We Are the Cops (2 page)

‘W
hat’s it like being a rookie?’ I asked the cop, as the patrol car he was driving dipped and bumped along a wide, potholed alleyway.

‘Nobody knows you, nobody trusts you, nobody likes you,’ he said.

‘Other officers or the public?’

‘Everyone.’

Although this was not the experience of every new cop I spoke with, it did seem that each generation of police officer looks at the next generation with a level of suspicion and distrust. Times change, people change and cops change, and if there is one thing cops don’t seem to like, it’s change. So it can be tough being the new recruit – being the rookie.

Usually, one of two things would happen when I asked cops about their days as a rookie: either their eyes would light up and a broad grin would stretch across their face as they thought back to those early and exciting days in their careers, or else their faces would drop as
they recalled the struggle and torment that came with being a new cop. You have to prove yourself and even then, that may not be enough. Time served – time on the job – can mean everything, and that’s the one thing a rookie doesn’t have.

Being brand new, fresh out of the academy, with a pristine uniform, sparkling, unused equipment and a head full of the official line as taught by instructors who are just following the curriculum is one thing, but the reality of actually being out on the streets is – as I was told many times – something completely different.

Everyone has their own reasons for becoming a cop – family tradition, paycheque, something different – and many will have similar fears when they are the new kid: how will people treat me? Will I get shot on my first day? Will I have to shoot somebody on my first day? Will I screw up so badly I have to resign immediately?

There are some officers, however, who will not worry about any of those things. They will turn up with buckets of bravado, plenty of attitude and act like they have been doing the job longer than the Chief. These officers are usually brought down to size very quickly, if not by the realities of the job, then by other officers.

It can be a rough and extremely sharp learning curve, where even your own family and friends can turn against you. In the space of just a few weeks, days, even hours, you can go from a clueless, immature idealist to a hard-assed, streetwise sceptic. There are probably few jobs in the world where your very character and values can change so significantly and so quickly. The fact is, not everyone has what it takes and not all police officers make it past being a rookie.

When I joined the police it was the worst day of my mother’s life. Jews didn’t become cops. I was the only Jew in my precinct for a long time. It wasn’t a big thing but I was the only one. But it was weird, Jews in this country, you know, don’t take menial labour jobs or stuff like that. Having a blue-collar job as a Jew is frowned upon in the United States. Well, we can’t all be doctors and lawyers. I think it’s changed a lot though, because the precinct I work in now has lots of Jews. I think the whole atmosphere has changed. But my mother thought it was the worst day of my life. She was very distraught.

Almost everybody in my academy class was Irish. Their families were just so proud but my mother was like, ‘Oh my God! A cop?’

I guess she got over it eventually, but I don’t know.

This is also the woman who told me my whole life that I would grow up to be a ditch digger. I’m not sure being a cop was much better.

I joined the police department because I grew up in a bad neighbourhood of Staten Island, New York – predominately black and Hispanic – and whilst we were growing up we were burglarised nine times and I saw a lot of despair in the community and really, truthfully, I just wanted to become a cop. No family history, I’m the first. My mother didn’t want it; my father didn’t care. My mother thought it would make me very jaded. She wanted me to be a fireman. They get better pay because they steal. All firemen are thieves. I had a fireman tell me that you should ‘never let good
money burn’.

But my father was just happy that I had a paying job. That I was working and I have a pension. He just wanted to make sure that his kids were set for the rest of their lives with work, but my mother wanted me to be something more.

I had no burning desire to be a cop; didn’t grow up my whole life saying, ‘I’m gonna be a cop’. Nothing. I was a truck mechanic. I was a happy truck mechanic. I had a bad run of luck on trucks; I got run over, had a transmission fall on me, but still, never thought I was gonna be a cop.

I was on my way to an engagement party in New Jersey with a friend of mine. He didn’t get the gift, I didn’t get the gift, so we stop at this mall in Queens. As we’re walking in, there’s this cop standing there handing out applications to take the police test. I take it, fill out the application, took the test three months later and nine months after that I was hired as a cop. That’s how I became a cop; I walked into a department store where a guy handed me a piece of paper. Twenty-four years later, if I could find that guy I would give him the biggest kiss. It was the greatest move that I ever took, but back then I didn’t know it was the greatest move. In fact, I almost quit on my first day after getting to my precinct.

My first assignment ever – finished my training, finished the academy – my first assignment was to sit on a hospitalised prisoner. He was in the intensive care unit; I never saw so many wires and tubes coming out of a human being in my entire life. Everything
you can imagine was hooked up to him.

I’m like, ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’

He was handcuffed to the bed – this guy ain’t going nowhere. He’s going nowhere. Even if he wakes up, he ain’t going nowhere!

I left that day saying, ‘I just wasted eight hours of my fucking life.’

Back then I was a very active guy. I was within a hair’s breadth of quitting. I was absolutely disgusted. I worked in a precinct with old timers, guys with a lot of time – anywhere from eighteen years to thirty years – and these guys would all say that being a cop was the greatest job they ever did. For my first five years on the job I didn’t understand how they could possibly say this was the greatest job they ever did. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it the way these other guys loved it. I couldn’t understand loving the job to that level. I mean these guys
loved
the job. But somewhere around twelve years on the force I started to understand why people loved the job. And I’ll tell you right now, it’s the greatest job I’ll ever have my entire life. The people you meet, the things you do; it’s just the greatest job ever.

I was very, very lucky. My class was the last class before there was a hiring freeze and the precinct I went to was kind of split between younger cops and cops with a lot of time on the job. And because it was such a bad and busy place, everybody looked out for everybody else.

You quickly learnt how to do the job because you were working with guys who had like, fifteen to eighteen years on the force, so you just went out on patrol with them. Granted, they wouldn’t let you drive, they wouldn’t let you talk on the radio, they wouldn’t let you say anything when you went to a job but they didn’t treat you bad and if you made a mistake they’d just say, ‘Don’t ever fucking do that again’, and they’d leave it at that.

You got all the shit assignments but in terms of learning how to do police work, they taught you how to do police work the right way, so that nobody was getting hurt. They taught you how to be a real cop. It wasn’t like it is today where these kids have no idea; where the blind are leading the blind.

Some guys will look for a job in the wanted ads in the newspapers or else they’re planning out their careers and going to college or whatever. But they look and they see that being a plumber pays this amount and an accountant pays that amount and a casino worker gets this amount. But the police pay this amount – therefore I’ll be police. And if that’s how you decided that you wanted to be a policeman, then you fucked up because that’s not how it works. As lame as it sounds, the police picks you.

My mum worked for Highway Patrol, my Dad worked for Highway Patrol, my flop stepbrother worked for Highway Patrol but I was never interested in doing that. I was having a perfectly fine time making an ass-load of money building bridges. Then I started reading cop books. Then I started listening to cop stories. And then pretty soon I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got to be a cop’. Do I
know when that happened? No idea. But all of a sudden I decided I had to be a cop.

I went and told my boss and said, ‘I’ve been here ten years. I’m leaving. I’m gonna go be a cop.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. I fucking do not know, but that’s what I’m going to do.’

And that’s how I decided.

A while later, I went to my police oral boards and they ask the question, ‘Could you take a life if you had to?’

I say, ‘Of course.’

‘What makes you want to be a cop?’

And I said, ‘Hey, I’m not here with the Miss America speech – I don’t wanna save the world. I don’t want to work with disadvantaged children. It’s a job that you need people to do and I think I can do it. When someone calls the cops for help, I wanna be the guy that shows up. I want to be the guy that fixes it, makes it right. If some little kid’s lost and I find his parents, that’s a victory to me. The rest after that is gravy, almost.’

Then they’ve look at my application and they go, ‘How much money did you make building bridges last year?’

I said, ‘Forty-two thousand dollars.’

They said, ‘You know you start at twenty-six thousand here?’

And I said, ‘Yeah, I know that.’

They said, ‘Well, you’re about smart enough to be a cop.’

The things that you see with the new generation that we’re hiring
and the thing that we’re losing with our new generation, is the ability to communicate with other people.

One of the biggest things in this job is learning how to talk to people. But this new generation of cops, they don’t know how to talk to people. Their interpersonal communication is zero. I mean, I don’t know if it’s because they are so used to texting rather than talking? The recruits now, they want to email or text rather than talk. I don’t know if it’s because these kids sit at home and play computer games all the time but they don’t want to actually speak to you.

And the other one is, the ability to read and write – it’s gone out the window. It’s insane. Somehow I think it’s all connected but I don’t know how. It’s so weird.

I give talks in high school and people always ask me, ‘What courses should I take? Should I take criminal justice?’

I say, ‘No. We’ll teach you the law. We’ll teach you search and seizure. We’ll teach you how to use force. We’ll teach you all the police stuff. You need to go out and take courses in English composition, public speaking and things like that because if you show up at my academy, I can’t teach you how to talk to people. I can’t teach you how to read and write. These are things you should be able to do
before
you become a cop!’

When I came on the job I was a reserve officer, I was nineteen and I was viewed as a spy for the Chief – I couldn’t be trusted. No one knew who you were or they didn’t know if you could do your job – handle yourself on the street – or if you were going to be a
complete idiot. So you got the shit assignments. Everyone looked at you a little sceptical, like, ‘let’s see what this guy’s going to be all about’.

Once you worked, you know, a couple of months, people realised that ‘this guy’s a good guy – he’s nice, he knows what he’s doing’. And so on. Once you’ve been to a couple of bar fights or calls with other officers, people accepted you and trusted you. But it took time.

The guys that are in The Bronx always say that The Bronx cops are the best and that The Bronx is the best place to work; they think they’re really good and granted, they have some pretty decent restaurants and you can eat pretty good and hang out and drink pretty good. But then they sent me to Harlem. They sent six of us to this one place at the same time. We were all pretty much devastated as we all thought that we were staying in The Bronx and would live our lives as Bronx cops - and that would have been great but then you walk into the precinct in Harlem. You drive down the block and it’s half abandoned and burnt out. It was a hellhole. Then you walk in the front door and the first thing you see on the wall are thirteen pictures of police officers who had been killed in the line of duty and this particular precinct has more officers murdered than any other precinct in the city.

That was a little bit eye opening and you think, ‘Oh boy! What am I getting my hands into here?’ But then you kind of get on with it. There ended up being some really good guys there – really sharp, smart, good guys. As far as I was concerned, they
blew every Bronx guy I ever knew, away.