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But there’s been another, more personally significant change for Delio in 11 years, too. “The same one every cop goes through, I suppose. You wake up one morning and realize your friends are all cops. When you run into people you knew before you went on the job, you can clown around about ballgames or something, but the conversation doesn’t last all that long. You get to count on the people who have the same assumptions about things as you do, and that means other cops. Is it inevitable? Did I see it coming? I don’t even remember if I did or not. It is what it is.” The next call is a reported assault on an elderly woman by a nursing home security guard. It’s not the first time Delio and Reyes have been called to the West 164th Street home and not the first time that the call has been attributed to a second resident looking for a little payback against security people for perceived slights. “They’ve checked the place out,” Reyes says, “and never found anything suspicious. You got a lot of AIDS and HIV cases and everybody’s a little on edge. Sometimes the 911 call can seem like the solution to everything.” “It’s ingrained after so many years,” Delio adds. “You can’t get the public to switch to another number overnight. Where do they even publicize the 311? On radio shows during the day when most of the people up here are working? And they do it in English when you’ve got so many in our command that speak Spanish or something else. When you think about it, it shouldn’t be so surprising 911 is still an automatic for people in trouble.”
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What the 911 is also good for, as two calls in a row make clear, is a threat. Responding to a Webster Avenue summons, Delio and Reyes find a woman waiting for them on the stoop of a three-floor graystone. “Sure, I called you,” she says. “He comes in here, starts throwing the clothes of our kid out the window, says he’s not going to pay the rent for me anymore. Got like a mad dog. What am I supposed to do? So I picked up the phone and called 911. He got the message and got the hell out.” Similarly, a grocery store off the Concourse at 156th Street turns out to be the scene of a I-dare-you-to-stick-around. “Guy comes in, starts messin’ with the stuff on the shelves,” the counterman shrugs. “I warn him I’m gonna call 911 if he don’t get out. He don’t get out, so I call. Then you shoulda seen him headin’ out the door!” But if such episodes say something about the intimidation factor 911 still packs, it is precisely that quality that risks being depleted through overuse. “The day somebody threatens a perp with a 911 call and we can’t respond right away because we’re too busy answering a call about a lost cat or something,” Delio says, “that’s the day it’s started to lose its clout. And we’re not going to be the ones paying for it.” Donald Dewey’s latest book, The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons, was published in October. |
