Kickoff!

The following pages are a series of police and family stories, some introspective, some just plain old cop war stories, some silly or whimsical and an occasional rant or two.

The original encouragement to set some of these to paper was from the pastor of our local parish. It was many years ago at the conclusion of a dinner in our home and we were relaxing in the living room over a glass of wine. Father enjoyed police stories, having come from a law enforcement family himself. After regaling him with a few tales he looked me in the eye and said, “You’re writing these down, aren’t you? You know, just for your family so years from now they can know what you were about.”

So I wrote a couple and the Chicago Tribune even published one, but then for some reason I stopped. But the increasing popularity of computers and word processing software made writing, revising and polishing a story even easier. With the advent of blogs, sharing became a practical option.

My plan is to publish at least two stories a month, targeting the 2nd and 4th Friday on the calendar for posting. Some will be family type memoirs under the Family Stories category. For a free subscription to this blog to receive notifications of new posts by email, signup at the right. No spam, I promise! Or follow me on Twitter (click above) for a tweet each time a new story is published.

Your comments are most appreciated. I try to answer each of them.

Thanks for reading… I hope you enjoy the stories.

Jim Padar
March 2011


In Memory of…

In Memory of…

     

  • Next week is National Police Week, several days set aside to honor those law enforcement officers that have paid the ultimate sacrifice as a result of adversarial action on the streets of our nation. They are truly the modern day heroes of our society. There is another group of officers, equally as large, who have lost their lives to an unseen adversary, suicide. This serves to remember them also, but unfortunately, it offers no profound insight because in the words of an unknown poet: “…tis hard to understand.”

It was a drab waiting room on the second floor of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. The light was poor, furniture nondescript and the walls were painted a dull unidentifiable color. My mom, 21 year old sister and I waited nervously. It was the day of my father’s surgery. At 12 years of age I was not supposed to be there. The plan called for me to take the nearby subway to my aunt’s apartment and spend the day with her. The actual surgery would go several hours and I prevailed upon my mother to spend just another hour with them before I left. We sat and bantered like nervous people do when greater, unknown things loom ahead.

My sister reviewed my instructions. The subway station was just two blocks away at North and Clybourne… I was to take the outbound train, not the downtown train, and get off at Addison. My aunt would be waiting for me and walk me to her place on Sheffield Avenue, a stone’s throw from Wrigley Field. As I was preparing to leave, the surgeon walked into the room, unannounced, in full operating room scrubs. My mother and sister looked at me nervously; I really was not supposed to be there.

The doctor didn’t notice and he began without fanfare. It was cancer, a tumor attached to the posterior wall of the heart. They would proceed with the surgery, hoping to make him more comfortable in the coming weeks. But at best, he would give Dad six months to live. I staggered against the wall. My mother and sister most likely reacted in a similar manner, but I did not notice.

A bit too late, I was dispatched to my aunt’s.

The subway station at North and Clybourne was well below street level and was damp and putrid smelling as I proceeded down the long stairs. I stood on the platform alone, the distant lights of the oncoming train turned to a roar as it sped into the station. My mind was spinning, my heart racing. The news incomprehensible. I felt physically ill. As I stared down at the shiny tracks, now reflecting the lights of the oncoming train, for the first and only time in my life I considered suicide.

I was alone on that subway platform and it was a moment of total despair, I was losing my father, my world was crashing to bits and I could not begin to absorb the news.

Why?

Why me?

Why now?

Up in a quaint old attic

As the raindrops patter down

I sat paging through an old schoolbook

Dusty, tattered, and brown.

I came to a page that was folded down.

And across it was written in childish hand:

“The teacher says to leave this for now,

’tis hard to understand.”

 A lifetime later on a sunny June day I stand with my police officer son at the Chicago Police Memorial Park for the Family Day Mass. He’s been unusually quiet this morning and for a moment he breaks away from me and I watch as he has some words with the Superintendent of Police.

“Walk with me,” he asks as he returns. The words are forced and he is visibly upset. We walk a distance from the crowd.

“My former partner committed suicide last night.” He is literally choking on the words. “It was a rumor last night, I couldn’t believe it but I just confirmed it with the Superintendent.”

The conversation is strained and disjointed, his throat constricts with each word… “A great guy… married… children…”

When it comes to a death like this

About all we can do is fold down the page and write

“The teacher says to leave this for now,

’tis hard to understand.”

In another story on this blog, I wrote about my partner Mike. He lost a long bout with the ravages of alcoholism and took his own life on another sunny day in May. I was out of town when I received the news and I sat for some time in my darkened hotel room.

There are lots of pages in the book of life

that are hard to understand

All we can do is fold them down and write:

“The teacher says to leave this for now,

’tis hard to understand.”

“Danny” was the subject of still another story here. A family friend since he was eight years old and close friend of my son. They grew up together; grammar school and high school classmates and became police officers a couple of years apart. The call came on a Monday afternoon several weeks ago:

“Dad… Danny… he…” then garbled words. Maybe wind noise? Damned cell phones!

“What? You cut out. What are you saying?” I stood up as if that would provide a clearer connection.

“Danny committed suicide.” The words once again choked in the back of his throat.

It hit me in the gut like a baseball bat and I recoiled back into the couch as though I had actually been physically struck. Marital problems, divorce… we knew. But Danny had fought and conquered so many other obstacles…

Someday—maybe only in heaven

We will unfold the pages again, read them and say,

“The Teacher was right; now I understand.”

 

  • Author’s note: The poem, paraphrased above, is “The Folded Page” and the author is unknown. My personal thanks to Father Greg Sakowicz for sharing his copy with me for this article.

Have no fear, the police are here…

 

  • This story has been around awhile. It was written several years ago by another police officer and has been revised a bit, with his permission, for posting here. It serves to illustrate we are never certain what the dangers are.

It was a simple call, very routine. Yeah, I know—we’re not supposed to use the “r” word.

“… see Mr. Patel on the first floor regarding someone knocking at his rear window. He stated someone broke that same window last week and he’s afraid that they’re back.”

“Ten-four, we’re on our way squad.”

My partner and I headed to the address and decided to drive through the alley first. We rolled slowly down the alley with the lights off but couldn’t be sure which building it was. We circled and headed to the front, found the address and parked the car. Our complainant could probably give us a little more background into the problems he was having so we went into the three-flat and rang his buzzer.

Sure enough, Mr. Patel, appeared all 98 pounds of him. He was a short, barefoot, slightly built east-Indian dressed in pajamas. There wasn’t much more of a story behind this call so we decided to check the yard and see what we could find. Mr. Patel decided he would follow us and wait at the mouth of the gangway. Assuring him that we would check things out, my partner and I moved cautiously toward the rear of the building with one hand shining our flashlights and our other hand on our pistols. Mr. Patel watched from the far end, intense and wide eyed.

The gangway was narrow, completely dark with not even enough room for us to walk side by side. Just as we were about to reach the backyard, our good sergeant pulled into the alley behind the building. He would cover the rear, and also write us down on his log. There was just one problem. His squad car scared a skunk that was out for a midnight stroll. The skunk shot directly up the gangway, right at us. Retreat was our only option.

With a quick loud yell, my partner and I turned and were running at full speed, right towards our startled complainant. Our keys were slapping together, nightsticks clanking against our radios, and the beams from our flashlights were going from ground to sky with every stride. Mr. Patel could also run fast, very fast. He must have been a half a block down the street before we caught up to him and assured him we were only running from a skunk. He never blinked his eyes or said a word to us as we explained that there was no one in his yard. I still laugh thinking about what he saw. Two of Chicago’s finest, twice his size, running straight for him with fear in their eyes. No doubt it took him awhile to calm down and get back to sleep.

He hasn’t called us back since that night.


A Camelot Day at High School

An email to my high school classmates:

Hey guys and gals,

I haven’t emailed the whole group for awhile so here goes. Excuse me if I repeat some stuff—I can’t keep track of all the individual emails I may have sent some of you.

It’s good to hear that many of us are shifting into the “fully retired” mode now. I’ve been doing six Saturdays and one Sunday for over a year now and I’ve never been more busy and loving every minute of it. Grandchildren abound but now I hear Wes and Laurie are great-grand-parents! How can that be? And I thought they were the same age as the rest of us!

I know you all remember that ’38 Buick I had in high school because it comes up in conversation every so often. Well a few weeks ago I reconnected with Tom who is now retired and living in New Mexico. He told me he had an old picture of the car and some of you girls and he emailed it to me! I didn’t even recall that he took the photo, much less still had a copy of it.

Remember that warm summer Friday in early September? It was a teacher conference day or something and there were no classes. Mac and I spent the morning polishing, waxing and detailing that old car until it looked like it just came off the showroom floor. Then we drove it over to school and somehow managed to park it on the lawn on the campus between the new building and the old building. We were the only high school in Chicago that actually had a campus.

Remember some of you girls from the College Club and The American Girl Club were having an impromptu beauty contest, vying for Homecoming Queen? You spotted that shiny Buick out on the campus and came running out and draped yourselves all over the car. We were all laughing so hard! You girls were gorgeous.

Remember the Assistant Principal and Disciplinarian spotted the car parked out on the lawn? He came marching out of the new building and headed toward us until he spotted his daughter on the hood of the car, then he changed course and walked briskly into the old building without a word. Thanks Jan, you saved our butts again.

Remember the sock hop that evening in the school gym? I think Tony and his band were playing that night. Us guys and gals reunited and joked about the car and the swimsuits. Mac and I told you girls you would have to come back Saturday and re-wax the car because you left smudges. We laughed and rocked and rolled all night.

Remember the last dance? You found your someone special and danced slowly, cheek to cheek.

Remember we all piled into cars, the Buick included, and headed out to Criz’s on North Avenue for cokes and BBQ?

Remember… well at this point in the evening I guess the memories become more individual, ya know what I mean?

Do you remember that very special late summer Camelot day at high school over fifty years ago?

What?

No?

You don’t remember it exactly that way?

Nah, me neither… well maybe just parts…


William Heirens—Full Circle

  • (Chicago, March 6, 2012) William Heirens, the notorious “Lipstick Killer” who in 1946 confessed to three horrific murders in Chicago and then spent the rest of his life — more than 65 years — in prison despite questions about his guilt, died yesterday, at a Chicago hospital after officials at the Illinois Dixon Correctional Center found him unresponsive in his cell.

I was not quite 8 years old when I discovered the joy of reading. I checked books out of our grammar school library and I sharpened my reading skills with a hard cover Webster Dictionary at my side. Then I discovered newspapers. The Chicago Daily Times was delivered to our home each day. It was a tabloid in both format and content. I scanned it each day for items that might interest a young boy. Then on January 8th, 1946 the “crime of the century” hit the front page.

Six year old Suzanne Degnan was kidnapped from her north side home and a few days later, based on an anonymous tip, police found portions of her dismembered body in nearby sewers within blocks of her home. It was a gruesome, macabre crime and The Times played it to the hilt with two inch headlines and front page pictures. Each day when I returned home from school I raced in and grabbed the paper, devouring every word of it. What were my parents thinking? Most likely they assumed I was reading the comics or sports section… well I was, but I read the Degnan Homicide stories first.

Sixty-five year-old Hector Verburgh, a janitor in the building where Degnan lived, was arrested and the police claimed to have solved the case. His picture filled the entire front page of The Times. He was wild-eyed, unshaven and appeared unkempt, the personification of an evil killer. A few days later he was released without charging. I was astounded. Why, you could tell by just looking at him that he was a murderer! Alas, my eight year old judgment apparently needed some honing. Two years later he was awarded $20,000 for false arrest and police brutality.

The next break in the case came in summer of ‘46 when the police arrested William Heirens committing a burglary in the Degnan neighborhood. Suzanne’s murder once again took over the front pages, but to this eight year old, Heirens, a 17 year old University of Chicago student, didn’t look anywhere near as frightening as Hector the janitor.  Never-the-less, over the next several months I read all the accounts of Heirens’ interrogation, eventual confession, and subsequent trial. The police linked him to two additional murders from the previous year and he was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms in the Illinois Penitentiary. Well, he confessed, so he must have been the right guy.

Almost 25 years later I walked into Maxwell Street Homicide as a full fledged big city detective. If asked, I would say that the Degnan Murder had no bearing on my desire to work homicide, but in retrospect I don’t think I could deny it. Steve Jobs said: “… you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” In the next eleven years I would experience firsthand the violence and depravity that human beings can wreak upon one another. And although it goes against any sense of reason, I also learned that it was not uncommon for innocent people to confess to murder without physical coercion of any kind. Without independent corroboration, any confession was suspect in my mind. Still, Heirens did not occupy any of my free brain cell minutes.

Under Illinois’ arcane sentencing laws, even a man serving three consecutive terms for murder was still eligible for parole and when he appeared before the parole board he again became news. Parole was denied of course and during one of my trips to Statesville Prison on an investigation I spoke with correctional officers who had routine contact with Heirens. “Nutty as a fruitcake,” was their opinion. Specifically, Heirens suffered from dissociative identity disorder, more commonly known as multiple personalities and the guards described having conversations with his different personas.

William Heirens and the Suzanne Degnan homicide became the farthest thing from my mind until the summer of 2010. A professional law enforcement association, of which I am a member and officer, booked a most interesting man as guest speaker for our fall State Conference. Steve Hodel is a former Los Angeles homicide investigator and spent a good part of his retirement years gathering proof that his father, George Hodel, was a serial killer. To that end he has published two books, The Black Dahlia Avenger and Most Evil, purporting to prove his case.

Some sixty-four years later, I found myself a more critical and discerning reader and after finishing reading The Black Dahlia Avenger I couldn’t say I was convinced that Steve had made his case. The publication of that book however, stirred the proverbial pot, and long sealed Los Angeles crime files were reopened and reviewed. These files confirmed many of Hodel’s earlier suppositions and led to the publication of his second book, Most Evil. I was gradually becoming a believer.  Even more surprising, several chapters in Most Evil build the case that Steve’s father, George, was the killer of not only Suzanne Degnan, but the other two murders of which Heirens had been convicted. Considerable doubt is cast upon Heirens guilt as Hodel builds a decent case, if not an airtight one against his father. He is even able to place his father in Chicago during the time period of one of the Heirens’ murders. Further, he purports that unique dissection details of the Degnan case and one of the Los Angeles Black Dahlia cases bear remarkable similarities.

I picked Steve up at the St. Louis airport when he flew in for his presentation. I listened to him in the classroom of course, but I also cracked a few beers with him later and we even attended a Cardinal’s game at Busch Stadium. Steve worked Hollywood Homicide about the same time period I worked Maxwell Street Homicide and it was my chance to talk to him “homicide mano a homicide mano.” I had hoped he would clear up a few things for that eight year old boy that still exists somewhere inside of me, but it was not to be. Steve was a good companion and conversationalist for those few days, but I learned little more than his books had already revealed. There was one tantalizing loose end concerning some possible DNA evidence at the Degnan homicide scene. But there is a question if it even exists these many years later. And even if it does gather dust in some 66 year old evidence file, the chances are slim that current law enforcement officials would expend resources on finding it and committing scarce laboratory resources for analysis at this late date.

As a very practical matter, the case is closed and with the passing of William Heirens on March 5th, any secrets his tortured mind held, died with him. Suzanne Degnan’s surviving siblings are convinced beyond all doubt that Heirens was guilty and that should be enough for me. No two persons have been closer to the case, having attended every Heirens parole hearing for the past 29 years.

The eight year old boy grew up and moved on devouring the details of the Chicago area Schuessler-Peterson murders in 1955, the Grimes sisters in 1956, and Judith Mae Anderson in 1957. In each of these cases, young people of my age genre were brutally murdered in the metropolitan area where I lived. In a sense, it brought me an unsettling sense of my own mortality, but—connecting the dots backwards now— perhaps it also brought me to the Maxwell Street Homicide office so many years later.


Maxwell Street Station Farewell

Maxwell & Morgan Streets

Maxwell & Morgan Streets

Can a building have a soul? The Maxwell Street Station at 943 West Maxwell in Chicago was a building where people shared history—lived history, actually—a building where people’s lives were forever changed, a building some will never forget, a building where people died. I can see my religious friends raise their eyebrows askance. Perhaps “soul” is not the best choice of words. Character. That’s the word, a building can have character and no building had more character for me than Maxwell Street, home for a time to my Area Four Homicide Unit and a plethora of other units over nearly 100 years of operation.

This came to mind as I read of other Chicago Police buildings closing recently in the wake of one of the most major reorganizations of the Chicago Police Department since the days of Orlando Wilson in the 1960′s. The decommissioning of the Maxwell Street Station was marked with great fanfare nearly 15 years ago. I wrote about it that night:

•  •  •

October 10, 1997. Tonight we celebrated the closing of the “Hills Street Blues” station.  Known here in Chicago as the “Maxwell Street” station, it was forever immortalized in the opening scenes every week on that most popular police show.

To those of us who worked at Maxwell Street, it was a unique and special place long before the TV show.  That was evidenced by the several hundred officers and their families who showed up tonight to share a hot dog and a beer or pop, take a picture and exchange war stories.  There was a live band, police parachutists dropped in, and a great deal of positive media.  Built in 1899 and in reality due to actually close early next year, I knew that tonight would probably be my last visit.

I was fortunate to have worked Maxwell Street Homicide for almost six years before our unit was moved to a new station several miles west.  I have always said that of my 29 year police career, as patrol officer, detective, sergeant and lieutenant, if I could relive any of it, it would be my years as a Maxwell Street homicide detective.  Tonight just reaffirms that in my mind.  For a few minutes I manage to tear myself away from my old homicide buddies.

I walk the single long flight of marble stairs, inch and a half deep paths worn into each side. On the stairs, it suddenly occurs to me that my father was born in 1901 and raised just blocks from this station.  Did he ever walk these stairs?  If he did, why?  What were the circumstances? I’ll never know. There was no path worn into the stairs then.

I stand in what once was our squad room on the second floor and I look around. A murder happened right here. A husband and wife had been brought into the station for an interview about a domestic disturbance. The husband dropped a derringer out of his sleeve and shot his wife to death right across the table and then set the gun down to await his arrest. We were always known as “the murder factory,” having the most homicides of any area in the city.  But our commander couldn’t believe it. “My God!” he said, “Now they’re killin’ each other right in the squad room!”

As I leave the building, I smile to myself as I think of the dungeon just below, sealed and off limits for the past many years. The basement housed the station lockup in some previous era of this grand old building. “The dungeon” was our terminology, in reality it was nothing more than abandoned cells, and it really wasn’t too well sealed if you knew where to look. Of course “sealed and off limits” to some cops is an overt challenge so my partner Mike and I surreptitiously gained access in the wee hours of a midnight tour of duty.

If the building itself had character, the basement cells, long ago abandoned, were steeped in “character.” The “dungeon” was dimly lit with low wattage incandescent bulbs controlled by old style rotary wall switches rather than the square toggle switches that are more familiar today. The lights cast a dusty orange pall over the entire area, the smell was that of a hundred year old basement. Cell doors had been removed long ago but some bars remained. In the center of each cell floor were holes that appeared to serve as lavatories. But most interesting was the graffiti on the concrete walls of the cells.

Cell Wall

Cell Wall

Pictured above, “Pretty Boy Forey” and compatriot “Red” gun down a cop. Another body lies below the trio. Note the zoot suit (circa 1940) and wide brimmed fedora worn by Forey and the pork-pie cap worn by Red. (I took  literary license with the inscription after noting that Red’s gun was going, “Bong, bong.”)

I leave the building and walk across the street and just stare from the outside. Good heavens, two of my four sons were born while I was assigned to this building! One of them reports to the police academy tomorrow morning for the first stages of recruit processing. Is it any measure of a man if his children choose to follow in his footsteps? Will he make it? Dear Lord, keep him safe. What will his memories be thirty years from now?

I rejoin my old homicide friends. Goodbye Maxwell Street. I raise my beer silently; this one’s for you and all the men and women that ever worked here. Thanks for the chance to remember the past…  and wonder about the future.


The Connection

The two old men purchased a pitcher of beer at the bar and then moved into the very back booth of the quiet neighborhood tavern.

“I’m tellin’ ya, I can’t do it any more.”

“What’s that?”

“Drive down here… it’s too much, the traffic, the trucks…”

“You were born and raised in this city for chrissake. What’s the matter with you??”

“Ya, so how many times a year do you drive up to see the wife and me?”

They smiled and the conversation turned to grandchildren.

After a while they lapsed into an easy silence and looked each other in the eye.

* * *

The two young teenagers worked hard at their cleanup assignment in the ROTC drill hall. They had met as incoming freshmen and immediately sensed a bond. They worked well together and enjoyed one another’s company. The chairs were folded and stacked. The flags covered, wastebaskets emptied. They stopped and admired their work.

“I want you to be best man at my wedding,” blurted out the one youngster.

“And I want you to be best man at my wedding,” replied the other, dead serious.

They looked shook hands and looked each other in the eye—and there it was—the silent connection: “We don’t even have girlfriends.” They laughed. It was at once the most ludicrous conversation and the most poignant pledge two fourteen olds could put together. And it was their first connection but they hardly noticed.

* * *

The two high school seniors mopped the basement floor in preparation for the evening graduation party. There were girlfriends now and other close friends that did not approve, resulting in a big time eighteen-year-old type crisis. They worked in total silence but the connection was humming this time. They finished and brought their mops over to the twin utility sinks. They stopped rinsing for a moment and looked each other in the eye and for the first time spoke aloud.

“Why are we thinking what we’re thinking?” By now the connection was a natural phenomenon.

“We know what we have to do… but after the party. No point in spoiling everybody’s night.”

The connection came more frequently and naturally now, not continuous of course, but from time to time, always unspoken. It was often enough and ordinary enough that they never stopped to question it or analyze what was happening.

* * *

The two servicemen sat in the back seat of the sedan, heading back to base after a night of more than too much to drink. It started with an elbow to the ribs, and then some closed fists to the torso. Neither would back off or retreat and it soon escalated to bare knuckle punches to the face and head. Now there was blood and the driver and front seat passenger pulled off the road to tug them apart.

“Hey you assholes! If the MP’s come by we’ll all wind up in a cell…”

There was a bloody lip and the other had an eye that was purple and starting to close. They winced when they touched their faces but the two reached out and gave one another a playful cuff on the back of the head. They caught each other’s glance and connected briefly. “Hey, that was fun!” They laughed.

* * *

It was the ultimate guy’s getaway road trip and Yellowstone National Park was the midpoint. The two young men drove off road onto a fire trail. The old Buick’s suspension creaked and groaned over the ruts, but they found a spot to pitch the tent for the night. Park regulations strongly encouraged the use of designated campsites, but then that wouldn’t be the wilderness. Bears were their most serious concern so they parked the car some fifty yards from the tent and left all the food items locked inside. After dark the starlight and moonlight actually cast faint luminescent shadows through the trees. But they had driven for the past twenty hours and could barely climb into the tent. It was a warm night and they lay atop their sleeping bags and were instantly asleep.

In the middle of the night came the unmistakable sound of scratching at the foot of the tent. He worked his foot free of the sleeping bag and scratched the inside of the canvas. Yep, that was the sound and it was instantly answered by another scratch. Bear! What to do? His heart was pounding now. Was he sure? Try it again. Scratch… answering scratch. Suddenly the connection clicked in.

“Is that you?”

“Yeah, is that you?”

“Jagoff!” he said aloud.

“Me? You’re the jagoff…”

They laughed. They would tell the story many times over once back home, but neither of them would mention the connection.

* * *

The widower stood near the front of the funeral parlor close to his wife’s casket. He was in control, or maybe just in shock. His three young sons would not be allowed here he had decided. His friend approached and a tentative handshake turned into a hug and then the two of them embraced and sobbed. They found that tears came more easily with age. They parted and looked each other in the eye. They were both overwhelmed and neither could speak, but they connected.

“It’s not supposed to be this way.”

“I know, I know.”

* * *

The old man broke eye contact and refilled his friend’s glass and for the first time in several minutes spoke aloud.

“We’re not there anymore,” he said, “And we can never go back”

“I know… that’s probably a good thing. There were good times and bad times. Funny how you tend to remember mostly the good times,” he said staring intently now, into his friends eyes.

“Stop it! You know it’s not just the eyes… it comes when it wants to.”

“Wouldn’t it be neat if we could turn it on whenever we wanted?”

“No, that would be creepy. Leave it be. This way it’s just a natural kinda… kinda…something.” He filled his own glass, set the pitcher down and glanced across the table.

“See! It is the eyes!”

“No is isn’t!”

“Is too!”

They laughed aloud.


What Scares Cops?

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”

–Mark Twain

What scares cops? I mean what really scares cops?

I guess a good general answer is: Not much.

If we want to be more specific, the answer becomes murky, more complicated. In reviewing this story in my mind before setting this account to the printed page, I think a good answer that most police officers would agree with is “the unknown.” Tactics can be taught in the academy and honed on the street with years of experience, but no matter the breadth of training and experience there come the incidents that have no safe, tactically defined approach. You master your fear, tough it out and do what you have to do.

It was a late summer evening, cool enough for a light jacket, especially after the sun had set. Mike and I were working homicide, driving west on Madison Street in the 3800 block. About 25 yards ahead of us a young man came darting out of a gangway, looking over his shoulder,  running from right to left into traffic. He reached the traffic lane directly in front of us when a very loud shot rang out from the gangway. He went face down, rolled onto his back, staring at the gangway as he tried to use his legs to push himself further away to no avail. He lost consciousness almost immediately.

Mike picked up the microphone and shouted.

“Seventy-four–o-seven. Emergency! We have an on view shots fired, man shot on the street at 3830 West Madison.”

I eased our car closer to the victim but remained about 10 yards back from the gangway. I put the car in park, positioning it to shield the victim from traffic. We paused for a moment to hear if our dispatcher had read our message. He did.

“Attention cars on City-Wide, we have a homicide unit with shots fired on the street and a man shot at 3830 West Madison.”

This was the 011th District and we knew that in a matter of seconds City-Wide units would be on the scene with District units close behind, delayed only by the time it took their dispatcher to relay the call. We approached the victim slowly with our revolvers drawn, all the while glancing warily at the dark gangway to our right. The victim appeared to be unarmed and unconscious. A Task Force unit arrived with siren wailing from the opposite direction and positioned their car to shelter the victim from the west.

“Call an ambulance,” we shouted as we headed to the gangway.

“You guys got a description?” they called to us.

“Negative—the shot came from the gangway.”

We got to the mouth of a narrow gangway, not more than four feet wide, lined with solid brick walls on both sides for the entire length. No cover, no concealment. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air as we peered down the dim length of the now empty passageway. Mike and I slowly crept towards the rear, revolvers drawn, sitting ducks for anyone who might suddenly reappear at the far end. It seemed a hundred yards long when in reality it was probably no more than a hundred feet.  These are the moments when cops hear their own heartbeat. After an eternity the rear opened onto a narrow lot occupied by a small construction office trailer. The lights were on and the door was ajar. We approached, again very slowly, remaining on the ground level as we gently pushed the door at the top of two stairs. An older black gentleman had his back to us as he carefully hung a shotgun on the far wall. We waited until he turned towards us, empty handed.

“Police! Keep your hands where we can see them.”

“I’m okay, I ain’t did nothin’.” He looked harmless… even kindly as he responded. Maybe he was threatened by the gunman also.

Mike spoke first.

“Did you shoot that boy?”

“Yassuh, I capped that niggah’s ass. He kept messing with me. I tole him not to mess with me no mo.”

Moments later we exited the gangway onto the sidewalk. Mike had his hand on the handcuff chain as he walked the prisoner out. I carried the shotgun.

“That was fast!” commented the Task Force unit.

“Ya, we don’t fuck around,” I answered with a smart ass air of confidence and just a bit of swagger.

The scene out front had changed dramatically since we had entered the gangway. Marked squads were curb to curb. Paramedics had cut away the teenager’s pant leg and were applying a dressing to the worst area of a buckshot wound. The boy was awake and alert now laying in a puddle of urine. Perhaps he had just fainted from fright.

The distinctive wail of a lone Chicago Police siren heralded the arrival of still another unit. A homicide car pulled into the center of the milieu.

“Didn’t you get the disregard?” I asked as our cohorts from Area Four rolled down their windows.

“Yeah, we were on the south side, but we kept coming because you sounded scared.”

I looked them straight in the eye, searching for a hint of insult or sarcasm but found none. I saw instead an expression of genuine concern that cops will seldom admit to. I diverted my eyes to the pavement before I replied.

“Yeah…

…well…

…maybe that’s ’cause we were scared.”


Rocco

• Synchronicity: A term coined by Carl Jung to explain what he believed to be the underlying order of the universe that manifests itself through meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect.

• Coincidence: God’s way of remaining anonymous. –Albert Einstein

One morning in January 1975, Jack Regan, my Homicide Sergeant threw an arrest report on my desk and said, half joking, “Hey, maybe this is your uncle.”

I looked at the mug shot and arrest sheet of a Rocco Padovoni that he had retrieved from the Robbery office next door. Could be, I thought, but who could say for sure? He had been arrested for the armed robbery of a Fannie Mae Candy store while using a blank pistol. His record indicated that at age 58, he had spent the vast majority of his adult life in Illinois State Prisons. He was soon to be headed back.

Literally over a hundred years ago in Baragiano, Italy our name had been Padovani. The guys in the unit knew that my family name had been mangled, first at Ellis Island in the 1890′s, then again when my dad and his older brother became wards of the state at Maryville Orphanage, and then one last time around 1924 when my father—perhaps not so inexplicably—dropped the last three syllables from his thoroughly corrupted surname.

I brought Rocco’s mug shot and arrest record home and he became sort of a scurrilous inside family joke, a real live authentic armed robber that might be my uncle. He became a living family legend, an armed desperado no less. Our very own family felon. Truth was, he favored sticking up Fannie Mae Candy stores with plastic guns. A poor soul that had fallen through the cracks of meager social services and had become institutionalized to the point where he found comfort and security in a prison setting. But I didn’t know that at the time.

Then in the early 80′s I was doing some genealogy research that confirmed Rocco Padovoni was in fact my uncle, a product of a second marriage of my grandfather. Our family’s sly references to Rocco only increased. Oh, we were so smug and clever.

To add fuel to the fire, at the age of 74, Uncle Rocco was arrested during the 1990 Christmas season, sticking up another Fannie Mae Candy Store. The newspapers reported he walked with a cane, was blind in one eye, and once again used a plastic gun. The responding officers were directed to a bus stop outside the candy store where he was waiting for his getaway vehicle, a CTA bus. Uncle Rocco pleaded guilty—he always pleaded guilty— and the Judge sentenced him to “intensive” probation, whatever that is. Somehow our image of an armed felon faded a bit, but we clipped the newspaper article and filed it away.

Then, the summer of 1992 everything changed. My wife called me at home from the local hospital where she worked.

“What is Rocco’s date of birth?” she asked. I looked it up and gave it to her.

“Well your Uncle Rocco is in the hospital. He was brought in last night by ambulance. He’s had a serious heart attack.”

“My Uncle Rocco.” That simple phrase had a sobering effect upon me. Now the butt of insensitive family jokes had a face, and a physical presence in the Intensive Care Unit a few miles from our home. A man I had never met needed help. “My Uncle Rocco.” He was an indigent patient and his hospital stay would be as brief as the doctors could justify. He’d be moved to a public aid nursing facility as soon as possible. We knew too well that would be a grim scenario.

Suddenly Rocco was indeed family. My wife visited a friend in the Social Services Department of the hospital.

“Is there any decent nursing home that could provide our Uncle Rocco with a public aid bed?” she asked.

As a matter of fact there was and within a week Uncle Rocco was resting most comfortably in an upscale nursing home on Chicago’s northwest side. They provided not only for his physical care but also the institutional structure that gave him comfort and security. Uncle Rocco was in heaven.

Perhaps not so strangely, he appeared at ease with the fact that I was a cop. But whenever anyone from our family visited him, he would find a way to express his opinion of our fractured family name.

“Padar, PADAR,” shaking his head with displeasure. Then he would hold his thumb against his fingers, palm up, and shake his raised hand , “Padovani, PADOVANI!” he would exclaim with a broad smile. He made no effort to conceal that he thought what had happened to our family name was a travesty. He was right.

Uncle Rocco passed away in December of ’94 at the age of 78.

Rest in peace, Rocco Padovani!


What Goes Around, Comes Around

Fabled bureau to file final page at year’s end

“Chicago Tribune, December 2, 2005—The Front Page gave way to the Internet age Thursday as the City News Service checked out.

 Dec. 31 will be the last day of operation for the 115‑year‑old news service where generations of reporters learned the abiding lesson of journalistic skepticism: If your mother says she loves you, check it out…”

 

The City News Bureau was every bit as much of a news bureau as the Associated Press or the United Press. City News however was a great deal smaller and largely relegated to the police beat in the greater Chicago area. In addition the bureau was staffed mostly with aspiring journalists working their very first job in the world of reporting. It was the proverbial bottom of the totem pole.

In the early 70′s at the Maxwell Street Homicide office, city news reporters were a fixture in the squad room, especially during the late evening/early morning hours on slow news days. We were the “murder factory” and the odds were high that the next homicide would come through this office. These hapless young reporters, mostly men, were thrown into a sink or swim training ground where hazing was oft times the order of the day. Cynical homicide detectives were all too eager to participate. Thousands of journalists began their career this way and many went on to fame and fortune, among them columnist Mike Royko, novelist Kurt Vonnegut and cartoonist Herb Block. No doubt more than one developed a dislike for police during their journalistic basic training.

To the crusty homicide guys these newbie reporters were fair game. Many of us were merciless, inviting them to make themselves comfortable… “Hang your coat here in the squad room.” Later in the cold winter evening, their boots would be partially filled with water in anticipation of that rush call to a murder scene. Other times they would be invited to share a hot cup of squad room coffee with guys. Any sense of comradery was dashed when they discovered a foreign object at the bottom of their cup. It was great fun and not a single cop in the group, including me, ever contemplated seeing these people in later years.

It has always been difficult for me to pick on the little guys… I despised bullies and many times I sensed these naive kids were near tears. No doubt I participated in some of the mischief but I also remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable on many occasions, even though I don’t have any specific memory of my personal behavior.

Fast forward some fifteen years… I am a Sergeant now, working in the department’s Video Services Section. We find ourselves summoned to the mayor’s office to videotape a personal message to a charitable organization. To say we were nervous would be a supreme understatement. None of us had ever met the Mayor.  As we readied our equipment I reviewed everything that could go wrong. It was a long list. We tried to at least plan for every eventuality.

The hour arrived and we found ourselves waiting in the outer office with a sense of foreboding. This experience could easily turn into a disaster given the combination of high tech equipment and what we perceived as an impatient mayor with no tolerance for mistakes. Without fanfare the door to the inner office suddenly opened and we were ushered in with our flatbed truck full of lighting and video equipment. I scanned the unfamiliar surroundings… The mayor was sitting behind a large desk befitting the office. At the far left a young man was sitting on a straight chair leaning precariously against the wall. His tie was loose and his shirtsleeves rolled up. He looked at me and literally leapt from his chair.

“Jim, Jim Padar!” he yelled. Sensing my confusion he held out his hand. “I’m Chief of Staff here now. What are you doing here Jim?”

My mind raced as I shook his hand and explained my present assignment. I recognized from the media that he was one of the mayor’s top aides. But how on earth did he know me? I had no recollection of how I might know him. He turned almost immediately to a slightly startled mayor.

“Mayor, I want to introduce you to one of Chicago’s finest officers. Sergeant Jim Padar, a real gentleman. I met Jim at Maxwell Street Homicide when I was a City News reporter. He’s a really good man!” He was positively effusive.

The mayor greeted me cordially and I introduced the rest of my team. For our crew it was the beginning of a warm relationship with the city’s chief executive officer.

Later as we packed up for the day I chuckled to my self. Somehow, some way deep inside, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff knew that years ago I was not the one who put a condom in his coffee.


“You Saved My Baby!”

Chicago’s West Side, 1975. The radio call was a man stabbed.

Mike and I trotted in between the buildings of the Henry Horner Homes, but we instinctively slowed approaching the play lot. There was a crowd as one would expect on this warm summer evening especially at the scene of a stabbing—but the people were strangely quiet—there was clearly something else going on here. Just a few months earlier a Chicago Police Officer had been shot and killed by a sniper from these buildings. It was not a nice place to be and tonight we were the first officers on the scene.

We slowed and unsnapped our holsters, keeping our hands on our snub nose revolvers as we continued more cautiously toward the group. Our uniform was “summer homicide,” short sleeve dress shirts, ties and slacks. Our sport coats hung on the rear seat hooks in our unmarked sedan now parked at the curb on the south edge of the housing project. Our lifeline, our radio, was firmly affixed to the dashboard of the car; the Detective Division would be the last in the department to be upgraded to the new handheld personal radios.

As we got closer, the crowd took note and created a path for us. In the center of the group lay a muscular teen-ager, staring wide eyed at the sky. No one was within 20 feet of him and we stopped in our tracks when we saw why. The shirtless young black male had been stabbed in the neck—the right carotid artery to be exact—and with each contraction of his heart a stream of blood shot 10 to 15 feet from his body. He writhed about from time to time and the direction of the blood would shift slightly with each movement. The crowd would murmur and shift even further away. We snapped our holster straps closed.

“Oh shit!” Mike and I exclaimed simultaneously. No matter how many first aid movies you may have seen, nothing can prepare you for this sight in real life.

“I’ll get a compress,” said Mike as he headed back to the car.

“And call for an ambulance!” I yelled after him as I approached the young man.

In our police careers both Mike and I had witnessed people bleed out from massive head wounds or other horrendous trauma that simply could not be staunched with the 4″ gauze compresses we carried in our case. But this was different. The point of bleeding was immediately identifiable. If I could just get my fingers on that point and apply pressure until Mike retuned, he might have a chance. I wasn’t quite sure how we would apply a compress with enough pressure and avoid strangling the young man at the same time, but that was not the present problem.

Somehow I got close enough to his body without getting a direct hit. I knelt next to him and placed the fingers of my right hand directly on the wound. I could feel the carotid pulsing but miraculously the bleeding stopped. With that accomplished I had time to contemplate our next move, but I didn’t have the faintest idea what that would be. I looked at his face, still wide eyed but conscious. Primal fear was the only way to describe his expression. The crowd stared silently. In the background I could hear the wail of responding sirens. What seemed like several minutes was in reality probably only seconds.

Mike, 12th District uniform personnel and two paramedics burst through the crowd at the same time… and they stopped in their tracks.

“Oh shit,” said the paramedics as they looked at streams of blood spatter that had streaked across the concrete.

“No shit,” I muttered to myself.

They showed a light on the man’s neck and my hand.

“Don’t move your hand!” they said as they opened their case of magic.

“Flatten your palm against his neck, but don’t move your fingers. Pressure! Maintain pressure!”

Okay I’m doing that I thought to myself.

Imagine my surprise when their magic appeared to be yards and yards of Ace bandages wrapped around my hand and the victim’s neck.

“And your plan is?” I asked

“You’re coming with us,” they said. “And don’t move your fingers!”

One of the paramedics retreated to the ambulance and returned with the stretcher. It wasn’t easy but somehow they maneuvered the patient, now totally unconscious, onto the stretcher, raised it to about waist high and all of us began to glide slowly toward the street. Once at the ambulance it was apparent that I was on the wrong side for conventional transport.

“You’ll have to kneel next to him.”

I looked at the corrugated steel floor. “Not without a pillow.”

“Give the pussy a pillow,” said one of the paramedics with a glint in his eye.

“Don’t fuck with me or I’ll move my fingers.”

“Okay, okay!”

Once inside the ambulance it was all business. The one paramedic started oxygen and was attempting to start an IV line while the other was radioing vital signs to the hospital. It was the first time I recall hearing the term “hypovolemic shock” amongst other medical terms and the hospital responded in a terse exchange with the paramedic on the radio.

The silent crowd had come alive and surrounded our vehicle and began pounding on the sides.

“What choo doin?”

“Ain’t you goin a take em?”

“Go! Go! Go!” They began to chant, all the while pounding on the sides of the ambulance.

The paramedic was still struggling with the IV.

A blue and white checkered hat appeared at the sliding window on the rear door.

“Hey guys, ya gotta move. There’s too many of them here.”

“Godammit!” cursed the paramedic on the radio.

“Stand-by, we have to move!” he shouted into the radio.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and we sped a few blocks to a parking lot on the far side of the Chicago Stadium.

“If we don’t get an IV started we’re going to lose him.” he said as he climbed back with us.

“Negative on the IV” ordered the hospital. “Transport stat!”

“Give me five more seconds,” said the paramedic next to me.

And then miraculously, “Got it!”

“Let’s move!”

I had never ridden in anything other than an old fashioned Cadillac ambulance and was astounded to observe that the newer ambulances were built on a truck chassis. Every block of our ride reminded me of that fact.

At the back door of County we once again had to gyrate and contort to get the two of us out of the ambulance, my right hand and his neck remaining securely fastened together. That accomplished we snaked our way through the corridor of the Emergency Room—which strangely was not our destination. We rolled out into the hallway where an elevator took us to the second floor Trauma Unit known simply as Ward 32. I had been there dozens of times investigating various shooting and stabbings. The Cook County Trauma Unit was probably one of the most competent in the world, but this visit would be quite different for me.

If I thought the patient and I were to be immediately released from one another I was mistaken. The paramedics described the incredulous scene to the doctors and they turned to me questioningly.

“That’s right,” I said, “He was pumping 10 to 15 foot streams.”

“And that’s where your fingers are now?”

I nodded.

“Don’t move your hand.”

And they started to work their medical magic. The victim was smoothly transferred from the fire department stretcher to the trauma unit gurney. His blood pressure was perilously low, called out with a single number rather than the pair of figures we are used to hearing. “Sixty!” And a few moments later, “Fifty-five!” Pulse was rapid. There were no breath sounds in his right lung. A urinary catheter was inserted—that always caused me to shudder no matter how many times I had seen the procedure. They couldn’t start their own IV and the one started in the parking lot of the Chicago Stadium was now being used to push a unit of blood while they started a cutdown in his groin to provide for a more rapid infusion of blood.

At any given moment there were four or more persons working on him, the medical terms being thrown about by doctors and nurses alike sounded like foreign language to me. I understood enough to know that they suspected that internal bleeding may have drained into his plural cavity causing the right lung to collapse. They called for a chest tube to be inserted immediately next to where my right elbow was positioned. I shifted away a few inches, but I couldn’t move any further. The incision and insertion without anesthetic resulted in a low moan and some movement on the patient’s part and I took that as an encouraging sign. But when the tube was finally inserted bright red blood flowed out, confirming internal bleeding.

“Clamp it! Clamp it!” someone shouted. “We need to get more blood into him.”

Every step was a balancing act but slowly I began to get the general impression that the plan was to prepare him for transport to the operating room. A vascular surgery team had been assembled and was in place. How far would I go, I wondered silently.

Suddenly they were concentrating on the ace bandages around my hand and his neck.

“Don’t move your hand until we tell you!” Maintain pressure!”

They started to unwrap several feet of blood soaked elastic bandages.

“Okay… when we tell you… remove your hand and step away.”

I checked the path behind me and nodded my head.

“Now!” shouted the doctor.

I pulled my hand away and stepped into the pathway behind me without looking back at the patient. We had been joined together for well over an hour. As I flexed my hand and elbow, he and his gurney were disappearing out the door on the way to the OR. I found a wash station at the back of the Trauma Unit and scrubbed with a Hexachlorophene impregnated sponge for several minutes. While I was drying, Mike appeared at my side.

“Where’s that 4″ compress I sent you for?” I said with mock indignation.

“Go fuck yourself,” he responded. “Can we leave now, doctor?”

We laughed and the medical people still in the trauma unit shot us a look.

I had blood on my shirt and I was sure there had to be some on my trousers. We only had about 90 minutes left on our shift.

“Let’s go in to the office. I’m going to ask to be excused so I can go home and cleanup. Do we have any idea who this guy is?”

I know who he is,” said Mike facetiously. “Wiggins. Larry Wiggins. He’s 19 and he lives in the Henry Horner Homes.”

“Well I’m glad you were doing something useful while I was… tied up.” We both laughed again.

Back at our Maxwell Street office, Mike started typing a Serafini Report, an unofficial note detailing what we knew, in the event Wiggins expired before we returned to work the next afternoon.

I headed home to shower and throw in a load of laundry.

•  •  •

For the next two days we immediately checked on Larry Wiggins’ condition when we arrived for work. The first day post-op they carried him as “critical.” The second day he got a half notch upgrade to “critical but stable,” a meager improvement.

We attempted some interviews at the Henry Horner Homes but the attitude toward the police was several steps beyond hostile. The offender was nick-named “Pookie” and we got a general physical description, but nobody would identify him beyond that. We enlisted the help of a robbery detective from our adjoining office. He was an encyclopedia of ghetto nicknames. Problem was, he told us, there were about a dozen Pookies on the west side. But with Larry Wiggins very slowly improving, he began to drop lower on our priority list. Homicide was the game and our Maxwell Street unit had earned the nickname “The Murder Factory” the hard way. Wiggins was alive and improving—time enough to interview him in person in a week or so.

The third day when we arrived for work, there was no need to call the hospital. The sergeant handed us a report from our morgue man reclassifying the Wiggins Aggravated Battery to Homicide/Murder. Larry Wiggins had expired suddenly during the early morning hours. The autopsy listed his cause of death as “Cerebral Thrombosis secondary to Traumatic Laceration of the Right Carotid Artery (Stab Wound). In short, Larry had suffered a stroke from a blood clot that had probably originated from the site of the knife wound. That put Larry back at the top of our priority list for the evening.

After roll call we trekked over to the Henry Horner Homes once again, but this time we went directly to the apartment where Larry had lived with his mother and sisters. As we entered, the mood was quiet and somber. A girl I would later learn was Larry’s younger sister turned to her mother.

“Mama, this is the detective I told you about,” as she nodded toward me.

“Oh sweet Jesus!” she shouted as she took about three steps and put me in a bear hug. “You saved my baby! You saved my baby!” She sobbed as she held tight to me.

Didn’t she know? Hadn’t they told her? Her son had been dead now for well over 12 hours. I held her tight, not knowing what her reaction was going to be, but she had to know the truth.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” I put my mouth close to her ear. “Larry passed away early this morning.”

She released me and put her hands on each of my arms just above the elbow.

“Don’t you understand?” she said. “You gave him a chance, oh Lord, you gave him a chance!”

I stared dumbly at her as she regained her composure.

“Jesus put you there so we would could see him and tell him we loved him… and say good-bye. You did that for us.”

“Yes ma’am,” was all I could say.

“We’re looking for Pookie,” I added lamely after a short pause.

She stood straighter and stronger, taking on the persona of the tough, resilient black matriarchs that I had seen so often in the ghetto.

“We know Pookie,” she said. “We’ll bring him in to you.”

“Mrs. Wiggins, that’s our job. We don’t want anything happening to you… or to Pookie.”

She smiled, indulgently I thought.

“His mama and I—we bring him in to you—ain’t nothin’ goin to happen to him. We be doin’ the right thing.” Her tone left no room for argument.

Two hours later an entourage arrived at the Maxwell Street Homicide office with Pookie in tow. He was a big young man, but with his mama at his side he looked meek and bedraggled. They stayed at the office while we took statements from Pookie and several witnesses. The Assistant State’s Attorney from the Felony Review Unit arrived, reviewed the case and approved murder charges.

It was well after midnight when we called for Pookie to be transported to the lock-up. The two mamas, Larry’s sisters and two witnesses left together. Everybody’s lives had changed the past few days, but the mamas walked out arm in arm, solid and straight. In a very real sense, they had each lost a son to ghetto violence, but no pair of mothers ever appeared more resolute in adversity.


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 306 other followers