A SHOT RANG OUT

This is New Year’s Day, a time for reviewing the immediate past and determining what lessons it teaches and the best way of not repeating it in the year ahead. I haven’t quite done that, but I have done some collating of the records I use writing this blog and will be telling you something about them here. This is the first time I’ve tried organizing them, as opposed to diving into them at random in the hope of finding something I can use for this space.

The organizing isn’t finished yet by a long shot, but at least I’ve pinpointed some of the differences between the various categories of documents coming into my hands during my time as a police captain in Queens, N.Y. Most of them are reports that I wrote but there are also copies of other people’s work which came to me as an addressee. I decided I was entitled to a copy of every one of these and threw them in my ragbag without classifying them. By starting to do that now I’m finding that they have a lot to tell us about the sociology of our time and place and about the conclusions we should draw from it.

I won’t be writing that kind of thing here, but the material for it is available from this dog-eared file. It runs the gamut -- murder, robbery, assault, suicide, accident, fire, flood, domestic violence, acts of God, disappearances, pursuits, captures, escapes, it’s all in the files. Up to now I’ve mined all this for material to use in this blog and I’ll continue that, but there will be an overview in due time, that is, when I feel the time is ripe and some “inconvenient truths“ can be revealed. Pending that, here’s one of the stories I’ve just uncovered which offers an insight into the life of a drug dealer who enjoyed great success until he overindulged in his own merchandise and ‘blew his cover‘, as they say.

His name was Maximo Vasquez and he lived in Jackson Heights, a location that appeals to dealers like Park Avenue appeals to stockbrokers. Anything goes in Jackson Heights, but Maximo overstepped himself one midnight and fired a shot through the floor of his apartment into the one below. This caused its tenant to decide that enough was enough and he called the cops. When they came he displayed a high-caliber bullet lodged in his floor right under the hole in his ceiling through which it had been fired. They went upstairs.

Maximo, apparently in a state of confusion, admitted them even though he had neglected to hide the scales and bags of milk sugar he’d been using to package his merchandise. They told Max and his girl friend they were under arrest and went searching for his gun. They didn’t find this but they did find $6,500 in cash which they confiscated for evidence. Somehow Max had hidden the gun, but his neighbor was able to help with this problem by pointing out Max’s car, a late-model Jaguar. He told them Max had put a bag into the trunk just before his target practice. The bag was removed and found to contain no less than three fully loaded pistols, plus more bags of a “white powdery substance believed to be heroin.“ An empire had come crashing down.

I should probably have been the one to make this report, but since I was never notified of the arrest, I couldn’t. Instead of calling me, a sergeant went ahead on his own and did a decent job of reporting. I wasn’t required to analyze his work since I only got it for information, not for action, but I would have done some things differently if I had made the report. The disappearance of the gun required more explanation, for instance. A search was made, but wasn’t spelled out in enough detail. By rights the rod should have been on the ground under the apartment windows, and when it wasn’t that should have been stated explicitly. The rest of the search should also have been described in more detail. Guns don’t just fly away leaving no trace behind.

No description of the three loaded guns was given. Were they name brands or just Saturday night specials of no particular provenance? It makes a difference. There’s nothing wrong with putting your best foot forward when informing headquarters of your achievements. The guns might have fitted the description of those used in unsolved crimes. And although examination by the Ballistics Squad was a foregone conclusion in this case, it would have been just as well to include it in the list of agencies notified.

Also the condition of the guns should have been reported. Had any of them been recently fired? That should have been ruled out because the informant had reported that they had been thrown into the car trunk before the shot into his flat, but it was possible he might have been confused and that possibility should have been checked out.

Finally, although the report states that Max and friend were charged with possession of a controlled substance, it makes no mention of a charge of unlawful discharge of a firearm or possession of unlicensed handguns. It’s all right to say that these charges can be assumed, but it’s not all right to assume it to the point of leaving them out of the report altogether. It’s also not all right to tell us no more about Max than his name and nothing else and to omit mention of any attempts to question him and of his response thereto.

All the same, it wasn’t too bad a production by a sergeant making probably his first attempt at wrapping up the details of an incident in a neat package to be delivered with the morning mail. Psychological portraits of suspects aren’t normally part of this, but it would have been interesting to see Maximo’s. I personally see him as a sufferer from Joe Pesce syndrome as seen in the movie “Goodfellas.” In it Joe demonstrates a propensity for spraying his surroundings with gunshots when excited. Liquor is the catalyst for this in Joe’s case, but I suspect heroin was in Max’s. Or maybe “Scarface” was his inspiration. Al Pacino was a successful Latino dealer who contacted a drug habit and started settling arguments with a machine gun. Did this strike a chord with Max? Will we ever know? Does it matter?