Times change. Today it’s different. Today is every day more liberal. Today they discuss, they talk with you. Even the high-class ones change. Everybody change today, more friendly today. Today I make a joke, they take it. More on the equal side, more friendship. Before you couldn’t do nothing. I see one time a doorman smokes a cigarette and the tenant went over to the manager and they fired ’im right out. They said, “Go”—just like that. You had no chance at all. Yesterday when payday was, they don’t want you, you’re through. They can’t do that today no more. Today the man is better off.
But I would like to see the house the way it was. If a stranger come in today, I stop him. I ask where he’s going. Some of ‘em give me a little trouble, especially the Democrats, the black ones. I call ’em Democrats. I don’t want to say colored or white or anybody—just Democrats. One time a guy says to me, “Didn’t you ever see a colored man come in here?” I said, “Yes, but it’s my job. I don’t care what you do upstairs, but I have to ask where you’re going, see?” When he came down, he said, “I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t realize that.” Seem with all this liberal stuff you have your ups and downs. I didn’t have that years ago.
You never had to stop ‘em before. I knew who they were. Years ago, they had more family life. Their friends come in or their brother or somebody you knew. Today is more open. They take apartments here, three, four guys, girls, and they have friends come in and you don’t know who is who. You have to stop ’em. I have to tell ’em this is my job.
There’s a lot of trouble around here. Pocketbook gets snatched, things like that. I used to work nighttime. There was a couch here. I slept there and the door was open in the summertime. Nobody came in, not a soul. Today you couldn’t do that. When I was out of the service in 1945, it was pretty good. But in the last ten years you get a little trouble. You walk there in the street, you see it. Drinking, dope . . . The uniform helps, yeah. If I would stay there with the suit on, they wouldn’t respect me. But when they see a uniform, they know who I am.
A heavy-set blonde girl wearing slacks has entered the vestibule. It had started to rain several minutes before. It is now a downpour. She stands against the wall. She’s obviously in a good humor. Fritz approaches her. She smiles at him and holds forth a half-pint. She offers it to him. She has a slight Spanish accent. He declines in a friendly manner. The rain slackens, she waves good-by and leaves.
“You need something?” she said. “I don’t need something,” I say to her. That would never happen years ago, no, no, never. You couldn’t say things like this or “How are you?” I liked it. You didn’t get in no trouble. They think today because you’re friendly they got advantage, you know? Freshness.
The people, they all know me. When they go away here in the summertime, they give me the key and I take care of the apartment. Whatever, flowers. I don’t care what’s laying there, I wouldn’t touch it. They know this. There could be whisky staying there, I wouldn’t touch nothing. If they have a little money in there, I don’t care what they got laying there, I wouldn’t touch it. They know this. They respect me.
In forty-one years, if I took five days off for foolishness, I would be a liar. Oh, I never take off. I betcha I wasn’t late five times in forty-one years. I’m very on the ball. I should get more money because I’m here a long time. A new guy comes in, he don’t know nothing, he gets the same pay I do. But then the other way around: if they would have to pay me more, they would take the younger man and save money.
I don’t care no more, because I’m sixty-five and maybe a year more and I will retire. I hope God is good to me, that I have my health. So long as I feel good, I work, because I have a nice job and I don’t kill myself. I wouldn’t like to take off now and sit on the bench here, with the older men here. I wouldn’t like it every day, like friends of mine. I’m active, I like to do something.
I came to this country from Germany, there were no jobs. This is 1927. I was working in a candy factory. Christmas and Easter we worked. They lay me off. The money I saved up went to hell. So this job was steady. Even if I wanted to change, I couldn’t change, because there was nothing. I was glad to have it. If I was to come to this country again, I would like to be a mechanic. Because today you have golden opportunity.
VINCENT MAHER
Each child has a dream. I had two. One was to be a marine and the other was to be a policeman. I tried other endeavors but I was just not cut out for it. I am a policeman. It is one of the most gratifying jobs in the world.
He is thirty-nine. He lives apart from his family—a wife and three children: two boys, fifteen and twelve, and a girl, fourteen. He presently directs traffic in Chicago’s Loop. He had previously been a member of the Tactical Unit. Due to a personal grievance, he had resigned from the force. For a time, he worked as a bartender—disconsolately. “I had a deputy chief come in and a commander. They said, ‘Vince, you’re a cop. Get your fanny back on the job.’ I came back on the job and I’m happy.”
Two of his uncles had been on the force in New York City, as was his father, “until he lost his trigger finger in a railroad accident.” As he reflects, past and present fuse.
I make an arrest on someone who commits a crime of violence. I have to resort to a physical type of arrest to subdue him, I might have to shoot the person. I’m chastised for being brutal. It’s all right for him to do what he wants to do against myself or legitimate people, but in no way I can touch him. I don’t see the justice.
I’ve been accused of being a bigot, a hypocrite, and a few other niceties. I’m a human being with a job. I judge people on face value. Just because a guy wears long hair doesn’t make him a radical. Just because he’s black —I’d
rather
work in a black neighborhood. They need me more than the white. White neighborhoods are not as involved in actual crime, the dirtiness, as they are in poor neighborhoods. I don’t mean blacks alone. There are Southern whites that come up here, they live in jungles. So do the Puerto Ricans.
The white man, he wants me to write an illegally parked car or write the neighbor nextdoor for his dog defecating on the grass. I don’t dig this. This is not my kind. I lived in a jungle, I’ve come from a jungle. In those early days, nobody knew the word nigger. There was no hate. You came and went as you pleased. I’ve seen kids come out of a bad neighborhood, some become priests, some become policemen, others go to the penitentiary. I don’t believe what some judges say: because of environment, this is the way it is. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I never finished high school. I finished the hard way—Uncle Sam and I. I should be a crook because I came out of a slum neighborhood? My dad was a Depression kid. I saw him when he was making four dollars a week, supporting four kids and a wife. (Laughs.) That’s why I became a policeman.
I’m in traffic now—semi-retirement. (Laughs softly, ruefully.) All I ever wanted was detective and I couldn’t make it. When I was on the Tactical Force, I just couldn’t wait. I used to work my days off. I felt I was really functioning as a police officer. I get out there and infiltrate, to find out why, when, and where. We need an element to get out there. I’m not saying it’s the greatest thing in the world, but it’s necessary. It’s a evil because crime is evil. Why do these people who preach liberalism and pacifism require walls around their houses? They need these buffers. That’s what we are, buffers.
If there was a crime pattern working, we’d go out and find out who, what, when, and cleaned it up. We would roam the street as citizens, rather than marked as policemen. We’d wear neat and presentable suits. You can hear a lot more when you’re sitting in a group of hippies or you’re sitting in a restaurant. That’s how I used to operate. I’d pick up information. Nobody knew I was a policeman.
I don’t believe in entrapping. To entrap is to induce someone to commit a crime. The prostitute was a great source of information. This is funny, but I’d rather have a prostitute working the street. This is her trade and it’s been going on since Adam and Eve. If I were President, I’d legalize it. As long as she’s operating, I don’t have to worry about someone being raped or a child being molested. They render a service as long as they’re clean and don’t hurt people.
I used to call the girls at two in the morning and say, “I need four or five for the night.” And they’d say, “Okay Vince, we’ll be here. Come back in about two hours.” They’d all be lined up and I’d lock ’em up. I’d grab one of the broads off the street and I’d say, “Charlene, you’d better hustle because I’m coming back later and if I catch youse around—boom—you’re gonna get nailed. The beef is on.”
The good suffer for the faults of the bad. You get one hooker out there that’s a bad one, starts jackrolling, working with a pimp, you’ve got a bad beef. As long as the broads are operating and nobody’s hurt . . . If Sam wants to go out and get something strange, he’s gonna go. I can’t put a ball and chain on this man. His own conscience has got to be his guide.
I don’t discriminate, black or white broads. They were good to me. They were my source of information. They can go places where my eyes and ears can’t go. The best eyes and ears the policeman has got is the street, because the blue is known even when you don’t have it on. So you send your other people out.
When they get pinched, they’re not hurt so much. When they put up a twenty-five-dollar bond, they know I’m not gonna be in court and they get their money back and they’re back on the street. They take the bust and it’s a cover for them.
There was a gang of thieves in Old Town. At the time, there was sixty or seventy unsolved robberies. They were working in conjunction with prostitutes. They’d rob the trick. They would sometimes cut, beat, or shoot the victim. My two partners and I set out one night and I was the decoy. I was picked up by two prostitutes. I took on four guys in a gun battle. One guy stuck a shotgun in my stomach and it misfired. The other guy opened up on me with a .38. I killed the man with the shotgun, wounded the other guy, and took the other two. I
volunteered.
I was decorated for it and given a chance to make detective. But I didn’t make it.
I’m human. I make mistakes like everybody else. If you want a robot, build machines. If you want human beings, that’s what I am. I’m an honest cop. I don’t think any person doing my job could face the stuff I face without losing your temper at one time or another. I’ve used the word nigger, I’ve used the word stump-jumpin’ hillbilly, I’ve used vulgarity against ’em. It depends on the element.
I’ve never studied psychology, but I apply it every day of my life. You can go into an atmosphere of doctors and lawyers and educators and get a point across verbally. They understand. You can also work on the South or West Side,* where you can talk your fool head off and get nothing. They don’t understand this nicety-type guy. So you walk with a big stick. Like the adage of a mule: He’s a very intelligent animal, but in order to get his attention you have to hit him on the head with a stick. Same thing applies on the street.
You walk up to some of these people and they’ll spit in your face. If you let them, then I’ve lost what I am as a policeman, because now I’ve let the bad overrule me. So I have to get physical sometimes. It isn’t done in a brutal sense. I call it a corrective measure. You get these derelicts on the street. I’ve dealt with these people for years. You whack ’em on the sole of the foot. It isn’t brutal, but it stings and he gets the message: he’s not supposed to be sleeping on the street. “Get up!” You get him on his feet and say, “Now go on back to junk heaven that you live in and get some sleep.” Someone coming down the street sees me use the stick on the sole of his foot is gonna scream that I’m brutal.
There were five gentlemen standing on the corner, all black. One guy stepped in front of my car, and said, “You white mother so-and-so, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Bleep-bleep on the horn. I say, “Listen fella, move!” He didn’t move. The challenge was there. I’m alone, I’m white. And he’s one of these people that read in the magazines: Challenge the policeman. I got out of the squad car and I told him, “You . . .” (Hesitates.) I rapped to him in his tongue and he understood. I called him everything in the book. I said, “Get up off the curb or you’re gonna go to jail.” He made a very emphatic point of trying to take me physically. It didn’t work. When his four buddies saw him go on the ground, I got the message across: I’m the boss on the street. If you’re the jungle cat, I’m the man with the whip and the chain. If that’s the way you want to be treated, I’m gonna treat you that way. If you want to be physical, mister, you better be an awful good man to take me.
From now on, I’d walk up and down that street and the guys’d say (imitates black accent), “Hiya mister po-lice, how ya doin?” I don’t care if you’re yellow, pink, or purple, I’m a policeman and I demand respect. Not for me as an individual, but for what I represent. Unfortunately, the country’s going the other way. They’ll be throwing bricks and bottles at you and you’ll be told don’t do anything, they’re merely expressing themselves.
Now this bit about advising people of their constitutional rights. I have been doing that for years. Nobody had to tell me to do it. I did it because I felt: Listen, baby, you open your big mouth and anything you tell me, I’m gonna use against you. I didn’t come right out and say, “Sir, I must advise you of your constitutional rights.” I didn’t stand there and let them go bang-bang and stick-stick with a blade while I’m tellin’ ’cm. I’m just as much a policeman to the black man as I am to the white man, to the yellow man, to the liberal, to the conservative, to the hippie or whatever. I choose no sides.
I was respected as good cannon fodder. But where do I lack the quality of leadership? This is what bugs me. Is there something wrong with me that I can’t be a leader. Who is to judge me? I’ve had guys on this job that have begged to work with me as a partner. If that doesn’t show leadership . . .