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

by Steve Osborne

  —

  For the first two months we worked fourteen to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, and in whatever free time we had, we went to cop funerals, sometimes two a day. Finally I got a weekend off, so I took my wife down to Ocean City, Maryland, just to get her away from the city for a little while. She needed to get away just as much as I did. I needed to smell some fresh air, and the ocean seemed like a good place to do it. When I got back it was Monday morning, November 12, and I was trying to restore some normalcy back into my squad’s routine. I was only in the office for about an hour when we heard on the radio that a jetliner had crashed out in the Rockaways—it was American Airlines Flight 587. Within minutes I got everybody together, and the next thing I know we’re racing, lights and siren—again—out to the crash site.

  On the way out there all I could think of was terrorism, what the fuck else could it be? What are the chances it could be anything else? But it wasn’t, it was an accident. And again, there was no police work to be done, except to process the remains. Because Bellevue morgue was geared up for a big event, all the bodies came to us, and in the next couple of days we processed what was left of the two hundred and sixty-five people who perished.

  It might seem hard to believe, but for me, and a lot of the guys I was with, that time in the morgue was worse than 9/11. I didn’t think anything could be worse than what we had just been through, but this was it. This time, most of the people I saw were intact—with faces to look into—and there were small children.

  I remember the one night I was there, all night long we carried body bag after body bag into the morgue—the refrigerated truck was filled with them. Inside it was like an assembly line of death, everywhere you looked there were bodies lying on gurneys, waiting for their turn to be processed and then returned back outside to another refrigerated truck. I was dressed head to toe in scrubs with thick rubber gloves on, trying not to get the leaking body fluids on me, and again deep down inside, I was numb—just concentrating on keeping the line moving, and getting the job done. My trusty wall was doing its best to keep me a safe distance mentally from what I was doing, but in the middle of all this, something kicked me in the gut and snapped me back to reality. Outside, after unloading another bag from the refrigerated truck, I realized someone was standing behind me. When I turned around I saw there were two people, a man and a woman, and they had Bibles in their hands. They were from the Salvation Army, and they were silently praying over the bag I had just unceremoniously placed onto a gurney. I think maybe it was God’s way of reminding me that there were people in those bags.

  —

  After about six months, the recovery was winding down—for us anyway—and it was time to get back to crime fighting. There were still fifty-two hard-core assholes out on the street who needed to be locked up, and we hadn’t forgotten about them. Operation Gladiator was back on. It wasn’t the big spectacular finale I had originally envisioned, everything seemed small and insignificant compared to what we had been through, but we got all of our subjects, and the case was a big success. Afterward crime dropped off dramatically in that neighborhood, and in the end that’s all you can hope for. We don’t do things for pats on the back, we do them because they need to be done. Because it’s our job.

  And not long after that, another feeling was bubbling up deep down inside me, and I couldn’t stop it. It was telling me it was time to retire.

  14.

  End of Tour

  It was Saturday night, and I was halfway through a 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. tour. My plan for this evening was to do absolutely nothing—zero—and so far things were going according to plan. Most nights when I’m out with my squad, we’re looking for collars, but not tonight. This was the last time I would ever strap on a gun, pin on a shield, and walk down the street as a New York City cop. That’s because Tuesday morning I was going to walk into police headquarters, turn in my gun and shield, and walk out a civilian. I was retiring.

  We had parked the car on the corner of West Forty-Sixth Street and Broadway—my favorite coffee spot. As usual we were in plainclothes driving a rental car, so to the thousands of people passing by, we were anonymous. Just like two shepherds, we were guarding the flock, and keeping an eye out for the wolves. I sat there quiet and empty inside, alone in my thoughts, watching the world go by, while I tried to figure out where I fit in the cosmos. It seems like a lot to contemplate, but at a time like this, a guy starts to think about where he’s been, where he’s going, and what the fuck it all means. I wasn’t sad, but I wasn’t happy either. I felt about this the way I felt about a lot of other things lately: numb.

  The detective I had working with me tonight was my old anti-crime partner from fifteen years earlier, back at the Sixth Precinct. The thing about partners is, you become more than just friends. When you place your life in another man’s hands, there is a bond that develops, and it never goes away. Over the years I’ve had several, and when I refer to them I hardly ever use the word friend, because partner has a deeper, more profound meaning. He was a big, thick, tough, football player type, and I always felt safe working with him. I always knew that no matter what happened, we could handle it, and I was going home in one piece, give or take a few bumps and bruises. It seemed appropriate to have him with me on my last night.

  The only physical activity I wanted to engage in tonight was to shake a few hands and tell people, “If I never see you again, have a nice life.” I had a couple of my guys out running around looking for collars, and I told them if they needed me, just call. They understood what that meant. I was looking for a nice, quiet, easy night. I wanted to enjoy my last few moments of police life.

  Retiring from the police department is kind of like jumping off a diving board, there’s no turning back. Not too many guys leave and then return, mostly because they don’t want you back. At the time the NYPD had about thirty-eight thousand cops, and whether you liked it or not, you were just a number to them. There’s an old saying, “You love the job—but the job doesn’t love you.” Somewhere out there was a young kid waiting and dreaming about going into the next academy class, just like I did, and just like it had since the NYPD first started, the cycle from old to new would continue. Since the Dutch first settled New York a few hundred years ago, and the first policeman, then called the night watchman, patrolled the streets, there has been a proud tradition that continues today. And I was honored to be part of it, because I felt like I belonged to something special. But my days as the night watchman were about to end.

  I had some doubts about pulling the plug, everyone does, but the one thing I was sure about was that I was tired. My entire career I worked in busy squads, did all kinds of crazy hours, and was involved in more collars and capers than I could possibly count. Numerically I was still a young man, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw a beat-up old punching bag staring back at me. I wasn’t a burnout, but I was numb, right down to the core. When I told people I was leaving they were kind of surprised. Some figured they would have had to put dynamite under my chair and blast me out. I always enjoyed the job and wouldn’t trade in a minute of it, but the past twenty years had taken its toll on me.

  Everybody knows when it’s time to go, when you realize you’re finished, and for me, I remember the exact moment, right down to the very second. I was sitting in my office with my feet up on the desk, struggling to stay awake, and trying to convince myself that the four hours of sleep I got the previous night was plenty. That was when one of my detectives came in and told me he got a tip from a CI (confidential informant) that a guy we were looking for on a homicide might be hanging out up in Yonkers. We had been looking for this perp for months, but nothing. The guy was a Mexican immigrant with no roots or ties to anybody or anything, so he had just picked up and vanished on us. He supported himself as a day laborer, and the CI said we might find him hanging out on this one particular corner early in the morning looking for work. My detective wanted me to do a stakeout with him and see if we could scoop this
guy up. The info wasn’t rock solid, but it was something that would usually get my blood going. But when my adrenaline didn’t start pumping and there was no tingle in my ball bag, I knew the time had come. This perp had stabbed a guy to death in front of his pregnant wife, and if I couldn’t get excited about that anymore, I was finished. I was never the type of guy who would stick around and just take up space. Cop life had stopped being fun for me, and I needed to move on, and let someone else do the job.

  I was never an “inside” kind of guy. I probably could have gotten myself a job pushing papers around, wearing a suit, and trying to act important, but that wasn’t me. I was happiest out in the street making collars. I loved the sound handcuffs make when you click them on some bad guy’s wrists. I loved putting him in the cell, and the sound the heavy steel door makes when you slam it shut. The sounds of justice in action. There’s no better feeling than taking some robber, rapist, drug dealer, murderer—you name it—off the streets. And I loved the sleepy ride home in the wee hours of the morning after making a nice collar and working all night, knowing that I was doing something honorable in this world.

  Leaving the police department wasn’t easy, and I was taking a bit of a chance because I didn’t have another job to go to. I only knew that I wanted, or maybe needed, a change. I wanted to see what else life had to offer. The world is a big place with a lot of opportunities, and just like Christopher Columbus, I knew I would never get to see the other shore if I didn’t lose sight of this one. I had saved up some money, so I could take a little time off, recharge my batteries, and contemplate the universe. When people would ask me what I was planning on doing, the best I could come up with was I wanted to live life in the slow lane for a while. I was going to drink beer, go fishing, and maybe stare at a wall. My brain was a little fried, and that was the best answer I could come up with. Tomorrow was the Super Bowl, and the only thing on my “to do” list was hang out with some friends and watch the game. After that my schedule was wide open.

  Normally I can sit in Times Square all night long. I enjoy watching the world go by, especially the girls, but tonight I was in a sort of melancholy haze, so we decided to go for a ride. I called my other teams and asked if they were okay. They told me they were fine, no collars yet, and if they needed me they would reach out. They told me to relax and enjoy my last night.

  We drove around Midtown for a while, occasionally stopping so I could jump out to shake a few hands and say good-bye. I kept looking at the clock on the dashboard, watching the minutes tick down till I was EOT (end of tour) for the last time. It was like waiting for the ball to drop on New Year’s Eve. As we turned another corner and cruised down another crowded street, my melancholy haze was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming for help. We raced down the block toward the screams, and that’s when I spotted two guys lying on the ground fighting. It was a brawl, with one dude on top of the other, throwing punches and doing his best to pound the shit out of the guy on the bottom. Hovering over them was the woman, waving her purse around in the air and screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to come and stop the madness. My first thought was this might be a robbery gone bad. Maybe the guy on the bottom tried to steal the woman’s purse, and the guy on top—possibly her husband or boyfriend—tried to stop him.

  We jumped out of the car with shields hanging around our necks, yelling “police,” and hoping that would settle things down, but they didn’t. The punches kept flying and the screaming continued. I ran over and grabbed the guy on top, yanked him to his feet, and threw him on the wall while Les did the same with the other guy. And as soon as we did that, the woman stopped screaming for help, and instead started screaming, “They’re brothers, they’re brothers.” That wasn’t exactly the explanation I was expecting, and my robbery theory quickly went out the window.

  After splitting them up and tossing them for weapons (there were none), I asked the woman what was going on. She seemed like the levelheaded one from this trio, so I figured I could get some straight answers out of her. She had finally stopped screaming long enough to tell me that the guy on top was her husband, and the one on the bottom was his brother. She tried convincing me that everything was okay, and there was no need for the police. Despite our first impression, they really were one big happy family. She explained to me that they were out drinking, having a good time, when the brothers got into a heated argument over who made the most money, and soon the verbal argument turned into a fist-fight. She seemed reasonable enough, and it all made perfect sense, except for the happy family part. I figured there must be some deep-rooted childhood issues going on here that I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about. I just wanted them to take their stupidity off the street, so it wouldn’t be my problem anymore.

  The fight looked and sounded worse than it was, no more than some ripped shirts and scraped knuckles, nothing serious. I had only a few hours to go before going EOT, and I had no intention of making a collar, especially two drunken asshole brothers. Everything seemed to calm down. The screaming had stopped, the fighting ceased, so there was no reason to take this any further. I was anxious to get back to my melancholy haze and contemplation of my place in the cosmos, so in my best “don’t fuck with me” tone of voice, I told them to knock the stupid shit off and start walking, or they were going to spend the night in jail. I was lying about the going-to-jail part, but nobody knew it but me.

  The three of them started walking while me and my partner headed back to the car. Mission accomplished—or so I thought. As I got back in the car I watched the two brothers shuffle up the block, walking side by side, but before I had a chance to close the door, the guy who had been on top hauled off and sucker punched his brother right in the face. Here we go: round two.

  Now I was pissed. All I wanted to do was be left alone and enjoy my last few minutes on the job in peace, but I can’t keep these two overachieving idiots from beating the crap out of each other over who has the better job. I ran out of the car, grabbed the aggressor, threw him back on the wall, and yelled, “What the fuck did I tell you?”

  When I got right up into his face, that’s when I realized how much taller and bigger than me he was. Both brothers had more than a few inches on me and quite a few pounds. Plus they were about half my age. I was old enough to be their father.

  Normally, out in the street, I don’t give anyone more than one warning. If you’re too stupid to take advantage of the one chance I gave you to leave, then you deserve to go to jail for the night. But tonight I really just wanted these two morons to go away. I stood there looking up at the guy with the anger management and childhood issues and yelled at him to stop his stupidity or he was going to jail. Again I was lying. That’s when he looked down at me and screamed in this drunken crazy voice, “FUCK YOU!”

  And with that, he hauled off and threw a big, drunken roundhouse punch at me. It happened pretty fast, and caught me by surprise, but I saw it coming and was able to duck a little, so the punch hit me on the top of my head. The force of it drove me back a little and I saw a few stars from the impact, but it was not enough to really hurt me.

  Drunks do stupid things all the time—it’s a big part of police work—but punching a cop in the head is a big no-no. Now it was my turn, and the little voice in my head was saying, “Fuck me? No, fuck you!” What happened next was a blur, so fast it was over in about one second. He was drunk, and his punch was slow and sloppy, but mine were fast and to the point. I threw a quick left jab, then I followed it up with a short right that caught him square on the chin. In twenty years of police work it was one of the best punches I ever threw. The next thing I knew his head snapped back, his eyes rolled, his knees buckled, and he hit the sidewalk like a sack of beer-soaked laundry. He was out cold. I don’t remember hitting him that hard, but I caught him right on the sweet spot, and the lights went out before he even hit the ground.

  The guy was a lot bigger than me, and when I saw him lying on the sidewalk, the first thought that entered my
head was, I better get this guy cuffed, because when he wakes up, he’s gonna be pissed. I jumped on him and managed to get a handcuff on one wrist, and that’s when out of nowhere somebody jumped on my back and started clawing at me. It was the previously levelheaded wife, and now she’s screaming again, this time wanting me to leave her poor hubby alone. Right then the husband wakes up and he starts fighting with me again. With one hand I have him by the throat trying to hold him on the ground, and with the other hand I have the wife by the throat trying to keep her off me. This is un-fucking-believable! All I want to do is go back to my melancholy haze, maybe plan a fishing trip, but no such luck.

  I needed to get the husband cuffed, and I needed to do it quick. The guy had some muscle on him—he obviously spent some time in the gym—and if I had to start wrestling with him on the ground it was going to be a problem. I had surprised him with those two quick punches, but the second time around might not be so easy. Just then I saw this big meaty fist come out of nowhere and grab the wife by the back of the neck and yank her off me. The next thing she knew, she was flying through the air and ended up face-first against the wall. It was my partner. I had been busy mixing it up with the first guy and couldn’t see him, but I knew Les was there covering my back. He always did. He had been holding the second guy on the wall, keeping him out of the fight, and now he had both him and the wife wrapped up in a bear hug, keeping them off me. With her off me I got back to business with the hubby. I got him cuffed, and the fight was over almost as quick as it started. But when I rolled him over I could see blood dripping out the back of his head. He had whacked it on the sidewalk when he hit the ground and now had a nasty gash. I couldn’t fucking believe it. From a relaxing melancholy haze to trading punches with some drunken moron when you least expect it. But that’s what police work is all about.