Saturday, October 22, 2005

NYPD Blues

“Heh-heh...it’s Storytelling Saturday.”

Once upon a time…

I was about 14...getting off a subway train with some friends when I decided to vault the turnstile on my way out. A transit cop saw me and said: “Practicing, huh?”

Determined to impress my delinquent comrades, I grinned and answered: “Yup.”


These days, that same exchange might not go as smoothly...but back then, you could talk your way out of trouble. For example:

I remember the time we were all hanging out in the local schoolyard, watching a YMCA League touch football game in the snow. A group of us wandered off and soon got into a good snowball fight. My side was winning as we bombarded some friends who were standing across the street from us...right in front of a two-family house.



Inevitably, some of our snowballs hit the house and the owner came out to scream at us. We promptly pelted him and his house with snowballs until he went in. Bored, we went back to watching the game not knowing this guy had called the cops. When NYPD arrived, the homeowner identified a few of us...including me.

I went into “little kid mode.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I was tossed into the back seat of the cruiser. I pleaded my case, explaining how the snowball fight was just fun and we didn’t mean to hit the house...blah, blah, blah. To appease the homeowner, the cops drove me around the corner and let me out where he couldn’t see.

One of my mother’s friends did see, however, and I was soon in hot water with my parents. It wasn’t nearly as easy to convince them that it was all innocent fun.



Not long after that, an encounter with the cops nearly became deadly. Three friends and I had ripped off a cigarette machine at the local taxi stand (None of us smoked; we were gonna sell the cigs or give them to the older guys in an attempt to impress.) We were carrying our booty down 28th Street when a some cops pulled up to eyeball us...like they always did. We hid the cartons under our jackets

The cop car came to a stop and we tried to look calm. That’s when one of my friends dropped a carton from under his coat...and we panicked. We all dropped the stolen cigarettes and took off running with the cops eventually following us in hot pursuit, as they say.

The four of us reached our friend Gary’s building at approximately the same time and began climbing up the fire escape (don’t ask me why). We scrambled about three floors up when the cops finally found us (we figured they picked up the cartons before taking off after us).

One of the cops got out of the car, aimed his gun right at us, and bellowed: “Stop!”

We stopped…for about two seconds. Then we all continued up, faster than ever. Gary let us into his apartment through the window...but herded us out the front door and into another apartment one flight down. We hid out while the cops had a look around the tenement hallway.

I don’t think they went door-to-door and the fact they were able to recover the cigs (and probably keep some) worked in our favor. By the time we exited the building—one at a time, about 20 minutes apart—the coast was clear (as they also say).



Fast forward a couple of decades:

Michele and I were cutting through Washington Square Park to see a play that our friend Damian was in. We happened to choose the precise time that legions of cops—uniformed and plainclothes—decided to not let anyone in or out of the park: something about “looking for a suspect.” We were trapped inside the park...and running late for the play.



I ended up jawing with a plainclothes dick who seemed to be in charge and it was fascinating to watch how willingly he embraced the conflict...almost urging me to escalate. Instead of becoming the test case for whether or not Al Sharpton would stage a march for a middle-class white guy like me, I backed off.

P.S. We made just in time to see Damian’s play.

Anyone else got a tale to tell?

+++

It’s not a coincidence that today marks the tenth anniversary of the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, & the Criminalization of a Generation

http://october22-ny.org

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Posted on 10/22 at 07:38 AM
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