Читать книгу World's Toughest Cops: On the Front Line of the War against Crime - Vinnie Jones - Страница 7

More than any other police force in America, the New Orleans PD have had to prove themselves. After the worst hurricane in this country’s history laid waste to the city, they stood alone as they struggled to keep order against a tidal wave of anarchy. They took on a flood of lawlessness…and they kept New Orleans on its feet. Just.

Their battle isn’t over. The aftermath of the hurricane has left this city awash with guns and violent crime – and whole districts where teenagers with no hope of a better life take the law into their own hands.

The NOPD operate above and beyond the call of duty: and right there at the sharp end are the Special Ops unit: the Violent Offenders Warrant Squad -VOWS for short. We met some real tight outfits around the world – but none of them compared to these boys. They had faced the worst the world could throw at them – and they’d come out fighting. They were still fighting. And I was going to fight right alongside them.

New Orleans has a nickname: the Big Easy. But there was nothing easy about the job we were about to do.

THE BOXING RING was in a corner of the warehouse behind police HQ. We’d noticed it before, the last time we were here, on the way to the cars…but I really hadn’t planned on seeing it up this close. The canvas and ropes, the talcum powder and sawdust, the padded corners…and that smell that only boxing rings have. Sweat and disinfectant.

From outside it seemed big: I knew that once I was in there it was going to feel a whole lot smaller.

As I stretched and loosened up, the place began to fill with New Orleans’s finest. They sauntered in, joking, laughing, looking forward to seeing the movie star, the former professional sportsman, the English guy, humiliated by one of their own. These were the NOPD’s Violent Offenders Warrant Squad and they were all tough men, used to taking it as well as dishing it out. And I was about to go head to head with their champ. In the ring. For two rounds. For real.

I’d already been out on a couple of raids with these boys and I thought I was building up a pretty good rapport with them…but it seemed that if I wanted to ride with them on the action-packed evening shift I’d have to prove myself first. I’d heard about gang initiations, ritual beatings that new members had to endure before being accepted into the brotherhood…but I never thought I’d have to go through the same thing myself. Not with the cops.

But that’s how these guys are. They’re a tight, solid unit, a proper band of brothers. They won’t let just anybody waltz in with a camera crew and roll with them…you’ve got to gain their respect first.

My reputation precedes me as a bit of a hard man – they’d seen the movies, some of them even knew about my record on the football pitch – and so they’d come up with this little initiation test for me. They wanted to see if I was all mouth and no fists…and so they asked me to face one of their own guys in the ring.

I knew they thought I’d refuse. So of course I said yes.

To these guys I’m Hollywood – but what they didn’t know was that before coming out here I’d just spent six weeks in a gym training for my last movie. It may have been a few years since I’d earned a living as an athlete, but I haven’t exactly let myself go. And a couple of years ago I did a film called Strength and Honour with Michael Madsen, in which we both played bare-knuckle fighters. I know a bit more about throwing a punch than most movie stars.

One of the guys taped up my hands and got a pair of gloves for me. I rolled my head, flexed my shoulders, jogged on the spot. I felt pretty good. I was ready to fight.

And then Jeff Roach, the unit’s champion fighter, stepped through the door.

Oh shit.

He was big. Big? He was massive. He practically blocked out the light.

He strode over, stuck out a hand and introduced himself. He had about 15 years on me, at least three or four stones and a good couple of inches in height too.

We’d met Jeff before: he’s the team’s entry man, their top guy when it comes to smashing into properties. As one of the others had told us: ‘When we find a door Jeff can’t break through, that’s the door I’m getting for my house.’

I asked the boys for an extra-thick headguard.

Behind us I could hear them laughing, placing bets on how long I’d last. Even our camera crew were getting involved. ‘I don’t know what your man can do,’ we heard one of the cops say, ‘but the young buck can hit hard, I know that.’

Jeff and I climbed through the ropes and squared up.

‘I’m fighting for the honour of the SWAT team,’ he grinned, before putting in his mouthguard.

‘And I’m fighting for Britain, flying the flag for Britain,’ I replied. ‘So long as you don’t put me on my arse we’ll be fine. Cos if you do I’ll kick you in the bollocks anyway.’

Jeff smiled again – and lifted up his long vest. He was wearing a protective box around the crown jewels. Everyone laughed again – seems like they really had done their research: more than Gazza ever did, anyway.

I waved away the offer of a box myself – that got me some applause, at least.

Deep breaths. Everyone was here to see me go down. Time to prove myself.

The bell rang. Seconds out. Round One.

The VOWS are the New Orleans Police Department’s Special Operations Unit, their elite squad. These guys are no ordinary cops; they deal with everything from tactical assaults and SWAT raids to cruising in ‘wolf packs’ in the city’s worst areas, on the lookout for trouble.

The city is situated in the deep south of America at the mouth of the Mississippi river. It’s a beautiful place with a turbulent past – some of which isn’t too far in the past at all. The French quarter pays homage to its original settlers, but just a few miles away it’s a different story. The after-effects of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, are still being felt. Violent crime in the city is amongst the worst in the United States – and it was recently ranked as having the highest overall crime rate in the country, per head of population.

The city is flooded with guns. Old city laws allow some New Orleaneans to carry handguns in their cars and on their person – which means that even those who aren’t allowed can get them easily enough: in the US it is estimated that nearly half a million firearms are stolen every year…and an unhealthy proportion of those gun robberies happen right here.

The VOWS unit are on the front line of the crime war in New Orleans. Every day they are charged with bringing in the city’s most wanted: from armed robbers and murderers to prison escapees and drug dealers. They’re up against hardened criminals with a lot to lose, so a tough and uncompromising approach is always necessary.

And when they’re not cruising the streets or serving warrants, they’re on SWAT duty, knocking down doors and storming houses.

It’s a busy job. It’s also a dangerous job.

We first hooked up with the squad as they were preparing for a SWAT raid – as it turned out, we would be so impressed with them that we’d stick around to cover all the other aspects of their work too.

They had just finished their briefing when we were introduced – in the warehouse behind HQ. There was the boxing ring in the corner, but for the moment we were more interested in the fleet of vehicles parked up: specifically the SWAT truck, an armoured personnel carrier they call a Bear Cat. When one of these beasts is packed with men and charging through the streets on the way to a raid, the pumped-up, adrenaline-filled atmosphere is like the changing room at Wembley before the FA Cup Final. Times about a million.

The team came over, already kitted up in bullet-proofs and helmets, all carrying machine-guns over their shoulders and pistols round their waists. There were 40 of them, just about the whole unit, and if they were dressed for business, they were also pretty focused. There wasn’t much time for small-talk and getting to know us: they were getting their heads together for the task in hand.

The target was a man wanted for suspected murder. Intelligence had come through with an address – he was holed up in a house with a girlfriend and a couple of pit bulls. But the dogs weren’t the only concern: the team were also going to be looking for weapons suspected of having been used in multiple murders and armed robberies.

Trouble was expected. Shooting was a serious possibility.

According to the cops’ surveillance footage, the building was surrounded by high chain fencing – as well as their guns, the unit would be taking bolt cutters. Getting into the house and on top of him before he had a chance to try anything stupid was vitally important…and that was down to the unit’s number one entry man.

We spotted him immediately. He carried a kind of battering ram known affectionately as an ‘enforcer’ – three feet of heavy metal that he would launch at the door until it gave way – and he swung it easily by his side like it weighed nothing. His name was Jeff Roach.

Jeff’s job on SWAT missions was to get the team into the property – pure and simple. Having the enforcer helped, of course…but being the size of a mountain probably played its part too. And the bottom line was that Jeff had a reputation for being the best entry man in New Orleans.

We nodded our hellos and got ready to ride.

Because of the dangers involved in the raid – and maybe because at this stage we still weren’t known to the team, I still hadn’t proved myself to them – we would not be allowed to sit with the boys in the Bear Cat. We watched as they loaded themselves in, psyching themselves up, adrenaline levels maxed…and then, as they pulled out, we followed behind with Lieutenant Brian Lampard in a squad car.

As we sped through the streets Brian outlined exactly what was at stake.

‘The guy’s suspected of murder,’ he said, simply. ‘He obviously has violence in his past. Depending on how bad he wants to stand his ground, it’s got the potential to be a violent rush.’

Finally we came to a stop outside a detached house. Almost before we could get our bearings the truck spilled out officers and they stormed the place. The bolt cutters did their work in lightning time and then they were at the door. Jeff swung the enforcer once, twice…on the third impact the whole frame buckled and smashed and they were in, guns drawn, shouting.

The rush was amazing. We were back in the car with the lieutenant but even we couldn’t sit still. We could hear screaming, yelling, dogs going crazy – and then a woman appeared, still kicking up a storm, escorted away double-quick by a couple of the men. But what was going on inside? Where was the target?

Brian’s radio buzzed and he gave me the nod. There was no sign of the suspect; the house was secured; we had the green light to go in ourselves.

Even though we knew the place was crawling with VOWS boys, we still edged inside carefully, our hearts in our mouths. The place stank of dogs; dogshit was everywhere. It was a mess…but there was no bad guy.

There was, however, his gun – a weapon suspected of use in a double murder. It was still a result.

Outside again and there were mixed feelings from the team. The operation had gone well – in that no shots had been fired, no officers had been injured…and they had got the suspected murder weapon – but the target was still at large. One of the cops had a theory about that one: he pointed out a couple of kids on the corner of the street – all it takes is one sighting of a raid, one quick call, and the element of surprise is gone.

It made me angry. That these guys, who are just trying to take a man suspected of murder off the streets – and are risking their own lives to do it – should be stopped by a kid with a mobile phone. It was…disrespectful. Half an hour before, loading into the truck outside the police HQ they didn’t know who would be coming home. They’ve got wives, families…and the fact is that on a mission like this they could have lost a man or two – just from trying to maintain a bit of law and order, just from trying to arrest a murderer. And then someone tips him off and all that adrenaline just dissolves into frustration.

It made me angry: I couldn’t imagine how it must make the VOWS boys feel.

It might only have been half the result they wanted, but it was still a result. The suspected murder weapon would eventually be destroyed, along with around 2,300 other firearms the NOPD recover every year. Also, I couldn’t help but be impressed watching the unit in action. These boys clearly know what they’re doing.

I wanted to see more. I wanted more action.

Next day the squad agreed to let me accompany a couple of officers as they served a warrant. They were going to bring in a man wanted for assault on his girlfriend and criminal damage to a property – we were going along for the ride.

But I wanted to earn my place in the patrol car and prove I wasn’t just some tourist, a Hollywood actor come to gawp at the real hard men. From what I had seen of the unit they were a fiercely loyal, incredibly close team, prepared to lay everything on the line for each other: and I wanted to be a part of that.

Big Jeff and some of the others had the day off: I was to ride with Officer Fred Faff on this one. He has served on the New Orleans streets for 15 years and with the Warrant Squad for four. He was a pretty relaxed kind of guy – and was keen for me to get involved as much as I wanted.

I asked him what he thought about British policemen – he couldn’t believe our Bobbies do their job without proper weaponry.

‘There’s no way,’ he laughed. ‘There’s no way that I would go out on a street without a gun…Not here, absolutely not. They have criminals all over the country but in this city they are savages. They don’t care about anything.’

Before long we pulled up at the target house. Made, like so many in this city, of wood, it also had a reinforced door, on which was painted some kind of weird blue hippy mural. The windows had shutters over them. Without Jeff, access was not going to be easy.

We stood and watched as Fred and the other officers knocked on the door – politely at first, and then with greater force. No answer. They rapped the windows. No answer.

We followed Fred around the side, where a locked wooden door blocked access to the back yard. ‘Give us a hand here, Vinnie,’ he called, and we got stuck in. Fred shimmied up the wall and tried to get some leverage from the top while I gave it a bit of gentle persuasion from the front. Finally there was a pop, a crack and a click and it swung open. We were in.

No holding me back now. ‘Open up,’ I shouted, hammering on windows, trying to prise open the shutters. Nobody believed the suspect wasn’t in – he was simply hiding, hoping we’d go away.

Eventually, good old-fashioned determination paid off. Fred spotted him from the back of the house. ‘Come round to the front!’ he yelled, banging on the door. ‘Come round now and let us in.’

Finally the door opened and a skinny, half-naked man appeared. His hair was all messed and he only had a pair of shorts on…but nobody could have slept through the racket we’d been making. He didn’t seem too happy to see us and was now making a lot of noise himself, but the sergeant put an immediate lid on the situation.

‘Get dressed,’ he ordered and, with the man still protesting, raised his own voice in reply. ‘Listen dude, calm it down, take it down a notch! Your girlfriend put charges on you, deal with it.’

Eventually he got into a pair of trousers and pulled a T-shirt over his head, then the cuffs went on and he was marched into the car. ‘This is embarrassing,’ he said, nodding at our cameras. ‘You treat a man like a rat.’

The sarge just laughed at him. ‘Treat you like a rat?’ he said. ‘How’d you treat your girlfriend? Tell you what, we’ll put you in a cage and see if that’s treating you like a rat, eh?’

As he was driven away, Fred and I shook on it. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Getting that gate open was the thing. It opened up the whole case, right?’

He was half joking, but it still felt pretty good. The team were warming to us. What we didn’t know then was they still had one initiation test planned before they were ready to let us roll with them on the night shift.

On the way to the bust, Fred had pointed out gaps in the houses, huge mounds of rubble and some buildings half-collapsed or with whole walls or roofs missing. The after-effects of Hurricane Katrina were everywhere. The city wore its scars for all to see.

Not all the scars were on the landscape either. The VOWS Special Ops unit were the tightest squad of men I’d seen yet – but there was a reason for that. They had a bond forged out of the worst circumstances – they’d been through things together that you and I can’t even begin to imagine.

And any dangers they might encounter today pale in comparison to what they faced in 2005.

On Monday, 29 August 2005, New Orleans was hit by a storm greater than any in the history of America. Hurricane Katrina gained pace and power out in the Caribbean before unleashing a fury of biblical proportions on the Big Easy.

Katrina changed the city for ever. The storm slammed into the levees and floodwalls, ripping them apart and releasing a torrent of water. The power grid shorted, the pumping stations – so vital in holding back the sea – were drowned. Within hours, more than three-quarters of New Orleans was under water: in some neighbourhoods by as much as 15 feet.

People looked to the police – but the police were suffering too. At a stroke more than 70 per cent of the city’s cops became homeless…and as well as thousands of criminal files being lost, flooding ruined hundreds of guns, bullet-resistant shields and countless rounds of ammunition.

Throughout New Orleans, citizens trapped by the rising waters and the lawlessness desperately took to their rooftops, or else barricaded themselves in where they could – often ready and willing to defend themselves with guns.

On the streets, it was Armageddon, described by one local news crew as ‘a tidal wave of chaos and violence’. Stores were looted, houses were robbed, bands of outlaws and vigilantes roamed the streets, robbing, raping and pillaging at will. Police stations came under attack; paramedics were shot at; relief and aid convoys trying to get into the city were hijacked.

Three days after the storm, National Guard helicopters were brought in to evacuate critically ill patients from one hospital – they were driven off by snipers. Doctors wheeling stretchers to the helicopter had to run for their lives as bullets zipped around them.

Dead bodies floated in the dirty water, thousands more were suffering horrific injuries at the hands of the mobs…or were simply dying from starvation, lack of water, heatstroke.

Society had completely broken down.

Into the breach stepped the NOPD. We met one of the unit who, like so many of his colleagues, stayed here to do his job. His name is Jason Samuels and if any cop we encountered around the world deserves to be called a hero, he does.

‘It was almost apocalyptic,’ he said, ‘probably 85 per cent of the city was under water. At least three to four feet, and everywhere you had families stuck that needed rescuing. And then that other 15 per cent that was out of water, you had millions of people heading that way – basically to steal what they wanted, what they needed, just to find safety.’

Jason and the rest of the unit regrouped in a nearby school, determined to keep serving the city, putting the people of New Orleans before their own needs.

‘We basically learnt the survival mentality: we went and found stores that maybe weren’t flooded where we could get supplies like socks and maybe some canned food and we were able to sustain ourselves until help arrived.’

The unit spent as many hours of the day and night as they could physically manage out on the streets, patrolling the dry areas and recovering bodies from the flooded zones.

The final death toll was nearly 2,000.

But as if that whole situation wasn’t enough, Jason did all this with an open gunshot wound in his leg: just over a month before Katrina hit he was involved in a shootout with a fleeing criminal while on patrol in the city. He rolled up his shorts and showed us his left thigh – long, ragged scars ran down from the groin to the knee, and a big triangle of skin like a pizza slice was red raw and tender from all the operations since.

‘The gunshot wound in my groin area had never closed so I was constantly bleeding,’ he said, as matter-of-fact as if he was describing a headache. ‘My left leg swelled up to probably two to three times its normal size. The pain was such that I would just crawl to my boots or whatever, get dressed and go to work.’

It was unbelievable. We literally could not imagine how he did it. We couldn’t really get our heads around how anyone here coped – and our admiration for the cops who put their sense of duty before their own homes and families knew no bounds…but to do it with an open gunshot wound in your leg? To strap on your boots, haul yourself to your feet, go out and try to police the apocalypse when you could barely stand up? Unbelievable.

‘As far as American police forces go, I don’t think there’s any other unit that has been through what we’ve been through,’ he said. ‘It was akin to going away to war together.’

We could do nothing but shake his hand. Words can’t express what we thought of the guy.

No wonder this unit were so strong. No wonder they were such a team. Listening to the heroics of Jason made me proud to be serving alongside them.

And no wonder they wanted me to fight for my place on the night shift. It was time to earn my stripes. I had a date in the ring with big Jeff Roach.

The bell rang and through the headguard the shouts of all the watching cops came through as a muffled roar. Word had got around and they’d turned out in force for this one. All the VOWS unit were here: and they were all looking forward to seeing their boy put the Hollywood hard man face first on the canvas.

Jeff raised his gloves in salute and moved forward. I did the same.

I was right about this ring: now I was inside, it seemed a whole lot smaller. To be fair, Jeff himself was taking up quite a bit of room himself. I was giving up a height and weight advantage – my tactic was to draw on my speed and nimble footwork to get me through this fight.

At first it worked. Jeff dominated the centre of the ring and I danced around him, popping a few jabs in. Some even got through his guard. He moved with me, watching for the most part, knocking out a couple of slow jabs himself…I parried them easily.

But then my fitness level started to tell. I may have spent a bit of time in the gym recently, but since I stopped playing football I’m nowhere near as in shape as I used to be. My legs couldn’t keep up with my heart, my dancing slowed to more of a soft-shoe shuffle.

Suddenly a big right hook came out of nowhere and walloped me pure and clean on the chin. The world spun…my left knee wobbled, my right knee wobbled…I spun with it, wheeling away, managed to catch myself before I fell. Just.

The noise of the watching cops was nothing compared to the roar in my ears.

For the rest of the round I kept my distance – and most importantly I kept on my feet. The bell rang and I got a minute’s rest. I made it back to the corner and sat down.

Our director – bless him, he’s a lovely boy, but he’s no boxing coach. He reckoned I had a shot at this. He reckoned I should play it Ali-Foreman style, use the old rope-a-dope tactic. Let him keep hitting me for another minute or two, let him tire himself out, and then slay him in the last 60 seconds, he said. Idiot.

As I took in some water and tried to clear my head I could hear a couple of the watching cops talking to the cre.w ‘Don’t tell Vinnie now but if he beats Jeff we’re going to book him. He’s going to jail,’ laughed one of them.

That did it for me. I came out for the second round fighting.

I’d learnt my lesson and cut out on the fancy footwork. We circled each other slower now and I kept landing my jabs. With less attention paid to dancing like a butterfly I was stinging a bit more like a bee. And, more importantly as far as my face was concerned, I was keeping my guard up. As the round went on I landed more on Jeff than he landed on me.

And that’s when I saw him grinning. The bastard. Suddenly I realised – here I was, giving it my all to stay in contention, and he was cruising at 60, 70 per cent. Whenever I put a few punches together he took them…and held himself back from coming straight back at me with a big haymaker of his own.

The bell rang out and so did the applause. Jeff and I shook on it and then we both doubled up over the ropes. I’ve boxed for movies, but I hadn’t done anything like that in a long time…and I’d forgotten that sparring for the camera is nothing like actually getting in the ring for real. You think you’re fit, but after two rounds I was exhausted.

Jeff was still smiling. ‘I’d have to take the first round cos I caught him with that hook, but Vinnie’s got to take the second round cos he put a few punches together on me that I just couldn’t defend. So we’ll definitely call it a split decision.’ He laughed. ‘He might have thrown the fight you know, cos he doesn’t want to go to jail.’

He was being generous. Let’s be honest: he could have kicked the shit out of me if he wanted. He was so big and strong. Any time he wanted he could have put it on my jaw and knocked me spark out. He’s the police champion, isn’t he?

It didn’t matter. As far as the boys from the squad were concerned I’d proved myself. I’d gone two rounds with their champ. I’d given it my best shot and despite taking a whack on the chin had kept my feet. Like the man said in Raging Bull: he couldn’t knock me out. That’s what counted.

I might not have won but I’d earned their respect. And with it came a place alongside them on the notoriously eventful night shift.

When night falls, the challenge of being a cop in New Orleans becomes even greater. When the sun goes down the criminals come out to play. We’d already seen two sides of the Special Ops unit in action, on SWAT duty and serving warrants on wanted men – now it was time to run with the wolf pack.

The wolf pack is the name the squad gives to a special tactical group that hits the city’s toughest neighbourhoods tackling crime as it happens, flooding an area with a gang of cars and enough men to take on the worst situations. They hunt by the light of the moon – and thanks to my battle with Jeff Roach, we’d got ourselves a place with them.

After getting stuck in helping Fred with the arrest earlier, I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty again. Officer John Barbetti was our partner tonight – he was another big guy, with the same easy confidence in his abilities as all the VOWS unit – and he assured us that if it was trouble we were looking for, there was a pretty good chance of finding it.

‘There’s murders here, you know, every day,’ he shrugged. ‘All we do is mostly proactive kind of work. Try to stop things before they happen, or while they’re happening. This is the ninth ward area, so there’s a lot of chasing, a lot of weapons violations, people are heavily into narcotics here…’

We peered out of the window as Barbetti drove. The streets were wide, the buildings spaced evenly out, like little Monopoly houses. It was flat, dusty, scrubby…these were the poorer areas of New Orleans and amongst the worst hit by Katrina. There were plenty of abandoned and missing houses, and most of those that remained were undergoing some kind of building work. Even four years after the hurricane, this place still needed a lot of attention.

The radio did its thing and we responded. Another unit had apprehended a suspect and called for assistance. Three or four corners later and we were on it: another of the wolf pack pulled up seconds behind us.

The suspect was standing between two officers, handcuffed, staring at his feet. Next to him a knackered old bicycle lay on the patchy grass. He was just a kid, skinny and wide-eyed. Barbetti asked what had happened and one of the guys pointed at the car.

On the bonnet: one big shiny handgun. Loaded, too. Barbetti whistled. The arresting officer filled us in, immediately lapsing into that cop-speak they use, like he was filling in a report, or giving evidence.

‘I saw the subject emerge from the corner on a bicycle,’ he said. ‘And when he saw us he hopped off the bicycle and started fleeing on foot, digging in his pocket as he ran. So believing he was concealing a weapon, we jumped out and ordered him to stop. He continued running: as he got up into this area right here, he removed the firearm from his pocket and tossed it on to the concrete over there. So Officer Budrow tazed him and he was quickly subdued.’

Sounded simple enough. At least the kid wasn’t stupid enough to try using the gun. We asked him old he was. Sixteen, came the answer. Sixteen – here he was cycling around with a loaded gun in his pocket and he’s not even old enough to watch one of my films at the cinema.

It got even stranger. ‘Ask him how he got the gun,’ said one of the cops, a big grin on his face. ‘You’re gonna love this…’

We asked the kid. His excuse was about as surreal as they come. If having a good imagination was taken into consideration when judges pass sentences, he’d be walking out of court scot-free.

It seemed – according to him at least – that possessing the gun was just an accident. What he was really after was…chickens. He had been chasing a chicken underneath one of these houses when he just happened to chance across the loaded piece.

He kept the gun; the chicken got away.

Obviously we needed to get to the bottom of this. It was time for me to earn my keep and get some proper interrogation going. I wanted to see if there were any holes in his story.

‘What happened with the gun?’ I asked. ‘Where did you find the gun?’

‘Under the house,’ he mumbled.

‘And what was the chicken doing under the house?’

‘I was chasing the chicken.’

‘Why were you chasing a chicken?’

‘To sell it for clothes and stuff,’ he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘You can get 10 dollars a chicken.’

Ten bucks? How come they don’t cost more when I get them from the supermarket? I moved on.

‘Are you quick enough to catch a chicken?’ I asked. We’ve all seen Rocky, we all know that scene where he tries to catch the chicken. If Rocky Balboa couldn’t do it, I was struggling to see how this skinny kid could.

‘Yeah,’ he shrugged.

‘You sure? How many do you get in a day?’

‘I didn’t get none: I found the gun, I was going to sell it.’

It was his story and he was sticking to it; but it had also got him tazered for his trouble – 50,000 volts of electricity disabling his nervous system, knocking him out more effectively than a big right hook from Jeff Roach. We asked him how it felt.

He raised those big, wide eyes and looked at us properly for the first time. ‘I was shaking like a chicken,’ he said.

We couldn’t help but laugh…even though we knew that it was really no laughing matter. In New Orleans even 16-year-olds are involved in serious crime – young though he was, to the cops here there simply wasn’t anything that unusual about a kid of his age carrying a loaded gun in his pocket.

‘A lot of the armed robberies and now even the murders, the suspects are getting younger and younger,’ explained one of them. ‘So who knows what he had on his mind, you know?’

The point was made even clearer to us as the night wore on. The wolf pack drove through the ninth ward on a steady mop-up operation, racing from one incident to the next, pulling over suspicious-looking people on stop-and-searches, flagging down cars they didn’t like the look of…and responding to reports of shootings, muggings, drug-dealing.

And all too often, the people we were questioning, handcuffing, taking away to the cells, were younger than my own son. Officer Dave du Plentier, NOPD veteran of 18 years’ standing, explained that that was just how it was these days. ‘Look at all these people right now, in these cars and in handcuffs,’ he said, as we joined him after yet another take-down. ‘Look at their faces. They’re kids, they’re children and you look at the hardware that they’re carrying out here. The rifles, the guns.’

According to some reports, as many as 50 per cent of teenagers drop out of high school across this state – and, in the poor areas of New Orleans especially, many of them turn to crime to make a dollar.

‘By the time we get to see them, the only thing you can tell them is death or jail,’ said Dave, ‘and guess what? They don’t care about either one. Jail is almost like graduating from college for kids out here, it’s like a pen on their shirt. They just do their time, learn in jail and come back out and keep doing it.’

On just the one night shift with the wolf pack we must have seen nearly a dozen suspects questioned, cautioned, chased or arrested – most of them, it has to be said, were teenagers. I did my bit too, talking to them, checking stories, filling in back-up units and helping look for anything dodgy that might have fallen out of their pockets…and the more work we did, the more I got into it.

It was high-adrenaline, edgy stuff: and it was about to get a whole lot more edgy. I was beginning to think like a cop a bit too much for my own good.

Back with Barbetti and we’d received a call to respond to yet another stop-and-search when the unit ahead spotted a suspicious car at the junction. Almost before we could radio them back, the car took off, tyres squealing as it disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust.

Barbetti floored it and we sped after them. Houses zipped by in a blur as the speedo clocked up 50, 60, 70…when we hit 80 they were still outrunning us. More gas – and at 100 miles per hour the dust thrown up by the car ahead meant that visibility was down to practically nothing.

Barbetti spoke low and fast into the radio, his voice barely audible over the scream of the siren – and suddenly we were braking, turning, swinging a hard right and then a vicious left before gunning full ahead again. We were on a road parallel to the target now, Barbetti pushing his car as hard as he could to try to cut him off. We flew over one intersection, then another, before the radio burst into life again.

‘We got a runner!’ he said, slamming the brakes and turning left again. The other chasing unit had reported that the suspects had crashed and taken off on foot. We skidded to a stop and jumped out. ‘He’s right around here someplace,’ he said, one hand on his holster, the other swinging a torch. ‘Keep an eye out behind us.’

There were more vacant lots here than occupied houses – some plots didn’t have any buildings on them at all and nature was reclaiming the ground. Sick-looking, stunted bushes, long grass, even trees were growing just off the road – meaning we couldn’t get a clear line of sight for more than a couple of metres. There were plenty of places to hide here, and so far there was only us two units on the scene.

Suddenly I spotted a man legging it across the road and into the bushes. Barbetti saw him at the same time and took off. ‘Come here! Get down, get down, get down!’ he yelled, and dived into the darkness after him.

We looked around. Where was back-up? Barbetti had gone after the runner and suddenly we were totally alone. More to the point – what if the big cop wasn’t fast enough? Somebody needed to head round the other side, cut him off, catch him coming out.

There was nothing for it. Pulling my bullet-proof vest tight, I took a deep breath and sprinted hard over the road, skirting the scrub on my right. Call it brave, call it foolish, call it what you like – the adrenaline had kicked in and after all my experiences with these boys I wanted to grab the chance to show what I could do.

I honestly didn’t think about my own safety, not right then. We’d just come off the back of a 100-mile-an-hour chase after a night of taking down kids with guns and I had the wind up me. If I could nail this guy I was bloody well going to.

I cut diagonally into the vacant lots and burst through the bushes, every nerve straining, every muscle ready to floor the bastard…and nearly ran straight into the cops from the other unit. They had him on the ground, were slapping the cuffs on, and when they saw me come thundering through one of them held up a hand. ‘We got him, Vin,’ he said.

Just then Barbetti came charging out of the trees on the other side. Call it a pincer movement then – I may not have notched up my first take-down, but we couldn’t have co-ordinated it better if we’d planned it. Like flushing out a rat.

One down. But there was still another at large.

The boy we’d chased down – and, like all the others, he was just a boy, another teenage kid who’d fallen through the cracks in the system – confirmed that he wasn’t alone. The car was stolen, he said: but it was the other guy who stole it, when he got picked up he didn’t even know it was nicked. He said he didn’t know if his friend had a gun.

The Canine Unit was called. In this jumble of empty and smashed-up houses, derelict plots and scrubby wasteland, there were a million places to hide. Dogs might just give us the edge.

As they did their work, we moved with them. All the cops searched with guns drawn and we shadowed them, scouring the area ourselves, eyes peeled, senses straining for any sign. I still hadn’t come down from the rush of chasing the first suspect: right then I wasn’t thinking about my family, or my career, or even making a TV show about these guys – all I was thinking was how we needed to find this kid. If I could help, I would help any way I could.

And for their part, the squad were right there with me. Nobody questioned what I was doing, nobody asked me to hang back and leave it to the professionals. Finally, it seemed, I was one of the team.

We searched for over an hour. We went through every garden, every abandoned house…the dogs snuffled and sniffed, and we followed them, peering and probing every nook and cranny of the neighbourhood. We couldn’t find him. He’d disappeared, like a ghost into the New Orleans night.

Back at the car, Barbetti wasn’t too downbeat. ‘Listen, man,’ he said, ‘you did a good job tonight. You did a good job spotting the guy. It was good eyesight and it led to an apprehension. And as for the chase…that was something else. There’s one more criminal off the street right now.’

The chase. The adrenaline was wearing off and the reality of what I’d done was beginning to kick in. We’d seen so many guns in this city…thank God there were none involved right here. We left with hearts still hammering.

The New Orleans VOWS unit were unlike any other squad we encountered. If gaining their trust was difficult – and I still had the bruises to show it – then once we’d been accepted, it was magic. Rolling with them, becoming part of the team, getting involved…it was amazing how much I got into it. It felt like I was one of them.

It was only later that I fully appreciated the danger I’d been in. Before we quit the Big Easy, we hooked up with Jeff Roach again – he’d heard about our chase and he told us a story that seemed to sum it all up.

‘There was one time,’ he said, ‘we were looking for a guy wanted for second-degree murder…he was tall, like six-three, but he was slim – and we couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. So I go in the bathroom, and I don’t know how the houses are done in the UK but there was a laundry chute, where you put the laundry in and it just drops to the ground, right? And it’s like, a couple of feet wide at most, and I had holstered my gun and I was just looking at things, cabinets and whatnot, and I flicked that cabinet open and the guy was in there.’

He laughed. ‘I mean, his knees were by his face and literally you couldn’t have fit another inch in there, so I jumped back and I drew my gun, said ‘Lemme see your hands!’ and he could barely show me his hands, so we pulled him out and we got him cuffed. And after he’s out we see there was a wig in there, right?

‘And the sergeant said to me, “Lucky he didn’t have a gun!”…I moved the wig and there’s a 9mm pistol right there. If he could have moved his hand he’d have had me. I laughed then but I got home and I was like phew…I really looked in the mirror on that one, know what I mean?’

We got it loud and clear. I was lucky, I said. We shouldn’t have taken the risk.

He grinned again. ‘One thing cops here say: sometimes we’re lucky – sometimes we’re good. One of our captains who was in command during Katrina: he always used to say, “It’s better to be lucky than good – but when your luck runs out you better be good.”

‘You got the guy. You did good.’