Arrest-Proof Yourself (14 page)

They also routinely see something most people aren’t sure even exists—evil. Most cops have looked into the empty eyes of stone killers. They arrest people with no socialization who react with the savage instincts of animals. Such people can exist safely only in prisons, asylums, and graves.

During my FBI tenure, I was a specialist in serial killers and sex offenders. I interviewed Wayne Williams, who murdered 21 boys in Atlanta. I’ve studied human vampires who drank their victims’ blood in Dixie cups. These people are monsters. Cops know monsters personally. Their job requires them to spend hours interviewing them, empathizing with them, understanding what it is to lust for death. Most killers are not insane. They enjoy the crimes they commit.

Surgeons, priests, and executioners know some of these things. Only cops know them all. Sometimes cops
are
the priests and hear appalling confessions. Instead of “forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” they listen to gruesome descriptions of murders, rapes, and child molestations. Often a cop will serve as a de facto surgeon, keeping someone alive until rescue comes. Occasionally, they’re executioners. Unlike fictional spies, they are indeed licensed to kill.

When my dad was the sheriff of Jacksonville, he used to tell me, “Being a cop brings out the very best in people.” What he meant was that cops, more than any other group in society, get called on to supersede themselves and do something truly noble. The cops who were at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, may not all have been good cops. Yet when the moment came, they stepped up and did what had to be done, every man and woman of them, knowing they might not survive. They saved a lot of people, and many of them died trying. You can’t do that if your job is processing claim forms or pounding the cash register.

Courage is the rarest of human qualities. The sort seen on athletic fields is artificial, and the type portrayed in the movies is phony. The real thing, displayed by ordinary people, is so fine and so magnificently human that it defies description and brings tears to your eyes. Many cops have the real thing, battle tested on the meanest streets in America. They are extraordinary people.

THE FREAK SHOW

When I was a kid, you could buy your way into a freak show for a quarter. You saw Siamese twins, sword swallowers, bearded ladies, midgets, and fire-eaters. This satisfied a universal craving for the bizarre. Today it’s crass even to admit an interest in human freakishness. Cops, however, get to see things even the circus would never have displayed.

For instance, cops in North Miami once found the upper half of a woman’s body, frozen solid, on an oceanfront condo balcony in 90-degree heat. How could that happen? The corpse was too big to have been in a refrigerator freezer. They finally figured out that the woman had stowed away in the wheel well of a jetliner and become frozen in the minus-50-degree cold of 35,000 feet. When the landing gear was lowered, her frozen corpse split in two and dropped out of the jet while it was coming in over the beach for a landing. Her legs probably fell out first, dropped into the ocean, and became shark snacks. The top half landed in the condo balcony.

In Miami, cops chase voodoo doctors who dig up bodies from graves and sever corpses’ heads for use as fetishes. I once investigated a headless face. It belonged to a suicide who had placed a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It blew away the skull and brain, but left the face and the front of the skull intact. The face was peaceful; the eyes closed. I’ve often wondered whether the writer Ernest Hemingway looked like that when he capped himself in Idaho. Only the cops on the scene know.

Of course, there’s cop comedy. One of my clients, after complex and clever motions made by yours truly, was released from jail and placed under house arrest with a radio transmitter ankle bracelet. After a few days, however, he just had to get out and get some love, so he sawed off the bracelet. Figuring he would fool the probation officers, he duct-taped the bracelet to the hind leg of his dog! When the cops showed up, they had a laugh, patted the dog, and waited until he returned to arrest him. Many times you wonder not only
what
these guys are thinking, but
whether
they’re thinking.

My coauthor talked to a cop in Jacksonville who had just responded
⁴
to an arson. When the officer rolled up, the house was ablaze, and the arsonist was stranded—on a second-floor balcony! Turns out the guy got pissed at his girlfriend and decided to burn down her house. He bought a can of gas, set a huge fire on the ground floor, and then
ran up the stairs
to the second floor. What was he thinking? The firefighters and cops had to stop laughing so they could rescue him for immediate criminal justice processing.

To be a cop is to know life’s fragility and often its meaninglessness. It can wreak havoc with religious beliefs. Is God a merciful creator, or is blind chance rolling the dice? Cops know courage and cowardice, ecstasy and despair, saintliness and satanic possession. They are fascinating to talk to, fun to make love to, and difficult to stay married to. Just ask my wives.

Now you know a bit about cops. They’re hunters, rescuers, observers of the strange and the bizarre. Often they
^’
re amused by breathtaking acts of stupidity. You want to treat them the way you do undertakers, which is to stay away from them until they’re needed.

3

WHEN YOU’RE LIVING FREE AND TALL, DON’T BECOME A SCORE IN POLICE PINBALL

A
s hunters of humans rather than animals, cops are at the top of the predator pecking order. All hunters are interested in the number of animals they bag. Cops, however, are obsessed. The most important thing in a cop’s life is the number of arrests made—how many each day, each week, each month. Cops get paid, promoted, and earn status and a macho rep almost exclusively by arrest numbers. This is bad news for you, because when cops come up short at the end of the month and have to make their numbers, they’ll arrest anybody for anything.

But relax and take a chill pill. If you’re reading this book, you’re probably not in jail—yet. What you’re going to do now is study your hunters and discover what they do, how they do it, and why.

Cops are constantly studying and training how to arrest you. Now you’re turning the tables and learning how to avoid them and stay free. What you will discover will astound you. For cops, making arrests and giving out tickets is much like a game, with a point score and a monthly total. I call this police pinball. It’s a game you don’t want to play.

First, let’s discuss basic police patrol operations. Forget what you see on TV—glamorous detectives, undercover officers, and crime-scene technicians. These people exist in big-city departments, and they investigate the most serious crimes, but they make only a small percentage of arrests. The average person, even one who has been repeatedly arrested, may never encounter these types of officers in a lifetime.

The cops who make the most arrests and who fill jails around the nation are patrol officers, the men and women in blue. How does a department know who’s a good cop and who’s not? Simple. Departmental bosses just count the number of arrests and traffic tickets the cops give out in a month. Is it really that simple? Yep.

On TV, you see police officers having heart-to-heart talks about their careers with (usually) gorgeous psychiatrists. You see concerned captains pondering thick personnel dossiers to which they’ve given hours of mature reflection. In real life this rarely happens, and it doesn’t have to. The best cops give out more traffic tickets and arrest more guys. Period.

Some arrests are more important than others, so there’s a rough scoring system. Let’s say traffic tickets are worth one point. Misdemeanor arrests then are worth two points, and felony arrests three points. Arrest someone with an outstanding warrant? Extra point! Find guns, narcotics, or stolen property? Score another point.

Police departments deny this and piously proclaim they don’t have quotas of traffic tickets and arrests. They’re right, in a narrow sense. Departments don’t set quotas, but they sure keep score. All police departments value felony arrests more than misdemeanor busts and traffic tickets, regardless of whether they use a formal point system.

So a good cop doesn’t hit the street thinking, “How am I going to make America a safer place?” He simply goes out to score points. I set felony arrest records by being assigned to Miami’s most dangerous neighborhoods on the night shift. During those hours the place was chock-full of high-value bad guys. It was, as cops would say, a target-rich environment. Many of the guys I arrested had (a) outstanding arrest warrants; (b) drugs, guns, and stolen goods; and (c) automobile violations that required a ticket. So on a traffic stop I could get a traffic ticket (one point), a felony bust (three points), an outstanding warrant (extra point), and recovery of dope, guns, or stolen merchandise (more points). The perfect bust is a jalopy packed with felons wanted on outstanding warrants and with a trunk full of drugs and guns. Yahoo!

To a cop, a patrol is like a game of pinball. He’s the player, and he launches the ball onto the table when he starts rolling in his cruiser. Encountering bad guys is like hitting bumpers, each with a different point value. Write a traffic ticket,
bing!
Misdemeanor bust,
bing, bing!
Felony bust,
bing, bing, bing!
Stop a law-abiding citizen? Your ball drops into the hole.
Buzz!
No points.

If a detainee is wanted by police in another jurisdiction, the cop scores double points. If the gods are smiling, the detainee will be wanted by the Secret Service or the FBI. This scores triple points and extra bragging

This is one of my tally sheets while I was a patrol officer in Miami. Nobody outside police departments ever sees these things. Now you’re looking at one for the first time, and what you realize is that
it’s all about points
. So many traffic tickets, so many arrests, etc. Superior officers can rate a cop in seconds, just by scanning the tally sheet. Note what’s
not
on the sheet—time spent helping citizens. There’s no column and no credit for warnings given in lieu of arrest or notices to appear.
rights in the locker room. Of course, there’s another level entirely, one with more substantial prizes. If a cop’s prisoner is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, or on the terrorist list of the Homeland Security Agency, or if he’s being sought in a nationwide manhunt broadcast on TV—
bing, bong, bing, bong
—it’s Lotto time! Job promotion? Book deal? A chat with Oprah? Absolutely. Is that the
National Enquirer
calling? FedEx the check and let’s talk!

There are three basic patrol activities:

responding to calls

stopping suspicious people on the street

making traffic stops