Route Forty was our main drag. I have a call, a lady needs help. It’s snowing and I’m just out of the academy. I am assigned to the same post as an officer I graduated with, a big man, a good man. We worked together on occasion. But usually, we’re alone. I don’t want to leave the road. I’m on Forty East, above Ebeneezer Road. I see this patch of snow and think, I can maybe pull over there. Wrong thought. If there is a question in your mind, that is the gazoo saying don’t do it. I get stuck. Now my call is in jeopardy. Three guys in a pick up, big strong bikers, all the tats—this is in the 70s, right. These guys pull over and I’m kind of nervous, being stopped by likely subjects of certain investigations. One says, “Officer, stay in the car and give it gas when I tell you to.” They rock the car and push me out.

Those guys saved my ass from years of roll call humiliation. If I had got stuck in the snow on my first night on the job, the old hard asses would have named me Snow Flake or Frosty and any time it snowed I’d hear it.

My class mate, he was young too. There is a post car, that all three shifts used. They are usually pretty beat up, sometimes a real piece of junk. On his first week he gets the new car—brand spanking new. It was a slow night, so he takes it a little out of his post. There is a call and even though he is a little out of position, he takes it, its like calling for a fly ball in the outfield and he’s got the legs. It’s four in the morning. He’s got this great car. What can happen? He’s tearing down Forty past Martin’s East and a woman pulls out in front of him and he rolls it—lucky he’s not dead. The Colonel does not ask how he is. He’s cussing up a storm about Rookies not being able to drive and losing his new post car! The old guys, they were hard asses.

We have a call on Forty together; a house call, noise complaint. We get there and its a house full of Mexicans and the one that speaks English, says, “Oh, officer, music too loud,” like they did it for attention. It’s late, they are drinking, but quiet and well behaved. We want to check the place out to make sure they don’t have any minor women there. The Mexican smiles and says, “Sure, Officer,” like he wants us to. All the doors are open going down this long hallway. We get down to the end of the hallway and there is this door that is closed. We look at it and my partner says, “Let’s go. This isn’t right.”

We left. Point is, maybe they wanted to grease some cops. These guys might not even have American identities—could just vanish. One or two guys with a shotgun in there, whoever opens the door gets it and the other guy is eating it too.

You have to have a sense for what might be. There are some knuckleheads that want to fight the cops. After a while, you know what that looks like and you call for back up. A tough man who works with his hands and is 160 pounds, that can take three cops a long time. A big 200 pounder, or some giant guy—that could be five men.

I go out to back up my class mate on his call. This is down Rickenbacker. All the bad shit happened on Rickenbacker, worst street, in the toughest post, of the worst precinct. It was back when they had that Village of Tall Trees right next to the next post up. You took the bus through there—it was a nest of crime. Go on a call there and there are guys ready to fight, with their own back up ready to roll.

[From this same period the story of Columbine Joe in One Soul Under God describes life in Tall Trees, which was a housing project served by the #23 bus line.]

The girlfriend calls. She is worried about her boyfriend, saying “I don’t know what drugs he’s into now, but he’s wacky.” He hasn’t hit her. This is a welfare call. This dude is in a wife beater, muscular, good 200 pounds, hard headed you can see—this guy scrapped. He’s on the edge of the bed zoning out and I try to talk to him, “Hey, pal, are you okay? Is there anything we can do?”

He doesn’t respond, so I put my hand on his shoulder and he tenses, his eyes beam and before the nice words can come out of my mouth my partner, the officer whose call it is says, “Let’s go.”

It’s his call, so its HIS CALL. We go. You don’t question the lead. It’s his call. He was right. He hadn’t done anything. And at this point, a few years in, you know this guy is not going to cooperate with the ambulance people. We would have had to bust him up just to get him to the hospital—which, eh, that doesn’t seem like a wise use of tax dollars, right?

Route Forty, my partner was out alone and sees four big Mexicans walking down the street with boots and vests on at four in the morning. What are they doing out there? Besides, how many Mexicans are big, and you have four big ones together, not in Mexico? Everything is closed—its a pack of men. So he pulls over, steps out, closes his door and tells them, 'Put your hands against the car.' This is serious shit. He will have to shoot them if they fight. But, as a cop, you are hunting for trouble, and you recognize when you see Trouble out hunting. These guys are either going to rob somebody, or, more likely, they are breaking in some place, and if they are armed, its not burglary, its some place where people are. If there is a woman at home, that goes down too. They put their hands against the car, and he lucked out. They didn’t fight. Two of them had steak knives in their boots. Now that is not a stroll. They were up to no good. So, now he has to hold and call us in for help. He made a good call that took some balls.

For me, most all the tough calls came on Rickenbacker.

I get a typical call for this guy beating his girl. He wants to fight. I get behind him—the choke is great. Extended arm manipulations are bullshit. They do not WORK! Unless you rock the guy, stun him, then you can get one. I get behind this guy and sink the choke in, right on the blood supply. The best way is to stomp the back of their knee and pull them back against the car, wall, tree, whatever. And I tell the guy, who thank God is smaller than me, “Look, Slick, this is going to last as long as you want it to. I don’t want to choke you out, because then I have to carry you. Get it? Either way, you’re going with me.”

Thankfully she was a well-behaved gal and didn’t talk shit to him and make my job any harder than it had to be.

With a big guy, that’s what we had the baton for. The old timers went upside the head first and then gave commands—that is when everybody listens up, when their buddy is on his knees holding his head together. Things were starting to drift the way they have gone since, that everybody takes the side of the criminal and use of force needs to be limited. But really, the toughest day was always a white guy—they’d scrap, no getting around it. As far as the baton, we preferred the lamp, with the D-cells in it. It handled better than the baton and had some authority. Of course, explaining why you were carrying your lamp during the day might be kind of touchy.

Back on Rickenbacker, I’m walking through there one day and I hear a thud and a groan, around the corner, a woman has been hit and is whimpering—it has a distinctive sound. And this man is calling her a whore. I walk around there and this woman is real pregnant, ready to drop, and holding her stomach crying while her boy friend is cussing at her. I say, “Slick, don’t tell me that you didn’t just kick this pregnant woman?”

He does not deny it, just talks about what a terrible bitch she is. I grab his head, slam it against the block wall—makes a bloody mess—and walk him off. To his credit, he did not ask for the hospital—he could have. He went in like a man.

Well, Mister James, there is some day-to-day police fun. I liked the action calls, would even drive off post to help out on a call. But I wouldn’t want to be a cop today—too much bullshit, not like back in the day.