We Are the Cops (28 page)

You used to see the buildings no matter where you were in the city. Whenever you came out of the train or the subway, if you didn't know that particular neighbourhood you just had to look up and if you could see the World Trade Center, you'd say, ‘Oh, okay, I know what direction I need to go now.' It was surreal to see that they weren't there anymore; it was just smoke. And then to go down there and physically see the carnage… it was just horrendous.

I knew quite a few people who were killed there that day. I knew one of the firemen, because he was a cop who had become
a fireman. I knew quite a few cops who were killed. One of them was my best friend's neighbour and he said that he had seen him that morning and they were scheduled to have beer at five o'clock that night at a local pub. Then there was a fella who was in my academy class; they had pictures of him on the news. He had carried two women out from one of the buildings – not physically, but they needed help and he helped them out. He wasn't a big guy but he was fit. He carried them out and put them on the kerb and then he ran back in. That's when the building came down. I don't think they ever found him. They'll never find him. So there were a lot of people I knew killed that day.

At the time, nobody warned you of any dangers of what it all was - the debris and dust. Now people are coming up with cancer and stuff. I have a spot on my lung and some sorts of spots on my lower abdomen. They're monitoring it to see if it's cancerous. They say the ones in the abdomen aren't but the one in the lung, well… they're hoping it's just scar tissue but they're monitoring it.

I have gotten so much radiation from MRI's and x-rays and everything that they didn't know whether they were doing me more harm than good. They don't know whether what I have may kill me or whether they've hit me with so much radiation that I may just die of radiation poisoning instead. So they've stopped. It was fucking crazy. I'm just hoping for the best on that one.

Everybody has a story from that day – every single person; they were there when the towers came down and almost got killed one way or another. But I can tell you that on that day, nobody cried.

So there you go. That was a weird day.

I
could have gone to almost any country in the world and collected stories from officers and they would have still been funny, absurd and fascinating but with the American police there is just something else. If any cops in the world have an x-factor, then surely it is them. I mean seriously, chasing after a gorilla called ‘Little Joe’?

Cops don’t care who you are. It doesn’t matter what your skin colour is, what religion you are, what sex or age you may be, what social background or class you are, or even if you’re a gorilla. Despite all the bullshit we hear about, the bottom line is this: if you’re in trouble, a cop will come to your aid. A cop will help you. You may be a complete stranger, you may even be someone who hates the police, but a cop will willingly risk their own life to save yours. They are an amazing bunch of people who to me have become, after researching and writing this book, a little bit more special. They don’t always get it right but for the most part, the vast majority are decent, honest human beings who want to serve their communities. I don’t know what
you will come away with after reading this book, this collection of stories and opinions, but I hope at the very least that you now have a broader understanding and respect for the law enforcement officers of the United States. I know that I do.

Thinking back to my own experiences with the American police and reading back through these tales, I have to wonder, would I still have wanted to join the NYPD, back when I had telephoned the American embassy in London? Do I still wish I could have had a go at being an American cop?

Hell yes. Now where did I leave those Ray Bans?

The final words I am leaving to two female officers - one at the end of her career, the second just starting.

As a cop, I think you do the best you can everywhere you go. Did I change the world in my career? No. I didn’t change the world but hopefully along the way I helped some people. I put some bad guys in jail, I changed some people’s opinions about cops, I treated people with respect – unless I had to do otherwise – and I like to think that I left my city a little better place than before. But I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s a continuing job that I will be handing over. But I’ll look back at my career and I’ll be proud and I’ll be happy and I’ll feel as though I’ve accomplished something in my own small way.

But, is it measurable? Probably not. But I did the best I could every day. I went to court prepared to testify against the bad guys; I showed up to work, ready to work and gave a hundred percent
whilst I was there. I helped people where I could, arrested people when I had to and helped my fellow officers whenever they needed me. And I think that’s it.

If you’re looking for a medal for doing all that stuff, you’re not going to get it. You have to have the satisfaction in yourself that you did a good job. People aren’t running around, patting you on the back. To me, I have to look back on what I did and say I’m proud, I’m happy I did it, I was lucky to have had the opportunities that I had and I worked hard. If that’s not enough for me, well, I’m not getting anything more than that. I loved it all.

I wish I had some more exciting stories. Talk to me in another fifteen years.

When I first reached out to contacts I had made with police departments across the country to tell the officers that I wanted to interview them about their work, their lives and to get their opinions so that I could write them down and put them into a book, I had no idea what their reaction would be. There was, perhaps unsurprisingly, some scepticism about what I was doing. Officers were naturally concerned about being identified; speaking about their work wasn’t illegal but they were worried about how it would be viewed by their departments, their colleagues and their communities. For this reason I made a rule that everyone would be speaking to me anonymously. Although I would know who they were, their names and details would not appear in this book. Some (I’m thinking particularly of the NYPD here) didn’t care, but the rule remained. Once they felt assured that this would be the case, officers opened up to me in surprising ways. I met many officers only once and was often with them for just an hour, and sometimes even less than that.

When officers spoke to me about the effects of the job on their personal lives (countless divorces, suicide attempts and
alcoholism) or, as some did, broke down in tears as they recalled particularly distressing incidents from their past, I realised that these men and women had given me their complete trust and really believed in what I was writing, which is a record of what it is like to be a police officer in today’s America; the good, the bad and, at times, the downright outrageous.

I conducted a couple of interview over the phone across the Atlantic but it quickly became obvious that to get the best out of these conversations, I needed to actually meet the officers face to face. So I jumped on a jumbo and crossed the oceanic divide. I didn’t embark on one, single journey, I did it in two main segments – West Coast and Midwest followed by more Midwest (they had a lot to say), the East Coast and the South, with little bits done here and there in between, such as meeting American officers when they were in London or catching officers while I was in the States for other reasons, such as vacations. It became something of an obsession, a crusade even. I’d travel across the country simply on the off chance that an officer would speak to me and in the end I interviewed everyone from street cops to Chiefs of Police.

As I said, many of these officers were meeting me for the first time and there were occasions when they were given just a few minutes warning of what they were about to be asked to do. Often, I would have arranged to meet with an officer who would suddenly remember a friend who had an interesting story to tell or who would see a colleague walking into the room and the friend or colleague would be told to sit down and speak to the guy with
the strange accent (which they often took for being Australian) and tell him all about themselves. Officers in the South, in particular, thought I sounded funny. But if they thought I sounded strange to them, they should have heard how they sounded to me.

These interviews were conducted in patrol cars with sirens wailing, secluded offices, bars, homes, honky-tonks (whatever they are), restaurants (from the best to the worst), bars, police bases (on one memorable occasion, a police cell), bars, parking lots, hotels, bars and even outside the White House. The bars were my favourite; it was always interesting listening to wild police stories while surrounded by intoxicated chaos.

In the course of collecting these tales I ate everything from alligator (the South) to hot dogs (everywhere) to excellent gumbo (oddly, because it’s a Southern dish, in the Pacific Northwest) with lots of lobster roll when I could get it (New England). I drank plenty of beer but greater amounts of coffee than I care to recall. I was never offered tea. Not even once.

There were times when the research didn’t go as planned and contacts would suddenly disappear or perhaps hide when they found out exactly what I was doing. On more than one occasion I was left stranded in a city or town without an officer to speak to, and day after day would slip by where I would spend hours sending out emails and checking my phone instead of carrying out interviews. On these occasions I would sometimes simply walk up to an officer in the street and tell them what I was doing. Most of the time, the reaction you’re probably thinking I got is exactly what I did get. But occasionally an officer would nod their head
and start talking. On other occasions I would make frantic phone calls to good contacts across the country who would then start making calls themselves to ensure my trips were not wasted. In fact, that is how I came to find myself in Baltimore, after things had not gone as well as planned on one of my trips to DC (the last time I was there was during a mass-shooting, which tied up the entire department). But almost always, I was greeted with genuine kindness and was once even given a house and a car (and twice, a gun) for my personal use.

I visited small towns, large cities, mountain communities, desert communities, places everyone has heard of and places no one has heard of. The result, I hope, is a book that will give the reader a completely honest and intimate view of American law enforcement.

Each individual cop is shaped by the people they meet, the officers they work with and the calls they attend. The very nature of the job can, on occasion, spawn a very dark sense of humour and it is no cop-out to blame this dark humour and behaviour on the stresses of the job and see it as a coping method. Having said that, I have genuine fears that this book, or at least some of the stories within it, will lead to serious criticism of the police, or even lead some police officers themselves to become angry with what I have written. It should be pointed out that some of these more shocking stories relate to a very different time. Things have changed for the better, and are still changing.

Looking back, there were times when I was truly horrified at what I was being told, but I have included all the stories, no matter
how unpleasant or how badly they reflect on the cops involved, because it is important that readers understand the realities of the job; it is tough and it can be dangerous and though it may sometimes be hard to understand the way officers behave or the things they do, it is also important not to hide from the truth. As Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.’ Cops seem to understand that instinctively, because when I questioned the officers I was interviewing, expressing my concerns about recording what they were telling me, their reaction was always the same: ‘I don’t care. Put it in.’

THE END

I have been visiting the United States regularly for a number of years now and I am always overwhelmed by the generosity of the people I meet. I know of nowhere else where I could simply arrive, often out of the blue, and be so well looked after and welcomed.

One of the conditions when I started researching this book was that officers would remain anonymous within it. For this reason it is not possible to enter the names of all the officers throughout the United States of America who spoke to me or else helped me in other ways with the completion of this book. They all know who they are and to them I say a very special thank you. Thank you so much for your openness, your honesty, your kindness and your friendship. Without these officers there would simply be no book. I cannot thank the police officers, sheriff department officers and deputies and state troopers who helped me, enough. They humble me to the point of embarrassment.

Everyone has people in their lives who in one way or another, helped them along the road to reach the point they were hoping for. Sometimes this advice and help can be huge, sometimes it can be something small but without them, things may have been
very different. Support of various kinds has come to me from Robert Dinsdale, Elly James, Eleanor Lang, Bob Howe, Morgan, Ellen Datlow, Anthony Moore, George and Marie, Bruno, Andy Soutter, and Neil Cumming together with Kurt and his wonderful family.

In addition I would like to thank my agent and publisher Humfrey Hunter who was enthusiastic about this idea as soon as I presented it to him and who has been a genuine joy to work with. He was, quite simply, everything a new writer could hope for. Thanks also to David Boa who designed the amazing cover.

I would like to thank my mother who has always supported me, my father who gave me an interest in both policing and writing to begin with and my brother David, who has always been enthusiastic about my ideas. I would also like to thank – though it pains me – my good friend Guy, whose belief in me has always helped me move forward. I must also say a quick hello to Jake, Evie, Dexter and Nathan, and Bonjour to Ethan.

Most importantly I want to thank my wife Lisa, without whom, I simply wouldn’t be able to achieve anything. She is understanding, calm and patient, often listening to my – sometimes foolish – ideas without complaint as well as helping with editing and proofreading. I don’t deserve her. Lisa, thank you. I love you.