these expressions: ‘we turn the trash into cash’ and ‘collars for dollars’.
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I’ve been around the world; cops are the same everywhere. They complain about the exact same thing: pay and overtime. If you were just a regular patrolman, you made shit.
There are two guarantees with this job – you’re never going to starve but you’re never going to be rich either.
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I remember driving around on ‘midnights’ and we would be looking for collars because you made the most money in overtime on midnights. You made an arrest on a midnight shift and you couldn’t process it ‘til eight in the morning, so you’d get seven or eight hours overtime.
I remember driving around three cars deep and we would just be going up and down the block jumping out on people, throwing them against the wall, patting them down and going through their pockets. If they had bullshit contraband – like knives or brass knuckles – we would just take it from them and send them on their way. It was almost like legalised fucking robbery. We never stole anything though; we never stole money or anything, but it was just like, you know, like here’s a knife. No,that’s not good enough, get rid of it. He’s got brass knuckles. No, no. We need felonies. Get rid of ‘em. We were looking for guns; we’re looking for drugs. Knives and brass knuckles were not good enough. If we found those we would smack ‘em on the back on the head and send them on their way. I remember thinking, ‘we’re fucking robbing these people’.
That was common; that was every fucking night. And it would only start after three or four in the morning. You couldn’t really do it after six – you had to stop by five because there were decent people that lived there. So you had a short window to get this accomplished. Anybody out on the street at three o’clock in the morning in Harlem on like, a Tuesday night, is not a good person.
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My neighbourhood that I work in is the absolute worst neighbourhood in Boston. But I’m so complacent and so comfortable there that I don’t even – and don’t tell this to my husband – sometimes I don’t even wear my bullet-proof vest. I should wear it at all times but I’m like, ‘whatever’. Sometimes my back is hurting or whatever, so I’ll just leave it in the locker, you know, give my back a break. But there are certain areas I will not go out to without wearing it.
They don’t make the best vests for women either. They’re all lumpy and gross. But I have been to The Bronx in New York and I’m like, ‘Jesus Christ! I wish I was in a bullet-proof car, never mind a vest!’ Everybody over there looks like a criminal. Everybody! It’s totally different to Boston.
The vests are bad and they make these pants for the women that go up over your belly whereas the men have pants that sit at their waist, so I buy the men’s pants as they fit me better. I don’t want to wear pants that are just over my belly button. It’s so uncomfortable, you know? It’s not the 1970’s anymore; it’s time to upgrade our uniforms.
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This woman calls the station. I’m doing a report. It’s like two o’clock in the morning.
‘Police, can I help you?’
This woman’s screaming hysterically and I’m pulling the phone from my ear. This was right before we had Enhanced 911.
‘What’s the problem ma’am?’
‘My baby’s not breathing!’
‘Okay. Where are you calling from?’
‘I don’t know where I am. I know the town but I don’t know the name of the road.’
I’m then having to multi-task. I don’t have any dispatch training. I’m a cop – I’m not a dispatcher. I’m trying to explain how to do child CPR whilst trying to get little bits and pieces of information about where she’s calling from to the ambulance, to get them rolling in the right direction. I’m basically doing this for four to five minutes.
‘Do you remember what part of town you came into? Keep doing the compressions,