Report to the Commissioner Read online

  Q: Wait a minute. You’re going too fast. What happened at the demonstration?

  A: They wanted to get rid of the dean, and these two kids I was watching, who were supposed to be leaders, who were the leaders, started into the administration building. And I was with them, and we got inside and we saw about ten campus police, and we started running down the hall, through the lobby there, for this stairway, and when we got up the stairway, on the floor where the dean’s office is, there was another bunch of campus cops, outside the dean’s office, and they came after us and caught us. I didn’t tell anyone I was a cop until that night when I went before an assistant dean and he told me I was out, expelled.

  I was very upset, very embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t go back and tell my sergeant that I had been kicked out of Columbia, when I was supposed to be there to infiltrate the Weathermen. Like I’m supposed to infiltrate the Weathermen, and I can’t even stay in the school.

  So I did something I shouldn’t have done. I confided in this assistant dean and told him I was a cop and explained that I wasn’t supposed to tell him who I was but could he smooth things over and not kick me out. I really begged him. I told him how humiliating it would be for me to have to go and tell my sergeant what a mess I’d made. But the dean didn’t believe me. He smiled at me like I was crazy. He didn’t even say anything. He just smiled, like he thought I was crazy for thinking he’d be dumb enough to believe I was a cop. I guess he figured the city wasn’t that bad off yet.

  So that’s when I got transferred into the 16th squad. I should have been flopped, but my father went to bat again.

  Q: What happened when you went into the 16th?

  A: It was a little—I knew I wasn’t going to fit with a lot of guys in the squad, that I wasn’t going to see things the way they would. I knew that. I’ve been very liberal, always, about politics and things like that, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide it, and I was afraid of the trouble it’d make for me. I was worried about my partner and the other guys in the block, who they’d be and what they’d think of me. But mostly I was afraid of what my reaction would be when I saw things. I knew what those guys’d be like. Not all of them, but some. Stupid, really ignorant, calling all the blacks nigger and that sort of thing. I was really hung up about that. I thought the first time some dumb white cop slapped a black man, I didn’t know what I’d do, because that was one thing I felt very strongly about and if I didn’t do anything I’d hate myself, but if I did I’d never be able to get along in the squad. So I was really worried about it, especially about my partners. I dreamed and thought about them and I guess I got a little too uptight about it because I used to see them, these three, like I say, big dumb Irish guys hitting everyone, and calling everyone nigger.

  So the first day when I reported to the squad I walked in through that little swinging gate and there’s two detectives sitting at the desks and another man, a big, really huge black man, about six foot four, maybe 250 pounds, just sitting there, and I’m wondering about what he did, and I thought he looks like an A&R man. So I go in to the squad commander’s office and I report to Seidensticker, and he smiles and shakes my hand, all that, and then he takes me out to the squad room again and says, “This is your block.”

  And he introduces the two detectives, and then he introduces the black man, he’s in the block too, he’s a cop too, and I couldn’t believe it. I was really relieved. I figured I’ve got it made now because no one’s going to go around calling anyone nigger in front of him.

  So Seidensticker introduces us, and right away Blackstone, the black one, starts in on me.

  “Bo” he says, with this incredulous look on his face like he’s never heard of anything so ridiculous. “For Beauregard?”

  I say yes. I should have lied. It says Beauregard on my birth certificate, and that’s my name, but no one ever calls me that. It was my grandfather’s name, and I got stuck with it. But I never use it. I use Bo. But this black cop picks up on it. He looks up at the ceiling and he says, “Beauregard. Beauregard. Beauregard. Beauregard.”

  Then he gives one of those big, Negro laughs and says, “You from the South, Beauregard? You got a plantation down in Georgia somewhere? How many slaves you got, Beauregard?”

  So Seidensticker is laughing, and the other two detectives are laughing, and I’m standing there like an idiot, just staring, I don’t know what to say. Then one of the other detectives, Sam Schulman, looks at me and sees I’m really out of it and he feels a little sorry for me and he laughs and says to me, “Don’t worry about this nigger. His big black mouth just likes to put people on.”

  And Blackstone laughs and slaps Schulman on the back of the neck and says, “Hey, jew man, who you callin’ nigger?”

  Then everyone has a laugh and Seidensticker goes back into his office and closes the door. So then Blackstone says to me, “Beauregard, let’s take a walk.”

  BLACKSTONE

  Det. Richard Blackstone was engaged in conversation at the Topper bar, 315 W. 47th St., on July 11. Blackstone was aware that he was speaking to another police officer, but he was unaware that the officer was a member of the IAD, or that the conversation was being recorded.

  PRESENT: Lt. William Lyon,

  Internal Affairs Division

  Det. Richard Blackstone

  [ BLACKSTONE 1 ]

  A: Lockley’s okay. He was just never working in the same place we were working, you know what I mean? You should have seen him the first day he came into the squad. We’d heard we were getting an undercover from Bossy, so we were looking for something a little strange. But this Lockley, he was somethin’ else, man. He was standin’ at the gate in long hair and jeans and T-shirt and suède jacket and his fingernails were all chewed down and he looked about sixteen. I thought he was a complainant. I thought he was some school kid who’d been Murphyed. Then he said he’s a detective, and he went in to see Seidensticker, and Schulman says to me, “It’s happened. They sent us a hippie.” And we’re just lookin’ at each other, like this guy is nowhere.

  But he’s a nice guy. He turned out to be a nice guy. Beautiful, like the kids say—quiet, passive, but things going on inside. He never should of been a cop. He never was a cop. A few years ago he never would of made it through the academy. But today they look for these kids, right? They’re all over these kids, they eat them up. It’s like it used to be with Negroes. You got problems in Harlem? You got the motherfuckers buying guns? You gotta have Negro cops. You know, if your problem’s Negroes, you gotta have Negro cops. Your problem’s Mafia, you gotta have guineas. And when the problem’s kids, you need kids. I’ll tell you how Bo got through the academy. Drugs, demonstrations, runaways, bomb throwers—that’s how he got through the academy. You need kids to fight kids. And it wasn’t any secret to anyone that that’s how he got put in the 16th. You take a look at Times Square, at the kids in that sewer, and you know why they put Lockley there. Someone should of told him right at the start, “Hey, man, this shit’s not for you.” But no one told him. He never should of got into the whole thing. He just had to be used. It was just a matter of time until someone made a victim out of him.

  Q: Why do you think he did get into it? Why do you think he joined up in the first place?

  A: His father. I think, his father. By wanting to do the right thing in the family. He wanted his father to, you know, approve of him, what he was doing. I talked to him once about his old man, for a few minutes. Because when his father and I were in the two-three together a long time ago, I remember his wife came to pick him up one day and she had a kid with her, and Lockley, Bo’s old man, scooped the kid up in his arms and called him sweetheart. And that hit me, hearing that word come out of Lockley, who was a tough guy, believe me, and I didn’t forget it. I asked Bo if he thought that was him, that kid. He said he didn’t remember it, he was too young, but it had to be either him or his brother. He said that wasn’t as unusual for his old man as I’d thought, that he was a very gentle guy at
home, that he gave the kids their way a lot. I could see he really admired his old man, so I think that’s maybe one reason why he came on the job. He wanted to do the right thing.

  [ LOCKLEY 3 ]

  So this Detective Blackstone and I go out and he says he’ll show me the precinct. We stop in a bar on 45th Street, and it’s filled with pimps, Murphy men, guys like that, all black, I’m the only white guy there, and we sit down at the bar and order Scotch.

  And Blackstone says to me, “You’re a young kid, but you’re gonna find out that we could all spend our time just sleepin’ if it weren’t for all these fuckin’ niggers comin’ down here and hustlin’ and robbin’ all the people just tryin’ to do a day’s work and have some fun.”

  So I look to see if he’s laughing, but he’s not. And I don’t know if he’s putting me on or not. So I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to put that. I don’t say anything. I just listen, and he goes on about all the fuckin’ niggers a little bit more, and then we leave and we walk around and he shows me some more wrong bars and points out people on the street, bookies, and KGs, and lots of people who should have been in but weren’t, and all the time I’m trying to put this guy together in my mind, but I can’t. He’s strange. Sometimes he talks to you in his real voice, with no accent at all, and other times he puts on this Deep-South Negro accent, dialect really, and talks like that. He’s hard to figure out. I could just tell from the way he moved, and the things he was telling me, that he was probably a hell of a good detective.

  All the men in the squad, just about all, had nicknames, and Blackstone’s was Crunch. Well, let me tell you how he got that name. About a week later, after I first walked into the squad, I was talking to a plainclothesman from division, and he had worked in Harlem and he said he knew Crunch from up there about ten years or something ago, and he said that then about five or six of the biggest and meanest black detectives in Harlem had a kind of vigilante group called the Black Knights. Can you imagine that? Cops calling themselves the Black Knights? Isn’t that ridiculous? And they used to go out, maybe three or four at a time, in one of their own cars, and when they saw black men on the street who looked wrong, or who they knew were dealing, or roughing people off, or something like that, they’d jump them. They never made any arrests, they just pounded people into the pavement. All very personal and unofficial, but everyone knew who they were and everyone knew they were cops, and this plainclothesman, a white guy, said they were really, really feared, because if they knew you were doing something, they didn’t even bother to snowflake you or anything that sophisticated, they just “Hey, you,” slam, slam, slam, and that was it. Case closed.

  This plainclothesman said he saw four black guys hanging around in front of a liquor store that’d been robbed about four times in six months or something, and he told them to move on and they just looked through him, and he walked up to the corner, and then he came back and told them again, and they just kept talking to each other, so he told them again and then he walked back up to the corner, and he said this green Buick, not a department car, with four huge black men in it stopped and one of them got out, he said it was Crunch, and asked him how many times he’d told those niggers to move.

  And he said three times, and Crunch said, “That’s two times too many,” and he waved at the car and the other three came out and the men in front of the store saw them and started to run, but the Black Knights caught them, and the plainclothesman said he never saw such a slaughter. He said in about two minutes those guys were pasted all over the pavement and the cops just very casually got back in the Buick and drove off. So that’s Crunch.

  Oh, I’ve got to tell you one more story about Crunch. It’s got to do with Joey, the guy in here without any legs. And this little incident I really know about because I was in the squad when it happened. In fact, I was catching, I answered the phone. Someone calls, someone who works in the Orange Julius stand on 47th Street, and he calls right to the squad and says there’s a guy without any legs out on the street swearing at people and trying to bite them. So I repeat that to the guys in the squad, and Crunch says, “Joey. That bastard’s gotta go. I had enough of his fuckin’ mouth.” Or words to that effect.

  So Crunch and I walk over and sure enough there’s a little knot of people around Joey and he’s swearing and yelling like a madman and every time anyone comes near him he snaps at their ankles and sometimes he gives his skate board thing that he’s on a shove and shoots off into the crowd, snapping. And the people in his way jump for cover and the others laugh like hell. So Crunch pushes through the crowd, and he’s mad as hell, he really looks mean.

  And Joey looks up at this big black giant bearing in on him and he cocks his head a little and gets real still, and then when Crunch gets there, Joey’s head springs, like a snake, and he gets his teeth into Crunch’s pants cuff and hangs on like a dog, and Crunch gives his leg a big yank all the way back and lifts Joey right off his skate board and Joey lets go and scrambles with his hands back onto the board.

  Then Crunch gets behind him, where Joey can’t turn around and reach him, and gives the board a kick and sends it rolling off the curb into the middle of Seventh Avenue. Joey is mad as hell and yelling and swearing and cars are honking and swerving by him, and some of the crowd is laughing and some are just watching and don’t know what to do.

  So Crunch walks up behind Joey in the street and gives his board another kick, and sends it rolling again. So he rolls it across Broadway, down 47th Street toward the river, Joey yelling and swearing, and in about fifteen minutes they’re at the docks, and Joey is exhausted from all the yelling and trying to reach around to bite Crunch’s leg, and now Crunch grabs Joey under the armpits and lifts him off the board and sets him on the sidewalk and he takes the board and throws it in the river, and walks off. I go after him and he says, “That’ll keep him out of trouble for a while. By the time he gets back to Seventh Avenue he won’t be biting people’s legs.”

  So I went back and a cab driver and I fished the board out of the river and put Joey back on it. That’s how I got to know Joey. The first time, I mean.

  So now, I mean I’m trying to tell you what this business with Crunch was doing to my head. You see, I was ready for a brutal, bigoted white cop. I was scared of him, but at least I was ready for him. And then instead of a big, brutal, bigoted white cop, I get a big, brutal, bigoted black cop. I couldn’t figure him out. So I got up my courage, and one afternoon in that same bar he took me to the first day, that I told you about, the black bar, I asked him, I said, “Crunch, you’re a black man—”

  And right away he interrupted me. He said, “I’m not a black man. Those Panther motherfuckers are black men. I’m a Negro.”

  And I said, “All right. You’re a Negro, and a lot of the bad guys in here are Negro, and they’re here for a lot of complicated reasons. I mean if I lived in Harlem and was treated the way they’re treated and everything, I’d probably be a Murphy man, too. So how can you be so disrespectful to your own people like that, calling them nigger and slapping them and things like that.”

  Well, you should have seen that look. He looked at me like I’d just landed from Mars. He looked at me a long time, really hard, and then he smiled and he said, “You gotta be kiddin’.” And then he finished his drink and said, “Let’s have a change of venue,” and we left.

  That’s the only time we ever talked about it. I just mentioned it once more to Schulman, this other detective in the block, and he said, “That’s no mystery. Look at the precinct arrest figures. Eighty-five percent of the collars are blacks. You can be around the precinct ten minutes and know that almost all the crime, all the street crime, here is black, and almost all the victims are white. So maybe Crunch just hates bad guys, and it just happens that in this case the bad guys are black, so he hates the blacks, and maybe he hates them more because they’re his brothers. That’s not hard to understand.”

  Maybe it’s not, but I didn’t really buy it. I guess I never re
ally got Crunch figured out. I just accepted it.

  Q: How did you get along in the squad?

  A: Not at all. I didn’t get along at all. The squad was so completely different from what we’d been taught in the academy. I found out that the academy had all been theory, what it was supposed to be like, and lots of physical preparation, judo and weapons training, and lots of lectures and classes. But the precinct, that was something else, that was the way it was. In the academy everything was all human relations—be very polite, very understanding, approach situations from the sociological point of view, talk things out. And I ate that up. That was the way the new cop, the modern cop, should be, enlightened and humanistic. In the squad, on the street, I found out that that’s just horseshit. Those guys on the street eat social workers. They don’t want to talk over nothin’. Like in the academy, the first thing they teach you, if you hit someone arrest him. Right? Because if you had to hit him, then he must have done something to be arrested for. But on the street, if Crunch collared half the people he hit he’d be living in court.

  So the squad was a shock. It was absurd. Really. It was like a raft in the middle of a tidal wave, and people trying to bail. The mobs of complainants, thinking something could be done to help them. You know, expecting television detectives who’ll run out and find the attacker and bring him to justice. Man, I saw complainants get educated. Burglary victims. They all wanted to know why detectives weren’t over at their apartments dusting for prints. “He came in the door. He came in the window. There must be fingerprints. Get the fingerprints.” They didn’t believe it when you told them you needed all ten for an identification. And that anyway the burglar was probably some junkie with no address. They looked at you like you were contradicting twenty years of television.