Читать книгу LIFE AFTER RUSSIAN ROULETTE: REDEMPTION - Michael Kaminski - Страница 7

With the coming of spring, Western District started to heat up with the warmth of the weather. I felt the changes in human temperatures as my feet hit the hard pavement. More people sat on their stoops in the evening. There was more traffic and more calls for service. I sensed that April was going to be an interesting month.

The domestic disturbance calls increased. None of us liked responding to them. We agreed that we would rather be called in for a bar fight than be in the middle of a relationship or a marital dispute. You never knew who was going to turn on you. In a bar fight, you acquire a better understanding of the situation.

It was not uncommon to be the target of a bottle or some other object when I patrolled the streets, especially on night shift. Many times, I heard the sound of glass breaking behind me yet rarely stopped to turn around. If I were really the intended target, I knew I would have felt the bottle. The goal of the game was not to show fear.

I was only out of the academy for about four months but I already felt like a seasoned veteran. As I passed the people standing on the sidewalk or sitting on the stoops, I always smiled and said “Hi” or made some other acknowledgement of their presence. I thought about my neighborhood and where I grew up. It was not that much different. I lived in a row home now in Brooklyn Park, just across the city line from Brooklyn. I thought about how I would feel if a police officer walked up and down my street day and night.

On one exceptionally balmy Friday evening, as I was on routine patrol on North Avenue, I noticed an elderly couple engaged in a heated argument across the street. They yelled and cursed so loudly at each other that a small group of neighbors gathered around.

I crossed the street and approached the man and woman. As the crowd turned their attention toward my direction, a shudder of apprehension washed over me. People in Western had mixed feelings, thoughts and opinions about police, especially white cops. Mostly resentment, distrust and suspicion – valid reasons most of the time.

“What’s going on?” I smiled. Both the elderly man and woman appeared to be slightly intoxicated as they stopped their argument and looked at me.

“Officer, we want a divorce,” the woman replied. “I just can’t stand him anymore. He’s too bossy.”

“How long have you been married to each other?” I asked as the crowd looked on.

“About 35 years,” the man answered. “But I just can’t take her actions and attitude anymore.”

“Why don’t you just get a divorce?” I continued smiling. “You are causing a scene and I really don’t want to arrest you both for disturbing the peace, or disorderly conduct, or public drunkenness.”

“We can’t afford a lawyer, officer,” the man replied. “But I don’t want to live with her any longer. What would you do, officer? You’re the law.”

I smirked and thought about the situation for a moment. “You don’t want to go to jail tonight, do you?” I replied.

“No, officer,” they both responded.

“Ok. Then both of you put your right hands on my badge,” I said. They looked at me, confused, but agreed. I saw the neighbors becoming a little concerned about what I was going to do.

“By the power vested in me by the City of Baltimore and with the authority of The Baltimore Police Department,” I spoke in a commanding voice. “I pronounce and decree that both of you are now officially divorced from each other. Now you may go your separate ways.”

They thanked me and walked away.

Was this legal? Did it avoid a confrontation with the community? Did it prevent two very nice and elderly people, who were temporarily intoxicated, from being arrested? Did it actually save their marriage?

Western now became a comfortable place for me. I had good feelings about my foot post, my squad, the people who lived in the district and the police who were assigned to Western. I felt like I belonged somewhere.

As I walked the streets on patrol, I thought about what it must have been like to grow up and call this part of Baltimore home. Although both of my parents worked very hard at minimum wage jobs in the city, I had a very good middle class life as a child. My parents always gave me what I wanted. I lived a very sheltered life as a child. Then, I also had very low self-esteem growing up and in high school. I was a fat kid with no assertiveness. I don’t think I would have survived in this neighborhood.

The question still remained unanswered for me after almost five months on the street: “Why did I really want to be a cop?”

At this point, I still did not have a good reason or even an honest answer, especially for myself. When I thought about it, I barely made it through the academy. I could not climb the ropes. I was not good in tactical self-defense or hand-to-hand fighting. I almost did not qualify on the pistol range. In fact, I was reprimanded one time on the range for pulling my service revolver and shooting too soon. I was not an aggressive person by nature, although in Southeast Asia, I did what I had to do to survive. But in the academy I did well enough, in general, to graduate.

Now, here I was in Western. Maybe this was where I was supposed to be. Many times during our after shift meetings when we processed and discussed the calls of the night with a couple cases of beer, Sergeant Florey told me that I should have been a social worker. Actually, he should have followed that profession. Florey was too sensitive to be a squad leader in Western.

On foot patrol, during the quiet times when you just walked the post, you have the opportunity to think and reflect on many things that enter your mind and affect your behavior.

I was in the worst district in the department. Once again, I was challenged, even forced, to face and confront my fears – the fear of failure, the fear of not measuring up to the expectations of other people and the fear of being a coward in critical situations. Then I hid my fears very well, not only from others, but especially from myself.

I learned at a very early age how to find strength, security, power and courage in a bottle. Alcohol allowed me to suppress my fears. Alcohol kept me alive in Southeast Asia and Vietnam. Now I knew it would get me through my inner personal and hidden challenges on the streets of Western District. The same inner war -– just a different location.

The war that I fought was within me. It was in my mind, within my soul. I constantly wrestled with a lot of jumbled thoughts, emotions and fears as I walked the streets alone. Mostly I wrestled with my conscience, the decisions and choices I made and many of the things I did and witnessed.

Western was just a different geographical war zone, a place for me to confront my fears and confront myself once again. I was afraid of hesitating if the time came to back up a fellow police officer. I was afraid of confrontation. I was afraid of not being a coward. And yet, I was also afraid of how society would view our actions in certain situations if they ever knew the truth.

In many ways, I still hid away as I did when I was a child. I spent most of the last nine years trying to run from my sheltered childhood. In a way, I escaped to Southeast Asia only to prove something within me. Now I fled to Western every day, every night, and every shift for the same reasons. Western was a magnetic force pulling at me to prove something to myself again.

Every shift, I was afraid when I walked my post but I did not admit it to anyone. In reality, I was afraid to face myself. I was afraid of going inside that dark cave of my psyche and coming face to face with what I did not want to see – the real me.

I was no different from the people I resented. However, I would not understand that truth until years later when I worked undercover.

I was constantly at war within myself. The conflicts did not come to an end until I took a good and honest look at the man in the mirror. My perception of law enforcement, and maybe my perception of myself, changed the longer I walked the streets in Western. It became a psychological war again. What is right? What is wrong? What is ethical? What is not? What is legal? What is moral?

I knew other districts were not this bad. Yet, in a strange and addictive way, this was where I really wanted to be. Patrolling the streets, dark alleys and side streets of Pennsylvania and West North Avenues on night shift was like sitting under an old and rotting tree during a lightning storm. It was like waiting for the bolts of lightning to hit the tree and have it come crashing down on my head. The game was that I did not move from under the tree. I had power over life and death especially mine.

It was always about the game. I did not really understand the rules until three years later when I was in organized crime and drug groups. See, you haven’t really experienced life until you think you are going to die. That was the thrill of the game – life or death. It depended on who won, who had the most power. And even if you won, you still died a little more each time within your soul.

Russo continued to work his informants for drug locations. We never asked him how he got his information. We just hit the houses in the early morning hours.

One night, during an early morning raid, we hit a house just like we did so many times before. We knew the drill. We knew what we were assigned to do. And, we were good at what we did.

We broke down the front door and the rear door at exactly the same time, like clockwork, and rushed the house from both directions, quick, efficient, and effective. However, when we broke down the back door and rushed in we found a family having breakfast. The children screamed and cried. The adults were in shock and fear of a police assault. It was chaos.

After Sergeant Florey and Russo talked with the adults and showed them the search warrant, Florey and Russo realized they made a mistake. We raided the wrong house.

All I could do was just stand there and watch the children crying at the kitchen table as they sat in front of their bowls of cereal. I felt feelings of shame, guilt and sadness all together as we left. I thought about how I would have felt if this happened to me – the shock of uniformed police rushing into my home at five o’clock in the morning. Guns pointed at my head and my family. I would file charges and sue Anne Arundel County for this violation of privacy.

As we were leaving, we heard Sergeant Florey and Russo apologizing for the mistake. Russo was given either bad information or location, but the damage was done. The doors were smashed. This family would never forget the experience. However, there was no complaint filed. It was like it never happened. There was no police incident report. People were afraid of the police. That was our last raid.

I did not realize it at the time, but as May was coming to an end, so was my career with the Baltimore City Police Department. The morale in Western was bad. It reflected the general morale of the entire police department. Our squad became more tense. I felt the under current in the community as I walked my post. Negotiations between the police union and the city government were breaking down. Rumors of a possible police strike hung in the thick summer air. June was going to be a very hot month in many ways. Both tempers and temperatures elevated to the boiling point.

During the next couple weeks, a typical Friday night would consist of the usual round-ups and illegal jail incarcerations. There would be a small police instigated riot and a false call for a man with a gun at the Oxford Tavern made by me just for fun on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Life and law in the Wild West. It all depends on how you justify it. Right or wrong?