Scarangella Way

My wife likes to chide me.

(Wives do that, just so you know.)

I've lived in the same place my whole life. I know all kinds of meandering shortcuts and long-ways-home. I can take you mansion sight-seeing a couple towns away, subliminally finding my way to this impressive home or that stoney, Gothic, gargantuan dwelling, or I can take you on a somewhat less-than-thrilling tour of the sights of my childhood: my old elementary school, the hardcore synagogue my family used to attend (guys in the pews, gals in the balcony), there's the house where my pediatric allergist collapsed and died of a heart attack in his garage, there's the pharmacy where I stole my first glance at a "Playboy," there's the lawn I slid onto in my old Volvo 240 in the snow on my way home from school. You know-- because I was driving like a sixteen-year-old dickball.

And, if you were in the car with us, maybe holding onto the green stuffed monkey I keep in the back of my car, you might giggle, or roll your eyes, when you'd inevitably hear my wife say to me,

"Oh, Bobber-- it's so funny how you always know just where you're going around here but you don't know the names of any of the streets."

And she's right. I don't.

But I'd never get you lost. Stick with me, kid.

Street names are important, but not to me. They don't help me get where I'm going-- not when I'm in my own backyard. Of course, when giving directions to our house to people, it can be a bit challenging, because I start invoking landmarks in a harried panic when I realize I don't know the names of any of the streets surrounding my own home. My street is one piddly little block, sandwiched in between two perpendicular streets, and I even have trouble remembering which street bears which name. That's how bad it gets. If you're ever coming to see us, make sure that GPS is strapped to you like a breastpump.

Near the Pennsylvania/Delaware border, there's a street that intersects Route 1, feeding into a commercial development, and the street is called "Consumer Credit Way." I don't go down Route 1 that far that often but, when I do, and I pass that intersection, I always shake my head. What a waste of an opportunity.

An opportunity for what? Well, I don't know. We like to name things in this culture. We dedicate things. We consecrate things. Buildings, parks, rec centers, bridges, tunnels, stadiums and, yeah, streets. Well, at least, some of us like to do it.

On May 1st, 1981, NYPD Patrolmen John Scarangella and his partner, Richard Rainey were driving in their radio car together down a street in Queens. Who remembers what street it was? Doesn't matter much anymore, I suppose. While on patrol, they happened upon a filthy, white van that fit the description of a vehicle used as the getaway car in several burglaries. Flipping on their car's lightbar, a couple of bonks on the airhorn. Call it in.

The shooting started before Scarangella and Rainey even got out of their radio car. Bullets-- 30 white-hot bullets-- screaming through the warm spring air, shattering their windshield, pummeling through metal. Richard Rainey was shot fourteen times and miraculously survived. John Scarangella, 42 and the father of four children, was shot twice in the head. He clung to life's frayed edges in the hospital for two weeks before the thread frayed its final time.

Signal 10-13. Call it in.

29 years after the blood of Patrolmen Scarangella and Rainey had long since been washed from that pavement in Queens, a fight was being waged to name another piece of pavement-- Baisley Boulevard in South Jamaica-- for the slain Patrolman John Scarangella. It was an idea spearheaded by Scarangella's sons, Thomas and Gerard. Happy Father's Day, John.

It might come as a surprise that not everybody was so into the idea. Adjoa Gzifa, the chairwoman of Queens-based Community Board 12, rejected the initial application. Other applications to name streets after fallen police officers have received the cold shoulder from Ms. Gzifa as well who, apparently, isn't such a fan of the NYPD. Most people who aren't, I expect, might alter their opinion if they saw someone trying to force their way into their house in the middle of the night.

Whom would they call then-- Greenpeace?

I've made that argument before, and it's annoying to make. It's blue-collar and it's tired and and it's cliche, and it's, well, sad.

It finally happened, though. A couple of days ago, it was decided that a section of Baisley Street, the part that runs past John Scarangella's 113 Precinct, will be named Officer John Scarangella Way. And I hope people pay a hell of a lot more attention to that street sign than I pay to all of the ones in my neighborhood.

I don't know why, exactly, I decided on this story to write about for Christmas Day. Maybe because it's a gift to the Scarangella family, who has suffered such intense tragedies and indignities and wrongs since May 1st, 1981. Perhaps because it's a gift to the people of New York City, another chip in the pocket of dignity and honor. Maybe because it's a story about sacrifice and redemption. Maybe it's something we can feel good about-- that sometimes in this dirty little world of ours, the good guys do win-- even if what they've won is a piece of pavement and a metal sign on a pole.

Maybe because, today especially, it's a particularly convenient time to be grateful that men like Richard Rainey and John Scarangella ever walked this earth.

Merry, merry Christmas.

What I'm Reading

You care about what I'm reading, don't you?

Just like, if you're my pally-wal on Facebook, you care about where I've been.

Right?

Because that's information that just plows you through the day.

And you definitely care about the mundane wordvom that pours forth from my psychologically-unattended brain every single day of the year, because, well, you're here.

Hi! Want a Swedish fish? We've got plenty.

I don't actually believe that you care very much about what I'm reading, but I'm going to pretend, for the sake of this blog entry, that you do. Maybe just a squidgey-widge. I suppose, if I wanted to yammer on about a book, I would do something rash like commandeer a local college's radio station, knock the chunky black glasses-wearing, prematurely-balding, skinny bearded loser in the "Sega Genesis" t-shirt on the head with a piece of pipe and take my inane book reviews to the airwaves.

Or join a book-club. But those are for middle-aged women who hate their husbands.

And then I thought to myself-- shit, I don't need to do any of that stuff-- because that all requires leaving my computer. I can just as easily just sit here and blog about what I'm reading because, in this modern society, I can blithely pretend that you care about such banal things as what I'm reading, what I had for breakfast (you know there are photography blogs simply devoted to pictures of the blogger's each and every meal? Kill me.) where I'm going this weekend (antiquing-- gay!) and what I think about teeth whitening products.

And you can reinforce that belief by reading, following, and commenting. Thanks for participating in the enhancement of my delusions.

Sidenote: Couldn't you just picture me as part of a book club? I'd love to do it-- just for s's & g's, and just for a day. I mean, I would never be invited back, so it would obviously just have to be for a day. I can't decide whether or not I'd show up in drag.

Anyway, I'm currently reading "Target Blue: An Insider's View of the N.Y.P.D." written by Robert Daley.

It's 562 pages and, according to Amazon.com, it's 2.2 pounds. That's rather a lot of bookage.

I love this book. I've read it several times since I first purchased it from ebay (my first ebay purchase, actually) in 1998, when I was a freshman in college. It was this book that inspired me to write my own law enforcement-related book. Daley was a civilian who was intimately involved with the police, and it was a subject that forever remained in his heart-- and, well, so was I.

My book was a lot shorter, and lighter, than his.

Robert Daley was a reporter in 1971 when he was assigned to interview Patrick V. Murphy, the new police commissioner of the New York City Police Department-- the most fabled, famed, scrutinized, influential and possibly important metropolitan police department in the country.

They spent a day together, Daley following him like a puppy or a shadow, or a shadow of a puppy, asking questions, scribbling in a notebook, paying attention. At the end of the day, Murphy asked Daley for his resume. Daley thanked the Commissioner and promptly forgot about the exchange-- he had no intention of becoming a cop.

A little while later, after another day-long follow-up interview, Murphy asked, "I thought you were going to send me a resume."

And so Daley banged out 3/4ths of a page on his typewriter and sent it off. A couple months later, he was summoned to police headquarters and was offered the position of Deputy Commissioner of the N.Y.P.D. He would be one of six Deputy Commissioners-- three of which were civilians-- usually lawyers. Daley accepted, and was sworn in and given a badge and a .38 revolver.

His mission: win back the public for the police department.

It's amazing to me to know that this is the way things were done back in the good old days-- or were they the bad old days? It's hard to tell, really. I was sitting in the living room with my mother yesterday and she made some passing comment about the 1970s.

"Ah, a marvelous time to be alive," I mused-- talking, as usual, directly out my ass because, obviously, I wasn't alive then.

"No," she said, "it wasn't so great."

Perhaps Robert Daley, given a shield and a gun and what back then was a very respectable salary, after a couple days of interviewing might have disagreed with my mother. Or maybe not. After all, in the very short time during which he was D.C. of the N.Y.P.D., he would attend a record number of Inspector's funerals, the ceremony-laden, full-dress send-off given to patrolmen who are murdered in the line of duty, he would witness (and even be caught in the middle of one) riot after riot in the streets of Harlem, he would have his life threatened, he would be alternately ignored, abused and praised according to the whim of the political winds that blew capriciously around One Police Plaza, and he would witness the very department he had come to love be brought to its knees in front of the Knapp Commission, set up to root out the rampant police corruption of the day.

During those Knapp Commission hearings, a young police officer would take the stand and, in front of television cameras and microphones, shout "VIVA LA POLICIA!" Afterwards, he would break down and weep. Ashamed and overwhelmed, that young police officer bolted from the room, and stunned spectators and reporters applauded the empty chair where he had sat.

That police officer's name was David Durk.

David Durk was one of the reasons why, one of the big reasons why I wanted to become a cop, way back when-- when I was twenty-two.

He was Jewish, like me. And he was college-educated, like me. Of course, David Durk was more intelligent, and more handsome, but we don't have to quibble about that. Like me, Durk always insisted on looking his best, and frequently wore sharp suits and ties.

"He looked like a lawyer," Daley said about him. His friend and fellow anti-corruption zealot, Frank Serpico, Daley mused, "looked like a pirate."

Together, the lawyer and the pirate, banded together to confront corruption, greed, graft and the other insidious poisons that threatened to infect and demolish the reputations of the then-33,000 member police department. They went to the New York Times, and the various stories, some small, some huge, about corrupt cops broke. Back in the 1970s, when this was all happening, Serpico was furious that Durk was getting all the credit and the attention.

Then, two things happened:

1.) Frank Serpico got shot in the face.

and

2.) Hollywood made "SERPICO," and Al Pacino got the role.

Now, the tides have changed. Guess who has a Wikipedia page, and a personal webpage and guess who has neither?

Life's pretty funny that way, I think. I've seen "Serpico" and, of course, it's a great cop movie-- hell, it's just a great movie altogether-- but David Durk barely exists in the film. Blink, fart twice, and go to the fridge for a slice of chocolate cake and you will miss him entirely. I suppose Hollywood felt that the wounded, homeless-looking, piratey Frank Serpico made better film material than the clean-shaven Jewish college boy.

The nice thing about "Target Blue" (what I'm reading!) is that it gives both men the credit for their part in headbutting corruption in the N.Y.P.D. It is a much more detailed, even, and reliable account of history, I feel, and maybe that's because it's 2.2 pounds.

Everybody loves asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. Lots of kids answer, "A policeman!" before they even know what the fuck they're talking about. If you had asked me, when I was in my early twenties, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I would have answered, without a breath, "A police officer." If you had asked me, "Who do you want to be like when you grow up?" I would have answered, immediately, "David Durk."

Durk was someone who got under people's skin, crawled up their asses, talked long after the meeting was set to end, was passionate, earnest, single-minded and revolutionary in his thoughts about what policing in America should be. Young, idealistic college graduates who wanted the job for its promise of authority, integrity, justice and fairness-- not for the paycheck or the ability to shoot people. Too many take the police entrance exam because it's just in their family, or they don't know what else to do with their lives, or because they're action junkies or meatheads, or because they've got a score to settle. Durk joined, I think, because of the ideal behind the badge-- for the surge of your pulse when you pin that badge on your shirt.

For the right reasons, and there are right reasons.

Of course, Durk was repaid for his honesty and integrity with scorn, contempt and hot jealousy that dripped from the top on down-- but, if he noticed at all, it didn't deter him from his mission: winning back the police department for the police. I wonder sometimes if David Durk expected the N.Y.P.D. to love him back the way he in which he loved it. If he did, he was crazier than anybody gave him credit for, and plenty of people gave him ample credit for being crazy. If he wasn't foolish, or crazy, he must have at least been disappointed. And he wasn't alone in that. As a former officer once said, "The New York City Police Department is the king of disappointing people."

I wanted what Durk wanted, and what Daley wanted, too. I wanted to bring back respectability and honor back to the profession. I wanted to be the person people in the community would look at and say to themselves, "God, I'm glad he's patrolling my neighborhood-- I'm glad that guy is a cop. I'm proud that we have policemen like that here."

But, it was just not meant to be.

"That's not for you," my mother would say to me when I wanted to watch an inappropriate movie or television show when I was a boy. And that's what she said to me about policing on the day I quit the police academy after I couldn't lift 93% of my own body-weight over my head.

And I guess she was right. But you have to admit; it would have been a hell of a career, though, if I'd lived.

Brutality

On a warm June day back in 2002, I started my first day as a Police Officer Candidate at a local municipal police academy. I arrived in my freshly-pressed black trousers, crisp, firmly-tucked white shirt, and black necktie. I had even gone to my old barber that weekend and got a shorter haircut than is customary for me, hoping I would fit in a little better with the jarheads and baldies I was sure to encounter at the academy.


We gathered together, 64 of us in total, in a huge gymnasium where we were taught to stand at attention when the commander or basically anyone except for the janitor walked into the room, and then to relax at parade rest. There were young guys and a few old guys. Lots of white guys, a couple black guys. There were two women, one was very short and the other was tall and thin, like me. Most of my classmates, although similarly attired, looked like they had just rolled out of bed, or some, a dumpster. I can remember being amazed, on my first day in the police academy, that there were so many people who could wear a shirt and tie, and still look like complete slobs.


As I scanned the room while practicing attention and parade rest, receiving instructions about how not to lock your knees, my eyes scanned the room, pouring over the faces of my classmates the people with whom, had I not dropped out two days later, I would have been throwing to the ground, subduing, pepper-spraying, mock-arresting, mock-backing up, and probably being mock-friendly to for a period of six months. In my brief time there, I only really got to know one person, one of the only black men, whose name was "Flax." Flax was considerably older than the average bear in the academy, and he had the highest level of education of anyone in the room, including the commander of the academy-- he held a Master's degree as well as a Ph.D. in Divinity, if I remember correctly. He came up to me on day 2 and and we quietly shot the shit for around twenty or so minutes. Gently, he asked me what I was doing here. I laughed.


"I might ask you the same question. In fact, I will-- what are you doing here?"


He told me that he wanted a life change. His idea was to graduate from the academy, work uniformed patrol for a few years and then move into the federal arena-- possibly the FBI or even the Secret Service. He advised that I do likewise. I shook my head and told him that I would want to work uniform for the rest of my life.


"You're crazy," he announced, as others have. "Why?"


And I gave him my insane rant about wanting to alter the public's perception of the police by conducting my affairs and contacts with the community in a respectful, courteous, eloquent manner, by instilling that forgotten professionalism and dedication that officers of a bygone era were credited with establishing. He smiled at me.


"I like you," he said, "but you're going to have a tough motherfucking time in this world."


Years later, I heard that Flax graduated from the academy and was doing a local community proud, serving faithfully as a police officer. And that made me feel better about washing the fuck out during the barbell portion of the physical agility test.

I can remember, though, being in that gym, looking at everyone, and thinking to myself: who are these people going to be? Who's going to go work for the city? Who's going to have a quiet life as a sheriff's deputy, standing guard in some courtroom somewhere for the rest of his life, his belly slowly growing with each passing year? Who will be the hero? Who will rise through the ranks, to become a captain or a commander, with stars on his shoulders? Who will get killed for no reason at all? Who will treat the public right, and who will take out his aggressions and his anger and his hatred on the suspects he comes across in dark alleyways, when no supervisor or video camera is there to watch?

I don't believe that many people go into law enforcement because they want to kick the shit out of people mercilessly, or because they have some sort of societal grudge, or because they're homicidal or brutalistic. I believe that, like corruption, is something that tends to happen along the way and, of course, neither brutality or corruption happen to everyone. But, when it happens, it happens big-- and it hurts far more than just the person who gets brutalized.

It hurts every cop who dons a uniform and pins on a badge and goes out to do an honest day's or night's work-- because the public does not differentiate between a corrupt, brutal piece of shit, and a decent, hardworking man or woman. Hence: uniform.

With little fanfare or brouhaha, a trial recently began in New York City. Three police officers are on trial, and it's their word against the word of a man named Michael Mineo. One day, over a year ago, a trio of police officers in an unmarked vehicle spotted Mr. Mineo smoking pot. Big deal, right? Like the NYPD doesn't have bigger things do worry about. However, these three young, energized, overzealous cops gave chase when Mineo ran, down to the Prospect Park subway station. They tackled Mineo on that platform and, when he did not readily submit, one of the officers, Richard Kern, shoved his retractable baton inside Mr. Mineo's anus. And Kern didn't just do it once, he did it several times. Just so we're all clear on this-- jamming a baton up someone's ass is not an accepted, authorized police procedure or practice.

Mineo, bloodied from the attack, was told by Kern that if he breathed a word of the attack to anyone, or sought medical treatment, that he would be slapped with a felony charge. Mineo did go to the hospital, though, with a torn rectum which later became infected and abscessed.

The NYPD brass stripped Kern and the other two officers of their weapons. Kern, only 25 when this went down, already had two complaints of excessive force on him, and has been charged in this case with aggravated sexual abuse. The other two shitheads were charged with hindering an investigation and official misconduct for covering it up. There are witnesses and, most damningly, there is DNA from Mr. Mineo on Officer Kern's baton.

Whoops. How'd that get there?

An article in the New York Times pointed out that, although there were massive protests and unrest and immense public and media interest and attention during other NYPD brutality cases, such as the Amadou Diallo shooting, and the infamous plunger-rape of Abner Louima-- there are no protests in the street over Michael Mineo. There's no hub-bub, no Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton giving virulent pulpit speeches and preaches. There's no angry people yelling into megaphones outside the courthouse, giving the finger to the rings of officers standing guard outside. In fact, there are no rings of officers standing guard outside, because there's nobody to stand guard against-- there's just the steady thrum of NYC cabbie traffic and people hustling from one place to the next, their heads down, thumbing their way through their Blackberries and iPoding their lives away, while a man with a torn rectum takes on three of the baddest apples in the NYPD.

And I hope he brings them down.

I hope he brings them down hard. Because these three men shouldn't be permitted to wear the uniform of a goddamn toilet attendant, let alone that of a New York City patrolman. Because these three men are the worst kind of coward: a coward with authority. Because these three men have no business nodding to baristas at Starbucks who give them drinks for free or at a discount because of the peace and order that they represent.

Because, on a personal level, these three men make me ashamed that I ever wanted to be a cop.