| IN THE WEE SMALL HOURSOF THE MORNING |
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In the Police Department we not only investigated cases, but we
re-investigated them and then investigated the investigators. Oh, you mean stealing the
crown jewels, assassinations and the like? Well, no, I mean cases involving
cops which might mean someone somewhere might draw an inference unfavorable
to the department and damaging to our reputations as outstanding defenders of
civil liberties acutely sensitive to the rights of citizens and the
safeguards of the same laid down in the law. Your friend the policeman, was the image
we sought to project.
When we could, that is. It was none too easy sometimes. One time was a
September night in Queens when two unlucky highway cops encountered a couple of
young chaps heading home from a wedding in the wee hours in an exhilarated
state. One of them, Donald Pretto, flew by them at seventy miles per hour on
the Long Island Expressway, causing them to begin a pursuit. Donald refused
to comply with orders to stop and instead raced up a ramp to a local street
where he attempted to execute a snappy getaway by means of a U-turn. It didn't
work and he instead skidded into the cops' lane so that he and they were now
facing each other. They got out of their car and walked toward him,
whereupon he backed up enough to get starting room and then drove straight at them.
The cops scrambled out of the way and fired one shot at Pretto so that he
came to a halt and allowed himself to be dragged out of his car. At this time
his friend Giovanni C. showed up in his car and attempted to interfere with
the cops so that he was arrested along with Pretto. All concerned then
proceeded to the nearest station house.
None of this would have required much in the line of investigation if it had
not been for the shot that was fired. That, ah, triggered an inquest. A
captain took charge and started questioning everybody. Donald admitted
refusing to stop but denied he'd driven at the cops. His friend, though, signed a
statement that Donald had driven at them.
This would have concluded the case favorably for the cops if not for the
fact that they still had to account for the shot at the driver, which had missed
him, but not by much. Police Department guidelines, which everybody was now
looking up, prohibited shooting at a moving car where the occupants were
using it as a weapon but not using any other weapons. A couple of doubtful
cases had caused this provision to be adopted although in the opinion of some, it
placed too much reliance on the ability of cops to get out of the way of cars
used as missiles. Whatever about that, the duty captain was left with no
recourse except to find that the guidelines had been violated, though he
softened this with the finding that there were extenuating circumstances in the
fact that the car was coming right at the shooter when he let go.
This did not pass muster at Headquarters. The report came back with an
inquiry as follows: "Sketch indicates Police Officers directly approached the
front of the suspect's vehicle on foot. Were they questioned as to why they
placed themselves in such a dangerous position which is contrary to the
instructions and training of the Police Academy?"
Well, we had an answer to that, kind of. I had to provide it, though, since
I was now assigned to tie up such loose ends. Headquarters was being misled
by a diagram of the incident that had been sent along with the report. It
had a professional look, with everything labeled engineering-style and
directional arrows pointing here and there. The mapmaker had left his name off
though, so we couldn't ask him why he'd made the cars half their actual size,
thereby making it look as if the cops had unlimited room to take cover and
protect themselves against an attack by car. Instead the two cars, theirs and
Pretto's, were actually cheek by jowl facing each other with only five feet or
so between for the cops to maneuver in.
At such close quarters there was no time for strategizing, but only for
emergency action to save one's skin. I pointed this out in a kindly manner to
the people who had sent us the inquiry. I had the urge to tell them what we
forgave them for their failure to understand the situation better unlike us
soldiers in the field with our front-line experience. I decided that it wouldn'
t really be appreciated as it deserved and it might even lead to a reopening
of the question as to why we had sent down a comic-strip drawing instead of
one that made sense.
So it went. Headquarters second-guessed us and we snapped back at them.
What did those desk jockeys know about the troubles of the man on the ground?
we asked. Let them give up their soft touches and come out here for a while
and find out what it's really all about. We'll show them.
Terrible bunch of bores we were, you see. We didn't really want anybody
coming out to join us with a lot of ideas for new ways of doing things that
might upset our accustomed routine. Typical.
Here I must enter a caveat. Before you conclude that I was one of a crowd
of reactionaries resisting progress at every step, I must tell you that in our
view it was the progressive types running our show that were the real
obstacles to constructive change. The car-shooting prohibition is an example. It
was ill-conceived and simply not practical in every case even though it made
no exceptions for changing circumstances. It represented Headquarters at its
worst. The thing it did best was to make concessions and promulgate new
restrictions to prevent cops from protecting themselves.
Eventually I left all that behind. I went to work for a bank. What did I
find out? That the people in headquarters didn't really understand those of
us in the field. |
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