Breaking Rank (25 page)

Author Ron Heifetz has an excellent suggestion for those of us whose power or position leads us to conclude we're irresistible to women we meet on the job: take a full-length photo of ourselves, blow it up, affix it to the inside of our office (or locker) door and take time to gaze upon it daily just to confirm how ugly we really are. Sgt. Heatherington was onto the same thing, “You're going to think you're Joe Cool out there, Stamper. You're actually going to believe the broads think you're hot shit. Well, let me tell you something, kid:
It's the uniform
.”

Every PD in the country has a Heatherington, not to mention a chief or a commissioner, who admonishes young cops in the academy about carnal temptations, who lays down the law on “inappropriate” behavior. Yet we still see the cases, ranging from unwanted sexual advances in the workplace to hardcore crimes of force and violence, sex with minors, stalking, and rape.

Why would a cop risk his career, reputation, and freedom by being a “cockhound”? For the same reason men everywhere, especially those wedded to their own sense of entitlement, force themselves on women. In police work, you can add the inescapable on-the-job enticements like “cop groupies,” the not uncommon presence of misogyny within the male-dominated culture, and even the fear of getting caught which, as with other sex offenders, can quicken the pulse.

You see these same conditions in other lines of work and play, celebrities from all walks of life using their positions to try to score with or force themselves upon women.

Some U.S. servicemen in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, sexually assault and rape servicewomen (in just a year and a half the Army recorded eighty-six incidents, the Navy twelve, the Air Force eight, and the Marine Corps six). And let's not forget studio bosses, other corporate and public CEOs, educators, athletes, shop foremen, priests. And elected officials who use the prestige of the highest offices in the land to woo a woman to her knees.

What steps can a community take to protect itself from predatory cops?
Pay attention to your local PD
, for starters. Whom does it hire? Does it insist on rigorous background investigations and psychological screening of all candidates? Is every member of the agency made to understand, explicitly, that sexual misconduct will lead to disciplinary action, including the probability of dismissal and the possibility of criminal prosecution?
Are
cops fired when they're uncovered as sexual predators?

Citizens should ask whether an “inspection and control” or “professional responsibility” unit regularly and randomly monitors police behavior. Such units check for trends and patterns within the workforce, and in the conduct of
particular
officers. Say a certain traffic cop habitually stops nine female drivers to every male he pulls over, or hands out more citations (or, more telling, a greater number of nonpunitive warnings) to women than to men. Shouldn't we know a little more about this guy?

Sting operations make sense. A department that has cause to believe a cop is on the make should set him up. Arrange for him to cross paths with a woman dressed in tight skirt and fishnet stockings (or as Laura Bush, if that's what turns him on). Toss the bait, see if he bites. I once arrested a woman who was drunk out of her mind. Or was she? I put her in the backseat of my police car but before I could shut the door she turned toward me, spread her legs and said (I'm not making this up), “Fuck me, fuck me now, fuck me hard.” Had I succumbed—and had she been an Internal Affairs plant—I would have been cleaning out my locker that night.

Unfair? No. Effective supervision of cops demands a balance between trust and control. When it comes to the integrity of the force and public confidence in the local PD you've got to tip those scales toward control. My fellow chiefs and I did stings all the time when we suspected a cop was into dope, or stealing from local merchants. In terms of the sheer number of sexual offenders in blue, there's far greater justification for “sex stings.”

It's also important, as it was during the aftermath of the Rodney King beating, to make sure that cops understand this: If they witness, or are aware of, sexual misconduct by another officer, including superiors, and they fail to blow the whistle they, too, will take the fall.

It's not enough for the PD to get tough on sexual misconduct. Local prosecutors have to be willing to file charges against cops who engage in criminal sexual conduct. Because they work with the police day in and day out, because they're afraid of the political fallout, and because they can't tolerate the migraines caused by vengeful police unions, some DAs look the other way in police crimes. More accurately, they look back to the PD for internal disciplinary action—leaving this ex-chief wondering if they'd do the same if the sexual predator were a shoe salesman or a construction worker.

The Los Angeles Police Department over a five-year period sent 350 cases (for all alleged crimes, including sexual offenses) involving five hundred police officer suspects to then-DA Gil Garcetti. How many did Garcetti prosecute?
Twenty-seven!
The guilt of many of those he declined to charge was overwhelming—some had been caught on tape, many had confessed. Prosecutor spinelessness has a chilling effect on the willingness of victims, and fellow police officers, to confront sexual abuse (or other criminal offenses) within the ranks.

Another step? Hire more women. Studies have shown that the feminization of police ranks over the past two decades has had many positive effects: fewer instances of brutality, fewer citizen complaints, improved problem-solving effectiveness, better relations with the community. One generally unexpressed benefit? A predatory male cop is at least somewhat less likely to try out his moves if his partner or backup is a female. (Unless, of course, he's got his sights on
her
.)

Police emergency lights are meant to convey a strong message to citizens:
Stop and comply.
Twenty-year-old Cara Knott pulled over on that cold December night when CHP officer Peyer lit up her white '68 Beetle. But when she refused to “comply” she paid for it with her life. That a cop went to prison for murder is of small comfort to legions of women who've been hit on by lawmen. Women should not experience more than the normal apprehension when those blue and red lights flash in their rearview mirror.

*
David Kalish, an openly gay, highly respected assistant chief of LAPD was recently relieved of duty for allegedly molesting six youngsters in that department's police explorer program back in the seventies.
Damn him!
Until the charges came to light I could honestly say I'd never heard of a gay cop molesting kids.

CHAPTER 12

THE BLUE WALL OF SILENCE

C
OPS LIE
. M
OST OF
them lie a couple of times per shift, at least. In some cases lies are not only permissible but beneficial, perhaps even life-saving. Informing a murder suspect that his accomplice, who's actually been silent as a clam, has copped to the crime may offend a defense attorney but it's lawful, and sometimes effective. Lying to a stalker could save his victim. “Freeze or I'll shoot!” could very well be a lie but if it stops a fleeing suspect in his tracks then let's hear it for mendacity.

But there's another form of untruthfulness that has no place in police business: lying on a report, lying to an IA investigator, lying on the stand. As any defense attorney (or candid supervisor or chief) will attest, a good deal of “bad lying” goes on in police work, by cops who don't seem to know the meaning of
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Some police officers bring a lifelong tradition of bad lying to the job, but most seem to pick up the habit in the workplace. I remember vividly my first instruction in the fine art of bad lying.

“Andy Taggart” was one of the first cops I worked with. I was still in the academy, and quite impressionable. Taggart was like a BB in a beer can, bouncing off the walls, darting in and out of alleys, stopping everything that moved on his beat—and on fellow officers' beats.

On our first night together Taggart cut his lights and started coasting down a long hill in a residential neighborhood two beats over from ours. The car picked up speed, going faster, faster. I puckered up. What the hell was he up to? How the hell could he see to drive? At the bottom of the hill
he drove up over the curb and onto the front lawn of an old frame house. “Come on!” he said in an urgent whisper. “Come on!” I bailed out of the car and trailed him up to the front porch where he kicked in the door. I kept following him, past a family watching TV and down a hall to a back bedroom where he jerked open a closet door and pulled a man out of hiding. Taggert put the cuffs on the twenty-year-old murder suspect. We walked him past protesting family members out to our car. It was surrounded by six of San Diego's finest.

Taggart's colleagues had been sitting on the residence, whispering tactics over the radio, getting ready to take the house when this phantom car went zipping by their Code-5 locations. Taggart had bested them, like it was a sport. They were furious. “Fuck you,” he told them, not bothering to stop and chat. “I didn't even know you guys were in the neighborhood.” They knew better. He knew better. I knew better.