Friday, August 20, 2004
But captain, we hardly knew ye
I know I'm dragging ass on the opus I'm working on about my recent trip back to the homeland, but I thought I'd share a quick story from the cop beat. Last night, I went to a perp walk, the common name for when the cops bring a suspect from the police station to a waiting car to be transferred to the prison. On some cases the cops will call the media, so they can see the walk and get photos of the suspect. I'm not a fan of perp walks, I thin, they could accomplish the same thing (getting an image of the suspect) by releasing mug shots.
On this night they walked the guy a little early and the two local TV stations hadn't shown up yet and missed it. Right after the cops had put the suspect in the car, a police captain came out telling the officers they had fucked up because they hadn't waited for TV crews. So they actually took the guy back out of the cop car and led him back into police headquarters, waited 10 minutes for TV to show up and staged the whole thing again. So I put it in the article. It wasn't real high in the story, certainly well below the six armed robberies this guy is accused of committing, but I think it's relevant if the cops are parading these guys in and out of cop cars simply for the benefit of TV crews.
Here's the exchange that happened the next day between me and the police officer who ordered the redo.
After I called and introduced myself to the officer, who I met for the first time at the perp walk, said:
Cop: "We're not friends anymore."'
Me: "OK, I think I know what you're mad about..."
Cop: "That was chickenshit."
Me: "Now wait, let me explain..."
Cop: "That was bullshit and had no place in the article, but y'all screwed yourselves, there won't be any more perp walks."
Me: "Can I just explain why I put that in the article?"
Cop: "There's no explainin', that was chickenshit. Bye." Click.
And thus, a new record: alienating a cop to the point of hanging up on me a mere 16 hours after meeting him. That's at least three minutes quicker than the previous record.
On this night they walked the guy a little early and the two local TV stations hadn't shown up yet and missed it. Right after the cops had put the suspect in the car, a police captain came out telling the officers they had fucked up because they hadn't waited for TV crews. So they actually took the guy back out of the cop car and led him back into police headquarters, waited 10 minutes for TV to show up and staged the whole thing again. So I put it in the article. It wasn't real high in the story, certainly well below the six armed robberies this guy is accused of committing, but I think it's relevant if the cops are parading these guys in and out of cop cars simply for the benefit of TV crews.
Here's the exchange that happened the next day between me and the police officer who ordered the redo.
After I called and introduced myself to the officer, who I met for the first time at the perp walk, said:
Cop: "We're not friends anymore."'
Me: "OK, I think I know what you're mad about..."
Cop: "That was chickenshit."
Me: "Now wait, let me explain..."
Cop: "That was bullshit and had no place in the article, but y'all screwed yourselves, there won't be any more perp walks."
Me: "Can I just explain why I put that in the article?"
Cop: "There's no explainin', that was chickenshit. Bye." Click.
And thus, a new record: alienating a cop to the point of hanging up on me a mere 16 hours after meeting him. That's at least three minutes quicker than the previous record.
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
<< Home
