ABOVE AND BEYOND

In my last disquisition in this space I misstated facts about the microfilm files I’d been consulting at the N.Y. Public Library. I said each micro box contained one reel of film. Not so. It was six reels. Sorry about that. I caught my mistake through trying to figure out why the library achieved its objective of printing two weeks’ editions of a newspaper on every reel of film by printing the same editions over and over until all the film had been used because if they only printed each edition once, two weeks total pages wouldn’t have filled a half a reel. So why didn’t they print four weeks or six weeks or something and fill the reels that way? I don’t know but I’m going back to find out. I’ve already learned that the capacity of a regular .35mm reel is 80 newspaper pages. But how can there be 778 boxes for a paper that never printed more than thirty pages or so a day? What about that? What about…oh, a lot of things. Well, I’ll never know what makes the rain to fall or makes the grass so tall, but I will know why I have to cope with microfilm that goes on repeating itself and wasting the best years of my life when I try to read it. Watch out, library.

The above is a diversion from my subject of today, which is another return to my police days as a relief from trying to penetrate the mysteries of the “plans” and “solutions” and “measures” being proposed for the alleviation of the mortgage miseries besetting us all, including those of us who have always kept our payments current and now wonder where we went wrong. Where are our bailouts?

Well, on to something more encouraging. Leafing through my dogeared collection of reports from my departmental days I’ve been struck by the number of them that are about off-duty incidents involving cops who were…off duty, but still went to bat against crime when they encountered it with no help available and no witnesses to vindicate their actions. I find it impressive. Here are some examples.

There we have it. Five off-duty cases in a limited time period coming to the attention of one captain out of twenty or more in Queens, all well or adequately justified, all voluntary and pretty well forced on the cop and all resolved without serious damage even to the perpetrators. They’re just a small sampling taken at random, which indicates to me that the total for the borough could have reached three figures for the year. If they all came out as well as these, the police department could take pride in the initiative of its members. The people of the city could take comfort from the fact that they were getting more service than they had paid for. For myself I now realize that I should have seen this earlier instead of taking this “above and beyond” activity for granted, as I did for years. I’ve always believed in looking for the patterns to be found in any sequence of events, but I should have found this one sooner. I was too close to the action to see it, I fear.