Tangled Up in Blue

by Rosa Brooks

  Once out of the academy, I quickly discovered that no one followed these elaborate directions. Most cops simply said, “Turn around,” then moved up behind the subject, heedless of the risk of being kicked or pummeled, grabbed one wrist, cuffed it, grabbed the other wrist, cuffed it, and that was that. When a subject was combative, one officer grabbed and held each arm while a third officer applied the cuffs.

  Searching someone is also harder than it looks. At the academy, our instructors would put fake knives, guns, and baggies full of drugs in their underwear, knowing that squeamish recruits would be reluctant to give the groin area more than a cursory inspection. After suffering mock stabbings and shootings due to our failure to conduct proper searches, we all became somewhat more thorough, but here too, searching real subjects was much tougher than searching our peers or the instructors. (Try searching a three-hundred-pound woman who bellows, “You’re tickling me!” every time you come within six inches of her.) More practice, I thought, could only do me good.

  My partner in the wagon was a silent, surly fellow called Yusef. His pale skin was pitted with acne scars. He seemed a little put out to have to ride with me, and offered monosyllabic answers to most of my questions.

  “Where you from?”

  “Jersey.”

  “How long you been with MPD?”

  “Couple years.”

  “You like it?”

  “S’okay.”

  I soon gave up.

  The only good thing about riding with Yusef was that his near-catatonic state enabled me to get plenty of cuffing and searching practice. The arresting officer puts cuffs on an arrestee and does an initial search, but the wagon officer does a second search before loading a prisoner into the back of the van, and once back at the station, the wagon officer sometimes ends up doing a third search as well if the booking officer is busy, or just doesn’t feel like doing another search. Prisoners are uncuffed before going into cells, then re-cuffed before being transported to Central Cell Block or any other location.

  Once ensconced in the passenger’s seat, Yusef did not budge, leaving the driving, cuffing, and searching entirely to me.

  Occasionally he’d offer laconic instructions: “Park,” or “Over there.” Aside from that, he remained almost entirely silent as we ferried prisoners to and fro.

  The prisoners remained mostly silent too. By the time we showed up to transport arrestees to the station, any initial rage or resistance had usually dissipated and been replaced by resignation. They put their hands behind their backs when requested, ducked their heads as advised when climbing into the wagon, and leaned glumly against walls while being searched.

  When we had no prisoners, we just drove around.

  “Should I go anywhere in particular?” I asked Yusef.

  “Whatever.”

  So I just drove, waiting for the radio to give us something new to do. The streets of 7D were still unfamiliar, and driving around in the wagon was as good a way as any to get my bearings. It was late afternoon and still light out; there were people out on the sidewalks and sitting on steps and porches, but they mostly ignored us as we drove slowly by. I turned a corner and started up a hill.

  Suddenly, a man jumped into the road ahead of me, waving his arms wildly. I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting him. He was shouting and pointing. “That building’s on fire!”

  And it was. Up the block on the left, flames were pouring out of what seemed to be the back deck of a ground-floor apartment, and thick smoke was rising into the sky. I looked at Yusef for guidance.

  “Local. Fire board.”

  This was more words than Yusef had uttered in the previous hour, but I understood his directive. In MPD-speak, a fire is called a “local,” and a fire truck is a “fire board.” (An ambulance is just “the board.”) I got on the radio and reported that we had a local—Yusef came alive again long enough to provide the address—and needed the fire board.

  “Now block the road, lights on, so people don’t drive in front of it, but leave room for the fire trucks to get by.” Yusef was becoming positively loquacious.

  “Shouldn’t we, ah, make sure no one’s still inside that building?”

  Yusef looked at me like I was nuts. “You want to go out there and start knocking on doors?”

  “Shouldn’t we? I mean, there could be people next door or upstairs who don’t know that part of their building’s on fire. Shouldn’t we tell them, so they can leave?”

  “Whatever.”

  I took this as an affirmative response and hopped out. I was sick of handcuffing depressed prisoners, anyway, and even more sick of sitting next to Yusef. Warning people about the fire seemed like a better way to spend some time.

  With a slight groan, Yusef slid out of the passenger’s seat to the street. I started running up the hill.

  “Hey, watch it,” he called after me. “These people don’t like us around here.”

  The flames had created a wall of fire on the side of the building facing the street, but from what I could see, the main entrance to the apartment was on the other side of the building, along with entrances to all the units in the attached apartment block. By now a small crowd had gathered to stare at the flames, but no one seemed particularly perturbed.

  “Fire trucks are on their way,” I called as I ran by. No one commented.

  I ran up the street, around the last unit, and into a large courtyard. On this side of the building, the fire was completely out of sight, and people were milling around casually, chatting and strolling. A few people seemed to be having a picnic.

  “The building’s on fire!” I shouted as I ran toward the burning unit. Everyone looked at me like I was insane.

  I couldn’t blame them—from the courtyard, there was no sign of danger. But I kept shouting and shooing people away from the building, and finally even the picnickers began to drift out toward the street.

  I ran into the vestibule of the burning building. It was also quiet and empty, though the smell of smoke was starting to drift through. I started up the stairs, pounding on doors as I went. A woman in pajamas opened one door.

  “There’s a fire,” I told her. “You need to get out of the building.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yeah, the ground floor apartment’s on fire,” I yelled over my shoulder. I was already running up the next flight of stairs. “Fire department’s on the way, but everyone needs to get out.”

  On the next landing, I could hear a child laughing inside an apartment, but no one answered when I pounded on the door. Shit. I pounded some more.

  “Police! The building’s on fire!”

  No response, though I could still hear children’s voices.

  I started to wonder if I should try to kick the door in. That seemed melodramatic, but then again, running around shouting, “Fire! Everyone out!” was melodramatic too. And weren’t these exigent circumstances? I didn’t want any children to burn up because they were too scared to open the door. But I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to kick the door in on my own. Maybe I could shoot the lock out like they did in the movies. But no: “Know your target and what is beyond it.” There might be small children beyond my target, their heads right at doorknob-level. Yusef could probably help me kick in the door, but where was he? I suspected he was back in the wagon, watching a movie on his phone.

  I pounded and yelled some more, and finally, the door was opened by a dreadlocked young man holding a toddler. Two slightly older children hung back behind his legs.

  “Yeah?” He was in sweats, and looked like he’d been napping. Everyone in the building seemed to have been napping.

  “The building is on fire. You need to get out.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “Sir,” I said, using my command voice, “this building is on fire. You and the children need to get out. Now!”

 
He gave me an aggrieved look, but began, reluctantly, to usher the kids out the door.

  By now, the smell of smoke was heavier, and I could hear sirens. I banged on a few more doors, but no one else seemed to be home; in a few apartments, I heard dogs barking. I winced at the thought of dogs stuck in a burning building, but there wasn’t much I could do. The fire department was coming, and they would either put the fire out and save the dogs, or not.

  I was fairly sure I recalled something from one of our academy lessons directing us not to rush into burning buildings, especially not to rescue barking dogs, but to stand back and let the properly trained firefighters rush into burning buildings. Had I been stupid to run into the building? Maybe. But only part of the building was on fire, and I was in the other part. Still. Either the fire was no big deal and it had been unnecessary to get people out, in which case it was stupid for me to have rushed in, or the fire was a big deal, in which case it was also stupid for me to have rushed in. Except the fire department hadn’t been here when I arrived, and at least one of the apartments in the building had erupted into sheets of flame, and there were children in the building, so perhaps rushing in was necessary, even if stupid. And where the fuck was Yusef?

  I was still puzzling over all this as I left the building, which was still intact on the courtyard side, at least. Running up and down the stairs and pounding on doors had left me panting and sweating, and the dreadlocked man with the children gave me an unfriendly look when I passed him in the courtyard.

  I went back around the corner and found that the cavalry had arrived with a vengeance; I counted at least seven fire trucks. On the street side of the building, water from several fire hoses was gushing into the burning apartment. Soon, the flames were gone, replaced by a billow of greasy smoke.

  Down the block, Yusef was leaning against the side of the wagon, looking unruffled. “So, you got, like, a hero complex?” He snickered.

  I glared at him.

  He looked a little abashed. “Hey, no, I guess that was good, you told people to get out. Yeah. Probably good to have people get out. You know, since the building was on fire.” He nodded, apparently just now reaching this conclusion, and let out a small, weird giggle.

  I wasn’t sure if Yusef was clinically depressed, a jerk, or just an idiot. Or maybe high. “So what do the fire department guys say?”

  “Dunno. It was the kitchen, they said. Looks like something caught on fire.”

  “You think?” I asked, but my sarcasm was lost on him.

  “Yeah. So, kaboom.” Yusef stretched and looked at his watch. “We can go now.”

  We went back to ferrying prisoners around.

  No Plot

  Assault with a Dangerous Weapon (knife): At approximately 1145 hours, Victim reports that he was [in] the bathroom shaving when Suspect came in the bathroom and requested to use it. Victim did not want to leave at that time. Victim and Suspect got into a verbal altercation at which point Suspect brandished a knife. Victim stated that Suspect began swinging the knife at which time Victim was struck in his right shin. Victim obtained a small puncture and responded to the hospital. . . .

  —MPD Joint Strategic and Tactical Analysis Command Center, Daily Report

  Patrol has no plot. I learned this very quickly.

  This is why there are thousands of books and movies about detectives, but not many about patrol officers. The work of detectives comes with built-in narratives. Someone killed someone, beat someone, raped someone, stole something—whodunit? The work of detectives involves a mystery, a search for answers, and at least some of the time, a resolution.

  Patrol is different. Patrol officers are first responders—they’re dispatched by radio, they’re flagged down on the street, or they spot a problem and stop to sort it out. Every patrol shift starts from scratch: a full tank of gas in the scout car, and a blank run sheet. The radio crackles and you’re off. Sometimes you get boring calls, and sometimes you get interesting calls. Men hit their girlfriends. Roommates get into fights. Burglar alarms go off; teenagers refuse to come home when they’re supposed to; people overdose on drugs. There are car crashes, fires, robberies, and shootings. The next shift, you start over. New people, new problems. Or sometimes same people, same problems. If a crime has occurred and the perpetrator happens to still be on the scene or can be found within minutes, you make an arrest. But patrol officers don’t track down serial killers or solve mysteries. If you happen to encounter a mystery—a crime with no suspects, or a missing suspect—you hand it over to the detectives, who may or may not remember to let you know how it all turns out.

  One day, for instance, human bones turned up in a basement crawl space in 7D. The construction worker who stumbled onto the bones was part of a crew hired to expand a residential basement, and he assumed he had found the bones of an animal—a raccoon, or just a big rat. Then he saw a human skull, and called the police. A couple of 7D patrol officers arrived and summoned the detectives. By the time the scene had been thoroughly searched, three skeletons had turned up; in addition to the one in the crawl space, there were two in the wooded area behind the building, found by police cadaver dogs.

  It was a genuine class A mystery. The skeletons were at least a year old, possibly much older, and once the medical examiner looked at them, it was clear none of them had died of natural causes. All three were female; two had been shot and one had been beaten to death. But though Murphy and I drove by and stopped to chat with the 7D officers guarding the perimeter, it wasn’t our business, and it wasn’t really theirs, either; they were just standing guard duty. When the remains were finally identified, months later (through DNA samples provided by families of people who had been reported missing years earlier), most patrol officers learned of it through local news reports.

  For reserve officers, the experience of patrolling is even more discontinuous, and not only because they’re part-timers. Most career patrol officers rarely leave their assigned districts. During major citywide events, such as mass protests, parades, and presidential inaugurations, they might be detailed to civil defense units or parade duty, but the rest of the time, they stay in their home districts. Although each reserve officer is assigned to one of the city’s seven patrol districts upon graduation, we were also frequently asked to help out in districts other than our own, especially if they were temporarily short-staffed or expected a surge of problems. I liked patrolling in other districts; it was a good way to get to know the issues police face in other parts of the city, and to see how different each district is. But it added to the disjointedness of patrolling.

  Despite this, things soon began to feel more routine. After a few months of patrol, I was starting to feel less anxious. It still took me half an hour to get all my gear on, and I still felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was coming to see that often my fellow officers didn’t know what they were doing, either, and for the most part, the more experienced officers were happy to help someone new.

  During one of my first traffic stops, the driver, a sad-looking middle-aged guy, told me his license and registration were in the back of his van. “Can I climb back and get them?” he asked.

  I hesitated, briefly flummoxed. The guy was cooperative; he had asked politely. Should I just let him climb into the back and retrieve his bag? I was about to tell him to go right ahead when my partner Ben jumped in to save me.

  “Hang on there, sir,” he interjected. “You can just give us your name and date of birth, we’ll look you up that way, all right?”

  I was mortified. What kind of dimwitted police officer would allow a driver to climb back into the unseen rear compartment of a van to retrieve something? Not for the first time (or the last time), a lifetime of polite habits had trumped every police academy lesson about officer safety.

  “That was dumb,” I admitted to Ben as we got back into the car to look the guy up.

  “I’ll give you a few
pointers on that one,” he said kindly. “We’ll talk in a second.”

  At least I wasn’t alone in my cluelessness. Many 7D evening shift patrol officers were young and relatively new to the job. Often, the most experienced officers in each PSA had just two or three years of experience, sometimes less. At complicated scenes, everyone spent a fair amount of time consulting one another by phone. (“You ever handled a juvenile selling weed? Yeah, what’s the process? You got a copy of that form? I never even heard of that.”)

  Scenes were frequently chaotic, and officers were part of the chaos. It was standard procedure for officers to request backup units if a call seemed potentially dangerous, and even when backup wasn’t requested, officers not busy on other calls routinely stopped by other officers’ scenes to see if they could help out. It was common to end up with half a dozen officers at each call. MPD officials often complained of being short-staffed, but as far as I could tell, there was no shortage of officers. Often, we were tripping over one another.

  In theory, the officers assigned to the call by the dispatcher “owned” the scene until a higher-ranking official showed up, but in practice, many scenes seemed to have no one in charge. You’d arrive at a domestic violence call, for instance, and find four or five other officers already wandering around in a house full of people, with no one coordinating their activities. Police culture is hierarchical between ranks but egalitarian within ranks, and officers rarely seemed comfortable telling their peers what to do. This reluctance to take charge meant that several different officers might interview the same victim or witness—not to double- or triple-check their story, but just because no one was keeping track. You’d find five officers in the living room and none at the doors, or four officers searching the yard and no one searching the basement.