The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (8 page)

After I got my learner's permit, my father and I routinely spent Sunday mornings driving around Codman Square, a business district of Dorchester. One morning, we stopped behind a cop car at a red light. We were the only two cars at the intersection. The light turned green, and the two cops were busy shooting the breeze. They weren't moving. We waited.

“Toot the horn,” my dad said finally.

“What?”

“Toot the horn, get 'em going.”

So I tooted the horn.

Cops being cops, they pulled out, let us pass, and then pulled us over. Both officers got out of the cruiser and sauntered toward us.

“You honk your horn?”

“The light changed, you weren't moving.” My father was immediately on his high horse. “Yeah, we honked at you. How'm I supposed to let you know that it turned green?” They straightaway got into a pissing contest.

I was sweating there with just a learner's permit, fearing that any
confrontation would end my driving career. One officer was leaning at the window, an arm cocked on the roof, the other at his gun belt, talking over me to my father on the passenger side. My father never let up. I just kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes on my dad.

Fortunately, it was toward the end of the morning. If they'd met up with us in mid-tour, they probably would have busted my father's chops a little, but these guys had been riding around for eight hours and all they were interested in was getting home. My father couldn't have known that. He was interested in not getting pushed around.

BUT THAT RUN-IN DIDN'T MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE. WHEN I GRADUATED FROM
Boston Tech in 1965, I knew I wanted to be a cop. I was eighteen years old. The City of Boston wouldn't hire police officers under the age of twenty-one. How was I going to get through these years?

I had a part-time job stocking shelves at the Finast Market, but I lost it and then dropped out of Boston State College after the first semester because I couldn't afford to continue. The tuition wasn't high, but I was living at home, and I needed to earn a living. That winter, my uncle, Peter Boyle, helped get me an interview at the phone company, which was a fairly good-paying company. I got the job. It was steady, very secure, the kind of job a blue-collar guy searched for, the private-sector equivalent of the civil service.

The first couple of months, I worked in the money room counting coins, which was awful work, but after a while they put me on the road. They gave me a little Ford station wagon to drive around in, and off I went, picking up the coin boxes from pay phones. We never had a robbery; who was going to lug around a couple of thousand pounds of stolen dimes and nickels? But after a while, I was assigned “specials.” I'd go out and handle jammed or overloaded boxes, and in certain rougher neighborhoods of the city the company didn't want to leave the car unattended, so they hired
traffic cops, on duty, with the white hats and gloves. I had a police escort, a cop in the backseat eight hours of the day. I thought that was great.

It was a soft detail for the cops, and mostly they would sit back there and read the newspaper. I wanted to be a cop, and here was a real live one in the backseat. I'd try to strike up a conversation.

“Jeez, I want to be a cop someday.”

“Oh, yeah, kid, that's good.” They would go back to reading their newspapers. All they were interested in, basically, was the overtime.

Late that summer, I was promoted into the central office as an installer/repairman. I was on night shift from five to midnight with two or three old-timers, and in the daytime I got a job working with my father in a plating shop in Roxbury Crossing.

Holding down two jobs, putting in sixteen hours a day, I began to understand how hard my dad had worked all his life. Plating was tough—dirty, grungy, straight labor. With all the acids and fumes, it wasn't the greatest of working conditions, and there was no workplace regulation. There was no OSHA in those days. Still, I liked working with my father. We didn't work side by side, but we had lunch every day in a little cafeteria-style neighborhood restaurant, which was as much concentrated time as I had spent with him in my entire life. I really enjoyed and appreciated just how hardworking, how straightforward, how good a man he was.

One of the few side benefits of working at the plating shop was that every so often cops at the adjacent Roxbury Crossing station house came in to get their badges shined—on the arm, of course. I talked with them every chance I got.

I had no social life, but I was happy to have two paychecks. I put some into savings and gave some to my folks.

Toward the fall of 1966, I decided to enlist in the army. The Vietnam War was heating up, and guys my age had two options: get drafted and serve two years in the service of the government's choosing or enlist in the regular army for three years and pick your own spot. The way I looked at it, this would be a good way to spend my time until I could take the civil-service exam to become a cop. More important, I could pick the military police. If I couldn't be a Boston cop, I could spend three years working on something that would be enjoyable and might also prepare me for becoming a police officer.

I had seen MPs around Boston. There were several military bases in the area, and along with large influxes of sailors on the weekends I saw the
shore patrol in the streets alongside the city cops. They were strong and efficient and looked good in their uniforms. I went up to the army recruiting station at Codman Square and signed up.

I was to be sworn in on November 30, 1966.

My mother wouldn't see me off. She was crying. My father drove me to the old Boston Army Base in South Boston, where I was going to get shipped down to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for basic training. It was the only time I had ever seen a tear in his eye. We sat in the car, and he gave me a firm handshake. “Good luck, Bill. We're going to miss you.” I got out, and he drove off.

I was processed, and then about five-thirty in the afternoon a caravan of Greyhound buses full of recruits headed south. Other than vacations in New Hampshire, a trip to Canada, and a visit to New York City with my parents, I had never been out of the Boston area.

We arrived at Fort Dix about one in the morning. They marched us over to a beat-up two-story wood barracks with ladders on both sides for fire escapes, just like I'd seen in World War II movies, and issued us our gear for the night. It was cold, and when I went to use the facilities, I found twelve toilet bowls fanned out in a circle—no separation, no privacy whatsoever—and a dozen guys sitting around looking at each other. I have always been a very private person, and I was aghast.

Then, they lined us up and marched us into the mess hall for a meal. Liver, lima beans, and mashed potatoes. This mess had probably been sitting on the steam tables since they fed the troops at five that afternoon. I was a persnickety eater to begin with. I had stayed clear of a lot of foods, and liver was one of them. Lima beans? Forget it. Thus began my army career.

For the next few days, we went through indoctrination, got our uniforms, filled out papers, received shots, took placement tests. After the aptitude exam, I was called into the sergeant's office. I stood at attention, and the sergeant said, “Bratton, looking at your test here, it appears that you would make a pretty good candidate for Officer Candidate School. We can sign you up. In fact, we would like to sign you up right now.” He told me that upon finishing basic training, I would be shipped off to OCS and would graduate from there as a second lieutenant.

“Sir. When I enlisted I was guaranteed that I would be assigned to the military police, sir. If I go to OCS, will I still be an MP?”

“No, soldier. You go to OCS and you can request a specialization, but the army cannot guarantee that your request will be answered in the
affirmative. You might be needed in other areas.” He wanted me to make a decision right there.

I liked the fact that I was being invited to move to the top of the pack. I always wanted to stand out, and a second lieutenant far outranked a private. I was only in the army three days, and already I was being singled out.

But I was hooked on the dream of being a military policeman and then a cop. That's all that was on my mind, and this promotion, while seemingly a step forward, would interrupt that ambition. I respectfully declined.

For some reason, my company was an equal mix of New Englanders and Mississippians. My squad in particular was very well mixed. Just deciphering the accents was a job and a half. My best friend turned out to be Bill Campbell, a black kid from Roxbury. I could at least understand his accent.

My first drill instructor, Sergeant Rush, was a big, black, Smokey the Bear–type guy with a gruff voice who was trying to grow us into soldiers. He was a decent guy underneath the shouting, and about a week into basic he appointed me squad leader, which got me a semiprivate room.

We had a private first class named Gomer. Gomer spoke with a heavy southern accent and had only recently been through basic himself. When the drill instructors went home at night, this was the character they left in charge of the place. Perhaps it was because I was Rush's guy, perhaps it was because he didn't like northerners; in any case, Gomer was all over me.

Some guys you know are trying to shape you up, others are trying to break you. Gomer went out of his way to make things tough on me. When we had hand-to-hand training with cudgels that look like giant Q-tips, I was the one he pulled out and pummeled. Every morning at reveille, we woke up, showered, and ran several miles carrying an M-14 rifle. I wasn't in good enough shape, not immediately. I kept lowering the rifle.

“Bratton, you little pansy.” I had never heard drawling and shouting at the same time. “Get that rifle up!” Gomer loved to chase me down and chew me out. Because of his dislike for me, my entire squad was taking the brunt of his attacks.

Weekly barracks inspection was a major preoccupation in basic training. Each member of the squad had to operate as part of a unit, and we all had to pull together, otherwise we would all fail, and none of us would receive the Holy Grail of boot camp, a weekend pass. When we succeeded, we all had a great sense of accomplishment. Toward the end of basic training,
we faced inspection by the post commander, and Gomer was even crazier. Before I'd arrived at the barracks that evening, he and Campbell had gotten into it, and for some time I had the sense that Gomer didn't really like blacks, either.

I came into the room and everybody was in T-shirts, slaving away getting the place ready. We had already been indoctrinated on the importance of shiny floors; that was a big deal in the army, floors so polished that you could see your reflection in them. (To this day, I like to see a shining floor.) We had a heavy metal buffing machine that we lugged around especially for this purpose. It was large and bulky and not easy to maneuver, but it got the job done. Gomer, just to ride Campbell, had told him to buff the ceiling. Then he had left.

We couldn't stand this guy. As respectful as I am of authority, when that authority is abusive or foolish, I will rebel.

I looked up. “He wants us to buff the ceiling? We'll buff the damn ceiling. Let him explain it to Rush.”

Campbell and I climbed up and stood on the top of a double-decker bunk. The metal frame sagged and creaked but held us. It was a shame to put our boots all over a freshly made bed, but it had to be done. I leaned over. “Hand that thing up here.” Three guys shouldered the buffer, which teetered as we tried to hoist it. Campbell and I grunted it to shoulder level, the bed shifting under the weight. Two guys on each side were spotting, another made sure the electric cord didn't get tangled. The rest of the squad was looking on, ready to help.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gomer had come back.

“You ordered us to buff the ceiling, we're buffing the ceiling. Those were your direct orders. You're insisting that things be done your way, here it is.”

Gomer was flustered. A buffed ceiling was way out of bounds. There was no way he could justify it to his superiors, and he knew it. “You knew I didn't mean it!”

Hey, we had a direct order. If there was hell to pay for it from the drill instructors, well, we were ordered to do it, and it was Gomer's order.

Gomer went storming out of there. He didn't last much longer.

I finished basic training and got shipped off to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for MP school. The highlight of those two months was when my high school sweetheart from Boston, Linda Gowen, the first girl I ever dated, snuck down to visit me for a weekend in Augusta. If her parents had known, there would have been bloody murder.

There were four thousand MPs in training at Fort Gordon. We learned
police tactics and techniques such as prisoner handling and handcuffing; we learned military codes and responsibility and protocol; we learned how to drive jeeps. We practiced enforcing military law.

The whole idea of the military police was spit and polish. At five o'clock reveille, we all put on our uniforms and gathered to salute the flag. The uniforms were pressed so heavy with starch, you had to peel the pants apart and put your foot in slowly to separate the legs. I loved that sound and feeling as I slid in and the fabric came open. MPs bloused their pants at the boot, put on a shirt, pistol, belt and shiny helmet liner, and then walked around like robots, not bending knees or arms until after inspection so nothing got wrinkled. Those outfits were hot. This was in Georgia in ninety-five-degree heat (or hotter), and there were easily 1,200 of us running around the quadrangle chanting and singing in cadence. I loved the parades and formations, the pomp and circumstance.

I did well in all areas of training except sidearms: I could not shoot a .45 pistol. I had trouble disassembling it, and once it was apart I had the damnedest time putting the thing back together again. Of course, a sidearm is vital for an MP, and this was something you had to do in order to graduate. There was a course and a final exam that I failed the first time, miserably. I was a bad mechanic and a lousy shot. I took the course over and flunked it again. I walked through it a third time. Failed. They were going to wash me out.