Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

The crowd that surrounded Thomlinson tonight was a mix of men and women, all of them police personnel, and all with the same purpose: to gather the strength to keep from drinking. Thomlinson scanned the room, where faces displayed hope or despair. Most in the crowd were young rookie cops ensnared by the lure of local bars that neighbored their precinct, where they could revel the night away with other cops. Always with other cops.

Some of Father O’Connor’s fledglings recovered, regained their lives, and went on to become productive police officers. Some didn’t. For them, often fighting off the inclination to put the barrel of their service revolver in their mouth and pull the trigger, another career awaited. Thomlinson, at age forty-three, with twenty years under his belt, felt he leaned more toward the whiskey-faced veterans who made up the rest of the crowd, many of whom were barely holding on until retirement.

“Hello, Cedric. Glad you could make it.” O’Connor placed a warm hand on Thomlinson’s shoulder before making his way toward the front of room. A young officer, with a wife and two kids, had just finished speaking about the struggle he was having with alcohol. A struggle that threatened both his marriage and his career.

“Would anyone else like to speak?” Father O’Connor asked.

Thomlinson cast his eyes to the floor. He had plenty to say but chose to keep it to himself. He knew he was not well respected by his fellow officers, present company included. The resentment stemmed from an incident that occurred while he and his partner, Harold Young, were undercover working Narcotics. A controlled buy was all that was to go down that afternoon. Nothing more.

It began with a drug dealer stepping out of the shadows of a darkened hallway and asking Thomlinson if everything was cool.

“Yeah, mon. Everything’s cool,” Thomlinson had assured him. But that wasn’t the case. Thomlinson had spent the night before tossing back shots of tequila at Cassidy’s Hide-away and was hungover. So when a gun materialized in the dealer’s hand, followed by shots, the ill-prepared Thomlinson caught one above the right shoulder blade and was knocked to the floor. In the cross fire that followed, undercover police officer Harold Young was killed.

As Thomlinson was lying on a rescue vehicle’s stretcher, he caught the look of astonishment on the face of the sergeant who had helped him climb in. He was staring at Thomlinson’s gun. A gun that was still in its holster.

In the official report it was indicated that Thomlinson was situated behind Detective Young and could not fire without the risk of hitting his partner. But Cedric Thomlinson knew his drinking was a major factor that helped deliver the officer to an early grave. That reality would follow him for life.

The NYPD is like a small town where news travels at lightning speed. Thomlinson soon became known as the cop who didn’t pull his gun in a shootout. Not a good handle to be saddled with. The resultant ostracism brought on more guilt, which led to heavier drinking. The heavier drinking spawned depression and with it, thoughts of suicide.

A compassionate borough commander, Todd Emerson, now retired, had a sense of what was going on. He arranged for Thomlinson to be transferred from Narcotics to Homicide. New surroundings would do him good, Emerson reasoned. There, Thomlinson would report to Lieutenant John Driscoll, a man with a reputation for fairness. But Driscoll was a keen observer as well. It wasn’t long before the Lieutenant recognized Thomlinson for what he was. A drunk. He tried reasoning with Thomlinson but couldn’t promote change in a man unwilling to own up to his addiction. Driscoll was faced with a dilemma: What to do with this newly assigned detective, a liability to both the job and to himself? Thomlinson was heading for a serious breakdown, the consequences of which could directly affect not only the new homicide detective but the Homicide squad itself.

Driscoll was forced to make a move that might have ruined Thomlinson’s career but that may have saved his life. He placed a call to the representative at the Detectives Union and had the detective “farmed.” Thomlinson was stripped of his gun and shield and spent the next six weeks in a recovery program at a retreat house in the secluded woods of Delaware County-“The Farm.” Thomlinson had little choice. If he refused to complete the program conducted by a group of certified alcohol and substance abuse counselors, he’d be fired.

Thomlinson acquiesced and was eventually returned to active duty.

Yet, here he was, back in the program. Again.

Father O’Connor took a seat next to Thomlinson. “You stayin’ out of trouble?” he asked.

Thomlinson nodded.

“How’s she doing?”

The priest was asking about a teenager, the reason the detective was back.

“She’s a fighter,” said Thomlinson.

“You’re a fighter, too,” said the priest. “It takes stamina to keep the sleeping tiger at bay.”

In the course of a prior investigation, the detective had been ordered to drive to the young lady’s house, pick her up, and bring her to Driscoll’s office, where she was to provide a helpful statement. It was a routine assignment. On his way, though, he stopped to buy a Lotto ticket. While he was standing in line, waiting to purchase what he hoped would be a ticket back to the islands, the young girl was abducted. In an attempt to silence the voices of condemnation that riddled his brain, Thomlinson turned, again, to alcohol.

In this man’s police department, very few get a second chance. He had Driscoll to thank for that, and he silently voiced his appreciation during the communal Lord’s Prayer that ended the meeting. After that, Thomlinson walked out into the brisk night air, made his way to his cruiser, slipped in behind the steering wheel, and repeated the prayer. This was, after all, his second go-round.

Another hot and steamy Sunday morning in July greeted the first visitors to the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. Among them was a wiry-haired man with his six-year-old son.

“Permission for me and my son to come aboard, sir?” The man was addressing the sailor who was guarding the gang-way to the museum’s main attraction: the Intrepid’s flight deck.

“Permission granted,” the sailor replied, firing a rigid salute to the little freckled-faced boy flaunting a white ensign’s cap inscribed

USS IOWA.

“Let’s go, Daddy!” the boy said.

Scurrying up the steel-studded steps, they reached the carrier’s upper deck. It was immense. Gutted warplanes stood silent under a blistering sun. A semicircle of onlookers had formed around the exhibit’s newest acquisition: a Russian MiG-21.

The boy’s attention was diverted to a loud commotion erupting behind an F-14 Tomcat. Filled with curiosity, he bolted behind the aircraft. A bare-chested youth, his wrists in handcuffs, was yelling at his girlfriend. Provoked, the girl lunged forward, striking her restrained Romeo on the side of his head with the heel of her shoe.

“See that? See that? Why ain’t ya handcuffing her?” the youth screamed. “Ain’t that assault with a deadly weapon?”

“Any more out of you, young lady, and you’ll be riding in the wagon, too,” the military guard warned. He barked orders into his handheld radio. “Reilly, here! We got ourselves a situation on the flight deck. Get a transport ready.”

“What exactly we lookin’ at?” the dispatcher’s voice crackled back.

“A domestic quarrel…with injuries. I cuffed the agitator after he slapped his girlfriend in the face. While I had him immobilized, she hauls off and tattoos him on the side of the head with her shoe.”

The guard positioned himself between the two combatants to block another blow from the irate girlfriend.