by Mark Johnson
Ms. Psychic Payne washed me out of both the Albuquerque PD and the BCSO. It was a long, discouraged drive back to Mobile.
But a few weeks after my return, I met with MPD’s shrink. Sitting across from him at his desk, I struggled to control my nerves, my breathing. He was an utterly ordinary-looking, slightly balding, middle-aged guy like me, who studied my test results and résumé in silence for a few moments as I awaited his pronouncement on my fate.
Finally, he looked up and spoke, his poker face offering me no clue of his decision.
“In my considered opinion,” he said, “you’re crazy.”
He shook his head slightly but could not suppress the hint of a grin. “Why on earth you want to be a cop escapes me. The cut in pay, the shift work. You know they say it’s 90 percent boredom and 10 percent terror, right? Don’t you think it’ll bore you to death?”
I insisted, of course, that I had given due consideration to all aspects of policing and was firm in the conviction that not only would the work suit me, but that I could bring a lot to the work, that I would make a good cop.
An eyebrow arched slightly as he looked at me, then looked down to sign off on the form that cleared me for academy enrollment. “Good luck, Mr. Johnson. Be careful.”
Clearing the last hurdle and getting hired doesn’t put you, necessarily, right into the academy. They only do academies when the budget allows, when there are sufficient vacancies in the department to justify one, and when they round up enough qualified recruits to compose a class sufficient in size to fill those vacancies and to make the effort cost effective. So, your hire date may be as long as six months away from the start of your academy class. They put you in a sort of holding pattern, on the payroll, require you to shave your head and wear a white button-down shirt and navy blue Dickies slacks, and assign you as an unskilled factotum in various areas around the department where you’re not likely to cause any damage or be in harm’s way, like filing clerk in records, or intake clerk at the impound lot or property or evidence, or gofer at the radio shop.
I worked as a groundskeeper at the firing range for six months before my class started.
I was the envy of my fellow recruits for this, the choicest of pre-academy assignments. Mostly, the job entailed picking up expended brass casings at the firing lines, cutting the grass, and routine painting and maintenance on the target mechanisms and buildings. But the range master, a grizzled, garrulous, white-handlebar-mustachioed old sergeant with a million cop stories from his thirty years on the job, was generous with me, providing much one-on-one firearm instruction and virtually unlimited rounds of target-load ammo to practice shooting when my chores were done.
Still, I had a lot of time on my hands and spent hours closely observing the cops who would come out to the range in twos and threes when they were off duty to keep up their skills. They would shoot up to fifty or a hundred rounds at the stationary paper targets, ignoring me entirely, then would smoke and joke among themselves (within earshot of me) about how the department is getting so desperate for recruits it’s accepting senior citizens. Then they would depart, not to return for a month or more. A few would come out more frequently and pop off a few rounds with their shotguns and backup pistols as well as their Glocks, and maybe even sight in their military-style Ruger Mini-14s or Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles, if they were authorized to carry them on duty (sergeants and above).
But there was one guy who was out at the range every week, and sometimes more often. He was older than most—probably just a few years my junior—and always came by himself and kept to himself. He had a rough, ruddy face, a chiseled physique, and a permanent frown. He would do something different almost every time, using a variety of handguns and long guns. Sometimes he’d shoot paper targets on the regulation range, but not standing still—he’d run and dive and roll while firing; sometimes he’d set up elaborate scenarios in the steel knock-down target area, where he’d run forward and backward from barrel to drum, using them as cover, firing all the while at multiple targets as if he were in a firefight; sometimes he’d go room to room in the heavy-timbered “shooting house” kicking in doors and clearing rooms, shouting all the while to imaginary fellow officers. He would even drive his squad car onto the range and fire at targets while driving.
After I had been there several months, I asked the range master, “What’s up with that guy?” nodding to the frequent visitor, dressed that day in camo fatigues and a dirty T-shirt, loading scrap lumber into the trunk of his squad car.
The range master chuckled and said he was surprised it had taken me so long to ask.
“That’s the legendary Tom McCall, our one-man SWAT team. Been in more firefights than anybody in the department. Wounded more times than I can remember. He once commandeered an ambulance and drove it straight into live fire to rescue another cop who’d been hit. They say he even carries an American flag in his trunk so we can wrap his body in it when he gets killed in action. Y’oughtta get to know him, and today’s a good day to do it, because he could use a hand. He’s out here to rehang some doors he busted up in the shootin’ house last time he was here. Take the Gator and load it up with hammers, coupla power drills, coupla coffee tins of wood screws and 16-penny nails, and meet him down there. Tell him I sent you to help him.”
I did as he directed. “Sarge sent me down here to give you a hand.”
McCall nodded and looked me up and down. “Just gimme stuff I ask for.” Then, over his shoulder, “And try to stay outta my way.”
We worked without even breaking for a drink of water, in near silence for more than two hours, shoring up door frames, replacing hinges, hanging doors, slapping mosquitoes. When we were done we gathered up our tools and scrap and tossed them in the bed of the Gator and sat in the cab, feet up on the dash, and drank from liter bottles of water, in silence. McCall pulled some beef jerky out of a cargo pocket of his fatigues and wordlessly offered me some. I accepted, nodding my thanks.
“How old are you?” he asked, not looking at me. It was the first complete sentence I’d heard him utter since we began.
“Fifty.”
He nodded. After waiting a respectful moment for him to comment, I realized more was not likely forthcoming. After a while, I ventured, “You?”
“Not far behind you,” he said. We returned to chewing our jerky thoughtfully, gazing at the shooting house. Then he observed, “Comin’ to the game a mite late.”
I let the silence hang for what seemed the requisite rhythm of our exchange, then said, “Ya think?”
He looked at me, expressionless. Thinking he might have taken me as glib, I elaborate.
“Late bloomer.”
There appeared the faintest flicker of a grin.
“You’re that guy from the United Fund.” The flicker faded, if it was ever really there.
I nodded wordlessly in the affirmative. He directed his gaze back to the shooting house.
Then, “I been at this awhile. I don’t know about your line a work, but in this one there’s only two kinds: sheep and wolves. If you’re gonna survive, you got to be a wolf. But not just any wolf; the kind that preys on other wolves.”
I nodded solemnly.
He faced me, smiled slightly, and shook my hand with a thick rough paw, then got up and walked to his squad car. As he got in, he said, “Thanks for the help, buddy. See you on the streets.”
So after about six months of applications and testing, then six more at the range as a recruit, I finally joined Class 31 of the Mobile Police Department’s academy. And by September 2003, almost a year to the day after my departure from more than two decades of nonprofit management and development, I’m delivering the graduating speech as president of my class at a midday ceremony. My whole family, including my cousins and seventy-eight-year-old Aunt Billye from Albuquerque, is in attendance. Hours later that same day, I will hit the streets of Mobile’s Third Precinct on night shift as a uniformed rookie patrol officer.
Already scheduled for
my first day off is the surgery I’ve been needing for a double hernia I’ve suffered since before the academy began, incurred while working at the range. (I had attempted to move a fifty-gallon drum full of spent brass casings by myself and felt the tearing in my groin but told no one. To delay my entry into the academy for any reason, including medical, would have meant a complete redo of the entire application and testing process and waiting for the department to call for the next class of candidates to be assembled, a price I was unwilling to pay.)
Incidentally—and perhaps portentously—signal 31 is police radio code for a subject with “mental problems.” Perhaps fitting for the so-diagnosed fifty-year-old president of MPD’s Class 31.
4
The Christmas Gift
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.
—Psalm 144:1
I’m rolling around with my windows down, the sharp cold air helping to fight off the sleepiness. It’s that last, drowsy hour before dawn and the end of another twelve-hour night shift. The streets are dead, and I’m dead, too. It’s Christmas morning, my second as a policeman on patrol. The first holiday season I was so pumped up at the idea of guarding the public while children everywhere were snug in their beds, I had been in a heightened state of vigilance all night. I had felt as if I were St. Nick with a Glock. St. Glockolas. But that was last year, my rookie year. Tonight, all I want to do is go home and sleep.
Despite the fatigue, I actually prefer night shift. More crimes, more hot calls occur at night, and there’s far less traffic to worry about when running code to a hot one. But the excitement typically tapers off around 3 a.m. That’s when cops gather in Waffle Houses and IHOPs to rehash the night’s events, flirt with the waitresses, and drink lots and lots of coffee to fortify us for the next three slow, sleepy hours of patrol. Some of us, exhausted from working daytime “extra jobs” before coming in for night shift, will need to “forty up” (rendezvous) with a partner in a secluded “hidey-hole,” cruisers parked close, driver door to driver door, facing opposite directions. We work our beats solo: one-man units, unless we’re a car short or we’re training a rookie. We don’t have the luxury of snoozing in the passenger seat while a partner drives. And it’s way too dangerous to simply pull up behind a building somewhere to catch a quick nap, alone. We’ve seen the horror stories in the academy, video footage of dead cops in their patrol cars, engines idling, blood and brains oozing from their heads. The official account is always the same: officer writing up reports at night, his interior lights blinding him to the approach of somebody with a gun and a hate-on for cops. Never see it coming. The lesson is to write up your reports at night in well-lit places, backed up to a building to cover your Six*, and keep scanning so nobody can approach without your knowing about it. What was unsaid in the training videos, but told to us by old timers, was that some of these dead cops probably weren’t writing reports, they were sleeping. And the real lesson is, sometimes you just gotta sleep, for whatever reason. But it can be deadly, so don’t do it alone! It can kill you.
Or get you fired. Two old-timers also told us about solo snoozers who didn’t wake up when called by Dispatch. One said he was so dog tired he had nodded off while stopped at a red light. He’s not responding to repeated calls on the radio. His buddy in the next beat (who is still in the department today, way up in the senior command ranks now) rolls up on the sleeping cop and lays on the horn.
“Get on the radio, now!” he yells. “They been calling you for five minutes!”
The groggy patrolman jerks awake and keys his radio mike. “Two-thirty-seven to Dispatch, do you copy? Unit 237, come back! Can you read me now, Dispatch?” When the dispatcher replies, the officer affects an exasperated tone. “Be advised I’m having transmission problems with this mike. I’ll be en route to precinct.”
Both old-timers had been far more concerned about the fireable offenses of failure to respond to the radio, or sleeping while on duty, than the fact that one had been so tired he’d dozed off behind the wheel of a department vehicle on a city street, the car in drive and his foot balanced on the brake pedal. Nowadays, you can’t get away with that, the old-timers warned. Each patrol car is equipped with a tracking device that indicates the car’s location. “They tell us it’s for our own safety, so they can find us if we get into trouble, but we all know it’s really to get us into trouble when they find us. So when you gotta sleep, don’t do it alone!” Typical of so much police training. It’s a coping mechanism, I think. One minute, murdered cops in color close-ups with gunshot wounds to the face and head, next minute knee-slapping stories about outsmarting captains.
I’d been shocked at the notion of cops sleeping on the job, quite aside from the safety issue. It angered me as a taxpayer, made me think less of the noble guardian in blue. But a couple of things changed my mind on that. The first was the challenge of supporting a family on $12 an hour—the lot of my squad mates. These guys, in their twenties and thirties, married, with kids, were struggling. If they could work an “extra job” (in uniform, while off duty, sanctioned, coordinated, and encouraged by the department), they were gonna do it, even if it meant getting by on two or three hours of sleep and napping on duty when the call volume slows down at night. The holidays are the prime extra-job season, because it’s also the prime shoplifting and thievery season, especially at the malls and other retailers, where the pay for cops to supplement “loss prevention” staff, and to beef up parking lot security, usually starts at $25 per hour.
The other thing was the chief. Clearly a qualified, experienced professional, respected by his peers, his men, his community. I had made his acquaintance back in my United Way days, when he volunteered in the campaign leadership. In the bleak final days of my old life, the chief had enthusiastically encouraged my interest in a career change. When I ran into the chief after my first few months on the streets, his opening question, after confirming my enthusiasm for the work, was “Have ya learned how to sleep sitting up yet, Mark?”
So probably half my twelve-man squad is fortied up, taking turns sleeping, and the rest of us (who hadn’t worked an extra job that day) are patrolling the entire precinct. I am grateful that I don’t need the extra-job income and glad to “cover” for my squad members who do. But eager for this damn shift to end so I can go to bed.
The radio has been silent for at least an hour. I’ve been driving around and around, covering three beats, in a rundown section of town. Lots of boarded-up storefronts between barbershops featuring artistic patterns shaved onto the scalp, or hair treatments called twists and ’rows, “urban fashion” boutiques where they charge over $100 for baggy jeans with brands like Coogi and FUBU, cell phone discounters, Dollar stores, and nail parlors. Everything is closed, even the Circle Ks and the 24/7 tat ’n’ pierce parlor. Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. I’ve caught myself snapping awake a couple of times while driving, not certain how long I had dozed, hoping it was only for a split second, relieved the car was still between the lines. I can’t take any more coffee, but I sure could stand to off-load some of the six or seven cups I drank at the Waffle House, and it would do me good to get out and stretch my legs in the cold air, maybe wake me up a little. I pull into the alley behind a cut-rate grocery, at the end of a rundown strip mall composed of a beauty supply shop, a secondhand-goods store, and a boarded-up coin-operated laundry. The grocery, P & H Market, is the “anchor” retailer of the strip. Cops call it the Pimp & Hoes Market. They employ a security guard there who’s the Pimp. He’s gotta be in his sixties. His gray hair is heavily pomaded. He wears purple suits, complete with a matching purple Dobbs bowler. The hat has a cloisonné pin in its crown proclaiming “Mack Daddy.” On a chain around his neck hangs a large, gold, official-looking badge. If you look closely, it reads “Security Officer.” On his hip, in a holster hanging on a purple alligator-look belt (matching his purple alligator-look shoes, polished to a high gloss), is a chrome Smith & Wesson .38. Th
e Pimp usually posts up by the front door of the P & H when he’s not helping pretty ladies to the car with their groceries. His presence may actually deter theft at the store to some degree: we get fewer calls to the P & H for shoplifting than we do for domestic disputes in the parking lot. The domestics usually arise from jealousy and betrayal between lovers. Hence the “Hoes” part of the P & H.
I cut my headlights, turn off the AM-FM radio (sick to death of Christmas music), step out, and take in the silent darkness. I had thought I’d gaze at the stars for a moment and imagine peace on earth, goodwill toward men. But, hell, it’s friggin’ freezing out here! In Mobile Alabama! How the hell do people in Wisconsin survive the winter? I’m shivering as I urinate next to my squad car and jump back in as soon as I’m done, glad I had left the engine running with the heater pumping hot inside. I decide to contemplate Christmas from inside the cruiser and sit a few minutes in the darkness. The jolt of cold air had been bracing, and my drowsiness has dissipated. It’s quarter to five: another hour to go before I can head to the precinct. I review in my mind the items under the Christmas tree at home, anticipating my family’s pleasure in opening them. Life is good. I’m a lucky man.
Slipping the Crown Vic into drive, I creep down the littered, graffiti-adorned alley from behind the P & H, past the rear of the Dis ’N’ Dat secondhand store, the Phlawless Hair Plus Beauty Supply, and the boarded-up Bright Spot Coin Laundry. As I round the back of the laundry, I see a man trying to open the door of a parked car. A car I know had been in that spot for weeks. A car whose tag I had run to check for stolen but had turned out to be just the object of a dispute between warring spouses. The guy halts abruptly when he sees me and turns to walk away from the car, away from me. I hit him with the spot and roll closer.
