by Rosa Brooks
This is not the kind of crime you see in police districts in the poorer parts of the city. In 7D, as in 6D and 5D, you don’t tend to get serial killers, terrorist bomb threats, daring bank robberies, or jewel heists. Instead, you get the small, sad crimes of the very poor. Whole families live in dark apartments with piles of trash in the corner and no furniture except a few mattresses. They steal doughnuts and chicken wings and cans of Red Bull; they burglarize houses and make away with vacuum cleaners, TVs, and the occasional iPhone. They hold each other up at gunpoint for six dollars or a pair of Air Jordans. People are shot or stabbed over a few bucks. Sometimes they are killed. It’s enough to make you cry.
* * *
• • •
Items used to inflict injury during assaults in Washington, DC, 2018:
AA battery
Acid
Bar stool
BB gun
Belt
Bicycle
Bicycle lock
Bleach
Blunt object
Book
Book bag
Bottle
Bottle of cologne
Bottle of soda
Bottle of soy sauce
Box cutter
Brass knuckles
Brick
Broom
Bug spray
Butter knife
Cane
Can of air freshener
Can of paint
Can of veggies
Cell phone
Chair
Chemical agent
Chip rack
Cigarette
Computer printer
Computer stand
Crate
Desktop computer
Dog repellent spray
Exercise machine
Fire extinguisher
Firework
Fist
Flowerpots
Food tray
Fork
Frying pan
Gasoline
Glass mug
Golf club
Gun
Handgun
Handheld blow-dryer
Handheld speaker
Hands and feet
Hard plastic object
Headbutt
Heavy display case
Heavy plastic bin
Hot cider
Hot coffee
iPad
Key chain
Knife
Lamp
Lawn chair
Log
Mace
Machete
Mason jar
Metal pole
Milk crate
Mug
Nail file
Paintball
Paintball gun
Paint pole
Pellet gun
Pepper spray
Phone cord
Pick comb
Pipe
Plastic bat
Plastic bin
Plastic broom
Plastic hangers
Plate
Pumpkin gourd
Purse
Remote control
Rock
Rubbing alcohol
Scalding hot food
Scalding hot liquid
Scissors
Screwdriver
Shoe
Shovel
Spatula
Spray deodorant
Squeegee
Stick
Stool
Table
Taser
Teeth
Television
Traffic cone
Trash can lid
Tree branch
Umbrella
Unknown irritating substance
Unknown object
Vacuum cleaner
Vase
Vehicle
Video controller
Water bottle
Water from fire hose
Wheel lock club
* * *
• • •
Like soldiers, doctors, and others who see a lot of misery, police officers survive by making jokes. Bleak, absurdist humor predominates. On a bulletin board in 7D, someone pinned up a drawing of Eeyore the donkey holding Winnie the Pooh’s decapitated head in his mouth. The caption read, “If Pooh lived in 7D . . .”
Cops cherish encounters with weirdness, and you could always count on the citizens of Washington, DC, to offer up plenty of weirdness. You could generally count on cops to see the absurdity of their own lives too. In the report-writing room at the Fifth District station, officers had annotated the sign that identified Computer No. 3.
Given the bureaucracy’s tendency to introduce typographical errors into all official documents, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between sly cop humor and the unintentionally absurd. One day a report alerted officers to a hate crimes investigation into the distribution of flyers containing “wording of anti-semantic nature.” (I imagined linguists all over the city living in fear.) Another day, I found a notice posted at the station, informing officers of upcoming mandatory professional development training (PDT):
2018 PDT:
—PDT is starting two (2) months early, on January 23, 2018
—PDT consists of three (3) days of ten (10) hours shifts
—Two (2) days of training will occur at [the Metropolitan Police Academy] and one (1) day of tanning at the African American Museum.
I let out an involuntary snort of laughter, and soon half a dozen other cops were also in stitches. For the next few days, I overheard black cops teasing their white colleagues: “Man, you lookin’ a little pale. Good thing they got PDT coming up. I think you’re overdue for your day of tanning.”
Each day, an email went out from what was still quaintly called the teletype office to let everyone know the code word, which was to be used to demonstrate authenticity when requesting sensitive information by telephone rather than over the encrypted radios, or, in an emergency, to prove that you really were a police officer. I was familiar with military and intelligence code words, which always managed to strike a tone of high seriousness; they tended to be phrases like eagle fire and tempest dune. MPD code words were more prosaic, and often silly: backpack, optional, happy, love, fun, rocket, urology, and waffle featured among recent entries.
It was hard to imagine a desperate undercover officer trying to identify himself as a “friendly” during an armed police raid by yelling, “Waffle! Waffle!” and shouting “Rocket!” struck me as a recipe for dangerous misunderstandings. At one point, the police code word was police, which seemed both redundant and unpersuasive. Sometimes, code words appeared to be nonsense words, or maybe just typos: there was clop, for instance, along with cartop, ultimacy, unpurely, and uncrazy. One day, the code word was Zombi, but that was duly corrected in a subsequent teletype message to Zombie.
“Zombie,” said Murphy. “They got that right. It’s like Night of the Fucking Living Dead around here most of the time . . . and I’m just talking about the officers.”
Portraying a Person
Sick Person to the Hospital: MPD units received a disorderly call. . . . The Complainant was inside the church acting erratically and aggressively, at which point he began jumping from the second floor choir balcony onto the first floor. A couple minutes later had climbed onto the roof . . . Complainant initially refused to communicate with officers, as he continues to demonstrate unusual behavior. Moments later, [a medic] was able to get the Complainant to safe grounds without incident. The Complainant was transported to [the emergency psychiatric clinic] for evaluation. . .
.
—MPD Joint Strategic and Tactical Analysis Command Center, Daily Report
Officially, there are no crazy people in Washington, DC. There are only what the Metropolitan Police Department refers to as “mental health consumers”—although much of the time, this label describes those who should be consuming mental health resources but are not, for one reason or another. According to official estimates, only about 3 percent of DC residents suffer from schizophrenia or severe bipolar disorder. Within the city’s homeless population, 13 percent suffer from severe mental illness, and another 15 percent suffer from chronic substance abuse problems.
Encounters with mental health consumers could be sad and frustrating, but they were also treasured by officers for their comic potential. Only with a mental health consumer, for instance, was an officer likely to encounter someone deploying a snapping turtle as a weapon. This happened to a 7D officer I know. Arriving at the scene of an assault call, he found an incoherent woman brandishing a snapping turtle in her estranged boyfriend’s face. Each time the boyfriend protested, the woman shoved the turtle a little closer to the boyfriend’s nose. “Everyone’s yelling and screaming and acting crazy, and the turtle’s going snap, snap, snap!” the officer told me dreamily. “It was such a great call. I loved that call. Arrested her for domestic violence—Assault with a Dangerous Weapon. ADW-Turtle.”
One evening in the fall of 2017, my Academy classmate Lowrey, who now worked in the Fifth District, texted me a screenshot from his scout car’s mobile data terminal: “C1 stated he was being sexually assaulted by monkeys.”
“So what happened with the complainant who was assaulted by the monkeys?” I asked when I saw him next.
Lowrey grinned. “Well, when we arrived there weren’t any monkeys. I said, ‘Sir, you reported that you were being sexually assaulted by monkeys, but I don’t see any monkeys.’ The guy got really, really mad, and said, ‘Well, what did you expect? They flew out the window just as soon as they heard you knocking!’”
A few months after that, I was patrolling with Lowrey in 5D when the car’s mobile data terminal pinged. We were directed to “check on the welfare” of a man in Northeast DC. Typically, welfare check requests come from concerned neighbors or relatives. (“Mail’s piling up on old Mr. Smith’s doorstep and he’s not answering the phone or the door, even though his car’s in the driveway, and I’m worried that maybe something’s happened to him.”) This particular request came through a more circuitous route.
According to the dispatcher, the San Francisco Police Department had received a call from a man asking them to initiate a tap on his phone lines. The caller provided the San Francisco police with his address—in Washington, DC—and his name, which he gave as Dracula. He explained that he was being abducted by aliens and tracked by the Mafia, and needed the police in San Francisco to help by tapping his phones. The San Francisco police called the DC police and suggested that someone might want to check on Mr. Dracula’s well-being. That night, Lowrey and I were the lucky officers.
“Oh, wow,” Lowrey said, looking at the address on the screen. “I think this is the ‘sexually assaulted by monkeys’ guy. You’re in for a treat.”
I was happy to be patrolling with Lowrey. He was big and slow moving, which had sometimes exasperated our academy instructors, but his measured thoughtfulness made him an excellent officer. He didn’t rush people, and he listened more than he spoke.
It was getting dark when we arrived at Mr. Dracula’s home, which was not a forbidding black castle, but a nondescript two-story brick apartment block. Mr. Dracula had done his best to make up for the building’s drab ordinariness by covering his apartment door with unusual decorations. Among other items, the door was graced with a laminated photo of Bela Lugosi in the movie Dracula, with a hand-lettered caption that proclaimed, planet earth. Beneath this was another hand-lettered sign: portraying a person is against the law.
More signs were posted up and down the doorjamb.
elf, declared one.
tree, read another.
Mr. Dracula himself was a fortyish black man. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt on which was written, in shaky black marker, kkk over a five-pointed star and the word police.
Initially, however, he seemed pleased enough to see us.
“Like I say,” he explained, “I want my phone tapped.”
I nodded encouragingly. “You want your phone tapped. . . . How come?”
Mr. Dracula became immediately agitated, his face a rictus of anxiety and distress. He glanced around suspiciously. “Word of honor! It ain’t about what somebody did or said, or just playing or laughing, see what I’m saying?”
His voice had gone up several decibels. “Word of honor!” He pointed accusingly at Lowrey’s chest. “I want you to stand by your word of honor!”
“We just wanted to make sure everything is all right,” Lowrey put in placatingly.
“And I’m telling you now, I want my phone tapped!” insisted Dracula. “I want my phone tapped, because I don’t like your Nazi state!”
Lowrey and I made soothing noises.
“We’re going to try to help you, all right?” Lowrey said.
“Ain’t nobody gotta help me!” Dracula looked at us like we were the dumbest police officers he had ever encountered. “I didn’t call you, San Francisco did!”
He scowled at us. Then, losing patience, he shouted, “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter, brah! Word of honor! First of all, I don’t want you spying on my house!”
Lowrey frowned. “But—” I cut him off before he could remind Mr. Dracula about the phone-tapping request.
“We’re not doing that,” I said firmly.
Dracula folded his arms, a picture of outraged skepticism.
“Oh you’re not? So you’re telling me that you wasn’t listening over that smoke detector?”
“No, sir. Not us.” There was still a lot I didn’t know about MPD, but I felt quite confident about this one.
Dracula narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “You’re wrong. You’re absolutely wrong. I know that you’re listening to me over the smoke detector. And . . . the lightbulb.”
His tone became suddenly confiding. “Matter of fact, they got a law, with the lightbulb. Called ‘Make a difference.’”
He gave us a sly smile and chuckled. “And you’re sitting and talking like ‘I don’t know!’ Well I know, my man. I know, all day long!”
Suddenly he was shouting again.
“I don’t care what y’all do. Just don’t come on my property. Don’t come in my house!”
“You got it, sir,” Lowrey and I chorused, both taking a rapid step back.
This still did not satisfy Mr. Dracula. “I got family and friends, and they do not like the United States, they want nothing to do with it, and you are in the house, and the water spigot, and the wall socket, and the smoke detector. I have informed the president, and I’m telling you, I don’t like it! Okay?”
We made affirming murmurs.
“And that,” Dracula added triumphantly, “is why I went up to the Secret Service, just yesterday, and I told them. I’m waiting for the president to tell me what he’s going to do about it. Because if you want to know, if you want to know what happened to me at this location, I was abducted by aliens. I stepped out of my door, and off I went, that way.” He pointed up, toward the sky.
His voice grew hushed and conspiratorial. “You ain’t safe in your house. You ain’t safe at all. Your kids . . . I even had to close down the toy factory. Because they were messing with the toys. They were doing very abusive things. I called Mickey Mouse and told him.”
“Well,” I said, stymied. “That does sound bad. It’s a scary world.”
Dracula was affronted by this. “It’s not a scary world. Not to me. And I’m telling you, all I need is for you to get off my property.”
&n
bsp; “Okay, sir.” It seemed like a good time to bring our conversation to an end. “Well, thank you for telling us about all this. We appreciate it.”
“No, no, no,” Dracula countered. “If I do something for you people, I’m not doing it for free. I mean, you pay me! And I’m not joking.”
With that, he stepped back into his apartment and slammed the door.
There wasn’t much we could do. We consulted with Dracula’s neighbors, who affirmed that he was off his rocker and most likely off his meds, but that he was generally no bother to anyone in the building, aside from his odd rants and unusual door decorations. DC offers emergency psychiatric services for the flagrantly crazy, but without voluntary consent, police can take someone to the clinic only if they appear to pose an imminent threat to themselves or someone else. Mr. Dracula was clearly psychotic, but aside from that, he didn’t appear to be sick, hungry, or even unkempt. He had a home, he appeared to have some means of support, he wasn’t threatening anyone, and he had made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in our assistance.
A few weeks after that, we responded to a call for a “suspicious person.” A resident had complained about a man hanging around the back stairs to her apartment unit. We split up to look around, and after a few minutes of searching, shining my flashlight into alleys and behind dumpsters, I spotted a heavy-shouldered man with a long black beard beneath a set of wooden stairs. He was sitting, hands around his knees, head down, rocking slowly and rhythmically back and forth, and he didn’t even lift his head when my flashlight beam played across his face.
On the landing at the top of the stairs, a door opened and a woman stuck her head out. “Officer! If you see a guy with a big black beard who looks like Jesus down there, that’s him!”
“Hey there,” I greeted the man. He kept rocking but his head drifted up, and he offered me a gentle smile. He did look a little like Jesus. His clothing was rough—work boots, jeans, and sweatshirt—but his eyes were soft and dreamy.
I didn’t want to provoke or panic him, so I kept my voice low and friendly. “Hey there. . . . How you doing?”
