Breaking Rank (57 page)

In Giuliani's hubris, he believed he knew best how to
run
NYPD and FDNY. Only the most egotistical public official thinks he can be both mayor and police commissioner. Giuliani would have done himself a service by swallowing his pride and congratulating both himself
and
Bill Bratton for making New York glisten.

I've been a chief-watcher for years, long before I joined their ranks in 1994. I've seen superb police executives, decent men and women, get chewed up and spit out by rank politicians, mayors who fail to understand their value. Some of these top cops, burned out and fed up, leave of their own accord. Some get the boot. Some, like James Jackson in Columbus, Ohio, sue their mayors. And some decide to run for mayor. Frank Rizzo (Philadelphia), Frank Jordan (San Francisco), Carlos Alvarez (Miami Dade), and Lee Brown (Houston) are just a few of the many police chiefs, good and not so good, who have morphed into big-city mayors—for better or worse. Tom Potter, former chief of the Portland Police Bureau, was just elected mayor in that city. He'll be a good one. (Potter's a fishing buddy, but I won't let that stand in the way of the truth: I'd have voted for him if I could.) Hell, even ex–middle managers have a shot, witness Tom Bradley, a former LAPD lieutenant who served three terms as mayor of Los Angeles. It's common among police chiefs to think they can do a better job of running the city than their bosses.

There is little that citizens can do to directly influence the relationship between a mayor and a police chief. The relationship is largely private, carried out by phone calls, e-mails, and office visits. Yet the public has a huge stake in the way these two officials behave. The best way to ensure that the relationship is not characterized by ego trips, bickering, and backstabbing but by mutual respect, is to elect self-confident mayors. Like Norm Rice.

*
I happened to be in New York, to officiate at the wedding of friends. The incidents in Central Park were, if anything, even more disgusting than the media's accounts. I saw men in blue, riding around on a kid's motorized scooter, and laughing as sexist louts sprayed water on passing women, and called them names. Just yards away from their “post,” which the cops told alarmed witnesses they couldn't leave, women's blouses were being torn off, their breasts fondled, their crotches groped.

*
A smart move on his part. Politicians who intercede, for example, on behalf of pals or contributors whose names crop up in connection with a vice raid almost always get burned, sooner or later.

*
New York currently has, in Raymond W. Kelly, a Michael Bloomberg appointee, a commissioner who is no one's lapdog. Serving for the second time as head of NYPD (Giuliani fired him in 1994 to make room for Bratton), Kelly is one of the most respected leaders in the field. He's as tough on police corruption and misconduct as he is on crime. One can only hope that the public's impression of the relationship between Kelly and Bloomberg, that of mutual respect, holds true in private.

CHAPTER 26

MARCHING FOR DYKES ON BIKES (AND AGAINST JESUS)

H
OMOPHOBIA CAME NATURALLY TO
me. At the time I hired on as a San Diego police officer, the only gays I assumed I'd met were the wheezing adolescent in engineer boots and leather jacket who'd unzipped my pants in the front row of the Bay Theater when I was six, and Johnny McGowen, a neighborhood boy who preferred to be called Suzy, wore poodle skirts, and twirled a baton after school.

In the seventh grade I asked Dad about Suzy. He mumbled something about odds and ends and queers and rears, and how guys in the navy took care of fairies like that. His explanation wasn't helpful, and I let it go.

Then I became a cop and was introduced to nonstop gay-trashing humor—in the classroom, the coffee shop, the locker room, everywhere cops gathered. I was also introduced to life on San Diego's lower Broadway, where everyplace you looked there were grown-up Suzies: she-he's strutting up and down neon-splashed streets, laughing in high-pitched voices, playfully slapping one another, picking up sailors and marines. When you'd arrest one—usually on the complaint of a serviceman who'd stuck his tongue down the throat of a hooker, reached for her pudendum and found something altogether unexpected—they'd tell you how they were only trying to earn money to swap out their sexual equipment for a new, improved model.

I was still a rookie, less than two years on the job, when Lt. Ed Stevens of Robbery–Sex Crimes called me into his office. “The chief wants the fags cleaned out of Balboa Park. That's a job for the Pink Berets. You're now officially a Pink Beret.” Fags? Pink Berets? What did I know about that stuff? My patrol lieutenant had recommended me for the job, Stevens had picked me. Did they think I was one of
them
? I felt my face flush.

“Wear tight clothes,” said Stevens. “You can smile but don't raise your eyebrows and don't lick your lips. That's entrapment. Just wait for them to start gobbling each other or go for your dick, then badge 'em.” He handed me a typewritten list of relevant penal code sections: soliciting, indecent exposure, oral cop, sodomy. A conviction meant you had to register as a sex offender, for life.

That was it then, my mission. Hang around the toilets, grin at the degenerates, witness their abnormal sex acts, then bust them. “A word to the wise,” said Stevens, shifting a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You'll be working alone out there. You won't be packing and you won't have a radio.” The radio I could live without. “There's nothing more vicious than a cornered queer, so don't go doing anything stupid. Better to let one get away than get yourself hurt. Got that?” I gulped, nodded. “And try not to pinch too many at one time.” Too many at one time? How many of these depraved, violent savages would I end up arresting?

Almost sixty, it turned out. But they didn't seem all
that
depraved, or even abnormal. In fact, they seemed like everyday people. And only one guy turned violent. It was late on a Friday afternoon.

I'd told myself I'd make one last sweep through the head in Alcazar Gardens, across from the Old Globe Theatre. My “clientele” were always reaching through the metal cages to unscrew the bare bulbs, so it was pretty dark inside. And dank, reeking of piss. I spotted Willie Brown, a downtown cross-dresser by night, and shook my head: I'd already busted him once that week. Now he was paired off with a bruiser half again his size. Two stalls away a man was on his knees, swallowing another. A four-banger. I'd need the extra set of cuffs I had started carrying the day I'd been forced to bind a second pair with my belt, escorting all four of them down a tourist-clogged Presidents Way, past the statue of El Cid and the Organ Pavilion, to a waiting police car.

I shot Willie a keep-it-cool look and announced, “San Diego Police!” Willie grinned, gave me a here-we-go-again roll of the eyes. “You four are
under arrest. You, you, you, and you.” The announcement flushed another three men from the on-deck circle and out the door. You could see why the chief's office was getting all those complaints. I cuffed the ones closest to me and told them to stand by, then turned to Willie and the Bruiser. “Okay, you two: Turn around and put your hands against the wall.” The command was a signal for Willie to resume beating off, and for Bruiser to jump me.

“Willie!” I yelled. “Put that thing away. Come over here and grab this guy.” The guy wasn't trying to escape, he was trying to hurt me. My first clue? He told me he was going break every bone in my body and stuff my head down the toilet. He had me in a bear hug, never a good position for a cop to be in. Rookie mistake.

“Do I have to?” said Willie.

“Yes, goddammit! Right now!” He struggled to stuff his johnson back into his trousers. “Hurry up, Willie!” I glimpsed the other two, cuffed right wrist to right wrist, shuffling awkwardly toward the exit. I yelled at them over Bruiser's shoulder, “You two: You are hereby officially deputized. You too, Willie.” Bruiser, my arms encircled by his, squeezed harder. “You (
gasp, gasp
) know (
gasp, gasp
) what that means?” I, myself, had no idea. Or whether I had the authority to deputize anyone.

“What do you want us to do?” asked one of the prisoners. It was odd. I could tell he was on
my
side. I took a risk.

“Move (
gasp
) over (
gasp
) to the (
gasp
) door. No matter what (
gasp, gasp, gasp
) don't let this guy out of here.” It was personal now. Bruiser was going down, no matter what.

“Yes, sir,” said both men. They planted themselves in the doorway. Willie, meanwhile, ran up and pushed himself against Bruiser's back.

“Grab
him, Willie. Pull him off me.” I needed to get my choking arm free, or at least get to my second pair of cuffs. This guy was
strong.
“Grab him, goddammit!” Willie hesitated a moment then jumped on Bruiser's back, throwing his arms around him. When he had him in a bear hug of his own I brought the heel of my right foot up, sharply, into my assailant's groin and slipped free. Bruiser let out a howl then chomped down on Willie's arm, causing Willie to emit a howl of his own.

“He's biting me! He's biting me! Stop it, mister.
Please
stop.” He started to cry.

Something shifted inside. A confusing mix of gratitude and rage, and a sudden letting go of at least a fragment of the bigotry I'd carried for most of my twenty-two years. I
had
to protect the three men who were helping me, especially Willie. “You heard the man,” I shouted. “Let him go.” Bruiser showed no sign of unclenching his jaw so I doubled my fist and smacked him in the face as hard as I could. Nobody treats my deputy like that.

The fight was over, and my struggle with homophobia just begun. When someone keeps your head from being stuffed down a toilet you feel a certain warmth for them, maybe even a bit of a desire to get to know them better.

Until that moment I'd played a strong role in antigay locker-room performances, the lisping, swishing, faggot jokes. In the months ahead I continued to smile at the fun-making, even laughed a bit when I couldn't help myself. But something had definitely changed, and it wasn't only because of the efforts of my good Samaritans. The men I arrested in Balboa Park (except for Bruiser, for whom I could muster no sympathy at all) were decent, respectful, frightened human beings. It was wrong to call them degenerates. It was wrong to laugh at them.

And it was wrong for Stevens to come to my patrol roll call, commendation in hand, a few days after I finished the detail.