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MR. GREEN AND HIS SEWING MACHINE |
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Every crime is unique of course, but it also has something in common with others. For instance, burglary. There is the impulse to break into other people’s houses which is a common bond between all burglars, but methods vary, as we see from the accounts here which I’ve collected from my Queens archive. And methods matter, too. When they’re wrong, they can lead to, well, extinction.
The case that generated the most paperwork, three reports, an original, an interim one, and a follow-up, by me, turned out to be not a burglary at all, but derived its importance from the fact that the cop on the scene slipped on an icy sidewalk and had his gun go off in an unauthorized manner, requiring investigation. Officer McRann, it seems, was off-duty and canvassing his neighborhood for clothes for some Guatemalan earthquake victims when he saw a young black man loitering suspiciously in the area.
McRann was well aware that burglars were targeting the neighborhood because he had personally arrested two while off-duty and been informed of many other incidents by local police and his neighbors. A stranger on the street with no occupation needed to be checked out. He decided to test the man’s local knowledge by pulling up to him in his car and asking the way to Jamaica Ave. The stranger didn’t answer but took to his heels instead. McRann pursued on foot with his gun pointed skyward for a warning shot, but had his fall instead.
The accidental shot got the fugitive’s attention and that of his two friends, a man and a girl. It also brought out the residents, some of whom wanted the suspects shot out of hand. This expedited their removal to the station house. They were anxious to explain things. They were only there to deliver a new sewing machine to a Mr. Green, a resident. He was getting it for $150. Why so cheap? Well, Henry, the runaway, he delivered them and one day there was one left over and, well, he didn’t return it to the warehouse. It would just confuse things to have an extra machine getting in the way. Then Mr. Green came in and wanted to return the machine and get his $150 back. He was shocked -- shocked! -- to find such irregularity in his little off-the-books transaction.
After this everyone was let go, even Henry, since it didn’t look like his company was going to prosecute him over its loss. The only one with a problem was McRann, the man who had, after all, fired a shot in the air that just had to be investigated. It was.
In this affluent area of Queens known as Jamaica Estates, burglary was a constant threat.. In appearance it was a suburban settlement lodged inside the city limits. The borough president, Donald Manes lived there . I met him once in his house once over some complaint or other. We talked about the neighborhood’s attraction for the elite. He said “Where else can you go?” It was some time later that he committed suicide when he found out that he was likely to be arrested for “Official Misconduct.” Even with forty judges for neighbors he couldn’t face that.
The neighborhood had class all right. One night thirty-two prints by Andy Warhol and other such people were stolen from one of the houses. The value was quoted as $18,750, but that was then and now is now.
Burglary wasn’t always comic opera or even polite. It could get very serious at times. One case involved a retired cop who sentimentally kept 26 rifles and shotguns in his house. His son lived there with him among the guns. One night Robert Devine, 28 years old, the son, went to the drugstore from something or other and found the house alarm lit up when he got home. He ignored it because the audible alarm wasn’t ringing. He went in quietly, though, and then he heard a noise upstairs which wasn’t made by his father. He went down to the basement and got a pistol out of a safe there. When he got to the top floor he came under a “Psycho” knife attack by the intruder who missed him and took refuge in the bathroom. Devine fired four shots through the bathroom door.
Not looking from another confrontation, he went next door to call 911. Before he and the answering cops could re-enter the house, two men on patrol brought in the suspect, picked up a short distance away. He had been shot in the right thigh and left calf.
We finished up a big night for the NRA by checking out the father’s arsenal and finding that every one of the long guns had been properly registered with the city’s firearm control board. Old man Devine must have been a good cop, a guy who looked out for details. And burglars.
The last case here, read in the light of a similar one agitating New York this morning, causes me to wonder if there isn’t something in drugs that imparts a sense of power to the point of convincing the user that objects bearing a resemblance to guns actually are guns and can be used to scatter the demons attempting to destroy him. Since the demons are generally cops, the harvest of all this is usually a set of headlines proclaiming that yet another unarmed man has been shot down in cold blood by individuals who simply haven’t responded properly to sensitivity training.
This was the case with John Kopka, a “known drug addict and thief in the neighborhood” who broke noisily into a doctor’s office one night, causing a couple of residents on the floor to call 911. When the police arrived they saw Kopka stumbling around inside the office and ordered him to come out with his hands up. He did, but he came in a rush, in one hand clutching a metal object that looked like trouble. The cop didn’t press his luck, he fired once and suddenly it was all over. The object? A desk stapler. What did Kopka think it was? We’ll never know. The object in today’s incident? A hairbrush.
We have gone from burglary as a non-event to burglary as a deadly one. I’ve only included one story of a householder coming home to find a burglary in progress there, and that had a happy ending, but there have been many others that didn’t end that way. Burglars always prefer empty premises to work in, but if they’re interrupted they’re usually ready to overcome the new arrival on the scene. Once you’ve seen the results of such a confrontation, you no longer think of burglary as a non-violent crime. All of a sudden it makes something like the Neighborhood Watch look good. If you don’t have one, start one. Also pray. | |
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