W. Griffin: The Vigilantes

It also, conveniently, helped ease the burden on the overcrowded jails. And that, in turn, eased the financial burden on a cash-strapped city to provide three square meals a day, armed guards for supervision, and sundry other services.

The vast majority of America’s biggest cities used the bail bond system, a private-sector enterprise administered by for-profit companies. In contrast, the City of Philadelphia (and the City of Chicago, Illinois, which had a similar number of fugitives from justice) used a system of deposit bail, which was government-funded and government-run.

In Philly, it was overseen by judges from the Municipal Court and from the Court of Common Pleas.

Using a worksheet titled “Pretrial Release Guidelines,” an arraignment magistrate determined the severity of the crime and the risk factor of the person charged with the crime to set the bail. The guidelines would, in theory, set a bail high enough to ensure that the person charged with the crime would appear in court so as not to lose the security fee.

Once the bail fee had been set, both the bail bond and the deposit bond worked essentially the same way. Generally, depending on various factors, the person charged with the crime had to pay only ten percent of the whole security fee to get out of jail.

The main differences between the two models arose if the offender missed or skipped out on his court date. Under the bail bond model, the court went after the bail bondsman for the deadbeat’s forfeited fee-the company then had a financial incentive to find the deadbeat and deliver him to the court. There was no similar financial incentive, however, with a deposit bond. The government already owned the deadbeat’s IOU. It was funny money, more or less worthless unless they hunted down the deadbeat and collected the remaining fee-if they could find him, and if he had the funds to pay.

And so, not surprisingly, those who’d blown their deposit bail numbered around fifty thousand-no one knew the exact number because, due to more bureaucratic blundering, a master listing was never kept.

These fugitives collectively owed hundreds of millions of dollars for their unpaid IOUs.

Worse, in the meantime they remained at large on the streets, acting with impunity-effectively telling the City of Philadelphia and its judicial system to go fuck itself.

All kinds of craziness going on down there, Payne thought, while I’m up here enjoying the company of this incredible goddess.

And God knows I do love her.

But do I love being out there chasing some murderer more?

He sighed.

The answer-right here, right now-is not no, but hell no!

And Amanda’s not complaining that they pulled me back off the street and stuck me at a desk in Homicide. There’s absolutely no question that deep down, all things being equal, she’d rather I do something other than be a cop, anything that didn’t risk me getting shot in the line of duty, like her father, or killed, like my father and uncle.

And that obit damn sure spelled it out.

While Amanda Law had been in her first week of recovery, under the shrink’s orders simply to rest at home and to reconsider taking the anti-anxiety meds that he’d prescribed and that she’d steadfastly refused-“I don’t need to be popping Prozacs and I damn sure don’t need them turning my mind to putty so I just sit there and drool all over myself ”-her type A personality had her brain working overtime.

Dealing mentally with the abduction and the attempt at extortion had been bad enough. But then came the knowledge that the bastards who’d kidnapped her had made a regular habit of committing sexual assaults and, worse, their leader had just killed one teenage Honduran girl-an illegal immigrant whom he’d forced into prostitution.

Naturally, logically, all that had caused her to consider her own mortality-How close had he been to killing again? He certainly threatened me-and then that of Matt.

And in the process of working through what-if scenarios-What happens if we continue seeing each other? What happens if we get married and move into that vine-covered cottage with the white picket fence that Matt loves to mention? And then what happens if he stays on with the department?-she’d come up with, as her father the cop had taught her to do, a worst-case scenario.

Amanda explained all this-and more-to Matt in great detail. And then handed him the absolute worst case as it had manifested itself to her: as an obituary.

Amanda had written the obit as if she were Mickey O’Hara, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who was well respected by both police rank and file and brass. Over the years, Matt and the wiry Irishman ten years his senior had even become fairly close friends.

Amanda had gotten a great deal of the details for the obit from searches on the Internet, mostly from the Bulletin’s online archive of articles, many of which had been articles written by O’Hara. The rest of the details had been provided by Matt’s sister. Amy Payne had never liked that her brother was a cop, and had been more than happy to fill in any gaps for her old college dorm suitemate.

Payne thought that Amanda had done a helluva job putting together the obit. He hadn’t been able to shake it from his mind, which was no surprise, considering the subject:

The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line: KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Homicide Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, 31, Faithfully Served Family and Philly-and Paid the Ultimate Price

By Michael J. O’Hara

Staff Writer, The Philadelphia Bulletin

Photographs Courtesy of the Family and Michael J. O’Hara

PHILADELPHIA-The City of Brotherly Love grieves today at the loss of one of its finest citizens and police officers. Sergeant Matthew Mark Payne, a nine-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department and well known as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line, was gunned down last week in a Kensington alleyway as he dragged out a fellow officer who’d been wounded in an ambush.

Payne’s heroic act amid a barrage of bullets sealed, right up until his last breath, his long-held reputation as a brave, loyal, and honorable officer and gentleman.

Friends and family say that part of what made Payne such an outstanding civil servant, one that personified the department’s motto of Honor, Integrity, Sacrifice, was that he didn’t have to do it.

He chose to do so.

A Family That Served-and Sacrificed

When, almost a decade ago, Payne graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, he could have followed practically any professional path other than law enforcement.

He’d enjoyed a privileged background, brought up in upscale Wallingford, in all the comfort that a Main Line life afforded. After attending prep school at Episcopal Academy, then completing his studies at U of P, he was expected to pursue a law degree and, perhaps, join his adoptive father’s law practice, the prestigious firm of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.

Instead, Matt Payne chose something else: He decided that he should defend his country.

He signed recruitment papers with the United States Marine Corps, only to discover that a minor condition with his vision barred him from joining the Corps.

Determined to serve in some other capacity, Payne joined the Philadelphia Police Department.

Again, he didn’t have to. If anything, Matt Payne had a pass. But, again, he chose to.

A pass, because his biological father, Sergeant John F. X. Moffitt, known as Jack, was killed in the line of duty, too-shot dead while responding to a silent burglar alarm at a gasoline station. And Jack Moffitt’s brother, Captain Richard C. “Dutch” Moffitt, commanding officer of the department’s elite Highway Patrol, had been killed as well while trying to stop a robbery at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Avenue.