Breaking Rank (26 page)

Taggart worked The Heights, a predominantly black community in Southeast San Diego. But every shift, unless we caught a call right out of the barn, he would drive around the streets of downtown before heading east to his own beat. “The idea,” he said, “is to get your numbers out of the way, right off. Keep the sergeant off your back. Then when you get out to your beat you can do some
real
police work.” He was talking about the “numbers game,” SDPD's quota system. Five shakedowns,
*
two “moving” citations (parking tickets didn't count), and one criminal arrest per shift: it was expected. “Working downtown,” continued Taggart, “if you can't nail
a gaggle of swabbies from Bumfuck, Iowa, you shouldn't be a cop, you should be selling Kirbys door-to-door. With swabbies, you stop 'em, write 'em up, shake 'em down, maybe even haul one or two off to Shore Patrol. Presto! You got most of your numbers for the whole night.”

To prove his point, he poached four sailors walking against the Wait sign at Fourth and Broadway. Taggart was a “hot pen” which meant that he could write out the four “coupons” in the time it would take me to complete one. Ten minutes later we were back in the car, the backseat crammed with four underage sailors, each with booze on his breath and a mover in his pocket. Four double-headers (four traffic citations, four arrests—you couldn't carry them as shakedowns if you pinched them), almost a full night's work for most cops. If you were lazy and ethically challenged you could complete the picture with a trip through Mt. Hope Cemetery, picking off names from gravestones and carrying them as shakedowns. Some used the phone book, a lot more convenient but it carried a risk since most people in it were still alive. In my first two years on the job there'd been major internal investigations into “daily padding.” Two cops got fired for it.

Taggart's arrests that night were all the more efficient because all you had to do with hapless military personnel was deposit them at Shore Patrol headquarters and waltz out. No arrest reports required. No probable cause to justify.

The night after we'd pinched the homicide suspect, Taggart let me drive. “Aren't you forgetting something?” he said as I made my way out Market toward his beat.

“Sir?”

“I said, ‘Aren't you forgetting something?' ”

“What's that, sir?”

“Hey. Do me a favor, will you?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.' I'm not a ranking officer, okay? My parents were married.”

I was sure it was a joke, but I didn't get it. “Yes, sir. I mean . . . okay.”

“Now, let's get back to business. Do I have to spell it out for you? Turn around . . . go back . . . turn up Fifth. Will you?”

“Yes, si . . . right. Right.” I dropped down to Island and worked my way back to Fifth Avenue where I began scanning the sidewalks for sailors from Bumfuck. Or an unlucky tourist, or a transvestite, or a . . .

“Aren't you going to answer that?”

“Wha . . . what?” How could I look for numbers, drive a police car, without wrecking it, and listen to the radio at the same time? It was an all-units. Shore Patrol chasing a suspect, on foot. Last seen in the vicinity of Sixth and G. We were now at Fifth and G, but I didn't know that. That's another thing: A cop is
always
supposed to know
exactly
where he is. Which would be fine if you were
walking
a beat, but . . .

“Are you planning to fucking
do
something about that?”

“Wha . . .”

“That!” He jabbed a thumb out his window. A hundred fifty feet away a shore patrolman was chasing a white male. “Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em!” screamed Taggart. I put my on turn signal, checked behind me, and prepared to make my turn. “What the
hell
are you doing! Get the bastard! Now!” He took out his baton. I thought he was going to hit me. Instead he rained down blows on the metal dash, screeching as he did, “Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em!” The inside of the car sounded like a brick tumbling in a dryer. I punched it, noticing out of the corner of my eye that Taggart had dented the dogshit out of the dash. What fib could possibly explain that? I swept east on G then south on Sixth, driving the wrong way on the one-way street. And cutting across three lanes of oncoming traffic. I made for the curb where the shore patrolman and his prey, a kid sailor in dungarees, white T-shirt with smokes rolled up in the sleeve, and a bottle of rotgut whisky in one hand, stood panting and heaving, staring at us.

At about 15 mph, Taggart attempted to “exit the vehicle,” as we say in police work. He got tangled up in the seatbelt and fell to the pavement, his butt bouncing off the asphalt. Once, twice, three times. Like a cowboy thrown from a horse, his foot caught in the stirrup. I tried to stop, but not too suddenly—I didn't want to run him over. The whole time I'm thinking,
Oh shit. I've killed my senior officer. How am I going to explain this at critique tonight?

I finally brought the car to a stop. My senior officer leaped from the pavement and sprinted to the sidewalk. The two men were standing side
by side now, watching the show, still gasping for breath. Taggart went right for the kid's neck. He throttled him, pulled him up on his back, and shouted at me to get my cuffs out. The kid, his oxygen all but depleted, went out in a flash. I bent over and hooked him up. Taggart's pants were ripped to shreds, his black shoe laid open from heel to toe, his legs and hindquarters bearing the makings of some awesome strawberries and bruises to come. He looked into my eyes as he bent down to pull the groggy sailor to his feet. “You saw him start to hit me with that bottle, didn't you? Didn't you?”

That was the first time I'd been asked to lie, but it was far from the last. Senior officers and peers were always making sure we “got our stories straight.”
No, I didn't see Smith hit the guy, Sarge . . . No, Lieutenant, that dent in the fender was already there . . . I didn't hear Jones say a word to the complainant . . . Well, yeah, Martin choked him out, but the guy kicked him in the balls first . . . Yes, your honor, we saw the gun
before
we searched him . . .

I don't remember actually lying on the stand. But I do remember composing some “creative” arrest reports. Every drunk I ever arrested, for example, whether hammered or sober, walked with a staggered gait, viewed the world through bloodshot eyes, and had about his breath and person an odor characteristic of an alcoholic beverage.

If I'd not undergone a near-religious conversion at the end of my rookie year, the result of that ethical prosecutor shocking me into a new habit of honesty, there's no telling how many of these bad lies I would have told. Before getting fired.

From 1969 to 2000 I was a police supervisor, manager, or executive. In all that time I fired or influenced the firing of hundreds of cops for incompetence, major policy violations, or crimes. I'm guessing anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the policy violators would have survived—if only they'd told the truth. To this day, I'm amazed at the numbers of police officers who,
caught in an infraction, lie, and
cling
to their lies, until they get sacked—for dishonesty, not for backing their police car into a light pole.

Many chiefs, burned by bad-lying cops, have told their force: Tell a lie and you're history. This “zero tolerance” policy is intended to drive home the moral imperative of honesty in one's professional communication. It's a worthy goal, but zero tolerance often backfires, serving, paradoxically, to
institutionalize
deceit and dishonesty.

Most cops, especially rookies, are in love with the job. They can't imagine doing any other kind of work. It becomes their identity: what they live for, who they are. And because most police agencies embrace a chickenshit disciplinary process, their cops live in constant fear of being reprimanded, suspended, or
fired
, even for an honest mistake. It's important to understand that the first impulse of a lot of otherwise good and decent cops is to
lie
when called on the carpet.

As a captain, I once questioned one of my officers about his having witnessed an act of excessive force. The moment he answered I knew he was covering for a fellow cop. “I have a problem with your answer, John.”

“What do you mean, Captain.”

“I mean I don't think you're being truthful here.”

“But I
am.
I'm
telling
the truth.” I felt like his father, or his junior high school vice principal. And I'm sure he felt like a kid. But the truth was non-negotiable.

“Just so we're clear: If you're lying to me I'm going to see to it that you're fired.”

“But, Cap . . .”

“Here's what I want you to do, John. Go home, now. Think about your answers. Come back tomorrow, same time. I'm going to ask the same question.”

“But . . .”

“Leave. I'll see you tomorrow.”

He came in to my office the next day. And told the truth. I ended up reprimanding him for failing to intervene in the excessive force incident (which, truth be told, was not an egregious case), and not being forthcoming initially. But he kept his job. And learned an important lesson.

Peer pressure in every line of work is intense. In police work it can be all-consuming. You
have
to rely on your fellow officers to back you. A cop with a reputation as a snitch is one vulnerable police officer, likely to find his or her peers slow to respond to requests for backup—if they show up at all. A snitch is subject to social snubbing. Or malicious mischief, or sabotage (typically directed at his or her locker or his or her automobile). This peer pressure is childish and churlish, but it's real. Few cops can stand up to it.

That's why the second shot at truth-telling (“Is that your final answer?”) makes sense. And zero tolerance does not. The exception to this second-chance rule? When an officer lies on a report or raises his or her right hand, swears to tell the truth, and then lies. When that happens its too late for a second chance. Dismissal from the force is the only option.

*
A “shakedown” (or a “shake,” as it's referred to in Seattle) wasn't about cops extorting or blackmailing business owners. It was a “field interrogation,” a “stop-and-frisk” contact. Its aim, sanctioned in the landmark
Terry v. Ohio
case (1968), was to establish the identity and the “occasion of purpose” of individuals in suspicious circumstances—short of probable cause for arrest. Taggart's definition of “suspicious circumstances” extended to anyone he wanted to talk to for any reason. “Shakedowns” were the primary source of community complaints against cops, especially among youth and people of color. Most cops had developed a stock answer, sarcastic and deceitful, to the question, “Why'd you stop me?”