Breaking Rank (29 page)

The cop world was no longer asleep. I was one of a chorus of units roused by the 11-40 call. At least two or three would beat me to the scene, I was sure. But I goosed it and dropped down to the interstate in order to avoid all the lights between Seventieth and my destination, the 4400 block of Marlborough. Commuter traffic was light on the freeway. I floored it, hitting speeds of ninety, ninety-five, my lights flashing and siren wailing, the ancient Ford shaking. I eased off the accelerator and pumped the brakes in time to make a harrowing turn off the freeway. Ninety seconds later, I pulled up to the house, my car smelling of rusty steam and burnt rubber. I was the first unit at the scene.

A man who looked too old to be the father ran out. He was dressed in pajamas, robe, and slippers. “Please, please! It's our baby! He's sick, we think. He's not breathing well.” I sprinted into the house, ran down a hall and met a woman who looked at me in terror. Was it the helmet? Or what she'd woken to that morning? Her baby was dead.

Unit 43 was minutes away. Maybe I'd ask him to continue. What would be the harm of a “PR run”? We did them when angry crowds gathered at a fatal cutting or shooting. But I fought back the urge to go through with the charade. It didn't feel right, the “kiss of life” administered to a stiff little creature who'd been dead for hours, followed by a sham run to the hospital. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Your . . . your baby died in his sleep.” I pulled the baby-blue blanket up over the infant's head.
Michael
read the sign on the blue dresser, each shiny letter a different color. Her husband and I helped pull Michael's mother to her feet. She'd collapsed to the floor, wailing. She apologized.

“May I use your phone?”

“Yes, of course,” said the father through his own tears. “Right in here.” He pointed to the kitchen. Everything was neat, clean, polished. I called 232-6981, told the business office to call off 43. “It's an 11-44, civilian, natural. An infant,” I choked. “I'll stand by for the coroner.”

I sat with Michael's parents, discreetly asking for the information I needed to fill in every box of the death report. They brought me coffee.

At the time, Dottie was pregnant with our first and only child. Delivering those two babies had brought joy, and optimism; their squealing, their wet squirming imparted confidence that our Matthew would be born healthy, with ten toes and ten fingers. The call to Marlborough Avenue left me numb, full of doubt and despair.

CHAPTER 15

DOUGHNUTS, TACOS, AND FAT COPS

W
HEN
K
RISPY
K
REME CAME
to the Seattle area in the late 1990s, off-duty cops had to be called in to untangle the massive traffic jam and to control the hordes of pedestrians lined up around the block for the store's grand opening. I have no idea whether KK paid the cops in dollars or doughnuts, but I do know that the fatty little bombs have contributed to one of policing's most enduring traditions, a persistent cultural stereotype of fat cops and their love affair with the doughnut.

I don't like doughnuts, never have. I don't care for the stale jokes, the “all-you-cops-do-is-sit-around-and-eat-doughnuts” jabs at community meetings and parties. But, if my neighbors want to stuff themselves full of sugar and fried dough, more power to them, right? They're Americans, living in the land of the free and the morbidly obese.

Does that make it okay for police officers to make pigs of themselves? To create image problems for a department, to compromise the public's safety, their own safety, the safety of fellow officers?

When it came to Code 7 (meal break), graveyard cops in the forties and fifties had few choices. They could pack a lunch, pray for an all-night diner on their beat, or fill up on doughnuts. Doughnuts usually won out. They were, to most palates, tasty, and they were cheap and convenient. Thus was the legend born.

By the time I became a cop in the mid-sixties, 24/7 convenience stores and fast-food drive-thrus were everywhere. So my “doughnuts” were tacos and burritos from Azteca, “krautdogs” from Der Wienerschnitzel, burgers and fries from Jack-in-the-Box, and fish and chips from Arthur Treacher's. After only a year on the job I'd put on thirty-five pounds (see sidebar).

No one held me down and stuffed Mr. Treacher's deep-fat-fried cod down my gullet. I understood I was responsible for my weight gain. But the ubiquity of fast food outlets, the relentless advertising, the low cost and convenience (especially to a cop on the run), the “centralness” of high-fat outlets to our culture made those franchises a coconspirator. Don't you think?

In any case, with my new job came a new habit of eating (and drinking). Still, I was a slim panatela compared to some of the guys, the ones who got so stout they had to be taken off patrol.

When you reached the size of Divine or Andy Divine they'd assign you
to the jail (where trusties served up huge, high-calorie meals daily,
gratis
) or they'd put you on a three-wheeler, writing parking tickets in La Jolla. Some cops were simply too fat to fit behind the wheel of a police car, or they'd crush the springs in the bench seats.

It took me twelve years, a hiatal hernia, two divorces, and a diet of grapefruit juice to shed those extra pounds. But I did it (and then some), and once I'd done it I had a hard time looking at an overweight cop without judging him. I went through a long period convinced that every police officer, regardless of age or gender or metabolic rate or body type or bone structure or thyroid or other medical condition or family history or life stresses should look like—me.

Police work is physically demanding, in peculiar ways. To illustrate: It's early Sunday morning, your radio's dead quiet. It's all you can do to stay awake. Then, a hot crime, an armed robbery. The attendant at a gas station has been shot. The stickup man is headed your way. Before you can pick up the mike to let radio know you're joining the hunt, the suspect vehicle passes you going the other way. You notify radio, make a squealing U-turn, and the pursuit's on—at harrowing speeds. The suspect barrels down commercial streets, through residential neighborhoods, out onto the freeway, then back to surface streets. He's making hairpin turns, and bottoms out several times. Sparks fly, his and yours. Department policy says you should have backed off ten minutes ago, but you're determined to get the bastard.

A moment later, in testimony to the wisdom of the department's pursuit policy, you do catch up to the guy, only to find that he's T-boned a minister and her family who are traveling to church services in a distant city. Both cars are totaled, and it's obvious that death and/or serious injury has resulted.

Somehow your suspect has managed to extricate himself from the mangled mess and is now darting between houses. You stop your car, bail out, give chase. Two blocks later, sprinting the whole way, you corner him next to a kid's swing set in someone's backyard. Your heart is ready to burst through your chest and you're gasping so hard you can hardly bark
orders—but your prey's not too pooped to put up a good fight. You thank God your backup is right on your tail because the bastard's got the upper hand and he's giving you a pretty good thrashing. Finally, with help of other cops you get him cuffed and haul him off to your car.

Forget that you've violated the law and half a dozen department policies, helped ruin a family, endangered innocent other lives, and ignored basic rules of self-preservation (where, for example, is the suspect's gun?)—you've done your job, you've gotten your man.

And your body knows it. At the peak of exertion your blood pressure spiked at 190/120. Your pulse rate almost tripled, jumping from a resting 65 at the time you were sleepily cruising your beat to 175 by the time you handcuffed your prisoner. ACTH (adrenalcorticotropic hormone, which floods the body when the mind is gripped by acute trauma) saturated your system, and stayed at dangerously high levels for several minutes following the arrest.

(Had you opted, instead of chasing the guy when he fled on foot, to stay at the scene and provide first aid your body would have been subjected to different but similarly taxing demands: prying dented metal, pulling bodies out of the wreckage, carrying dead weight, working feverishly to save lives.)

And that's how it goes in police work. From deadly boring to deadly physical, in a heartbeat. And back. Day after day, night after night. Add to that a diet rich in doughnuts and/or greaseburgers, frequently interrupted meals, a typical cop's drinking habits, smoking, sporadic or no exercise, shift work (with its corrupting metabolic effects), mandatory overtime, family commitments, court appearances, college classes, an off-duty job, perhaps the occasional extramarital affair—and you've got all the makings of a malnourished, sleep-deprived, cranky, and probably
fat
cop.