Corruption Officer (25 page)

A few months had gone by and I was beginning to wonder if
they had forgotten about me.
 
I was
anxious to get this over with or at least find out what I was up against.
 
It’s about 6:30 in the morning and I am
already late for work, if you want to call it that, when the door to my
apartment is buzzed from down stairs in the lobby.
 
Curious as to who would be ringing my bell at
this time of morning, I pressed the intercom button to see who it was and I
asked, “Who is it?”
 
They said, “
the
Police.”
 
I buzzed
them in and scratched my head as I walk toward the bathroom not paying anything
any mind because in my neighborhood the Police will buzz anybody’s buzzer just
to gain entry into the building.
 
I had
nothing on but my pants when there was a knock on my door.
 
With a confused look on my face I went to the
door knowing that they had the wrong apartment because I don’t get into any
trouble in the streets. I open my door and six burly White detectives my size
or better were standing there.
 
One of
them asked, “Are you Gary Heyward?”
 
I
said, “Yes,” still confused. Then a Spanish woman came from around the corner
and flashed her badge.
 
She said she was
from the Inspector General’s office and that they were not here to arrest me.
 
They just want me to come with them to answer
some questions about an investigation that they were conducting.
 
I said, “Okay.”
 
When I went to close my door so that I could
put on the rest of my clothes, one of the Police officers put his foot in the
door so that I could not close it.
 
Another
came into my apartment uninvited, went with me to my bedroom, and watched me
get dressed.
 
I knew then that this was
more serious than I thought because they were treating me with caution as if
they heard that I was armed and dangerous.
 
As I put on my shirt and shoes, one cop asked
me if I had a weapon in the house.
 
Before
I could respond, the Spanish female Officer from I.G. answers, “No we took that
away from him already.”
 
I then asked, “Am
I going to need the Union or a lawyer for this questioning?”
 
Her response was, “We just want to show you
something.”
 
Now I am wondering to myself,
‘Show me something?’
 
Still confused, I
understand the I.G.s being here but what are the regular Police for - six of
them at that.
 

I finished getting dressed and we left.
 
I went down stairs not hand cuffed and got
into an unmarked car.
 
When we arrived
down town I was asked to wait a minute in a room while they prepared for me.
 
As I sat there with four of the six Officers
right there with me one of them asks me, “You really don’t know what this is
about?”
 
I nervously said, “No.”
 
Then the Spanish Officer came in the room and
said, “We’re ready for you now.”
 
I got
up and followed her in to a room that had a projector at one end and a screen
mounted on the wall at the other end.
 
I
sat down on one side of the table and she along with an older gentleman that
met us there sat across from me on the other side.
 
Then the older gentleman got right to the
point and said, “We brought you down here to give you a chance to help yourself.”
 
I looked at him confused again not
knowing what he meant.
 
Then the female
said, “Take a look,” and clicked on the projector.
 
I looked up at the screen as the video came
into view.
 
My heart sank at what I was
looking at and I began to break out into a cold sweat as the video kept
playing.
 
Their attention I noticed was
on me and my reaction to the video and nothing else.
 
I was speechless as I watched the video of my
Big Black dumb ass getting out of my van and standing right in front of a car
that clearly had a camera crew inside of it video-taping my whole conversation
and drug transaction that I did.
 
I was
in shock and all kinds of things went through my mind as they repeatedly asked
me over and over, “Is that you in the video?”
 
All I was thinking about was the sayings that, ‘These inmates are not
your friends, and they will give you up in a heartbeat.’
 
I thought about how I did not believe that
because of the amount of inmates that I trusted and the amount of time I had
been hustling and had not been caught.
 
When
they did not get a response from me, they began to ask me, “Who else was doing
it with you?
 
You could not have run all
of that by yourself!”
 

I was too caught up in the fact that the one person, that I
least expected, the one person who had been there with me from the beginning,
and that I had treated like a brother in the streets and in jail had-set-me-up.
 
I mumbled to myself, “I knew his whole
family.”
 
Then I looked up at the screen
at me and Flocko’s sister again as they continued to ask me if that was me on
that video, as if they needed confirmation, as if it wasn’t obvious, that it
was me.
 
I spoke but it came out real low
because my throat was completely dry as I asked for my lawyer and Union Rep.
 
They answered with, “You can call both, but is
that you on the video tape?”
 
Seeing that
they were so eager for me to say that it was me, I just asked again for my
lawyer never admitting that that was me, ‘Dumb Donald,’ up there on that screen
like that.
 

Little did I know that they did not need me to admit that it
was me because they had a hidden video camera video-taping me and my facial
expression when they presented the video of me to me.
 
When they saw that I wasn’t going to admit that
that was me, they told the Police to come inside the room and arrest me.
 
I was asked to stand.
 
Then they searched my pockets and placed hand
cuffs on me.
 
Then she said, “Well, we
gave you a chance to help yourself.
 
If
you had told us who else
was
doing it with you then we
could have helped you.”
 
My street sense
took over when she said that because I felt deep down she was lying.
 
I felt that they were all set to arrest me no
matter what I would have told them.
 
The
truth is, even if I was being helped I would not have said a word.
 

A chill came over my body and a lot of thoughts ran through
my head as I felt the cold steel of handcuffs on my wrists for the very first
time in my life.
 
I couldn’t help but to
wonder, “What was going to happen to me next…”

It starts.
 

When they first put the cuffs on me I was in the confines of
the office but now I am being escorted out of the building like a common
criminal.
 
I’m talking people looking and
staring at me as my head is being ducked down into an unmarked car.
 
It’s a silent ride to where I would be taken -
the Bronx Courts.
 
I am now being fingerprinted
and they take my mug shot.
 
It seemed
surreal having the arresting Officer take my picture telling me to face to the
left so that they could get my side profile.
 
Then I am placed in a small holding pen and
handcuffed to a pole that lines a wall, with some other people who have been
arrested too, and who have no clue of who I am.
 

After I am processed, I am taken upstairs and turned over to
the Corrections Officers that run the pens up there for the Bronx house.
 
I am greeted by one of them that I know and he
tells me to have a seat on a couch that is placed in front of a desk.
 
He asks me if I am alright and tells me that
they were told that there would be more Officers coming who are going to be
arrested.
 
His attitude was that this was
some bullshit political move that the department was on.
 
As I sat there one-by-one others arrived, amongst
them was the other Officer I had been searching for earlier to find out what
they had on me.
 
When he came in and sat
down, our eye contact said it all.
 
We
both knew that we were up
shits creek
.
 

He let me use the phone to make as many calls as I wanted
to.
 
I called my best friend and told him
what had happened.
 
I told him not to
tell my moms because I was going to wait to see what happened when I saw the
judge.
 
My theory was that at worst case
if I lose my job I could always make some other reason up to my family.
 

At this time a union lawyer shows up and is livid that they
had us this way when, to him, the charges weren’t that serious.
 
A female Captain came into the area and asked
the Officer if we were the arrested Officers.
 
He said yes and then she said, “I am sorry but
they can’t sit here.
 
They have to be put
inside some holding pens.”
 
We all got up
and were placed in individual one man pens.
 
I saw the hurt on the Officer’s face having to
lock us in like that.
 
As I sat there, I
thought to myself, ‘How the fuck did this happen?’
 
An Officer, I used to know, gave me a sad
stare.
 
She then locked the holding pen
that I was placed in at the Bronx Criminal Court House of the Grand Concourse.

“Yo, bigman!” a detainee soon to be inmate, yelled out to
me.

I ignored him because I was deep in my own thoughts, worse -
I was in shock.
 
I could not comprehend
what was going on around me.
 
My chest
tightened, my breathing was shallow, and my brain felt like it was too big for
my skull.
 
A hundred things flashed in my
mind.
 
Again, “Yo,
bigman!
 
Why you
in here bigman?!”
 
Getting no
response from me the detainee asks a passing Corrections Officer, “Yo,
C.O
.!
 
Why he gets to
be in a pen by his self and we gots to be packed in here like sardines and
shit!?
 
Who the fuck is he, the
president?!”
 
The Officer just looked at
me with disgust, shook his head, then turned to my would-be tormentor and said,
“Shut the fuck up before I give you something else to worry about besides being
sandwiched in!”
 
He then glared at me.
 
All I could do was put my head down.
 
I had just gotten arraigned.
 
And what I thought was going to happen,
didn’t.
 
I thought by me being a Corrections
Officer, who had gotten into trouble don’t act like I’m the only one that the Judge
was going to let me go on my own recognizance so that I could fight my case
from the street
 

Syke!
 
Toto, you’re
not in fucking Kansas anymore.
 

Instead, the D.A. gave a speech that made me look worst than
Saddam Bin Hussein Laden!
 
She hit the Judge
with all sorts of “hideous and heinous” acts and shit!
 
All upset about me being uncooperative (not
snitching) and shit!
 
Da, fuck!
 
If I didn’t know that it was me she was
talking about in her exaggerated speech, I would have sworn that the dude she
was talking about like, killed thirty little kids or something!
 
After the first five
or six charges I
lost count.
 
I just kept looking at the Judge,
shaking my head.
 

Then I looked over my shoulder, standing there handcuffed, and
it hit me.
 
I saw her.
 
We made eye contact.
 
I crumbled.
 
I heard my heartbeat get louder, and it blocked out whatever was being
said about me.
 
She had the look of
support.
 
I had the look of someone
causing embarrassment, humiliation and most of all, pain.
 
I wanted her to see that I was sorry.
 
I did not want her to come here to find out
about me this way.
 
I wanted to say so
many things that would comfort her, something that would make the pain that she
was hiding under her face go away, but I couldn’t.
 
I was instructed to face forward.
 

That is when I heard this front page grabbing, charge
exaggerating, ‘I am bucking for promotion on this nigga’s back,’ ass bitch, say,
“Your honor, we are asking that the bail be set at $100,000 dollars!”
 
I looked over at this crazy bitch and said,
“You bugg’n!”
 

I shook my head franticly.
 
I looked back at my sister who had accompanied
my moms.
 
Her expression was of shock.
 
All I thought, as my cardboard cut-out of a
lawyer argued to get my bail reduced, was ‘I am sorry momma.
 
I am sorry.’
 
They then led me back to the holding pen where
my man, do-dirty (the detainee) had recruited a supporting cast.
 
At that time it became a joint effort to find
out why I was isolated.
 
I again ignored
them.
 
Then without warning I heard the
television that was positioned facing the pens for inmate viewing purposes
blare out the news for the night.
 

“Three Corrections Officers and three counselors were
arrested today on drug charges!”
 

I turn to look up at the television in shock!
 
Right there, front and center, they had my
picture plastered all over the tube!
 
I
thought to myself, ‘No they didn’t!
 
No
these dirty motha’s didn’t!’
 
But, yes,
they did.
 
They had my picture up there
first and foremost blown up for the world to see, while they explained and
exaggerated the story.
 
All I remembered
was the newscaster saying, “Correction Officer, Gary Heyward could be facing
life in prison.”
 
I thought to myself, ‘
For
a half ounce of coke!?
 
Come on now, knock it off!’
 
Then
came
‘the
coalition.’
 
I put my head down to brace
myself.
 

“Ayyooo, bigman!
 
You
was
doing it like
that bigman?”
 

Then one detainee to another, “Yo son, dude was gett’n
it!”
 
He and his back up dancers broke out
in laughter.
 
Then I was the topic of
discussion for the rest of the night.
 

“I bet it was a snitching ass nigga that blew it up!”
 

“Nigga’s don’t know how to act when they got a nigga looking
out for them.”

I sat there thinking of my family, thinking of my kids.
 
What will they think when they find out?
 
All I could think
of
over and over again was, ‘How the fuck did this happen!!’