Have no fear, the police are here…

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• 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.

Maxwell Street Station Farewell

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

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.

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 011^th 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.”

What Goes Around, Comes Around

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, 12^th 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.