“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.
CHAPTER 3
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.
I was still holding the remote control in my hand, figuring out what to do about any of this, when Tina emerged from Brodie’s office and walked straight for me.
“Brodie just saw that press conference and he’s decided we need to go after this, guns blazing,” she said. “I guess he feels like he owes it to this minister guy after the rough ride we gave him a little while back. You got enough stuff to put together something by maybe eight, eight thirty? Lead with the family calling for the investigation, get the AG’s office comment, then pad it out with all that touchy-feely stuff about him and the G.I. Joe dolls.”
I couldn’t help myself. I made a display of walking around her, bending down and pointed toward her behind.
“Oh, hey, look at that!” I exclaimed.
“What?” she said, trying to look back at what I was doing.
“I think there are some monkeys flying out of your ass.”
She stuck her hands on her hips and looked in another direction.
“I just don’t know if I want to
waste
my time on a
nonstory
like this,” I said.
As she sighed, I continued: “I have copy due on something else by the end of the week, and the editor, let me tell you, she won’t accept any excuses for it not being done because she’s
never
wrong.”
I stopped for a moment just to make sure, you know, we were still having fun with this. And I think we were.
Or maybe it was just that I was having enough fun for two because she finally said, “Are you finished?”
“Let me think about it,” I said, paused for five seconds, then added, “Yes, I think I am.”
“Great. Then please get to work. Brodie has a massive, throbbing woodie for this”—it was
Eagle-Examiner
tradition that Brodie’s interest in stories was often described in penis metaphors—“and he’s even talking about splashing it out front. He’s going to stick around to make sure it’s something he likes. So don’t dawdle.”
“Ja, mein Führer,”
I said.
I returned to my desk, glancing up at the clock on the way: 5:48. After hours.
Fortunately, the AG’s spokesman was a former
Eagle-Examiner
reporter. This was one of the few benefits of all the buyouts, layoffs, and other staff reductions that had ravaged our numbers through the years: many of the high-level public relations people in the state were former colleagues, having switched from covering the news to slanting it. Ben Hilfiker had left us a few years ago after a long and distinguished stint doing stories about the attorney general’s office and the state police, so I had his cell phone number programmed in mine.
“Uh-oh,” he said, “the state’s largest newspaper is calling. It must be very, very important.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know a lazy government bureaucrat like yourself probably left the office two hours ago, but you think you can give me a comment on something?”
“I wish I left two hours ago. I’m still here. I tell you, I can’t speak for the rest of Trenton, but there are still a lot of lights on in this place right now.”
I told him to save the spin for someone else, then enlightened him about the LeRioux-Kipps press conference—which, as I suspected, he hadn’t seen. He grumbled a few unmentionable words about how this better not screw up his date with a Devils game and a beer, then said, “Okay, let me check with my boss. I’m guessing you’ll need this for first edition?”
“Yep, Brodie wants copy by eight. That going to be a problem?”
With any other flak, I would have said seven thirty. That was the downside of dealing with a Ben Hilfiker: he knew our deadlines.
“No, that should be okay. He’s out of pocket right now, but I think he’s having dinner with Mrs. Attorney General later on. As long as I get him before his second martini, I should have something for you.”
I thanked him and got to work. I would be surprised if the AG wouldn’t at least pay lipservice to looking into it. The attorney general of the State of New Jersey is not an elected official. He serves at the pleasure of the governor. That might seem to make the position less political, but, if anything, it was more. An elected AG at least knew he had four years to do his job before he faced the voters. An appointed one could get bounced at any time.
And in this case, I knew that Pastor Al—whose eight thousand worshippers included a lot of old ladies who voted as religiously as they attended church—had stumped for the governor the last election. The AG would know that, too. Mimi Kipps had chosen her friends wisely.
Then again, politics cut all ways. The mayor of Newark was a Democrat, like the governor. And if Newark’s police director put in a phone call to the mayor, who put in a phone call to the governor? Well, it could complicate matters.
I left a blank spot in the story for the AG’s comment, then put in a perfunctory call to the Newark Police Department. Unsurprisingly, the spokesman on duty told me the department was standing by its statement that “Evidence gathered at the scene supports a preliminary determination that Detective Sergeant Darius Kipps died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The next two hours fled by as they often do when you suddenly find yourself writing a thousand words on deadline. I was nearing the end when Hilfiker called back.
“Hey, got anything for me?” I asked.
“Yeah, you ready?”
“Go.”
He read: “The attorney general’s office is aware of the request for an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Detective Darius Kipps. We hope to make a determination within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours as to whether such an investigation would be appropriate.”
I waited for the rest of it, but there was nothing more coming. “So in other words he’s waiting to see which way the wind is blowing?”
“More like how hard it’s blowing. But you get the idea.”
“I was hoping for something a little more definitive. You sure that’s the best you can do?”
“I got him midway through his second martini,” Hilfiker said. “You’re lucky I got anything at all.”
* * *
It took another half hour to finish the story, and Tina was doing what I call “the semihover” all the while. Basically, she didn’t want to make it seem like she was cruising over my shoulder. But she also seemed to be walking in my part of the newsroom more than she normally might.
I hit the Send button at 8:28, gave Tina a thumbs-up, then stretched my legs, doing a brief stroll just to get my circulation back. I was starving but stayed away from the break room. The thought of foraging dinner from the vending machines was too depressing. There had been too many vended meals in my past. Maybe I could convince Kira to grab a bite before we started sucking down absinthe. No reason she wouldn’t—the girl weighed ninety-eight pounds but ate like she had a tapeworm.
When I returned to my desk, I placed a call to Mimi Kipps, just to get the backstory on how Mr. Privacy, Pastor Al, talked her into a press conference. Her phone went straight to voice mail and I didn’t leave a message. My morning had given me enough quotes from Mimi and besides, if Brodie was as amorous toward this story as Tina suggested, there would be more time to talk to Mrs. Kipps in the coming days. Sometimes you have to avoid wearing out a source.
Mostly because I had time to kill, I started halfheartedly working some digital databases for more background on Darius Kipps—as if finding out he was a registered Democrat was going to make a large difference in my understanding of the man. I still had my head buried in my laptop screen twenty minutes later when Tina approached.