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Francois’s worst moment on the job was different. “It was a kid, 10 or 11, and he was hit by a car on Rochester Avenue. He was already slipping into a coma by the time I got there, but I was screaming for him to hold on until the ambulance arrived. He didn’t make it.” He shakes his head. “Sometimes you hear talk in the house about this one dead and that one dead. But there’s a huge difference between coming on somebody already dead and having to watch someone dying. When it’s a kid like that... well, I know I won’t ever lose that picture in my head.”
On the next call, a Troy Avenue woman has phoned 911 with the desperate report that a gun-wielding boyfriend is in her apartment threatening her and her daughter. Indeed, there is nothing in the least reassuring to Francois and Scarcella when they reach the third-floor apartment and find the door open. But then the situation takes on a familiar coloring. A 30ish woman sprawled out on a couch in front of a TV set denies ever calling anybody. When a four-year-old girl on the floor near her begins bawling, the mother rips into the cops for “terrifying the child.” She keeps at them until they have completed a search of the apartment in case she is being fed her lines by the lurking boyfriend. “What gun?” she asks at one point. “He can be a bastard, but he doesn’t go around with any gun!”
Scarcella waits to hit the street before venting. “She uses the gun thing to 911 to scare away the boyfriend and get us here! Then she gets rid of us because we’re supposedly scaring the kid more than the boyfriend was! You know anybody sane who wants to do this job?”
The subject of mental stability reminds the Brooklyn veteran of other grievances. “You want to know what’s crazy, really crazy? The younger the cops are, the faster Police Plaza is bent on moving them on. You need at least five or six years on patrol to get a grip on this job, but the newer guys are moved along to Squad or Anti-Crime after two or three. I’m not saying they all want to move on, but like it or not, they are. And that’s creating a very dangerous condition between the cops and the public. The less they know, the more likely they’re going to commit some very serious mistakes. Police work isn’t just another job. The civilian makes a mistake at what he does, it’s called a mistake. The cop makes a mistake at what he does, it’s called a crime. Just what exactly are they thinking about downtown with all this express movement? It’s absolutely crazy.”
The next 911 call is for Francois, personally, from an estranged husband who wants protection while he picks up some of his belongings from the apartment he shared until recently with his wife. The cops head over to the apartment clucking over how low the guy has fallen in a very short time. “He’s an electrician, good money every week, lots of jobs every week,” Francois says. “He bought an entire building on Nostrand Avenue, rents out to a couple of stores. But the liquor got to him. She finally got an order of protection against him for her and their three kids, and that’s only made things worse.”
So much worse that the very night before Francois had to run in the husband for violating the protection order by falling down drunk in the street in front of the apartment building while shrieking to the skies about being let back into his home. Twenty-four hours later, though, he seems sober as he stands in front of his building and waves to the cops. “Just a few pieces of clothes,” he says. “And as long as you guys are with me, she won’t make any trouble.”
As it turns out, the wife is still at work, so the husband is able to throw some shirts and underwear into a Jiffybag in peace. But while he goes about that task, Francois and Scarcella are mesmerized by interior decorating that has positioned a 60” television set all of two feet away from the bed in the master bedroom. “How in god’s name can you lie there and look at that thing?” Francois asks. “If the picture doesn’t make you go blind, the sound must make you deaf.”
The husband shrugs and stuffs more clothes into his bag. “She bought it. Six thousand dollars.”
“Six thousand dollars!”
“Yeah, she wanted it. I gave her the money. That’s how we usually did things. I brought home the money and she went shopping with it.”
The cops never do get their answer about how the TV set must have assaulted the senses, but they are consoled by the fact that the electrician clears the premises without another family brawl. The man wanders down Nostrand Avenue, Jiffy bag slung over his shoulder, and, if past performance means anything, on his way toward another drink.
The tour’s final call is a rerun — back to the grocery store for the threatened assault allegedly involving a gun. This time Francois asks the dispatcher for a more detailed characterization of the caller, hoping to be able to identify the grocer or one of his employees, but the dispatcher can’t help very much. Not much else at the corner of Nostrand and Winthrop does, either. The basketball fans are no longer standing around near the door. Even the lead pipe is gone from the sidewalk. As for the grocer, he can’t understand why somebody should have called again: He himself hasn’t seen the two assailants for hours.
Francois and Scarcella give it a few minutes just in case the phantom trio comes back for a third round. They are finally forced to admit that there was never even a second round, that the original call probably got repeated by mistake. They don’t mind. The only thing more invisible than a nonexistent gun is one that didn’t exist twice.
Donald Dewey’s latest book is The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons.