by Rosa Brooks
Just then, another door popped open, and a neighbor in a bathrobe stuck her head out into the hall.
“What happening out here?” She gave Deandra an accusing look.
“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” my partner told her. “Please go back inside.”
Reluctantly, the neighbor complied.
This triggered a flurry of comments from Deandra, Zari, and Darius: Kent or Ken or Kenny had staged his assault because of something the neighbor lady had said. The story was garbled and I couldn’t quite make out the causation.
“Kent and me, we just friends,” said Deandra. “I used to smoke coke, I be stupid sometimes. But that bitch, she smokes, she still smoke crack.”
The medics arrived, and Darius tapped his mother on the arm. “Ma, you gotta get your lip checked out.”
His mother rounded on him. “Would you please shut up?”
Darius and Zari exchanged a look. Her moods kept shifting.
Deandra glared at them for a moment, but then allowed the medics to look at her.
“She’s been bleeding since it happened, and she’s still bleeding,” Zari said softly. “I already told security, I told her she should get a warrant or something.”
“Were you there the entire time they were arguing?” my partner asked Zari.
“No,” she said, looking down at her toes again. “If I did, I would have pushed him off her.”
“Me too,” whispered Darius.
“It’s good of you to take care of your mom,” I told them. “Even if she doesn’t want it.”
The children watched gravely as the medics cleaned and disinfected their mother’s lip, Zari with her hands clasped in front of her, Darius nibbling on a fingernail.
There was little more we could do. We would investigate, we promised. We would talk to the security guard, and see if we could find out the identity of Kent/Ken/Kenny; if we could locate him, we’d get a warrant. In the meantime, we’d write a report.
I didn’t bother giving my card or the report numbers to Deandra, who was humming to herself, eyes glazed. I just handed everything to Zari, since she appeared to be the responsible party.
“You see him again, anytime, you call us, okay?”
She inspected my card solemnly. “You gotta go now?”
I nodded.
She looked again at her mother.
“Mom, they say with you being hurt, you shouldn’t be drinking all evening.”
Her mother wasn’t having it. “They didn’t say anything about that.”
Zari just inclined her head a little, like she hadn’t really expected that gambit to succeed. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and for a while she just stood there, wiping her face with her sleeve.
“You’re lucky,” I told Deandra. “You’ve got kids who love you a lot.”
For a moment, this seemed to penetrate Deandra’s chemically induced haze, and she looked genuinely moved.
“Yeah. I do. I do.” She thought for a minute, then added, “I have eleven kids.”
“Eleven kids,” my partner said. “That’s a whole lot.”
“Mom,” interjected Zari. “Will you go inside and put an ice pack on?”
“I don’t need no ice pack! What you doing? Get on out of here.”
Zari and Darius exchanged looks again, then both started slowly down the stairs, away from their mother’s apartment, the apartment that wasn’t their home.
“Bye y’all!” Deandra called, cheerful now, taking a long swallow from the can of beer.
“I’m not going, Mom,” Zari said over her shoulder. “I’m gonna be standing here. Right here.”
Officer Friendly
Victim . . . reports that while attending a Halloween event . . . he was assaulted by an unknown female. . . . Victim reports that while at the bar area in the club he had words with the suspect. Victim reports that the suspect then threw her alcohol drink in his face. Victim reports that he was unable to see out of his right eye at that time. Victim reports that the suspect then threw her drinking glass at him hitting him in the right eye. Victim describes the suspect as a black female . . . wearing little brown bunny ears on her head . . .
—MPD Joint Strategic and Tactical Analysis Command Center, Daily Report
Sometimes, the Seventh District just seemed so unremittingly sad. Even as a part-time cop, and even early on, there were days when it was hard to summon up the energy for one more shift’s worth of large and small tragedies. In 7D, the perpetrators usually seemed as lost and desperate as the victims, and I soon discovered that many of the victims doubled as perpetrators, and vice versa: the same guy whose wallet was taken on Monday by a kid with a handgun was the guy you had to arrest on Tuesday when he took his frustrations out on his girlfriend with his fists.
The main occupational hazard of policing is not assault or injury, but cynicism. Almost by definition, the typical patrol officer gets a one-sided view of humanity. People whose lives are going well don’t spend much time with the police. No one calls the police to say, “Hey, officers, just wanted to let you know that it’s a beautiful evening, and when I got home from work I had a relaxing barbecue with the whole family and then we went inside so I could help the kids finish their homework.” You’re not there to see parents reading to their kids, or hosting birthday and graduation parties. You’re not there to see all the large and small moments of joy and affection and triumph. You only get called when things go wrong—when Dad hits Mom or Mom pulls a knife on Dad or Junior runs away or Grandma gets robbed by Junior’s friends or Junior’s sister overdoses. Sometimes, it seems like everyone you meet is crying or yelling.
It can make even well-intentioned officers cynical; it’s easy to start to think that everyone on your beat is nothing more than a criminal-in-waiting. This is not true, of course—even in the most dysfunctional, crime-ridden, drug-ridden neighborhoods, the vast majority of people are simply trying to get by, often working two or three jobs just to hold things together for their families. In 7D, there were old people like the Carters, living off pensions after a lifetime driving the city’s buses or teaching at local schools. There were girls like Zari and boys like Darius, trying to take care of the adults who should have been taking care of them. There were soccer coaches and youth groups, church choirs and entrepreneurs, community organizers, high school boys who wrote poetry, and girls who wanted to go to medical school. There were men who helped single mothers fix broken toilets and busted sinks, because who else was going to help? There were middle-aged women who brought blankets out to the drug boys on the corner on cold winter nights, because even drug dealers shouldn’t have to sit out there and freeze. There was plenty of kindness and courage and generosity amid all the misery.
But if you were an outsider, you had to look hard to find it sometimes. I made a point of searching for the good things, however small, in the bleakest situations: the drug-addicted mother whose apartment contained almost no furniture, but who still proudly displayed her children’s school report cards on the refrigerator; the older brother who put his arm around his younger brother’s shoulder and hugged him close each time their mother shouted or cursed.
Still, sometimes it was nice to get out of 7D. From time to time, district officials would ask reserve officers to help out on dates they expected would be particularly busy. We helped staff the annual High Heel Race, the Special Olympics, and assorted protests and parades. Parades, special events, and holiday details offered a chance to be Officer Friendly for a change, to see people looking healthy and cheerful rather than miserable and angry. I smiled, waved, gave people directions, helped them decode program schedules and Metro maps, and posed obligingly for photos with out-of-town tourists who were thrilled to meet a police officer in the nation’s capital. At the St. Patrick’s Day parade, people kept trying to give me plastic shamrock necklaces and offering me sips of green beer. (I accepted
the necklaces, but declined the beer.) At the two-day Barbecue Battle festival, I couldn’t get a single merchant to take my money; everyone kept insisting that I have a cold bottle of iced tea or a hot dog on the house, and thank you for your service, officer.
You’re not supposed to accept freebies, and when people told me there was no charge, I’d generally put some cash down on the counter and ask them to consider it a donation to their favorite charity. Sometimes, they would still refuse to take the money, and insisting seemed rude, so I just accepted the free iced tea. Often, people offered spontaneous thank-yous, and every now and then, spontaneous hugs.
Those hugs reminded me that despite everything, most Americans like the police. In Gallup’s annual survey of public confidence in institutions, police consistently fare quite well: In 2019, 53 percent of Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, and only 17 percent had “very little” or no confidence in police. Among public institutions, only the military fared better than police, with a whopping 73 percent of those surveyed responding that they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military. The criminal justice system as a whole had the confidence of only 24 percent of those surveyed, and public schools didn’t do much better, garnering positive reviews from only 29 percent of respondents. The Supreme Court and the presidency clocked in at a modest 38 percent confidence level, while Congress fared the worst, with only 11 percent of Americans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in their elected representatives.
These figures hide significant racial and ethnic disparities. White people are more likely than African Americans to express confidence in the police, with Hispanics somewhere in between. Republicans are more likely to have a favorable opinion of police than Democrats, and across all partisan lines and all racial and ethnic groups, older people are more positive about police officers than younger people.
I knew all this. But the occasional hugs were still nice.
My first holiday shift was on December 31, 2016, when I was just two and a half months out of the academy. I was temporarily sprung from 7D to provide extra New Year’s Eve manpower to the Third District’s Nightlife Unit. It was an unseasonably warm night, with temperatures in the midforties, and the sergeant was effusive in his thanks to the five reserve officers who turned up to help out.
“It’s gonna be crazy,” he warned us. “It’s too warm. Everyone’s gonna be out. We really appreciate your being here—we have a lot of guys on leave, so we need all the help we can get. All I need from you is, try to focus on the big stuff. No bullshit arrests; we’re too busy and I don’t want you tied up back at the station for two hours locking someone up for a POCA.” POCAs—possession of an open container of alcohol—would be everywhere tonight. “Just try to help keep things from being out of control.”
I was paired with an experienced 3D Nightlife officer, a big friendly guy called Maloney, who seemed pleased to have the company. “Normally I’m ninety-nine,” he explained. “Gets kind of lonesome out there.” Our beat would be a five-block stretch of Ninth Street, with Nellie’s Sports Bar at Ninth and U at the epicenter.
This was a different kind of policing. For one thing, two-thirds of the people on the streets were white, unlike in 7D, where cops, teachers, social workers, and the occasional foolish suburban kid trying to score some drugs were often the only white faces. Most people in the crowd looked happy and affluent, and absolutely everyone was either drunk or well on the way.
Maloney parked the patrol car in an alley, since the crowds in the street were too thick to drive through, and we started walking up and down. Within minutes, a blond kid wearing cargo shorts and a button-down shirt had attached himself to us.
“Hi, officers!” He had the bonhomie of the extremely inebriated. “Hey, Happy New Year! Isn’t this a great night? Man, this weather is something else! It’s like, it’s like . . .” He paused, frowning, unable to decide just what it was like. “Like, it’s like when it’s really warm. Like . . .” It came to him. “Summer!” He leaned in confidingly. “Listen, officers, do you know the best place for me to get a taxi? I’m trying to hook up with some friends over in Adams Morgan and I can’t remember where I left my car, and”—goofy smile—“I’m thinking anyway that probably I shouldn’t drive, but I thought maybe you could help me out. Man, it’s so . . . nice out. So . . . warm!”
Maloney gave him a curt smile and suggested he try Uber. The boy beamed. “Oh wow, that’s . . . a really good idea! Except . . . I can’t find my phone. I was thinking, could you guys maybe give me a ride? Maybe if you just drove me a little ways I could remember where my car is. I promise I won’t drive it! Maybe I’d just . . . nap in it for a few minutes.”
I advised him to walk down a few blocks and try for a cab where the crowds were less thick. He nodded, thanked us effusively, then spent the next hour following us around, coming back over to us every twenty minutes or so to smile some more. I was the nicest police officer he’d ever met, he said. Seriously, would it be possible for him to just sit in our police car for a few minutes? He liked me very much, and he liked my partner too, and he thought maybe if he could just sit down with us for a little while, he’d be able to come up with a better plan for the evening. Or maybe he could buy us a drink? No, of course not, he totally understood, we couldn’t drink on duty, of course not! Another time, then? If I would give him my phone number, he would call me as soon as he found his phone, and then we could really spend some time getting to know each other. He squinted hopefully at me until Maloney urged him, somewhat less gently, to get lost, at which he fell back to trail us from about fifteen feet away.
Soon we were hailed by one of the servers at Nellie’s. They had a drunk woman who was causing trouble and refusing to leave. “No problem,” Maloney said. We made our way through the crowd to gleeful cries of “Oh shit, it’s the pigs!” mixed with “Happy New Year, officers!” Inside, you could barely move; by now, the drunk woman had collapsed onto the bar, weeping. “She was cursing at everyone,” the server told us. “And she kept asking for more drinks, and we said she’d had enough, and then she took a swing at Todd.” Todd, the bartender, looked quite able to take care of himself, but we took the sobbing woman by the elbow and half led, half carried her outside, several of her friends following along. She didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t resist, and outside we told her it was time for her to go home. Her friends promised they’d take care of her, and we moved on.
In the next block, two men were scuffling. “What the fuck, man, what the fuck!” they bellowed at each other. Maloney grabbed one guy and I grabbed the other, and we pulled them apart. They stood scowling and huffing at each other, but once they were separated they stopped struggling and agreed to head off in different directions, with only an occasional “What the fuck!” tossed back over their shoulders.
Everywhere, music was thumping, and between the music and the noise of the crowds, our radios were inaudible. “Let’s take a break and go sit in the car for a bit,” suggested Maloney. “Check the MDT and the radio, see if we’re missing anything.”
As soon as we sat down in the patrol car, the drunk boy popped up again, knocking at the window.
“Are you sure I can’t just sit in there with you for a little while? It’s getting cold,” he added sadly. “Maybe just for a few minutes? I probably shouldn’t have worn shorts tonight, you know, except it was warm, like summer, only now it’s not so warm.”
We told him again that he could not join us in the car, and urged him to go inside somewhere warm, like a restaurant. He brightened again immediately.
“Oh, that’s a really good idea! I’ll just go back inside! But listen, officer, can I give you my phone number? You could call me and I could buy you a drink sometime. I’d like to do that, because I really, really appreciate what you’re doing. I mean, it’s just so . . . so wonderful, so . . . nice . . .
what you do, I mean, it’s so great, like, your being out here, and, you know, keeping us safe, and everything!”
He started to tear up, so I accepted a receipt with his phone number scribbled on the back, then told him to go inside and get warm. “Right! No problem! That’s exactly what I’m going to do! Thanks, officer! Okay, Happy New Year! Bye! Thanks!” He retreated, waving enthusiastically.
The mobile data terminal apprised us of a call for damage to property, so we drove a few streets away. “The PSA guys are supposed to be handling the routine calls,” Maloney explained, “but if it’s within a block or two of the clubs, we might as well take it.” We drove to a deserted lot behind a small theater, where we found a young woman standing by a car with a shattered windshield. Someone, she said, had thrown a rock through the windshield, maybe from the roof of the theater. The front seat of her car was littered with broken glass, and a large rock sat in the middle of it. We took her details and got a case number from the dispatcher, and I started writing the report on the car’s mobile terminal.
Maloney decided we should spend some time driving around in the alleyways behind the clubs. We found several men skulking in various spots, and interrupted one probable robbery, but the probable robber hadn’t had time to take anything, and the probable victim seemed disinclined to provide us with any details. “I just want to fucking go home, man,” he said, so we escorted the probable robber to the end of the alleyway and told him we didn’t want to see him again. In another alleyway, we found a guy peeing against a wall, and Maloney, who was angry that we hadn’t had enough basis to arrest the would-be robber, told him, rather aggressively, to get the fuck out of there. “I’m going, man, I’m going!” the guy protested, zipping up his pants. “Shit! Sorry, man, I just had to take a piss, for fuck’s sake!”
