right now for trying to kill me. You might think that I would tell him to shut the fuck up or maybe open the cell door and beat the shit out of him with the phone. But it doesn’t work that way. I realized a long time ago you can’t take this stuff personal. If you do, it will just eat you up or worse, get you into trouble. He was not trying to kill me. He was not trying to kill Steve Osborne. He was trying to kill the cop that was coming to lock him up. I was actually more pissed that one of my guys almost got hurt.

  I took him out of the cell and walked him over to the phone. I dialed the outside line and handed him the receiver, then stood next to him and listened to his conversation. In a low voice he grumbled into the phone, “Hey, it’s me. Listen, I got a little problem. I just got arrested and I need you to call my lawyer.” After a short pause he continued, “What’s that stock going for?”

  He waited for an answer, then replied, “A dollar a share. Sell two hundred thousand, I’m going to need some cash for this.”

  Now I wanted to punch him in the face! He just made more money from one phone call from jail than I made in more than two years.

  I escorted him back in the holding cell and slammed the door shut. The boom from the closing door made the air around us vibrate. Then I shoved the six-inch-long skeleton key in the lock, securing it with a metallic click. I love those sounds. It sounds like justice. And I wanted to remind him he wasn’t on Wall Street anymore.

  People like to think cops are racists and only lock up minorities. Nothing could be further from the truth. After being a cop for a few years, you learn to dislike people equally. I enjoy locking up some white millionaire stockbroker who raped a topless dancer as much as some black crackhead who robbed a little old lady. To keep from becoming too bitter and cynical about the world in general, occasionally I have to remind myself that I only deal with the bad people of all races—and now religions.

  Because he actually did date a supermodel and was featured in the gossip page of the New York Post a week earlier, I called the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information with the details of the arrest. I was a little surprised when headquarters called me back a short time later and said a television news crew was coming to the station house to do a story. I was even more surprised when they told me it was okay to give an on-camera interview.

  A television news crew came to the precinct and interviewed me on the front steps of the station house. My guys and some of the other cops stood in the background behind the cameraman making faces at me and giggling while I tried to sound professional and not make an idiot out of myself.

  The next day the story ran in three New York newspapers. One even printed a picture of the gun and the vest.

  A few days later I went down to court to testify in the grand jury. I got the feeling bad news was coming when the ADA called me into her office and asked me to close the door.

  First she explained to me we weren’t going into the grand jury that day. Next she threw a name at me that I vaguely recognized from reading the newspapers.

  Turns out the name she mentioned was a very high-priced attorney who was well known for representing some of the biggest organized crime figures in New York City, and now he was representing my perp. My first reaction was “So what? Who cares?”

  She went on to explain that if our perp took a felony conviction he would lose his stockbroker’s license and thus, in his mind, lose everything. He was willing to spend every penny he had to prevent this. And he had a lot of pennies.

  I sat and listened as she continued. Looking at this objectively, she explained, if we went to trial most likely we would lose. She was afraid they would destroy our complainant on the stand. I tried to assure her our complainant seemed solid, good under pressure, and I thought she would hold up well on the stand. The ADA had already spoken to the complainant and agreed she seemed solid, but the topless dancer issue was too much of a problem to overcome.

  The ADA was well known and well respected in the field of sex crimes. I had a case with her earlier and liked her. She was afraid the City of New York would invest a lot of time and money to prosecute this case only to lose. She pointed to a pile of other cases on her desk that needed to be prosecuted. Cases more vicious and violent than mine. I understood—with a limited amount of time and resources, you had to pick your battles.

  It was time to pull the ace from my sleeve. What about the attempted murder on me? I asked. We had charged him with attempted murder for pointing the gun at me. The apologetic look on her face said more bad news was coming. She explained if he fired a shot at me we would have a great case, but just pointing it at me was not enough. I asked her if he pointed it at some ADA, would it be enough then. She failed to see my humor.

  A little frustrated and disappointed I asked her, “So what now, do we buy him a martini and apologize for locking him up?” I was starting to regret not shooting this little prick. The wheels of justice just came to a screeching halt. Funny thing about the law is, one day you are completely justified killing a guy and the next day you can’t even get him one day in jail.

  In the end he took a plea to a misdemeanor gun charge and received a year’s probation. This wasn’t the first time a case of mine went down the crapper through no fault of my own, and it wouldn’t be the last. I had to remind myself again, “Don’t take this stuff personal—it’s only business.” I’m just one spoke in the wheel of justice and I did my job. I can’t do everybody’s.

  About eight months later I strolled into a regular coffee spot of mine—a deli down the block from the perp’s apartment. When I walked up to the counter and ordered, I felt an uncomfortable feeling over my shoulder. I felt the uneasiness of eyes on me, like someone was staring. I looked over my shoulder and it was him! It took a second for me to recognize him. Since his arrest we had slapped cuffs on a few hundred other guys, and they all start to become a sea of sad, defeated, angry faces. But it was obvious by the way he was eyeballing me he recognized my face right away.

  This time I had my vest on, and a 9mm Glock tucked under my shirt. I really didn’t expect him to pull a gun on me, but I didn’t expect it last time either. And I had learned a big lesson.

  There was an awkward silence as we both stared for a moment and sized each other up. It’s always a thorny situation when you run into someone in the street who you locked up. Especially when you almost killed each other. I could feel my body tense up a bit and my right hand ball up into a fist. I thought, “If he tries something stupid I’m going to fuck him up big-time.”

  He broke the edgy silence by muttering an unexpec
tedly humble “What’s up?”

  My body and balled-up fist relaxed a bit when I saw he had no interest in fighting. But I growled back the first thing that came into my mind, “You got off pretty fucking easy, huh?”

  He spoke slow and deliberately, like he was about to say something that he obviously gave a lot of thought to. “You know you ruined me.”

  He had me at “ruined.” I was intrigued. I don’t know what I expected him to say, but this definitely wasn’t it. I had to know more.

  “Oh yeah, how so?” I said, not trying to hide my impish glee. I was hoping he wouldn’t disappoint me.

  “That little press interview you did. As soon as my clients saw that they all dropped me within a week. I lost everything—millions. Then the company I worked for fired me, and no one else will touch me—I’m finished.”

  Even losing millions doesn’t substitute for a little jail time, but I was starting to feel better. It had pissed me off thinking that the only punishment this guy got was a six-figure attorney’s fee. But money to a guy like him was everything in life and he lost it. No more supermodels for him.

  It wasn’t the jail time I was hoping for, but it sounded pretty severe so I figured I would cheer him up—show him the bright side. I said, “You’re lucky we didn’t fucking kill you.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded his head, contemplating what I just said. He knew I was right. That little 3:00 a.m. run-in we had could have easily ended up with somebody getting shot—either him or me. He realized out of the other possible outcomes that could have happened in that lobby, he didn’t do too bad.

  He tried explaining to me that, at the time, he was afraid the victim might show up with a couple of her guy friends and try to beat him up. That’s why he answered the door with the gun and the vest. He tried telling me that in those few seconds of excitement and confusion he never heard me yell “police” or saw the shiny gold shield hanging around my neck.

  Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if he had got that shot off—I would still be dead. And most likely he would have been dead about one second after me. My guys would have lit him up!

  During our conversation he must have sensed my disappointment at the fact he didn’t receive any jail time. When I grabbed my coffee and turned to leave he tried to console me and said, “Don’t worry—you got me good.”

  Before I left and, I hoped, never saw this guy again, I wanted to impart some wisdom I had learned along the way—maybe this little episode in his life could be a learning experience. The answer popped right into my head.

  I said, “Don’t take this stuff personal, it’s only business.”

  9.

  A Different Path

  I was in bed snuggled under the covers, in a deep REM sleep, when in the far reaches of my brain I heard the jarring, irritating sound of a ringing phone. I really didn’t want to be bothered and tried to ignore it, but it was on the nightstand only two feet from my head and I couldn’t make it go away.

  I was beat. My team and I had collared up last night and worked overtime till five in the morning processing arrests and transporting prisoners. I needed to get some sleep because I was going back to work in a couple of hours—to do it all over again.

  I was working in the Fugitive Division up in the Bronx, and we had done a warrant sweep over in the Hunt’s Point Market area. The Point is an industrial area and the largest food distribution market in the city, and during the day the streets are lined with commercial vehicles either picking up or making a delivery. But at night, the streets are lined with crackhead whores in short skirts and high heels waving at passing cars while their boyfriends (pimps) watch from the nearby shadows, keeping a careful eye on business. From sunset to sunup cars from the surrounding suburbs, even some with baby seats in the back and “My Kid Is an Honor Student” bumper stickers, parade around the blocks, in a never-ending cycle of picking up and dropping off.

  The precinct commanding officer had asked us for a little help cleaning up his prostitution problem, so we went over there and grabbed every hooker we could find and ran their names for active warrants. This is a little like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the girls had active warrants under various names for failing to return to court on their open cases. When you have a crack hangover and after a long night of twenty-dollar blow jobs I guess it’s easy to forget you have a court date in the morning. And even if you do remember, you probably just say fuck it. But when they don’t show up the judge just issues a warrant for their arrest and the process starts all over again.

  It only took about thirty minutes and we had eight pissed-off ladies of the night handcuffed in the back of the prisoner van on our way to the office.

  You probably never had to deal with eight angry hookers crammed into the back of a van, but it can be a handful. If they’re not fighting with us they’re fighting with each other. It takes days of riding around with the windows open before the smell of cheap perfume dissipates out of the seats. Right off the bat two of them let me know they were PMSing and were in no mood for any bullshit out of me. The funny part was one of them was a transvestite.

  As the phone continued to ring I willed one of my eyelids half open so I could check the clock on top of my dresser. It was 7:00 a.m., an unusual time for someone to be calling for no reason. It was either bad news or a wrong number.

  I started to get concerned, thinking it was one of my guys calling from court telling me there’s a problem with one of our prisoners. I started to imagine the worst, maybe one of our perps escaped, or they found a gun, or some other interesting foreign object, hidden up one of their vaginas when they went through the metal detector. It happens more often than you would think!

  The ringing thankfully stopped and the answering machine finally picked up. Speaking was the familiar voice of a friend of mine I hadn’t seen or heard from in a few years. Through the sleepy haze I could tell his sentences were short and a little broken up—like he was nervous and searching for the right words.

  He said, “Hey Oz…uh, it’s Dan. Uh, uh…you home? I was hoping. Uh…I got to talk to you about something.”

  I could tell by the sound of his voice something was wrong, so I picked up the phone and grumbled, “Hey, what’s up?”

  Danny apologized for waking me up so early, but he had to talk to me about something and said I was the only one who could help him. I started thinking maybe he got arrested—but no, Dan wasn’t that kind of guy. Unlike some of my other friends he always stayed on the straight and narrow. He got married early, had kids, and found himself a decent job. But I could tell in his voice something was up.

  When you’re a cop your family and friends like to come to you with their “legal” problems. Usually that means someone got arrested. Or they were pulled over and got a ticket for something that wasn’t their fault. Sometimes their car got stolen or their house was broken into and they want your help or need some advice.

  I don’t mind, but most of the time there’s not much I can do, so advice is all I can give. Usually the advice is some inside “cop” information I might have. It makes people feel better, especially when it’s coming from a friend or relative. For twenty-five years my father was the “neighborhood cop”—everybody came to him with their problems. But he had recently died, so the torch had been passed down to me.

  I asked Dan if he was all right and he said yes. I asked about his wife—I knew her also, we all grew up together on the same block and went to the same schools. I asked about his kids, they were okay too. From the tone of his voice I knew something bad was up and my curiosity was getting the best of me, so I told him to hurry up and get to the point. He stumbled a little, searching for the right words again, then finally said, “Remember Jimmy?”

  I said, “Yeah, what about him?”

  And after a short dramatic pause he added, “He’s dead.”

  I wasn’t totally shocked. I hadn’t seen Jimmy in quite a few years, but from what I remem
bered he lived life on the edge. And with Jimmy the edge meant drugs—hard-core drugs.

  When I was a kid everybody drank beer and smoked a little weed, but after a few years Jimmy and some of the other guys in the neighborhood needed more and made that cavernous leap to the dark side—heroin.

  Jimmy was a stocky, muscular kid and a pretty good ballplayer. He and I played baseball together on the same Little League team. There wasn’t much difference between us. We grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same Catholic grammar school together. And if that wasn’t enough of a righteous upbringing, we both went to Catholic high schools for four more years of religious brainwashing and higher education. But somehow, after all that, we ended up on very different paths.

  He wasn’t the only one, there were other guys I knew that made the jump, and they became their own little secret society. The heroin guys—and girls—soon hung out by themselves and stopped playing sports.

  I’m ashamed to admit it, but at the time, the thought of it did intrigue me—going into the really seedy neighborhoods of Manhattan to score. Doing something dark and mysterious, living on the edge. But there was one thing that didn’t intrigue me—sticking a needle in my arm. When I envisioned myself doing that it just seemed terribly wrong. Smoking weed and drinking beer was one thing, but sticking a needle in my vein didn’t seem like a normal thing to do and it scared the hell out of me.

  Once, when I told a good buddy of mine I was contemplating trying it just once to see what the big deal was, he looked in my eye with a seriousness I’ll never forget and said, “You do and I’ll kill you.” He was normally a calm easygoing guy, so his straightforward reaction was a little startling and confirmed for me that it was probably a bad idea.

  And it wasn’t long before the members of the secret society became disheveled zombies going through life in perpetual slow motion with hollow eyes and thousand-yard stares.