Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

Scott’s little girlfriend was busting to throw in her two cents, but three guys popped off at once, and finally Scott’s voice drowned out the others. “I’m a law student,” he said, “and I intend to be your adversary someday in a courtroom. Tell me, do you really get satisfaction when you send a man away for ten years?”

“Listen, Scott,” I said, “in the first place even Eichmann would stand a fifty-fifty chance of not doing ten years nowadays. You got to be a boss crook to pull that kind of time. In fact, you got to work at it to even get to state prison. Man, some of the cats I put away, I wouldn’t give them ten years, I’d give them a goddamned lobotomy if I could.”

I dropped my cigar because these kids had me charged up now. I figured they were starting to respect me a little and I even tried for a minute to hold in my gut but that was uncomfortable, and I gave it up.

“I saw a big article in some magazine a few years ago honoring these cops,” I continued. “‘These are not pigs’ the article said, and it showed one cop who’d delivered some babies, and one cop who’d rescued some people in a flood, and one cop who was a goddamn boy scout troop leader or something like that. You know, I delivered two babies myself. But we ain’t being paid to be midwives or lifeguards or social workers. They got other people to do those jobs. Let’s see somebody honor some copper because the guy made thirty good felony pinches a month for ten years and sent a couple hundred guys to San Quentin. Nobody ever gives an award to him. Even his sergeant ain’t gonna appreciate that, but he’ll get on his ass for not writing a traffic ticket every day because the goddamn city needs the revenue and there’s no room in prisons anyway.”

I should’ve been noticing things at about this time. I should’ve noticed that the guy in the headband and his old lady were staying away from me and so were the two black guys in the plastic jackets. In fact, all the ones I spotted were staying at the other end of the line of marchers who were quieting down and starting to get tired. I should’ve noticed that the boy, Scott, the other blond kid, and the tall black kid, were closer to me than the others, and so was the cute little twist hanging on Scott’s arm and carrying a huge heavy-looking buckskin handbag.

I noticed nothing, because for one of the few times in my life I wasn’t being a cop. I was a big, funny-looking, blue-suited donkey and I thought I was home-run king belting them out over the fences. The reason was that I was somewhere I’d never been in my life. I was on a soapbox. Not a stage but a soapbox. A stage I could’ve handled. I can put on the act people want and expect, and I can still keep my eyes open and not get carried away with it, but this goddamned soapbox was something else. I was making speeches, one after another, about things that meant something to me, and all I could see was the loving gaze of my audience, and the sound of my own voice drowned out all the things that I should’ve been hearing and seeing.

“Maybe police departments should only recruit college graduates,” Scott shrugged, coming a step closer.

“Yeah, they want us to solve crimes by these ‘scientific methods,’ whatever that means. And what do us cops do? We kiss ass and nod our heads and take federal funds to build computers and send cops to college and it all boils down to a cop with sharp eyes and an ability to talk to people who’ll get the goddamn job done.”

“Don’t you think that in the age that’s coming, policemen will be obsolete?” Scott’s little girlfriend asked the question and she looked so wide-eyed I had to smile.

“I’m afraid not, honey,” I said. “As long as there’s people, there’s gonna be lots of bad ones and greedy ones and weak ones.”

“How can you feel that way about people and still care at all about helping them as you say you do when you arrest somebody?” she asked, shaking her head. She smiled sadly, like she felt sorry for me.

“Hell, baby, they ain’t much but they’re all we got. It’s the only game in town!” I figured that was obvious to anybody and I started to wonder if they weren’t still a little young. “By the way, are most of you social science and English majors?”

“Why do you say that?” asked the black kid, who was built like a ballplayer.

“The surveys say you are. I’m just asking. Just curious.”

“I’m an engineering major,” said the blond kid, who was now behind Scott, and then for the first time I was aware how close in on me these certain few were. I was becoming aware how polite they’d been to me. They were all activists and college people and no doubt had statistics and slogans and arguments to throw at me, yet I had it all my way. They just stood there nodding, smiling once in a while, and let me shoot my face off. I knew that something wasn’t logical or right, but I was still intrigued with the sound of my own voice and so the fat blue maharishi said, “Anything else about police work you’d like to talk about?”

“Were you at Century City?” asked the little blonde.

“Yeah, I was there, and it wasn’t anything like you read in the underground newspapers or on those edited TV tapes.”

“It wasn’t? I was there,” said Scott.

“Well, I’m not gonna deny some people got hurt,” I said, looking from one face to another for hostility. “There was the President of the United States to protect and there were thousands of war protestors out there and I guarantee you that was no bullshit about them having sharpened sticks and bags of shit and broken bottles and big rocks. I bet I could kill a guy with a rock.”

“You didn’t see any needless brutality?”

“What the hell’s brutality?” I said. “Most of those blue-coats out there are just lads your age. When someone spits in his face, all the goddamn discipline in the world ain’t gonna stop him or any normal kid from getting that other cat’s teeth prints on his baton. There’s times when you just gotta play a little catch-up. You know what five thousand screaming people look like? Sure, we got some stick time in. Some scumbags, all they respect is force. You just gotta kick ass and collect names. Anybody with any balls woulda whaled on some of those pricks out there.” Then I remembered the girl. “Sorry for the four-letter word, miss,” I said as a reflex action.

“Prick is a five-letter word,” she said, reminding me of the year I was living in.

Then suddenly, the blond kid behind Scott got hostile. “Why do we talk to a pig like this? He talks about helping people. What’s he do besides beat their heads in, which he admits? What do you do in the ghettos of Watts for the black people?”

Then a middle-aged guy in a clergyman’s collar and a black suit popped through the ring of young people. “I work in the eastside Chicano barrios,” he announced. “What do you do for the Mexicans except exploit them?”

“What do you do?” I asked, getting uncomfortable at the sudden change of mood here, as several of the marchers joined the others and I was backed up against the car by fifteen or twenty people.

“I fight for the Chicanos. For brown power,” said the clergyman.

“You ain’t brown,” I observed, growing more nervous.

“Inside I’m brown!”

“Take an enema,” I mumbled, standing up straight, as I realized that things were wrong, all wrong.

Then I caught a glimpse of the black cossack hat to the left behind two girls who were crowding in to see what the yelling was all about, and I saw a hand flip a peace button at me, good and hard. It hit me in the face, the pin scratching me right under the left eye. The black guy looked at me very cool as I spun around, mad enough to charge right through the crowd.