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While Gonzalez and Arroyo close off an avenue so the ambulances can get through, other officers strap cop injured in car chase accident into gurney. |
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| Working an afternoon tour with Michael Squibb, Richards is flagged down by the owner of a brownstone on Putnam Avenue. The man has become familiar to the command for the number of times his building has been burgled over the last couple of years. This time he owes it only to his grandson that he doesn’t have to fill out another robbery report. “The kid heard something upstairs, and when I went up I saw the roof latch off,” the man says. “I know it had been in place because I fastened it myself.” Richards and Squibb confirm that the latch couldn’t have been blown loose by accident. There seems little doubt another burglary had been in progress. So what’s so valuable about this house that it’s become a magnet for neighborhood lowlifes? “You got me,” the owner shrugs. “Maybe it’s just because I keep it maintained. It looks ripe for the picking.” It’s hard to say the same thing about another apartment, a drab one-room thing with a kitchenette, a few blocks away on Marcus Garvey Boulevard. But unlike the setting for the first call, it has been ransacked. The cops meet the boy friend of the victim on the street in front of the four-floor building. “She’s not home from work yet,” he says nervously, “and when she sees this, she’s going to flip out.” A lot of people would. The lock on the door of the top-floor place has been completely ripped away, some of the pieces scattered over the staircase. A television set sits untouched inside, but every drawer, closet, and cabinet in the main room and kitchenette has been tossed. Since the boy friend can only speculate that money and jewelry were the targets of the break-in, there is not much the cops can do until the woman returns home from work.
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The guy doesn’t understand so much patience. “There are people in this building you should look at,” he says. “Especially this woman on the first floor. She knows my girl friend’s schedule.” Richards and Squibb put it all into their report, warning the boyfriend to stay away from the target of his suspicions. “No sweat, no sweat,” he says. “I’m going to have my hands full as it is when Jenna sees all this mess.” The next call, to Fulton Street, turns out to be the first of three in a row with the common theme of short tempers. As the cops pull up, a posse of young teenage girls is walking away looking pleased with itself for having excited the middle-aged woman shouting after it. “They disrespected me!” the woman screams at the cops. “I’m just walking along and they start in with this foul language. I’m a mother and I work for a living. I don’t have to take that crap from them. That’s why I called 911.” But the woman’s fury abates when she is asked if she wants to file a formal complaint. “I haven’t got time for that kind of thing. I got a seven-year-old waiting for me at home.” At Garvey and Lexington, Richards and Squibb walk into a deli just in time to see a counterman reaching for a second handkerchief for his bloody nose. “This crazy man came in here,” he says, “said I insulted him last night and, bam, right in the face! I wasn’t even working last night!” As the cops eventually piece it out, there had been an argument between a counterman and a customer the night before, with the latter going off behind a threat to come back; unfortunately for all concerned, the assailant returned to wallop a different counterman. Since there was no attempt to use a weapon, let alone rob the store, the incident is recorded as an Assault Three.
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Richards and Squibb are about to canvas the zone for the attacker when they are called back to the Fulton Street neighborhood where the teenagers had taunted the woman. To their surprise, they see the same girls sashaying away from the entrance to a housing complex, where other officers are interviewing two young men. The reason for all the commotion? The teenagers had had as much to say to the men as they had to the woman on Fulton Street, leaving more irritated passersby in their wake. Or, in the words of a foot patrolman acquainted with the teens: “They like going around sassing everybody. We’re going to have a situation on our hands at some point if they don’t stop, but right now all they’re doing is trash-talking.” When Squibb suggests the girls might be in need of some listening, the foot patrolman says he knows where they live and intends seeing to precisely that. None of this calms the street dudes who feel they have lost a little of their machismo. “You oughta lock them up,” one of the men all but whines to Richards. “They got no call walkin’ around and startin’ trouble with everybody.” Richards and Squibb have a more modest goal: get through the tour without another call involving the girls. “You never know where you’re going to end up,” he laughs. “But there’s no reason to fall in love with the predictable, either.” Donald Dewey's latest book, The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons, will be published later this year. |
