Brad Parks - The Good Cop

This time I was surprised to see one of the televisions contained an image of the Reverend Doctor Alvin LeRioux, all three-hundred-plus sweat-mopping pounds of him.

But it wasn’t one of his commercials. It looked like he was just beginning … a press conference? He was standing on the steps of Redeemer Love Christian Church in front of a bank of microphones. All the local television channels had obviously been invited. The agent-of-Satan local newspaper had not been.

“Oh, what the hell is he doing?” I asked no one in particular.

A few of the reporters chained to the All-Slop looked up at me, then reburied their heads in their laptops. We were getting the feed from the local twenty-four-hour news station, which always cut into press conferences on the early side, so it hadn’t quite started yet. But it was clearly about to. The camera was tight on Pastor Al, who was gesturing for someone to join him at the podium. Then the camera panned out slightly to capture Mimi Kipps, dressed in her finest suit, with her chin held defiantly high, coming to her minister’s side.

“Now what the hell is she doing?” I asked, but again no one paid attention to me.

I grabbed the appropriate remote control and turned up the volume just as the festivities began.

“Thank you for coming,” Pastor Al boomed in his best basso profundo. “I have gathered you here to discuss the death of one of our community heroes, Detective Darius Kipps of the Newark Police Department.”

Wait, what happened to “private moments” and sharing words in confidence and not publicizing tragedy? I guess all that went out the window when the good Reverend Doctor realized he could get himself some face time out of this. He had timed the press conference perfectly to be able to get sound bites on all the six o’clock news programs-and I’m sure they would be recycling it at ten and eleven as well.

“The Newark Police Department has put out a press release, indicating the death of Detective Darius Kipps was due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the pastor said, then he brought down the hammer:

“The proud family of Detective Kipps disputes this finding. We are calling on the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and the Essex County Medical Examiner’s Office to recognize its conflict of interest and step aside in this matter. We would like the attorney general of the State of New Jersey to perform an independent investigation into the cause of death.”

In the State of New Jersey, buying a gun can be a tedious process. Buying a whole lot of guns is not legally possible.

It was this basic fact that helped Red Dot Enterprises to thrive.

New Jersey is one of just six states that does not have a version of the Second Amendment-guaranteeing the right to bear arms-in its state constitution. It has outright bans on any weapon that chambers more than fifteen bullets, and either restrictions or bans on a variety of other weapons, including semiautomatic guns.

Then there’s the paperwork. Would-be gun buyers must first acquire a Firearms Purchaser Identification Card from their local police department. The application fee is only five dollars, but it requires fingerprinting, which costs an additional sixty. Processing of the form takes a minimum of thirty days, though it can sometimes take longer, depending on how rushed the municipality feels. And not many of them feel rushed.

Felons are, of course, denied, as per federal law. But New Jersey codicils restrict gun ownership further. Anyone who has committed a crime that could have required them to spend six months or more in jail-whether or not they actually served the time-are banned from buying a gun. So are people convicted of crimes involving domestic violence. Other grounds for denial include treatment for mental illness, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, narcotics addiction, or physical defects. Police chiefs or their surrogates are expected to conduct an interview and check references, and are given broad authority to reject applications.

But that’s only the first step. Holders of a valid Firearms Purchaser Identification Card must then obtain a separate Permit to Purchase a Handgun for each individual gun they wish to buy. That requires filling out another form with the local police-with another minimum thirty-day wait and another thorough background check-and can again require fingerprinting, though the police chief has the discretion to waive that requirement if fingerprints already exist on file and valid identification is presented.

Once a person has obtained both permits, the latter of which is only good for ninety days, they may then purchase a single handgun from a licensed dealer. If they can find one. The onerous nature of the state’s gun laws pushed many dealers out of business decades ago. In most of the state’s cities-including Newark and Camden, its most violent municipalities-there are no retail outlets that sell guns.

The result of all this regulation means that, each year, at least three out of every four guns used to commit a crime in New Jersey come from outside the state. And those are just the guns that are traceable. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the origin of roughly half the guns recovered by law enforcement in New Jersey cannot be determined. The record-keeping is either incomplete or nonexistent; or the guns’ serial numbers have been obliterated. It is widely assumed these guns come from states whose laws allow guns to be acquired more easily.

Indeed, New Jersey’s laws-enacted in response to the epidemic of gun violence that has plagued its cities for decades-have had the unintended consequence of proving that old NRA bumper sticker: when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

If anything, Red Dot Enterprises hoped New Jersey’s gun control laws would get tougher.

It would mean even less competition.

The anointed man of God prattled on for a while about Jesus, Lady Justice, heroism, and other topics on which he felt he could speak with some authority. There were a lot of pretty words and some fine elocution, though anyone listening carefully would have heard that he wasn’t offering any real information. To distill it to one sentence: the family of Darius Kipps didn’t know much, just that they weren’t buying the official version they were being sold.

Midway through the sermon, I saw Tina Thompson leave her roost and scurry three doors down to the corner office, where Harold Brodie presided. I wanted to alert her to what was happening, but she was heading in the wrong direction and I didn’t want to miss anything on the off chance the good reverend said something useful.

He didn’t, of course. But once he got himself wound down, he invited Mrs. Kipps to the podium. Next to him, she looked small, and she was partially obscured by the microphones, which had been set at the right height for a six-foot-six minister, not his five-foot-five parishioner. She was gripping a folded piece of paper, from which she read:

“Darius Kipps was a proud father, a caring husband, and a dedicated police officer. Under no circumstance would he take his own life. We are calling for this investigation in the hopes that the truth will come out.”

She stepped away from the podium, with nothing more to say. And, of course, the TV people didn’t need anything else: properly edited, she had just given them the perfect ten-second sound bite. She even punched the words “the truth” to give it the necessary bit of drama.

Shortly after she finished, the all-news station cut back to the studio, so I never got to see if there was anything more to the performance. Then again, I doubted that any of the questions and answers that followed-if there even were any-would have elucidated much. The Kipps family was making a big, public stink. That was the only takeaway that mattered.