Last Wednesday night, a Harm County cop who has harassed me in the past [see Officer ManFriendly] came to me, named me Sir as I stocked the cream cheese and asked me where the prepackaged lunchmeat was. I showed him, he thanked me, and a chill went up my spine, making me wonder if I was falling into peaceful coexistence with yet another enemy of my savage adulthood. As a mortal the passage of 30 years of adult living into something that ‘was’ rather than ‘is’, is, I suppose , a sign of a proximate end. Happenings like this—such as black youths who would have stoned me on sight a decade or two ago—standing aside to let me pass and referring to me as Sir, have me feeling like I’m already dead; a withering relic to a new world that does not even require me as an enemy, an obstacle, or even the lowly confidence-building butt of a joke.
At about 3:00 a.m., after a few young punks and drunks had been into the store, I moved up front to read on the bench behind Bubba’s register. The night crew splitting its break time and breaking up front instead of in the back break area is one way of reducing Bubba’s time alone on the front end. As I checked out my coffee we noticed a cop cruiser speed up to parcel pickup. Bubba said to Steevo, “Did anybody call?”
“No man, maybe he smelled the fried chicken finish back in deli—Oh, my bad, it’s a white pig!”
A big white 40-year-old cop who has come in to help Bubba out before walked in and said hello, asking us if everything was okay. This cop then walked the store, and, as we expected him to return with lunch, came back and gave us a neighborhood security report. He let us know that stabbings are the big thing right now, that groups of black youths have been harassing 7-11 and fast food clerks, and gave Bubba the dispatcher’s number so that if he had a real emergency he would not have to go through the hassle of being grilled by a 911 operator, as the questions these operators ask prior to calling dispatch are extensive enough to endanger the caller and hold up the police response.
I was impressed. As a store manager in a city supermarket some years back I could tell that this cop had thought things through from the stationary target’s perspective and was being proactive. As much as I have hated cops for being harassed for walking while white in a black drug zone while underdressed, as a store manager I had been pleased with police procedures and individual officer initiative. As a home owner I had been appalled at the lack of cop concern for home invasions and the hunting of my family on our city block. But, even though I had two cops threaten me as a store owner for not letting them shop after hours, the cops assigned to patrol our district were like the cavalry on an old western movie. My ability to bounce criminals off the property was mostly vested in the fact that they knew the cops were on the way and that the cops would take my side.
As I was on the bench reading a book on the Hell’s Angels I became more impressed with this cop, and finally asked him a question about the crimescape, making sure not to mention I was a writer. Without taking notes I can quote the following small bit of his monologue:
“Our big problem right now is a night club out on Route Forty called Prime. We call it ‘Crime.’ Some jerk stabbed three people there last week. [Mentions a City/County unit dedicated to tracking career violent offenders] tracked him into the city and ended up killing the guy during the apprehension—a real tragedy!
[Laughter]
“We have a two man car on that lot all the time. It’s become a place for the guys from Joppatown [the pit stop on the way to Camden and Philly for Baltimore drug traffickers, conveniently served by commuter bus]. I don’t get it. None of these guys will just fight like when I was a kid. Who goes home after the fight and gets a knife or gun and comes back? There is something seriously wrong with these people.”
I asked him about the connection to the drug trafficking, and told him about what has happened with the heroin trade link between Belair [the posh community west of Joppatown] and my city neighborhood of Hamilton, where black city drug dealers are now working suburban neighborhoods and white suburban kids, once hooked, are moving into Hamilton to get closer to the supply—their parents mailing drug money by check to crack houses, methadone clinics and halfway houses or sending it Western Union to the news stand.
“I know what you’re talking about in Harford County. I live out there and it’s like Dundalk North. You can talk to the home owners and tell they all came from East Baltimore, Dundalk and Essex; and those neighborhoods had huge drug and alcohol problems back in the day. What has probably happened where you are is some new guy has got ‘the hot package’ ‘the low price’ that everybody wants and they’re moving close to the supply. Once he gets busted—whoever he is—then the next guy starts up and the drug hub shifts down the street or across town.
“I know that we are the heroin capital and a huge crack market. But I have to say one thing about the Baltimore area and Maryland in general: meth has not gotten a foothold. We don’t find any of it. You talk to cops from PA, Delaware, Virginia, and its everywhere—the big drug. We’re working the same procedures as these other department. The difference must be on the criminal end. Whoever has a lock on heroin and crack distribution in this area, obviously does not want meth here, and has the ability to keep it out.”
I then showed the officer what I was reading and said, “You know these biker gangs seem to have relied on meth as the cornerstone of their operations.”
He checked out the book, took down the information, and then began discussing his reading list with me. He admitted to having graduated from high school hating to read, and that he was now trying to rewire his brain through reading. He confided that his wife got him started reading and that he felt a change in his thought process when he took it up. I chimed in on the crackpot wavelength:
“They teach us to hate reading in school. Like reading Moby Dick when you’re fifteen when its eight-hundred pages and was written for a thirty year old man whose just starting to realize the world isn’t what he was led to believe.”
I then gave him some manly reading suggestions, such as the war memoir, House to House, and even promised him a copy of the GQ Mugging Inquest when I order my copy.
I stood to return to work and we shook hands, which had Bubba slack-jawed. On the way to the stockroom I walked by Steevo and groused, “Hey man, I think I just made friends with a cop.”
“What the fuck dude!”
“Man, just hit me any time you feel like.”
“Fuck that dude—that cop love bullshit might be contagious!”
Here I fall, into the abyss.
