Allegedly True Police Stories – Series

Police Brutality

Officer Johnson sat in his roll call seat, more concerned about his biorhythms than listening to Sergeant Ford spout off about this past month’s larcenies from auto stores. He and his biorhythms were at an all-time low and getting worse. He felt like everything he touched turned to shit, which was true.  

Several things had just recently, within the last week, happened to cause his overwhelming feeling of doom. To start, his wife of twelve years six months fifteen days had just left him to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a member of a naked lesbian water circus somewhere in Arizona. That was terrible enough, but he never knew she was a lesbian. Second, his dog Blackie was run over by a school bus. Blackie was crossing Reese Street with the light in the crosswalk when a school bus driver, distracted by twenty-seven loud and rowdy elementary school kids all with worms, did not stop at the big red stop sign, struck and knocked poor old Black a good ten yards down the road. Last but not any means least, he just found out this morning that the IRS was taking his house as part of a judgment against him for not paying taxes for the last two years. His wife, the now brand new lesbian, had been saving all the money she could hoard to make a fast get-a-way to the big top and forgot to give Uncle Sam his unfair if you believe the radical right-wing, share. The IRS can be so unfair at times.

He raised his hand and waited for the Sergeant to acknowledge him. When that happened, he said sadly and mournfully, “Sarge, I feel sick. I have to go home.” By home, he meant Mom and Dad’s place in Riverdale. Four minutes later, he was in his police car headed for Johnson’s homestead a mile and a half from the station. In traffic, it was a four-minute drive.

Just as he stopped at the red light on Route One at Cleveland Avenue, a call went out on his Motorola, “Any unit in the vicinity of the Riverdale Tavern for a large fight?” Just Johnson’s luck, he was less than twenty feet from the Riverdale Tavern’s front door. He hesitated but said to himself, What the fuck? I’m sick of this shit. Three-thirty in the afternoon, and there’s a bar fight? How much worse can my day get? “ID 4724, hold me out.” The dispatcher responded, “10-4, ID 4724.”

As Johnson rolled to a complete stop in the parking space right outside the tavern’s front door, a man, standard lookout number 4 ( White Male, Six Foot, Thin, Dark Waist Length Hair – Clean Shaven, White T-Shirt, and Blue Jeans ) came running out of the T/A. T/A is police jargon for ‘Trading As, ‘ a commercial business. As an added short description note, the man was bleeding, thick and dark flow, from the top of his head.  He must be the loser, Johnson thought. 

Of course, Johnson entered the T/A and found the remnants of what must have been one hell of a bar fight. Four guys were lying on the floor in front of a bar in various stages of distress. The bartender held a baseball bat and yelled, “That bastard.”

Johnson had to grab the bartender to get him to calm down, and when he was somewhat stable, whatever that was, he asked the bartender what had happened. “That son of a bitch tore my place apart and beat those guys up. He’s fucking loco, on something, shit, look what he’s done.”  

In a casual, almost disinterested tone, Johnson asked, “How did the fight start.”

The bartender replied in an almost hysterical state, “That crazy son of a bitch just walked in here and started fighting with those guys,” pointing at the four on the floor, “for no reason whatsoever. I hit him several times with the bat, but that had no effect. It wasn’t till you showed up that he left. I got him good. He should be dead. Look what he’s done to my place.

In the meantime, Communications tried to reach Johnson to determine if he needed a backup. The day work shift had all gone out of service, but Johnson’s squad, 3-11, had yet to come in service, 10-8. When Communications got no reply, a telephone call was made to the station requesting a backup from the officers still in the station for Johnson. It seems Mrs. Syms, the station clerk, was good at taking messages but not that good at getting off her big hippo ass and walking 25 feet to the Sergeant’s cubical to give him the message. When asked later about the message, she informed the shift Lieutenant that she had forgotten to provide the Sarge with the news. The Lieutenant found a posted-note message crumbled up with the following written in what can only be described as a third grader’s handwriting, “riv dale bar, need back up,” in Mrs. Syms’ office trash can. Help did not arrive for ten minutes. By that time, it was almost too late.

While things were happening or, better yet, not happening in Communications, Johnson was leaving the bar to find the assaulter and/or victim. He crossed Route 1 and found fresh blood drops on the sidewalk in front of a vacant storefront and bloody handprint smears on the building wall. Johnson was never headed for the Investigative Bureau, but even he could follow fresh blood smears at the eve level on a grey-painted wall. The blood streaks led up Route 1 to the corner of the building and then up Oglethorpe Street. Johnson turned onto Oglethorpe and continued following the blood smears. Forty feet up Oglethorpe, he came to a small parking lot with a man kneeling on his left knee on the asphalt. Johnson walked up to the assaulter/and possible victim, John Earl Prince, of no fixed address since his parents disowned him for stealing money from them to feed his illicit drug purchases and placed his hand on John Earl’s left shoulder. Johnson was mid-sentence asking Johnson if he needed any help when somehow John Earl, in a nanosecond, jumped up, turned, and struck Johnson with all the force he could muster in the face with his right hand. The fight was on.

John Earl was on top of Johnson, trying to grab Johnson’s service reveler out of its holster violently, and Johnson was doing everything he could to prevent it. However, Johnson somehow noticed one thing he would forever remember until the day he passed away, 42 years 4 months 11 days later, from sepsis due to an ingrown toenail. He noticed an elderly white female dressed in a grey pantsuit walking down Oglethorpe from the senior living house, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Police Brutality, Police Brutality.” A Snap Shot In Time!

He doesn’t know why that is the only thing he remembered about the encounter, but it was. He doesn’t remember somehow getting John Earl off him, handcuffing John Earl, and dragging the struggling assaulter/victim by his long, unkempt hair; where one’s hair goes, so goes one, back to his police car. As Officer Johnson, his shirt torn off and bleeding from his mouth and ears, dragged the struggling John Earl across Route 1, vehicles honked their horns to get on down the road. Not one person stopped to render assistance.  In their defense, it was the beginning of the ‘rush hour’ after all.

Help finally arrived just after Johnson got John Earl in the back of the police car, seated himself behind the wheel, and passed out. The first officer on the scene, Candice Pompeo, panicked when she saw a bloodied Johnson slumped over and John Earl in the back. For some unknown reason, she drew her service revolver and pointed it at John Earl, who was seated, handcuffed behind his back in the back seat behind metal bars, strapped in my seat belt, and froze. The second police car to arrive was the Sergeant, who found the prisoner, a passed-out officer, and an almost catatonic police officer with her finger on the trigger.  

They treated Johnson for a broken jaw and nose at the hospital and sewed a particularly ripped-off left ear back on his cute little head. 

The now-arrested John Earl was also treated at the same Emergency Room, strapped to a gurney with five officers standing around it just waiting in case John Earl ripped off the straps. Doc Martin told the officers John Earl was most likely on PCP, which would account for his superhuman strength and violent, aggressive nature.

John Earl Prince was sentenced to 6 years in the State Prison and sent to Jessup for his new home away from home for the assaults on Officer Johnson and four would-be drunks.

Bob Ferby, bartender and baseball bat swinger, was about to get an award from the Department when it was learned that he was on probation for aggravated assault on his 2nd cousin, twice removed. Unfortunately, it seems Bob used a bat on that occasion, too. So instead of a Departmental Civilian of the Year Award for beating on the bad guy to save his buddies, Bob’s probation was revoked, and he was returned to Maryland’s State prison at Jessup for the 17 months remaining on his sentence.

It has been rumored that John Earl, five months plus into his 6-year sentence, ran into Bob Ferby at Jessup in the showers. Bob was an old friend of victim drunk number 3. However, nobody at Jessup seems to know how John Earl came to break both arms and both legs while showering. No matter how bad John Earl thought prison would be, he had no clue.

Officer Johnson spent five weeks recuperating at his parent’s house before returning to work. For the next 8 years, until he retired, Officer Johnson never again called in or took off sick. On his death bed, Officer Johnson’s last words were reported by his older sister Sherry, who was the only one to show up at the hospital to see her brother off, “The lady in grey, police brutality.”