Apprehensions & Convictions

by Mark Johnson

  But for all his reckless, errant ways, hare-brained schemes, and imprudence with women, Balzer was pretty 10-8 when on duty, the kind of guy you were glad to have backing you.

  He didn’t suffer fools or would-be heroes (often one and the same) on the job. I had a squad party at my home once, and some of the guys started teasing me about responding to calls before backup arrived. My wife and daughter were in attendance, and I didn’t need them getting all worried about my taking unnecessary chances, so I poo-pooed the criticism by dishing it back, accusing my accusers of laziness or jadedness or driving like little old ladies. Balzer, who had not even been part of the conversation, exploded.

  “It ain’t no joking matter, and I’ll tell you why. You walk into a scene you think is just a garden-variety domestic or something, you think you can handle it without backup, and all of a sudden you’re outnumbered and you’re fighting for your life, screaming like a girl on the radio. Not only is your own life in danger, but now you have endangered me and everybody else who’s running code to get to you, risking a wreck on the way. And when I get there, it’s a goddamn fight going on that probably never woulda started if two cops had walked up, and so I’m bustin’ my knuckles on some assholes that probably woulda complied if you hadn’t thought you were Dirty fuckin’ Harry or something!”

  There’s that damn Clint Eastwood thing again, I’m thinking. All the joking and the trash talk ceased. Balzer had the floor.

  “And the biggest risk is when they’ve already whipped your elderly ass before any of us even gets there, and they’ve taken your gun! Now me and everybody else is comin’ into a whole new scene, and if one of us gets popped with your gun, it’s on you, motherfucker!”

  I can see the stricken look in the eyes of my wife and daughter to this day. It comes to me when I get the urge to respond without backup.

  For all his bluster, Balzer could laugh at himself, and some of us knew Balzer was really kind of mushy on the inside. He once had asked me if I would kick in some cash for a down-on-their-luck father and son he had found sleeping in their truck one night on patrol. All they needed was a couple hundred to get the dad’s toolbox out of the pawnshop and Balzer had arranged for a good construction job for him, one that could put him and his teenage son in a decent apartment.

  It had sounded to me like a bullshit scam, one I’d heard (and fallen for) too many times at United Way. I had learned the hard way to leave these kinds of cases to pros. “Why don’t they go to the Sally or the Waterfront Mission?” I’d asked Balzer. “They got real caseworkers, three hots and a cot, and they even have short-term cash loans for just this kinda thing.”

  Balzer would hear nothing of it. This was his project. The damn Sally and Rescue Mission were just flophouses for mooches, winos, and manipulators. He was a cop, not a bleeding-heart social worker. He could tell when people were bullshitting or not, and this case was the genuine article: a bona-fide workin’ man, down on his luck, just trying to be strong for his son. I told Balzer I was still unconvinced, but I’d match whatever he was willing to give them. We each put in a hundred. A week later, I asked him how his father-son rescue project was going. He grew sheepish and admitted the two had skipped town the next day. “The shitheads probably scored a flask a Wild Irish Rose ’n’ a fistfulla Lortabs ’n’ headed for the boats in Biloxi to blow the rest of our cash,” Balzer said. “I shoulda listened to you. From now on it’s strictly cuffin’ and stuffin’ for me. I’m leavin’ the social work to the professionals.”

  So Balzer and I forty up a couple of doors down from the domestic. “Ever been here?” he asks. I shake my head, so he briefs me. “I’m here once or twice a month. I can tell you what’s going on. It’s always the same. Grandma’s good people. Mama Ruthie, she works in the kitchen at the Tiny Diney and supports the whole bunch. Problem is her crazy-bitch crack-whore daughter, Shaletha or Shabetha or Bathsheba, something like that, who keeps poppin’ out babies and dumpin’ ’em on Mama so she can be rippin’ and runnin’ with dope slingers and gangbangers for days at a time. Then she comes home all tweaked out and tells Mama she ain’t raisin’ her babies right.” Balzer flicked away his half-smoked Marlboro. “You ready? Taser charged? I ain’t kiddin’, she’s a handful when she’s been flyin’ about three days nonstop.”

  Balzer and I mount the front porch and listen to the crashing and breaking of furniture inside, the screeching of women’s voices and the wailing of children. We pound on the door and yell “Police!” to no avail. I keep pounding on the metal door while Balzer steps back to his cruiser, hits the yelp siren, then repeats “Mobile Police Department, open the door now!” over his PA system. A kitchen chair crashes through a pane of the front picture window as Mama Ruth comes ducking out the front door.

  “She crazier’n’ ever dis time, Officer!” grandma cries, her eyes pleading. “Y’all gotta stop her ’fore she hurts one a dem babies!” Balzer and I enter the fray.

  The house is a shambles, or “ramshacked” as they say in the ’hood (and in many police report narratives). A fifty-inch flat screen has been shattered. Chairs are overturned, kids’ toys and treasured knicknacks scattered and broken everywhere. Grandma’s framed portraits of Dr. King and an African Jesus have been ripped from the wall and impaled on the plastic handlebars of a child’s tipped-over Big Wheel trike. We can hear smashing dishes and a woman’s incomprehensible growling in the kitchen. Terrified toddlers are shrieking. A boy about fourteen emerges sobbing from a hallway, his contorted face a spasm of anguish. Balzer and I scoop up the younger ones in our arms and herd the others out the front door. There are five of them, all but the teenager preschoolers, all crying and trembling and clutching at us. It breaks my heart. A boy in diapers who’s maybe three or four is bleeding from a pretty deep cut to his palm. One of the others has blood smears on him but apparently not his own. I wrap the wounded toddler’s hand in my bandana as Balzer radios to start medical. We tell Mama Ruth to keep pressure on the hand and to make sure they all stay safe out here in the yard till the paramedics arrive. I pull out my pepper spray and Balzer unsnaps his Taser. Together we reenter the fray.

  A young woman is slinging glassware and dishes against the refrigerator in the kitchen, her eyes fierce, inhuman, her voice a low moaning keen over the devastation she wreaks. She has the visage of a horror-flick fiend, a she-devil. She’s outfitted in shiny, knee-high red vinyl boots with stiletto heels, torn fishnet stockings, a skintight skirt barely covering her buttocks, and a spangly T-shirt pulled tight into a knot above her bejeweled navel. The straps of her G-string ride her hips above the waist of her skirt and the T-shirt’s neckline plunges so low that half her lacey red brassiere hangs out. A florid script proclaiming “hug Love” is inked across her cleavage. (The T that I assume precedes “hug” tatted on her left breast is obscured from view.) Platinum tresses, an outrageous contrast to her deep chocolate complexion, have become caught and twisted in the tangle of bling around her neck and have pulled the entire wig askew. Both eyelids are painted with some kind of neon sparkle; one eye has inch-long false lashes. At first I think it’s a spider perched on her brow. The other eye’s lashes have, apparently, been lost in the fray.

  When she spies Balzer and me, she shrieks and launches a volley of saucers at us. We duck and dodge, and they smash against the overturned kitchen furniture and walls.

  “Shaletha! Stop it now!” Balzer commands.

  “Get on the ground, now!” I bellow. “Don’t make us put hands on you!”

  She fires another plate at us, hissing, “Fffuck you honkey muhfuckas!” and makes for the backdoor through the adjoining laundry room. Balzer leaps and grabs her by the hair, and the tangled blonde mass slips completely off her head. But the ringlets knotted into the tangle of golden chains around her neck form a noose in Balzer’s grasp that tightens around her throat and jerks her off her feet. With a loud thud, the house shakes and Shaletha’s on her ass. We’re both on her, yelling “Stop resisting! Give us your hands!”

&
nbsp; For a nineteen-year-old girl no more than 120 pounds, Shaletha’s strength surprises both of us, and she’s scratching and squealing and biting like a wounded panther. Her claws slash at my throat, and she sinks her teeth into one of Balzer’s hands.

  “Sheee-it!” Balzer yelps. “Fuckin’ bitch bit me!”

  I blast her with the pepper spray, less than a foot from her face. The problem with pepper spray in a fight is it gets all up in everybody’s face. In an instant the fight’s out of all three of us, but mostly it’s Shaletha who’s blinded and choking for breath. Balzer and I manage to flip her and cuff her before we stagger away coughing, leaving Shaletha in a snarling writhing mess on the laundry room floor. We catch our breath in the living room, spitting and slinging stinging strings of snot from our noses.

  I squint out the window and see the paramedics out in the yard with Grandma and the kids.

  “You go on out and let them look at your bit hand,” I sputter. “I got her.”

  Balzer exits through the front door and I direct my attention back to Shaletha. She’s still twisting and straining against the cuffs, kicking at the washer and dryer that ring out with loud metallic clangs from her stiletto heels, but mainly she’s just heaving around trying to breathe and spewing vicious, incomprehensible obscenities at me. I go grab her by the arms, hoist her to her feet, and wipe the pepper spray from her face with a dish towel.

  “Settle down and the breathing won’t hurt so much,” I tell her. She tries to twist away from my grasp, which I tighten.

  “Owww! You’re hurting me!” I ignore her.

  Outside, the children have become distracted by the big shiny red fire engine and the ministrations of the paramedics—all but the older boy, the teenager, who still weeps openly. It occurs to me that he’s too old to be Shaletha’s child; maybe a younger brother. Is he weeping out of shame, because he failed as the “man” of the house to stop his big sister? Or does he see in Shaletha his own dreaded future?

  Shaletha resumes her bucking. I’m always a bit puzzled by this, from cuffed prisoners. If they break free, is their plan to run down the street with their hands behind their backs until some sympathetic thug with a cuff key or a hacksaw rescues them?

  “Just settle the fuck down, Shaletha! It’s over! None a this shit was even necessary!”

  “You don’t know!” she shrieks. “You don’t feel me!” Then, “Necessary!” she sneers. “How you know what be ‘necessary’ to me! An’ dis shit ain’t over! It never gon’ be over! ’Less’n I’m dead, or dey be gone! Y’on’t know shit, y’ole honky muhfucka!”

  We make our way to Balzer and the paramedics. Shaletha screams “Balzer! You know! You feel me, bruh! Take my babies! Take ’em away from me, please! I can’t do it no mo’! Please take my babies, please, Balzer!” I’m disgusted and wishing the babies were out of earshot.

  Balzer turns his attention from the paramedic swabbing antiseptic on his Shaletha-bit hand. He gets right up in Shaletha’s face. Tears are still streaming from all our pepper-sprayed eyes. Shaletha’s mascara has run down her cheeks in long smeary black stripes highlighted with the glittery sparkles from her lids. We’re all blurry to each other, but the situation is very clear to Balzer, and he speaks for me, too.

  “First off, I ain’t your ‘bruh,’ bitch. You self-centered little cunt! I don’t want your babies! Don’t you get that? Why should I, or Officer Johnson, or these firefighters, or even your poor old mama have to take care of your babies? We have our own babies! We take care of ’em, like grown-up human beings are supposed to! When are you gonna grow the fuck up, Shaletha, and stop letting your gangbangin’ dope boys put dick all up in you?”

  Shaletha is seething, quivering with rage. But mute.

  “Huh, Shaletha? Will you ever grow up? Do you ever think about anybody but yourself? Or is dope boy dick and partying all you care about, Shaletha? You are one sick, twisted fuckin’ crack ho!” Balzer turns to me and mutters, “Put her in the fucking cage where she belongs.” That I do and shut the door with a satisfying slam.

  When I return, Balzer is apologizing to Mama Ruth for his profanity and advising her to call DHS to get the custody of the kids transferred to her, and to get a restraining order against Shaletha, and not to bail her out, no matter what she promises when she calls from Metro or how much she blubbers about being sorry. “Don’t even accept her calls,” Balzer instructs, and explains that Shaletha will be jailed for DV assault, child endangerment/neglect, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer. Mama Ruth is so apologetic for Shaletha’s behavior and grateful for Balzer’s coarse, rough compassion, I feel like weeping.

  I want to suggest to Mama Ruth that she put the kids up for adoption, give them a chance at a decent life. But I know it’ll fall on deaf ears, or likely offend her. And worse, I know that even if she chose adoption as the best option, DHS would put the kids through an endless bureaucratic shuffle of paper and temporary placements in foster homes (where the caregivers are indifferent at best) until they age-out of the optimum adoptable years and begin bouncing between juvenile detention and the state reform school, eventually becoming no more than crime or death statistics.

  In the back of my mind is the small whisper “There, but for the grace of God . . . ,” but I disregard it. I just don’t have the heart to tell her (or Balzer) that the bureaucratic, brainless, heartless twin threshers of Human Services and Justice doom Mama Ruth’s grandbabies to a destiny of unrelenting, mind-grinding, soul-slaying misery, to be repeated generation after generation.

  Several weeks later, Nancy and I are at a small dinner gathering of the smart set—people whose acquaintances I had made in my previous life and who (largely for Nancy’s sake, I figure) had not yet dropped us from their social rosters.

  The event is hosted by the manager of a German petrochemical plant down Rangeline Road and his wife. We know Heinz and Ilse Schultz from serving on the symphony board together. At the party I overhear Nancy speaking with Heinz.

  “So Heinz, what do you think of my husband’s new career?”

  I listen closely (though surreptitiously) and brace myself, knowing Heinz’s answer will be ammo for Nancy in some future argument between us. Being of German descent herself, Nancy admires the often-bruising candor of Germanic opinion. Heinz takes a moment to consider his response.

  “Only in America is it possible,” he says, with a gee-whiz kind of tone. “Only in America is it possible for one to make such a change, to reinvent oneself so completely. You know, I think it’s just great! It’s a noble thing your husband chooses to do. I admire him for it.”

  Whoa! Take that, Nancy! I’m putting that nugget in my own clip.

  The gathering comprises educators, a psychologist, a journalist, a federal administrator, an investment broker, a civil litigator, a medical researcher, and a geneticist—professional, learned, progressive thinkers all. After dinner, while we’re all still gathered at the table, the question is posed to me: Since your, er, shall we say, unorthodox (chuckle) career change, Mark, you’ve sort of seen the world from both sides now, from the social work view and now from the rather, um, rough-and-tumble perspective (heh, heh, har, har) of law enforcement; how have your opinions changed (if indeed they have) vis-à-vis social problems and solutions?

  For the first time in a long while, I have the floor, and I’m not at a loss for words. I pause, for effect. “Great question! One I’ve given some thought to, actually, because I do sense some subtle changes in me.” Another momentary pause. Knowing looks, titters around the table, sympathetic glances from the women to Nancy. “A career cop I know told me early on, ‘Us cops have the rare privilege of confronting evil, face to face, and the ability to do something about it.’ That was his word: privilege. That really struck me. He wasn’t talking about campaigning to raise money or taxes to start more programs, or making speeches, or rallying and marching to ‘stop the violence.’ He was talking about doing something tangible, right now. Cops have the unique ability—the duty�
��to act. To act at once, in the face of evil: to stop it, contain it, even eliminate it, destroy it, if necessary. It’s really an awesome privilege.

  “But confronting pure, living, coldhearted, dead-eyed evil is rare, even for cops. What really gets to me is what we encounter way more often, what some of us call feral youth. Kids, born to older kids, all on drugs, raising themselves with no responsible adult supervision or example, with absolutely no sense of right and wrong, never even heard of the golden rule, absolutely no direction, discipline, ambition, or integrity, utterly bereft of any moral sense. They don’t go to church, or school, or to any kind of job. They’re not in Scouting, or the Boys & Girls Club, or on the football team. They steal from each other, abuse and assault and kill each other, often as not their own flesh and blood: mothers, brothers, cousins, baby-mamas, babies, uncles, grandmas. They’re not evil, really. They’re barely sentient or capable of reason or abstract thought. They’re animals. Not even domesticated. Feral. And they’re armed. I arrest twelve- and thirteen-year-olds with Glocks in their pockets, over and over. The same ones, from the same families—but not ‘families’ like anything any of us know. I’ve put three generations, all related, into Metro at the same time, more than once.